This article has been chosen as a Making Sense of These Times
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This is a teaching speech, giving us new ways to hold the stalemates of our day. It fits well with Maureen Dowd's piece, providing some interesting speculations about how the flower children "turned into the same selfish people we thought we were against." Marianne takes us way out – or way in – to where we are solving the problems from a different level of consciousness that the one in which they were created (her homage and mine to Einstein here). "I am of a generation, which thought that we could bring peace to the world, and we didn't think it mattered if we ourselves were angry. What we learned is that an angry generation cannot bring peace."
-Suzanne-

April 7, 2002 (posted here June 27, 2002)

A New Movement for Peace, Peace and Justice Conference, Toledo, Ohio
Marianne Williamson


I am interested, as you are obviously, in the intersection of spirituality and politics. When Mahatma Gandhi was asked, 'You are religious, you are spiritual. Why are you involved in politics'? He said, 'Is not politics a part of dharma too'? Everything that is our work in the world is theoretically, from a spiritual perspective, something that we are here to transform. And we are here to transform it, by being transformed within it. And that, I think, is why the conversation around non-violence is so important. It claims that we cannot give to the world anything that we ourselves do not have.

I want to talk about two of the principles of non-violence that Gandhi articulated, which were then picked up by Dr. King when he applied the principles of non-violence to the struggle for civil rights in the United States in the 1960s. First of all - very interesting - Dr. King used to say that self-purification must precede direct political action. And also, Gandhi, and then Dr. King, would say that the end is inherent in the means. Now traditional political stratagem claims that the end justifies the means, and what Gandhi and Dr. King said is that the end is inherent in the means.

I am of a generation, which thought that we could bring peace to the world, and we didn't think it mattered if we ourselves were angry. What we learned is that an angry generation cannot bring peace. Also, in my youth, we thought of peace in terms of the absence of war. I mean the Peace Movement, back in the 1960s, was basically the idea that if we could stop the war in Vietnam at that time, there would be peace, which is like saying that if you get rid of your disease, then you're healthy. But we now think differently about health, and it's time for us to think differently about politics as well. We know that health is more than the absence of sickness. Health is a positive state that we proactively cultivate. You don't just wait until you get sick, you cultivate health. Sickness is the absence of health; health is not the absence of sickness.

And so it is with war, and conflict in the world as well. It's not like, 'well if we don't have a war, we're at peace'. In fact, Martin Luther King Junior used to say that there are two kinds of peace. There's negative peace, and there is positive peace. Negative peace is where there is no outright war, but there is underlying tension and anxiety. Positive peace is the presence of justice and brotherhood. So while many people would say that as they look at it, there was peace before September 11, many of us would say, 'that depended on what neighborhood you lived in'. Many people say that September 11 shattered their views. I was at a talk in San Francisco, and was introduced by a woman who made a claim, I can't remember exactly how she said it - she said, 'All of our suppositions, all of our assumptions were shattered on September 11'. And I said that for me, and for most people I know, unfortunately, our assumptions were validated on September 11 - that there has been a sense among many of us for a very, very long time that we were living in a state of negative peace, not positive peace. A negative peace in which there was tremendous underlying tension and anxiety, which, it was only reasonable to assume, would at some point or another erupt.

The opportunity, obviously - the challenge, but also the opportunity of current events is that we will take a quantum leap forward in our thinking. We cannot take a quantum leap forward in our circumstances unless we take a quantum leap forward in our thinking, and I am here today for the same reason that you are, because one of our most powerful tools for change in consciousness is conversation. A Course in Miracles says that miracles arise out of total communication given and received.

When Dr. King talked about the principles of non-violence, when Mahatma Gandhi talked about the principles of non-violence, they articulated a philosophy which claimed that there is, within every human heart, a love - what we would call God, of course - which not only heals personal relationships but, according to Gandhi, would heal political and social relationships as well. That's why Dr. King was so enamored by the teachings of Gandhi. Dr. King said that Gandhi was the first person in human history to take the love ethic, which he associated with Jesus, and lifted above mere interaction between individuals to apply it as a large-scale social force for good.

I am going to ask that you just hold that with me for a moment. Think about what he's saying here: that love might be a large-scale social force for good. Now you love - you love your friends and your family. Millions and millions of people, the vast, vast majority, 99.99 percent of people on this planet feel love in their hearts. But love is like gold - on this planet- is like a gold that has not yet been mined.

And so, where we are with love now, is that it is a power, it is a force - and God knows we all carry so much of it - but yet look at the terrible disjunct between the love in our hearts and the horror that occurs throughout the world. So isn't the task of our generation to harness the love inside us, that it might be a large-scale social force for good? The French philosopher, Pierre Theilhard de Chardin, said something I find very compelling and very beautiful - as only the French can; everything is so beautiful when they say it - he said that "one day, after mankind has mastered the winds and the waves and the tides and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in human history, mankind will have discovered fire."

You know, our anthropological ancestors were creatures of the sea who made their way to land, and we now stand at a juncture in the development of our species, which is as fundamental and significant as that. Now we are creatures of the land, who are challenged by history, to spread our energetic, our spiritual, our attitudinal wings that we might become creatures of the sky. And what that means mystically is that we now embrace, and mystically identify with and merge with, thought forms that are higher than the thought forms that now dominate this planet.

Now, I said that I was interested in being here today at this conference, because I noticed from your literature that intersection of the spiritual and the political. Let me tell you what I mean by that. Let's take what is happening today in Israel. Now, many people have many opinions, but I'd like to speak to you for a moment about what the spiritual perspective on this situation is. You could say that there are various spiritual perspectives - I coming from a metaphysical perspective.

With the mortal mind, you almost can't even conceive of an answer. On the personality level, there are so many layers of anger, there are so many layers of resentment, there are so many layers of pain. This is one of the situations confronting the human race, in which we are challenged by history to recognize what anyone in recovery comes to recognize. My life has become unmanageable. There is a power in me, but not of me, that can do for me what I cannot do for myself. The skill set of powers that we in the Western world embrace, far too often come from technology, to science, to business, to money, to the military.

You know, there's a line in Alcoholics Anonymous, 'You're best thinking got you here'. This is where our best thinking, ladies and gentlemen, has brought us, to the brink of global catastrophe. That's a big message. You think you're so smart. The best answer that you can come up with is to have more nuclear bombs than the other guy. Something is horribly wrong. But what the spiritual, non-violent philosophy would suggest, is that the same mind that created this, is not the mind that is going to get us out of this. Einstein said, 'We will not solve the problems of the world from the level of thinking we were at when we created them'. So any 'us versus them' thinking has to go.

As long as we ourselves - and I'll go back to this idea of non-violence that 'the end is inherent in the means'. If we are stuck at any level of 'us versus them' thinking, then from the metaphysical perspective, we are part of the problem, not part of the answer. Now I am not saying you don't have a political opinion. Of course, we have political opinions. It's a democracy and it's a very good thing, as citizens, that we have political opinions and that we voice them. But what we are talking about here is something beyond mere political opinion. We are talking now about the application of a new force, that broad scale social force for good that emanates from love, that Gandhi talked about, that King talked about, that Pierre Theilhard de Chardin talked about.

Now, from the perspective of basic metaphysical principle, including the Course In Miracles, what the mind does to heal a situation, is to withdraw from the level of thinking that it represents. So, for instance, with the Israelis and the Palestinians, the greatest service we can be, not just as political thinkers, not just as citizens, but as human beings who are seeking to embrace the quantum 'next step', not only in our political development, but in our spiritual development, is to ask that we ourselves be healed of judgment, of any of them, of either side, for any reason. We have the capacity to hold a space in which the spiritual reality of their oneness is embraced and affirmed.

What do I mean by that? Well, books like a Course in Miracles claim, that as human beings, we are like sunbeams thinking we are separate from other sunbeams, or waves thinking we are separate from other waves. My physical reality is that I am over here, and you are over there. But non-violent politics is based on the notion that while your body is over there and my body is over here, in spirit there is really no place where you stop and I start. On the level of bodies, the Israelis and the Palestinians today, in many cases, could not be further away. On the level of spirit they are one, because God created only one Son, and we are all It.

So for us to hold on the level of consciousness to the oneness in spirit between the Israelis and the Palestinians, does not destroy our brain cells. It does not mean that we do not take a stand for justice as we understand justice - and even on that issue, a lot of different interpretations, because there's a lot of different issues. In my mind, it's hardly a black and white situation; it's very complicated and very nuanced. But the point is, more of a complication, and more of a nuance coming from you, they don't need. More of a complication and more of a nuance is not what is necessary here. What is necessary is that somehow they find the ground of being which is beyond the personality level, which for them is almost impossible to achieve right now, and how could we judge either side for their difficulty in achieving it? You and I, though, have an easier time being clear about that situation because we are not in it.

If you're in a situation, your circumstances are awful, and I start telling you the only reality is love, you could say to me, 'Well that's easy for you to say', and I say, "Well, that's why I'm saying it, because I don't know this person you're talking about'. So for me, in this situation, it's easier for me to see the abstract truth about your life. And then when I'm lost in the midst of my own circumstances and craziness, someone else speaks abstract truth for me.

Now, there are different levels of reality, and the level of reality which is the physical world is considered, from a spiritual perspective, what the Buddha called maya, or illusion. It's all really mortal hallucination that we're having. And to the extent to which we remain inside the hallucination trying to fix it, once again, we're really just more of the hallucination. The Course in Miracles says, 'God does not give you victory in battle. He lifts you above the battlefield'. Martin Luther King said, 'This is not a personal love that we're discussing here. This is an impersonal love'. I'm not talking about a personal love for the Palestinians, or a personal love for the Israelis. We're talking here about an impersonal love that withdraws its attachment to the level of the personality, and instead is lifted to another realm.

Now, in my own life, I had an interesting demonstration of this. As you probably know, I am not a Republican, and during the Republican National Convention - what was it, two summers ago? - I was not consciously aware that the convention was taking place. I mean, I guess I knew, but I wasn't thinking about it, and I wasn't planning to watch. I did my lesson from the Course in Miracles one morning, and the lesson was, 'Give me Your blessing, Holy Son of God'. And the whole lesson was about how you have to ask one brother, one human being, who is a symbol of all the rest, and ask them to love you. And your entire spiritual practice that day would be about your establishing love with this other human being, and this would heal the world, and this would heal your world.

I did the meditation that morning, and I read the exercise. I was deeply moved by it, and truly infused. I was taken to that place where I really got it. I put down my Course in Miracles, and I went downstairs. I was sipping tea, and I thought I would turn on television, and there was a picture of George W. Bush. I thought, 'No, not him Lord. Anyone, not him'. But I knew, I absolutely knew, that this could not be more perfect. Now this is the really hard part. This was the very beginning of the convention, so I had three days of this torture that I had to go through. But I knew, I knew. I had read Gandhi, and I had read King, and I knew that this, you know, self-righteous, left wing anger of mine is me being a brat. It's not me being an advocate for real change. I knew that intellectually. So I knew, because I have read King and Gandhi, that I must be the change I want to see happen, and for me to talk about peace in the world, while I am so judgmental and warlike towards anybody who has the audacity to disagree with me, is really not the new politics, thank you Miss Williamson.

So I really worked that baby. It was so beautiful. I worked at it over the next three days, and my whole spiritual practice was about falling in love with George W. Bush. At the end of the convention, he came out to give his speech, and I had really worked at this - every time his name was said - I was just blessing.

By the time he came out to give his speech, I had a very interesting experience. I had prayed so much, and really owned what was mine - that I really felt love for him. I felt totally emotionally flat about him. I felt no need to personally dishonor him, and there were a couple of lines in his speech that I actually very much admired - he talked about forgiveness, and then some other things - I had no problem giving him his due when he deserved it.

But this is what was very interesting to me. I listened to his speech. I didn't feel a need to separate from him on a personal level. I did not feel a need to withhold my appreciation and honor for him as a human being, and I was more clear, more articulate, and more focused in my disagreement with just about everything he said politically than I had ever been before. I also noticed when I talked to my friends, that they were so apoplectic that they could hardly carry on an intelligent conversation about his speech. I noticed that my political perspicacity had actually been increased, and other people I knew, who were stuck in this level of just judgment and, 'Oh, this is so awful, blah, blah, blah', were actually, it seemed to me, decreased in their ability to put forth a more serious, intelligent political argument.

You know, sometimes we have this idea that love will destroy our brain cells, that love is fuzzy thinking. That is something we really need to take on. Somebody ought to take some speeches by Gandhi and Dr. King, take the name 'Gandhi' off it, take the name 'Dr. Martin Luther King' off it, send it to a lot of magazines and op-ed pages and places like the New York Times, and I'm telling you, it would come back with a note written that this is just too New Age for our audience. Right?

The Course in Miracles says that love restores reason, and not the other way around. So, for those of us who are interested in the non-violent politics of Dr. King and Gandhi, one of the lines from Martin Luther King, which I find fascinating is, he said, 'You have no morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt'. You have no morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt. So that takes us full circle back to the principle that self-purification must precede direct political action.

I had been fascinated by such ideas for a long time, as many of us have, and the work that I have been involved with that I want to take this opportunity to tell you about, is something called the Global Renaissance Alliance.

You know, we're living at a time of a great movement, and I do believe this, and anytime you have a movement, no particular project monopolizes it or owns it. No one has a corner on transformation of any domain, whether it's political or spiritual. This is one work, and I just want you to know about it, because it might be something that feels good to you.

What the GRA is, is a very simple template. It is a template based on a subject that is pretty hot right now, and that is the notion of the power of circles. I was driving home and there was some talk radio program on, and it was some very, very conservative gentleman, and he was saying, 'I am so sick of these peaceniks out in Berkeley California, and they think we should all just sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya'. You know - those are the people that would like to deport Gloria Steinem. Then a woman called in, and the conversation was about this new Al Queda prisoner that they have. She was saying that she thinks what we ought to do is that since, in certain parts of the world they stone women to death, that she thinks every American should be given a stone, so we could have at this guy. And then the talk show host said, 'Sounds good to me'. But he's so sick of these peaceniks out in Berkeley, right?

Well, once again, I think this is a time for us to remember, also, the line of Martin Luther King when he would say, 'Don't worry about numbers. A lie will fall. Doesn't matter how long it's going to take for the lie to fall. If it's a lie, it will fall, and it will fall of its own dead weight. You just claim a ground of truth. And when it comes to social and political activism - and this is something, now, from a purely political perspective - don't kid yourself. When the abolitionists first said, 'We're going to abolish slavery'; they hardly represented a majority. They were considered crazy, and radical, and impossible dreamers by the status quo of their time. And suffragettes, when they said, 'We're going to give women the right to vote'; they hardly represented the majority of people, even the women at that time. They were considered crazy. They were considered radical and dangerous, threatening to the status quo of their time.

So it's important, I think, for our generation, who is used to getting things pretty easy, not to give up. It seems to us sometimes, like other voices are in the media, and other voices seem to control the political parties, or whatever. It's very important for those of us who believe in a new politic, for those of us who believe in a deep democracy, a deep democracy based on a level of compassionate conversation and sharing of our stories with each other; a deep level of listening and a deep level of sharing. For those of us who believe that meditation has its place, for those of us who believe that forgiveness has its place, for those of us who believe that genuine prayer for our enemies has its place. Jesus said, 'Pray for your enemies, and bless those who curse you'. And even those who are not necessarily into the Jesus authorship of the line, tend to know, 'Bless your enemies' - it drives them crazy. Right? Love your enemies; it's good strategy, if nothing else.

So, what the Global Renaissance Alliance is, is a template - very simple notion of people sitting in small groups called Peace Circles- twelve or fewer - because it's difficult to have an intimate conversation with more than twelve people. The Peace Circles meet, usually, every other week. It's simply a group of people, two or more, who pray together articulate their own deeper vision for what they want, instead of articulating all the time what we don't want. We have great power in articulating what we do want - in making of the space of their circle through prayer and meditation, and deep and holy sharing, a little piece of the heaven we wish to see in the world.

Scientists tell us that the world that we live in is holographic. The notion in that is that every piece contains the whole, and the whole is in every piece. So if we take little groups of people, we can among ourselves, create genuine right relationship - genuine right relationship based on a deep understanding of who the other person is as a human being, then we create little pieces, little pieces of heaven.

After September 11, we heard a lot about cells of terror. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for us to create cells of peace, because there's a synergistic power. The Course in Miracles says that ideas grow stronger when they are shared. Notice, if you had a canvas full of little red dots, just many, many little red dots, but you looked at it from far enough away, it would look like a solid field of pink. And that's what happens here. As we have enough small little pieces of heavenly energy, of energy among people that has truly been lifted to a level of a deep humanity, you go to your divinity.

You know, in the cross - the intersection of the vertical axis and the horizontal - it's that place where God meets the earth. Same with the Star of David in the Jewish religion - the triangle pointing to God intersecting the triangle pointing to man. That's our purpose on this earth. We are mothered by the forces of the earth, we are fathered by the forces of the sky, and everything - whether it is our politics, whether it is our science, whether it is our business, our education or any other thing we do - when those institutions become informed by a sensibility which recognizes who we are - not merely as mortal beings, but as eternal beings, as spiritual beings - then those institutions will change. The idea here, of course, and I think this day testifies to this, is that anything else is inadequate to the task.

The Global Renaissance Alliance


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