Читать книгу Cast Away : For These Reasons - Lambert Timothy James - Страница 9

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's for everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

This inspiring quote by Marianne Williamson is from her book A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles, Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3 (Pg. 190-191). Even though Nelson Mandela never uttered this quote in his 1994 inaugural speech, for my generation, it is forever attached to the man. If something has to be objectively said about his one term as the President of South Africa, his cowardly rainbow approach on dissolving apartheid had made him the white South African bourgeois champion. And, of course, if one simply tries to look at him within the context of a man who spent twenty-seven years in prison without begging his masters for a pardon or cracking the skull of another inmate, he, in essence, deserves to be held as one of the mythical figures of the power of conviction who exemplifies the strength of character required in the struggle against social, commerce and trade, and political inequality. What other better way to limp into the next phase of this expedition?