Born with Love
(Introduction to A Return to Love)
Marianne Williamson
When we were born, we were programmed perfectly. We had a
natural tendency to focus on love. Our imaginations were
creative and flourishing, and we knew how to use them. We
were connected to a world much richer than the one we connect to
now, a world full of enchantment and a sense of the miraculous.
So what happened? Why is it that we
reached a certain age, looked around, and the enchantment was
gone?
Because we were taught to focus
elsewhere. We were taught to focus elsewhere. We were
taught to think unnaturally. We were taught a very bad
philosophy, a way of looking at the world that contradicts who we
are.
We were taught to think thoughts like
competition, struggle, sickness, finite resources, limitation,
guilt, bad, death, scarcity, and loss. We began to think
these things, and so we began to know them. We were taught
that things like grades, being good enough, money, and doing
things the right way, are more important than love. We were
taught that we're separate from other people, that we have to
compete to get ahead, that we're not quite good enough the way we
are. We were taught to see the world the way that others had
come to see it. It's as though, as soon as we got here, we
were given a sleeping pill. The thinking of the world, which
is not based on love, began pounding in our ears the moment we hit
shore.
Love is what we were born with.
fear is what we learned here. The spiritual journey is the
relinquishment, or unlearning, of fear and the acceptance of love
back into our hearts. Love is the essential existential
fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on
earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in
ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.
Meaning doesn't lie in things.
Meaning lies in us. When we attach value to things that
aren't love -- the money, the car, the house, the prestige -- we
are loving things that can't love us back. We are searching
for meaning in the meaningless. Money, of itself, means
nothing. Material things, of themselves, mean nothing.
It's not that they're bad. It's that they're nothing.
We came here to co-create with God by
extending love. Life spent with any other purpose in mind is
meaningless, contrary to our nature, and ultimately painful.
It's as though we've been lost in a dark, parallel universe where
things are loved more than people. We overvalue what we
perceive with our physical senses, and undervalue what we know to
be true in our hearts.
Love isn't seen with the physical eyes or
heard with the physical ears. The physical sense can't
perceive it; it's perceived through another kind of vision.
Metaphysicians call it the Third Eye, esoteric Christians call it
the vision of the Holy Spirit, and others call it the Higher
Self. Regardless of what it's called, love requires a
different kind of "seeing" than we're used to -- a
different kind of knowing or thinking. Love is the intuitive
knowledge of our hearts. It's a "world beyond"
that we all secretly long for. An ancient memory of this
love haunts all of us all the time, and beckons us to return.
Love isn't material. It's
energy. It's the feeling in a room, a situation, a
person. Money can't buy it. Sex doesn't guarantee
it. It has nothing at all to do with the physical world, but
it can be expressed nonetheless. We experience it as
kindness, giving, mercy, compassion, peace, joy, acceptance,
non-judgment, joining, and intimacy.
Fear is our shared lovelessness, our
individual and collective hells. It's a world that seems to
press on us from within and without, giving constant false
testimony to the meaninglessness of love. When fear is
expressed, we recognize it as anger, abuse, disease, pain, greed,
addiction, selfishness, obsession, corruption, violence, and war.
Love is hidden within us. It cannot
be destroyed, but can only be hidden. The world we knew as
children is still buried within our minds.
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