(The following was interview that was published in The MOON Magazine.)
The MOON: You’re known as a spiritual teacher and author. Why are you running for office?
Williamson: As President Eisenhower said, “Politics should be the part-time profession of every American.” Any citizen should feel that running for office is something to consider, yet we’ve developed in this country the myth of a political class. We treat politics as a spectator sport, and the average citizen is just watching the game played by others. That’s the problem right there. The House of Representatives was intended to be “the House of What’s Happening Now.” The farmer would leave his farm and become a member of the House for a while. A shopkeeper would come and be a member of the House for a while. A candle maker would come and be a member of the House for a while. And it shouldn’t be any different today.
People often create artificial distinctions between things that aren’t really distinct. There’s no place where spirituality stops and anything else in life begins, because spirituality is simply the journey of the heart—the journey from fear to love, from limitation to limitlessness, from living in the past to living in the present. So why wouldn’tsomeone with a prime focus on spirituality, with a skill set having to do with developing more loving and compassionate viewpoints and behavioral patterns, go into politics? Can you think of a place where such things are needed more?
The MOON: Actually, no. [Laughter] I learn from your press secretary that you write your own speeches—or rather, that you don’t need to write speeches because you speak from your heart, which is to say, authentically, in the moment. That in itself is a break from the conventional campaign model, in which speeches are crafted after focus groups determine what voters want to hear, and are further vetted so as not to alienate potential campaign contributors. Can you speak to that?
Williamson: I’ve written ten books, so when you’ve spent months of your life working on material it becomes part of your internal dialogue. Talking about a topic isn’t difficult if you’ve been reading or writing about it all day. When I speak politically, it’s not as if something just pops into my head. It’s a product of a conversation I’ve been having for quite a while. I’m not new to politics. I published a book called Healing the Soul of America in 1997. I founded the Department of Peace campaign. So it’s not like I’ve been doing one thing with my life and then woke up one day and decided to do something else. Quite the opposite; I see this move as an extension of what I’ve been doing for thirty years.