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.

The quotation contrasts an innate, dignified “natural state” with a fallen condition produced by “illusion.” In Williamson’s spiritual vocabulary—shaped by A Course in Miracles and New Thought—illusion typically names ego-driven perception: fear, separation, and the pursuit of status or control. The line suggests that when people identify with appetite, compulsion, and domination (“false power”), they experience themselves as confined and diminished. Conversely, remembering one’s essential nature restores a sense of freedom and worth. The moral force of the passage is reformative: liberation comes less from external conquest than from inner awakening and a reorientation from egoic craving to love or truth.