One of Williamson’s most famous pieces of rhetoric, a passage from her best-selling 1992 self-help book, *A Return to Love* <https://www.amazon.com/Return-Love-Reflections-Principles-Miracles/dp/0060927488?ots=1&ascsubtag=___vx__p_20463874__t_w__r_google.com__d_D>, often isn’t attributed to Williamson. For almost 25 years, Williamson’s quote has been consistently misattributed to Nelson Mandela.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,” Williamson writes in *A Return to Love*. “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 doesn’t serve the world.” *A Return to Love* is often read as a standalone self-help book, but it was first conceived of as a supplementary religious text. It’s a response to the 1976 book *A Course in Miracles* <https://www.amazon.com/course-Miracles-Foundation-Inner-Peace/dp/1883360269?ots=1&ascsubtag=___vx__p_20463874__t_w__r_google.com__d_D>, whose author Helen Schucman claimed to have taken dictation directly from Jesus. (The book was published without Schucman’s name.) Williamson, who was raised Jewish and continues to identify as a Jew, says *A Course in Miracles* changed her life. “I had been waiting for someone to explain to me how to fight the fight, or to fight the fight for me, and now this book suggested that I surrender the fight completely,” Williamson writes in the preface to *Return to Love*. “I was surprised but so relieved.” *The fight* here is the fight to get ahead in the world — to have a successful career, to marry well — but, Williamson says, she learned in the Course that she didn’t need any such thing. Part of what made Williamson and her book so famous and so successful is that *Return to Love* is full of empowering affirmations like the “our deepest fear” passage. But in context, when Williamson tells her readers that they are the children of God, she means something specific. A central tenet of the *Course in Miracles*, and hence of Williams’s philosophy, is that God is love, and that as children of God we are an extension of God’s love. Therefore everything in the world that is unloving — fear, war, hunger, poverty — does not really exist. “That’s what this world is: a mass hallucination, where fear seems more real than love,” Williamson writes in *A Return to Love*. “Fear is an illusion. Our craziness, paranoia, anxiety and trauma are literally all *imagined*. That is not to say they don’t exist for us as human beings. They do. But our fear is not our ultimate reality, and it does not replace the truth of who we really are.” Essentially, Williamson is saying that because God is love, and we are all children of God, the reality is that we are all brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous. Our fear is hiding that reality from us. K Rajaram IRS 20 12 23 NB The above is the quotre thought ; but don't we have the same in B G? ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Jambunathan Iyer <[email protected]> Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2023 at 04:39 Subject: Thought for the Day 20th Dec 2023 To: Rajaram Krishnamurthi <[email protected]>, ARR < [email protected]>, YM - markandeya101091 < [email protected]>, venkat giri <[email protected]>, Yeddanapudi Markandeyulu <[email protected]>, SRIRAMAJAYAM < [email protected]>, Sridhar Srinivasan(Sanadhana Gmail) < [email protected]>, gopala krishnan <[email protected]>, Chittanandam V R <[email protected]>, N. Sekar <[email protected]> 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. N Jambunathan Rengarajapuram-Kodambakkam-Chennai-Mob:9176159004 *" What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things "* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CAL5XZoo%2BHHMS1XyoKF13urMQg5r60zP_D3AZnWMFxTaPpcdX8Q%40mail.gmail.com.
