Beauty Run-in: love and fear

I need to preface this post with my feelings surrounding some of the content of this podcast.

Marianne Williamson has some amazing things to say in her books and in this Super Soul podcast, but if you don’t buy into the traditional sense of “GOD” (like I do not) — it might be difficult for you to get through the god language to really identify the points she makes that are universal.

I have a hard time when really great teachers get caught up in being specific around god speak, because it immediately turns people away who might not believe in a traditional god.

I have had to REALLY replace her god speak in this podcast with my own language around the universe, spirituality (which has nothing to do with “god” for me), and positive thinking. Towards the end of the episode, she defines god as “a all encompassing love that is the source of all, the reality of all, and the being through which I am”, but this is truly eclipsed by her apparent personal belief in a god who she refers to as “him” throughout. But if I can get over it, so can you.

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Here’s where the beauty comes in.

Williamson teaches a great deal about living in LOVE. That through love, we become our best self — where we can truly forgive others and find self-actualization.

I am so down for that.

She says that in our life, we are really only working around two major emotions. Love and fear. And we either walk towards one or the other.

We walk towards FEAR or LOVE.

Fork in the road, folks.

This makes a lot of sense to me, and has a lot to do with this new project of mine, and my personal spiritual journey through writing. Much of the reason that I haven’t done this sooner, is the FEAR that people wouldn’t accept it. Or, that I wasn’t being true to an image of myself that people believed me to be, but that I no longer felt. And even though right at this moment, I haven’t even put this online zine out into the world in any real way yet, I already feel as though I have moved from walking a path of FEAR to a path of LOVE. (Go, me!)

Williamson talks a lot about your miracle, or your creativity coming for you.

It is yours. But you can’t block it. The most intense way of blocking your ‘miracles’ (actually, I’d prefer to refer to them as ‘creativity’), is not being able to forgive. Or in other words, not being completely full of love. If this happens, and you hold grudges, or you are not self-actualizing through love, then those creative juices will flow to another person who is open and ready for them. Elizabeth Gilbert talks a lot about this too. Your creativity is only going to hound you for so long before it moves onto the next person.

Yup, I buy into that too.

There was one thing that Williamson said about religion that I agree with 100%.

“No religion has a monopoly on truth.”

I think in the car when I heard this I said out loud, “goddamn right they don’t”. Ironic.

But yes, this goes back to the universality of the spirit and soul. We all have them.

Or what ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘they’ or ‘it’ god you believe in.

Personally, for me, ‘god’ is within myself.

It isn’t a man (like, no way is it a man), and it isn’t a person of any kind. It is my truth, my soul, and the LOVE I put into the world and the universe. And I do believe that my personal self-actualization will come through letting that LOVE lead, while fear takes a back seat on my ride (thanks Liz).

Last, how does Williamson say we find happiness?

“The key to happiness is the decision to be happy.”

We decide to be happy. We choose to love. We choose to not let our circumstances dictate happiness, but rather we choose how to react to circumstances and alter the lens we see the world through.

I am trying to do this every day.

“If I am unhappy there is something I am not looking at correctly. I am believing in an illusion and I am seeing through the eyes of fear. It is not the circumstances, it is looking through a filter of fear.”

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