Good Life Project - Marianne Williamson: Transforming the Illusion

Episode Date: January 16, 2017

Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed spiritual teacher, activist and multi-time New York Times Best Selling author.She's been teaching about A Course in Miracles for three decades, founded LA meals-on-wheels program for homebound people with AIDS, Project Angel Food in 1989, and serves on the Board of Directors of RESULTS, an organization on a mission to end hunger and poverty.Marianne Williamson also speaks every Tuesday evening in New York City, at the Marble Collegiate Church live and via live-stream. Her upcoming event, SISTER GIANT, held in Washington DC on Feb. 2-4, 2017, will bring together a diverse gathering of thinkers, from politics to faith to philosophy and activism, in a quest to incubate ideas and build a conversation around a more enlightened path for society.In today's episode, we dive into Marianne's personal journey, exploring everything from growing up in Houston to the relationship between fear and love, compassion, activism, politics and spirituality and her current quest to inspire people to rise up, participate and be intentional about the societal and political path we are all on.In her words..."We are not here to ignore the illusion, we are here to transform the illusion." [Click to tweet]Be sure to subscribe to our weekly Good Life Updates and listen on iTunes to make sure you never miss an episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spiritual exercise is like physical exercise in that it works if you do it. But there is both on a physical level and a mental, psychological, emotional, spiritual level, a force of gravity. And if you are not working at keeping your physical muscles up, then gravity will pull them down and weaken you. If you're not working through spiritual exercise, a conscious, proactive, vigorous practice of forgiveness, atonement, compassion, and so forth, then spiritual gravity, i.e. fear, will pull down your thought forms and your attitudes and your energies and weaken you spiritually and morally and ethically and psychologically and emotionally, just like gravity will weaken us physically if we don't physically exercise. Hey there, it's Jonathan. This week's conversation is with spiritual teacher, author, and activist

Marianne Williamson. She has been teaching for the better part of three decades, maybe longer, around something called A Course of Miracles. And that's, I think, what a lot of people may have come to know her for. But she's also been fiercely involved in a lot of causes that are designed to relieve suffering and really increasingly involved in the intersection between spirituality and activism and politics. And if you ask her, and I do ask her, and we go into this conversation, there never was and there still is not

a separation between any of those. They're intertwined. And these days, we go into how they're intertwined. And we also explore this overlap between spirituality and activism and politics and what role we all need to play in the state of the world today and asking really big important questions. Is it the way I want it to be? Am I being of service to myself, to others, to those in need? Am I relieving suffering, being inclusive and

elevating and helping others rise? And what am I leading with? And what is the world that we're kind of surrounding ourselves with today? And what do we want it to be? And what is my place in getting us from where we are now to there? She teaches in New York City regularly, actually, at the Marble Collegiate Church every Tuesday. You can actually drop in live if you happen to be in New York, and that's live streamed as well. And she's heading up a pretty substantial event in early February in Washington, DC called Sister Giant, where she's bringing together a pretty incredible group of some of the world's leading spiritual thinkers and activists and political thinkers to have a really powerful discourse.

And I think it's going to be something that will be eye-opening for a lot of people and hopefully be a conversation starter for maybe a lot of people who have kind of been sitting on the sidelines or not known what to do. Today's conversation is fierce. It's direct. It is strongly held wisdom and opinions. And it's provocative. It will make you think about who you are and what you believe and how and why. It it's pretty fitting that we're airing this episode on the day that in the United States, we celebrate the life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I'm Jonathan Fields, and now, diving in. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the

thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.

Well, it's so nice to be able to spend some time with you. You actually moved to the city last year, right? Sometime earlier? Yes, but I lived here when I was younger, in my 20s quite a bit. So I'm not really new to New York, and I've always spent some time here. I hadn't lived here in quite a while. But yeah, what was the impetus to actually come back this time? I woke up one morning and went, I think I should move to New York. Divine intervention.

Pretty much like that. Yes. Nice. Yeah, it's, it's an interesting city. I liken it a little bit to the mob. Every time we try and get out, it keeps pulling us. It's a wonderful, wonderful place. and of course I love being here. It is. It's an amazing city. You came up, though, in Texas. I was born and raised in Houston, yes.

Right. And I know very little about it. So this would have been late 60s, early 70s? No, earlier than that. I was born in the 50s. Okay. No, earlier than that. I was born in the 50s. And I went to, you know, I spent my college years, 70s and my 20s. Yeah. So when, I mean, growing up in Houston, from what I've read, you were brought up in a Jewish family. Was my curiosity... I always get a little freaked out when people say brought up in a Jewish family.

Tell me why. I am Jewish. Yeah. Born a Jew, died a Jew. It's not just something, it's like saying brought up in a black family, raised black. You don't say you were raised black. That's how I see being Jewish. Yeah, okay. It is a gene pool among other things.

So you are Jewish. I'm curious, because it's funny, when I think about 50s, 60s, 70s in Texas and Jewish families, in Houston, was there sort of a Jewish culture or a Jewish community in Houston? You know, my sister married a Canadian. And when she came home and told my parents that she was marrying this man from Montreal, they said, there aren't Jews in Canada. And when he told his parents he was marrying a girl from Texas, they said, there aren't Jews in Texas.

But in fact, there were and are. I don't know about the are, but certainly were a lot. It was a large Jewish community in Houston where I was growing up and a strong Jewish community. You ended up heading out to California at some point. I went to college. And most of my adult life I've spent in Los Angeles, yeah. Yeah, why Los Angeles? I don't know.

You know, places are like people. You know, you have chemistry with certain places and at certain times. It's like when you do astrocartography and you can see. Yeah, I just have a connection to Los Angeles. But, you know, I love being here now. It's where I belong.

So I think geography, particularly today, matters less and less on a certain level. And I think this whole, we're all becoming global citizens stuff is really affecting the way we look at our lives. You know, my daughter has grown. When you have a career that is specific to a geographical region, or you have a child at home, or some relationship that ties you, or activity that ties you to a place, then, of course, place matters. But if you don't have a professional or personal situation

that ties you specifically to a city or an area, more and more these days, people can just kind of be where they want to be. If you have your computer, you can be wherever. And I love to travel, and my daughter lives in London, so one of the good things about being in New York is that I'm closer to her. Much easier trip over there. You mentioned that you were in New York, I guess, in the early 70s?

Well, in mid-70s and late 70s. Yeah, a lot of the 70s I spent here. So what brought you here the first time? I don't remember. I think it was just being young and wanting to live in New York. I think every young person should live in New York at some point. I think it's part of being young. I don't remember if there was a specific.

I think I just wanted to go to New York. I'm not sure. Yeah, what were you actually doing when you were here? Well, I worked as an editorial assistant to a man named Albert Goldman, who was a pretty fascinating character. He taught at the time, I think, at Columbia University and was teaching a class in pop culture and wrote a pretty famous biography on Lenny Bruce.

So I worked as his editorial assistant, learned a lot, had great affection for him. And years later, many years later, like 20 years later, when my first book came out, and it was a bestseller, mainly because of Oprah and stuff, he was quoted. Somebody, some news journalist had learned that I had worked for him. And he was quoted in some magazine or newspaper article as saying, she worked for me. She is the last person in the world you would have expected to have any kind of success or something like that. So much for that. Right, not the greatest way to come full circle there.

So you have multiple, you have differing associations with that relationship. You know, I'm old enough to laugh at all of it. Yeah. I think you have to at some point. I think that one I even laughed at at the time. Yeah. When you were here. I mean, so you spent your time there. I guess part of my curiosity is also you've had a meaningful career now as a spiritual teacher.

What were the earliest beginnings of that for you? Did it happen here? Did it happen another time? Well, I was living in New York City when I first read A Course in Miracles. That was in my sort of mid to late 20s, and that changed my life. I had been a student in college in comparative religion and philosophy, but also that period of time we were all doing the I Ching and the tarot cards and reading Ram Dass and the Tao Te Ching.

So there was a lot of interest in esoteric and Eastern philosophies at the same time that I was studying academically, whether it was St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Moses Maimonides. So I've always been interested in both the East and the West. I've been interested in academic as well as esoteric. I don't care whether it was astrology or Kierkegaard. If it had to do with the inner life and the higher mind. I've had a taste for it and an appetite for it since I was very young. So when I read The Course in Miracles, what that did for me was it took so much that I already knew or embraced and guided me into some understanding about how to make these ideas applicable on a practical level in my life. And that did and does continue to inspire me, to guide me, to illumine my life,

and has caused my life to unfold in profound ways. And, you know, my life works really good when I practice what I preach. So, I believe in this stuff, even in the moments when I might fall short of full embodiment, I have full belief, that's for sure. Yeah. What do you think it is about, whether it's A Course in Miracles, whether it's any tradition that anyone's been brought up in, whether it's just exercising every day. When we know that something, when we do it, when we pursue it, when we build it into a practice, it helps us. We feel better.

It has an impact, yet we don't do it. And I'm always so curious whether I can sort of deconstruct what the why is there. Do you have a sense for what stops us from going to that place and embracing and building this sort of regular practice around the things we know to be good? Until we are enlightened beings, we are all at the effect to a greater or lesser degree in a profoundly self-hating mechanism within our consciousness. Now, you can call it the devil, you can call it the shadow, you can call it fear, you can call it whatever you call it. In the Course in Miracles, it's called ego. It's an aspect of consciousness, which is the natural energy of life inverted so that instead of guiding us towards creativity and life, it tempts us towards destruction and death. And the mind is infinitely powerful. And every single moment we are deciding whether we are

deciding consciously or unconsciously, how we will use our minds, but every thought creates form on some level. You could say the same thing as what you asked about physical exercise. This is an area where we see that a lot. If we exercise physically, we feel better, we're healthier, we look better. What is it in us that resists that, particularly since once you actually get in the gym, it's not as bad as you were thinking it was going to be in those hours. You go, oh, I don't really want to do that today. Spiritual exercise is like physical exercise in that it works if you do it. But there is both on a physical level and a mental and psychological, emotional, spiritual level, a force of gravity.

And if you are not working at keeping your physical muscles up, then gravity will pull them down and weaken you. If you're not working through spiritual exercise, a conscious, proactive, vigorous practice of forgiveness, atonement, compassion, and so forth, then spiritual gravity, i.e. fear, will pull down your thought forms and your attitudes and your energies and weaken you spiritually and morally and ethically and psychologically and emotionally, just like gravity will weaken us physically if we don't physically exercise. So it's almost like the default state is this gravity. It's a decline. That's exactly.

And default is a good word for it. And of course, it takes a form in our personalities so that your default, your ego default becomes arrogance or anger or cynicism or neediness or controllingness. What the spiritual perspective does is it completely dismantles the more common psychotherapeutic perspective in that it repudiates this notion, we just have to work on this. I have to work on why I'm so angry. I have to work on why I'm so needy. I have to work on why I'm this, or I have to work on that. You know, we're always working, we're always processing. When in fact, just as you turn on the light, the darkness disappears. If you fill the mind with love, the fear disappears. They have the same relationship. So we tend to think your issue is different than my issue, is different than somebody else's issue, when really the particular default is not the issue. The issue is that those defaults exist because of the absence

of a proactive pursuit of light and love. Yeah. So, in that sense, would you consider love, then, to be the opposite of ego? It is absolutely the opposite of ego, except look at that. That's like saying, is light the opposite of darkness? To get more specific, darkness is the absence of light.

Darkness doesn't actually exist as a thing. It's the absence of a thing. And same with fear. It has no existence except as the absence of a thing. And same with fear. It has no existence except as the absence of something else. Yeah, I'm just sitting with that for a minute. It makes a lot of sense. When I think of fear also, one of the things that at least my experience has been with, I'm curious what your thought is on this, is that it's an anticipatory experience. It's, it's fear is a reaction to something that you believe will or will not happen in the future. And once it has

or hasn't happened, like you can't experience it anymore. Well, the ego's thought system, which dominates the planet is a thought system based on fear. The core belief is that you live in a dangerous universe, you live in a dangerous universe. You live in a random universe. You live in a universe in which you are separate from all these billions of other people. How could you, you know, the Course in Miracles has a great image. It talks about how we're like waves in the ocean, thinking you are separate from the other waves. Now, if you identify yourself just as one wave in the ocean, how could you not be terrified of all the other waves? How could you not be terrified that you're going to be obliterated in any moment by some bigger wave? But if you instead think of yourself as what you are, which is connected to every other wave,

because there's no place where one wave stops and another starts, then you identify with the ocean itself and the power of the ocean. And you're not worried about being overwhelmed because you are one with the ocean. And that's what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is a shift from body identification to spirit identification. As long as I identify myself only as a body, isolated, separate from other people, at the effect of a random universe. You know, Einstein said the most important decision you will ever make is whether to believe in a friendly universe or a hostile universe. The ego's core belief is that it's a hostile universe and you're separate from everybody else and you're separate from God. How could you not only anticipate fear?

How could you not only fear the future but fear the present. It's just a constant state of fear that never allows for an interruption between a scary and unsatisfactory past and a future, which will be assumed to be as bad as the past was. And that's why spirituality is so radical. It interrupts that entire perspective and extends our perception beyond the whole drama that the physical senses reflect to us based on that core belief system. You change your belief system, you not only no longer think that you are at the effect of a random universe, you experience a universe that is friendly to you and a time and space continuum that is more your servant rather than your master. Yeah, and I guess the obvious question there is how. How do we begin? What are the first steps that we take to create that change in our belief system?

Well, for anyone who desires, there are several categories listening to you when you said that. Some people said, oh, I know how. I'm already doing it. I'm already, of course, a miracle student or a Kabbalah student or a Buddhist meditator or whatever. There are a lot of people who heard you and went, oh, I know how. And I meditate every day and I pray every day and I follow a specific practice. And I proactively work to attitudinally hone my mental muscles and I rise to the occasion and I atone for my mistakes. And I seek to forgive others for theirs

and I seek to be a vessel of love and compassion every day. That's one category. Then there's another category, which is, you know, she's right, and I know the path that works for me. I really should do it. It's kind of like sometimes you pay the dues at the gym, but you just don't go. So there's some people who really, you know, we're so past people, and when you say things like, how do we do it, that's, to me, a 1995 conversation. We really need to stop coddling that because we all know the answer to

this, which is infinite love, compassion, forgiveness, and so forth. So there are people who go, wow, this is true. I really should start reading that book again. I really should make sure I meditate every morning and so forth. But then there's another category, and that's people who go, this sounds right, but I don't know. I don't know what path. I don't know where to go. And if that person, if you're listening to me right now, if you will just say a little silent prayer in your heart, I promise you books will fall at your feet over the next few days. Somebody will just suggest a meditation class, or you'll find a book that just sort of jumps off the shelf at you. We're at a time, people know love is the answer.

We just need to know, how do I effectuate this? And there's one truth spoken in many different ways. We live in a society where it's a plethora of candy store. If you want to know, there's a book or a teacher or a teaching out there for you. Let's stop kidding ourselves. Really, let's stop kidding ourselves and let's stop coddling that. And other people like this ditzyness, kind of like, I don't know. We know. Sometimes you know exactly what the answer of your heart is. You just don't like the answer of your heart. It's like, you know how to work out your body. You go to the gym and you do it. Yeah. I agree with that. I think the answer is not...

I do it. The answer is do it. We all turn into Valley Girl on that one. I just had a funny image right there. Yeah, really, but it's true. And taking me back to the movie. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The relationship between love and, for lack of a better word, the recognition that I am you, and the next person, and the next person, and the next person, call it oneness, call it whatever we might label it. I look at the world that we live in today, and it does not feel like that is the guiding ethos. You think? Okay, so this is the deal. I do think that more people on this planet love than hate, for instance. I believe that very strongly.

What we have, however, is a world in which those who hate, hate with greater conviction than that which is demonstrated by those of us who love. I can't imagine a kind of sort of sometimes when it's convenient, committed terrorist. These people are very serious about effectuating their worldview. They have made that horrifyingly obvious. We now have a government which is in place or about to be in place because it harnessed fear for political purposes. These people are not kidding. These people are not kidding, whether it has to do with an international goings on or domestic. On the other hand, many of us have been kind of sort of sometimes when it's convenient committed to love,

you know, we've been namby-pamby about it. We've been selectively loving. We've been real big on the personal love conversation. But we haven't done the inconvenient questions about how does love apply to our economic policies? How does love apply to our social policies, our political policies, our business policies? So in this, as in everything else, what we got is exactly what we put out. So when you say it's not the guiding ethos, duh. But there's a reason for that. And that's that those who stand for fear and stand for hate and stand for short-term economic gain, rather than humanitarian principles, a short-term bottom line in social, political, economic functioning, have been busy. They've been busy.

Where have we been? And, you know, it's not to take blame, but it is to take responsibility for the fact that a lot of the love conversation has been very personal. And it's simply not enough. When you look at the philosophy of nonviolence, when you look at Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement was a collective social act of love. The abolitionist movement was a collective social act of love. The suffragette movement was a collective social act of love.

You have to carry love beyond yourself for it to really fulfill the mission that I think we're put on earth to fulfill. What do you feel is the relationship between love and compassion in this context? I think that's semantics. I think love, too often, we fail to see love as a participatory emotion. And compassion challenges us. It confronts us to recognize that because we know sometimes love, we think, I want love. I want someone to love me. And we make it's too easy with the word love for it to become an ego based conversation. I'm looking for love, as opposed to our own responsibility to give it. Whereas compassion, I think, takes it a little further.

Somehow the word itself suggests that it is something I need to give, that I need to embody. But to many of us, when we hear the word love, it does also. So the Course in Miracles says

words are at best but symbols. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. When I think about the way that both of those words land to me is that compassion inherently implies action. There's empathy plus altruism, plus a need to actually do something about other suffering. And I sometimes think that love is, well, I am love. I feel it. It's like a being type of thing. It keeps you past it If you allow it to. Yeah. Paul Bloom read a really interesting book that's out recently called Against Empathy. I don't know if you've seen it.

He makes an interesting argument. I'm curious what you think of it. His argument is on a societal level. And I may get this wrong, but this is how I understood it. Empathy leads to some bad things because we are wired to feel empathy towards people who are very similar to us. And that, in fact, it can lead to, if we start to build policy around that, it can lead us on a grander scale, not to this sense of oneness, but to a sense of compassion only towards those who are like us.

In fact, repressing those who are against us. I'm curious what your thoughts are around empathy. Well, I haven't read the book. All I got was the thumbnail from you. But the thumbnail I got, I repudiate passionately. I think it's absurd. Of course, I don't think that we are hardwired. You know, we are hardwired by God. And we are not hardwired by God to feel empathy just for those who are like us.

Because empathy is a soul force, and my soul recognizes your soul, not your socioeconomic conditions or your physical makeup. So when I'm truly dwelling in the space of me that can empathize, I empathize with you based on who you are, not based on what you are in terms of your physical circumstances. Now, the Course in Miracles does say true empathy does not mean to join in suffering. So it keeps you out of enabling behavior. But I can't imagine ever joining with any argument that what we need is a little less empathy on the planet or that we must beware the empathy on some way. In fact, I find it disgusting. I haven't read the book, so I'm not making a comment on the book, but just from what you heard, when we have 12,000 children on this planet who are starving every day, one every four seconds, that means quite a few have starved since you and I began this conversation.

This is not an act of God. This is an act or non-action of humanity, that we simply have not placed feeding those children as a bottom line in our collective functioning. The last thing I would ever agree with is a concept that what we have is too much empathy or that we must be aware of its functioning. Yeah, something you just said also was interesting in that from the Course of Miracles, and again, if I get it wrong, tell me, that we are not to join in other suffering on the same level, which makes sense to me because if we felt it on the same way that they would feel it and that was causing such pain that they were unable to relieve them from it, does that... Well... I mean, is there a difference between cognitive and emotional empathy?

It's like the poor. What do the poor need? Do they need your pity or do they need your cash? Do they need your pity or do they need your advocacy? Do they need your pity or do they need you to use your voice in a dignified, meaningful way? Not just trembling lips and tears, but meaningful conversation that could actually

have an effect with lawmaker and others to actually deal with the fact that global poverty could be effectively eradicated from the planet. Let's all grow up now. There seems to be really a deepening interest in various paths of Buddhism over the last decade or two in Western society. And I sometimes hear an interpretation, which I don't agree with,

that there is sort of part of that philosophy is an acceptance of things as they are. And then I look at that, and I'm like, that's not how I understand it. And then I look at Thich Nhat Hanh, who has embraced what has been termed engaged Buddhism, and said, like, I cannot not respond to suffering. You know, this idea that Buddha, it's just inaccurate.

It's just inaccurate. What is the Eightfold Path? Correct speech, correct action, right living. I mean, the Eightfold Path is all about what you must be and do in order to live the light of the Buddha mind so this Buddhism I don't even think I have to say it

according to my understanding according to what he said according to the tenets of the Noble Path according to the Eightfold Path you must be correct in your concentration correct in must be correct in your concentration, correct in your mindfulness, correct in your speech,

correct in your action. Correct action. I mean, the Eightfold Path is all about being correct. Buddhism is not, it's about, you know, the yin and yang is like you do physical exercise in order to train your physical muscles so you can move. And you do spiritual exercise such as meditation so that you can remain still within yourself and non-reactive. Not in order to not participate in the world, but so that, number one, the very vibrations of your energy are a harmonizing agent. And so that when you move, when you do move,

because everything you do is infused with the consciousness with which you do it, you have an effectiveness and a power that is unmatched by those who are not still within themselves. So it's like what you're saying, you hear people, I don't know, maybe they've read some of the Course in Miracles, but not all of it. I don't know. It's a deep, selective remembering. It's like the people selectively read the Bible, right? So they say the world is an illusion, which the Course in Miracles says, which Buddha said, which Einstein says.

He calls the three-dimensional plane. Einstein said it is an illusion, albeit a persistent one. I love that. Okay, so yeah, so Buddha, it is an illusion, albeit a persistent one. I love that. Okay, so yeah, so Buddha says it's an illusion, and the Course in Miracles says it's an illusion, and Einstein says it's an illusion. So some people say, therefore, ignore it. Therefore, ignore it. You know, that's not what any of them say.

That's not what any of them say. We are not here to ignore the illusion. We are here to transform the illusion by standing within it in love. Now, if you are, you insulted me. Yes, the training is that I am to just ignore it, lighten up, look past it, remember you're an innocent child of God. But if you are a Nazi marching on Poland, or a president-elect basically designing a neo-fascist agenda for the government of the United States, no, I don't think that the spiritual path is that I'm supposed to ignore that. And I think that it's important for us to remember, and this includes Buddhism, there is no serious spiritual teaching anywhere in history that I know of that gives any of us a pass on addressing the suffering of other sentient beings.

Harmlessness towards life, including animals, is a basic tenet of Buddhism. You know, I get a lot of blowback on Facebook and Twitter, and Marianne Williamson's out there spreading fear because I'm concerned about what's happening in America politically. And I wrote back to one person, and I said, so if Paul Revere on his horse is riding through the towns, the British are coming, the British are coming, the British are coming, would you have yelled back, stop spreading fear? Paul, stop spreading fear. I mean, come on. We should be the biggest grown-ups in this society. We should not be the children, these infantilized thinkers standing on the periphery with some infantile conversation about love. No.

We live in a time also where I think a lot of people are struggling with bringing together the concept of spirituality and political conviction. What do you think Martin Luther King did? What do you think the abolitionists, the abolitionist movement grew out of the Quakers, it came from the Quakers. And many of the women suffragettes were Quakers. And Dr. King was a Christian, his being a Baptist preacher was foundational. Gandhi said politics should be sacred. So the separation of church and state is a very different conversation. The separation of church and state is one of the most enlightened principles in our Constitution. It means that no minister, priest, rabbi, imam, or whatever can walk into Congress and say what law they must make or cannot make. And it also means nobody can come in, a police

person can't come into you while you're doing your podcast or me while I'm doing a Course in Miracles lecture and say that's not in line with our official religion. That's what separation of church and state means. But that was meant by the founders to liberate and protect the religious conversation, not to in any way dampen it or limit its expression. So the spiritual conversation, all that spirituality is, is a path of the heart. So when you look at something like the philosophy of nonviolence as articulated by Mahatma Gandhi, which was based in part on Quaker philosophy, the idea of an inner light within every man, woman, and child. And he's saying that this could heal not only our personal relationships,

but our political and social and economic relationships as well. And Dr. King traveled to India. He brought back those principles for application to the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s. So in fact, every single social justice movement in the history of our country has been based, yes, because the spiritual power gives you, number one, the conviction. One of the questions that is interesting to me is, what is the psychological difference? What was the psychological step that occurred between someone who was anti-slavery and someone who actually became an abolitionist. There is a difference. This anti-slavery means, oh, it is so awful. Those southern states, I don't know what they're thinking.

I'm just totally against that. As opposed to being an abolitionist, which is that you stand your ground in every way that you are guided to, where to the best of your ability, on your watch, this stops. But also, the second thing that the spiritual perspective empowers you with is the knowledge that through the infinite power of a higher power, the alternative is possible, and that human beings can be vessels for its emergence into the world. So that's, you know, we don't have to reinvent any wheels. This is Gandhi, King, abolition, suffrage, and the civil rights movement. People need to learn

a little history before they start throwing things around like, oh, no, you put those two together. Read a book because there are so many books written about it. We just need to do it right now. Yeah. And I think a lot of people look at those movements that you just shared and say, I can see how there was a spiritual grounding in it, but the spiritual aspiration, they don't make the connection. So it's interesting how you have the through line all the way through, that there's a seamless line. Well, if you read Dr. King, you know, there's a book called Testament of Hope, which is the collective writings and speeches of Dr. King. Just read it anywhere. Just pick up anything by Gandhi.

And I don't mean to in any way compare myself to those two giants, but I wrote a book called Healing the Soul of America that came out in 1998. So it's a while ago, but so were those guys, obviously, about the intersection of spirituality and politics. And I am doing a conference, hosting a conference on February 2nd through 4th in Washington, D.C. called Sister Giant, which is about the intersection of spirituality and politics. We will have senators speaking. We will have congresspeople speaking. We will have people talking about the external issues speaking. But we will also have religious scholars. For instance, you were talking about Buddhism. Robert Thurman will be there. Also, Angel Kyoto Williams, who is a Buddhist scholar. So that intersection of spirituality and politics, I think, is absolutely necessary in order for us to wage the kind of nonviolent resistance to the extremist right-wing agenda that is being promulgated in our country today. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting distinction that you make also, and good for us to make and to understand that church versus state is different than leading political decisions from a place of spiritual grounding.

Yeah, yeah. We're not talking doctrine or dogma or any of that stuff here. Yeah, I was fortunate to have Angel Keota Williams in here. And she will be speaking at the conference. She's fantastic. And just a beautiful example also of embodying this deep spirituality and fierce activism all in one.

That's what we need now. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

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making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations,

iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. You've been, it seems like the last five years or so, and maybe it's been going on for longer than that, because it sounds like actually from the book that you just mentioned, you've been deepening your involvement in sort of a more public political life. Is that true? Well, as I said, that particular book came out in 1998 um i one of the things i love about the the practice of spirituality is that it's relevant to everything so i was also very involved in the aids crisis or i work a lot with people with life challenging illnesses i work a lot with couples

and and trauma i i the the category of human suffering is not what matters. The presence of human suffering is what matters. And so at this point, for us to fail to address the issues of collective suffering that are represented by not only our political manifestations, but also by our possibilities for solving them, I don't know how you can, you know, as Gandhi said, is not politics a part of good dharma too? The idea that spirituality applies to everything but politics is silly to me. Yeah, I know from what I understand, and tell me if this is right, a part of what's behind Sister Giant is also an encouragement of women to become more involved. It began as that, but you know, at this point, things have become so extreme. And with what's happening today, we can't afford to leave anybody out of any conversation. I mean, we need to all wake up now.

This is all hands on deck. I don't care your sex, your sexuality, your color, your religion. I mean, come on. If you're an American, my hope would be that all of us are awakening, and I think many are, to the fact we are living in a very urgent moment, a very critical moment. And this categorization by any sense of outward identity is not the highest level of conversation we need to be having now. Beyond immediate and specific political change, you're bringing together a really diverse grouping of voices. What are some of the bigger outcomes that you're really looking to generate from this conversation? When people ask me, what is your goal for Sister Giant?

My goal is that people leave the conference that weekend at the end of it lit up. That there's a deeper understanding of American history and of our politics, of how this happened, this perfect storm that has given us what we have today, a deeper understanding archetypally, spiritually, what it signifies, and a deeper understanding on all of those issues, including political, what it will take for us to transform it. This is, I believe, a collective dark night of America's soul, but we've been there before. We've had slavery in this country.

We've had women not allowed to vote in this country. We've had institutionalized segregation in this country. We had genocide of Native Americans. But we are not just the inheritors of that karmic makeup and that karmic landscape. We are also the inheritors of a great legacy of the abolitionists and the suffragettes and the civil rights movement. done wrong. But I think we need to identify with those who have put America back on course when we have drifted from our ethical center. And that's what I want people to leave with. I think particularly once the new president is inaugurated, they're making so many moves right now already to delegitimize the press, to delegitimize intel. I mean, this is out of Hitler's playbook. This is out of a neo-fascist playbook. And there is going to be a great temptation to fear, to disengagement, to denial, to a kind of paralysis.

And so that's why we're doing the conference immediately, as fast as we could, two weeks after the inauguration, to actually give people an opportunity. And you can find out more about it at sistergiant.com. Come to Washington. I love the idea. The Course in Miracles says an idea grows stronger when it is shared. There's something about being in the room when this conversation is happening. But also, people can live stream it. Everything in life emerges from a conversation,

the conversation in our head and the conversation in our culture. We need to have a new conversation about the deeper, deeper, a much deeper political conversation and a much deeper spiritual conversation. And as we forge those two in partnership, which is what the philosophy of nonviolence is, we will override this very scary trajectory that has already been put in motion. You know, today, reading a newspaper is a revolutionary act. We need to be deeply informed intellectually, politically, and spiritually. And we need to devote ourselves. You know, a lot of people are asking, what can I do? What should I do? What can I do? But in life, you affect the horizontal plane most powerfully when you address the vertical plane with greater dedication. Every morning you wake up and you pray to the God of your

understanding, use me. How might I be helpful? How might I be useful? How might I be a vessel for the enlightenment and the love and the happiness of all living things? And answers will be all around you. There are so many people. We have at this point, even at Sister Giant, it's interesting, and I'm not going to name names, but you'd be surprised some of the people who are now approaching us to ask if they could speak because people are aware. This is where it's at now. People have to come together. We have to have a deeper conversation. That's what I want this weekend to be.

I want this weekend to be like you were just at the most unbelievably cool dinner party. You were the smartest. Be just like when people say, if you could be at a dinner party with five people who would be there. Some of the people who I believe

are holding the conversations with the deepest level of insight, the deepest transmission of information, so that when you leave there, I don't know which issue got you most interested. Is it voter suppression? Is it racial healing? Is it getting money out of politics? Is it what we have to do in general to resist the agenda? Is it the 2018 election cycle? I don't know, but you're going to have learned, and you're going to be able to see it on our website, and have heard speakers talking about it.

One thing you will have is the information, should you choose to use it, on behalf of effective action. And I hope that you will feel inspired and motivated to pray hard, love deep, and kick ass. Yeah. And I think just making the conversation, making any conversation at this point more public and more accessible is an active service. Especially since there will be, don't kid yourself, there's already so much effort going on to limit conversation, to limit free speech, to delegitimize the press. It's horrifying what's happening. Tell me more about what's happening with what you're doing in New York. You arrived here, I guess, a little under a year ago.

You came back to the city, and you've been doing a weekly series now. Yes. I lecture every Tuesday night in New York at the Marble Collegiate Church. What did that come out of? Well, I have lectured weekly on A Course in Miracles for over 30 years, with very small breaks in between. That's kind of what I do.

I see that as the base for the telephone, you know? You have the base. So that keeps me and certainly helps keep me on my path and I hope is of service to others, not only here in New York, but you can watch them free on livestream. And this is where we actually study the principles of the Course in Miracles

because, you know, the Course has no doctrine or dogma. It's not a religion. But it is, like other serious spiritual paths, a system of psychological mind training in relinquishing a thought system based on fear and accepting instead a thought system based on love. It is a path of forgiveness. It is a path of compassion. And it is a path of atonement. So that's what I do every Tuesday night. But I also do online seminars. And I do

what everybody else is doing, what my heart calls me to do. Your heart called you to do a podcast. Every cell in the body, you go to the heart, you go to the lungs, you go to the pancreas, you go to the bones. Well, that's how it is in society. You, you're assigned to the arts. You, you're assigned to education. You, you're assigned to whatever. And I think politics is a collective assignment. When people ask me, why did I get so involved in the AIDS crisis? Well, it was in front of me. Why am I so concerned about what's happening with our political crisis? Because it's in front of me. Who is not concerned? But sometimes in life, you just show up. You just show up and then you, you meet, you know, the other people just like cells collaborate.

We collaborate. And to the extent to which we have the consciousness, you could use your podcast to talk about stupid things. But those aren't the people you invite onto your podcast. And so it invites other people to show up. And then together, both of us are able to do more today than we could have done if the other hadn't been here. And you just multiply that exponentially, and because love does have, as Martin Luther King would say, cosmic companionship, this will override and transcend the trajectories

of fear that are taking place and unfolding in front of our eyes today. I want to come full circle with you. The name of this is actually Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? It's not a big picture. It's a little picture. I think I live a good life, but that doesn't mean I'm good every moment. I know my intention is to live a good life. I know that my mission on the earth, that know my intention is to live a good life. I know

that my mission on the earth, that God put us here to live a good life. And I also know that some of this is easier said than done. So my prayer in life is that I rise to the occasion on any given day, in any given situation, and seek to express the angel of my better nature. And I seek to have mercy on myself when I fall short, to have mercy on others when they fall short. And that itself is good. I'm not a less good, you know, you're not a less good person if at some moment you said or did something that wasn't your absolute best. God created us good.

Life is good. God is good. Life is good. God is good. So goodness is not just a concept, but a reality that I embrace. Life is good. But we don't spend enough time downloading it, standing on it with conviction, celebrating it. And too many times, if you do not promote and promulgate that which is good, then that which is not good takes up the space. So the good life has already been given to us by God, but I feel our mission here is to download it onto the earth so that truly heaven and earth shall be as one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and

ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life. Take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of

us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much, as always, for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for good life project

mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i knew you were gonna be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.