Marianne Williamson It’s interesting that you point out the issue of lethargy because depressed means exactly that and it doesn’t contribute to return to love. Your energy, your vitality, and your creativity are depressed. This should be no surprise to anyone because the ideas and the main organizing principles by which we organize our society, even our world are themselves depressed thus we are unable to return to love. They depress our vitality because they depress our spirit. There is no true vitality and creativity where there’s not soul, spirit, and love and the world in which we now find ourselves, has into many ways, in terms of the broader social construct peripheralized soul and truthenized love, and placed before the issues of love, brotherhood, holiness, unity, compassion, and mercy. We’ve put a veil in front of those things and the veil are goals that we deem more important, and that has to do with money and personal gain. Sometimes, at the expense of others but certainly, without care on others beyond, “Oh well, I don’t want to proactively hurt anyone.” We are a civilization and a world, actually a species that is dominated by fear rather than by love therefore we are unable to return to love more frequently. On a spiritual level on the level of consciousness, you only get what you give in order to return to love. Anytime I go into a situation and I’m not giving love and my purpose there is not to give love, then I’m failing to feed myself. By withholding love from others, I’m withholding love from myself so I don’t have any gas in the tank. Where’s our get up and go? Well, you’re desired with deep soulful desire to do what you came here to earth to do, which is a mission that is etched on all our hearts. We are love and we came here to express love and extend love. That’s our cosmic mission. When we’re dwelling outside the circle of that knowing, we are depressed because we feel like we’re in alien territory because we are. What’s happening that is particularly dysfunctional is that the fact that we feel so depressed and this lethargy is the most understandable thing in the world that instead of seeing the psychic pain that is a natural consequence of this lethargy, as the early warning system that it is. It’s like physical pain. Psychic pain conveys a message just like physical pain and it doesn’t allow us to return to love. It means something is wrong. It means you have to address something. If you have a broken leg, you don’t just numb it. You have to reset the bone and this psychic pain is a call to all of us to reset the thinking to return to love, which resulted in this pain. However, the very forces that produce this pain, the very matrix of thinking and the very outlet that produces this pain, been extended itself into the issue of our pain by saying that it will help us and its idea of helping us is to numb us from the pain or distract us from the pain. That’s why we have to wake up and get the story for what it is.

Marianne Williamson The owners of the coal mine instead of saying, “Oh, wow. There’s too much toxicity in here. We have to fix this,” says, “There’s something wrong with the canary” and thus the labelling and the medicalization of our despair that this is not a system that produces the despair. They don’t say, “Wow. We need to look at the matrix of thought and behaviour that produces the despair on a suicidal basis.” Instead says, “Oh. There’s a pill we can take for this despair. It’s an anxiety disorder,” “It’s a depression disorder,” as though we’re just victims of this disease we have, which is the last thing you need in order to get out of that lethargy, is to think that you’re the victim of that, which produced it.

Marianne Williamson First of all I have a question. You were adopted by an American family?

Marianne Williamson In a way that your father saved your life?

Marianne Williamson Yeah. It seemed to me to have been delivered from that situation was the miracle that he was the miracle worker in your life, the person who put you in the situation where you could get out of those horrible circumstances. Once again, as you came to think about the situation differently, then you saw his world and you are in a trajectory of your life completely differently unless that part of your mind saying that he should have taken you and raised you himself. Is that what the part of your mind that didn’t forgive him said that he should have taken you and raised you?

Marianne Williamson Yeah. Columbia at that time, it’s very possible that he saved your life. Let me ask you a question. Did your sister grow up with him and everything’s good with her now?

Marianne Williamson Well, you’re Americanized. Going back to what that analogy is, I think an interesting contrast between a nation like Colombia and a nation like The United States, when you look at the terrible turmoil of a country like Colombia, many of the Central America, South America countries, those countries all over the world, the social conditions and the political environment was depressing for everyone. America has just realized it and just entering a phase of both experiencing that and recognizing that. So what happened in The United States was that the psychotherapeutic model that has been prevalent for the last hundred years is one in which there has been this focus on the individual sufferer. So you would look at a country like terrible things going on a country like Colombia and there was no way that the private citizen, only a very, very small portion of Columbia population during that time had any level of protection from the craziness and the horrors that were going on so as understood that everyone would be emotionally affected by it thus fails to return to love. What’s happened in The United States until really, what’s happening right now is that, anybody who got upset, anybody who got depressed, the assumption was that this had to do with their own individual story and own individual drama. “I’m depressed because of my divorce or my breakup,” “I’m depressed because I lost my job,” “I’m depressed because I lost this money,” “I’m depressed because my mother died.” So, we haven’t recognized that much of the prevalence this lethargy and supposedly, the epidemic of depression that we have felt has had to do with a larger construct that all of us are affected by even here in The United States. For the longest time, we all bought into the story that because we have in many ways many blessings living in The United States. Don’t get me wrong. However, until we recognize the underbelly to many aspects of our society, the toxic elements to many of our collective conditions, we fail to realize how those collective issues affect all of us on a personal level. Just like years ago, you took a teenager to therapy. The therapist would say, “I cannot address the issues of the teenager without seeing them in the context of the larger dynamic of the social system that is your family,” and now, I think it’s time for us to realize the same is true for us as adults. You can’t really understand the psychological, emotional, and spiritual drama of an individual without recognizing how that connects to the larger dynamic. The larger dynamic is one in which most people are economically stressed, most people like to believe that your value lies outside you and is based on what you achieve and on what you do rather than in who you are. We are led by the veil of illusion of the 3 dimensional reality that we are separate rather than one. But once we do understand that we are one, that’s when we to return to love. This separation leaves us either in a state of existential loneliness because we feel disconnected on some level. Inside of our hearts we know we are one with or at least meant to be one with. This crises leaves us either inappropriately needy and dependent on our connectivity with someone else or something outside ourselves that doesn’t help us to return to love. It leaves us in a situation where we are more apt to see other people as our competitors rather than our collaborators, it’s turned relationships into transactions rather than deep communal experiences, and these are dysfunctions. These are spiritual dysfunctions which do not help us return to love. This is a twisting of a deep moral perspective that has perverted the system. It’s like a toxic gas. In the book: ‘Tears to Triumph’ I talk about how you can’t address the issues of an individual about suffering in a meaningful and fundamental way without recognizing all of the larger cultural attitude. It’s true when you talk about your father. You can’t understand the story of your father, your sister, and you without addressing that it was Colombia. You’re in that awful time politically, right?

Marianne Williamson One without the other and you just don’t see the whole story. When you say,”How can we make the emotional shift?” I think about the bigger picture, and not just the immediate question. In the old testament there was 40 years between the time that the Israelites first left Egypt and the time when they entered the promised land, and there was 3 days between the crucifixion and the resurrection in the New Testament, and there was that period of time after Buddha awakened to the fact that life is suffering, really had to go through his own trials and tribulations where he fought off the demonic Gods of illusion before he awakened in his enlightenment. So, in all the great spiritual stories, it is recognized, acknowledged, and drawn very specifically that there is a period of time before the shift happens. The problem is not how do we make this time go faster, the problem is we think that should go faster to return to love and that once again is because we have taken the dictates of the business model and impose it on everything. Now, whereas when I was growing up, if you had a loved one, a family member who died, there was a lot more emotional social permission given to the experience of grief. It was understood. If your husband died, if your wife died, it would be a year before you were yourself again. A year was considered natural. Today, we are more likely because of this new medicalization as you, “Oh, it’s been too long. Maybe he should be in treatment. Maybe he should be taking something.” It’s interesting to me particular because people talk about the wisdom of the body and the genius of the body. Everybody’s going to get muscle testing because the body is such a genius. Well, if the body is such a genius, why don’t we put tears in that same category? So if you have 45 tears to cry, who are we to say, “No, no, no. You really should only cry 30 tears and after that, it’s a problem and you should seek treatment,” and that’s really what’s going in our society. So the first thing when you say what to do to get over those emotions in order to return to love, it’s recognized that’s not the question we should be asking. The question we want to ask is what are these emotions? What is the lesson for me to be learned from this? What is the wisdom that I can gain from this that can help me to return to love?

Marianne Williamson Difficult? Yes. However, life can be difficult and that’s what we’re all running away from. When you’re running away from the difficult seasons of life, you’re not choosing to learn how to navigate the troubled times.

Marianne Williamson This earth is dominated by attitudes that then, create behaviour about the individually and collectively that creates suffering. That’s what Buddhism is about, it teaches you how to return to love. That’s what the Old Testament talks about. That’s what a crucifixion is about. That’s why in the book, I talk about the mystical understanding to return to love, the metaphysical understanding of the great spiritual and religious stories because they are all spiritual transmissions, and when we dwell within the context, so you begin by realizing, “I am suffering. Where is the out? Where is the gap in my understanding in order to return to love? Where is the gap in the social understanding? Where is the gap in my understanding? That means where is my suffering because of my own mistakes? Let me not run away from that and let me atone for whatever part I played. If you went to a bit of break-up, you went to a bit of divorce, you got fired from your job, your job fell apart, you lost money, every time I’ve been through any of those dramas and I don’t know anybody who hasn’t been through the majorities of those dramas on some level, if you’ve lived long enough.

Marianne Williamson Exactly. What I’ve learned in my life, it was not one of those cases where my own behaviour, my own thinking, my own attitude, my own energy was not part of the problem that held back me to return to love. My literary agents stole the royalties on my first 3 books. Yeah, and, what kind of woman hasn’t checked her own royalties statements in 8 years? And on and on and on. That’s part of the pain.

Marianne Williamson You can’t get the gain and be able to return to love unless you go through that pain. If you don’t, you don’t get to the place where your eyes having been opened whether tearfully. You know that at the end of this, you will go forward in life and you will be smart where you were stupid before. You will be wise where you were unwise before. You would be brave where you were cowardly before. You would be humble where you were arrogant before. You will be appreciative where you were ungrateful before. You will be kind where you were harsh before. Once you have a spiritual perspective that helps you return to love, you understand the situation will be coming back. Every situation is going to come back around again. Other people, other places, other form but that’s all that life is. Life is lessons constantly rehearsed. If I numb my pain, where am I going to get the wisdom? That’s one category where it was my own pain, my own mistakes that I have to look at. Catholics go to confession. The Jewish have Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement. In Alcoholics Anonymous, there is the taking of the fearless moral inventory. You have to recognize the nature of your own wrongs, atone for them, make amends for them, and take responsibility for them to be able to return to love. Those times are painful. So what do we do with the painful emotions to be able to return to love? What you don’t do is try to rush them. It’s overwhelming to look at the kinds of things that I was just talking about and you have to look at all of them because unless you look at all of them, spirituality we heal to a kind of detox. We can’t pour a pink paint over this stuff at your life. You can’t pour light over the darkness. You have to bring the darkness to the light to return to love. You have to face the horror. You have to face the remorse. Only a sociopath has no conscience and has no remorse. You have to burn through that to be able to return to love.

Marianne Williamson Well, that is not spiritual information. Jesus suffered on a cross and the Jewish were slaves in Egypt and Buddha began his spiritual journey by realizing that life is suffer. You can call that all kinds of things to help you return to love. I’m not here to judge it but don’t put any kind of spiritualmonic around it. All the great religious systems and spirituality does derive from the mystical core of the religious traditions. None of them say that. I know you asked me to comment on a philosophy that is just not a philosophy on top of that. Obviously, what I’m saying is something very different than that.

Marianne Williamson I’d like to go back if I might because when I talked about the things we have to take the time to experience, I gave you one of 3 categories and if I might real quick, I want to go to the other category. When we’re depressed, it’s not always because we did something wrong. I wanted to point out that part but it’s one of 3 major categories. The second category is you have to forgive someone else for theirs. If you are in pain because of what someone did to you, and this is why in the book, there’s an entire chapter on forgiveness, which is the ultimate technique people are asking about. If I’m in pain because of what someone did to me, the spiritual issue there is:

1. You were not created to be at the effect of lovelessness of anyone else. Someone could have hurt you on the level of circumstance but no one can diminish your soul, you are able to return to love with self.
2. If I don’t forgive that person, then like they say, you can be bitter or you can be better. If I’m going to be happy on the other side of this, you cannot see yourself as a victim and be happy at the same time. The ultimate antidote to depression is happiness.

Marianne Williamson People say, “Oh Marianne, you can’t just think happy thoughts.” However, when they say that, they’re talking about a kind of happiness that fellow artificial happiness stuff that you were just referring to a few minutes ago Luis. Real happiness is where you realize that only love is real here, you can return to love and it is difficult getting to that. So, if I am upset and pained because of what someone did to me, “I got left,” “I got abandoned,” “Someone fired me”  or whatever unfairly. First of all, there’s the issue of taking responsibility for my own life. The Course in Miracles says if you don’t take 100% responsibility for your life, you can’t return to love then you can’t change it and then the issue of forgiveness.

Marianne Williamson Let’s say someone hurt you. You broke up painfully in a relationship and you don’t want to return to love. To pray for that person, may he be blessed, may he be happy, may he be loved when really all you want to pray is may he call and say he is sorry, may he come back to me or may he have scalding hot water poured all over him. When you ask me what the techniques are, these are the techniques. These are mental changes. The miracle is a shift in perception that leads you to return to love. Then the other major category is when we have lost someone that we love like you’ve lost both of your parents, your sister, my best friend, and so forth. These are horrifying. However, where is the wisdom there? Or the wisdom is that I know and you know this really not just intellectually that this mortal ride is exactly that. It’s mortal. It is temporary and will not last forever. This leads you to really appreciate more the people who are in your life because that’s what life experience gives you to be able to return to love. When you’re younger and inexperienced, you take life for granted. When you go to all of these experiences of hardships, you come out on the other side if you allow yourself to dwell within them spiritually with such a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Then you try to understand, how to live impeccably, how to live within the order of a moral universe, how to live in such a way that you do not create so much suffering for your pain, for yourself, and others, and how to live in such a way that you are much less at the effect of what other people do to you. When you ask how to do it, once you know the laws of consciousness, if I focus on what you did to me, then I’m dooming myself to emotionally be at the effect of what you did to me. Forgiveness means I’m willing to change my focus and it doesn’t happen in a minute and it doesn’t happen in a day but you are willing to see it differently to allow yourself to return to love. Your prayer becomes, “I’m willing to have another mental lens on this,” “I’m willing to understand that that’s just an innocent child of God who didn’t mean to hurt me or even if they meant to hurt me, I am not created to be at the effect of this and I can learn to exercise some mercy towards that person the way God shows mercy to me, only if I do and willing to take the hook out of them, will the hook me out of me. So these are the spiritual techniques. That’s why the book has a chapter on forgiveness, another chapter on relationships and a part about death and grief because when you ask how do you do it, then that’s the only way to change your experience is to rethink it and everything comes from there.

Marianne Williamson We are living in very difficult times. As you and I are talking, the last two weeks have been just horrific here in The United States and around the world. In one week with horrible incidents in Bangladesh and Baghdad and then the next week, the horrible things that had happened in shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and then Philando Castile in Minnesota and then the shooting of the police in Dallas. There is no way to distract yourself anymore from what is going on effectively. Forget numbing yourself and for that matter, it is appropriate to be sad when things are sad and it is appropriate to be upset when things are upsetting. It is appropriate to be disturbed when things are disturbing.

Where would we be if the abolitionists had not gotten upset? Where would be if Susan B. Anthony just don’t have a chill? This is not a time to try to put yourself within some bubble especially calling it spiritual because there’s nothing spiritual about that whatsoever. There is no deep religious or spiritual path and never has been. It gives anyone a pass on addressing the suffering about this ancient being.

These are revolutionary times. The revolution has begun. Your only choices; am I going to proactively be part of the revolution on love or do I choose to be at the effect of the revolution of fear? I think that hope is born of participation in hopeful solutions and as we declare that I will be here, I want my life to be used by power higher than my own, by God as I understand God, that my life might be a conduit for the solution. When you talk about Columbia and the horrors that occurred there, there was transformation and human beings caused those transformations. Human beings are conduits of the darkness but human beings are conduits of the light and it is only light that casts out darkness. So at this point, the issue is will enough of us form a real critical mass. We already know that principle. Gods know there are enough share graphics out there. We got that. The issue is will enough of us know apply what we know and expand our vision beyond our own individual pain and say, “I will stand out. I will rise to the occasion of being a mature conscious citizen on the planet at this time that God might use me in whatever way would be viable and helpful.” Just like the cells of the body are assigned to certain organs of the body. We’re assigned. You’re assigned to the arts. You’re assigned to business. You’re assigned to education. You’re assigned. You do this. You do a podcast. You write a book. You make a film. You start a business. You start a new educational system. You do science. When you see everything that is offered to us in terms of our life experience as our assignment, knowing that we can dwell within the space, wherever our space is as it now, not a different space but this space you’re in now, and pray in your own way to be a conduit of an alternative possibility there. May I be a conduit of love and be able to return to love. Because if I’m a conduit of love and the moment I’m loving, I can’t be fearful and the moment I’m giving, the gift is not only to others to put to myself. I want to be used by the forces of life as a shining lamp in whatever place I am, then not only will the entire system, the entire country, the entire world transform but one day, we’ll wake up and realized, “Wow! I’m happy,” because that’s the only place where happiness comes from.

Marianne Williamson Thank you so much for having me guys.