The Law of Divine Compensation

November 19, 2012
Williamson (A Return to Love) may be the most renowned spiritual activist and author teaching spiritual principles based on A Course in Miracles. The Course, as it is fondly referred to, presents in lesson format spiritual understandings in Christian language. This latest book by Williamson, as with all Course-based books, addresses how we should perceive things, using one pivotal principle: love is the all-encompassing reality of God, and love (or remembering God) is the only eternal truth. It addresses the ways we attract miracles or deflect them (anger, guilt, a negative sense of self), with a focus on the particular attitudes that will pave the way to material abundance. What Williamson calls the Law of Divine Compensation is the deeper realization that "to whatever extent your mind is aligned with love, you will receive divine compensation for any lack in your material existence." Since internal abundance is ultimately the source of our external abundance, a shift in thinking from fear to love is the miracle, one that allows us to become a willing channel for the infinite creative energy of the universe. Agent: Ellis Levine

February 1, 2013

Williamson (A Return to Love) is a continuing puzzle--a beloved spiritual leader and interpreter of messages thought to have been transmitted by Jesus himself, but also, to some, a petty tyrant and pop phenomenon. For all that, her new book is unobjectionable--and unremarkable. Williamson urges her readers to think positively, to trust God, to be thankful, and to learn from yesterday, all of these ideas presented in language that could offend almost no reader or faith. VERDICT Williamson's unsurprising meditations--a melange of ecumenical, unchurched, Unity Church-flavored, and nonsectarian--will doubtless delight her many dedicated readers, but may baffle or bore the rest.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2012
"Finance is just one of the many areas where an increasingly obsolete, materially based worldview is proving inadequate to the challenges of the times in which we live," writes spiritual activist, teacher and author Williamson (A Course in Weight Loss, 2010, etc.), whose concern about the country's fragile financial state has her procuring alternative pathways toward a fulfilling livelihood. Structured around uplifting Catholic dogma, the author provides useful if basic advice certain to reinforce the power of promoting positivity and goodness. To Williamson, qualities as simplistic as an affirmative mindset (inside and outside of the workplace) and self-love can release "an infinite number of possibilities." The beneficial byproducts of love, self-assurance, faith and a blind allegiance to the universe's cause-and-effect harmony will surely promote financial and professional success and stability, she writes, while defusing anger, guilt, fear and negativity is the key to moving forward ("miracles will follow"). Williamson refers constantly to A Course in Miracles, a spiritually transformative book series she helped popularize. This, combined with her New-Age enlightenment, results in an ecclesiastical amalgam of magical thinking, great expectations and the kind of fanciful awareness already calcified throughout the author's best-selling oeuvre. Williamson also presents healing prayers and patented themes of hope and faithful devotion toward becoming financially and professionally sound by following a "path to material abundance through immaterial means." Though tribes of believers will again take the author's classic soothsaying to heart, it's essentially the same song with slightly different lyrics.

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November 15, 2012
For more than 30 years, Williamson, a student and teacher of the spiritual discipline called A Course in Miracles, has been distilling the guide's dense texts for a general audience. Her seminal piece, A Return to Love (1992), remains a classic of spirituality writing, and in subsequent books, she has used parts of that original volume to show how the Course can be applied to such diverse problems as reshaping America and even losing weight. Here the task is to explain how the Course's core principleseverything but love is an illusion, and letting go of fear and shifting one's trust into a loving state produce miraclesapply to people who are broke and broken. Williamson's easy, caring writing style makes almost anything seem possible, and here it is used to best advantage to rethink issues about why people continue to have doubts even under the best of financial conditions. The take here is that while today's circumstances make it easy to believe in scarcity rather than abundance, in spirit there is never a lack of possibility. The rest of the book goes on to prove this is true and offer ways to incorporate more positive thinking into one's life. Fans will appreciate this approach; unbelievers will scoff; but those in the middle, given Williamson's gentle power of persuasion, might say, It can't hurt. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Most of Williamson's books have been best-sellers, and she's a familiar media face who knows how to attract an audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)