I’ve been reading the book, A Return To Love, by Marianne Williamson, which was recommended by a friend.  It’a a rich, inspiring, work of self-healing, and I thought I’d share a little bit of it with you:

The ego is like a gravitational force field, built up over eons of fearful thinking, which draws us away from the love in our hearts.  The ego is our mental power turned against ourselves.  It is clever, like we are. and smooth-talking, like we are, and manipulative, like we are.  Remember all the talk about a silver-tongued devil?  The ego doesn’t come up and say, ‘Hi, I’m your self-loathing.’  It’s not stupid, because we’re not.  Rather it says things like, ‘Hi, I’m your adult, mature, rational self.  I’ll help you look out for number one.’  Then it proceeds to counsel us to look out for ourselves, at the expense of others.  It teaches us selfishness, greed, judgement, and small-mindedness.  But remember, there’s only one of us here: What we give to others, we give to ourselves.  What we withhold from others, we withhold from ourselves.  In any moment when we choose fear instead of love, we deny ourselves the experience of Paradise.  To that extent that we abandon love, to that extent we will feel it has abandoned us.