and life you love, and this is not Q&A Tuesday. It's a very special day. Why? Because I am

here with one of my favorite authors of all time, a woman who has made such a huge impact

on my life, and I'll tell you about that in a moment. But first, I want to read you her

intro.

Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed spiritual author and lecturer. Six

of her ten published books have been New York Times bestsellers, four of these have been

#1 New York Times best sellers. Her first book, A Return to Love, is considered a must

read of the new spirituality and in 2006, a Newsweek magazine poll named her one of

the 50 most influential baby boomers. Her newest book is called The Law of Divine Compensation

on Work, Money and Miracles. Marianne, thank you so much for having us in your home today.

Thank you for having me on MarieTV.

I have to tell you this before we get into it. I want to tell all you guys. When I was

in my early 20s, I was having such a hard time. I was just starting out as a life coach

and I was questioning everything and I was having a hard time with my parents, with my

vocation and I was really in a tough space. I remember being in Union Square in the Barnes

and Noble and looking around for a book and your book A Return to Love just jumped off

the shelf at me and I picked it up and I started reading it, and I cried right there at Barnes

and Nobles because your words and what you put down in your work spoke so deeply to where

I was in my life and you gave me a pathway to get back to what I felt like was really

me and to do what I really wanted and to reconnect with my parents in a way that I've never even

imagined possible. I just wanted to thank you publically.

Thank you. You know so much of that book is based on the agony that I felt much like the

one you just described when I was in my 20s, and so much of that was spent in New York

City and I found A Course of Miracles in New York City. I was you wandering through Barnes

and Noble.

Thank you. It was just awesome. First thing I want to ask, we're talking about your new

amazing book, The Law of Divine Compensation, which by the way, if you do not have this

book, you need to get your hands on this book now. Get five copies, ten copies, and give

it to your friend and as we go through this interview, you're gonna hear why. You've written

so many books over the course of your career which has been amazing, and this one being

about work, money and miracles, when you first started as a writer and a teacher, did you

struggle to make ends meet and tell us just a little bit about that part of the journey

and how it's evolved.

I'm of the generation that grew up in the late 60s and the 70s and everything wasn't

so financialized the way it is now. I grew out of a hippie ethic, I needed to work, I

needed to pay the bills, but I didn't have this ambition that is so rampant now. When

I started lecturing on a course in miracles, there was no reason to think that I would

be able to make a living doing that because this career niche did not exist then. You

could be a clergy and I didn't see myself being clergy or you could be like a professor

of comparative religion in a university somewhere and I didn't see that for myself either. So

when I first knew about Judy Scotch going around the country talking about a course

in miracles, I thought that was just the most amazing thing, but there was no conceptualization

of that as something that you would do for a living. When I started lecturing on a course

in miracles, I remember I was working as a temporary secretary and I was working at a

building in Santa Monica here in LA that at that time was called the World Savings Building.

I'd been doing this temporary secretarial job and I was standing at the elevator bank

there and it was as though I heard a voice in my head say "this will be your last secretarial

job." It was really one of those things of like "who said that?" and at that time, I

had started lecturing on A Course in Miracles at a place called the Philosophical Research

Society. I didn't think I would pay my bills doing that and yet more and more people came

and I don't remember the specific day, but in fact it happened that enough people were

coming to my lectures with their $3 or $5 or $7 donation that I could live on that.

For me, that was so amazing. I was bringing in money that others would be strategizing

how to make more that I just thought was the coolest thing in the world. Then when my first

book came out and it was very successful mainly because of Oprah Winfrey, that was just such

a delight and a miracle but nothing I would've ever even conceived of.

Wow, so beautiful. What exactly is the law of divine compensation?

The law of divine compensation is just a phrase I came up with to describe a particular action

of how the universe operates. The universe is both self organizing and self correcting.

What do I mean by that? An embryo becomes a baby and a bud turns into a blossom and

an acorn turns into an oak tree. Clearly there is an invisible hand of sorts. You have a

sperm and you have an egg and then the next thing you know, cells are dividing and the

little brain is formed and toes and spleen and heart and lungs; it's so extraordinary.

From a metaphysical perspective, that amazing way that the universe supports life in moving

forward all the time is not just in physical nature, but in all aspects of things. Just

as the little embryo is programmed to become the baby, you and I are programmed to have

the best relationship possible. You were programmed to have the best career possible. There is

a programming by which this television show would be its best. The difference between

you and me and the acorn is that we can say "no."

Yes.

We can think thoughts and behave in ways that make us deviate from that otherwise perfect

self organizing pattern. Usually when we think of making things happen in our lives, we think

like you're looking at a computer and you bring up a blank document and then you have

to figure out what to write on it. That's one way of looking at life. If you want to

make anything happen, you have to bring up that blank document and figure out what to

do. Another way of looking at life is to think of an undeletable file that is always in your

computer. You might think of it as God's will. You might think of it as divine intelligence.

By whatever name you call it, that same force that makes the embryo turn into the baby.

The embryo didn't have to figure out how to become a baby. When you think of life that

way that I don't have to pull up a blank document and figure things out so much as I have to

bring down to the screen, this undeletable file always there but usually not brought

down to the screen because it's not the button I push or the file I select, by which every

thought and every action not only on my part, but on everyone else's part, including this

divine bio-computer of the universe that will make sure that everybody meets who we're supposed

to meet and everything happens that's supposed to happen, I can have that. Let's say I pick

up a file and the file is God's will document my career. File God's will, natural intelligence,

divine hand, whatever; document, career, document, money, and that is a programming in our minds.

This is no more true about money and career than it is about anything else. The quote

I have at the beginning of the book is from Einstein when he said:

"The most important decision we ever make is whether we think we live in a friendly

universe or a hostile universe."

If you believe you live in a friendly universe, then you believe that you are supported just

the way the embryo is supported in becoming the baby. The acorn is supported in becoming

an oak tree. You were supported by a universal plan of sorts, a divine architecture. That

architecture for the oak tree is within the acorn and there is an architecture within

your consciousness by which Marie becomes the highest creative possibility for Marie

this lifetime. Every aspect of the universe is already at work making sure every aspect

of your life unfolds according to that same divine perfection, but because we are treated

to think according to a mindset that rules the human race that is based on fear rather

than love, we are constantly thinking thoughts that knock us out of that universal order

and there are really only two categories: harmony and order or chaos. It's like a cancer

cell. When the cancer cell deviates, a cancer cell is a cell that's gone insane and it disconnects

from its natural intelligence and instead of existing to collaborate with other cells

in the synergistic way by which they come together to support the higher functioning

of the organ, the cancer cell goes off to do its own thing, build its own mass made

up of other sick cells, and of course that's destructive to the system. That's the way

we live on this earth. We have forgotten our native intelligence and that native intelligence

is love itself. When we live with the mind as a conduit asking only... there's a lesson

in A Course in Miracles a prayer that we're taught to say every day, "where would you

have me go, what would you have me do, what would you have me say and to whom," then you

find yourself flowing down the river in this divine alignment and you really do see that

the universe can bring more to you than you can bring to yourself. It's like the difference

between seeing a pile of iron shavings and saying "I'm going to put my fingers in there

and try to design these beautiful patterns, filament, and beauty." No. the only way I

can do that is introducing a magnet and the true self by whatever name you call it, you

can talk about it in religious terms or secular terms, it's the Christ self, the Buddha mind,

the universal life, whatever name you use for it is a magnet for all things good. The

law of divine compensation is not only that the universe is self organizing, but that

the universe is self correcting. Just as my body is programmed to work, your lungs breathe

and your heart beats, should there be injury to your system, the body is also programmed

to repair it and to heal itself. The law of divine compensation is that that is true on

every level of nature. What that means is that anytime there is a lack, there is diminishment;

there is a deviation from love. Within spiritual substance there is the ability and the intention

of the universe who enters into the mortal realm and compensate for whatever lack or

diminishment. I think that that is so important because we all have moments of deviation whether

I did it or somebody else did it, whether I made a mistake and I was stupid with my

money and I went bankrupt or do systems of economic injustice and Wall Street and banks,

etc, it was somebody else's fault; it wasn't even my fault. The point is the universe is

on it, but if I am in lovelessness, if I am in anger at myself for others, if I am in

attack about it, if I in some way constrict rather than open my heart during that period

of pain, then the universe cannot move through me to provide the compensation. Every thought

of love we co create a miracle because miracles occur naturally as expressions of love, but

every thought of lovelessness deflects the miracles, deflects the correction, deflects

the healing. That's why in the book, usually if somebody's going through money or career

issues, their coach does not say to them "who have you not forgiven" because that person

would say "forgiveness? This has nothing to do with forgiveness. This has to do with my

career. This has to do with my money." But anyplace we haven't forgiven is a place where

we are blocking love, so we are blocking the miracle, and in career as much as in anything

else, you never know where the miracle is going to come. You never know what avenue

this new opportunity is going to move through, but the universe is literally moment by moment

an infinite and endless opportunity machine, but if we're not present in that moment with

an open heart, we miss the opportunity.

One of my favorite parts of the books is actually in the preface and I literally almost fell

off my chair. I was like hooting and hollering because it was just so stinking good and you

talk about something that I've actually thought about a lot, and I actually typed it down

here. You said:

"What happens when someone says 'oh yeah, what about starving kids in Africa? Are they

poor because their consciousness is out of alignment with love?' Can you share your response?"

Anytime there's a problem, the ultimate cause of the problem was s deviation from love,

but that doesn't mean that the deviation from love was on the part of the person who is

experiencing the effect of that deviation. If someone gets cancer because there were

carcinogens in the water that they were drinking, whoever put the carcinogens there was not

thinking if they knowingly did that. The lack of ethics, the deviation from love, and a

deviation from the sense of the sacredness of life itself was not on the part of the

person who then got the cancer. Are you with me?

Yep.

We can talk about other factors, etc, but my point is that the deviation itself was

not on the part necessarily the person. When you talk about 17,000 children on this planet

who die of hunger every single day of starvation, not just hunger, 17,000 children every single

day; that's one ever four seconds; starve on this planet. That means since you and I

started talking, figure out how many four second intervals there were; that's how many

children have starved to death. Obviously we're not saying "at least I'm not" because

some people I think are. I am certainly not saying that there's something in the consciousness

of that child that somehow is not as loving as ours. I find that obscene actually. I find

that viewpoint really morally obscene. However, you can say that those children are starving

from a lack of love. The love in this case on the part of the industrializations of the

world. In the United States, we spend $700 billion a year on our defense budget. Economist

Jeffrey Sacks from Columbia University has established that for $100 billion spent over