I’ve interviewed Marianne Williamson three times, and she is electric: smart, fast, passionate, insightful, eloquent. In some ways, Marianne is the most frustrating person I’ve ever interviewed, because each time I’m blown away and end up wondering how she isn’t the best-known teacher of our time. And then I really think about the question and…
Marianne Williamson is running for Congress — running as an independent for the U.S. House of Representatives in California’s 33rd District — and I’m very glad. She is one of the great spiritual teachers of our time, and broadening the manifestation of her calling has the potential — the possibility, at least — of transforming…
I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Marianne Williamson three times. I have great respect for her, her work, and the enormous power and passion with which she expresses herself. This slightly extended interview excerpt is from the third of our interviews. I also invite you to read a second post on the topic of the…
Ray: You write about the importance in midlife of doing “the rigorous work of taking a fearless moral inventory”—about facing your pain and even facing places of self-loathing. Where do you begin that work? Marianne: Sometimes it’s late at night—it’s 3 o’clock in the morning—and for whatever reason, you can’t stop thinking about something you…
Ray: As you talk to people around the country, what’s surprising you about what other people are and aren’t concerned about in themselves? Marianne: I wouldn’t say that anything is surprising me. It’s fundamental to the body of information and knowledge that I’ve dealt with my entire adult life that there’s really only…
Ray: Were you afraid of reaching middle age, Marianne, and have you truly released those fears? Marianne: My fiftieth birthday hit me hard. In the two or three months before that birthday, it was rough. I talked to people who had already turned fifty, and a few good friends said they had absolutely been through…
Ray: Marianne, what about the essential role of forgiveness in releasing the past? In The Age of Miracles, you write, “We can have a grievance or we can have a miracle, but we cannot have both.” But I think we sometimes forgive ourselves a little too quickly, before we’ve really dealt with something in a…
Ray Hemachandra: Your mother died recently. How important is it for people at midlife to come to terms with the idea and reality of death? Marianne Williamson: It feels to me like the death of a parent is a kind of inoculation. You really do get, in a way that you’ve never viscerally gotten before,…
Ray: Marianne, as people already wrestling with midlife issues also face their parents dying, they encounter yet another transition: becoming the elders in their families and communities. Would you talk about taking on the role of elder? Marianne: We have all often heard the conversation about our society needing to treat its elders with greater…
