Light Years

It turns out that one of my greatest inspirations, Marianne Williamson, is celebrating 25 years of lecturing on A Course In Miracles this month – that’s a hell of a lot of light for one person to put out into the world!

And she’s still doing it. In a recent post on her blog, discussing the US presidential election, she raises the issue of how authentically the candidates have communicated, saying “There is a psychological principle that people hear you on the level that you’re speaking from. If it’s all in your head, then someone hears you with their head. But if it’s coming from your heart, then someone will hear you from your heart. And that’s not just a metaphor; it’s brain functioning.”

Using the Obama and Clinton face-off as an example, Marianne notes “Throughout her campaign, with almost every word she uttered, Hillary Clinton spoke to us from that smart head of hers. And like everyone, she was fated to crash into a wall with that. No matter how smart we are, we don’t break through to our greatness until our mind has been humbled. There is a higher intelligence than the intellect, and that is the ceiling Hillary was not able to break through. She depended on intellect, force of will, external alliances and political strategising – while Obama subsumed all those things under what Mahatma Gandhi called soul force.”

For Gandhi, that principle known as satyagraha had its root meaning in “holding onto truth, hence true-force.” He also called it love-force or soul-force.” It stems from the wellspring of essential goodness – the divine spark – that lies within us all. That same principle of authentic and innate inner beauty lies at the heart of the teachings of A Course In Miracles, to which Marianne Williamson has dedicated her life’s work, with enormous success. So much so that a passage from her book, A Return To Love, formed part of Nelson Mandela’s inauguration speech and is often mis-attributed to him. Although you’ve probably seen it a thousand times, it’s so good it bears repeating …

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

What’s particularly powerful about this quote is that it reminds us of the many ways we hide our truth and our goodness from ourselves and so often project the good that we cannot see in ourselves onto others, particularly in intimate relationships. This principle is echoed in Spiritual Divorce, by the leading shadow coach, Debbie Ford, who writes “Just as we project negative aspects of ourselves onto our partners, we also project our light. For most of us when we fall in love it is because we are seeing our disowned light in someone else. We see in our mates a part of ourselves that is hidden and then the chase begins to capture what we believe will make us whole.”

In the chapter on Reclaiming Our Divine Light, she notes “Having embraced our darkest qualities, it is now time to reclaim our light, our loving, compassionate, creative self. Only when we embrace our darkness and our light equally do we have access to our entire self. And only when we have access to all of who we are can we align to the destiny of our higher selves. When we are dancing in the arms of our soul’s purpose, each of us naturally expresses the precious gifts that we hold.”

To find our way back to an awareness of the personal qualities that we’ve endowed others with, Ford counsels “While your dark shadow is the person you would rather not be, your light shadow is represented by the people who inspire you. We can find our disowned positive qualities by looking outside ourselves at those we admire, those we love and those whom we would like to emulate. When you look outside, you can see yourself in the mirror image of others. Just as we have given so much of our darkness away, we have also hidden that much of our light.”

This week, let’s redress the balance by taking a look at just how much of our own light we’ve projected on to others. Look back at past relationships for clues as to the qualities you were drawn to in your partner. Then notice, as the relationship went on, was that truly a quality of theirs or was it something you later learned to express yourself? Any area of disillusionment in a past relationship is fertile hunting ground for disowned qualities. In my own personal inventory, I’ve noticed an attraction to so-called ‘creative’ partners, yet as I’ve gone on to express myself more creatively they don’t seem to have been quite the creative geniuses I rather idolised in the beginning …

Take a good look at the people you admire – famous people, fictional characters, family or friends – and pay attention to what it is that inspires your admiration. Whatever you find attractive and uplifting in them is a quality lurking within you that’s crying out for expression. Dare to face quite how talented and fabulous you just might be. It could be the missing piece of the puzzle in your quest for a fabulous, authentic life. While we’re all too willing to dig around to find what we think is wrong with us, we could do with a little light relief by focusing on what’s ultimately true – what’s actually right with us.

I’ll leave you with a final word from Ford on the importance of encompassing the entirety of ourselves. As she says “It’s not until we can embrace both our light and dark sides – all of our positive traits and all of our negative traits – that we can truly experience the feeling of emotional wholeness.”

Oh, and Happy 25th Anniversary, Marianne - very glad to have you on my team of projected light!

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