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Interview with Marianne Williamson
Aired January 07, 2003 - 14:38 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Some resolve in the new year to lose weight, some want to fall in love, others want to get ahead. But for some people, the search for a new and improved self means turning inward.
A new book focuses on finding a spirituality in a material world. It's called "Everyday Grace," and its author, Marianne Williams (sic), joins us now live from Detroit. Marianne Williamson, so nice to have you with us.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, AUTHOR, "EVERYDAY GRACE": Thank you. It's really nice to be with you. Thank you.
PHILLIPS: Well, let's talk about the new book. You get very deep here, I must say. There is a comment where you say we feel "enslaved by conditions that should have no power to bind us and powerless before forces over which we have been given dominion." Explain that to us.
WILLIAMSON: Well, you know, the world is too much with us. That's a line -- famous line from poetry. Certainly, throughout the 20th century and continuing today, we are mesmerized by the external world. And from a spiritual perspective, the more reality you give to the external world, the more forgetful you become about your own spiritual reality. In a way, we've become by the industrial revolution, by the scientific and technological achievements of our age, mesmerized by the external dramas at the expense of our own spiritual experience, so we've marginalized our souls.
And having done so, it's difficult to find the magic that we all really wish for in our daily experience. There is a love and a peace and a harmony that becomes very difficult to find when we are constantly focused on that which is outside us.
PHILLIPS: OK. You bring up the word "magic," and I know your father had an influence on you with that word. And you talk about reclaiming -- reclaiming our magic, and you say that a lot of people are looking for this connection, like through the "Harry Potter" books. For you and me, it was "A Wrinkle in Time." Explain this want for this magical feeling, and how we can parlay that into a search for a spiritual life.
WILLIAMSON: Well, a "Harry Potter" book is simply saying to children the same thing that the great religious teachings are saying to adults, and that is that there is an internal connection, which is the source of the sense of joy that we wish to feel as human beings. So it's not just children who are searching for that lost dimension. All of us are searching for a kind of lost dimension, and anybody now who is just looking around us knows that something is off in the world. The love that we wish to experience, the connectedness with the rest of life, the connectedness with other human beings. Something seems to be off at the very fundamental center of things.
And so people are looking for that key to what can fix our outer world knowing that that's not in the outer world. The key to our outer problems lies within, and that is what we seek as children in children's books, and as adults we begin to understand that a serious spiritual practice, forgiveness and love and compassion, those faith issues are the keys to the life that we want as adults.
PHILLIPS: And you've made the comment we can land a man on the moon, but we can't forgive our enemy. You know what? I want to get right to the e-mails. We have a lot of questions for you, OK?
This one comes from Suzanne (ph), and she says she wants to know from you, "during most of my life, I have tried to feel spirituality as I studied my religion and others, but it alludes me. I am able to have the knowledge required, but I am unable to really feel that which I intellectually know is true. What I am asking is, if there is a new way that I can come closer to that, what do I do?"
WILLIAMSON: Well, that really is the essence of this book, "Everyday Grace." We as a generation have gotten to a point where we know what the principles are. We already have an abstract understanding of principles of spirituality. The issue now is for the ideas that have penetrated our intellect to penetrate our nervous system.
So, Suzanne, what Suzanne is looking for is what we are all looking for, and usually it has to do with the person who is standing right in front of us. Are we holding judgmental thoughts about the person who is standing right in front of us. Are we truly forgiving everyone that we are capable of forgiving, or at least being willing to see the innocence in people, rather than judging them and blaming them?
In most of our situations in life, if we take a good honest look at our lives, we are holding to small, limiting thoughts, cynical thoughts. Oh, I don't really think I can have the life I want. Rather than consciously laying claim to a life of faith in which we know that through the grace of God infinite possibilities are always available.
So I think, Suzanne, for you as for all of us, the issue now is to focus on exactly what's happening in your life. Are you bringing the best of yourself, are you supporting other people, are you showing compassion, both in your community and in your individual relationships? Ultimately, we can't feel the peace of God unless we're standing forth to give it to someone else.
PHILLIPS: Marianne, Jim in Pennsylvania said, "would you ask our guest why the spiritual life will not heal a severe depression?" Maybe he's saying, how can a spiritual life help severe depression?
WILLIAMSON: Well, certainly there is such a thing as chemical depression, and for that, obviously, there are issues that psychotherapists are much more expert at speaking to, but I think there is a low-grade depression that actually prevails in our society. And most of us feel it. The fact that we're always running out to find something, whether it is in drugs or alcohol or eating or sex or buying something else.
There are many ways we try to cover this emptiness that we feel inside, and that's a spiritual depression that most of us feel. Now, I as a woman who believes in a life of faith and the power of prayer and the power of meditation, and following a serious spiritual path, for me that is the key to the joy that we're looking for, and I know in my own life that those are the things that help me to rise above the same lure towards those feelings of depression and kind of prevalent sorrow that sort of eats away at all of us at times.
PHILLIPS: Derrik (ph) says, "Dear Marianne, first of all I would like to thank you for writing 'A Return to Love,' which changed my life while I was in high school about seven years ago. My question is this," yes, very nice. "What would be the best viewpoint when dealing with 9/11 and making a spiritual drive for peace in our world today. What can we do to stop war?"
WILLIAMSON: First thing we can recognize is that the war is outside, a reflection of a war that's going on inside of us. Everything outside is a reflection of human consciousness, and I think that if we look to the events in the world which so dominate the news today and which literally could threaten survival as we know it, from a spiritual perspective what would be a very good thing is if we ask for a miracle.
But you know when you ask for a miracle, God can't do anything for us that he can't do through us, so when it comes to the state of the world today, when an individual comes to God and says please heal my life, it's understood that you have to ask God -- you have to say to God that you're willing to make changes yourself.
We're pretty good about that as individuals saying, Dear God, show me what I need to see. But as a society, we have a little more difficulty with that. As a society we have a hard time saying, By the way, God, if there's anything we need to see, show us.
We tend to make unilateral decisions and then say, Oh, God, by the way, please support me in this. I think when it comes to world events today, we need to ask God's help. We need a miracle. In the book of Matthew, Jesus says, "Pray for your enemies, bless those who curse you." We need to praying that we see the innocence in our enemies -- that our enemies see the innocence in us, and that all of the forces which disconnect us from our fellow human beings be dissolved by the grace of God.
There is nothing that a military machine can do to work a miracle. It might have some effect at managing the effects of hatred, but only the grace of God can dismantle hatred. That is through the love in our hearts, and we need to ask God for help in doing that.
PHILLIPS: Marianne, one of your other books, a best seller, "Illuminata," one of my favorites, and I pulled this prayer out of there, and I want to just get you to respond to this. This was the "Prayer for America." And I just took some excerpts.
"May the beauty and the greatness of this land burst forth once more in the hearts of its people. Pray for America -- prayer for America, may this country once again become a light unto its nations of hope, goodness, and peace and freedom. May we be repaired, may we be forgiven, may our children be blessed, may we be renewed. Dear God, please bless America."
Your thoughts about reevaluating our spiritual lives, our religious lives since 9/11. We've heard so much about God, Allah, spirituality.
How do you feel about that?
WILLIAMSON: Well, thank you for saying that prayer because, you know, the only reason hatred has had such power is because it's like darkness is not a thing of itself. It's an absence of love -- excuse me, darkness is an absence of light and hatred is an absence of love. I think if we loved our country more, and if we loved our world more, hatred would not have gotten the choke hold that it's gotten on human civilization.
So I think moving back into what that prayer was saying about the light at the center of our own existence, I think that this is a time for us to ask God to repair our own country as well, to help us to be able to atone for our own sins, both our sins against whether it's African-Americans in the past, Native Americans in the past, our own international relationships which sometimes have not reflected our own highest ideals, from Vietnam and elsewhere.
The atonement power in which we come to God and say, Please, Dear God, give us a chance to do everything that you would have us to do by taking away from us -- bringing to our conscious awareness that then you might lift from us the places where we too are not the people -- we are not yet the nation that you would have us be.
As we pray for that, then things will change inside us, change inside us as citizens, things will change on a visible, subtle levels inside our leaders, and I think we will begin to see effects of a greater capacity to build relationships rather than just destroy what we don't like, and that will be a miracle in this nation that people will speak of for generations to come.
PHILLIPS: Marianne Williamson, the book is "Everyday Grace." What a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much for your time.
WILLIAMSON: Thank you so much.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired January 7, 2003 - 14:38 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Some resolve in the new year to lose weight, some want to fall in love, others want to get ahead. But for some people, the search for a new and improved self means turning inward.
A new book focuses on finding a spirituality in a material world. It's called "Everyday Grace," and its author, Marianne Williams (sic), joins us now live from Detroit. Marianne Williamson, so nice to have you with us.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, AUTHOR, "EVERYDAY GRACE": Thank you. It's really nice to be with you. Thank you.
PHILLIPS: Well, let's talk about the new book. You get very deep here, I must say. There is a comment where you say we feel "enslaved by conditions that should have no power to bind us and powerless before forces over which we have been given dominion." Explain that to us.
WILLIAMSON: Well, you know, the world is too much with us. That's a line -- famous line from poetry. Certainly, throughout the 20th century and continuing today, we are mesmerized by the external world. And from a spiritual perspective, the more reality you give to the external world, the more forgetful you become about your own spiritual reality. In a way, we've become by the industrial revolution, by the scientific and technological achievements of our age, mesmerized by the external dramas at the expense of our own spiritual experience, so we've marginalized our souls.
And having done so, it's difficult to find the magic that we all really wish for in our daily experience. There is a love and a peace and a harmony that becomes very difficult to find when we are constantly focused on that which is outside us.
PHILLIPS: OK. You bring up the word "magic," and I know your father had an influence on you with that word. And you talk about reclaiming -- reclaiming our magic, and you say that a lot of people are looking for this connection, like through the "Harry Potter" books. For you and me, it was "A Wrinkle in Time." Explain this want for this magical feeling, and how we can parlay that into a search for a spiritual life.
WILLIAMSON: Well, a "Harry Potter" book is simply saying to children the same thing that the great religious teachings are saying to adults, and that is that there is an internal connection, which is the source of the sense of joy that we wish to feel as human beings. So it's not just children who are searching for that lost dimension. All of us are searching for a kind of lost dimension, and anybody now who is just looking around us knows that something is off in the world. The love that we wish to experience, the connectedness with the rest of life, the connectedness with other human beings. Something seems to be off at the very fundamental center of things.
And so people are looking for that key to what can fix our outer world knowing that that's not in the outer world. The key to our outer problems lies within, and that is what we seek as children in children's books, and as adults we begin to understand that a serious spiritual practice, forgiveness and love and compassion, those faith issues are the keys to the life that we want as adults.
PHILLIPS: And you've made the comment we can land a man on the moon, but we can't forgive our enemy. You know what? I want to get right to the e-mails. We have a lot of questions for you, OK?
This one comes from Suzanne (ph), and she says she wants to know from you, "during most of my life, I have tried to feel spirituality as I studied my religion and others, but it alludes me. I am able to have the knowledge required, but I am unable to really feel that which I intellectually know is true. What I am asking is, if there is a new way that I can come closer to that, what do I do?"
WILLIAMSON: Well, that really is the essence of this book, "Everyday Grace." We as a generation have gotten to a point where we know what the principles are. We already have an abstract understanding of principles of spirituality. The issue now is for the ideas that have penetrated our intellect to penetrate our nervous system.
So, Suzanne, what Suzanne is looking for is what we are all looking for, and usually it has to do with the person who is standing right in front of us. Are we holding judgmental thoughts about the person who is standing right in front of us. Are we truly forgiving everyone that we are capable of forgiving, or at least being willing to see the innocence in people, rather than judging them and blaming them?
In most of our situations in life, if we take a good honest look at our lives, we are holding to small, limiting thoughts, cynical thoughts. Oh, I don't really think I can have the life I want. Rather than consciously laying claim to a life of faith in which we know that through the grace of God infinite possibilities are always available.
So I think, Suzanne, for you as for all of us, the issue now is to focus on exactly what's happening in your life. Are you bringing the best of yourself, are you supporting other people, are you showing compassion, both in your community and in your individual relationships? Ultimately, we can't feel the peace of God unless we're standing forth to give it to someone else.
PHILLIPS: Marianne, Jim in Pennsylvania said, "would you ask our guest why the spiritual life will not heal a severe depression?" Maybe he's saying, how can a spiritual life help severe depression?
WILLIAMSON: Well, certainly there is such a thing as chemical depression, and for that, obviously, there are issues that psychotherapists are much more expert at speaking to, but I think there is a low-grade depression that actually prevails in our society. And most of us feel it. The fact that we're always running out to find something, whether it is in drugs or alcohol or eating or sex or buying something else.
There are many ways we try to cover this emptiness that we feel inside, and that's a spiritual depression that most of us feel. Now, I as a woman who believes in a life of faith and the power of prayer and the power of meditation, and following a serious spiritual path, for me that is the key to the joy that we're looking for, and I know in my own life that those are the things that help me to rise above the same lure towards those feelings of depression and kind of prevalent sorrow that sort of eats away at all of us at times.
PHILLIPS: Derrik (ph) says, "Dear Marianne, first of all I would like to thank you for writing 'A Return to Love,' which changed my life while I was in high school about seven years ago. My question is this," yes, very nice. "What would be the best viewpoint when dealing with 9/11 and making a spiritual drive for peace in our world today. What can we do to stop war?"
WILLIAMSON: First thing we can recognize is that the war is outside, a reflection of a war that's going on inside of us. Everything outside is a reflection of human consciousness, and I think that if we look to the events in the world which so dominate the news today and which literally could threaten survival as we know it, from a spiritual perspective what would be a very good thing is if we ask for a miracle.
But you know when you ask for a miracle, God can't do anything for us that he can't do through us, so when it comes to the state of the world today, when an individual comes to God and says please heal my life, it's understood that you have to ask God -- you have to say to God that you're willing to make changes yourself.
We're pretty good about that as individuals saying, Dear God, show me what I need to see. But as a society, we have a little more difficulty with that. As a society we have a hard time saying, By the way, God, if there's anything we need to see, show us.
We tend to make unilateral decisions and then say, Oh, God, by the way, please support me in this. I think when it comes to world events today, we need to ask God's help. We need a miracle. In the book of Matthew, Jesus says, "Pray for your enemies, bless those who curse you." We need to praying that we see the innocence in our enemies -- that our enemies see the innocence in us, and that all of the forces which disconnect us from our fellow human beings be dissolved by the grace of God.
There is nothing that a military machine can do to work a miracle. It might have some effect at managing the effects of hatred, but only the grace of God can dismantle hatred. That is through the love in our hearts, and we need to ask God for help in doing that.
PHILLIPS: Marianne, one of your other books, a best seller, "Illuminata," one of my favorites, and I pulled this prayer out of there, and I want to just get you to respond to this. This was the "Prayer for America." And I just took some excerpts.
"May the beauty and the greatness of this land burst forth once more in the hearts of its people. Pray for America -- prayer for America, may this country once again become a light unto its nations of hope, goodness, and peace and freedom. May we be repaired, may we be forgiven, may our children be blessed, may we be renewed. Dear God, please bless America."
Your thoughts about reevaluating our spiritual lives, our religious lives since 9/11. We've heard so much about God, Allah, spirituality.
How do you feel about that?
WILLIAMSON: Well, thank you for saying that prayer because, you know, the only reason hatred has had such power is because it's like darkness is not a thing of itself. It's an absence of love -- excuse me, darkness is an absence of light and hatred is an absence of love. I think if we loved our country more, and if we loved our world more, hatred would not have gotten the choke hold that it's gotten on human civilization.
So I think moving back into what that prayer was saying about the light at the center of our own existence, I think that this is a time for us to ask God to repair our own country as well, to help us to be able to atone for our own sins, both our sins against whether it's African-Americans in the past, Native Americans in the past, our own international relationships which sometimes have not reflected our own highest ideals, from Vietnam and elsewhere.
The atonement power in which we come to God and say, Please, Dear God, give us a chance to do everything that you would have us to do by taking away from us -- bringing to our conscious awareness that then you might lift from us the places where we too are not the people -- we are not yet the nation that you would have us be.
As we pray for that, then things will change inside us, change inside us as citizens, things will change on a visible, subtle levels inside our leaders, and I think we will begin to see effects of a greater capacity to build relationships rather than just destroy what we don't like, and that will be a miracle in this nation that people will speak of for generations to come.
PHILLIPS: Marianne Williamson, the book is "Everyday Grace." What a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much for your time.
WILLIAMSON: Thank you so much.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
