and life you love.

If you or anyone you know has ever struggled with sadness or loss or depression, my guest

today is here to share an enlightening perspective on its deeper meaning in our lives.

Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed spiritual author and lecturer.

Marianne has been a popular guest on shows like Oprah, Larry King Live, Good Morning

America, Charlie Rose, and Bill Maher.

Six of her eleven published books have been New York Times Bestsellers.

The mega-bestseller, A Return to Love, is considered a must read.

Marianne's other books include The Law of Divine Compensation, The Age of Miracles,

Everyday Grace, A Woman's Worth, Illuminata, Healing the Soul of America, A Course in Weight

Loss, The Gift of Change, and A Year of Miracles.

Her newest book, Tears to Triumph: The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment, is

available now.

Marianne is a native of Houston, Texas and is the founder of Project Angel Food, a meals

on wheels program that serves homebound people with AIDS in the Los Angeles area.

To date, Project Angel Food has served over 10 million meals.

Marianne also co-founded The Peace Alliance and serves on the board of The Results Organization,

working to end the worst ravages of hunger and poverty throughout the world.

Marianne, thank you so much for making time to be here.

Thank you for having me.

I want to acknowledge, once again, I know you've been on the show before and we only

did audio because we had some challenges with the video.

But thank you for the work that you do in the world.

Right back at you.

I've told you this…

Thank you.

...it just… it always makes such a difference to me and I'm always so excited when you

have a new book coming out, which today…

It's an honor when you say that.

Thank you.

Tears to Triumph.

Read the full thing.

It is extraordinary.

Thank you.

You've been counseling people for over 30 years…

Yes.

...in some very serious situations.

Indeed.

You've also had dark nights of the soul yourself.

Tell us about what inspired you to write this book now.

Well, actually, why I decided to write the book, I ran for Congress a couple of years

ago.

And after the election, a few days afterwards, I was being interviewed by Maria Shriver and

she asked me if I was sad.

And I said, “No, I'm not sad.”

She said, “Really?

You're not sad at all?”

I said, “No, you know, somebody… you don't go into a political election knowing you're

going to win.

Somebody's going to win, somebody's going to lose.

So I'm not sad, I'm… whatever.”

She said, “Really?

You're not just a little bit sad?”

She said, “I had a cousin who ran for Congress and lost and it was just devastating for him

for a long time.”

And I just…

“No, it's not sad.”

And then about 2 or 3 days later I think, I was actually sitting in my apartment and

it was like a black wave, huge wave, was coming at me like a tsunami.

And I knew it.

There was no mistaking it.

And I had been through it once, very, very terrible time in my life, a tragic time in

my life decades before.

But also, we all go through our dark nights of the soul.

And I think also, suffering gives you x-ray vision into other people's sufferings.

So, for instance, like when you were talking about my work.

My career began right smack dab in the middle of the AIDS crisis.

And so from the very beginning of my work, applying these principles in the lives of

people in often catastrophic situations has been core to my experience.

Now, what I have seen though in the last few years, what we've all seen, is that it's

almost like we've begun to make being deeply sad wrong.

Something has happened in our society where what I think of as a normal spectrum of human

suffering, if you take a risk and really put yourself into it and many people back you

and support you and then you fall flat on your face, of course you're going to be depressed

about this for a while.

If you are diagnosed with a serious disease, of course you're going to be depressed about

this for a while.

If you go through a painful divorce, of course you're going to be in pain for a while.

But those pains are not a mental illness.

And what I've seen in the last few years is so many people who are on antidepressants,

who are on pharmaceuticals when if you ask them why, describe situations that are depressing

but in a way that is part of life.

And this is particularly disturbing and I think all of us should be very aware of this.

The FDA itself has warned, and does warn, for people 25 and younger, antidepressants

can increase, not decrease, the suicide risk.

We have huge increase in suicides, we also have huge increase in antidepressant use.

So I don't see the causal relationship.

I'm not saying there's a causal relationship between taking them and committing suicide,

but neither am I saying that we've proven that there's a causal relationship between

taking them and not.

So I think there's been a pathologizing of normal human suffering that is very unhealthy

in my experience and in the experience of many people that I've worked with and spoken

to.

A dark night of the soul is some of the most transformative times that we go through in

our lives.

They are sacred initiations.

You learn things.

That's what's so painful.

What's so painful is you have to look at things that are so painful to look at.

You have to look at your failure, you have to look at your part in your own disasters.

You have to look at your own mortality, you have to grieve the loss of a loved one or

the loss of a marriage or a love affair.

But I think that the psyche has an immune system just like the body does.

If you're in a car accident, you go through something and it's understood it's gonna

take a while to heal.

Your body is bruised.

And we often feel, everybody knows this, you know, you go through a rough time and you

feel like you're bruised emotionally because you are.

But humanity would not have evolved over the last however many thousands, hundreds of thousands

of years were we not imbued with the capacity to take a hit.

And that's true not only physically, but also emotionally and psychologically.

Catastrophes didn't just start happening.

Heartbreak didn't just start happening.

Grief didn't just start happening.

And in our really arrogance, the modern mind has decided that it can do better than certain

natural systems.

And we know with our bodies to work with your immune system, and yet with a lot of the over

medication that's applied in America today, we're trying to sort of override the immune

system.

And the psychic immune system, much like the physical immune system, involves taking time.

You're gonna be sad for a while.

You're gonna be depressed for a while.

A lot of people say, “Oh, no, you know, Williamson, you know, don't tread there.

This is a physical disease.

We see there's a chemical imbalance in depression.”

But I ask you, do you know anyone who has been clinically diagnosed as depressed that

they gave a blood test to or some kind of brain test to see all this chemical change

in their brain?

No.

Clinical… the diagnosis of clinical depression is a questionnaire.

And when you look at that questionnaire, I don't know anybody who can't look at some

of those and go, “Yes, I've been there.”

Yes.

So I think that it's extremely important that we not stay to a corner of thinking.

Look, I have as much respect for biomedical research as anyone does.

I'm not saying… and I'm not saying that there's no place for psychotherapeutic drugs,

bipolar situations, schizophrenia, and so forth, but not within the spectrum of normal

human suffering that we've begun to pathologize in this country.

And so I think that if I'm talking to a therapist or a doctor who does not factor

the soul into their calculation and I think that it's a soul disease, it's a spiritual

disease, who… they're saying what am I to tread on medical ground?

I'm challenging the assertion that this is medical ground and who are you to tread

on spiritual ground?

This is an ancient malady called the dark night of the soul.

And if you look, the three spiritual traditions that I looked at in the book: Buddha, the

story of Moses and the exodus, and Jesus.

They, like all great religious and spiritual systems, have the issue of human suffering

at their core.

Buddha said life is suffering.

That's the essence of suffering.

He says that is what I teach, that life is suffering, and I teach the cessation of suffering

through the realization, he said, that the things of this world can only bring temporary

happiness.

Well, you and I live in a culture that says if we're unhappy, we need to get this or

get that or get that or get that.

Buddha says the very fact you think you need this to make you happy is your setup for despair.

And then in the story of the exodus, the whole point is that God sent Moses to deliver the

Israelites from their suffering as slaves, and the suffering of the Israelites in their

journey to the promised land.

And then, of course, the suffering of Jesus on the cross.

So it's not like the spiritual traditions don't have anything to add.

And so I wanted to write a book where people might feel, hopefully will feel, some guidance

and some illumination as to how to navigate these times, not to run away from these times.

You know, somebody was telling me the other day that buffalos when they see a storm coming,

they don't turn around.

They run right into it.

That they know that that's… and I heard that before I wrote the book or I would've

put it in.

That they know that the best way to get through it is to go right into it.

And I think there are certain times in life, and I felt that with this last one in my life.

This is coming.

This is… this is… this couldn't be avoided no matter what.

You're gonna have to look at this, you're gonna have to do some deep forgiveness of

yourself and others and taking responsibility in all those things or else you will come

out of this more, do they say, bitter rather than better.

Yeah.

You know, cramped rather than expanded.

And I think when you're younger, one of the things that's so disturbing to me about

this with young people is not only the physical aspect, which is that 25 and younger antidepressants

increase, can increase the risk of suicide, the FDA has said this.

It's written in a little black box, but nobody talks about it.

But I think the 20s are hard.

Yes.

I mean, it's just… it's hard.

So in young people being depressed is like, yeah, honey, this is called becoming who you

are.

And then in older people you're depressed because of who you've become.

So, you know, on both sides it's like the dark days are part of the natural order and

transformative process I think.

So I can even hear someone in the audience saying, “Oh, Marianne, this sounds amazing

but I actually am on antidepressants right now.”

What would you say to them?

Oh, thank you for mentioning that because I think it's so important.

I am not a medical doctor and I would never suggest with any pharmaceutical that you just

go throw it in the wastebasket.

My whole point is we should be far more sober about how we get on them and we should certainly

be sober about how we get off.

So if anybody is feeling with this conversation that is articulated not just by me but by

others as well, and do feel that they would like to move away from pharmaceutical treatment

of their depression, obviously you should only do this under the supervision of a doctor

who tells you how best to do that.

So according to many experts, you know, clinical depression is being alarmingly overdiagnosed

and overtreated.

Why do you think that our suffering has become such a profit center?

Surely you don't really… you're not really without the answer.

Any of us who think about this are with the answer.

It's what I call the psychotherapeutic pharmacological industrial complex.

Yes.

We're talking about billions of dollars here.

Another one that you hear a lot is a lot of young women, girls even, who are not even

in their… not even sexually active yet taking birth control pills to, quote on quote, regulate

their hormones.

What is this regulate your hormones?

Nature has been regulating our hormones for hundreds of thousands of years.

Yeah.

What is going on here?

Another thing I find interesting in terms of our community, Marie, is there's so many

people who don't want to touch gluten, don't wanna put… ooh, I wouldn't want those

chemicals in my gut, who don't seem to transfer that into chemicals in your brain so casually.

Yeah.

What is that about?

And you have something else in the book that is really interesting and I… you say the

place…

“That which is placed on the altar is altered.”

Yeah.

“And a prayer for a miracle is not a request that the situation be different, but a request

that we see it differently.”

Right.

And then I love that you also juxtaposed that with, you know, for someone who is in deep

pain right now, because there will be people watching who are very hopeful and you say,

you know, when your spouse has left you after 25 years, where's the miracle in that?

When your child has died from a drug overdose, where's the miracle of that?

Right.

What is your response, this idea that what you place on the altar will be altered?