Return to Love

by Marianne Williamson

I didn’t know what to do with my life, though I remember my parents kept begging me to do something. I went from relationship to relationship, job to job, city to city, looking for some sense of identity or purpose, some feeling that my life had finally kicked in. I knew I had talent, but I didn’t know at what.

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here.

to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.

Meaning doesn’t lie in things. Meaning lies in us. When we attach value to things that aren’t love—the money, the car, the house, the prestige—we are loving things that can’t love us back.

Love is the intuitive knowledge of our hearts.

Love isn’t material. It’s energy.

We experience it as kindness, giving, mercy, compassion, peace, joy, acceptance, non-judgment, joining, and intimacy.

When fear is expressed, we recognize it as anger, abuse, disease, pain, greed, addiction, selfishness, obsession, corruption, violence, and war.

We’re more afraid of life than we are of death.

a miracle is a reasonable thing to ask for.

When we choose to love, or to allow our minds to be one with God, then life is peaceful. When we turn away from love, the pain sets in.

Although we may not realize it, most of us are violent people—not necessarily physically, but emotionally.

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”

When we think with love, we are literally co-creating with God.

So then it might go like this, or at least it did for me. I’d get myself into some terrible mess, and I’d remember that all I needed was a miracle, ‘a shift in perception’. I’d pray, “God, please help me. Heal my mind. Wherever my thoughts have strayed from love—if I’ve been controlling, manipulative, greedy, ambitious for myself—whatever it is, I’m willing to see this differently. Amen.”

Let’s not just ask for a new job, a new relationship, or a new body. Let’s ask for a new world. Let’s ask for a new life.

The return to love is not the end of life’s adventure, but the beginning. It’s the return to who you really are.

nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth.”

While it’s true there isn’t an actual devil out there grabbing for our souls, there is a tendency in our minds, which can be amazingly strong, to perceive without love.

The ego doesn’t come up to us and say, “Hi, I’m your self-loathing.” It’s not stupid, because we’re not. Rather, it says things like, “Hi, I’m your adult, mature, rational self. I’ll help you look out for number one.” Then it proceeds to counsel us to look out for ourselves, at the expense of others.

The word sin means loveless perception. It is an archery term. It means “you missed the mark.”

“Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all.”

“There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve.”

Faith isn’t blind, it’s visionary.

Faith is believing that the universe is on our side, and that the universe knows what it’s doing.

So the laws of the universe merely describe the way things are. These laws aren’t invented; they’re discovered.

“Faithlessness is not lack of faith but faith in nothing.”

This external searching—looking to anything other than love to complete us and to be the source of our happiness—is the meaning of idolatry.

“Dear God, my desire, my priority is inner peace. I want the experience of love. I don’t know what would bring that to me. I leave the results of this situation in your hands. I trust your will. May your will be done. Amen.”

They’re all so unique before they start trying to be, because they demonstrate the power of genuine humility. This is also the explanation of “beginner’s luck.” When we go into a situation not knowing the rules, we don’t pretend to know how to figure anything out, and we don’t know yet what there is to be afraid of. This releases the mind to create from its own higher power. Situations shift gear and lights go on simply because our minds have opened up to receive love. We have gotten out of our own way.

In asking for miracles, we are seeking a practical goal: a return to inner peace. We’re not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change. We’re looking for a softer orientation to life.

our greatest tool for changing the world is our capacity to ‘change our mind about the world.’

God heard us. He sent help. He sent you.

Let us give ourselves permission to begin again.

I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise. I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace. I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him. I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.

tomorrow will take care of itself.

“Be ye not anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow shall be anxious for itself.”

‘The ego bases its perception of reality on what has happened in the past, carries those perceptions into the present and thus creates a future like the past.’ If we felt that we were lacking in our past, our thoughts about the future are based on those perceptions. We then enter the present in an effort to compensate for the pa...

Our internal state determines our experience of our lives; our experiences do not determine our internal state.

Lamps without electricity cast no light, and electricity without lamps casts no light either. Together, however, they cast out all darkness.

“Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy.”

‘we don’t ask God for too much; in fact, we ask for too little.’

Heaven, according to the Course, is neither a condition nor a place, but rather the “awareness of perfect oneness.”

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”

“Dear God, I surrender this relationship to you,” means, “Dear God, let me see this person through your eyes.” In accepting the Atonement, we are asking to see as God sees, think as God thinks, love as God loves. We are asking for help in seeing someone’s innocence.

It’s easy to forgive people who have never done anything to make us angry. People who do make us angry, however, are our most important teachers.

Because we ourselves are angry and punishing, we have concocted the idea of an angry, punishing God.

The ego always emphasizes what someone has done wrong. The Holy Spirit always emphasizes what they’ve done right.

Darkness is merely the absence of light, and fear is merely the absence of love. We can’t get rid of darkness by hitting it with a baseball bat, because there is nothing to hit. If we want to be rid of darkness, we must turn on a light. Similarly, if we want to be rid of fear, we cannot fight it but must replace it with love.

If we judge another person, then they’ll judge us back—and even if they don’t, we’ll feel like they did!