Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you. If these words strike a chord inside of you, then you will not only seek to shine, but allow and encourage others to shine. And specifically, you will seek to not make yourself small "so that other people won't feel insecure around you."
Similarly, you will want others to not make themselves small around you either... yes?
Therefore, I begin an interesting journey of self worth with you now... if you will allow me to shine...
[From the web:]
FYI: In the mid and late 1990s, The Landmark Corporation, which gives the widely held and influential confrontive and “breakthrough”-catalyzing personal growth seminars such as their most well known course “The Forum”, featured the quote everywhere in their many well-attended seminar rooms throughout the U.S. and beyond — always with the name “Nelson Mandela” at the bottom. Whether this was out of unintended error, or whether, as I have sometimes suspected, it was intentional — in order to have the quote be received by everyone as being as fully awesome as it IS — I do not know. What I do know is that they are a very savvy, very canny and knowledgeable group. Why, IF they did, would they do it intentionally? Because the words of an unquestioned world famous sage (or, alternately, on the big screen) are, automatically… the “Deep Truth” or “important” and to be taken in, whereas the exact same powerful & true words of (what we so sadly call a) ‘nobody’ go unnoticed and unheralded and are — as many, MANY Social Psychology experiments have proven — perceived by nearly everyone as far less profound and important and amazing. (I’m sorry, but this is true about humans, and we do not want to believe it is true of us.) - Marcus
“The primary cause of disorder in ourselves
is the seeking of ‘reality’ promised by another.”
-Krishnamurti
The first three sentences of Mandala's quote are a quote WITHIN a quote, and are from “The Course In Miracles” — not from Marianne Williamson, let alone Nelson Mandela.
So, to clarify: Marianne Williamson, not Nelson Mandela, is the author of the quote we’re all talking about (this is not debatable or a matter of opinion: It’s a matter of public record, there for all to look up, that the quote is in her book A Return To Love, which was published in 1992 — two years before Mandela’s 1994 Inaugural Address) — That sub-quote, WITHIN the quote, is from “A Course In Miracles” (first published- 1973)— a ‘channeled’ work that purports to be a direct message dictated from “Jesus” through the pen of a person named Helen Schucman. Helen Schucman, who died many years back, was a highly assimilated, (nominally) Jewish woman who taught medical psychology at Columbia (Medical Center?) in NYC and claimed to be an atheist or agnostic, yet who, nevertheless, starting in 1965 (and through to 1972), had exact words (which announced themselves as “a course in miracles”) ‘dictated’ to her by a voice which she felt compelled to write down until a nearly 700 page complete course was written. She herself was never comfortable with and/or didn’t believe in the material as absolute truth and the word of “Jesus”, yet had the experience of hearing it all and choosing to record it all regardless of what SHE thought of it.
Marianne Williamson, who STUDIED and was inspired and felt “awakened” by the Course In Miracles, wrote a commentary/reflections ON it.
SO: The whole quote is Marianne Williamson’s drosh (riff) on a quote from A Course In Miracles, itself written by Dr. Helen Schucman (nee Cohn), who says she DIDN’T “write” it and instead was merely “the scribe”.
Pretty trippy, and ‘tricky’. But now you know. (Life IS stranger than fiction…!)
If you are still reading this, there is one more turn to make this roller coaster in your mind take off and jump like a kangaroo....
[From the web:]
The quote, as cited at the top of this webpage, has numerous inaccuracies, to the point of real degradation of the actual quote and it’s power. If you want to read the actual words — the authentic, original quote — please go to Marianne W.’s website: I think it’s Marianne.com. You can also ‘go’ to google and google “Marianne Williamson and Nelson Mandela” and that will take everyone to the real origins of it — and to how much greater so very many people suddenly thought it was when they believed (incorrectly) that Mandela wrote it, as opposed to a (then) little-known young, spiritual Jewish woman. That itself is very telling about the psychological power of “attribution” — i.e. how we humans tend to give our power away to hero worship (a subtle form of idolatry) and experience something as being more “amazing” and having more value if we think it comes from someone famous and “great”. This is all the more ironic given the message of the quote! (…”It is not just in some of us; it is in all of us.”) … …
YES the quote is truly great and has its intrinsic truth and power regardless of WHO wrote it (and so in THAT sense, at THAT level, it doesn’t matter who wrote it) — yet if the misattribution had never been made and no one had believed it was from Nelson Mandela, none of you many souls who love it and have been so moved by it would ever have HEARD of it. (And, of course, it never would have been in those two movies.)
Something to think on… So there you have it. How do feel now?
Do the words of Mandela which are the words of Marianne, which are the words of Helen Schucman, who said they are not her words, but the words of "a voice" which seemed like Christ, whom she did not even believe in.... because she herself was Jewish, but had become an atheist... and yet she was able to accept the words and share them with us without judgment!
How's that for trippy?
My conclusion:
Truth doesn't care who said what... the Truth remains the truth and will eventually reach you even if Micky Mouse has to say it simply because he is the only one you will listen to.
"The Truth needs no defense."
- A Course in Miracles
In deepest appreciation and gratitude for our friendship and kinship, may we all remember our greatness and shine! I hope you enjoyed the journey.... Blessings, In the wild and wonderful dance of life.
note: I did not write this but had it saved on my computer from the internet. If you are the author or know who is I would love to thank you and acknowledge you, please email me at taylyns@yahoo.com. 
