You see, a lot of people here on our community at Mindvalley think personal growth stops

at becoming the best version of yourself.

Today, we're with Marianne Williamson, and what you're going to hear is a radical idea

that will make you see your growth in a different way.

Marianne, welcome to Mindvalley.

- Oh, thank you so much for having me.

- So, what captivated me about you is that I saw Marianne speak on stage to a group of

personal growth enthusiasts and she emphasized to them, and when I heard this, Marianne,

it changed my life, how our personal growth cannot stop at just us.

We need to go beyond just, for lack of a better word, a great yoga butt, and instead use everything

we are learning to go forth and fix the world.

In other words, if we stand for health, if we're a health coach, we can't just stop at

teaching people healthy nutrition, we have to stand up against the food companies that

use bad labeling and false advertising to create an epidemic of obesity.

So, let's start with that topic.

- I think you see the best template in nature.

When you see a cell in the body that actualizes and becomes all that it can be, it doesn't

just sit there.

It is guided through a natural intelligence to, whether the pancreas, the lungs, the heart

or whatever, to collaborate with other cells so that together they serve the healthy function

of the organ and the organism of which they're part.

So, the fullest actualization of the cell is its participation in that collaborative

matrix.

Now, when a cell disconnects from its sense of collaborative function, that's a malignancy.

When a cell thinks, "Oh, it's all about me, I'm going to go off and do my own thing and

build my own kingdom."

And it doesn't necessarily have to do with serving the healthy function of the organ

of which it's part.

That's cancer.

And that's a malignancy, not only in the body, it's a malignancy in consciousness, and that

malignancy in consciousness has infected the human race, the idea that it's all about me.

So, the ego mind is very sly, and it loves to talk about religion and spirituality, as

long as it's all about me.

So, what appears to be this fullest actualization of the best version of myself, is actually

the worst version of myself if it doesn't include the extension of myself into the public

sphere, something further than my private domain.

Even when you talk about something like nutrition, well, yeah, a lot of well-to-do, small part

of the population of the world can sit and have really nice conversations about nutrition,

while millions of people don't even have food, much less better nutrition.

So, the highest level of our personal growth is an extension into recognizing the systems

that are larger than our personal behavior that need to be transformed the way we did.

- And you know why that's so beautiful?

There's this blogger called Tim Urban.

He writes a blog called 'Wait But Why'.

And Tim is a genius.

Elon Musk calls up Tim to have Tim explain complex ideas around Tesla and SpaceX.

And there was a post that Tim Urban wrote, Elon Musk asked him to write this post, and

it was about one of Musk's new inventions, Neuralink, but Elon went on to state something

similar to what you did.

He said, "The unique thing about the human race is, as we're getting more connected through

technology, and Facebook, and Skype, we are moving into a different level of our species."

You take a human being today, you send them 10,000 years into the past where we were just

in hunter-gatherer mode, and that baby might grow up to be a hunter-gatherer.

You can take a baby from 10,000 years in the past, put him in the world today, and that

baby may grow up to be an engineer.

Human beings as individuals have not evolved much in 10,000 years, but collaboratively,

through technology, we have.

And that's why the world today has engineers, has satellites, has been sending rockets to

the moon.

We have created, according to Tim Urban, a new species called the human colossus.

Now, here's the interesting thing, all of us are cells in this human colossus, this

giant being that envelopes the planet, and as you said, many of these cells are not healthy

cells, but cancer cells.

- Well, the problem, as I see it, is that technology does give us this tremendous opportunity

to connect, but it also gives us an opportunity, should we choose that, to further disconnect.

I mean, technology of itself does not make the heart join with the heart of another.

It can also be used for the worst kind of exploitation.

It can be used for the worst kind of oppression even.

It can be for the worst kind of sales mentality, transaction at the expense of human relationship.

So, I think that the largest issue of the 21st century is not technology, but consciousness

and technology must serve consciousness.

Spiritually, everything in the material world is of itself neutral.

It either serves the ethic of love and connection, or it can serve the ethic of fear and disconnection.

So, I think in all of our excitement about technology, it's important to remember that

it is ultimately the decisions we make on the level of the heart, on the level of consciousness,

which, will determine where we go in the future.

We all know that, you know, so many people these days don't even look up from their screen

to have an interaction with the person sitting next to them.

And there's nothing that that computer can do yet, to mimic what your brain can do and

what my brain can do.

So, millions of years of evolution have gone into the various signals, and synapses, and

everything that can happen when you and I are just talking.

So, let's remember that because some of this technological obsession is addictive, some

of this technological obsession...And this is not in any way to minimize the possibilities

that it brings forth, but I think that we run the risk these days of underestimating

what can happen when your heart, my heart, your brain, my brain, what nature has done

with a brrrrrrrr, is much more evolved than anything that can happen on there.

- I love that vision that you have, that we are all part of a collective species, right?

And we are cells in this 8-billion-cell being.

How do we know if we are functioning as a proper cell?

- The answer to that, from a spiritual perspective, is inner peace.

If you're at peace, you got it going on.

If you're not at peace...And once again, this goes back to the genius of the psyche, that's

the signal, inner peace is a signal you're on the right path, and a disturbance of the

heart is a signal that you're not on the right path.

This was one of the reasons the over-pharmaceuticalization of our society is so dangerous because psychic

pain is there for a reason.

Psychic pain is an immune system function just as the physical body registers with pain

when there's a problem you need to address, the psyche registers with pain when there's

a problem you need to address.

So, if you feel disturbed about something, this is not something to cover over so that

you don't feel disturbed.

When you feel disturbed about something, it's something to listen to.

What is the disturbance telling me?

And the whole issue in politics is that the fact that there is such a disturbance in the

field is a sign it's time to move in another direction and the same focus on connectivity,

the same focus on new consciousness and new technology that forms the evolutionary impulse

of the 21st century needs to be expressed everywhere.

It needs to be expressed in politics, no more and no less than it needs to be expressed

anywhere else.

But right now, our politics, particularly in the United States, not just particularly

in the United States, around the world, but my focus is on the United States, the politics

of the United States is regressive, and it has to do with bolstering a system that is

not only inadequate in terms of its capacity to forge a sustainable future in the 21st

century, it's also inaccurate in its conceptualization of what's real.

- That's fascinating.

Why is it inaccurate?

- It's inaccurate because it posits us as machines.

It's a very Newtonian paradigm.

And so, the political system is stuck in this 20th-century model, which 20th-century science

itself has evolved beyond, which sees the world as a machine.

So, if there's a problem, you just tweak the pieces of the machine.

But those are just symptoms.

Those are just effects, and they are products and consequences of things happening in human

consciousness.

So, we need a politics that's whole person, we need a politics that is based in consciousness,

we need a politics that is based on a realization that number one, we are here to love each

other.

And everything we do life works, when we place ourselves in service of that which would increase

the field of love, and connectivity, and divine right relationship, that's when your individual

life works, and that's when our collective lives work.

So, any conceptualization of the world which posits that anything else is going on, such

as an economic primacy as opposed to a humanitarian primacy, is inaccurate if it in any way is

promoting the idea that that's what will bring forth a good society and a peaceful world.

- So, do you think, like, the measurements of politics today, ideas like GDP, like tax

rate, that there's an overemphasis on that?

- I think they both represent what is basically an obsolete operating system for economic

theory.

I think we are moving into an entirely new conceptualization, not only of where money

comes from, but where wealth comes from in terms of financialization over a monetary

system.

We have a whole...Economics is just one more area where the way we've been thinking, based

on where we landed by the end of the 20th century, is about to break open completely.

That's why there are all these new conversations about universal basic income, about basically

seeing money coming from payment rather than tax.

It's an entirely new conceptualization that is coming forth, and that's why we need a

new political conversation that will be open to the new ideas that are springing up everywhere

else.

- What is your view of the world 20 years from now if this new era of your vision of

politics became more commonplace?

- You can't just fight disease.

You have to cultivate health.

And when it comes to war and peace, we don't cultivate peace.

We don't wage peace.

Most of our focus when it comes to national defense strategy has to do with preparing

for war, and you begin with what's the vision of what is the likely consequence if you continue

that way?

Our defense strategy has very little to do with creating peace 50 years from now, much

less creating peace 100 years from now.

So, you want to move back from what you want.

What do we want?

We want a world without war.

We want a world at peace.

That's my vision.

So, then you start with the vision, and then you move back from that, and you realize,

"Well, how am I going to have a peaceful world if all I do is prepare for war?"

You go, "I have to wage peace."

So, the things that wage peace have to do with the expansion of economic opportunity

for women, the expansion of educational opportunities for children, the diminishment of violence

towards women, and the amelioration of unnecessary human suffering wherever possible.

When you have those factors present, you have a more peaceful community.

Right now, for every dollar we spend on genuine peace creation, we spend $1,000 on actually

preparing for war.

- What?

The ratio is that wide?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

We have a $718 billion defense military expenditure this year, and we have what we give to the

State Department and to the United States Department of...International Department of

Peace.

It's like a little fraction of that, and we know why, Vishen, it's because no corporate

profits are made.

No corporate profits are made from expanding economic opportunities for women, expanding

educational opportunities for children.

So, what happens is that those efforts, while they exist within the State Department, once

again, the money that is given is completely disparate from the money that is given for

preparing for war.

Another example is that in this current administration, the first Secretary of State...

- The former CEO of ExxonMobil.

So, the first Secretary of State in this administration was not a great humanitarian, or diplomat,

or peace builder, he was the former CEO of Exxon.

So, that tells you everything you need to know in terms of what the basic goals are.

- So, this is not the way to...

- It is corrupted at a fundamental level.

- Right.

Corrupted at a fundamental level.

- Twenty years from now, if you were running the world [crosstalk].

world [inaudible].

- Well, the President of the United States does not run the world.