 Paperback 1993 | |
| Author | Marianne Williamson |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Self-help |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | 1992 |
| Pages | 336 |
| ISBN | 0-06-092748-8 |
| OCLC | 317503896 |
| 299/.93 20 | |
| LC Class | BP605.C68 W56 1996 |
| Part of a series on the |
| Paranormal |
|---|
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (1992) is the first book by Marianne Williamson, and concerns the 1976 book A Course in Miracles by Helen Schucman. A Return to Love was a New York Times Best seller.
The book contains Williamson's reflections on the book A Course in Miracles and her thoughts on finding inner peace through love. Amazon.com describes its theme as "how we each can become a miracle worker by accepting God and by the expression of love in our daily lives." [1]
The book is divided into two main parts, Principles and Practice. The Principles section has chapters entitled "Hell", "God", "You", "Surrender" and "Miracles". The Practice section has chapters "Relationships", "Body", "Work" and "Heaven". [1]
In each chapter, Williamson defines certain concepts. For example, she defines "darkness" as internalized fear. Williamson also provides personal experiences and anecdotes to further explain the concepts. Strong Christian references are woven throughout the book. [1]
The book is written with the understanding that the reader will have a working knowledge of religious concepts. Some of Williamson's explanations are not mainstream Christian theology views. For example, in chapter 3 ("You"), section 2 ("The divine mind"), when referring to Christ she writes "The word 'Christ' is a psychological term. No religion has a monopoly on the truth. Christ refers to the common thread of divine love that is the core and essence of every human mind." [1]
Reviews of the book were generally favorable.
A Return to Love spent 39 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list in 1992 [2] and was number one on the Publishers Weekly non-fiction best-sellers list for 11 weeks.[ citation needed ] It was credited as having been written by one of the two authors that helped bring New Age perspectives to the American mainstream, the other being Thomas Moore. [3] [ citation needed ]
Williamson promoted the book as well as A Course in Miracles when she appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show , an episode that received more pro-viewer mail than any other show for 1992. She also spoke of the book, and The Course, when she was interviewed by Barbara Walters on the ABC television show 20/20. [4] In July 2012, twenty years after the book was published, Williamson was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on a Super Soul Sunday (OWN TV) episode titled, "20 Years After A Return to Love". [5]
The book has also been labeled by critics as having paranormal and anti-science philosophy in regard to health issues. However, Williamson has rebuffed such framing:
“This entire idea of me as anti-medicine and anti-science could not be further from the truth." [6]
Chapter 8 of the book, titled "Body", is the most criticized. [7] [8] In it, Williamson states:
Bob Carroll, of The Skeptic's Dictionary , wrote: "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." [9]
Writing in Commentary magazine, John Podhoretz described Return to Love as "almost unspeakably tasteless" in its blithe misappropriation of concepts central to the world's major religions...[it is] a work of surpassing vulgarity in a surpassingly vulgar field [that, nevertheless] offers both sound and surprisingly moving advice." Readers are advised to seek meaning in something larger than themselves, to get over the issues of their past, and, "to act on wisdom from your grandmother, expressed in sugarcoated cliches: Always look on the bright side. If God gives you lemons, make lemonade." [10]
Notable quotations from the book include: [11]
One particular passage from the book has become popular as an inspirational quotation:
"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 doesn't serve the world. There's 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're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
The passage was paraphrased in the 2005 film, Coach Carter , and in the 2006 film Akeelah and the Bee .[ citation needed ] It has also been popularized because it has mistakenly been attributed to Nelson Mandela since 1996. [12] [13]
Williamson herself is quoted as saying, "As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people." [14]
The passage has been compared to a statement of Jesus of Nazareth found in Matthew 5:16, "let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." [15] [16] [17]
Faith healing is the practice of prayer and gestures that are believed by some to elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing, especially the Christian practice. Believers assert that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by religious faith through prayer or other rituals that, according to adherents, can stimulate a divine presence and power. Religious belief in divine intervention does not depend on empirical evidence of an evidence-based outcome achieved via faith healing. Virtually all scientists and philosophers dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.
A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific laws and accordingly gets attributed to some supernatural or praeternatural cause. Various religions often attribute a phenomenon characterized as miraculous to the actions of a supernatural being, (especially) a deity, a magician, a miracle worker, a saint, or a religious leader.
Unity is a spiritual organization founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore in 1889. It grew out of Transcendentalism and became part of the New Thought movement. Unity may be best known for its Daily Word devotional publication begun in 1924. Originally based in Christianity with emphasis on the Bible, Unity more recently has said it offers "positive, practical Christianity" and describes itself as "for people who might call themselves spiritual but not religious."
Caroline Myss is an American author of 10 books and many audio recordings about mysticism and wellness. She is most well known for publishing Anatomy of the Spirit (1996). She also co-published The Creation of Health with Dr C Norman Shealy MD - ex Harvard professor of neurology. Her most recent book, Archetypes: Who Are You? was published in 2013. Myss describes herself as a medical intuitive and a mystic.
A Course in Miracles is a 1976 book by Helen Schucman. The underlying premise is that the greatest "miracle" is the act of simply gaining a full "awareness of love's presence" in a person's life. Schucman said that the book had been dictated to her, word for word, via a process of "inner dictation" from Jesus Christ. The book is considered to have borrowed from New Age movement writings.
Helen Cohn Schucman was an American clinical psychologist and research psychologist. She was a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University in New York from 1958 until her retirement in 1976. Schucman is best known for having "scribed" with the help of colleague William Thetford the book A Course in Miracles, the contents of which she claimed had been given to her by an inner voice she identified as Jesus. However, at her request, her role as its "writer" was not revealed to the general public until after her death.
Marianne Deborah Williamson is an American author, speaker, and politician. She began her professional career as spiritual leader of the Church of Today, a Unity Church in Warren, Michigan. Williamson has written several self-help books, including A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles in 1992, which became a New York Times Best Seller. She was launched into prominence by Oprah Winfrey, being a frequent guest on her daytime talk show and becoming known as her "spiritual advisor".
The Second Bill of Rights or Bill of Economic Rights was proposed by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, January 11, 1944. In his address, Roosevelt suggested that the nation had come to recognise and should now implement, a second "bill of rights". Roosevelt argued that the "political rights" guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness". His remedy was to declare an "economic bill of rights" to guarantee these specific rights:
Endeavor Academy, founded in 1992 as the New Christian Church of Full Endeavor, was a community of students of Charles Buell Anderson, which focused primarily on the teachings found in the book A Course in Miracles. Anderson's teachings also incorporate elements from the New Testament, and from other various spiritual and religious leaders. The community lists itself as an "international school of enlightenment", and also as a seminary.
Louise Lynn Hay was an American motivational author, professional speaker and AIDS advocate. She authored several New Thought self-help books, including the 1984 book You Can Heal Your Life, and founded Hay House publishing.
João Teixeira de Faria, known also as João de Deus, is a Brazilian convicted rapist, self-proclaimed medium, and self-proclaimed psychic surgeon. He was based in Abadiânia, where he ran a spiritual healing center called the Casa de Dom Inácio de Loyola. He received media coverage on CNN, ABC News, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. James Randi and Joe Nickell exposed his healing procedures as nothing more than carnival tricks, and there is no evidence that the benefits reported by patients are anything more than placebo effects.
Gary Zukav is an American spiritual teacher and the author of four consecutive New York Times Best Sellers. Beginning in 1998, he appeared more than 30 times on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss transformation in human consciousness concepts presented in his book The Seat of the Soul. His first book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979), won a U.S. National Book Award.
Andrea Cagan is an American writer, biographer and ghostwriter. She has edited and collaborated on more than fifteen books, including biographies of Diana Ross, Grace Slick, Joan Lunden and Prem Rawat. She has brought a dozen books to the bestseller lists, including three New York Times number-one bestsellers and one Los Angeles Times number-one bestseller.
The law of attraction is the New Thought spiritual belief that positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences into a person's life. The belief is based on the idea that people and their thoughts are made from "pure energy" and that like energy can attract like energy, thereby allowing people to improve their health, wealth, or personal relationships. There is no empirical scientific evidence supporting the law of attraction, and it is widely considered to be pseudoscience or religion couched in scientific language. This belief has alternative names that have varied in popularity over time, including manifestation and lucky girl syndrome.
Bernie Siegel is an American writer and retired pediatric surgeon, who writes on the relationship between the patient and the healing process. He is known for his best-selling book Love, Medicine and Miracles.
Sean Richard Sellers was an American triple murderer, one of 22 persons in the United States since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 to be executed for a crime committed while under the age of 18, and the only one to have been executed for a crime committed under the age of 17. His case drew worldwide attention due to his age as well as his jailhouse conversion to Christianity and his claim that demonic possession made him innocent of his crimes.
Debbie Ford was an American self-help author, coach, lecturer and teacher, most known for The New York Times best-selling book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers (1998), which aimed to help readers overcome their shadow side with the help of modern psychology and spiritual practices. In following years, she went on to write eight more books including Spiritual Divorce, Why Good People Do Bad Things, and The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse, which have sold over 1 million copies and been translated into 32 languages. She led workshops on "Shadow Process" and hosted TV and radio shows, and also established the "Ford Institute for Transformational Training".
Barry Karr is an American skeptic and paranormal researcher, currently the executive director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He has been consulted by the media on the paranormal. Karr has been involved in many investigations including faith healing, UFOs, firewalking, ghosts and others. He is a published author in two anthology publications, and as an editor of two others. Karr is a proponent of scientific skepticism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Larry Dossey is a physician and author who propounds the importance for healing of prayer, spirituality, and other non-physical factors.
The 2020 presidential campaign of Marianne Williamson, an author, was announced on January 28, 2019, after the initial formation of an exploratory committee on November 15, 2018. Williamson's bid for the Democratic nomination was her second political campaign, after previously running as an independent to represent California's 33rd congressional district in 2014. Prior to her candidacy, Williamson was known as "Oprah's spiritual adviser" due to her frequent appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show.