Unity Magazine Interview with Marianne Williamson: The Power of Positive Transformation

Katy Koontz: You’ve been addressing the relationship between spiritual evolution and political action for quite some time, so your run for Congress is not exactly unexpected. What compelled you to take this new direction now?

Marianne Williamson: I don’t really feel I’m moving in another direction. I’m having the same conversation I’ve always had; I’m simply expanding it to include our collective rather than just our individual lives. I’ve always been concerned with a moral dimension of social and political issues.

I think people with an understanding in spiritual or personal growth are the last people who should be sitting out the great social and political issues of our days, because if you have a clue as to what changes one heart, then you’re the one with a clue as to what changes the world.

All of us want to feel like we’re useful. I simply felt that this is the way I could be of greatest use at this point in my life.

KK: You’ve said the government has lost its ethical center, and we need a more humanitarian politics, where conscience has a greater influence than deep pockets. That’s a tall order. Can we really get there?

MW: Of course we can! Abolitionists abolished slavery, women suffragettes gained women the right to vote, and the Civil Rights movement ended segregation in the American South. Now it’s our generation’s turn to show up for our country.

It will be difficult to interrupt the now firmly established pattern by which money wields such undue influence on our politics, but it can be done. It will take a lot of effort—a people’s movement both in and out of Congress—leading probably to a constitutional amendment. But I believe getting the money out of politics is the greatest moral challenge of our generation. The corrupting influence of money on our politics threatens democracy itself.

Read the full interview here.