Our Deepest Fear
I hate it when movies and television steal great poems and quotes for gratuitous tear-jerker moments.
The Dylan Thomas/Bob Dylan references in “Dangerous Minds” is just one example in a sea of sacrilege.
I get the same feeling when I see BB King doing Burger King commercials and Janis Joplin selling a Mercedes Benz from her grave.
Is nothing sacred?
So while watching “Coach Carter,” in which Samuel Jackson plays a tough-as-nails basketball coach at a ghetto California high school, I started to cringe when one of his players recites a wonderful poem in a typical movie power moment. Dim the lights and cue the sappy soundtrack.
I had heard the poem before, wrongly attributed to Nelson Mandela’s 1994 inauguration speech.
It’s good, and once again Hollywood has bastardized it to sell a bucket of popcorn and a gallon of Pepsi.
Well, I’m not selling Goobers and $8 movie tickets. I just want to share it with you.
Our Deepest Fear
by Marianne Williamson
from A Return To Love: Reflections on
the Principles of A Course in Miracles
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, 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 is not just in some of us; it is in 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.
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