fear works best when love isn’t close
inviting love with A Return to Love - a collection of teachings from Marianne Williamson's love bible: we are all meant to shine
Let me introduce you to one of the most influential books of my life: A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson. At its core, the book is about finding inner peace by choosing love over fear and thus literally returning to love. This signifies the essence of healing for me — unlearning the bullshit lessons we were taught, seeing through the illusion and recognising love in ourselves and others.
These teachings have become unshakeable guideposts in my life. When I feel misguided, when my vision is blurred, when I’ve gone astray, the principle of love acts like a lighthouse that radiates light to get myself back on course, to guide me safely through the fog.
This all may sound hyperbolic, but that’s just the way it is for me. And I’ve realised that even though we might all be aware of the principle of love — most of us do in fact know that love is bigger than fear — we are quick to forget when life gets busy. Which is why the book plays such an important role in my life. It helps me remember what is true, what actually matters. It sets the tone, helps me tune out all the noise of modern life. In times of inner turmoil, returning to love helps me find my way back to peace. That’s why I want to share its teachings — to help spread love.
learning to read with an open mind
First of all, let me emphasise how skeptical I was of the new-age side of the book. Its spiritual lingo really put me off. Just reading expressions like God or Holy Spirit already gave me the ick (and there is a lot of both in it), but I wanted to give Marianne Williamson a proper chance and practice non-judgment & open-mindedness. In the preface, she states: “I wrote this book with an open heart. I hope you’ll read it with an open mind.” That’s what I sought to do. I have to admit, it’s quite a challenge to stay open-minded with some of its lingo and ideas. But trust me, you won’t regret it.
treat spirituality (and this post) like a buffet
A general lesson I’ve learned with spiritual ideas: you shouldn’t take them too literally. Treat it like a buffet (picked this quote up from
) — choose the practices and notions that work for you, and leave the stuff that doesn’t suit you for others. This way of approaching healing practices makes one less closed off towards new insights, staying open to various ways of healing. The same works well for A Return to Love and that’s how this post is intended — a collection of teachings from the book. Pick the ones that resonate with you & ditch the ones that don’t.god = love
I am not religious, but I believe in something. I believe there is a higher power connecting everything, holding everything together, but I can’t put into words what exactly. It’s more of an abstract belief in the universe. In A Return to Love Williamson explains that you can read God as divine love, which works waaay better for me. It’s so much easier for me to believe in Love than in God.
trust that love is real
The course can be summed up very simply:
1) Love is real. It’s an eternal creation and nothing can destroy it
2) Anything that isn’t love, is an illusion
3) Remember this, and you’ll be at peace
A core idea of the book is that fear is literally a bad dream, an illusion. Why is this key? If we recognized that, we’d have an antidote to anxiety, to rumination. We could understand that we don’t need to follow our anxious thoughts, since they’re lying to us. There is no hidden truth buried beneath them. There is no benefit from engaging with our anxiety. We are allowed to return to love and stay protected.
love is what we were born with, fear is what we have learned here
“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have 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.”
(M. Williamson - A Return to Love)
The book helped me unlearn so much of my conditioning. We have been raised in a culture based on fear and competition. We learn that we need to protect ourselves from all the evil in the world, we learn to fight against each other for scarce resources. We learn that our world is based on hierarchies, and we need to climb this hierarchy in order to be loved.
calls these beliefs LHBs (learned hierarchical beliefs): “LHBs have been passed down from generation to generation as a way of organising society along the lines of status, wealth, and power. The foundation of LHBs is that your value depends on where you are on the hierarchy of human worth.” (from Bunny’s stellar book Hello, Higher Self)
LHBs mean that some people are worthier than others, more deserving of love and admiration. If you turn this around, it would mean that we all are enough just the way we are: “I am enough and always have been.” This statement sounds pretty simple and not that groundbreaking, right? But looking at our society, at our world, at our conditioning — it’s a pretty radical shift in perspective. And this shift in perspective is what A Return to Love is all about, this is the miracle Williamson is talking about.
the miracle is a shift in perspective = a return to love
Fear is a vicious cycle that begets more fear. Yet, when we invite love, we break that cycle. The book is a reminder that it’s our choice, we can choose to believe in love instead of fear. The whole attunement-process begins with our own decision to fully believe in love, to invite love.
the strength of surrender
It’s not easy for me to surrender, to give up control. But the book helped me reframe surrender as something strong, something powerful: “Passive energy has its own kind of strength.”
Again, unlearning my conditioning, thinking surrender is weak. We have been told to respect aggressive energy, we have created a fight mentality (we think we should have that dawg in us). We are always fighting for something, but the spiritual path is the opposite, giving up control, surrendering to love. It’s the necessary balance to our aggression. It’s what we need to bring our patriarchal world back into balance.
giving up results
Surrender also means giving up attachment to results, learning to trust. Thus, we stop trying to control events (which is impossible anyway). When we try to control our lives, we become tense, we can’t breathe freely. When we let go, when we surrender, we relax, we can breathe again. Williamson calls this process “a gentle liberation from pain”.
This was and continues to be a demanding lesson for me. It’s easier said than done, but I’m working on it. And the book helped me reframe this whole thing, helped me see that surrender is something I want to achieve in my life (instead of avoiding it). Surrendering is something I and we all can be proud of.
growth can be messy
“Inviting everything into our lives that will force us to grow—and growth can be messy. The purpose of life is to grow into our perfection. (…) Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don’t yet have the capacity to be unconditionally loving. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to draw our attention to that, and help us move beyond that point. Our comfort zones are the limited areas in which we find it easy to love. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job not to respect those comfort zones, but to bust them.”
(M. Williamson - A Return to Love)
we are looking for love in all the wrong places
“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.”
(M. Williamson - A Return to Love)
This hits home. I can't count how often I'm baffled by where people invest their energy, where they look for love. How misguided so many of our lives feel like. We seem to be missing the whole point. This is where A Return to Love is at its best: re-adjusting our lenses, setting our sails, navigating us on our quest for love & purpose. Focusing on the essentials, instead of wasting our energy hunting for things we don’t even need.
lessons on intimacy - why we’re attracted to unavailable people
“But to the ego, self-acceptance is death.
This is why we’re attracted to people who don’t want us. We know they’re not into it from the gate. We pretend to be surprised later when we find ourselves betrayed and they leave after an intense but fairly short stay.
They fit perfectly into our ego’s plan: I will not be loved.
The reason that nice, available people seem boring to us is because they bust us. The ego equates emotional danger with excitement, and claims that the nice, available person isn’t dangerous enough. The irony is that the opposite is true: available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy. They might actually hang around long enough to get to know us. They could melt our defenses, not through violence but through love. This is what the ego doesn’t want us to see. Available people are frightening. They threaten the ego’s citadel. The reason we’re not attracted to them is because we’re not available ourselves.
The ego seeks intimacy through control and guilt.
The holy spirit seeks intimacy through acceptance and release.”
(M. Williamson - A Return to Love)
if a return to love was a song:
I loooove this love-spreading jam by Little Simz, it’s the rare hip hop track where you don’t need to block out the lyrics. The title of this post actually is a quote from the song: “fear works best when love isn’t close”. Pleaaase, we need more rappers who are not afraid to ditch the lame hateful/misogynist/homophobic songwriting. Spreading love goes so much harder.
To close things off, I want to quote Williamson’s reflections on playing small and allowing ourselves to shine:
“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.”
(M. Williamson - A Return to Love)