glyph#122: liberation greatness power enlightenment poetry
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 and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you.
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 are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
—Marianne Williamson
Readers who take Williamson's words to heart risk developing lives regarded as eccentric. Apple, Inc., has forseen the possibility and offers this consolation in a video called "Here's to the Crazy Ones": http://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/18.html
Until November 4, 2006 this glyph was titled: "Our Greatest Fear, by Marianne Williamson, quoted by Nelson Mandela"
Email received on November 2, 2006:
The writer recommended http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/4564.htm for further information. This site includes a note from the ANC saying that they could find nothing in Mandela's speeches that quoted "Our Greatest Fear". Perhaps this was quoted by Mandela in conversation. Further information received with interest. —leif smithYour website [explorersfoundation.org] correctly attributes the "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate..." passage to Marianne Williamson, but inaccurately states that it was quoted by Nelson Mandela in a 1994 speech. This is a misapprehension that I think arose as people tried to explain why the passage was so frequently attributed to him. Actually, the passage appears nowhere in either of his two 1994 speeches ...
The Explorers Foundation Glyphery is a collection containing indications of things that have to do with the emergence of a world fit for explorers, and of a people fit to inhabit such a world. We call this the emergence of freeorder. We intend that our work and the work of similar ventures will spread a conviction that such a world is the destiny of humanity, one hard fought for by a growing few over centuries. Such conviction will inspire an avalanche of events, in imagination, thought, and action that will make it so. — http://explorersfoundation.org
http://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/122.html
entered before July 9, 2006; edited/updated December 16, 2007