A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (The Marianne Williamson Series)

“feel your anger,” “feel your shame.” But we need support in feeling our positive feelings just as much as we need support in feeling our negative ones. It is the experience of genuine emotion of any kind that the ego resists. We need support and permission to feel our love, to feel our satisfaction and to feel our happiness.

The Course tells us we decide what we want to see before we see it.

But we must be aware of our ego feelings in order to release them. “He cannot shine away what you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him and he cannot take it from you.”

We can make mistakes,’ to be sure, and we obviously do. But God’s attitude toward error is a desire to heal us. Because we ourselves are angry and punishing, we have concocted the idea of an angry, punishing God.

The way to do that is to bless her beauty, praise it, permit it to be so you can permit your own. Christie Brinkley being beautiful doesn’t mean that you don’t get to be. There’s enough beauty to go around. It’s just an idea. Anyone can have it. As you bless what she has, you multiply your chances of having it too.”

This process can be so painful that we are tempted to go backwards. It takes courage—this is often called the path of the spiritual warrior—to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.

After I said the prayer and got the feeling that my store was a church, I understood that my only job was to love the people who came there. I actually did that: every time I saw a customer walk in, I would silently bless them in some way or another. Not everyone bought a book every time they came in, but people began to consider me their bookselle

It is mostly in casual encounters that we are given a chance to practice the fine art of chiseling away the hard edges of our personalities.

Our self-perception determines our behavior. If we think we’re small, limited, inadequate creatures, then we tend to behave that way, and the energy we radiate reflects those thoughts no matter what we do. If we think we’re magnificent creatures with an infinite abundance of love and power to give, then we tend to behave that way. Once again, the e