Thinking about her, she seems like she would be an Oprah type, who dispenses lots of advice about marriage and parenting, but who has never been married, and who never had children.

I was correct about the former, but wrong about the latter.  She has one child, in what sounds like an accidental pregnancy, and which, if the media decides they like her, you will never, ever hear discussed again: https://www.lamag.com/longform/the-new-age-of-marianne-williamson/2/

“My daughter lives in London, and that is about as far as I will go in discussing her,” she says. “So be it.”

Was or is their relationship close?  I very much doubt it.  I think she is much too involved with herself, with her work, and with her, as she calls them, audiences.  She chose to keep the child, perhaps in part because at the time she thought she might actually want her.  I’d be curious, in any event, to see what her daughter has to say, if anything.  Her best play is most likely to keep all this at arm’s length.  She is most likely already on the other side of the Atlantic for good reason.

Abstract love is not love.  And in general the people who talk the most about it seem to actually feel it the least.

The whole Democrats slate, with the possible exception of Tulsi Gabbard, who Google is even now trying to torpedo, is nuts.  I honestly think Joe Biden is a full blown psychopath.  What we see in all those pictures is just the tip of the iceberg.  Think the movie “Spartan”, and what I recall as the unseen politically powerful Senator, with Val Kilmer.  Kamala Harris literally got her start in politics on her back and on her knees.

It’s unbelievable.  I would be extremely embarrassed if I were a Democrat.  The party has not always been without ideas, and without leadership.  But it is now.

Again, the plan was for Obama to set the stage, and Hillary to close the deal.  Electioneering was supposed to be unnecessary by now.  They were going to legalize all the illegals, crack down on conservatives right to enter the public space with dissenting speech, and facilitate cheating as widely as they needed to.  But she lost.  Thank God she lost.

Maybe one day we will finally see the criminal trials we all voted for.  It’s past time.

Edit: also from the article:

I looked forward to hearing her ideas every week, but she was like an egomaniac control freak,” says David Wenger, a current church member 

The thing with narcissists is that they are often extremely charismatic people.  They are frequently very passionate, and if they are intelligent, they have a lot to say.  Everything they believe, they believe fully, and for anyone who has doubts about life, they will dispel them with absolute faith and certainty.  This particular Personality Disorder is well suited to religious leadership.

To say she would make a horrible President, though, is the understatement of this year, for me, in all likelihood.

I tried to read “Return to Love” perhaps 5-8 years ago, right around the time I realized both my parents were most reasonably labeled narcissistic. I was seeing narcissists behind every tree and stone. And I concluded she, too, was a narcissist, and stopped reading.

I might now be more open, but I doubt it. Here is my thing: she talks about love, but views as evil, as “demonic”, people who question the motives of people from countries suffused with violent radicalism, and who view traditional American values of mutual respect, diversity of thought, tolerance and common sense as essential to a vibrant and healthy national life.

In effect, by framing things as she has, she has cast her lot in with the emotionally detached zealots, cultists, and aspiring terrorists.

This, itself, bespeaks to me an emotional shallowness. She uses the words, like love, but they are abstractions to her. This implies people are abstractions to her, which to my mind validated my initial gut instinct. My gut instincts are usually accurate, even if in the spirit of competence I am always willing to question and scrutinize them.

Yesterday I spoke of, I forget how I put it, but in effect plastic, ersatz, superficial love as something I specifically reject. Using words is so easy. Manipulating symbols is so easy. Being your message is much harder, and I would suggest as a general principle that no one who evidences the drive for guruhood that Williamson manifestly has should be trusted.

Anyone who cannot grok the answer to “why Trump” is lacking something essential, something without which it is not possible to be a fully present member of society.

“You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”

It’s important not to let trauma pass through generations.  You have to stop it with you.  I think I did a reasonably good job of this.

I think it is very common for parents to use their children for emotional support, to help them meet their own emotional needs.  This is a form of abuse, in my view.  You should keep yourself disentangled from their lives.  Support them where needed, always be available, guide them when you can and they are willing to listen, but take care of your own needs without reliance on them.

Now, the experience of mothers must be different than that of fathers.  How much, I can’t know.  I’m not a woman, much less a mother.  But for fathers at least you have to make your own way.

I would like to grow to be old.  I would like to see grandchildren, and even great grandchildren.  But the loss of one or even both of my children would not put me in state of permanent shock.  We are all heir to the frailties which come with these bodies, and we will all cross that great river, sooner or later.

I don’t think losing your child is the worst thing that can happen.  I think the worst thing that can happen is that you stop seeing the sunrise, stop feeling the life around you, stop being open to new and wonderful experience.  You owe all this to yourself, and I think giving it to yourself cannot but make you a better parent.  You are modelling health to your children.  All personal growth which you undertake for yourself is, in the long run, a gift you give, or at least make available, to your children.

Who you are is what you teach.  This is an important principle.  And in not relying on your children for emotional support you teach them to be independent.  And when they do not feel they need to pull away from you, they are more likely to stay close emotionally.

Neither of my children ever really went through a rebellious phase.  They made mistakes, and no doubt did not tell us everything they were doing, but neither ever went through a period of being a sustained little shit.

I think the necessity of rebellion comes with both clingy parents, and perhaps even disengaged parents.  In the first case, anger and emotional distance are needed to attempt the process of individuation, and in the latter I think the sense of feeling felt is missing, so on some level the child attempts to force engagement through anti-social behavior.

As I slowly thaw, I am feeling the passage of time.  I am getting back sensations and feelings that happened 30-40 years ago.  It is strange.  They were things that I felt on some level, but would not have known I felt, would not have acknowledged.

In a certain sense we are all all alone.  We pass into death alone.  But life can also be filled with moments of connection, too, especially if we do not force it, are not starved for it, and if we allow it to happen.

We all happen to see rainbows from time to time.

I am an “Empty Nester”.  I am divorced, and my children do not come to see me where I live, ever, although I spend a decent amount of time with them, considering that they are in college hours away.  We have fun.  We have a solid relationship, based on mutual respect.

But it is sad, seeing them grow.  It is so tempting to give in to sentimentality, to the “but they were just children yesterday”.  I suspect we all do it, at least those of us who were emotionally involved in our childrens lives.

It occurs to me, though, that this sort of sadness has as its basis the notion that such happiness will never occur again, that feelings that have come once will never come again.

Plants are seeded, and they grow, and they blossom, then they wither and die.  Some of them are just hiding under the soil, waiting their turn to live again above the ground.  Some of them plant the seeds of new plants before they die.  In all cases, life returns, in a cycle.

You cannot prevent tragedy, and you cannot prevent change.  But you CAN prevent happiness.  You CAN limit your life to trees which have fallen, and will never rise again.

Oh, it is so hard to be soft, so hard to be flexible.  It is so hard to retain a child’s spirit in a body and mind like mine.  But it is POSSIBLE.

Letting go is realizing something is done, and something new is beginning, perhaps something wonderful.  And of course we all have some say in this.  We all have voices, hands, feet, minds.

“Life” has been boring into me lately, but what is so painful is most likely that, after living in a cave so long, light and water feel like strangers. 

I am adapting, though, slowly, slowly, slowly.

I continue to be attacked at night by demons from time to time. I experimented a good long while with one last night and they really dont like the word love.  Love is their krytonite.

 I say this as a practical observation. I am still not particularly loving myself, outside of my children. I aspire to it, but I intend something more substantial than the plastic substitute usually intended (so it seems to me) by the people who use this word nearly reflexively.  True love is the perfection of self. It is the result of complete maturation.

In important respects, it is the final conquering of chronic fear.

It is your worries which are on shaky ground, not your sense of safety.

because the past was practice and preparation, for your next bold move, and your next daring escape.

Everything you have ever done, felt, thought, and experienced has made you who you are, this very moment.  What will you do with that knowledge?

I am speaking to myself, but you can listen in.

I’m in an odd place.  I have to jump into the dark water with both feet.  It frightens me, but the thing is, I have a LOT of experience dealing with fear.  I don’t like fear, but fear does not frighten me.  I’ve lived with it so long.

My old world is slowly dissolving.  It is a staggering, maddening feeling.  But it is the only way.  My commitment is total.

Epstein, in my view, was attacked to make it clear “they” could get to him anywhere, any time.

But he wasn’t killed.  They apparently decided that a full suicide was likely to bring more light on their activities, and the goal must have been to scare the living shit out of him.

But game this out.  If he keeps his mouth shut, he’s most likely looking at a life sentence.  He will never leave prison, and may well be killed for the sake of safety once he’s safely behind bars forever.  Why not?  He may do five years then spring a leak.

If he talks, he does five years, but again he’s looking at a continual risk of murder.  No really good options.

The ONLY way he might be able to live and breathe as a free man again in this lifetime is if he takes down the WHOLE NETWORK.  If the people who can get to his cell mate get arrested, then give up the people giving them orders, on up to the Clintons and who knows who else.  Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, the Bush’s.  Who can guess?

His only good play is ALL the names, all the dirt, and a prayer that Trump and Co. can push through something which will shake our nation to its foundations, in an utterly good and cleansing way.

That’s my take.  His take may be a renewed love of oxygen and desire to avoid risk.  Hard to say.  I am praying he breaks, though.

I have from time to time wondered why such a wonderful system of emotional awakening is not better known after so many years. And it occurred to me that one key attribute it possesses is that it cannot be made into an obsession. It cannot be repurposed into a drug, an anesthetic. It is the opposite of an agent of dissociation.

Yoga can be used that way. Many yoga practioners are obsessive. “Meditation” in all its many forms can be used that way. And of course “compassion” and “kindness” are the closest thing to a religion many Westerners have. They NEED them.

The fruit of Kum Nye is enriched experience, nothing more. The goal is to spark a self sustaining reaction with no obvious outward signs. Even though it is precisely the medicine most people need, precisely for that reason it has no obvious appeal.

I think this is close to the truth. It has also been marketed poorly. It is hard to see where it has been marketed at all, anywhere, in any sustained, serious way.

When I am ready, I will do my part.