Return to Love

by Marianne Williamson

Maybe they know something we don’t know. Maybe we’re missing a chromosome.

Many of us have slipped into a barely camouflaged vortex of self-loathing. And we’re always, even desperately, seeking a way out, through growth or through escape.

I suspected that both characters were me, that they lived as psychic forces inside my mind.

It was as though I was addicted to my own pain.

For me, no matter what hot water I had gotten into, I had always thought that I could get myself out of it. I was cute enough, or smart enough, or talented enough, or clever enough—and if nothing else worked, I could call my father and ask for money.

Nervous breakdowns can be highly underrated methods of spiritual transformation.

You spend your whole life resisting the notion that there’s someone out there smarter than you are, and then all of a sudden you’re so relieved to know it’s true.

When our house is built on rock, then it is sturdy and strong and the storms can’t destroy it. We are not so vulnerable to life’s passing dramas.

But God remains who He is and always has been: the energy, the thought of unconditional love.

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

Our craziness, paranoia, anxiety and trauma are literally all imagined. That is not to say they don’t exist for us as human beings. They do. But our fear is not our ultimate reality, and it does not replace the truth of who we really are. Our love, which is our real self, doesn’t die, but merely goes underground.

Thought is Cause; experience is Effect. If you don’t like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking. Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of Heaven. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell.

What you do or don’t do is not what determines your essential value—your growth perhaps, but not your value. That’s why God is totally approving and accepting of you, exactly as you are.

I realized, many years ago, that I must be very powerful if I could mess up everything I touched, everywhere I went, with such amazing consistency.

So God isn’t angry at our sins because they’re not really happening. He doesn’t see sins, but only errors in perception.

The problem is that aggressive energy is what we’ve all been taught to respect. We’ve been taught that life was made for quarterbacks so we exalt our masculine consciousness, which, when untempered by the feminine, is hard.

There is no higher drama than true personal growth. Nothing could be more genuinely dramatic than boys becoming real men and girls becoming real women.

We have a mission—to save the world through the power of love. The world needs healing desperately, like a bird with a broken wing.

“To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten.”

miracle is a shift in thinking from what we might have done in the past or should be doing in the future, to what we feel free to do right here, right now.

“Past, present and future are not continuous, unless you force continuity upon them.”

A glass vase is meant to hold water. If more water is

poured into the vase than its volume can contain, then the vase will shatter.

It was only when we were stoned that we had the courage to claim our own experience.

Take nuclear bombs, for example. If we all work hard, sign enough petitions and elect new officials, then we can ban the bomb. But if we don’t get rid of the hatred in our hearts, what good will that do, ultimately?

But we can bypass the scenario of a nuclear Armageddon if we so desire. Most of us have already suffered our own personal Armageddons.

He takes so long because it’s not until then that we bother to think about Him. All this time, we thought we were waiting for Him. Little did we know, He was waiting for us.

Denying love is the only problem, and embracing it is the only answer.

But what people said or did is not who they are.

Once I was having porcelain fingernails applied, and my manicurist’s friend came into the room. I couldn’t tolerate her personality.

Now it may be time for physical separation so that more can be learned in other ways.

The special relationship makes other people—their behavior, their choices, their opinions of us—too important. It makes us think we need another person, when in fact we are complete and whole as we are.

We don’t try to hide our weaknesses, but rather we understand that the relationship is a context for healing through mutual forgiveness.

A girlfriend once told me she had broken up with her boyfriend. “Why?” I asked. “Because he didn’t call me for five days.” I didn’t say anything. “He knows I need verbal reassurance on a daily basis,” she continued. “So I set my limits. Don’t you think that’s good?” “No,” I said. “I think it’s childish.” I paused. “Have you considered accepting him as he is?” “Well, thanks for the support,” she said. I responded, “You’re welcome.”

But love is a decision.

The choice to give what I haven’t received is always an available option.”

A mutual friend of ours spoke up and said, “I can’t stand the way you guys are always fighting.” “We’re not fighting,” I said. “We’re Jewish.”

At the end of a relationship with someone like this, we feel as though we’ve taken cocaine. We had a fast and very exciting ride, and it felt at the time like something meaningful was happening. Then we crashed and realized that nothing meaningful had happened at all. It was all made up. Now all we have is a headache, and we can see that this kind of thing isn’t good, isn’t healthy, and we don’t want to do it again.

The reason that nice, available people seem boring to us is because they bust us. The ego equates emotional danger with excitement, and claims that the nice, available person isn’t dangerous enough.

We keep blaming someone in the present for something someone else did in the past.

And if there is a perfect person out there—which there isn’t—would they date you?

The problem is, he never came. Not only did he not come. He never called.

So I came up with an exercise; I would repeat constantly, out loud when I could and silently when other people were present: “I forgive you Mike, and I release you to the Holy Spirit. I forgive you Mike, and I release you to the Holy Spirit. I forgive you Mike, and I release you to the Holy Spirit.”

But communication is a two-way street. It only occurs if one person speaks, and the other one can hear them.

“I love you so much that I can release you to be where you need to be, to go where you need to go.”

Woe to the person who doesn’t support the healing between a man or woman and their ex.

If my husband or boyfriend heals with his past relationships, it only increases his capacity to love me from a healed and whole place. The last woman in his life is not my competition. She is my sister.

Our needs are not separate. If we contribute to another person’s pain, it will always come back to haunt us. If we do what we can to help them, someone will always come around to do the same for us.

A woman once said to me after a situation in which I felt betrayed, “I never intended to hurt you.” I said, “But you never intended to love me, either.”

If Jesus had yelled from the cross, “I hate all you guys,” it would have been a completely different story.