Marianne Williamson

This episode delves into the spiritual teachings of Marianne Williamson, her insights on prayer, love, and societal influences on our spiritual and emotional wellbeing, as guided by A Course in Miracles.

1. Prayer is viewed as a medium of miracles, a state of merging with love that transcends ordinary possibilities.
2. Society's influence shapes our fears and disconnections, but personal spiritual practices like meditation can open doors to new realms of experience.
3. Love's power can counteract the pervasive fear and separation enforced by societal norms, suggesting a holistic, integrated approach to life is more aligned with the 21st-century mindset.
4. Marianne Williamson’s personal narrative intertwines with her teachings, showing how spiritual understanding evolves from personal crises and deep introspection.
5. The discussion encapsulates the essence of A Course in Miracles, promoting a worldview where love and forgiveness are foundational to personal and societal healing.

1: Introduction to Spiritual Insights

Marianne Williamson introduces concepts of light and peace in spiritual practice, setting the tone for a discussion on inner transformations. Marianne Williamson: "So may it be. Amen."

2: The Power of Prayer

Williamson and Rubin delve into the nuances of prayer as a transformative power that opens possibilities beyond the material world. Marianne Williamson: "Prayer is the medium of miracles."

3: Societal Impacts on Spirituality

The conversation shifts to how societal structures and a prevailing mindset of separation affect spiritual and emotional wellbeing. Marianne Williamson: "The world as we know it is dominated by a thought system based on lovelessness."

4: Spiritual Practices and Real-world Application

Williamson discusses the practical applications of spiritual teachings in daily life and the importance of actions aligned with spiritual truths. Marianne Williamson: "Every thought and every action extends out into the world."

5: Reflections on Personal Spiritual Journey

The episode concludes with a reflective exploration of Williamson's personal journey to spiritual understanding through various religious and philosophical teachings. Marianne Williamson: "The course of miracles was the key that unlocked my spiritual path."

1. Integrate a daily meditation or prayer routine to align with a state of love and peace.
2. Actively choose love and forgiveness in interactions to transform personal and collective realities.
3. Reflect on the societal structures that influence your thoughts and feelings, and consciously choose to think differently.
4. Explore spiritual texts or teachings that resonate with your personal journey to deepen your understanding and practice.
5. Engage in community or group discussions about spiritual practices to enhance collective consciousness and support.

Marianne Williamson is a bestselling author, speaker, political activist, and spiritual thought leader. She is the author of 15 books, including 5 New York Times Best Sellers (A Return to Love, A Woman's Worth, Illuminata, The Healing of America, and Illuminated Prayers), and the highly-anticipated forthcoming book presenting a new way of thinking about Jesus’ role and relevance in our everyday lives, The Mystic Jesus: The Mind of Love. A leader in the fields of spirituality and new thought, Williamson has been inspiring audiences around the world for more than four decades. Beyond her writing and speaking, Williamson is the founder Project Angel Food, a non-profit organization that provides meals and nutrition counseling to individuals living with serious illnesses, such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, kidney failure, and diabetes. Since it was created in 1989 during the height of the AIDS crisis, Project Angel Food has provided more than 1 million meals each year to men, women, and children who don’t have the means to shop or cook for themselves. Williamson is running for the Democratic nomination in the 2024 presidential election.

People

Marianne Williamson, Rick Rubin

Books

A Course in Miracles

Guest Name(s):

Marianne Williamson

Content Warnings:

None

Marianne Williamson

So we see in the middle of our mind a little ball of golden light. And we watch this light as it begins to grow larger and larger. Until now, it covers the entire inner vision of our mind. And we see for ourselves within this light a beautiful, sacred temple of some kind.

Whatever image appears to us, and the temple is surrounded by a forest.

And within the forest, there is a body of water.

In turning our inner eye once again to the temple itself, we see that it, too, is filled with this brilliant, golden light. And now we see that which we think of as the all powerful, creative source, God of our understanding, source of wisdom, creativity and blessing.

Whatever we see, whether it is a being or an intensification of the light, whatever we see is perfect.

And here we are. And we are joined here by one another. That is the blessing, the oneness, the light and the peace.

We dedicate ourselves that this light might so permeate our being that we might carry it forward, extend it out into the world with every thought and with every action.

So may it be.

Amen. Amen. Beautiful image. Thank you. You're welcome.

Rick Rubin

I love it. Tell me about prayer. The course in miracles says that prayer is the medium of miracles, because a miracle is a thought of such pure love that it becomes a portal into a realm of possibility that would not otherwise occur. And that the reason such possibilities do not otherwise occur from the perspective of the course of miracles is that the world as we know it is dominated by a thought system based on lovelessness. And the course in miracles says that love is to fear what light is to darkness.

Marianne Williamson

So when the mind is at one with love, which is the ultimate state of prayer, the ultimate state of prayer is not an entreaty of any kind, but a gentle melting in, like when you, you have a child, a wife, a lover, those moments, it often will even say, this is heaven, because it actually is the experience of total oneness with another being and in total oneness with another being. There's a line in Les Mis. To love another person is to see the face of God. So when we are in that space, possibilities open, and it becomes a divine intercession from a thought system beyond our own. Otherwise, we are trained from the time we're born to think within this limited mental prison based on fear, judgment, attack, separation.

And because all thought creates form on some level, our body's senses register the reality that we ourselves made manifest. And we say, well, this is just what it is. This is reality. It's reality within a little r but prayer, meditation, any kind of practice, of that sort opens the mind. It's like opening a door to that space beyond.

And to me, that's what prayer is. Do you think the reason we live in fear and feel disconnected has more to do with the society we live in? Or is it something else? Our disconnected? Well, the course of miracles would say that it all began millions of years ago, in time as we know it, but in reality, it never happened at all, because only love is ultimately real, and what is all encompassing can have no opposite.

So when we're thinking without love, we're actually not thinking at all. We're hallucinating. And that's what, at the deepest level, this entire three dimensional reality is. This is why Buddha called it Maya, or illusion. Einstein said time and space are illusions of consciousness, albeit persistent ones.

We, thinking that way, then manifest a society which bolsters the way we're thinking. So it's an endless loop of malfunction. It's because of the society? Yes, but then we maintain the illusions of the society. And I see an interesting intergenerational thing going on.

I'm 71, so I remember the countercultural revolution. Sixties, seventies, we had a glimpse, and then there's generations right after us, never even had a glimpse. They're very hard to convince. Then you have this younger generation, Gen Zs weren't even born in the 20th century, or if they were born there, they just were there to learn to walk. Their natural propensity is not within the 20th century mindset that is so mechanistic that it perpetuates the illusion of separation, because it's a mindset that is overly focused on the external, on the external.

You're over there, I'm over here. On the spiritual. There's no place where you stop and I start. 21st century mindset, far more holistic, integrated body, mind and spirit. I find in my work such an interesting intergenerational connection between those of us who remember and those of us who yearn.

Rick Rubin

Tell me about the first glimpses in the sixties. Tell me about that time for you. I don't know how old you are, but there was a fundamental questioning of everything. That's where it begins. It begins when you shift from, we can tweak it a little and make it better, to no fundamental break, which in a way, to me is the creative act of consciousness.

Marianne Williamson

It's like giving birth. That which was will be no more. There was a time when I didn't have a child. Now I do have a child. It's a new life that is the ultimate to me, creative act.

America was born from that. It's the most traditionally american thing to say, no, we're not going to do that anymore. Today, that's seen as almost dangerous. What's dangerous is holding onto things that do not work, that are dysfunctional and worse. And yet we're continuing down this path for no other reason than that people are afraid of change.

What we should be afraid of is not changing. So the sixties and the seventies were about, no, we're changing it completely. Knowing that there is newness in that, you know, also must come with wisdom, must come with responsibility, must come with emotional, spiritual, psychological, and intellectual sobriety, or it's just chaos. And so where we're living now, as I see it, the tumult of this moment is you can feel the underlying tension and anxiety. It's happening out there, and it's gonna blow.

It's gonna blow. It will either blow in the direction of Abraham Lincoln, called it a new birth of freedom, expansiveness of consciousness and society and opportunity, economic health, healing, agriculture. What's possible is so brilliant, it's going to either blow in that direction, and our job, I think, is to create a conduit for that, or it's going to blow in the direction of unbelievable chaos, violence, neo authoritarianism, possibly worse, genuine dystopia. But it's going to blow. It's like a volcano that's coming up.

And what's dangerous about this moment, in my experience and what I've come to believe and to see is that the conduits, the vessels through which we were brought up to believe positive change could emerge, have been corrupted. That's what makes this dangerous. This moment, I believe, so critical, and why we better get very serious very fast. Tell me about your spiritual life before finding the course. I think everybody's on a spiritual path.

Most people just don't know it. But I did have, because I had a grandfather who was a very religious jew. And I remember when I would be at temple with him and how he would be, when the ark would open and he would genuflect and he would. There would be tears in his eyes. I actually wrote about this in my book, return to love, that I didn't know if I was crying just because he was or because I too, felt the fervor, but I always did.

And then in the home I grew up in, God was just a given. Cultural Jews, conservative Jews. That's not politically conservative, but conservative Judaism. But I felt I was always very drawn to anything about the higher mind. But for me, I wasn't any more attracted or any less attracted.

If it was eastern or western, it could be the tarot cards, the I ching, or it could be Heidegger and Hegel. It was all fascinating to me. And also going back to like when I was in college in the seventies, we would read Ram Dass and Alan Watts in the morning and go to Vietnam war, and there were protests in the afternoon. There wasn't a sense of stay in your lane. There were no lanes.

It was a cultural revolution, sexual revolution, musical revolution, political revolution. When it came to the actual spiritual, even though I kept reading and even though I kept doing everything I could, I was finding a huge disconnect between what I had come to abstractly understand and my ability to practice in my life. The image I used to get was, there's this big cathedral, and I'm trying to climb up the stairs, and there are these big stone steps, and I'm on my hands and knees, and I have bloodied knees and I have bloodied elbows, and I'm just trying so hard. And then I get up to this huge cathedral, clearly looking for God here, and these huge wooden and metal doors, and it's locked and I can't get in. And then in my twenties, I saw a course in miracles.

Now, I think there's one truth written in many different ways. Nobody has a monopoly on it. Course in miracles doesn't have a monopoly on it. But for whatever reason, that is the book that unlocked the key for me. Not that I hadn't read that elsewhere.

It was just for whatever reason, that was when the aha came that unlocked the door. It's the person right in front of you. I didn't know that I'd be looking like, excuse me, Rick, I'm looking for God. Please don't talk to me. You know, I'm very busy.

I'm looking for God. Rather than realizing the corsets, heaven is entered two by two. Heaven being the awareness of awareness. How do I know it's you? Because you're standing there.

And once that key was opened for me, now, that doesn't mean it's easy to practice or that I practice it 24/7 but I'm certainly advanced enough to know when I'm not at peace. That's where the problem lies. Tell me the story of return to love. Was that your first book? Well, I was in my twenties, and I was at a cocktail party in New York City, and there was this big blue book sitting on a coffee table, and I picked it up, and the book didn't have an author on the COVID which today isn't that odd.

But in those days, I'm sort of unheard of. This was in the 1970s. And I opened up the book, and the first page said, this is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum, but only that you can choose which part to take at any given time.

I thought that was so amazing. What do you mean, it's a required course? What book tells you it's a required course? So I remember turning it over to see who wrote this thing. Nobody.

So then I start leafing through the pages, and I see all this, what I think of at the time as christian terminology. Now, I had read in college a lot of christian theology, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and all kinds of things, which I found fascinating. But this was a cocktail party in my personal life, and I'm jewish, and I thought about this. So I was intrigued, but I thought it was sort of crossing a line, sort of.

So I put it back down. And the young man whose apartment it was said, that book is published from an apartment at the Beresford Apartments on, what is it? 79th in Central Park west, right across from the Natural History Museum on Central Park Westdale. So I didn't forget that, and I didn't think about it. I was at the party with my boyfriend.

I think he had looked at it, too. And nothing else went down, except I would be on that bus on Central Park west. And about two or three times, I saw people reading it. And one person who I saw reading it was the ex boyfriend of a woman. I had been my roommate when I'd lived there before, and she hadn't gotten along with him.

And I thought, well, isn't that interesting? So it would sort of come up in my consciousness a year later, a year after that party, on that same bus, Central Park west, which would always pass the Beresford apartments. And I had bronchitis. And I used to have bronchitis every winter when I lived in New York at that time. And I was on the way to the doctor, and something in me said, when I passed the Beresford, I'm going to get those books.

I went to the doctor. I went back to my apartment, and they were sitting on my dining room table. I just glanced up at my boyfriend, and he said, I thought it was time. We hadn't talked about it for a year. That whole year, we had never discussed.

I thought it was time. Then, as a matter of fact, we went the next day to the bookstore on West 72nd where he had gotten them, because we were going to get another copy. And he went to the bookshelf where it had been. They weren't there. This was in the days of cash registers and little boxes with index cards.

And the person at the counter said that they didn't have that book and they never had. So somebody had just put them on the shelf or whatever. Then I became a passionate student. And once, you know, at that point, I was in such pain, I didn't care what the language was. And then when you start reading the book, you see it's not the christian language.

It is a Christ centered philosophy, a psychological mind training in the relinquishment of a thought system based on fear and the acceptance instead of a thought system based on love. But the christian terminology is. Is used in very non traditional, psychotherapeutic ways. So the course in miracles talks about the teachers of God, which just means those who demonstrate love to teachers to demonstrate. And God is love come, as it says, from all religions and no religions.

So being a student of the course in miracles has never made me feel in any way less jewish. As a matter of fact, it was interesting for me because a lot of the people I knew who were christian, I had this naive assumption once I started reading this book, I just never been taught any of these terms. You know, my mother would just say, we don't read that book, darling. We read the other one, you know? So I had this naive belief at that time, oh, God, this is so amazing.

My christian friends must talk about this all the time. And I guess they just don't talk about it in front of me because I'm jewish. And I found that was when I started talking this stuff in front of them. They were like, oh, my God, what's happening to you? We had a term at that time called Jesus freak.

They thought I'd become a Jesus freak. And I learned, interestingly enough, that for someone like myself, these terms were new. For many people I knew, it was a much more difficult thing. I mean, the kind of ambivalence that they had around some of these concepts. I was learning new concepts.

They were unlearning old concepts. So that was interesting. And then I became so enamored of the books, and then I would just teach little courses and have study groups. And then I started lecturing at a place called the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. And when I first started, you never saw anyone there under the age of 50 or 55, and they were all students of a man named Manley hall.

Not long after I started giving these little talks, the AIDS crisis burst forth full blown in Los Angeles and elsewhere. And so gay men at that time, it wasn't like western medicine wasn't trying, because it was. But they just kept coming up empty. It was kind of like COVID. There was no cure.

And organized religions had to go through a lot of their own homophobic stuff. There was an eerie silence. And so I was, at that time, 31 years old, one of them. I've been in the same clubs, I've been clubbing in the same places, you know, no different than they same age, talking about a God who loves you no matter what, and how, with enough love for one another, we would all get through it. And so, in a very real way, gay men in Los Angeles and then later in New York, really gave me my career, because then it was suggested to me that I write a book, and there was a man named Jerry Jampolsky.

Rick Rubin

I know who he is. I read his book. Yeah, yeah. Love is letting go of you yes. Beautiful.

Marianne Williamson

He was a real friend and mentor, and he had been there from the very beginning, you know. And he said to me one night, I was lecturing in San Francisco, because I used to lecture Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings in LA. And then during the week, every other week, go to New York. And the week that was in New York, go somewhere. So this was San Francisco, and I had dinner with Jerry, and Jerry said, you know, you should write a book.

I said, well, I don't know how to write a book. He said, well, it's all in those little cassette tapes. I said, yeah, well, I don't know how to get it from a cassette onto the page. And he said, let's just join in consciousness right now that there is someone out there who knows the course of miracles, by the way, says nothing is more powerful than an agreement between two people. So he said, let's just agree that there's someone out there who would know how to get it from your tapes to the page.

That was a Thursday night. One week after that Thursday night with Jerry, I was in New York, and I given a lecture, and I saw a man at the end of the line, and I had a real sense, I had destiny with him. And when he got up, he introduced himself to me as a literary agent named Al Lowman. He said, have you thought of writing a book? I said, well, people have said that, but I don't feel pregnant with a book.

I don't know. He said, well, it's in your cassette tapes. I said, I don't know how to get it from the tapes to the page. He said, well, I can help you do that. And he did.

And then when the book came out, Oprah, there was a movie at that time. Do you remember a movie called Crash? No. It was a really good film. And it was something about a miracle at the end.

And so Oprah was planning to do a show on it, just what she told me later. And they were talking about, well, what are we going to, you know, who are we going to have? Who are going to be the guests? And she said, well, it's that miracle stuff. At the end, somebody said, you know, well, there's a book on your desk over there that just came in.

It's called a return to Love. Reflections on the principles of a course in miracles. She said, I'll take it. I'll read it this weekend. And then she had me.

All this was before her book club. She said it was the best book she'd ever read. She gave away 1000 copies. So she really gave me my career in a very real way.

C

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Rick Rubin

Were you traveling from place to place because you wanted to spread the message? Is that what it went? I was like, 1980 savant, and then we started project angel food. It really is like, I mean, I don't want to, like, put myself down and call me an idiot, Savannah, but it was like I'd say to you, if you ask me, I'd say, yeah. When the memo came to get serious, I sense that might be true of you to some extent.

Marianne Williamson

When the memo came to be a more serious adult. I never got that memo, you know. Never got the memo. Luckily. Yeah, exactly.

Rick Rubin

Luckily. So it all just opened up. Yeah. You know, that's what beginner's luck is. You don't know what there is to be afraid of.

Marianne Williamson

You know? I'm not supposed to. Yeah, you know what I mean? But the idea of, like, crossing the country on a regular basis to do it, that's a wild idea. The fact that you could even afford the ticket, and then you stayed with somebody, and I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

And, wow. Were you feeling like you were spreading gospel in some way? Is that what it was about? No, I would never have. Tell me how you describe it.

It was what I love to do. I remember when I first went to that Beresford apartment to get that book. Yes. And I met a couple. Judy Scutch and Bob Scutch, whoever met.

Rick Rubin

Them at the time. Oh, yeah. I never met anyone who ever met them. Oh, yeah. And Kim Wapnick and Jerry.

Marianne Williamson

That whole generation. Sure. Well, actually, the first day I met Bob and Judy was getting into the elevator to go talk about the course in miracles in Houston, which is where I was born and raised. And I remember thinking, oh, what a cool thing to be able to do with your life. Will you just go around the country and you just get to talk about a course in miracles?

And then when I had moved to LA, what happened was. And this always interested me, too. A woman who did not like me gave me my career. It was at a place called the philosophical research study that was headed at that time by a woman named Pat Irvin. She was an interesting mix of right wing politics and serious metaphysics.

She was never nice to me. I was working in the office. It was very nice. One day she told me, I'm told, like she was not happy about it. But she was told to ask me if I wanted to give lectures on a course in miracles.

And so I would drive my little old silver oldsmobile every day from Los Feliz to Woodland Hills, where I was staying with a friend. And I just fine tooth combed the book. I'd been reading it for five years at that time, and then started giving those lectures. I feel like a return to love, really. Shed more light on a course in miracles than maybe even the course itself did.

Well, I wouldn't say it shed more light than the course in miracles, but I would think of it jokingly as the cliff notes. So what I do think it did was it opened up the space for a lot of people. And I've come to believe, and I see the same thing about my role in politics. I'm a popularizer. I read or I see, and I do the deep digging, and then I come back and I say to everybody, this is what it says.

This is what it is. Oh, really? Yeah. I found your book much more digestible than the course. But did you actually start doing the workbook?

Yes, because the course is this huge buffet, and I'm a little piece of rye bread at the beginning. But it brought you to the buffet table? Yes. How has your relationship to the course changed over the years? Not an iota.

It works if I work it. My life works if I practice what I preach. You know, there are objective, discernible laws of internal phenomena just like there are objective, discernible laws of external phenomena. It's like saying, how has your relationship to the law of gravity changed over the years? Doesn't change.

No, it doesn't. I know that if I drop it, it will fall on the floor. You're not going to say, oh, she's so faithful. No, I just know how gravity works. So my relationship to the principles has not changed.

My ability or willingness, of course, would say, it's not your ability, Williamson. It's your willingness to practice what I know to be true. That's fluctuated at times, been a rocky road, because, you know, the course in miracles talks about how every experience is a lesson faithfully rehearsed until you get it. And I sense that I'm not the only one at this time finding the lessons coming fast and furious, because the universe is intentional. And I once had an experience that was very dangerous.

And when I registered the danger, it was like every cell in my body woke up. It felt like actually being on a psychedelic. It felt like every cell and every finger was awakened in a state of alertness. And I feel that's how the planet is now. There's a wake up, wake up, wake up.

You know, in the Talmud, it says, over every blade of grass, there's an angel bent over whispering, grow, grow, grow. Right now, it's almost like now. So I'm feeling that. And the lessons are much more challenging than anything I've ever had in my life, actually. But I don't sense that I'm alone in that.

I think everyone is feeling like, oh, my God, this is it. When you went to meet the. Would we call them the writers of the book? Oh, Helen Schuchman and Bill Thetford. Yeah, I met Bill Thetford.

I never met Helen Schuchman. I worked at the office with Bob Scutch, who is still with us at a little apartment on Central Park south in New York. When she came, which was maybe she would come to be with him for lunch or something, like every two weeks or so, he would make me leave. She had a thing about not meeting the students of the course or anything. She didn't.

So he would make me leave, so I never got to meet her. Bill Thetford, however, went out to Tiburon, which is where Jerry lived and where the sketches moved and all that stuff with Judy Scotch and Bob Woodson and stuff. And so I did get to meet Bill Thefford. What was the group of people like? Tell me about all of them.

They were wonderful. Then there was Wapnick, Ken Wapnick. And Ken was different, but Bob and Judy. Judy was divine. When I think of how Judy was to me.

So here I am with the characteristic overzealousness of the new student, and I would say the kinds of things to her that we've all heard people say, oh, I have this great idea, and we should blah, blah, blah. And I remember how she would always just go, wow, that sounds great. I always felt taken seriously by her, even when there was nothing to take serious. And I've always remembered that because she role modeled something so profound for me. Then there was stuff with my book, when my book came out with Lopnik and was not very nice, but that was just him and Bill.

One of my, this is my favorite tour about Bill, but I wasn't there for this. But it's a kind of famous story. Within the course in Miracles world, he did a, I don't know if it was daily or weekly course in Miracles study group in Tiburon. And one day he hadn't gotten there yet. To me, by the way, this is such a perfect demonstration of the course.

So he hadn't gotten there yet. And they were talking about a particular page or particular paragraph. I don't know what it was. And one group of people said, it means this, and another group of people says, it means that. So the story goes that he walked into the room and everybody said, oh, bill, we're so glad you're here.

We're so glad you're here. We're on page 86 of the text, or whatever it was, and it says this and it says that, and nobody can decide if they think it means this, and that means that. It's really causing so much tension, and we're so glad that you're here, because we really need you to tell us, Bill, what do you think it means? And his response was, whoa, wow. Rip out that page if I were you.

Rick Rubin

Amazing. Amazing. You meet Buddha on the road. Kill him. Yeah.

Amazing. God himself would not have you use God to separate yourself from each other. If ever there's a trick of the ego. Yeah. Tell me about manly P.

Hall. Well, I didn't know him, but he was the big boss. I did meet him, and he was giving talks. I don't know if it was Sunday morning. He was a very, very big man, you know, and I was working at the philosophical society where he.

Marianne Williamson

There was this big book, the Secret History of the United States, which was. I was really enamored by. But in those days, you know, it's like I was the girl in the office at foundation for Inner Peace, and I was a girl in the office at Los Feliz. He was the great man. And I didn't have any personal interaction.

I think I got him coffee a couple of times, you know, but I remember just being there, and because it was a book publishing, which I assume it still is, there was this amazing library room and cataloging all of his things. But that book particularly, you know, but it was just. For me, it was so many things. It was the Seth books. Did you ever read the Seth books?

Rick Rubin

I never have. Oh, wow. Nature of personal reality. You know, the course in miracles is. I've never met anyone for whom the course in miracles is the introductory material to the world of metaphysics.

Marianne Williamson

So all of those things were important to me. And then when I went to the course, so much was understandable. It would not have been had I not read all those other things first. And the metaphysical beginnings of this country. I mean, they were all, you know, they were Freemasons.

And Benjamin Franklin was a rosicrucian. Look at the dollar bill. The great seal of the United States is the great pyramid of Giza with the top stone returned and the eye of Horus, the novus ordos of Chloram. New order of the ages. So those guys knew things.

Rick Rubin

Do you have a spiritual practice? Of course, in miracles. I also do TM, but I'm not. I'm not religious. Well, you're not religious with any of them.

Marianne Williamson

But I'm not ritualistic or anything with TM, whereas I am with the course in miracles workbook. Every morning. From the time you started lecturing, have you ever stopped? At this point in my life, I have more discipline. The course would talk about it in terms of discipline.

I'm more disciplined right now than at any other time, because there is no serious religious or spiritual tradition that does not emphasize the power of the morning. When you wake up in the morning is when you first take in the consciousness that will dominate the day, particularly today. We are assaulted by so much ultimately meaningless and unimportant material assaulting us. So if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is Twitter or a news site or Instagram or TikTok, there's no mystery why you're depressed by noon. But if you ground yourself in the morning in what is ultimately true, then I'm not saying you'll never fall off the spiritual wagon, but getting yourself back on is much easier.

Aren't you a meditator? I am. Well, isn't that true? So at this point, you know, there's no, as you know, there's no should about it. It's just if you don't fill your house with light at the beginning of the day, darkness will settle in.

Rick Rubin

Yeah. Those thoughts are gonna go somewhere. They're eager to go into extension, love, creativity, or into neurosis and pathology and fear. You know, these books are not written with a you should believe this or written with a just thought you might like to know. This is how consciousness operates.

Yeah. You can participate or not. Yeah. But the last thing it is, is kooky. I'll tell you what's kooky, is what's the insanity that is dominating the world today.

You talk about light in the morning. I think of it literally getting out into the sun to start the day changes everything. Nature. This all evolved over millions and millions of years. So everything, it's a perfect ecosystem.

Marianne Williamson

Nature, what it does for us. Just looking at that. Tell me about where you grew up. Houston. What was life like?

I had a very magical father and a very wonderful mother, but a traditional mother. My father was like a cross between William Kunstler and Sorba the Greek. He was amazing. He took us to Vietnam to show us what war was. Wow.

Yeah. My father was one of those where they don't make them like that anymore. And describe the area. Was it rural or suburban? Suburban, Houston, various, you know, externally, fifties, housewife type stuff.

But my parents traveled all over the world all the time and took us during the summers. So I traveled all over the world as a child, and people would say to my father, why are you doing this? Your kids will never remember all this. And he would say, it'll get under their skin. And he was right.

There's just so much propaganda, american propaganda, particularly militaristic propaganda I was never vulnerable to. Because if when you're a little kid, you get that people are the same everywhere. Lady, you don't even have to explain it. It's like they experienced it.

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Rick Rubin

Tell me about the law of divine compensation. Well, it's just the idea that God is this ocean of love, right? And it's all that is. And we are ideas in the mind of God. So when you think a loveless thought, you deviate from the truth in you.

Marianne Williamson

The universe works like a gps that you take a wrong turn immediately, your path is recalibrated. If you atone, get it. And the law of divine compensation is you swerved in the next moment, you have the opportunity to get it right. And the other aspect of that, that book is about money, and particularly the idea of divine compensation. You know, I think the purpose of money is so that you won't have to think about money.

So I think everything like you were talking about, the sunlight, I think the universe is set up to support us when we are in aligned with the truth of who we are. And we are taught ideas about money that have to do with such struggle and worldliness. And if you think of it in terms of divine compensation, I felt that way even when returned to love came out, because I wrote return to love while I was doing all the AIDS work. And every single day there was a support group. And the things I was doing at that time, and the last thing that ever was part of any of that was money.

And then when return to love came out and it was more money than I'd ever seen, it was the fifth largest book that year, selling book. I felt in my gut that that was the universal payment for the work I'd done for years without ever thinking about money. I never made as much money as I made before I even knew what bestseller meant. Right. Yeah.

I remember once watching an interview with Richard Gere talking about Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, and he was talking about what a brilliant performance she gave. He says, because she doesn't know yet. Nobody's told her what you're supposed to be able to do and not do. And then he said, she'll learn. Yeah.

You know, it's that beginner's luck. Which is also Zen buddhist empty mind concept. Zen mind. Empty mind. And you have that line at the beginning of your book, the state you get in, in which it occurs naturally.

It's not about what gets created in that state. It's about the space that you inhabit where the next best thing is inevitable. The universe is naturally creative. Yes. Everything, every relationship, every podcast, every book, it's all a creative act if you are allowing yourself to be a portal for that which is good and holy and true.

And we are taught the resistance to that of the ego mind, the non loving mind. Tell me about the new book. My new book. Yeah. Well, about five years ago, Harper one had asked me, there was an editor there, a wonderful man named Mickey Magdalen.

He said, you know, the biggest demographic out there, and I'd known this a lot. I mean, I think the success of my career as a lecturer and an author has been in large part based about this, because a lot of people, when they turned away from organized religion, did not mean to be turning away from God. They felt they ended up throwing away the baby with the bathwater. But he said, it's interesting how many people come into bookstores and they want a book about Jesus, but not necessarily a book about Christianity. So, would you be interested in writing a book about Jesus separate from Christianity, per se?

And I said, well, definitely. I'm. Your girl is a student of a course in miracles. So I contracted to write that book, and I was very nervous about it. Certainly, it seems like the most important topic you could possibly take on.

Better not get this one wrong. And then I had this idea that I should run for president. So I said to the publisher, um, if we got one little problem we've got to deal with. They said, what? I said, I'm going to run for president.

They went, oh, really? I said, yeah. They said, well, what would you like to do? I said, well, everybody runs for president. I mean, almost everybody.

910, actually write a book, a campaign book, so I wrote. They said, okay. So I wrote this book called Politics of Love. That was much more where my mind was at that time. And then.

And later I ran for president. And then when that was over, they said, hello, how about that Jesus book? Now it's called the mystic, the mind of love, and I hope it's good. It's published in May. So I haven't yet had the experience of anyone.

You know, you probably know this about your own book. You know, in the first 15 minutes, it's like when you meet a person, you know, if it's hot, immediately, you know, you can get the feeling of things people say. And it was an honor to have a chance to write it. And it's about a Jesus which cannot be monopolized by any institution or specific religious set of dogma or doctrine, universal Christ. You know, when in the early days there were the gnostic.

I don't know if you've ever read the wonderful book by Elaine Pagels, the gnostic Gospel, which was really a book that blew my mind about the ecclesiastic christians and then the gnostics. So you could think of the course of miracles as gnostic. The mystical tradition, one sees the church as the kind of broker and external doctrine and dogma and institution. And then the mystic tradition is much more direct. The loss of the heart and a direct experience of the divine.

So that's what the book is about. There was a historical Jesus. Jesus was the Christ. So the idea metaphysically and spiritually, is, whether you call it the shekinah, as in Judaism, or the Buddha mind, or the Christ, the idea that this divine essence, where our connection with God is one of complete unity, exists in all of us through meditation, through prayer, through forgiveness, through love. It is both received and given, and that when that occurs, life works.

Rick Rubin

There's a line in the book. I thought we had a deal. Yeah. You want me to tell that story? Please tell it to me.

Marianne Williamson

Jesus at the cocktail party. So I had, in about 1980, 79, 80, I had an experience that today would be called a nervous breakdown. And I had already started doing the course. As a matter of fact, I was living in Houston and I could not stop crying. And my mother had a friend who was an art therapist, an art therapist named Buzz, Buzz Cohen.

So my mother was a very traditional woman. For instance, if you had said to my mother, you should maybe go to therapy, why? I'm not crazy. I mean, that's how old fashioned we're talking. So I cannot stop crying.

I'm definitely in the middle of a breakdown. And my mother comes into my room, and she says, buzz tells me that you're in trouble. And I went, yeah, mommy, yeah. And she said, ann, that we need to help you. And I said, you think?

And she said, and Buzz says that you should go see someone. And I said, that would be lovely. And she said, but I don't want any of this California stuff. She had this thing, you know, this California stuff you do. I mean, I've been doing the course of miracles in New York, but to her, it was California type stuff.

She said, I want you to see a doctor, a medical psychiatrist, a jewish psychiatrist. And I said, okay, mommy. Just anyone. Okay? So she comes back.

She says, buzz tells me that there's this man, and his name was doctor Mark Valverde in Houston, and he's the one you'll go see. So I went to see him, and I said to him at the very beginning, now, this is 1980, in Houston, Texas. And I went into his office, and one of the first things I said, I know that I'm in trouble, and I know that I need to see someone, but I just want you to know that I'm a student of a book called the course in miracles, and if you're going to tell me that that's just kooky, crazy stuff and that I need a real psychiatric help, but that's not it, then this is not going to work. And he leaned over his desk, and he said to me, I just completed the workbook. Amazing.

So during that time, which I do think of him as having saved my life, I must say, I will feel such gratitude to that man forever. But during that time, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I would feel this presence at the end of my bed. It was a shadowy figure. It wasn't like, oh, my God, someone's in the room, very tall, very skinny, sitting perpendicular, not looking at me, but present. And I would always sense it there.

And I began to sense this presence. And, you know, the course, the longer you study it, the deeper your understanding of it. You never outgrow it. But, you know, the course isn't trying to get you to believe in Jesus, not even trying to get you to believe in God. It's just trying to get us to believe in one another.

And as far as Jesus is concerned, the word. You know, he says, you do not have to believe in me for this material to have any meaning for you. But if you do, there's a little more I can do for you. Something like that. And as I walked through that horrifying period of my life.

I did begin to feel that it's as though I was accompanied by a presence. And I had said to God, during that period of time when I was in deep trouble psychologically. I remember saying, if you will put my life back together, I will give the rest of my life to you. Because it was like humpty Dumpty might not ever be put back together again. And I felt like the psychiatrist, like my skull exploded.

And I felt like he treated it like a priceless vase, greek vase. And he painstakingly, we're going to put your skull back together. But I felt when my skull got put back together, something was in there that had not been there before. And I said to God, you know, we all have conversations in our own heart, something about if you. Because I knew I was in trouble.

And I could see the looks on the faces of my family, the fear in their eyes. I'd become a pathetic person. Nobody knew what to do with me in a family system like mine. I remember my cousin of mine told me a few years ago, my father said to her during that time, which I didn't even know, I don't know what to do with an afflicted child, but I could see in people's eyes. It was really scary for me.

I didn't stop crying. I mean, I needed help and I got help. And the spiritual was not at odds with the psychiatric. So I had said to God something about, if you will help me, I will give you the rest of my life. And then at one point I said to, you know, this presence, you know, I wasn't thinking of it in terms of, you know, the course doesn't have this rigid grandiosity stuff with it, but this sense of, I wanted to go back to life, and I didn't really want to be thinking about God all the time, because during that time, the belief that God would help me was what enabled me to take my next breath.

And then it was like, thank you very much. I'm fine. And I know there are a lot of people of you to help now. And thank you so much. Bye.

It was like I was trying to blow them off or something. And then I went to this cocktail party. It was in Houston, and it was at a big house in river Oaks, and there were these rooms, and you just went from room to room. And I saw these three men, and they were all in either, I think, tuxedos. It was a very fancy cocktail party, and I must have had a spontaneous hallucination.

A daydream. But I know the mystics would call it a spontaneous mystical experience. You can call it whatever you want. Three men. And I look, and one of them turns at me in this waking dream, whatever that was clear who he was.

And he looked at me and with no emotion whatsoever, he said, I thought we had a deal. And that was it for me in my life. It was a moment to find everything that would come to pass.

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Rick Rubin

Do you think the reason you were in the debilitated condition was you're unusually sensitive? No, I'm human.

Marianne Williamson

And it was a tragic experience that would have thrown anyone into some level of disrepair. But I think we're all sensitive. You know, I love the line in the course that all of the children of God are special, and none of the children of God are special. I don't ascribe to any of this. Some of us are empaths, and that's just grandiosity.

All of us are going through what's happening in this world right now. And I think spiritual superiority is one of the shadows to avoid. Yeah, you know, they call it a mental health crisis. It's a spiritual crisis. But clearly it has a grip of this society, and this is, once again why.

One of the reasons I ran for president and have run for president, am running still, technically, is because you have 70% of Americans who live with chronic economic anxiety. The majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. The majority of Americans cannot absorb a $1,000 unexpected expenditure. Now, I remember the seventies. During the seventies, the average american couple could afford a house and could afford a car and could afford a yearly vacation, and one parent could stay home with the kids if they wanted, and they could afford to send their kids to college.

And one salary could support a family of four that was called a thriving middle class. So the level of economic despair for the majority of Americans, there is no wiggle room, and I meet these people all the time. So what the system says to people such as myself, clergy, counselors, et cetera, can you help them survive the pain of this injustice? And my response is, why don't we just end the injustice? When the AIDS crisis happened in the 1980s, what would happen for me, and then what continued to happen in my life is that, you know, the jokes used to be most people don't call Marianne because things are going well.

So I had what I think of as really a privilege of being with people. Sometimes in their darkest hours. The test results came back. It's cancer or it's AIDS, or your child is on heroin, or someone you love just died suddenly, or whatever it is. But at that time, when my career began, and I think this was true, not just in my career, it was true of America, a time of crisis was the exception.

It wasn't the rule. And around the year 2000, I began to meet more and more people whose conditions in life were such that the crisis was the rule, not the exception. It wasn't just that the test results came back and you had cancer. It was that you don't have any health insurance. And we've now developed as a society, it's perma crisis.

It's a permanent state of crisis. Whereas I had always felt that my working with people on a personal growth, spiritual consciousness level was the way I could be of greatest help, I began to realize, especially when I went to Michigan in the late 1990s, how many of the problems that people experience in this country are due, at least in part, to bad public policy. So I began to realize that at a certain point, we need to do more than just try to help people survive difficulties. We need to remove some of those difficulties. There's a line in the new book, I'm determined to see this differently.

Rick Rubin

Tell me about that. The course in miracles says that's the most powerful. It's like the most powerful affirmation. I am willing to see this differently. So we are not always in control of what's happened, but where we are 100% responsible is where we stand in the midst of what's happening, how we choose to hold what's happening.

Marianne Williamson

Are you going to see it as an opportunity for a miracle? You're going to see it as an opportunity to look within yourself. Who am I not forgiving? Or are you going to play this the way you might have played it in the past, and things didn't work so well every situation is part of what the course of miracles calls a highly individualized curriculum. If you played it well last time, are you playing it even better today?

And if you didn't play it well last time, could you play it better today? Was your heart closed? Were you standing in victim? Were you not giving everything? Were you not thinking about the other person?

Well, guess what, the situation's back, your choice. So I am willing to see this differently. Is a recognition of the primacy of your consciousness in any situation. Because every thought the course says creates form on some level and the altar is inside your mind. So what you put on the altar is then altered.

If I put our relationship, let's say, on the altar, it's a way of saying, may my thoughts about you, may my thoughts about me, and may our thoughts about us and our purpose here be lifted to the highest place above the low level thought forms that dominate the world, which will constantly tempt us to separate ourselves from each other, to withhold love from each other, to judge and to attack and to separate. Let's talk about miracles in general. In our culture, miracles are things that can't happen. In the course, miracles are natural and always occurring. It's a perception of love.

And as I said before, when we are in a state of love, infinite possibilities are open, as you just said, and that's a line in the course. Miracles are natural when they do not occur. Something has gone wrong. Did you read Cs Lewis book on miracles? Uh huh.

I think by the time I read that book I was already into it all. You know what I mean? I mean, to me he had much more effect on my childhood lime witch and the wardrobe and all that, right? He opened up the space of the mystical for me in the line, right? Yeah.

So I would say he was very formative, but by the time I was an adult reading that, he had already taken me to where I needed to be. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Tell me about your relationship to Leonardo's painting of Jesus. That was an amazing experience.

So I was living in New York. It was about the time like six years ago, I'd read in the paper about this painting that they had found and finally all the experts had said, yes, it's actually a Leonardo. And it's a picture of Jesus dressed and very anachronistically in these renaissance robes and he's holding an orb. And I just read about it just from a place of, well, they found a new Leonardo. Wow, cool.

You know, it was nothing more than that. And my friend Maria had a friend who worked at Christie's, I was living in New York and I was living in midtown. And she said, do you know, have you heard about this Leonardo? I said, yeah, I was reading about it. She said, well, it's actually at Christie's, which was just a few blocks from where I live.

And she said, my friend works there and I want to go see it. She said, we could go. Would you be interested in seeing it? I went, yeah, I think that would be cool. And we went.

And it was at the end of the time before it was being taken away. So by the time we went there, there were only, like five or six people in line. The room was practically empty. And then we came up to the picture, and I've traveled to the great museums of the world. I've seen so many great religious paintings.

When I looked at this picture, I had this experience, and it was like I was transported. And I saw these two words, and somehow I saw that these two words were what he is, and the words were tender and power. So tenderness, like, I think the way I wrote it in the book, like a billion babies kisses. Like, just think of any tender moment possible, all of it. That that's what he is.

And power so great that it's the power to manage universes. I got that consciousness. And of course, you know, the course says you're an idea in the mind of God. So it's is that infinite tenderness and infinite power. And it was extraordinary.

And I don't know if I was there for a minute, two minutes, I don't know. And then they came and they took the painting away. And I started reading on the Internet. I was really curious who bought it. It was a mystery buyer.

And later in the day, it was announced who had bought it. And it was MBS, that prince in Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. And it was before the Khashoggi murder, but we already knew who he was, and he is apparently building a louvre of the Middle east. And this will be star treasure. And at first, I was so like, ugh, how awful that he, of all people would get it.

And then I realized, know how perfect. Who needs it more? And then when I was writing the book, my friend Andrea Kagan, who helps me with editing often, she's a literary muse for me. You know, when I was talking about that we were writing and I was writing that part, she said, oh, I had a very similar experience. I said, really?

She said, it was at the Vatican. I don't know how long ago. It was, apparently years ago. She said, I had that same experience where I looked at a picture of him and I was transported into a place beyond it. She said that what she saw was all the people in the world.

She said, he is all people in the world. But the way she described it was very similar in terms of deliverance to her level of perception. Tell me more about putting the book together. Well, you know, I've written, how do you do it? 16 books at this point.

I think writing is very difficult. I'm one of those people. I don't know what yours was. If you're not pregnant, you're not pregnant. If it's not there, it's not there, and then it gets there.

Is that how you felt with that one? I was particularly. There was a man named Robert Perry and his wife, Emily Bennington, who know a lot about the course in miracles. And Robert has written books, and so has she. And I asked him for his help with his perception of Jesus in the course and some of the lines written in first person, like, I am the atonement.

Excuse me. Excuse me. I remember reading that that first time. I started like, what? Who is this again?

And then I called Andrea. I work well with the literary babysitter. Yeah. You know, just. Can we sit and talk this through?

And all you can do, like, you know, you've written, but you just hope it's of value to someone. Absolutely. Who would you say is Jesus today? Well, I think he is to everyone who he is to them. You know, my book is about the mystic Jesus.

Obviously, there was a historical Jesus, and there are people who are experts in the life of the historical Jesus. You can go to Israel, and I even talk in that book about my experience at the church of the Sepulchre. And, you know, I respect all that, but I'm jewish. I didn't write a book about Christianity. I didn't write a book about the christian Jesus.

That's not what this book is. And I don't think that everyone feels called to Jesus. I don't think everyone feels called to God. You know, the course in miracles says some people conspire with God who do not yet believe in him. The issue is love.

Loving people are doing the work of what I think of as God, whether they believe in God or not. The course in miracles says belief is ultimately meaningless. Experience is what matters, experience of our loving one another or being a space of possibility for one another. So the course in miracles says Jesus is someone who lived on the earth but thought only the thoughts of heaven, and he therefore became one with the mind of God. And I think of him, and I think I use this IMAGE in the book.

In a lot of books, he's called an evolutionary elder brotHer. And the course says he's not the only one who has actualized the full human potential, which is oneness with the divine, you know, whether it's the Christian cross or the Jewish star of David. They're both symbols for an intersection, you know, the vertical and the horizontal, the axis with God and the axis of the world. And I think of him, and I think that's the image I used in this book. I think I used it return to love as well.

If you are sketching and Picasso walks in and Picasso says, well, you know, if you want me to look at your sketches and work with you a little, would you say no? If you're a musician and Beethoven walked in, he said, you want me to listen to a few bars? Would you say no? I think of him, the highest art of living. He has actualized it, and I think he has been given the authority by God to help others who so choose.

And I don't think there's any should to it. Yeah. And when he said, no man cometh unto the father but through me, I think, but through unconditional love. And unconditional love has nothing to do with your belief? No, that's what I believe.

Rick Rubin

Tell me about the workbook. Well, the course of miracles says, the workbook is the crux of the course. So the course of miracles says, enlightenment begins as abstract understanding, and then it makes a journey without distance from the head to the heart. So, you know, if you've read the course in miracles as many times as I have, if simply abstract knowing of the principles was enough to make you an enlightened master, I'd be an enlightened master. I'm not, however, because it has to do with application.

Marianne Williamson

So the workbook is 365 days of meditation exercises, and it's a very specific curriculum. And the first half of the year has to do with dismantling a thought system based on fear, and the second half has to do with substituting for that a thought system based on love. I think of it much like going to the gym. You are reworking your muscles, you are strengthening your muscles and reforming your physical body. The same is true with your attitudinal muscles.

It's like with meditation. If I do physical exercise, it's to strengthen me so that I can run across the yard. Spiritual exercise is so that I can remain non reactive and still your external muscles are about movement. Your internal muscles are about stillness, right? And non reactivity and being a magnet in all of that, rather than the dynamism of physical movement.

So you never get to look in the mirror, you know, and say, I really like where I am. I don't have to exercise anymore. And you never get with spiritual exercise, say, oh, I'm there now, I'm cool. I don't need to do it anymore. And once again, it's not a should.

It's just I'm aware from experience what a mess I can make of things if I don't, particularly in the morning, ground myself in peace and inner peace.

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Rick Rubin

Is it true to say that the course is internal work and that the external changes happen because our perception changes? Well, but your perception leads to behavioral change and all thought, everybody subconsciously knows everything. So I think differently. If you are looking at me and I just get a patronizing vibe, condescending vibe. It's how other people feel.

Marianne Williamson

So if I haven't changed my thought, or let's say, if I do change my thought, your perception of me will be different. What you say to me will be different. How you behave towards me will be different. So, yes, it's about internal change, but all internal change has external consequences, because all that's going on out there is a screen. You know, if you go to a movie and you don't like the plot, you don't get to go to the screen.

It's coming from the projector. And once you realize that, you realize my external life is not going to change unless and until I change my perception. And we are the projectors. Absolutely. And all that's just the manifestation.

Rick Rubin

Describe miracle mindedness. Miracle mindedness is the thinking grounded in a thought system. Based on love. Now I look at my little granddaughter. She's almost eleven months, and I see how she is like when she's lying in her father's arms with her mother, too.

Marianne Williamson

But it's different. I've noticed this particular woman with her father. She's in such bliss, and she's in bliss with her mother, too, but it's a different thing. I notice, and what I notice about her body is there's nothing in her little consciousness yet that has perceived danger. That is the natural state, right?

But no matter how much her parents love her, and they do, you get to a point in life where you cannot completely protect them from some of the machines of the world. Part of the heartbreak of parenting, really, and the art of parenting and all of that. So she will be inundated by that, no matter how much she is loved. And the course in miracles says that enlightenment is not a learning, it's an unlearning. Miracle mindedness is the mental habit that you develop perceiving with love, for instance.

The course in miracles says no matter what someone says to you, you can perceive it one of two ways. You can perceive it as an attack, a judgment, and you're going to attack back the wheel of suffering, as Buddha would say. But the course is everything someone says to you is either love or a call for love. Either way, the appropriate response is love. If you say something loving to me, it's very easy for me to see the appropriate responses.

A loving response. But if you say something unloving to me, the course in miracles would say something in your life could have been in childhood, it could have been adulthood. Whenever it was, something broke and you went into a place where you don't see how to be loving and get your needs met. It's almost like a muscle cramp. And so instead of loving you, that person is attacking you or judging you or blaming you.

They have fallen asleep to who they are. And in their sleep state, not knowing who they are, they don't see who you are either. But you don't have to fall asleep with them because somebody's personality behind that is the truth of who they are. So you can choose. Miracle mindedness means your choice to extend your perception beyond what they just said or did to what your heart knows to be true.

So you are going to stay alive and awake to who they are, even when they have clearly fallen asleep to who they are and who you are, as you remain awake to who they are, that awakens them. That's miracle mindedness. Now the issue is a lot easier said than done. And that goes back to the whole concept of the Holy Spirit, Jesus, whatever you call it in the Aranta book, it's called the thought adjuster, where you can say, and I've said it many times in my life, okay, I get that she's a perfect child of God, but she just came across like a perfect bitch to me. Now, I am willing to see her innocence, but I need some help here, because I can't do it by myself.

Now, I told a story, I think, in return to love. One of the most dramatic examples of this, it was during the 1980s. And the reason I remember was during the 1980s, was because I had on these acrylic fingernails. I was lecturing in LA, and there was a woman who came to my lectures on Saturday morning, and she did acrylics. So I would go to her house, and she put my acrylic fingernails on.

One day I'm there, and she has the three girlfriends, and they're talking, and there was this one woman, and every time she spoke, it was like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. It felt so affected to me. And would you please get me that? It just. I thought, oh, my God, who is this chick?

Ah. And I just was raging in judgment about the way she was talking. Meanwhile, I'm not stupid. I get the irony. This girl holding my hand at the moment between the acrylics, comes to my lectures all about being so loving and enlightened, you know?

And I get the irony. If she only knew. So I say a little prayer. I am willing to see this differently. Within probably sooner than five minutes, one of the girls says to the girl who was speaking that way, are they ever going to let your father out of prison?

And I'm hearing them talk. Her father. It had been one of those cases, like, worst type of things you've ever. That you see on tv. This man held this girl and her little brother in a dungeon their entire childhood.

Like one of the worst you've ever heard of. Right now, they're just talking. She didn't know how to talk. She gets out, she's a teenager and had to learn how to talk. So five minutes before, what had elicited me such judgment now elicited in me such compassion, and I'm so impressed.

And it's the same girl saying the same things the same way. I had changed your story changed about her. Right, right. It was all in my mind, my judgment. But I had prayed, I'm willing to see this differently now.

This is how the course of miracles would see it. That would have happened whether I've said the prayer or not. But with the prayer, I opened myself to understanding what was going on here. And that's where we miss a lot of miracles. Miracles are always happening.

I think there's a metaphysical principle also. Whatever you need is right there. I missed a couple of profound, within a worldly sense, professional opportunities. Why it was so easy. It didn't occur to me what it was.

It's like we were so taught to think. It has to come to a struggle when really the greatest creativity and the greatest comes through just love and play. And in two cases, how could you miss that? Well, part of it was a lack of wordless sophistication, but it was more than that. It was not realizing to be open to every moment.

This could be it. Yeah. And now you have a story about what could have been, and maybe you're being protected from something that would have been terrible. You don't know. I kind of don't think so.

However, you don't know. I think riding the forward to the power of now would have been fine. I think doing that project with OPa would have been fine. But there is something else about that. From course in miracles perspective, if there was a miracle that could have happened, and either you through your lovelessness or someone else through their lovelessness, blocked the way, the course in miracle says the miracle is held in trust for you by the Holy Spirit until you are ready to receive it.

Rick Rubin

Wow. That's right. So when you have either forgiven the other person for blocking it or forgiven yourself for blocking it, and usually in life it's both. Although in those cases it was totally me. It'll happen in another form, it happens in another place, it happens to other people.

Marianne Williamson

So I think that's beautiful. The Holy Spirit being what the course in miracles calls the eternal connecting link between God and his separated sons beautiful. I love that story that in that moment, the course as we were talking before about happened millions of years ago, and that millions of years ago in time, we had that first thought of separation from love. So the course says, love being God has the answer to every problem, the moment the problem occurs. So if you started thinking a non loving thought, God couldn't force you back because love doesn't force.

But the course, says God, place within your mind a place of consciousness that will be there forever. Because once God creates something, it can't be uncreated, which will guide you back should you choose. As a matter of fact, when we're talking about Jesus and in fact, I didn't put this in the book. I wish I had, but I'm fortunate enough to have another printing. I want to put this in because this is so fabulous.

I can't believe I hadn't thought of it. He says, I am not an ego oriented teacher. I look forward to the day when you won't have to ask me to help you get to the loving thought, because sometimes the evidence of the world is so great, you can't get there yourself. He said, when we get there, and this is so incredible, because the Holy Spirit was created by God, it cannot be uncreated. He says, at that point, when you don't need me to help you anymore, I will remain there as your friend.

Rick Rubin

So beautiful. Do you think the physical Jesus who walked on the planet, the mystical Jesus of your book, and the Christian Jesus of the Bible are all the same character? I'm not an expert on the Bible, and I think that there are people who would have a fascinating take on the answer to that question, and I'm not that person. Cool. Have you ever had any conversations with any christian scholars about Jesus?

Comparing notes? I've had conversations with christian scholars about the course in miracles, yes. What's their take? They're not a monolith. I mean, there are many christian scholars.

Marianne Williamson

I don't mean to generalize. Organized institutions, including religions, tend to calcify, and an arrogance sets in, and particularly not with all, but with some dispensations of Christianity. Everything that's gonna be said has already been said. So we don't wanna hear about your book that came out in the 1970s. I see you mentioned the morning being a powerful time.

Rick Rubin

Are there other times of the day that are special for any reason before sleep? Well, I think the course in miracles talks about morning and sleep doesn't. TM talk about maybe late in the afternoon. Yeah. Before dinner usually is recommended for the second meditation.

Marianne Williamson

Also in the set books, it talks about how your life, when you're awake and asleep, they are two distinctly separate. There are times during the middle of the night with the negative ions, etcetera, when you should be awake, and there are times in late afternoon when you should be asleep. Basically, what it describes is kind of the mediterranean cultures with the siestas. He says you're awake for too long at one time, and we feel it on our bodies and then in the middle of the night. And I thought, that is exactly, even though he doesn't say it, it's like that mediterranean culture.

And I know a lot of us, I know, I'm not the only person who wakes up at, you know, 415 and some of the most creative times and the hours and the quiet. He says your waking hours should be more dreamlike and your dreams should be more wakeful. Wow, that's beautiful. That's great. What can we do to build our spiritual muscles?

Meditation, prayer practice. I think there's a path for everyone, and you know, you know your path when you, when you find it. I've always said in my lectures there are three groups of people here. One of you is hearing what I'm saying and going, yeah, but she's right. I do it, and she's absolutely right.

My path is this or that, and she's right. The other second group is saying, she's right. And I do know what my path is, and I should do it in a more disciplined way. Remember, the word disciple and discipline came from the same root. And then there's another group that's saying, I am open.

It sounds right. I just don't know what it would be to you. I say be alert because books are going to fall at your feet in the next few days.