Tag Archives: Marianne Williamson

Living in the Past must be Past

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It is so easy to live in the past, our life story being a litany of the various misfortunes that have fallen our way. And no doubt there are misfortunes and worse, the Shakespearean “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” But at some point we have to make an effort to let it all go and accept responsibility for our life, to live in the moment and recognize that we can make choices in the present that can mitigate if not eliminate the impact of past experiences. And I admit that I feel it is mostly going to be “mitigation” rather than elimination. Read what Marianne Williamson said last week on a Facebook post re this subject:

There is nothing about your past that determines who you are in the present, unless you yourself choose to drag the past with you. That is why the Light — our connection to God, Christ, Buddha, by whatever name we call it — is our salvation: it’s the eternal remembrance of who we really are, unencumbered by any false beliefs within ourselves or others. Now, in this moment, you are who you have always been and will always be. All spiritual practice — forgiveness, meditation and prayer — is for the purpose of training the mind to see through the illusions of a world that would convince you otherwise.

And then, of course, Shakespeare always has wisdom to offer on everything. Here Macbeth wonders why a physician cannot purge the mind of Lady Macbeth of the demons that haunt her, only to be informed that ultimately only the individual can do that:

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuf
Which weighs upon the heart?

The Doctor responded, “Therein the patient must minister to herself.”

Marianne Williamson and Shadow Politics

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Marianne Williamson is one of my favorite spiritual voices of our time. She writes in, A Return to Love:  Reflection on the Principles of ‘A Course in Miracles‘ , “ I spent years as an angry left winger before I realized that an angry generation can’t bring peace. Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it.”  She elaborated about a dream that she had at one time in her life which taught her that she was bringing to bear on the right wing animosity which had to do with her own personal issues, aside from the validity or appropriateness of the views and actions espoused by the right wing leaders .  Elsewhere in her teachings she explains that what she had to learn was to realize that she could hold firm with her political convictions and do so with great passion but without crossing the line to hating the persons who held the views that she disagreed with.

Williamson was dealing with something which is very hard to learn—how do we learn to be tolerant of the “intolerant” and even deign to learn at times that we are equally intolerant.  It is intoxicating to know you are right; but the greatest tragedies are perpetrated by people who are dogmatically assured that they are right.

This makes me think of something I recent ran across in the blog of Richard Rohr. He noted that we most pay attention when we have a lot of “anti-“ activity going on in our life, as in, “I’m against this, I’m against that…”   Rohr suggests that hen we have a lot of things we are against and are vehemently opposing them and campaigning against them, we should be given pause and should ask ourselves, “Is this our shadow rearing its ugly head?”   This is not to say we should not have standards and convictions and be ready to speak out for them.  But we need to take that “pause” occasionally and make sure that we aren’t merely grinding an axe in the guise of “truth, justice, and the American way.”

“With devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.” (Shakespeare)

god’s awful grace

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Marianne Williamson quotes Aeschylus, “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

Now why would anyone describe God’s grace as “awful”?  The answer is that grace can come to us only when our ego has been penetrated and that is an excruciatingly painful process.   Mercifully, most of us get this grace piecemeal.