Excerpt from "The Luminous Mind" by Marianne Williamson

"The Luminous Mind" is a recording of a full weekend workshop with Marianne Williamson that was offered at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California in 1995, and includes  Williamson’s meditations, prayers, thought-provoking lectures and exercises that take us on an exploration of our human potential and are designed to help us return to our “Serene Center”. Following is a transcribed excerpt from that profound weekend.

When we meditate, the point of meditation in prayer work is that the ego voice, the elbows and jerks we’re talking about, the ego voice burns off and we settle in. Once again, we don’t wait for the love within us, we let go. It’s like when Michelangelo said that when he gets a piece of marble, he imagined that the statue had been created by God -- The Mary, The Pieta, The Moses was already there. His job was to relinquish, was to get rid of the excess marble. So what we’re doing is recognizing that living in this world that is what we’re addicted to, the fearful thoughts.    

Without meditation, without prayer, without a serious spiritual path, we can’t get out. And it’s not like going to the gym. Oh -- it is like going to the gym. You don’t go to the gym and have your body the way you want it and then say, “Oh I don’t have to go anymore.” It’s almost the opposite. It’s almost like the more you meditate, the more you’re going to need to meditate, because the more we get into that place. Does that make sense? Now, the place that we want to be, Jesus said, “I am the Alpha, I am the Omega, I am the Beginning, I am the End.” Look at this -- George Wallace, 78 years old, has now apologized and begged for forgiveness from the African-American people. You saw how, right? Because now he feels the hand of death. Robert McNamara -- he can’t live with it anymore, he feels as he’s an old man. He feels it coming, he had to say… he had to go to the realm of first things first and say it. 

I was playing Candyland the other day with my daughter and my daughter’s friends. And so as I was watching them playing Candyland, I was thinking that to God, watching us do politics must be like us watching Candyland. Because it’s about that mature. So this little 3-year-old girl… my daughter just needed a purple and she’d win, she’s 4. The little 3-year-old jumps up and goes, “Oh I hope Ella gets a purple!” Because she can’t conceive yet. She doesn’t get it yet that if Ella wins, she loses. So she’s still in a realm of pure spiritual truth. George Wallace has returned to pure spiritual truth. McNamara on some level has returned to spiritual truth. What’s our excuse? We live having forgotten and having not yet remembered. We had it when we were born. We’re going to have it again right before we die. Or right at death. Of course the miracle says some people get it at death. So the point is you can get it now or you can get it later, and all the pain of our lives is that we have chosen to be in that other realm. Why do we do it though? It is very difficult.