How to Choose Love Instead of Fear with Marianne Williamson

My guest on this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy says our actions at any given point are either rooted in love or rooted in fear. Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed lecturer, activist and author of four number one New York Times best selling books. And on today's episode, Marianne and I talk about how we can tap into a place of love on a day to day basis and how we can have a civil discourse in this very tough political climate. Marianne's activism and her mission to fight for the disenfranchised is really inspiring and I know you'll love this conversation with one of the most well-known sought after spiritual authors, teachers and inspirational speakers in the world. So welcome Marianne to the Doctors Pharmacy, place for conversations that matter and I know you used that quote today with Russell Brand. Martin Luther King said that our lives became to end the day we become silent about things that matter. And you focused on a number of things that really matter in your career. And they seem really disconnected, but actually they're very connected, which is spirituality and love and politics, which seems sort of not good bedfellows, but it turns out that not so much religion, but more spirituality and politics seem to be really connected. And your work originally began with course in miracles, which sort of is an interesting story of how you came to it and how to learn about it. So I'd love people to understand, how did you come to this understanding about the work of course in miracles and what is a miracle and what's the difference between a miracle and magical thinking and why do we need to sort of focus on the messages in that work?

I was in my mid-20s. First of all, thank you so much for having me on. It's great to see you again. I was in my mid-20s when I first picked up a course in miracles. and I was already very involved. I read a lot of books about spirituality. I read a lot of books about the power of the mind. I had read a lot of books about higher principles of truth. But somehow when I read the Course in Miracles, an essential piece fell into place that had never fallen into place for me before, and that has to do with my relationship to the person who's standing in front of me or the person that I'm thinking about. You know, I think I had been, like a lot of people are, almost sometimes discounting other people because I'm very busy looking for God.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

And that piece that there is no experience of God outside our compassion and non-judgment of the person standing in front of us. That was radical. It is radical. A lot easier said than done, obviously. But it changed my life just knowing it, and it changes my life to this day any moment I practice it. So I felt from the beginning of reading it.

It really is transformational. When you meet another person and see them as somebody who's embodying God or whatever you believe that to be, then it changes your relationship with them and engenders love, compassion, kindness. It's a whole, it changes your biology. It's pretty profound.

There's an aspect of the mind inside all of us. In the Course in Miracles, it's called ego. It can be called shadow. It can be called all kinds of things. That's a judgmental tendency. And it works like a kind of heat-seeking missile. It's like a scavenger dog always looking for any shred of evidence of somebody's guilt. And so it's a constantly judgmental mind. Other people aren't good enough. Other people aren't okay. Other people should be different. Situations should be different. It's a mental filter that dominates the planet, dominates the consciousness of the human race. And it leads us, it is an insanity because it is a separation from the truth of who we are, which is love. So the miracle is simply a shift in a perception. It's a shift in perception from fear to love, which is the same as saying it's a shift in perception from a blaming thought to a blessing thought, to a judgmental thought, from a judgmental thought to an accepting thought, from a grievance to an acceptance of what is. It's really the relinquishment of one thought system, which is based on fear, and the acceptance instead of a thought system based on love. The Course in Miracles is not a religion. There's no doctrine or dogma. It's a psychological training based on universal spiritual themes. And one of the things that I think we all find so exciting these days is that there is one truth with a capital T spoken in many different ways, many different religions, spiritual paths, and secular traditions as well. That simply have to do with looking through the eyes of love rather than through the eyes of fear. And because thought is the level of cause, and what we experience in the world is the level of effect. When you change on the level of thought, you change everything. Now, you were talking before about the.

Difference between- But aren't your thoughts generated from your beliefs and your conditioning and your childhood? And those are the things that get embedded. So it's harder to change your thoughts if you don't deal with those underlying things, right?

Although, as they say in AA, it's easier to think yourself into a new way of acting than it, excuse me, it's easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting.

For sure.

And I think we in general, in our society, indulge ourselves too much and don't practice enough discipline, emotional discipline or intellectual discipline. You know, we have this idea that I will think differently when I feel like it. Well, you can choose to think differently even when you don't feel like it. And that's what changes your feelings.

Yeah. The narrative we get is so often stuck in our way of thinking. I had a lot of thinking, for example, that actually impaired my ability to be in my family in an effective way. I thought it was my job to take care of everybody, to manage everybody, to do everything for everybody. It was very frustrating over time because it didn't really lead to my happiness and certainly they didn't seem to care. And then it really a weird dynamic. And so I had to deal with my beliefs about that was my job. Before I could change my thinking, I had to deal with the beliefs that were setting me up to say, well, I think I am supposed to take care of everybody. I'm supposed to manage everybody else's feelings. I'm supposed to be concerned with everybody else's experience, as opposed to just, you know, not.

And in the Course in Miracles, it says, beware of the power of an unrecognized belief.

Yeah.

You know, you have the belief that you have to take care of everyone. But when you have a thought system, which is that God is in everyone and everybody makes their own choices, then you can't have the belief that it's your job to take care of them. It's your job to take care of a child, but it's not our job to take care of adults who can take care of themselves.

So how do people get to this miracle mindset where they're shifting their thoughts and behaviors and actions from fear to love?

Well, that's what a genuine spiritual path is. The Course in Miracles doesn't have any monopoly on truth, any serious spiritual path. Buddhism, it could be mystical Christianity, it could be the Course of Miracles, it could be AA, it could be Tibetan Buddhism. That's what all serious spiritual paths are. That's what the path is. The path is an internal path from one way of looking at the world, one way of being in the world, one way of seeing your relationship to the universe and to other people and to the earth itself, to another way of seeing the world and seeing yourself and your place in it.

Yeah, it was interesting. I was with the former CEO of Whole Foods the other day, Walter Robb, and he was on the phone with one of the people who works at Whole Foods, who he's worked with for a while. And when he got off the phone, he says, I love you. And I was like, wow, that's an interesting thing for a business executive to say to someone who works for him. And he said, we base our culture on love. And I thought, that's profound.

Well, of course, John Mackey from Whole Foods, of course, is the one who who has started this whole conscious capitalism movement, there is clearly a change within capitalism and within the capitalist dynamic, trying to move away from the idea that the only responsibility of a corporation is the fiduciary responsibility to its stockholders, to a realization that actually was more ensconced in our society before, that there are more shareholders than just your stockholders, that the employees are the shareholder, the community is a shareholder, the earth is a shareholder. And this is not just This is no longer a counter establishment or an anti-establishment. It's a new establishment, but it needs to go more quickly because the consequences of our disregard for the ways of love and nature are already reaping terrible consequences, as we know.

Yeah, it's interesting. And Walter said that, I said something about his employees, as we don't have employees, we have team members. At Cleveland Clinic where I work, they don't have employees, they have caregivers. Everybody's a caregiver from the person who washes the floor or makes the beds to the doctor and the surgeon and everybody else.

So it's a very different way of framing how we relate to each other. And language is so powerful. And language affects how we think about something.

So in your life, you went through this transformation, you had the realization that you should change your behavior, right?

Well, I don't subscribe to the Eureka.

Theory of personal growth. But you had some insights, right?

That you change your behavior, right? You grow up. you mature, you learn. I'm no different than anyone else. My path hasn't been unique. I did some things wrong in my life. I did some things right in my life. And one way or the other, life has a way of teaching you.

It does.

Even if you don't want to. And I was blessed to encounter the kinds of books and teachings and mentors and teachers who have helped me. And I always say when I practice what I preach, my life works really well.

Yeah. And how has that changed? So what are the things you notice as you begin to shift to more.

Well, we live in a world which is dominated by a thought system based on fear. So if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is you turn on the computer or the news on television and you just download these thoughts of fear that dominate the world. It's just this assault on us all the time of stressful stimulus. Then your mind is taken over by this, particularly early in the morning. It's when you first download the thought system that's going to dominate your day. And I've learned, as we all learn, that if you do that, you'll be depressed by noon, and you'll be at the effect of all that craziness. So just like you take a shower or a bath in the morning to wipe yesterday's dirt off your body, you meditate in the morning to purify your mind and heart of the stressful, fear-based thinking. So if you, the Course in Miracles says, if you spend five minutes in meditation in the morning, this will guarantee the divine guidance of your thought forms throughout the day. That doesn't mean that I'll be an enlightened master today, but I do know this. I know that if I spend time with the Course in Miracles or Transcendental Meditation, which I also do, whatever your path is, you have a different nervous system. It gives you a different nervous system. And the chances of doing something really stupid are drastically reduced. The chances of sending the text or sending the email or saying the thing that you might then regret for months, if not years, drastically reduced. And also, it's about building a spiritual steel core. And this, as you certainly know and are such an expert at, it affects you physically.

Yeah, it's true. The mind clearly affects the body and your physiology and promotes disease. 95% of all disease is promoted by, caused by stress. the beliefs that we have cause stress, but also you're seeing the external environment and, you know, often we don't pay enough attention to the pollution that we're putting in our cognitive brain through the constant plethora and stream of negative media and content that we're exposed to. And it's very pervasive. It's hard to get away from. It's worse than ever. I had a recent guest on the podcast who's a MIT computer scientist who basically is a millennial who says, I don't do social media at all. And I still connect to the world and I have more time and I have more presence in my life. And, you know, that's a simple detox, right? It's tough to do, but even giving yourself a week or a day, you notice the changes, right?

Pardon?

You notice the changes if you. Yes.

But people were crazy even before social media.

It's true. It's true. And so the meditation in the morning, you're saying it sets the day and the precedent for how you're going to think and feel your reactivity, your ability to separate thought from action and take a pause, right?

There are so many paths. Many people know what their path is and are practicing it. Many people know what their path is, but just kind of let it slide. You know, I always say, the doctor gives you a pill and you write down, do I take it in the morning? Do I take it? twice a day, do I take it with meals or without meals, do I take one before I go to sleep? You wouldn't think of not following the prescription, but sometimes they'll say, well, do you meditate every day or do you do the lessons in the Course in Miracles? And it says, Sometimes. I said, well, it helps sometimes, right? If you do it sometimes, it helps sometimes. And that's what I meant before about how we're not rigorous enough. We are too, we're too lenient with ourselves about our appetites, whatever feels good at the moment. We call that being authentic, but it's not really being authentic. If I'm angry in a certain moment, I'm authentically angry in that moment. But the real authentic me is not angry. The authentic me is love. So I can choose sometimes behavioral modification is necessary. Sometimes you say, I am feeling angry, but I don't have to act it out. There's self-discipline involved in spiritual and personal growth. We're all wounded, but you don't have to act from the wound. and I think that's a lot of the work. I think sometimes we have to decide whether or not to choose our strength. It's easy to give in to the neurotic patterns. It's easy to give in to the weaknesses. And sometimes we've all fallen to line with this thinking, well, I'll work through it, and then when I no longer feel that way, I will be different. But that's where thought is so powerful. You can can know. You know what, Marianne, the fact that you feel this way right now doesn't mean you have to act on that feeling. Because if it's not a loving feeling, it by definition is your neurosis, it's your weakness. And so a lot of, so you.

Think people are spiritually lazy almost?

It is. Well, it is a form of laziness, self-indulgence, lack of discipline, lack of rigor. The world, the word, the word disciple and the word discipline come from the same root. And it's also an infantilization. It's a way of indulging our immaturity, indulging our irresponsibility. And I think that given the situation on the planet today, it serves us to call ourselves and call each other on that and coddle our neuroses less and fortify our strengths more.

Yeah, it kind of feels like we're in junior high.

Yeah, and it's, you know, name calling.

Rants and on all sides.

But even the so-called spiritual community sometimes in the constant indulgence of, as Carolyn Mays calls it, woundology.

Yeah. Tell us about that.

We take our problems and we make them call it, it's our calling card. Like I said before, we're all wounded and we've all had some terrible things in our past. You know, I had something terrible happened in my, when I was a teenager. And I was talking to someone about it recently and saying it was certainly attended to. I certainly was in therapy. It, you know, it's not like I was not taken care of both personally and professionally by people who love me and people who were there to help me. But I'm glad that I was, that was before the time in the culture. when anyone would have suggested to me that I was going to identify with that for the rest of my life. It was just something bad that happened.

Right. It didn't define who you are and everything.

It doesn't have to be the identification, you know, after my name. That's true.

We see that a lot. People say, you know, I was abused or my parents were bad. I mean, after a certain age, you can't get to blame your parents anymore.

Yeah, at a certain point, it doesn't matter. Where you got it, it's yours now.

And you see, you know, it's interesting, you see, and I've met people with tremendous trauma who have a very different way of dealing with it, you know? And it's, it's striking to me whether they grew up in horrible circumstances, they pull themselves up in some way. They have some spiritual core, and you look at what is going on. I mean, a guy like Trevor Noah, he grew up in Soweto with, you know, a black mother and, you know, it was illegal for him really to be there because they didn't allow what they call colored people there, which is, you know, mulatto mixed race people. His father was white. And it was just a horrible, poor child. He was scrounging, living in cars, and he was able to somehow, you know, raise up out of that and had a consciousness allowed him to do that. Not everybody can do it on their own, but some people, you know, can. And other people really need help. And I think things like the Course in Miracles and things like basic spiritual practice. And you're not even thinking of a spiritual practice, just basically a way to learn how to be more in relationship with your own mind in a way that allows you to be empowered by it instead of entrapped by it. And I think that's something that's really rare in our society. It's not a value. It's something people care about. But you're seeing increasingly meditation being normalized. You're seeing, you know, things like yoga being, you know, I think 15 million people practice yoga, maybe more. and that people are seeking more truth. And sometimes it's in extreme ways with religion and ways that are extreme, but a lot of times it's really in a way that people are being drawn to that. And have you seen a change in the culture related to that over the last 20 years you've been doing this? Is it, because it was sort of an anomaly when you started, right?

It was weird. Oh, absolutely. When my career began, some of this was considered like a fringe conversation. Now you're fringe if you don't know the conversation. Like I said, it's the new establishment. It's not counterculture, it is the new culture. We're living in the 21st century and many people are still stuck in this 20th century mindset. And you have to look at it.

From a different perspective. Which is what?

Very materially based, very mechanistic, very concentrated on things that are happening on the outside, looking at the world as a kind of machine, this very Newtonian paradigm. tweak the pieces of the machine and everything will be okay, which is the exact opposite of the realization that everything happening out there is simply a product of thought or consciousness. So in the 21st century, it's a realization that the inner life is not only as important as the outer life, but it is the causal plane. So the 20th century had a lot to offer, but it was also the bloodiest, most violent century, on record. And I think we need to look at the 20th century the way you look at your parents when you grow up. Where did they get it right? Because where they got it right, I want to add to that, extend that. And where they didn't get it right, I want to break the chain right now. And there are a lot of ways, particularly politically, socially, and economically, where we need to break the chain with some of the attitudes and behavioral patterns that we have inherited from the 20th century. because they are unhealthy for people and they are unhealthy for the planet and even unsustainable over the next 50 and 100 years.

Amazing. So, you know, we are seeing a lot of disconnection. We're seeing a lot of depression, suicide. And, you know, how do you feel that what's happening in the culture is promoting that? Clearly, you know, your physical factors can, stress can, diet can, all those factors. There's this other sort of stress that's the ether of this toxic political environment, this toxic bipolar society. You know, I remember being in a conference where there was this sort of guy who was the head of economics and the Obama administration was sharing this map of Republican and Democratic votes over the decades. And they were these clouds that kind of merged. and they were early on, there was a lot of voters on both sides that crossed the line. And as we've gotten to today, it's almost completely bifurcated. I mean, I was shocked that there was a Democrat that voted for Kavanaugh. And I was sort of shocked there was a Republican who didn't. You know, it was like, you know, wow. But that all through history was pretty normal. Now we're just completely polarized. So that whole thing is driving I think a sense of despair. I mean, I feel it and it does affect me. And one of my close friends, who's a distinguished Harvard professor, was like, I'm getting out of here. Can you help me get a job in New Zealand? I'm like, wow, okay. So can you talk about that and how it's affecting us and what we can do about it? Because that's the next part of the conversation I want to get into, which is not only you are a spiritual activist, but you are a political activist and you see those as completely connected and related.

Well, Condi said anybody who doesn't think religion has anything to do with politics doesn't understand religion. There's no spiritual or religious path that gives any of us a pass on addressing the suffering of other sentient beings. So anything that has to do with human suffering, human happiness, the human condition is the whole point of the spiritual or the religious life. The idea that spirituality is over here, but the actual human experience is over there, is a bastardization of what spirituality is. So what has happened in our society, particularly over the last 50 years, starting really, particularly in the 1980s, is that there has been this economic theory that market forces should be not only the dominant organizing principle of our society, but for the most part, the only organizing principle of our society.

The economy is the new God.

It is, exactly, which is a form of idolatry, which is a false God. The idea that market forces should rule and that fiduciary responsibility to the bottom line, the short-term economic gain of stockholders is everything. This has had evil consequences. And particularly now, when there is this unbelievably undue influence of money on our system since the Citizens United case, It goes.

Those who know what that is, that allowed corporations to buy people and be seen as being able to give unlimited funds to political campaigns.

So that for all intents and purposes, we are not performing as a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Our government now is such a handmaiden to these, to these, the influence of corporate donors that for all intents and purposes, it's a government of a few of the people by a few of the people. for a few of the people.

Yeah, the individual can give like what, a few thousand dollars, but corporations can.

Give hundreds of millions. Exactly, exactly. To the point where whether it has to do with the food supply, you have right now the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, this is just one example, Environmental Protection Agency that was established to advocate for the protection of the earth, now much more advocates for the financial protection of fossil fuel companies, chemical companies, big agricultural companies, et cetera, to gain more profit. So if that means you've got the Clean Water Act, you've got the Clean Water Act, it means you've got the Clean Air Act, you've got the Clean Air Act. If it means you overturn the ban on pesticides that we know harm a child's brain, you overturn the ban. So whether it has to do with educational policies, food policies, immigration policies, criminal justice policies, health policies, just all down the line. What we find is that we are being tyrannized by this mindset. And the propaganda has been so thick and now you have younger people who don't even remember a time when this would have been considered extreme because it's this false God. So we now have in front of us, the challenge to interrupt that pattern because it is a mindset which finds democracy itself inconvenient. And it is a passive assault and in some cases at this point, an active assault on the underpinnings of our democracy.

I mean, do you think it's sort of embedded in our Declaration of Independence and life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and happiness has been equated to money? so the pursuit of money is equated to the pursuit of happiness and people get stuck in this cycle of idolizing.

No, I don't because take a child, a child in an elementary school, we have millions of American children who go to schools that don't even have functioning toilets and go to schools in places where there aren't the minimum school supplies. Go to schools where the- Unlike Africa. That's right. We actually It is almost that bad, actually. So that child is an equal citizen of the United States, but because that child does not work, children do not work, therefore they have no financial leverage. And so their needs are pushed to the side for all the reasons that we've said. Now, I think it's not because of the Declaration of Independence, it's because we're ignoring what the Declaration of Independence says. If it is the function of government to secure those unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then I feel that you and I as adults have the responsibility to say, what about the child? What about, is an eight-year-old able to pursue happiness in a school where the school doesn't have functioning toilets? Is that child able to pursue happiness? So I don't think we can blame it on the founders for getting it wrong. The irony of the founders, of course, is that they got it profoundly right by establishing those principles. and 41 of them profoundly wrong and that they were slave owners. In other generations, you have always seen this dichotomy. And now the dichotomy is evident in ours. We have subconsciously reverted to an aristocratic system where once again, we are acting as though only a few people are entitled to the blessings of liberty, really. Only a few people are entitled to health care. Only a few people are entitled to the kind of opportunities of wealth and wealth creation that other people are. Only a few people are entitled to justice. So I think it's a matter of our needing to stand up for the Declaration of Independence and recognizing that that, what I just described, is a reversion to an aristocratic paradigm.

Yeah, it certainly seems like, and you've got now 40% of Americans who could not withstand a $500 emergency. That's right. You've got the top 200 or I think I even heard it was the the top 40 have more wealth than the bottom rest of the planet.

That's right. And I think we should stop right there and note something. What you just said, so 40% of all Americans having a very difficult time if you put food, rent, transportation and health care costs. But notice how our government goes around talking about how good the economy is. That's because it's good for a few. And this is not to minimize, it's not to fail to celebrate vibrancy in an economy. But we do not have long range economic planning in this country. If we had long range economic planning, we would have a massive realignment of our resources in the direction of children eight years old and younger. That's where our lost gold is. If you go into any elementary school in this country, you want to see an entrepreneurial spirit, you want to see the potential for economic vibrancy, it's in our elementary public schools. That's true.

And we're doing all sorts of crazy things like these tax cuts that increase the debt and spending we do on all sorts of things like chronic disease where we could prevent most of those costs through changing our health care system, the food system. And, you know, we, we probably, by 2050, every dollar of tax revenue will be needed to service the debt, which is trillions of dollars of federal debt. That's just not sustainable. And you're right. It's very short-term thinking. So we're just going to do what we do now, and then let our ancestors, our descendants take care of it.

And they have the gall to say that they're thinking about economics. You know, we should not run this country like a business. We should run this country like a family. Nature is the greatest ecosystem, and it knows how to take care of life, and it takes care of life by taking care of the young. It is not good economics to take care of those who are about to pass away at the expense expense of those who are young. Now, we don't have to fail to take care of those who are about to pass away. Don't get me wrong, we should take care. But the neglect of America's children, the crisis of America's children, is the opposite of anything that has to do with proper economic thinking.

It's crazy. But this is really different than has happened for millennia. I mean, you look at this book, Sapiens, which is an interesting commentary on the human race and the evolution of our species. development of money and religion and culture. And you read that book and I thought, I had this sort of fantasy of our ancestors being in community and taking care of the land and being good stewards. And you read this book.

Where did you get that, by the way? You know, I mean, like this idea of indigenous. We have Vikings and barbarians. Yeah, I mean, true.

But like, you know.

The Middle Ages, the Inquisition, just little things like that.

Well, there was that, too. But like, you know, But if you look at indigenous cultures, you know, how great they were. And I just sort of fantasized that these were really, you know, utopians. And some of them did. But for the most part, we basically went through the planet and we destroyed whatever we had and then we moved to the next place. We just run out of places to move now. And I think, you know, the question I have for you is, given that this is sort of our default nature is fear and aggression and seeking to dominate our world and each other, How does the spirituality that you've been so embedded in for the last decades of your life, for most of your life, inform how we change this political dynamic? Because you ran for Congress and you took a stand and said, I'm not just going to sit by the sidelines and whine about it. I'm going to actually do something about it.

Martin Luther King said we need quantitative shifts in our circumstances and qualitative shifts in our souls. To me, it's both and. We need change on the outer and change on the inner. When we were children, we learned about evolution, and we learned that when a species is behaving in a way that is maladaptive for its survival, that it will either go extinct or it will mutate. That's where the human race is now. Our collective behavioral patterns at this point are maladaptive for our survival. You talked about the barbarians or whatever in the past. They didn't have nuclear bombs.

Yeah.

You talked about the fact that they would destroy the earth. No, we're destroying the whole thing. So the risk now is greater. than it ever was before.

Yeah, for sure.

So at this point, we will change or we will go extinct. It's like when my environmental friends say, Don't worry, Marianne, the worst that could happen, the Earth will be fine. It just might have to kick us off for 250,000 years. Yeah, that might be true. So at this point, the issue is whether or not we are going to mutate. And all of the great spiritual traditions, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, all the great religious figures are demonstrations of another way. So that's where the spiritual comes in now. A miracle, the Course in Miracles says, is an intercession from a thought system beyond our own. So that is the challenge of the 21st century for us to expand our consciousness. When Einstein said, We will not solve the problems of the world with the level of thinking we were at when we created them. And in AA it says, Every problem comes bearing its own solution. We will not survive as a species for another hundred years if we do not expand our capacity to love each other, to realize that we are one. What I do to you, I am doing to myself. So that means that the love will save the world is not enough just the love of my own children. The love that will save the world has got to include my love for the children on the other side of town, my love for the children on the other side of the world, that I cannot look away from the child who is starving. in another neighborhood or in another part of the world. And the realization that I will not be safe just by protecting my home. We must realize the Earth itself is our home. So, you know, you like, look at the kinds of things that you talk about. My sense is that no matter what the area is, it could be environmental, it could be food, there are so many areas, it could be war and peace, it could be so many things. The geniuses are here. They're in place. They're demonstrating another way. All they need is to be told, go, make it happen. Here are the resources.

From leadership in the country?

Well, that's the thing. That's why politics matters. I think, and I think the United States is a perfect example of this. The consciousness of the people of the United States is pretty progressive, actually.

Yeah. Do you mean there if you actually polled everybody?

If you poll everybody about what they really would like to see happen, We're a little left of center, actually. But what has happened because of the undue influence of money and so forth, and this is not only true in the United States, but in the world, it's these geopolitical power centers that's still in the hands of the consciousness embedded in a 20th century mentality. The Course in Miracles says there has been no mass awakening, but it is time to initiate one now. What I see, and like, look, let's say your podcast, so what we have now is tools for the exponential spread of more enlightened information. So it's very interesting and conviction is a force multiplier. So the more we build this conversation, you and millions of other people, so many people are having the alternative conversation, and that's what a miracle is. And when we begin to be as convicted behind our love, many more people in the world love than hate. But those who hate hate with conviction. We have to love with conviction now. We have to be willing to say it. And no, we can't say it everywhere except economics. We can't say it everywhere except politics. We can't say it everywhere except in social issues. Because that's where, you know, I remember when I heard Deepak Chopra say once, If I want to get healthy, I'm going to go Ayurveda. But if I'm in a car accident, someone get me to a Western hospital emergency room as soon as possible. And that's where we are now.

We need the emergency room.

We need the emergency room.

So if this is inspiring people and they're in their own lives and they're struggling at work with conflict and fear, they're struggling to deal with all the inundation of bad media and the toxic, political environment we're in. If they're in their families and they're struggling with, you know, relationship that are challenging, if they're struggling with trying to live in a toxic food environment, and they're just trying to stay alive. And how do they move from that place of anxiety and fear and struggle to this place of compassion and love and awakening? Because it seems like a big gap. So you say, yeah, you can change your thinking, but it's not so easy for people.

Prayer, meditation, compassion, forgiveness, atonement.

Okay, that sounds like a good recipe. And those are things you can all do.

That's what all the great, those are universal spiritual themes at the heart of all the great religious systems.

Prayer is a medium of miracles.

You talk about each one of those, see how we are? Well, prayer, you know, in prayer we realize there is a power higher than our own, greater than our own, that can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And there's a line, there's a kind of an old saying, God cannot do for us what he cannot do through us. So the issue in life is to say, Dear God or God of your understanding, love, whatever words are true for you, use me. And it lifts you up. You know, the Dalai Lama said, In order to save the world, we must have a plan, but no plan will work unless we meditate. So when you pray and meditate, and that's of course the 11th step in Alcoholics Anonymous, it's the core of any great religious spiritual system, it lifts you above the emotional turbulence of the mortal mind. And then you have to practice it.

You have to- that's a good sentence, the emotional turbulence of the mortal mind.

We all live in that most of the time. That's right. And that dominates the planet because it dominates the consciousness of the human race. So then if all your healthcare system is managing the symptoms, that emerge from that craziness, you're always gonna be playing wacK-A-Mole. We have to address the underlying tension and anxiety that causes all the sickness in its various manifestations to begin with, whether it's the sickness of injustice or the sickness of a physical disease.

So the prayer sort of invites in a relationship to some energy or being or consciousness that is enabling us to wake up and to be, you know, more connected to the body.

Every cell in the body, every healthy cell collaborates with every, with other healthy cells to serve the healthy functioning of the organ and the organism of which it is part. A cell that disconnects from that collaborative Matrix, it disconnects from its own natural intelligence and goes off to do its own thing. Yeah, it's called cancer. Yeah, we don't want that. It's a malignancy in the body, and it's a malignancy in Consciousness, and that's happened to the human race. We've been infected by a malignant consciousness, which is simply the thought, it's all about me. Prayer is a way that we open ourselves to a realization that my larger self with a capital S is bigger than just my body. And that my identity is bigger than my mortal self and my purpose on this planet is bigger.

It reminds me of a joke by Mel Brooks, who's the 2,000 year old man. So they were an interviewer was asking him, 2,000 years old, so did you believe in God? And he's like, well, yeah, there was this guy, and I was like, what? Who was he? He was like, and that guy named Phil. And I was like, what? Did you pray to him? Oh yeah, we say big guy was dangerous. We say, Phil, don't kill us, don't hurt us, take our eyes out. And he says, and then what happened? One day the lightning came, hit Phil in the head, and we go, There's something bigger than Phil. So I think it's like, you know, we all kind of have an intuitive sense that there's something bigger. And there are about devout atheists, but I think for most of us, we know there's a sense of something. And I think that's important to acknowledge.

There's a line in the Course in Miracles that says, Some people conspire with God who do not yet believe in Him. If an atheist is a loving person, they are conspiring with God, whether or not they believe in Him. And there are people who say they believe in God, who hate in God's name. So whether or not you quote unquote believe in God is almost irrelevant.

That is true. And the second thing you mentioned- Whether.

Or not we love.

That is true. So you mentioned meditation, which is sort of differentiated from prayer. I would say that prayer is talking to God and meditators listening to God.

That is how I always think of it too.

And so what does that do? And how does that shift?

I am sure in your field you know all about that. You literally emit different brain waves when you are in a meditative state and it builds a different nervous system. And as I said earlier, if I've meditated in the morning, that doesn't mean I'm going to be an enlightened master all day. But I know very well from my own experience that if I've meditated that morning, the chances of my doing something really stupid are drastically reduced. You know, it's not just about what we do. Everything we do is infused with the consciousness with which we do it. That's why Gandhi said that the end is inherent in the means. So we need personal repair on the level of that, those qualitative shifts in our souls in order, number one, to discern what we need to do to change the world. And secondly, in order to be able to be people who can do it. Let's say your career or my career. If you were just a nervous mess, you couldn't pull it off. And if you were a nervous mess, I wouldn't want to be and if I was a nervous mess, you wouldn't want to be. It's as simple as that. It's just a pattern of growth and maturation that we need to embrace.

It's true. It's one of the things, it's a tool. It doesn't have to connect to any particular religion or thing. It's a physical practice that allows you to shift your biology, as you said, in profound ways. And we know it increases stem cells, reduces inflammation, reduces blood pressure, It reduces blood sugar, helps improve sleep, reduce anxiety, depression. I mean, the studies are manifest. And our friend Daniel Goleman has written a book with Richard Davidson called Altered Traits, which describes the biology of this and what happens to the meditators who've been, Olympic meditators, he calls them. Guys have been in a cave for nine years meditating in Tibet and they've studied these with brain scans. All that's fascinating to me, but what's even more important on a personal level for me and I studied Buddhism and I understood all this, but it was my basic curriculum in school. I was graduating in Buddhism from Cornell. And yet, and I did a lot of meditating young and I stopped for a while. And then I recently started a number of years ago. And what I noticed was just a profound shift in the quality of my emotions and my thinking. And it wasn't like I had to do anything other than do nothing and just be.

Which.

And stop and create space. And I do 20 minutes twice a day, almost every day. Sometimes I'll do once a day if I'm. Can't manage it. And it's. It just changed my experience and allows me to be happier. It allows me to have more space between something that happens and a reaction. It's my wife says something or she has a reaction or whatever. I. Or someone in work gets kind of, you know, does something. I don't. react in the ways that I did and it allows me to be in a space of love. So in a way, it's the trick that you can use in your life or the tool that allows you to access the love that we all have and be out of fear.

When you mentioned just now being non-reactive, when it's very parallel, spiritual exercise is very parallel to physical exercise. Physical exercise, you're building your muscles so you can physically move. Spiritual exercise such as meditation, you are building your attitudinal muscles so you can achieve stillness.

Yeah, and then, yeah, go ahead.

Well, exactly what you're saying, because nobody has impulse control these days. So the idea, Donald Trump's tweeting at.

Three in the morning. Well, hello, hello. It's like, that's the epitome of reactivity in our culture, right? I mean, whether it's good or bad, or what he has something good or bad to say, it's just something wakes, somebody wakes up three in the morning, has to respond to some nonsense on news. It's just a reflection of a lack of ability to like moderate your own emotions and thoughts and feelings. So prayer, meditation, you talk about forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgiveness is from A Course in Miracles.

Perspective, it's not the old fashioned forgiveness of you did something terrible, but I'm spiritual now. You're a jerk, but I'm spiritual now, so I'll deign to forgive you. The Course in Miracles calls that judgment. Forgiveness is the realization, the real you is love. And in the moment that you did something loveless, you just simply got confused. No different than me when I did something loveless and I got confused. We all have those points where the wires got crossed, usually something in childhood, some trigger where in that moment I don't know how to give love and get my needs met. Now forgiveness is where when you show me, you fall asleep to who you are and you show me, Yeah. Forgiveness is when I know the real you is love. The real you loves me. You just got very confused. Now, if I just fall into the reacting to your lovelessness with my lovelessness, we'll both be on what Buddha called the wheel of suffering. Forgiveness means that I can know that only love is real here. I can take a deep breath. I can pray and ask to see this differently. All minds are joined. And if I refuse to judge you in that moment and bless you instead, everything will shift.

Yeah. Blame instead of blessings, instead of blame.

And love instead of- It's not difficult, but it's different. What's difficult is getting over our resistance to practicing this. Truth is very simple. It's life that's complicated. so when you, when you learn spiritual principle, they're not complicated, they're not difficult. It's just a different way of being in the world. None of us except enlightened masters are there all the time. But you know, that's why, like I say, when I practice what I preach, my life really works. Well, when you do this stuff, it works. It's no different than physical exercise. If you do it, it works.

It's true. I remember when I was 18, you know, I was kind of a weird kid, kind of nerdy. didn't really have friends and I, people kind of bullied me. And, you know, I went up by myself after high school, went out west and was backpacking and working in Canada, in Northern Canada, and I was camping out with a bunch of guys, and they were just kind of jerks. And I was, they were saying stuff that wasn't really nice or loving to me, and I, I had this insight. at the moment that that was happening, that this was coming from some, like you said, some loveless place where things were not right in them that made them do this. Or maybe there was something, a nugget of wisdom in what they said, even though the packaging wasn't great, that I could use to learn about improving myself. So it was a gift or a chance for compassion. And I was like, when I reframed it like that, It took a number of years because I would still have this emotional response when people would say things, but I had this different way of thinking about it. And so I changed my thinking and over time, I don't react in any way when people say something, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. If someone's praising me and idolizing me because I do this or do that, I just know that's not about me, really. whatever I did to help them great, but, and also someone said something horrible about me. I, it's either, it's either their story or maybe there's a nugget in there for me to pay attention to it, my behavior that I can be more conscious about. So it's a really interesting way. But it's, again, it's, it's changing the narrative, it's changing the thoughts and the beliefs. And it's also changing your biology through.

Things like prayer meditation allows you to actually do that. Right. In the Course in Miracles, one of the things that really impacts me, it says only what you are not giving can be lacking in any situation. So when someone says something that's hurtful to us, I would think, I'm in pain because of what you just said. But the Course of Miracles says, no, actually what happened is that when they said what they said, you closed your heart to them. That's the only thing that can cause you pain. So everything that someone does to us, the issue in life is not what was just done to us. The issue is who am I going to be in the space of what just happened? And that once again goes back into the emotional discipline of knowing, and the line in the Course that's so powerful there is that we were to say, I am willing to see this differently. I am hurt. I feel hurt in this moment, but I am willing to see this differently. And when you do, I was once in a situation where these women were talking, and there was this one woman who had a very affected way of speech, and she was talking in a way that made me wild with judgment. Like, what is this? Why is she talking like that?

What a weirdo, right?

And I had, you know, I'm a student of the Course, so I remembered what the Course said. I realized how wildly judgmental I was being. And I just said a little prayer. I'm willing to see this differently. Within, definitely within five minutes, maybe sooner than that, one of the other women said to her, Is it true what I heard that they're letting your father out of prison? Now these people just knew each other. And what then transpired that I'm just listening to is that this girl had been raised in a dungeon. This was one of those kinds of situations you see on television.

Yeah.

Where her Father had kept her and a sibling in a dungeon. The girl literally did not know how to talk. And she had been freed and was learning how to speak. Now, five minutes before her, the things she said brought up in me wild judgment. Now, the very same speech brought up in me such massive compassion and admiration It was the change was in me. But from A Course in Miracles perspective, the fact that I prayed, the fact that I said, I am willing to see this differently, then literally opened my subconscious mind. However you want to say it, the Holy Spirit works through your subconscious. What language we use almost doesn't matter. I think one day they will map the brain and know it's the cosmos in there. And then, and now those things would have been said anyway, but I noticed to them because of my willingness. And I have seen that over and over and over again where I'm being so judgmental or so hurt by what someone did. If I will remember to say, I am willing to see this differently, then everything I need in order to do that will be shown.

Yeah. Powerful. Okay, so prayer, meditation, forgiveness, you talk about atonement. That's something we talk about in Yom Kippur.

Atonement is huge thing. In Catholicism, confession, you do it as you go along. In Judaism, the most- We do it once a year. Right, once a year we do the whole thing. We fast, two days. And then you eat a lot of bagels and lox. And then in Alcoholics Anonymous, there's the taking of one's personal inventory. So every, in a brutally honest look at oneself and the admitting of your character defects, every great spiritual and religious path makes us look at where we've made mistakes. Jesus was born, no, Buddha was born about 500 years before Jesus. So Buddha describes karma, action, reaction, action, reaction. The message of Jesus, really coming out of the Jewish tradition, is that in a moment of grace, the karma is burned. Now, what does that mean? That means when you atone, it's a cosmic reset button. You change things on the level of cause. So if I treat you in a terrible way, there's gonna be an effect in my life. for what I just did to you, because that's karma, that's cause and effect. There's really only one of us here. It feels to me like I just did it to you, but really the sword's fallen on me, because that's the metaphysical realization, there's only one of us here. Okay, if I atone for what I just did, you change on the level of cause, and that will undo the consequences of the wrong decision. It will lead to my apology, it will lead to my making of an amends. And otherwise, I'm gonna reap what I just sowed. So atonement is huge. And what's up for us now in so many ways is the need of a nation to atone, the need of a nation to make amends. Because all that a nation is, is a group of individuals. So the same psychological and emotional and spiritual principles that prevail within the life of an individual prevail within the life of the nation.

Yeah, it's powerful. You know, I think what you're talking about is, you know, this overall concept of leading with love and building the tools and the skills to do that, whether it's prayer, meditation, forgiveness, atonement. These are all tools that are available to us that don't cost anything that are actually pretty simple when you think about them that take, like you say, avoiding the spiritual laziness that we have and having the discipline to actually do it. that can really transform our culture, our families, our work, our way of being, our happiness, everything that matters. And, you know, I I I had this thing I was born with, and I. It was sort of shocking when I realized it wasn't just the way it was. And it's determined a lot of what I do and how I live my life and why I do the work I do is I remember being born feeling love for everybody. Like, when I would see another human being, I just. felt this sense of love. And then I kind of realized around maybe four or five years old that this was not what everybody else was doing or experiencing. And it was sort of depressing and made me really sad and isolated and lonely for a long time. And now in my life, I find myself automatically being with anybody and just seeing who they are and seeing their divine nature, their Buddha nature, whatever you want to call it, that they're a sacred being and and even, you know, everybody, whether it's a homeless person or, I mean, I used to work in prisons, I worked in mental institutions, I worked in all these places, and I just sat with someone and just showed up in that space of love and seeing their divine nature, and let myself literally fall in love with everybody. It's actually, it's sort of my superpower.

Well, it makes you a miracle worker because miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.

Yeah.

And that is your purpose on the earth, and you knew it as a child. And then the thinking of the world trained you to think that you are who you aren't and you aren't who you are. And then you remembered it. That's what enlightenment isn't a learning, it's an unlearning of the lies of the world. I have a birth memory of feeling that I came out just exactly like you said. And then in those days, I was still slapping the baby. Oh. And I remembered I just couldn't even believe that he would do that.

Someone whacked me. Now they just put you on your mom's tummy and they wrap you up.

But think how simple but profound what you just said is. And think what the world, not even what the world would be, what the world will be, when we realize that's our only purpose here is to love each other.

I feel like that's an invitation that you're giving and that we're talking about here on the podcast, which is an invitation to help people figure out how to connect to love through changing their thinking, simple practices, building their spiritual muscle through things like meditation and actually being able to shift because it, you know, change doesn't start at the top. It starts in the periphery. It starts with the individual and their families, their communities, their friends, their workplaces, and it ripples out. And that's the power we all have. We all feel powerless in this Society, I think. many of us feel disengaged and giving up and it's just too overwhelming and the problems are too big and the people are too toxic at the top and we can't really create a world that we want, but you're saying we can.

Well, we feel powerless because we're taught the power is in external things. So we feel if I don't have external power, money, prestige and so forth, then I don't have power. But as Martin Luther King said, there's a power inside us more powerful than bullets. The real power is our capacity to love each other. That's what makes us powerful. And when you see your purpose, your identity is love and your purpose is to love, then any externals that are needed to support you in that mission will be there, other people and so forth, because you will attract it. And that's really when you said you just see your purpose to love. Once we realize that's all that matters, think how different the world will be if you see the purpose of your business to love, the purpose of your being in your relationship. I say to people all the time in my lectures, you know that person you slept with last night? I'm not asking for a raise of hands, but did you pray for their happiness today? Whether it was your husband, your wife, your lover, did you pray for their happiness today? Or did you think more about what you weren't getting? How many times do you go to therapy these days? Are you getting everything you need from this relationship? Rather than... -You-'re giving everything you can. -Giving everything you can.

Are you giving everything you have? I've noticed that in my relationship with my wife, I'm really focused on her happiness and serving her and what she needs. And the result of that is just unbelievable.

Oh, some people would say that that's just codependent nonsense. That's how crazy it is.

No, it's not. I mean, I've been there.

I've been there. That's my point. But that's my point. That's really what we're here for.

Yeah, I mean, yes, there's codependency I've had, but this is very different.

Oh, of course it is, and I agree with you entirely.

It took me 50 years to figure it out. I feel like I see the importance of it's not about what I need to get or what I need or what she can do for me.

We are here to serve each other. We are here to serve each other.

I once said to this friend of mine, who was this very wise woman. I said, I don't understand why there's so much goodness happening to me and coming back at me all the time. And I just, like, I live in a miracle all the time. Always synchronicities happen. The things show up that make me help the world in a better way. I don't understand. She's like, well, Mark, you spent your life taking care of people and being a doctor and creating health for them and transforming their lives, and all that is coming back to you. It's this is your karmic cycle can be negative, as you said, if you do something nasty or mean to somebody. The opposite is also true, right?

Most of us are not all one or the other.

Yeah.

Most of us are a mixed bag. And where we give love, we get love back. And where we withhold love, love is withheld from us. And I've certainly seen that in my life and continue to see it.

So amazing. Well, I think this has been an amazing conversation.

Thank you.

About love, about politics, about spirituality, about things that are all connected that we often don't connect. And what you're saying is we need a love revolution.

That's right. That's exactly what we need. We need a love revolution. And that will heal, you know, Gandhi said that the love inside us heals not only our personal relationships, but our political and social relationships as well. That's why Dr. King said about Gandhi that he was the first person in human history, to take the ethic of love and turn it into a broad scale social force for good. That's the next step. We know how love heals our personal relationships. The next step is to allow it to heal the world. So here's a big question.

If you were Queen for a Day or President, what would you do to shift the world from fear to love, to shift America from fear to love? What would be the things you would do? Well, if you were Queen, you would.

Have some autocratic power. If you're President, you don't have that power. Let's say you're the Queen.

Let's say you're the Queen.

Queen or the, or I could have whatever I wanted.

Or, you know, you could just be autocrat.

To remove the influence of money from our politics. That is such a corrupting influence at this point. And it undercuts the potential of democracy. The potential of democracy is that wisdom will prevail. The whole notion of our founders was that if you have a free press and you have free public education, to hone our critical thought processes and free speech, that we could rely on the wisdom inside us to be the great governing force. And I still believe, I believe in that. I think that if we create the conditions where our wisdom is what leads us, our collective wisdom, then we will be okay as a country and as a world. But the undue influence of money on our politics now cuts off that possibility. It's money over wisdom. It's short-term economic gain over wisdom. So to me, that's the underlying toxicity. It's the issue underlying all the others.

I agree. It's true in my small world of the food system and health care.

Of course it is. Fossil fuel companies, big agricultural companies, chemical companies, and it's a half a billion.

Dollars spent on lobbying the farm bill a lot.

Absolutely.

Which is mostly food stamps or SNAP, which is 75% of the farm bill, which is mostly processed junk food and soda. So they're all protecting that.

That's exactly right. And the FDA has been completely defanged, de-juiced. All they can do is politely suggest that something be taken off the shelves.

Well, I hope we can figure out a way to do that. Maybe we can. I don't know, but it seems like with our current court, we're not going to be able to do that for a generation.

Well, with the current court, we will not be overriding Citizens United anytime soon. However, there are state-by-state issues moved to amend and so forth. Ultimately, we need a constitutional amendment that will establish federal funding, public funding for federal campaigns. I think what we need as a generation to realize that other generations before us have done great things. and we can too. How did they, quote unquote, figure out how to abolish slavery? How did they figure out how to give women the right to vote? How did they figure out how to end segregation? They did it. And in all of those situations, the initial impulse came from the religious and the spiritual communities. You know, from a spiritual perspective, you don't have to figure out anything. Just discern what you feel you have been called to do, and the how will be given to you. That's amazing.

Well, thank you, Marianne, for joining us in the Doctor's Pharmacy. I want to share with people an amazing course that you've created, which I'm going to take personally. It's called Teaching the Teachers, because often the people who are in the world who are trying to bring goodness, whether it's a yoga teacher or a doctor, because doctor means teacher, we often don't practice self-care. We often run ourselves in the ground trying to make the world a better and you create a course that gives people the tools and the insights and the skills to actually do the right thing for themselves so they can be more effective in the world. So you can build an army of leaders who are empowered and also healthy and connected to what really matters. And that's amazing gift to the world. I can't wait to take it. You can go find it at maryann.com www.maryann.com and you can watch it every Tuesday at 7:30. Oh, so you can watch your course also on Course in Miracles every Tuesday, which is live streamed. It's available for free and you can learn more about our events at marianne.com and I can't wait to see your course called Teaching the Teachers. So thank you for joining the Doctors Pharmacy. Thank you. It's a place for conversations that matter. We'd love to hear from you. Please write a review. We'd love to know what you think. And if you like this podcast, share it with your friends and family on Facebook and social media. And if you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And we'll see you next time on the doctor's Pharmacy. Don't forget, there's a way to listen completely ad free with Hyman plus on Apple podcasts. You can enjoy every episode without any breaks. Just open Apple podcasts and tap try free to start your seven day free trial.