“TIMELESS … UNDENIABLY COMPELLING.” 
—Redbook
“How strange that this should be the club we belong to: women who have
been to hell and back. But we all understand what this means. It’s a
membership badge we wear with knowing looks and lines on our
foreheads.… Such has been our womanquest. The relationships, careers,
children, dreams, betrayals, hopes, wins, losses  … Our feelings have
blended. Our stories converge.”
So begins the extraordinary  new book by one of today’s most
renowned and inuential spiritual leaders. A hugel y popular
proponent and interpreter of A Course in Miracles , Marianne
Williamson has made a phenomenal impact on audiences
worldwide, via her captivating lectures and TV appearances. With A Woman’s Worth , Williamson turns her charismatic voice—
and the same empowering, spiritually enlightening wisdom that
energized her landmark work, A Retur n to Love—to exploring the
crucial role of women in the world today. Drawing deeply and
candidly on her own experiences, the author illuminates her
thought-provoking positions on such issues as beauty and age,
relationships and sex, children and careers, and the reassu rance and
reassertion of the feminine in a patriarchal society. Cutting across  class, race, religion, and gender, A Woman’s Worth
speaks powerfully and persuasively to a generation in need of
healing, and in search of harmony. OceanofPDF.com“IMPASSIONED, INTENSE” 
—Mirabella
“Marianne Williamson is blessed with the ability to get to the kernel
of truth .… [She] addresses issues of the spirit with such earnestness
and grace that she can conve rt even the most jaded of souls.… Her
voice is refreshing and new.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“She puts the responsibility, glory and direction of women’s lives
right where it belongs—in our own hands and hearts.”
—The New Times (Seattle)
“DEEPLY FELT … IT’S CLEAR SHE’S BEEN THERE.”
—Booklist
“Marianne Williamson has powerful and universal things to say and
she says them well.… This is a work of wisdom.”
—Santa Rosa Sun
“Filled with insightful comments and inspirational thoughts that will
empower women to fulll their potential.”
—Chattanooga News
“A potent message.”
—Kirkus Reviews
OceanofPDF.comOceanofPDF.comA Ballantine Book  
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1993 by Marianne Williamson
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-90550
eISBN: 978-0-307-83335-8
v3.1_r3
OceanofPDF.comPREFACE 
 
When I told girlfriends I was writing a book about
women, most of them said something like this: “For us, for women
who have been to hell and back?”
How strange that this should be the club we belong to: women
who have been to hell and back. But we all understand  what that
means. It’s a membership badge we wear with knowing looks and
lines on our foreheads. Most of us have known at least one divorce
or one devastating breakup, whether we were married or not. Other
circumstances can get us into the club as well: abortion,  disease, a
variety of public or private humiliations, drugs, alcohol, the death of
a loved  one, incompetent parents, sick children. It’s everything we
thought life would never be like. We don’t feel self-pity so much as
fear and deep grief. Such has been our womanqu est. It is conscious and discip lined, or
unconscious and unbridled. Whether we’ve learned anything or not,
our suering has shaped who we are, and for better or for worse
we’ve been changed by the past few years. We are not who we
would have been had we not descended. We have a lot of stories
and a lot to edit. In writing this book, I have no purpose other than a creative spill
of my own guts. But that in itself is a passionate purpose, and I have
seen how like my guts are to those of other women. The
relationships, careers, children, dreams, betrayals, hopes, wins,Marianne Williamson  
Los Angeleslosses—all these form my landscape too. Our feelings have blended. Our stories converge. Every writer hopes her words will open a door, will oer a
passage of light the reader can glide through. I dare to dream that
dream for this book. OceanofPDF.comCONTENTS 
 
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Chapter One  
GLORIOUS QUEENS AND SLAVEGIRLS
Chapter Two  
INTERNAL LIGHT
Chapter Three  
A MAGNIFICENT ADVENTURE
Chapter Four  
EMBRACING THE GODDESS
Chapter Five  
SEX AND SOUL
Chapter Six  
A GOLDEN CORD
Chapter Seven  
THE CASTLE WALLS
DedicationAcknowledgments
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
OceanofPDF.comONE
Glorious Queens and Slavegirls
The eternal feminine draws us upward. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It’s very dicult being a woman. It’s very dicult
being a man too, I realize, but this is a book about women. Sam
Keen wrote a book about men, which he called Fire in the Belly. My
friend Tara called me up one day and told me she wanted to write a
companion volume, Volcano in the Uterus . I laughed when she said
that, but inside I was thinking, and Catastrophes in the Breasts  and
Terror in the Ovaries …
More women cry, loudly or silently, every fraction of every
moment, in every town of every country, than anyone —man or
woman—realizes. We cry for our children, our lovers, our parents,
and ourselves. We cry in shame because we feel no right to cry and we cry in
peace because we feel it’s time we did cry. We cry in moans and we
cry in great yelps. We cry for the world. Yet we think we cry alone. We feel that no one hears. And we must all listen now. We must
hold the crying woman’s hand and minister to her tende rly, or she
will turn—this collective feminine shadow self—into a monster who
will go unheard no longer. This book is an eort to hear and
understand her, in today’s world, as she exists at this moment,
imprisoned while still dressed in all her ancient, soiled regalia. Sheis like a child yet she is not a child. She is our mother, our daughter,
our sister, our lover. She needs us now, and we need her. Womanhood Today is tentative and unsure, a thing dened more by
what it isn’t than by what it is. For some women, this is not a
problem. They have risen above the complexities of society’s
projections and misunderstandings and now y high above the
clouds. For most women, however, the resistances they encountered
as they reached for the sky were so great that their wings  have now
drooped, and they try no longer. Womanhood is a mass pain of unspoken depth; and when we try
to speak it, we’re liable to be told, “There you go—co mplaining
again!”
As long as this is true, not half but all of humanity is obstructed in
its journey to our cosmic destination. This destination is far, far
away, a place so deep inside us that we have barely glimpsed its
outer walls. This is a book about a woma n’s inner life. Here, we are our real
selves, while in the outer world we are impostors. We’re not sure
why we’re posing, except we have no clue how not to. We have
forgotten the part we came here to play. We have lost the key to our
own house. We’re hanging out outside the door. The stress of being
away so long from home is hurting us, even killing us. We must not
stay away; we must nd the key. For until we do, we will continue
to shrivel—ou r faces, our breasts, our ovaries, our stories. We are
drooping down and falling apart. If we knew how to moan, they
would hear us on the moon. But the dirt around us is moving, making room for tiny sprouts. Like every woman, I know what I know. Something is starting to
happen. New things lie in store for the earth, and one of them is us. Womanhood is being recast, and we’re pregnant, en masse, giving
birth to our own redemption. Watch. Wait. Time will unfold and fulll its purpose. While we
wait, we must not go unconscious. We must think and grow. Rejoice
and dream, kneel and pray. There is holiness in the air today;
modern prieste sses are appearing all over. They are who we are, forthey are us: friends, therapists, artists, businesswomen, teachers,
healers, mothers. Start laughing, girls. We have a new calling. You can tell who we are: We use whatever our busines s is as a
front for talking about things  that really matter. We’re only stuck in
this work, you see, because our real work was taken away from us
several thousand years ago. We looked on the map, but our town
was gone. We looked through the catalog but couldn’t nd the
course we wanted. It’s as if someone removed our chair but couldn’t
take away our longing to sit. Together we embark on a quest for our own enchantmen t. It will
take us to a place where what is feminine is sacred, as are a lot of
other things as well. There we can become who we are meant to be
and live the life we are meant to live. But we need to see the lay of
the land, and we need to see clearly the way back home. “What?” you say. “Me, enchanted?” Yes, I say, and don’t act so
surprised. You knew when you were little that you were born for
something special and no matter what happened to you, that
couldn’t be erased. The magic could not be drained from your heart
any more than Lady Macbeth could wash the guilt from her hands. Sorry to tell you, but you had it right years ago, and then you
forgot. You were born with a mystical purpose. In reading this now,
you might remember what it is. There are women who are enchanted, living here now as there
have always been and always will be. They are bearers of the
Goddess’s torch, however dim its light may shine. On the inner
planes, they are priestesses and queens. They are absolutely
powerful; they have made it past the gates. I have known a few, and
I have heard of others. And I will tell you all I know, of who they
are and how they do it. At every moment, a woman makes a choice: between the state of the
queen and the state of the slavegirl. In our natural state, we are
glorious beings . In the world of illusion, we are lost and imprisoned,
slaves to our appetites and our will to false power. Our jailer is athree-headed monster: one head our past, one our insec urity, and
one our popular culture. Our past is a story existing only in our minds. Look, analyze,
understand, and forgive. Then, as quickly as possible, chuck it. Our insecurity is inevitable in the absence of personal meaning. Without a sense of connection to deeper, more noble ideas, we are
doomed to a desperate struggle for things that ll us up: the job, the
relationship, the looks, the body. We are tyrannized by a belief that
we are inadequate. No nazi with machine gun could be a more
tormenting presence. The monster’s third head is the pop culture we collectively spend
billions of dollars supporting  each year. It does not support us in
return. Most movies do not love us, most advertising does not love
us, most of the fashion industry does not love us, and most rock and
roll does not love us (very sad that one—it used to). Like many
battered wives , we look endlessly for love in places with no capacity
to love us back. We must consciously choose to do this no longer. Until we do, the monster will keep us locked up in his dungeon. Deep inside us, however, is an inborn escape hatch. It’s a love that
doesn’t end or waver or make money o us or play games with us or
stomp on our hearts. It’s our spiritual core. Within it, we exist as
cosmic royals: mothers, sisters, daughters of the sun and moon and
stars. Within this realm, we nd God, the Goddess, and our own
sweet selves. Laugh at all of this at your emotional peril. The outside world contains many vicious dreams, and those
dreams have a hold on us. I know, I know. But I have heard some
spiritual secret s, and so have you if your ears have been open. There
are ways to transcend, ways to go forward. We can leave the
monster behind. We can nd deliverance for our hearts and come
home to scented roses. There is a door, a true one, a passage of emotional opportunity,
and we are perfectly capable of sailing through it. Angels are
holding it open for all of us. But you must be bold. Sissie s can’t see
angels, so sissies can’t nd the door.Most women I know are priestesses and healers, although many
don’t yet know it, and some never will. We are all of us sisters of a
mysterious order. Several years ago, I found myself waking up at four-fteen each
morning, my eyes popping open as if on cue. Later, I learned that in
days of old four-fteen was considered the witching hour. How
perfect, that seemed to me. We would all awaken at the same time
and join with one another, and worship, and know. We still know things. As best we can, we continue to commune. “Is the baby asleep?” “Did you get the job?” “Did he come home?”
“Does your pain feel better?” “Have you heard the news?”  We begin
as friends and then develop a shared realization, conscious or
unconscious, that we are bearers of magic and that our circles of
support are circles of mystical power. It’s a woman’s prerogative to
know of magic , and to practi ce magic, and to use her knowledge to
help the world. We are used to thinking of Friday the thirteenth as bad luck. In
fact, Friday the thirteenth was the day the witches gathered. When
the patriarchal system, headed by the early church, began to
squelch the power of women, witches were deemed evil, and many
great women were deemed witches. Their meeting time, then, was
seen as bad luck rather than as what it truly was: a time for women
to gather and share energy and pray together and heal. Our mystical power should not be relegated to the distant past. It
still exists. I want mine now, and so does every woman I know. Our
power is not evil but good. We must reclaim our goodness as well as
our power. Today, the reason we haven’t found our grail,  the key to
who we are as women, is because we look for it in worlds of false
power, the very worlds that took it away from us in the rst place. Neither men nor work can restore our lost scepter. Nothing in this
world can take us home. Only the radar in our hearts can do that,
and when it does, we return to our castles. There we are crowned in
gold, and we remember how to laugh, how to love, how to rule. We can’t look to the world to restore our worth; we’re here to
restore our worth to the world. The world outside us can reect ourglory, but it cannot create it. It cannot crown us. Only God can
crown us, and he already has. I once saw a funny birthd ay card. On the front it read Happy
birthday to my daughter, the princess . On the inside, it continued,
From your mother, the queen . What is a princess, and what is a queen? Why is princess  often a
pejorative description of a certain type of woman, and the word
queen  hardly  ever applied to women at all? A princess is a girl who
knows that she will get there , who is on her way perhaps but is not
there yet. She has power but she does not yet wield it responsibly. She is indulgent and frivolous. She cries but not yet noble tears. She
stomps her feet and does not know how to contain her pain or use it
creatively. A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it
bestowed on her but having  passed her tests. She has suered and
grown more beautiful becaus e of it. She has proven she can hold her
kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about
something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power. Our kingdom is our life, and our life is our kingdom. We are all
meant to rule from a glorious place. When God is on the throne,
then so are we. When God is in exile, our lands are at war and our
kingdoms are in chaos. To be a princess is to play at life. To be a queen is to be a serious
player. Audrey Hepburn was a queen, Barbara Jordan is a queen,
Gloria Steinern is a queen, Judy Collins is a queen. Most of us are a
little of both. The purpose of life as a woman is to ascend to the
throne and rule with heart. The growth of a girl into a woman, a princess into a queen, is not
a liberal transition. Like any true creative ow, it is radical. That is
not to say it is angry or harsh. But it is radical, the way truth is
radical—and birth and art and real love and death. It changes
things. It represents a shift in core beliefs, a belly-up of dominant
paradigms. Without this shift, a woman seesaws between  the brink
of disaster and the brink of salvation. She goes from moments ofbliss to moments of terror. And then the children, and the world,
begin to seesaw with her. When a woman has owned her passionate nature, allowin g love to
ood her heart, her thoughts grow wild and erce and beautiful. Her juices ow. Her heart expands. She has thrown o crutch and
compromise. She has glimpse d the enchanted kingdom, the vast and
magical realm s of the Goddess within her. Here, all things are
transformed. And there is a purpose to this: that the world might be
mothered back to a great and glorious state. When a woman
conceives her true self, a miracle occurs and life around her begins
again. Mary’s was a virgin birth, and the word virgin  means  “a woman
unto herself.” The actualized  woman is powerful unto herself and
gives birth to things divine. Today we have the chance to give birth
to a healed and transformed world. This cannot be done without a
major uprising of the glorious in women, because nothing can be
healed without the female powers that nurture and protect, intuit
and endure. What does this mean for the individual woman living
day to day in a world that resists her expansion and makes her
wrong for her passions? It means nding others who have seen the
same light. They are everywh ere, and like us they await instruction. They are men and women, young and old, who have heard the joke
but take it too seriously to laugh. It is funny but also tragic, this
cutting o at the pass of the life-force of half of humanity. Something new is brewing, and let’s be grateful that it is. The Queen
is coming to reclaim her girls. When the Queen emerges, she is magical and enchanting. She is
calm and happy. She creates  order where there was none. She has
grown new eyes. When a woma n rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic  and her
sense of possibility contagio us. We have all seen glorious women,
full of integrity and joy, aware of it, proud of it, overowing with
love. They shine. I have known this state in other women and, at
moments, in myself. But it could be a stronger statement, a more
collective beat. We don’t have to do anything to be glorious; to be
so is our nature. If we have read, studied, and loved; if we havethought as deeply as we could and felt as deeply as we could; if our
bodies are instruments of love given and received—then we are the
greatest blessing in the world. Nothing needs to be added to that to
establish our worth. Just stand there. Sit there. Smile. Bless. What a hunge r is left
unfullled in our society for no reason other than that women have
been so devalued by others and so dishonored by ourselves. Every woman I know wants to be a glorious queen, but that option
was hardly on the multiple-choice questionnaire we were handed
when we were little girls. Rarely did anyone tell us we could choose
to be magic. When I was a child, there was a woman who lived across the
street named Betty Lynn. She was sort of a cross between Auntie
Mame and Jayne Manseld. I thought she was the most beautiful,
most fascinating, most wond erful woman in the world. Betty Lynn
was wild and gorgeous and drove a Cadillac. I thought it was beige,
but she called it the color of champagne. She wanted a thatched
roof on her guest house. She obviously had sex with her husband. She always told me I was wonderful. Years later, I remembered the scotch and water that was usually
in her hand, and many things began to make sense that hadn’t made
sense when I was young. But at the time, she was a model of sorts, a
glamorous woman who made me see magic when all I found on my
side of the street was a lid placed on my emotions and disapproval
of my more outrageous passions. Why, in the thirty-odd years since I knew this woman, have I
never forgotte n her? What did she represent that struck me as so
real, so passionate, so enchanted? Whatever it was, the alcoho l helped her let it out, but then the
alcohol enslave d her, and then it killed her. That’s clear. But why do
people who have the most ardor, the most enchantment , the most
power so often feel the need for drugs and alcohol? They do not
drink just to dull their pain; they drink to dull their ecstasy. Betty
Lynn lived in a world that doesn’t know from ecstatic women, or
want to know , or even allow them to exist. In former times, shewould have had her own temple, and people from all around would
have gathered  to sit at her feet and hear her pronounce them
marvelous. She would have mixed herbs and oils. But an
unenlightened world began to burn these women, and the world
burns them still. Betty Lynn crucied herself before anyone else had
a chanc e to. Many of us are a little like her, choosing to implode
rather than take on society’s punishment. Those of us who don’t
must bear society’s wrath. But we live through it, bruised and
battered thoug h we might be. And more and more of us are now
living to tell the tale, surviving the re, surviving sober, and,
hopefully, altered in such a way that our daughters will have an
easier time. We have a job to do, reclaiming our glory. It’s work, and it will not
please everyone. We will be called grandiose. We will be accused of
being in dangerous denial , of our faults, our neuroses, our
weaknesses. But it’s an ancient trick this, telling a woman that her
glory is her sickness. You bet we’re in denial. We deny the power of
weakness to hold us back, be it the weakness of the world or the
weakness in our own past. We are on to better things, such as
owning our beauty and honoring the courage it has taken us to get
here and claiming our natur al power to heal and be healed. We’re
not grandiose,  but we’re tired—tired of pretending we are guilty
when we know we’re innocent, that we’re plain when we know
we’re beautiful, and that we’re weak when we know we’re strong. For far too long, we have forgotten we are cosmic royals. Our
mothers forgot, their mothers forgot, and their mothers before them. We regret their tears; we mourn their sadness. But now, at last, we
break the chain. When the Goddess is ready to reemerge, she reemerges. There is
no person or law or institution that can hold her back. Like the
energy of Christ, of which she is a part, the Goddess nds her way
into the hearts  and minds of millions of individual women , and they
change. It doesn’t matter who doesn’t change when enough people
do. This is true in any social, political, or cultural tide. When anidea reaches critical mass, there is no stopping the shift its presence
induces. One of the most sophisticated, insidious conspiracies has been
perpetrated against women. Thousands of years of history have been
largely rewritten in order to erase from collective memory the fact
that men were not always on top. Archaeological evidence now
argues for the existence of a twenty-thousand-year period  of history
when men and women lived as equals, with neither sex dominating
the other. The earth ourished. The so-called feminine qualities of
compassion, nurturing, and nonviolence were shared by men and
women alike and were the most vital elements of social structure. Women were revered as priestesses and healers. Our intuitive
strengths were not scorned but respected. Our more uid modes of
thought and feeling were seen as creative rhythms, not aky girl
stu. To our mates and lovers, our children and friends , we were
natural priestesses. We healed one another through our
compassionate connection to spirit and earth. But we took a detour,
and the Goddess was masked. The world is currently set up according to masculine models of
thought and structure, and it has been for thousands  of years. Aggression, force, domination, and control have been at the heart of
our social agreements. Organization, technology, and rational
analysis have been the order of this very long day. During this time,
the feminine principles of nonviolence and surrender and the values
of intuition, nurturing, and healing were pushed aside. We forgot
the power of a tender touch. Slowly but surely, generation after
generation, over thousands of years, the feminine was made to seem
ridiculous. She was debased in men as well as in women, all of us
risking shame when choosing to relate to her. We could know her in
bed, and she was good with children. But other than that, she didn’t
belong here. She wasn’t silenced, just invalidated. She could still
speak, but she wouldn’t be heard. Note the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus’s poem inscribed at
its base. “Give me your tired, your poor,” Liberty says, “Your
huddled masse s yearning to breathe free.” Her manifesto of concern
for human life became a cornerstone of compassionate strength atthe center of American consciousness. But our national mind,
dissociated from its feminine nature, has sought domination and
control instead of sharing and nurturing. Our words began to
change from “give me your tired” to “tell them to go home.” We
kept the statue, but we no longer take her seriously. During the
1986 centennial celebration in New York Harbor, I was struck by
the irony of the spectacular party thrown at the Statue of Liberty. A
government that had systematically dismantled the elements of the
social and political policy that formed the lifeblood of Emma
Lazarus’s poem now hosted a lavish celebration at Liberty’s feet. We
treat her the way we treat all women during times when the
Goddess is silenced: We dress her up and show her o, but we don’t
want to listen to what she has to say. And no one will listen to us until we listen to ourselves. The
Goddess awake ns in our hearts before she awakens in the world. We
must notice that she exists. We must honor and worship and revere
her, regardless  of the name by which we call her. For not to do so is
to dishonor ourselves. She is our feminine essence. She is the female
power and the spiritual glory that lies within every woman and
every man. Forget looking for earthly role models, because there aren’t many;
and even when  we nd them, they live their own lives and not ours. We must look instead inside ourselves. The Goddess doesn ’t enter us
from outside; she emerges from deep within. She is not held back by
what happened to us in the past. She is conceived in consciousness,
born in love, and nurtured by higher thinking. She is integrity and
value, created and sustained  by the hard work of personal growth
and the discipline of a life lived actively in hope. Build commun ity. Nurture those less fortunate. Become yourself. Seek God. No less potent steps than these will be deep enough to
move you forward. The crucixion of the Goddess—the invalidation of feminine
beliefs and values—lies at the heart of all our painful dramas. But
crucixion is merely a prelude to resurrection, and we are now
living at the beginning stages of the resurrection of the Goddess.This occurs not through the reemergence of any one particular
symbol, be it Mary, Quanyin,  Gaea, or Isis. She has many names and
faces, but her most important one is your own. Her reemergence
now is a cellular upheaval, a rising up from the depths of individual
women throug hout the world. It is a new spirit, a new strength, a
new conviction, and a new care. The most glorious angels light up
the sky when the Queen of heaven returns to her throne. These are
archetypal images that trace for us the trail of the feminine journey,
its purpose and direction. Women must remember how important it
is to honor women. In “reforming” the Christian church, Martin
Luther chose to throw out Mary. In rediscovering the church within
us, we choose to bring her back. A powe rful tool for the reclamation of our glorious feminine
identity is the worship of female gods. As the mother of the son of
God, the Virgin Mary gave human birth to God’s expression on
earth. Without  her body and her nurturing, the Word would have
remained just a word. Through her womb and her maternal
compassion, she became the vehicle through which the Word was
made esh. Mary is real. She is a symbol, but she is also much more than that. She is an energy, an essential hierarchical truth or being,  that is the
essence of all women. She is found in many religions. Some call her
the Goddess. She is active psychically, participating alchemically in
the areas of our suering and our liberation. For millions  of people,
she is no joke. At her birth, her parents knew her life was to be used in the
service of a great and holy cause. She was raised to be a channel of
light, which is to say she was guided in the direction of her highest
human qualiti es. She was entrusted by God with a profound and
mighty task on earth, and over the years her body, soul, and mind
were prepared for that service. To think of ourselves in terms of Mary’s purpose and ministry is to
heal our wounds. It is to ll our minds with the light that casts out
the darkness of myriad neuroses. In every area of our experience as
women, we are lost and disconnected because we do not perceive
ourselves in spiritual terms. We think of ourselves as esh and bone,résumés and relationships, clothes and cosmetics. The truth of who
we are, why we’re here, and where we’re going is far more
spectacular than any of these worldly things indicate. We are God’s
precious vessels, and we are always pregnant with his possibilities. This is not the kind of knowl edge that sounds sane when divulged
at a cocktail party. But in private, in meditation, in churches,
mosques, and synagogues, at ashrams, and in support groups, it is
the stu of truth that sets us free. And women need desperately to
be set free. We have been enslaved for centuries by our ignorance
and deep forgetfulness. It is time to remember we’re the daughters
of God. One of the themes of healing in the nineties is deeper spiritual
practice. When I say, “Go talk to Mary,” I mean  “Go talk to Mary”—
as in, go to a church, light a candle, sit in a pew, and let yourself
become very serious about this. Tell her, “Mary, I wish to know who
I am as a wife or girlfriend or mother or daughter. I wish to be the
woman I am capable of being . I wish to have your purity and clarity
and level of enlightenment. May the essence of my womanhood
become more radiant than my external self.” And that’s it. It doesn’t
matter what your religion is. Talking to Mary  doesn’t make you a
Catholic, nor does being a Catholic give you a special “in.” If Mary
doesn’t feel comfortable for you, that’s OK too. Find a Greek goddess
or a female Indian avatar you can relate to, or any other  symbol of
feminine divinity, and begin a relationship with her. Don’t see this as a joke or treat it as a toy. The world as it is has
very little use for your womanhood. You are considered  a weaker
sex and are treated as a sexual object. You are thoroughly
dispensable except for bearing children. Your youth is the measure
of your worth, and your age is the measure of your worthlessness. Do not look to the world for your sustenance or for your identity as
a woman because you will not nd them there. The world despises
you. God adores you. OceanofPDF.comTWO
Internal Light
i found god in myself  
& i loved her  
i loved her ercely. —Ntozake Shange  
I looked  at a picture of my face today. I hated the
picture becaus e it doesn’t say who I am. But then, most women’s
faces don’t tell the truth. Or, I should say, most women’s hairdos
don’t tell the truth; their clothes don’t tell the truth; their jewelry
doesn’t tell the truth. There are what appear to be magnicent
exceptions; but far too often when their adornments tell a great
story, the women themselves don’t. Most of us—most American
women—are completely bewildered by our hair, clothes, and
makeup. That’ s why we spend so much money on them. We’re
looking for help. The next time you meet another woman at a party, assume she
experienced at least 10 percent as much angst over what to wear
that night as you did. Multiply that angst by the number of women
in America who went out to dinner that night. Now add up the
stress. Feminine beauty is not a function of clothes or hair or makeup,
although billio ns of dollars are spent in this country each year by
women who have been convinced by the advertising industry that itis. Beauty is an internal light, a spiritual radiance that all women
have but which most women hide, unconsciously denying its
existence. What we do not claim remains invisible. This is why the
process of personal transfo rmation—the true work of spiritual
growth, wheth er couched in religious terms or not—is the only
antidote to the pernicious eects of society’s backlash against
genuine female empowerment. Society programs us, through the
subliminal messages of popular culture, to believe that we’re not
truly desirable  as women unless we adhere to the current  standards
of physical beauty. The reaso n we’re such fertile ground for the dark
forces of such lies and social  manipulation is that we’re dissociated
from the genuine light of self-awareness. The woman who is truly self-aware knows that her self is a light
from beyond this world, a spiritual essence that has nothing to do
with the physical world. Those of us who strongly believe in the
reality of spirit are quickly invalidated by a worldly power system
that senses within spiritual truth the seeds of its own destruction. For if we truly believed in an internal light, we would not believe in
the power of external forces, and we would not be so easy to
dominate and control. We would not be tempted to see hair and
clothes and makeup as sources of so much of our self-esteem and the
ideal beauty of a fashion model as a sign that we are not beautiful at
all. In the words of Naomi Wolf, “We as women are trained to see
ourselves as cheap imitations of fashion photographs, rather than
seeing fashion photographs as cheap imitations of women.”
But we are ultimately responsible for how we see ourselves,
regardless of the horrible  images of women—por nographic,
misogynistic, and violent—that permeate our culture. Much of
traditional religious imagery  has represented women as inferior,
even evil. It is only an enlightened spiritual worldview that reveals
both men and women in all our true glory. We are glorio us because
we are not beings of this world at all. Our spiritual essence is
nonmaterial, nonphysical; and when we become aware of this, we
are genuinely empowered. The more we develop what is called in
Alcoholics Anonymous our “conscious contact” with truth as God
created it, the less we are prey to the lies of a fearful world. Whenwe are truly aware of our spiritual glory, a varicose vein or two is
not that big a deal. A woman once stood in line in front of me at a 7-Eleven. She was
fat, at least fty pounds overweight. Her hair was bleached blond. She was buying copies of the Globe  and the National Enquirer , a bag
of peanuts, and a huge prepackaged cookie. I felt her misery. I said
a little prayer for her. I’ve been as bummed out as she was, although
I haven’t acted out my despair in quite the same ways. I’ve known,
as we all have, her desire to escape into a world where she wouldn’t
have to face the harshness of another day like this one. At the same time, I know she cares desperately, because we all do. Her body says she doesn’t care, her hair says she doesn’ t care, and
her choice of reading matte r says she doesn’t care. But she does
care. And if she felt she had a choice, she would open wide and act
like a queen. But she doesn’t realize she has the option. She thinks
that only queens get to be queens. She doesn’t know that every
woman who is a queen simply knew she could be one, and everyone
else is still pretending she can’t. That’s all that separates the queens
from the slavegirls: a shift in consciousness from denial to
acceptance of personal power. That woman’s education may have been poor, and her family
dysfunctional, and her present circumstances somewhere between
horrible and catastrophic. But she remains a potential queen. A
change in consciousness produces miracles. The growth of a woman
from slavegirl to queen is the miracle of feminine transformation. It
begins with a decision to change and a willingness to accept God’s
help. If by any chance the woman  I saw at the 7-Eleven is reading this
book, say this prayer if you wish to: Dear God, I am willing to
relinquish my life of limitation and despair. I invite your spirit to
renew my life. Amen. It is God’s will that we be beautifu l, that we
love and be loved and prospe r in all good things. It is God’s will that
we all become the goddesses we were created to be.Even when a woman has been blessed with great abundance, she
often has a dicult time allowing herself to receive it all. I have a
friend who has a wonderful life. She lives half the year in Europe
and ies in her own privat e plane back and forth between her
various houses  around the world. She has a husband who is perfect
for her. She has a successful, fullling career in fashion design and
two happy, healthy children. What she doesn’t have is a thin waist. Her suering over her weight casts a giant shadow over a life that
is otherwise so sweet. She has tried every diet, every doctor, every
technique she could nd to help herself lose the excess pounds and
keep them o. What she had not tried, until recently, was
confronting whatever it was in her that had so much invested in
being fat. There is no diet or doctor that can prevail against a strongly held
belief. In the case of my friend, and in the case of many people who
carry around one thing, whatever it is, that blocks them from total
joy, that belief is this: If I am too happy, too successful, too perfect, I
will not be loved. There has to be something that lets other people
know that I’m really “one of them,” that I’m miserabl e too. I’m
really not takin g away their piece of the pie. I’m really not perfect,
so they don’t have to hate me. For some women, it’s weight; for others it’s something else we do
or think  or say to make it appear that we’re having a hard time too. We’re unconsc iously afraid of a reaction against us if we dare to
shine fully, embrace joy, and permit ourselves to have too great a
life. The injunction against winning is subtle but strong, so we
ourselves make sure no one will be able to accuse us of having
broken the great unspoken rule: Do not experience heaven on earth. The punishment can be severe, at least emotionally, for those of us
who break the rule. From friends to family to people who don’t even
know us, the chorus of disapproval can ring loudly against women
who dare to break through the ultimate glass ceiling. What is the antidote to such a threat, whether it comes from
others or is in our own minds? It is to realize that it is God’s will
that each of us, every woman, man, and child, be happy, whole, and
successful. It is impossible to overestimate the psychic damage doneby the delusio ns, pseudoreligious and other, that God is somehow
happier or we are somehow purer if we are suering just a bit. The
truth is not that God is happier or that we are better, but that the
institutions that told us so are happier, because suering keeps us in
our place, where we are easier to control. But how can there be a joyful planet without its being inhabited
by joyful people? Our embrace of joy doesn’t rob others of the
possibility. Quite the oppos ite is true—it liberates them, if they
choose to be liberated. If I see before me a person who lives a truly
happy life, I can follow my ego or follow my heart. My ego will try
to argue that the person must be guilty of something , but my heart
will recognize that his or her success is my succes s, if I can allow
myself to applaud instead of criticize and bless instead of condemn. When I rst began my career as a lecturer, doing my best to make
a positi ve dierence in my community, I often heard people say,
“Isn’t she nice!” But as my work became visible to a larger public,
the same work done the same way and with, if anything, even
greater dedica tion, drew cries of “Who does she think she is?” I
have never received the criticism for failure that I have for success,
and it is clear to me that people in our society at least unconsciously
hold the conviction that someone else’s success limits their own,
makes them lesser, and puts a permanent lid on their own chances. The world believes in nite resources and in everybody ’s guilt. As
long as we adhere to these pernicious beliefs, we will not only fail to
let others shine, but we will never be able to allow ourselves to
shine fully either. And if we, like my friend, stand in fear of what fear says, in the
minds of others or in our own minds, we then conspire in a thought
system that cruelly limits us and our daughters and their daughters
too. We refuse  to allow ourselves to help the world as much as we
might were we to allow ourselves to be all that we can be. God gives
us abun dance in all things that we might use it in behalf of the
healing of the world. If we forge ahead and continue to embra ce the
life that God has opened up for us, then we will break through the
cloud banks of other people’s disapproval, whether real or imagined. When we ourselves no longe r feel guilty, when we have liberatedourselves from the limited thinking of a society deeply afraid of
ecstatic women, then we will no longer encounter people who
attack us. Or if we do, we will no longer care. And having broken
through the clouds, we will see a new light and meet new friends. Don’t stop now. Keep going. The next time someone makes you
feel as though, winning as you are, perhaps you’re getting too big
for your britches, say to them silently, “I haven’t even started yet.”
We exist in God’s mind as total and complete beings : There is
nothing Madison Avenue can give us that will make us more
beautiful women. We are beautiful because God created us that way. Some of us know of our beauty and express it and celeb rate it. But
beauty itself is not given to us by anyone; it is a power we have
within us from the gate, a radiance inside us. I have know n women
who were not physically beautiful but who expressed themselves so
magnicently that the result was a beautiful woman. I have known
other women who were practically perfect physical specimens but
were so unawa re of their own light that the eect of their beauty
was nil. What should women do with a fractured sense of self? Many of us
are good at describing and analyzing our insecurities; what we must
do now is invoke the healed self. Within each one of us, in the realm
of pure awareness, is the Goddess, the glorious female, the cosmic
queen. If you’re a sensitive creature, and almost every woman  is, then
your heart is open to all things. Every cry we recognize. Every tear
we relate to. Every sigh contains our own. And we are stymied by
this, immobilized until we make a run in the other direction. A
woman’s emotional instrumentation, more delicate and intricate
than any computer chip from Japan, is as fragile as it is powerful. It
turns against us when it is not used for healing, constructive
purposes. It is as if God has said, “Here. Feel this,” and we don’t
know whether  he said that because he is angry at us or because he
loves us. Without a potent inner life, a spiritual connection, a woman tosses
on a storm of hysterical emotions. Like a beautiful vase into whichan ocean is poured, shattering the glass because the container
cannot accommodate the force or the volume, we are ill prepared
for the powerful and dynamic energies that race through our veins. We remember everything. We remember Mary holding the baby. We remember watching him die. We remember wars and murders
we don’t even know we remember. We remember ancient temple
sites, healings and prophesies. We remember genital mutilation and
Sophie’s choice . We were present at the beginning of things; and if
people would only let us, we would teach the marvelous lessons we
learned from the experienc e. We cannot get to our knowledge
because the world is too loud. And we tend to make it louder as we
cry out in pain, pretending we are singing. We add to the world’s
cacophony because we don’t know it’s our job to turn down the
noise and listen to silent symphonies. No one told us that. For
thousands of years, they haven’t wanted us to know. But when we
break free and see the game  for what it is, we will let out a howl,
and our silence will be deafening. We will hear the holy choir of
angels, our eyes will brighten, and our smiles will burst  forth. We
will see the angels and know the angels, and do lunch with them,
and speak their case. We will be intimate with the stars and ride
rainbows to ancient Greece. We will light up like lamps, and the
world will never be the same again. The men around us need this change as much as we do and
maybe more. Our children see in us the truth we do not see: that we
have power unmatched by any other creature. When we remember
our royal inheritance, men will become our true partners, our kings. We have all been crowned, and yet the throne awaits us. Now is the
time to reclaim  our title, to bow our heads before God and receive,
in awareness, our conscious coronation. When we do, the world will
change quickly. It will change when every woman gets it that we are all beautiful,
powerful, and strong. That we deserve love and approval and
support. That we would all be glorious if we could only spread our
wings. That we are, each one of us, a portion of a great and mighty
Goddess self. What a light will arise from behind the mountains onthe morning of our remembra nce. What a sun will shine through the
fog of tears when we embrace our true selves at last. Until we do, we will remain sad. Our imprisonment has been long
and cruel. We have dressed to hide ourselves and spoken to
misrepresent ourselves, and worked to change ourselves. We have
imagined our passions to be wrong and our instincts out of line. We
have suered a wounding, but a miracle has occurred. There is a
Woman in the Sky, and she has come to take us home. The Woman in the Sky has long, beautiful hair and skin that
glows. She smiles from a place deeper than the center of the earth. She has a beautiful speaking voice, and she can sing. She has
mothered us all. We have inherited her gifts and her healing powers. In ancient agreement, we have come to this point to remember her
together. Like a volcano erupting after years of stillness, we now
explode with heat and power and liquid strength. The Woman in the Sky has entered into us. Like every aspect of
the cosmic energy of which she is a part, she permeates the cells of
those who have invited her in. She gives us new life, that we might
give it to others. Through her power within us, we redeem all
things. For centuries, we have been ripped apart inside, our
personalities disconnected from our most crucial knowledge. We
have been concerned with small things when we ourselves are huge. Those days are over. We must begin again. We begin with a promise, made to ourselves and to each other,
that we will never go back. We will never again fail to realize how
hard it is for every woman, as it has been for us, to face the
challenges and resistances of a world that treats women as second-
class citizens. We have been relegated to such a position not because
we are less intelligent. The world treats us as second-class citizens as
a means of control over us—as if were we simply named weak, then
we would be weak. And we have fallen for that ruse. We have been
defeated by the power inherent in naming things. The spell that this
power has cast on us must now be broken. We must name ourselves
queens. Patriarchal power has resisted our strength, but the oppressive
forces of an entire kingdom—and the thought and treatment ofwomen as inferior are a mental kingdom—have no power in the face
of a woman who knows she is a queen. The negative ego fears
women not because we are weak but because we are so powerful,
and because our power come s from an invisible realm. The rational
mind can neith er explain it nor control it, and to the negative ego
this is unforgivable power. Still, we must claim our mystical forces. We must forge ahead,
through the dark and prick ly forces of ridicule and resistance in
whatever form they take, doing what we came here to do and being
who we came here to be. Oppression of women is far from over, and
often women themselves are the ones who make the world even
harder for other women. But this phenomenon will fade away as
female-oppressing females become healed of their own self-hatred. On the other side of this jungle is a new and glorious day on earth,
when our daughters will not be judged wrong for their passions or
held back because they are bursting with such power, strength, and
love. Children help. Sunsets help. Good men help. The beach helps. Reading about  women who have been great in their eld helps. Meditation helps. Prayer helps. Don’t you love it when some  incredibly beautiful woman  like Linda
Evans or Cindy Crawford tells us that the real beauty secret is
nding your inner light? Right. But I’ve done the same things these
women have done to nd my inner light, and while it’s true I’m
happier, I still don’t look like them. The point is I never will, but I
look the way I look, and how I look shouldn’t be such an awfully big
deal. It isn’t for men, and it shouldn’t be for us. It would behoove
Americans to recognize that in other cultures the range of what is
considered beautiful is much  wider than it is in ours, as is the age
range that denes physical beauty. In many ways, I used to try to be a certain way for men: my
personality, my looks, my behavior. I still try to improve myself in
those areas, but I do so for myself, for my own joy. To please a man
can be exciting, but to try to be a certain way for him, to try to
create ourselve s instead of revealing ourselves, is to come from sucha lack of self-e steem that it would be hard to keep a man interested
anyway. And who knows how we are supposed to be? I can’t gure it out,
and at times I’ve tried. But I do know this: On the days when I feel
love and compassion and forgiveness in my life, I’m happier and
more attractive  to other people. Those feelings are the mystical keys
to beauty and happiness. It is so simple, and it doesn’t cost a thing. From pseudosophisticated corners, there is resistance to such an
easy message. For if women were really to believe these things—
that love in our hearts could renew our lives—billions  of dollars
would be spent elsewhere. And why are we always trying to gure out how to be more
attractive to men, anyway? Why shouldn’t they work a little and try
to gure out how to be attractive to us? Not every man knows how
to handle a woman who is full of passion, glory, power, and
intelligence. So what should  we do? Shrink? Many, many women
do. And then perhaps they’r e married or hitched. But they’re not
necessarily happy, and neither are their men. It is better to be alone
than to be living at half throttle. Men in our culture have been spoiled, treated with false reverence
instead of respect. We have enabled them to think a woman is just a
body, a clothe shorse, and a sex machine, and we have done so by
acting at times as if we were those things. A woman is an ever-
deepening mystery that takes years and humility and great patience
to fathom. Having become blind to this fact ourselves, we have over
and over and over again put up with the most irreverent attitudes. We have failed  to teach our sons, much less our daughte rs, what a
magnicent thing a woman is. Break the chain. Don’t let another woman inherit your last
spoiled-brat lover like a pair of uncomfortable shoes you took back
to the store. If he doesn’t get it, let him know. Walk on by. We have
spent enough time in the heart of darkness; now we are headed for
the heart of light. OceanofPDF.comTHREE
A Magnicent Adventure
In youth we learn; in age we understand. —Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
There is a collective force rising up on the earth
today, an energy of the reborn feminine. She is peeking around
corners, taking  over businesses, tucking in the children, and making
men go wild in every way. She knows us at our source. She is not, as
we are not, lacking in virtue. She remembers our function on earth:
that we should  love one another. She has come to reclaim us. She
has come to take us home. As the feminine spirit seeks  to rise, there are numerou s forces
seeking to push her back down. This is a time of a monumental
shift, from the male dominance of human consciousness back to a
balanced relationship between masculine and feminine. The
Goddess archetype doesn’t replace God; she merely keeps him
company. She expresses his feminine face. The resistance  to this is stronger than most people know. The
invalidation, the crucixion, of feminine power is one of the most
emotionally violent and subversive forces at work today. Time after
time, the Goddess has been beaten, thwarted, shut down—
emotionally, physically, politically, and socially—by men and
women alike. Every time a woman is raped or beaten, every time a
woman is attacked on the street or crucied in the press for no other
reason than that she is a woman, every time a strong woman issqueezed out of the workplace because her presence there is
threatening to the old order—we are witnessing the skirmishes of a
vast invisible war. The fate of every woman alive today, whether
she likes it or not, is that the story of her life shall be played out
against this panorama. Her relationships with everyone and
everything—from her parents to her teachers to her lovers to her
children to her friends to her job to her employers to her employees
to her community to her culture—have been, are, and will be
aected by this gigantic conagration. We have no choice as to whether or not this is happen ing. Our
only choice is whether we shall open our eyes. When we remain
ignorant of the forces swirling around us, we suer the
consequences of all unconsciousness, remaining at the eect of
forces over which we seem to have no control. Should we awaken to
the truth of the moment, we can consciously usher in one of the
most important human breakthroughs in history. We have the
opportunity to forge a marriage between masculine and feminine,
more potent and more vibrant than any we have experien ced on the
earth for ages—more beautifu l, perhaps, than any the earth has ever
known. The story doesn’t begin with grown women being massacred in
the workplace or in the press . It begins with innocent little girls who
become convinced, for what ever reason, that the girl within them
isn’t good enough. From there, they turn into women who are
always seeking to deny their femininity. From there, they attract
others who will want to do the same. In order to disman tle a social
disorder in which women are oppressed, we must begin where it all
started: a long, long time ago, when we were very, very young. Many of us grew up in dysfunctional families, because modern
society is a dysfunctional place. But the spiritual journey, the path
of recovery and personal growth, is a detoxication process in
which we bring up and out the negative beliefs we have carried
with us from the past and which now poison the present. We then
learn to invoke the ame within us, which did not go out during our
dark and dic ult years. However confused we might have become,
angels protected and shielded  us. Our spirits did not die. There is anever-renewable natural strength within us that still exists and is
accessible now, regardless of what Mommy did or didn’t do, how
Daddy loved us or ignored us, or whether we feel we’ve succeeded
or failed at life so far. I call that innocent place within every woman
the lost girl. “I could have been a mystical princess! I should  have been a
mystical princess! I was supposed  to be a mysti cal princess!” Thus
cries the woman who has tried to reclaim her lost girl. The lost girl
is still within us—the girl who wasn’t allowed to blossom, the girl
whose natura l childhood instincts were unnaturally capped at
puberty, the girl who was squelched in fear of the woman she would
become. For years, we live damaged, cut o from the true
expression of who we are because we don’t know  who we are. We
are numb to our own creative juices. No one held a space for our
gorgeousness, and now we can’t nd it. As maidens, we were
crushed. We were treated with suspicious looks at the very moment
someone shoul d have been turning up the applause. We don’t know
how to be women because we were taught it was not OK to be girls. Our most natural impulses were thwarted and distorted. We were
like lava channeled into plastic molds. Recently, I met a woman in her early twenties who was deeply
depressed. Looking at her, I saw myself fteen or twenty years ago. I
recognized every desperate feeling, every horried thought. I asked
her why she felt so sad. She told me she felt misundersto od by her
father, who didn’t want to pay for her therapy or for her to move to
another city. She said she was trying to make her way in the world
but kept falling down. She couldn’t stay with any career for very
long; she felt fat; she felt inadequate; she felt embarrasse d and kept
thinking that other people were laughing at her. The reality, in this instance, is that of an exquisitely beautiful
young woman, as fat as the pope is Jewish and as lacking in brains
as Susan Sontag. Here is a girl who doesn’t know how to nd her
glory. But that’s what our twenties are for, I told her. They are the time
when the maiden turns into a woman, the princess becomes aqueen, the child grows up. They are not the time to concentrate on
our parents so much as they are the time to concentrate on
ourselves and our own abilities. Her father’s money came with a
very high price tag, as it usually does. What she wanted in a
protector was not to be found in Daddy but in God. The peace and
security she was looking for could be found only within herself,
through a search for a higher, more noble life, and an embrace of
the glory within her. I told her that a career grows out of who we are; who we are
doesn’t grow out of a career. Her goal must not be to nd a job but
to become a magnicent woman. That is the mystical calling of
every woman’s  heart, and it is our core task as we grow up. Later on
in life, we are often bound by things, by responsibilities, by people,
and situations that keep us tied to certain spaces and times. But a
young woman must y free, away from Mommy and Daddy, away
from the dense conventions of the world, away from childhood and
into the arms of the Goddess, who awaits her. A hysterical
depression can then become a magnicent adventure. When I myself was about her age, I worked for a man who was,
and still is, a master at logos. His intellect is staggering. At the time
I knew him, I was a maiden,  a young woman like my friend, whose
thoughts were scattered like wind through a half-built house. I knew
many things that I could not yet articulate. I felt dierent from
others, unable to play the parts assigned to me by the world in
which I lived. As for the man, I knew he couldn’t truly see me. But
still I felt that one day my life would turn out ne, and I knew he
would be surprised when it did. Everything he spoke of was factual; everything could be measured
and proved by the scientic mind. I, with my feelings bruised and
scorched, knew that the lessons I was learning were not from the
intellect but from the trials of my heart. I knew these lessons had
more to do with where the world was going than did any of his facts
or gures. The heart would be the language of tomorrow because
the heart is where our pain is. Recently, I read that he had said of me, “She was the last person
in the world you would have ever expected to be a success.” Ilaughed when I read that. I understood his thinking. The feminine
way seems weak to the masc uline prejudice; and when I worked for
him, I was a developing feminine spirit. Lots of tears, lots of drama. For thousands of years, the woman’s way, our way, has been kept
underground. Unlike Mary, we are not prepared for our role. No
gracious, institutionalized structure is unrolled like a red carpet to
usher us into our glory. We come into it covered in mess from our
rocky ascent. But now the Goddess is returning—she is making her way up—
and people without eyes to see will be completely in the dark about
the journey of women all around them. As the Goddess begins to
make her claim on them, there will be more, rather than fewer, girls
who appear to make no sense . The Goddess makes a dram atic entry. When a system is ooded with new and radical impressions, it
seems to implode before making a quantum leap forward into
something dierent. Thus, there are millions of girls who are
depressed to a degree beyond what their families and friends nd
normal, but who are actually undergoing the feminine journey into
full and actualized consciousness. One day they will be queens, and
the transition wouldn’t have happened had they not cracked up
when they did. The princess does become a queen if she stays the road. It is as if
there were a beautiful enchantress in a luminous bubble. She stands
before us and beckons for us to become her. Faith in her invokes our
best. We change. We become unlike who we used to be. It is the
miracle we sensed when we were little girls: that one day we would
live lives of joy in enchanted castles. Let us seek all that is true and loving and good about womanhood
and ask for the blessings thereof, for ourselves and others. We ask
that our womanhood bless our communities, our families, our
friends. We ask for wisdom and guidance that we might reach the
highest vibration of humanit y of which we are capable. We look to
God and his many teachers, to the Goddess and her many faces, to
show us what we do not know. From here we grow, more each
passing day, into the wome n God would have us be. There is nohigher prayer. From there we shall know joy, and this is what we
were born for. Joy is our goal, our destiny. We cannot know who we are except
in joy. Not knowing joy, we do not know ourselves. When we are
without joy, we grope in the dark. When we are centered  in joy, we
attain our wisdom. A joyful woman, by merely being, says it all. The
world is terried of joyful women. Make a stand. Be one anyway. Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognize how
good things are. Joy is not necessarily what happens when things
unfold according to our own plans. How often that’s happened—we
married the right man, had the children, got the job—and  we’ve still
known despair. Joy is what happens when we see that God’s plan is
perfect and we’re already starring in a perfect show. It demands that
we have the audacity to embrace the knowledge of just how
beautiful we really are and how innitely powerful we are right
now—without changing a thing—through the grace that’s
consistently born and reborn within us. Such an embra ce is not arrogant but humble; it is not crazy but
realistic. It is an appraisal of our lives through the eyes the Goddess
gives us. I have not known a lot of joy, but I have known some. When I am there, in that golden circle where everything feels
wonderful for no apparent reason, I try to memorize the feeling, the
terrain, the scenery. I have noticed how full I feel at those moments,
with an overwhelming sense  of lightness about all things. I know
that this is our natural state and that the purpose of our lives is to
achieve it consistently. For now, joy is a gift, an act of grace that’s here when it’s here
and not when it’s not. But perhaps joy can be practiced. Perhaps we
can decide to be happy, to give joy before waiting to receive it. This
is not denial but armation  of the power inside us. Embracing joy
heals depressio n. Then we become the ones who teach the meaning
of joy to our children, as well as allowing them to teach it to us. We
bring joy to one another, to men, to children, to God. Just knowing
we’re meant to do this increases its presence within us. Our deciding
to be joyful demonstrates our willingness to relinquish the petty and
negative preoccupations that stand in its way. When we give theseup, a more joyful life has a chance to emerge. The Goddess doesn’t
ght our pain; when she is in our hearts, the pain is gone. I think women can have it all, but not immediately. The various
forces of our power take years to develop fully. One of the ideas we
must agree on and continue to forge with individual and collective
vigor is that a woman’s life goes uphill at forty. The French say that
a woman blossoms at forty, but in America we’re still burdened by
our abhorrenc e of age, particularly in women. I remember when I
was younger and looked great in a way that only the young can
look. But I’m also sure that in those days I had no clue as to what
makes a woman glorious. Some young women do, I realize.
_OceanofPDF.com_A_Womans_Worth_-_Marianne_Williamson.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        “TIMELESS … UNDENIABLY COMPELLING. ” 
—Redbook
“How strange that this should be the club we belong to: women who have
been to hell and back. But we all understand what this means. It’s a
membership badge we wear with knowing looks and lines on our
foreheads. … Such has been our womanquest. The relationships, careers,
children, dreams, betrayals, hopes, wins, losses  … Our feelings have
blended. Our stories converge. ”
So begins the extraordinary  new book by one of today’s most
renowned and inuential spiritual leaders. A hugel y popular
proponent and interpreter of A Course in Miracles, Marianne
Williamson has made a phenomenal impact on audiences
worldwide, via her captivating lectures and TV appearances. With A Woman’s Worth, Williamson turns her charismatic voice—
and the same empowering, spiritually enlightening wisdom that
energized her landmark work, A Retur n to Love—to exploring the
crucial role of women in the world today. Drawing deeply and
candidly on her own experiences, the author illuminates her
thought-provoking positions on such issues as beauty and age,
relationships and sex, children and careers, and the reassu rance and
reassertion of the feminine in a patriarchal society. Cutting across  class, race, religion, and gender, A Woman’s Worth
speaks powerfully and persuasively to a generation in need of
healing, and in search of harmony. OceanofPDF. com“IMPASSIONED, INTENSE” 
—Mirabella
“Marianne Williamson is blessed with the ability to get to the kernel
of truth. … [She] addresses issues of the spirit with such earnestness
and grace that she can conve rt even the most jaded of souls. … Her
voice is refreshing and new. ”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“She puts the responsibility, glory and direction of women’s lives
right where it belongs—in our own hands and hearts. ”
—The New Times (Seattle)
“DEEPLY FELT … IT’S CLEAR SHE’S BEEN THERE. ”
—Booklist
“Marianne Williamson has powerful and universal things to say and
she says them well. … This is a work of wisdom. ”
—Santa Rosa Sun
“Filled with insightful comments and inspirational thoughts that will
empower women to fulll their potential. ”
—Chattanooga News
“A potent message. ”
—Kirkus Reviews
OceanofPDF. comOceanofPDF. comA Ballantine Book  
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1993 by Marianne Williamson
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. , New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. www. ballantinebooks. com
This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-90550
eISBN: 978-0-307-83335-8
v3. 1_r3
OceanofPDF. comPREFACE 
 
When I told girlfriends I was writing a book about
women, most of them said something like this: “For us, for women
who have been to hell and back. ”
How strange that this should be the club we belong to: women
who have been to hell and back. But we all understand  what that
means. It’s a membership badge we wear with knowing looks and
lines on our foreheads. Most of us have known at least one divorce
or one devastating breakup, whether we were married or not. Other
circumstances can get us into the club as well: abortion,  disease, a
variety of public or private humiliations, drugs, alcohol, the death of
a loved  one, incompetent parents, sick children. It’s everything we
thought life would never be like. We don’t feel self-pity so much as
fear and deep grief. Such has been our womanqu est. It is conscious and discip lined, or
unconscious and unbridled. Whether we’ve learned anything or not,
our suering has shaped who we are, and for better or for worse
we’ve been changed by the past few years. We are not who we
would have been had we not descended. We have a lot of stories
and a lot to edit. In writing this book, I have no purpose other than a creative spill
of my own guts. But that in itself is a passionate purpose, and I have
seen how like my guts are to those of other women. The
relationships, careers, children, dreams, betrayals, hopes, wins,Marianne Williamson  
Los Angeleslosses—all these form my landscape too. Our feelings have blended.
Marianne Williamson
Who is the author of the book being discussed?
The author states that her purpose is to "consciously and deliberately" share her own experiences and the experiences of other women, and to explore the crucial role of women in the world today.
What is the author's purpose in writing this book?
The author emphasizes that women have the power to reclaim their worth and worthiness, and that they should not look to the external world for validation, but rather seek inner guidance and connection with the divine.
What is the author's message to women about their power and worth?
The author argues that true beauty comes from within, and that women should not try to conform to societal standards of beauty, but rather focus on cultivating their own inner light and spiritual connection.
What is the author's stance on the concept of beauty and the expectations placed on women?
The author emphasizes the importance of embracing and honoring one's own power and divinity, and encourages women to focus on their inner strength and connection with the divine, rather than seeking external validation or approval.
What is the author's perspective on the concept of "the Queen" and the importance of self-acceptance?
The author advises women to stop trying to conform to societal expectations and instead focus on embracing their own inner power and spiritual connection, and to recognize that their worth and power come from within.
What is the author's message to women about their relationships and societal expectations?