Marianne Williamson

[lpetrich]

Marianne Williamson: What to Know About the Self-Help Guru Who Made Anti-Vax Comment

Marianne Williamson’s 2020 campaign for president has made barely a blip—until this week when she called mandatory-vaccine policies “draconian” and “Orwellian,” immediately sparking criticism that she is an anti-vaxxer. On Thursday, appearing on The View, the New Age self-help guru said she misspoke but then failed to make a full-throated endorsement of vaccines, saying she does not “trust the propaganda on either side” and that “we must have a balance between public safety and the issues of individual freedom.”

How convenient.

 Marianne Williamson, Welcome - Marianne Williamson, Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) / Twitter

In 1979, she came across Helen Schuchman's book  A Course in Miracles. HS claimed that that book was dictated to her by a voice in her head that she identified as coming from Jesus Christ. It has a lot in common with some Eastern philosophies, though in more-or-less Christian dress, and it has lessons for going from "condemnation-out-of-fear" to "forgiveness-out-of-love". Not surprisingly, some conservative Christians have condemned it as New-Age heresy.

MW started promoting it, and in 1992, she wrote  A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, and she appeared with it on Oprah Winfrey's TV show. Robert Todd Carroll of "The Skeptic's Dictionary" wrote about it that "Williamson might be called Oprah's patron saint. She's all about love and healing, yin and yang, being wounded, and using love and prayer to heal all wounds."

Back to TDB,

As she gained fame, Williamson—who once called herself “the bitch for God”— was accused of harsh treatment of her employees in the past. “Marianne is a tyrant,” one of her former associates told People magazine in 1992. “Her own ego is going to destroy her.” The magazine said one staffer was fired soon after a double mastectomy. The article described how Williamson’s employees attempted to unionize to protect themselves from Williamson’s bad temper.

MW's response: ”Does the press think it has a big scoop that a woman who goes around talking about love would fire people who thwart and undermine her in the organization she started? I’d do it again. Does Michael Eisner apologize for making policy at Disney?”

She has a following that some people consider rather cultish.

In 2014, she ran against California Democrat Henry Waxman as an independent. Despite having a lot of celebrity friends, she got only 13% of the vote.

Marianne Williamson, Longtime Wacko, Is Now a Dangerous Wacko - "For decades, Williamson said that medicines don’t cure disease but positive thinking does. Now she’s taking her quackery to a new and dangerous level: the anti-vaxxer conspiracy."

After describing her anti-vax assertions and how she has backed off from some of them,

The main point is: None of this is new for Williamson. For 30 years, she’s been peddling dangerous, anti-scientific garbage: specifically, the warmed-over “New Thought” teaching that you can manifest your own reality by thinking it to be so.

You probably have an annoying spiritual friend who’s into this crap: “The Law of Attraction,” “The Secret,” “The Teachings of Abraham,” “The Power of Positive Thinking.” It’s all the same delusion, designed to give people the illusion of control over the messy, uncontrollable, and often miserable realities of human existence.

In short, wishing will make it so.

It’s also true that Williamson has said some very smart things on the campaign trail. She raised the subject of reparations for slavery before any other presidential candidate. She has been outspoken on issues of reproductive justice and feminism. She has linked progressive (even radical) economic policy with moral values better than any presidential candidate in memory.

...
The problem isn’t that Marianne Williamson teaches spirituality. The problem is she’s giving spirituality a bad name.

She validates every lazy critique of spirituality by people who don’t really know what they’re talking about: that it’s selfish, deluded, and dumb. Her denigration of science is the exact opposite of mindfulness and other scientifically validated forms of contemplative fitness.

 

[lpetrich]

From Wikipedia on "A Course in Miracles":

It states that everything involving time, space, and perception is illusory. It presents a monism which states that God is the only truth and reality: perfect, unchanging, unchangeable, extending only love, though not in time and space, which cannot really be comprehended from a dualistic perspective. The theory further states that all life as we perceive it is actually one life (because God has only one son, sometimes called the collective sonship), dreaming of separation and fragmentation. It claims that eternity is outside time and space and that this dream never occurred in reality and is "already over", though not the (illusory) perception. When addressing the question of how such an illusory dream could arise from a perfect and unchanging God, the Course states that to ask that question is to presume that the time-space dream is real, which it states is not. A Course in Miracles states that to think we exist as individuals is the fundamental error.

Then a lot of stuff on how to cope with this odd hallucination that we seemingly inhabit.

This is much like Hindu Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita's content, and also much like Christian Science, with its belief that the physical world is an illusion and that disease is false beliefs. Isaac Asimov once discovered that a rumbling sound on Sunday mornings had come from the air conditioner of a CS church, and when he thought of CS beliefs, he laughed long and loud at how CS believers were willing to use such a materialist contraption to deal with the summer heat rather than try to get themselves to recognize that that heat does not really exist. Most recently, Val Kilmer went to a materialist hospital to take care of a goiter that stubbornly refused to be believed out of existence.

From  Oprah Winfrey:

She was quoted as saying: "I have church with myself: I have church walking down the street. I believe in the God force that lives inside all of us, and once you tap into that, you can do anything."[120] She also stated, "Doubt means don't. When you don't know what to do, do nothing until you do know what to do. Because the doubt is your inner voice or the voice of God or whatever you choose to call it. It is your instinct trying to tell you something is off. That's how I have found myself to be led spiritually, because that's your spiritual voice saying to you, 'let's think about it.' So when you don't know what to do, do nothing."[121]

Not surprisingly, conservative Xians don't consider her a True Xian.

 

[lpetrich]

Marianne Williamson’s highlights at the Democratic debate - Vox - " She sort of feels like a cross between your local psychic, the hippie lady who runs the town secondhand store, and your mom (or, um, you) two glasses of Chardonnay deep."

On which issue she would push first as president:

My first call is to the prime minister of New Zealand, who said her goal was to make New Zealand the place where it’s the best place in the world for a child to grow up. And I will tell her, “Girlfriend, you are so on/wrong.” Because the United States of America is going to be the best place in the world for a child to grow up.

On the international relationship she would reset:

One of my first phone calls would be to call the European leaders and say, “We’re baaack.” Because I totally understand how important it is that the United States be part of the Western alliance.

Her closing statement — and message to Donald Trump:

I’m sorry we haven’t talked more tonight about how we’re going to beat Donald Trump. I have an idea about Donald Trump: Donald Trump is not going to be beaten just by insider politics talk. He’s not going to be beaten just by somebody who has plans. He’s going to be beaten by somebody who has an idea what the man has done. This man has reached into the psyche of the American people and he has harnessed fear for political purposes.

So, Mr. President — if you’re listening — I want you to hear me please: You have harnessed fear for political purposes and only love can cast that out. So I, sir, I have a feeling you know what you’re doing. I’m going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field, and sir, love will win.

Seems like goopy hippie idealism.

 

[lpetrich]

Democratic debate: Marianne Williamson’s beliefs are not rare in America - Vox - "Williamson (probably) isn’t going to win. But she speaks for a broad swath of Americans."

Americans who call themselves spiritual but not religious: in 2012: 19%, in 2017: 27% (Pew Research Center). More female than male, likely to have gone to college, about 50% Democrats and 30% Republicans. The Public Religion Research Institute: 18% (spiritual + religious: 29%).

Although her policy positions put her in the left wing of the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris to Bernie Sanders, her take on them is different. When addressing the issue of Medicare pricing policies for prescription drugs, she moved away from specific plans ("“if you think we beat Donald Trump by just having all these plans, you’ve got another thing coming") to something more broad:

We have to get deeper than just these superficial fixes, as important as they are. Even if we’re just talking about the superficial fixes, ladies and gentlemen, we don’t have a health care system in the United States, we have a sickness care system in the United States. We just wait until somebody gets sick and then we talk about who is going pay for the treatment and how they’re going to be treated.

What we need to talk about is why so many Americans have unnecessary chronic illnesses, so many more, compared to other countries. It gets back into not just Big Pharma, not just health insurance companies, but it has to do with chemical policies, it has to do with environmental policies, it has to do with food, it has to do with drug policies, and it has to do with environment policies.

The author notes

This type of rhetoric can easily go dangerous places, like her waffling on vaccines. But it can also speak to many people, including many women, who experience chronic ailments with unclear or unrecognized causes that are then poorly handled by the health care system.

 

[JohnG]

I never heard of her before the debates. Just today I read that there are republican donors contributing to her campaign. They want her on stage as much as possible.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...s-urge-giving-marianne-williamson/1598726001/

 

[lpetrich]

Marianne Williamson Kind of Stole the 2020 Democratic Debate | Time

A lot of people found her very goofy and loopy. But she did have some interesting things to say.

On health care:

“Ladies and gentlemen we don’t have a health care system in the United States, we have a sickness care system in the United States. We just wait until somebody gets sick and then we talk about who’s going to pay for the treatment and how they are going to be treated.”

On family separations at migrant detention centers:

“If you forcibly take a child from their parents arms you are kidnapping them. And if you take a lot of children and you put them in a detainment center thus inflicting chronic trauma upon them that’s called child abuse. This is collective child abuse.”

On race:

“I do not believe that the average American is a racist. But the average American is woefully undereducated about the history of race in the United States.”

On generational change in politics:

“That somebody has a younger body doesn’t mean you don’t have old ideas.”

Democratic debate 2019: Republicans urge giving to Marianne Williamson - because they hope that she will make the party seem silly. But it might have the same effect as AOC's college dance video. It may attract Oprah Winfrey fans and other such voters.

25 Funniest Tweets About Marianne Williamson at Democratic Debate
Like (1) Kate Aronoff on Twitter: "A head to head match up between Donald Trump and Marianne Williamson would be the best television of the century" / Twitter
The author concluded "I don't care how she polls; Marianne Williamson needs to be in every debate going forward."

 

[Ford]

I was going to say "she's nutty as a fruitcake," but that's unfair.


To fruitcake.

 

[lpetrich]

10 Wildest Facts About 2020 Dem Marianne Williamson – The Forward

1.No food comforts her
2.She’s fed millions of hungry people
3.She’s not a guru (she’s definitely a guru)
4.She put out a press release stating that she is not Oprah’s best friend
5. She spent the 70’s enjoying “bad boys and good dope”
6.She’s lukewarm on vaccines
7.Her campaign promises reparations for African-Americans
8.She made an edgy joke about Spanish
9.She used to lead a church, with special guest Steven Tyler
10.Sarah Silverman and Kim Kardashian endorsed her in the past

After the first day of debates, Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "I need to learn Spanish by tomorrow night at 9." / Twitter

Also, Kate McKinnon Perfectly Impersonates Marianne Williamson at the Democratic Debate - YouTube -- she's a Saturday Night Live regular who has also impersonated Elizabeth Warren.

Who Is Marianne Williamson, the Spiritual-y Author Running for President? | RELEVANT Magazine
Matt Whitlock on Twitter: "Marianne Williamson’s vision of serving as President of New Zealand. #DemDebate https://t.co/PLLokQ5QME" / Twitter - with a picture of her next to a hobbit house.
"Williamson is big into spirituality, but not of the easily identifiable type. On Twitter, Buzzfeed News reporter Ellie Hall dug up some of Williamson’s tweets about spirituality and …whew."

Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Yin is feminine, earth; yang is masculine, sky. When God is seen as He, the soul is seen as She. Just archetypes. Spirit impregnates soul." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "You're a lamp; God is the electricity. You're a faucet; God is the water. You're a human; God is the divine within you. ALLOW the flow. #fb" / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "If you want a simple explanation for what's happening in America, watch AVATAR again." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "God is BIG, swine flu SMALL. See every cell of your body filled with divine light. Pour God's love on our immune systems. Truth protects." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Visualize the oil spill plugged. Close your eyes for 5 minutes and see angels coming over it, filling it with sane and sacred thoughts. #fb" / Twitter
Wishing will NOT make it so.

Into America’s Spiritual Void With Marianne Williamson on Buzzfeed

They’re somehow both a little cheesy and radical. In 1992’s A Return to Love, sin is an “archery term” that “means ‘you missed the mark,’” and “the term crucifixion means the energy pattern of fear,” which “represents the limited, negative thinking of the ego” — rather than, e.g., the inherent fallibility of our hearts, redeemed through Christ’s sacrifice on the literal cross. Based on A Course in Miracles, a 1976 book by Helen Schucman, a psychologist who said Jesus had dictated the book to her, A Return to Love considers miracles as achievable shifts in perception. Aside from some everything is an illusion talk, A Return to Love offers firm guidance: love others, forgive others, devote your life to a power beyond yourself (specifically, God), don’t put your faith in material things, believe in the egalitarian dignity of your own life.

 

[Derec]

lpetrich, did you find another obsession? Will AOC be jealous having to share you with that gilf?

 

[lpetrich]

Interesting Tweets By Presidential Candidate And Author Marianne Williamson

Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "The way to get over someone having broken your heart is to visualize yourself pouring buckets of divine love all over them." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "When a woman is pregnant she can feel a new life gestating within her. We are collectively pregnant now, the consciousness of humanity a womb wherein is forming a new state of being. As with any pregnancy there are uncomfortable moments, but the miracle of new life is on the way." / Twitter

Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "The Goddess doesn't just dance under the moon on the night of a Solstice. She fiercely protects the children of the earth, and so should we." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Any time any of us move from fear to love, we participate in the morphic field out of which will emerge new possibilities for life on earth." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "I was laying awake in my bed worrying about something, when a voice in my heart said, "Marianne, most people in the world do not have beds."" / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "When enough minds are vibrating on a high enough level, then all lower thought forms will fall of their own dead weight." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Your body is merely your space station from whence you beam your love to the universe.Don't just relate to the station; relate to the beams." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Everyone feels on some level like an alien in this world, because we ARE. We come from another realm of consciousness, and long for home." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "The most important things in life are not visible to the physical eye. It’s only when we soul-explode beyond the confines of the mortal self, expanding the boundaries of what we think is real, that we begin to glimpse the truth of who we are and why we’re here." / Twitter

Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "All the films were good but AVATAR has changed the world. He didn't win an Oscar tonight, but James Cameron deserves a Nobel Peace Price #fb" / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Peacock feathers are created by peacocks eating thorns. Every thorn you have eaten can become a peacock feather too. #fb" / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Your mind is like an airplane, and YOU are the pilot: Rise above the clouds. Fly above the turbulence. Seek a smoother ride." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "A grey sky is actually a blue sky covered up by grey clouds. A guilty person is actually an innocent soul covered up by mistaken behavior." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Humanity needs a mental shower: we need to wash off all prejudices of the 20th Century and stand naked beneath the waters of eternal Truths." / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

I'm doing this because some of it is deliriously funny.

Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Terrible wildfires burning in Sweden. Let’s all pray for/visualize massive rain there. (The mind is that powerful.)" / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "For those too young to remember, trust me: who killed Kennedy is indeed a big deal. A nation, like an individual, is as sick as its secrets." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "The world has no idea the power about to rise from the global heart. Haters might have guns, but only lovers have wings." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "See a golden chord connect the heart of the Arab and the heart of the Israeli. See it joining them soul to soul. Imagine them one in spirit" / Twitter

Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "The “end times” means the end of the experience of time as we know it. Wars and rumors of war, yes; but also a time of signs and wonders. Streaks of light. Mental starbursts. The expansion of the heart. Preparation for holiness and timelessness and Love." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "The world is chaos. The only antidote to chaos is to cultivate your inner world. You can't exit chaos from consciousness which is chaotic." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Meditation is the most powerful antidote to chaos. Given the chaos in the world today, meditators meditating is one of the greatest ways we can be of service. A resonant field of inner peace is the greatest disruptor of all." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "The universe literally loves you." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Calling all goddess types: this a perfect time to do ritualistic nature ceremonies invoking divine alignment between humanity and nature." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Don't be afraid to surrender to the void. The void isn't empty; it's filled with the divine. #fb" / Twitter

Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Those who passed haven’t passed far, but live on in another dimension. ACIM says the time will come when we’ll see death as nothing more than the taking off of a suit of clothes. Our loved ones are still broadcasting; our need is simply to expand our set to pick up that channel." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Just beneath the surface, this isn't politics it's black magic. Entirely a psychic battle. Use your shield of Virtue and your sword of Truth" / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "The Phoenix that will rise from these ashes is a politics pointing neither Left nor Right so much as to love & decency & radical good will." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "To the consciousness/transformation/meditation/yoga/spirituality/recovery crowd: politics should be part of our awakening now. It's time." / Twitter

Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "In any moment of negative feeling, stop for 10 to 20 seconds and name all the things you're grateful for. (It stops the psychic bleed.) #fb" / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "Sadness is not a disease. We don't need pharmaceuticals to get through a dark night of the soul." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "The psychotherapeutic-psychopharmacological-industrial complex is one of the most threatening forces in America today. Putting our children on psychotherapeutic drugs does more to cause depression than to heal it. Parents awaken." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: ""The spiritual medicine that heals our sadness is not a pill or a shot; it’s an internal process of awakening... https://t.co/zUwiRF2BdG" / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "How many public personalities on antidepressants have to hang themselves before the FDA does something, Big Pharma cops to what it knows, and the average person stops falling for this? The tragedies keep compounding. The awakening should begin." / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "When they go low, go to a higher frequency where they cannot touch you. https://t.co/O60zdXYQqP" / Twitter
Marianne Williamson on Twitter: "When haters step up the hate, the lesson for the rest of us is to step up the love." / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

lpetrich, did you find another obsession? Will AOC be jealous having to share you with that gilf?

Gilf? Grandmother I'd like to fuck?

I find this so funny.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Williamson is amusing for sure. Yes, she needs to be in every debate for the entertainment value alone.

 

[Patooka]

So Williamson is the Vermin Supreme of the 2020 elections.

 

[ZiprHead]

lpetrich, did you find another obsession? Will AOC be jealous having to share you with that gilf?

"GILF"? Goof I'd like to fuck?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

lpetrich, did you find another obsession? Will AOC be jealous having to share you with that gilf?

I’d say you must be the jealous because they beat you to the ridicule, granted, this is warranted ridicule, so that could explain that.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

lpetrich, did you find another obsession? Will AOC be jealous having to share you with that gilf?

Should Ipetrich have posted a trigger warning for you?