A Return To Love: Reflections On The Principles Of "A Course In Miracles" (1996) - Plot & Excerpts
I had such high hopes for this book, and it was but I didn't expect the religious turn the book took on me.I have loved the quote from Marianne Williamson ever since I first heard it in a yoga class during meditation (and still do): Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is not our darkness but our light that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. ...Yet this book started out on a strong note and then went down for me. I listened to the audio version read also by the author herself, and her voice just didn't connect with me. Something was amiss and I can't say what. She was sincere enough. She read it well enough. Yet something about this book didn't hit the right chord with me, but there were valuable lessons too so and for that, and reasons outlined below, I'm giving it a 3 star. Why didn't I like it so much? To be honest, it was the deeply religious tone. I felt excluded immediately. I had no idea about the turn this book would take with the constant role of the Holy spirit and God as the author articulates each and every one of her points. This is not just a spiritual book, it is a deeply religious book with christianity at the center of the driving thoughts. But beyond that, I stayed with the book because I was initially mostly in agreement with the author in the ideas she was sharing around a course in miracles, until I was no longer in agreement. I did not feel that I can just as easily subscribe to this happy world of hers when everyone is deep down very good no matter what they have done in their past live. And some of the concepts were rather shallow.Williamson has a beautiful way of describing and I did want to share some of my favorite quotations from A Return to Love:1. Whether we think with love is entirely up to us.2. When we choose to love, then life is peaceful, the meaning of heaven. When we turn away from life, then life is painful, the meaning of hell. 3. Love is the only thing that's real, and when we think with love, we are co-creating with God. When we think the opposite of love, lovelessly, we are hallucinating. 4. Denying love is the only problem and embracing it is the only answer. Love heals all of out relationships. The future can really be programmed in thus moment. All we need is a gentler perception. All we need is to ask for a miracle, a new beginning, a life unlike the past. 5. The only way that we can find someone wonderful is to be wonderful ourselves because to the ego, self-acceptance is death! 6. The narcissistic personality is looking for perfection which is a way to make sure that love never has a chance to survive.7. If we don't already believe it, nobody can convince us that we okay. 8. Unconditional love is the death of ego. 9. *my favorite* Accepting people as they are has the miraculous effect of helping them grow. Those who tell us what's wrong with us paralyze us with guilt and shame. Those who accept us let us feel good about ourselves, to relax and to find our way.10. As you let your own light shine, you unconsciously let others do the same. There was a part of the book which I loved and it spoke to my passions (which are now also my businesses:) Do your gift ONLY if you have to. If you can't NOT do it, then forget it. Do what you love, do what makes your hear sing and never do it for the money. What we give we will receive and what we withhold will be withheld from us.Business lesson here was powerful: If you genuinely have something to say then someone has to genuinely hear about it. We don't have to invent an audience so much as to serve them once they get here. Serving 3 people is as important as serving 300! And perhaps one of the best phrases in the business part of the book was this: The miracle is to think of our profession however small as healing the universe.
There is something peculiar and paradoxical about New Age spirituality and that is fully embodied and exemplified by the personality of Marianne Williamson. Who is this famous Marianne of www.marianne.com? Daughter of an immigration lawyer in Texas, she went to the Claremont colleges in California but apparently did not graduate with a degree. Instead, she experimented with sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll. Rather than getting a regular professional career in law or medicine, she became a single mother, a bookstore manager, and then a spiritual teacher. Eventually, she published A Return to Love around 1992, made it to Oprah, and skyrocketed to NY Times bestselling author status. Now she is one of Oprah's best friends and teaches her interpretation of New Age spirituality on cruise ships, very much like the character Elizabeth Costello in J.M. Coetzee's novel by that name. She hobnobs with the rich and famous and is very wealthy herself. She has founded charities but has also garnered tremendous criticism for her temper and judgmental qualities. She is sexy for her age and dresses more than well when she goes in front of her rapt audiences. Her lectures, however, are all variations on the same material she published in her first book--A Return to Love. In fact, her jokes are canned, as in this one she told a couple of years ago, which in fact came from her first book published in the 1990's: "I studied with an Indian guru, but I wondered to myself: what does he know about life when he doesn't even date?" As Marianne herself repeatedly states, A Return to Love is "Cliff Notes" to A Course in Miracles, which is often considered the scripture of the New Age. However, because the Course is a channeled text that sees Christ in everyone and forgiveness as the sole purpose of life, it can be hard to decipher for the average reader. This is where Marianne comes in: as the interpreter. She uses her own experiences to illustrate Course lessons and readers love her not only because they can better appreciate the Course after reading her but they must also share her foibles, as they are known to laugh at her jokes, despite them having been told countless times.
What do You think about A Return To Love: Reflections On The Principles Of "A Course In Miracles" (1996)?
This book saved my faith at a very dark time and helped me to make sense of some of what I was going through. It changed who I was becoming and it remains part of who I am. I will always cherish it and be grateful for its existence. I can't love and feel gratitude for the book without also feeling love and gratitude for its author, so I have a deep love and enduring gratitude for Marianne Williamson as well. I have ready most of her books, but this was the one that stands out, and it has a place on my literal and figurative bookshelf that is reserved for books that changed my life.
—Cynthia Hernandez
This is a great book that I’m sure I’ll go back to quite often. In this book Marianne Williamson shares with us many of her reflections on A Course of Miracles. She covers the basics of ACM and points out the way to reach inner peace through a conscious effort to reconnect with God and therefore with love. The only thing that is real is love, and anything else is just an illusion. We tend to forget that we are mere souls having a human experience, and most of the time we get sidetracked by our egos. Which of course causes us a lot of pain. The Soul just wants to open up to life experiences without any judgments. Our egos on the other hand need life to be intricate and seek for all kinds of guarantees in order to “enjoy” life. However, if we are able to love, in the full sense of the word, from the core of our souls, life will be so much different and such an enjoyable experience. And this book points the way for any lost Soul to return to love.
—Denise
A Return to Love - Reflections on the Principles of a Course in MiraclesI don't rate many books 5 stars - I've given Marianne Williamson's book that rating for a number of reasons - 1) it helped me move through a particularly difficult period in my life.2) it helped me return to a study of "A Course in Miracles" (a book I actually physically threw across the room the first time I started it, LOL).3) it's one of the few dozen books that remain on my shelves (and I had several hundred at one time). Ms. Williamson's book is written in a style I find easy to read; my copy is well-worn, and I've high-lighted, post-it-noted bookmarked, and dog-eared NUMEROUS pages which resonated with me and my own life experiences. Skimming through the chapters as I write this, I see that it still offers me nuggets of wisdom/spiritual Truths to me on my continuing path of Self-awareness. 'Nuff said!
—Francisca Friday-Pabros
