Peter McWilliams was an American author and poet. Besides, he was an advocate for medical marijuana in the United States. McWilliams was also a photographer and director of "The Thorn" movie (1971).
Background
Peter McWilliams was born on August 5, 1949, in Detroit, Michigan, United States. He was a son of Henry G. McWilliams, a supervisor at a drugstore, and Mary Taormina McWilliams, a part-time salesperson. Peter had a brother - Michael McWilliams.
Education
Peter studied at Allen Park High School and Eastern Michigan University. He also attended Maharishi International University (known as Maharishi University of Management until 2019), where Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was his mentor.
Career
It was at the age of seventeen, that McWilliams penned a collection of poems, titled "Come Love with Me and Be My Life", which he later self-published under the name Versemonger Press. In 1975, Peter, together with Denise Denniston, published "The TM Book". This work was at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks. The following year, in 1976, McWilliams, in cooperation with Denniston and Nat Goldhaber, published "TM: An Alphabetical Guide to the Transcendental Meditation Program".
Among Peter's many other works are "Surviving the Loss of a Love" (1971); "The McWilliams II Word Processor Instruction Manual" (1983); "You Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought" (1988), co-authored with John-Roger; "Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned about Life in School but Didn't" (1990); "Do It! Let's Get Off Our Buts" (1991); "How to Survive the Loss of a Love" (1991), co-authored with Melba Colgrove and Harold H. Bloomfield; "Portraits - A Book of Photographs" (1992); "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society" (1993); "Life 102: What to Do When Your Guru Sues You" (1994); "Love 101: To Love Oneself is the Beginning of a Lifelong Romance" (1995) and others.
It's worth mentioning, that, with his work "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society" (1993), McWilliams embarked on his crusade for legalizing medicinal marijuana use, and in 1996, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized and muddled the computer files for his work in progress - "The Big Lie: Deceiving America about Medical Marijuana". The following year, in 1997, Peter was arrested and charged with growing marijuana. However, he was released from custody on $250,000 bail and with the "condition, that he not use marijuana". At his death, Mr. McWilliams was waiting to be sentenced in federal court after being convicted of having conspired to possess, manufacture and sell marijuana. He and a co-defendant, Todd McCormick, were accused of growing more than 4,000 marijuana plants.
As for Peter's other activities, he directed the movie, titled "The Thorn", in 1971.
Religion
Peter was born to a Roman Catholic family.
Views
Quotations:
"If you want peace, stop fighting. If you want peace of mind, stop fighting with your thoughts."
"Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it's a small price to pay for living a dream."
"It is a risk to love. What if it doesn't work out? Ah, but what if it does."
"Our thoughts create our reality - where we put our focus is the direction we tend to go."
"When people don't understand that being uncomfortable is part of the process of achievement, they use the discomfort as a reason not to do. They don't get what they want. We must learn to tolerate discomfort in order to grow."
"To the degree we're not living our dreams, our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves."
"Happiness requires courage, stamina, persistence, fortitude, perseverance, bravery, boldness, valor, vigor, concentration, solidity, substance, backbone, grit, guts, moxie, nerve, pluck, resilience, spunk, tenacity, tolerance, will power, chutzpah and a good thesaurus."
"When it comes time to teach, teach from your experience. Go out and do, learn from the doing, then teach from the knowing."
"The irony is that the person not taking risks feels the same amount of fear as the person who regularly takes risks."
"If you're not actively involved in getting what you want, you don't really want it."
"One of the great joys of life is creativity. Information goes in, gets shuffled about, and comes out in new and interesting ways."
"Keep your goals away from the trolls."
"When thought and action are combined, the results are powerful - among the most powerful forces on earth. The combination of successful communication - the sharing of thoughts - and physical action can, literally, move mountains."
"The more severe the pain or illness, the more severe will be the necessary changes. These may involve breaking bad habits, or acquiring some new and better ones."
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
In 1996, Peter was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He also suffered from AIDS.