“Your drive to experience pleasure isn’t a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Feeling good has something important to teach you every day.”—Rob Brezsny
In the big stage play of life, we all get a role to play, an important part that only we can fulfill.
Recently, it seems, I’ve been assigned to re-translate the workbook from A Course in Miracles into language that isn’t quite so sexist (is ACIM having a #Metoo moment?) and difficult to digest. Like, what does atonement and salvation even mean?
ACIM Lesson 101, like its predecessors of the past few days, is one we’re supposed to repeat every hour.
And it’s an important one. God’s will for me is perfect happiness.
Perfect, of course, means 100 percent. Never stopping. All the time. From sun-up to sun-down. And even when I sleep. It’s SO radical and SO outside our range of experience that how we can even wrap our minds around it. 24/7? How can that be?
So today, in order to hook into just a wee bit of willingness (all I’m ever asked to contribute), I wrote myself a mantra, a little ditty that I plan to repeat A LOT. Quietly, inside my head, since I prefer not to be locked away just yet.
My intention is for it to get stuck in my head the way certain lyrics do. So here it is:
Epic. Awesome. Forever Fine.
Happiness, fun and joy are mine.
And because I haven’t shared a favorite song in a while, here’s another great ditty to get stuck in your head.
Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her new book, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.
38 Responses
Hi Pam
I think you are onto the next book….take these daily ACIM blogs & turn it to print.
Your help with interpreting the daily lessons has been a true life changer for me.
Thank you!!!
Wow woman! You are powerful. Coz it’s happening! The book, that is! Thank you!
Before I came in and read the lesson for the day, I was talking to a guy that is installing our above ground pool about playing and laughing. And we were both laughing. I have the wonderful job of to walking around in the pool as it is filling up with water to help get the wrinkles out. It’s really fun!
Pam, I’m so happy that you have been invited to re-translate the workbook! I met a man in Walmart yesterday that was an Engineer in Canada. He said that part of his job was to take pages of detailed information and rewrite it into one page that people could understand. This is what you are doing…making everything simple, happy, and fun! Just as the Universe wants us to laugh and dance and play, you’re reminding us daily.
I love this story Delaine. I can picture you walking about in the slowly rising water, laughing and having a great time 😁 I tried (not very successfully) to imagine I loved vacuuming yesterday whilst helping my sister clean the rental property she was vacating! I managed to do it calmly and with the tiniest sparkle of peace but I didn’t love it. But that was quite an improvement for me because I usually hate vacuuming! The reason I’m sharing this story is simply because you could have chosen to find the task of smoothing out the wrinkles by walking around the pool as it fills an annoying waste of time but you laughed and had fun and enjoyed it! Amen sister! Thanks for sharing this delightful story with us 😁👍🏻🌷
Thank you, Jenny Louise!
OMG, Delaine. You found my job description. Thank you!
Hi Pam!
I was so happy to read that you are going to re-translate the workbook to get rid of sexist language . I actually have never seen the workbook but I have a hard time getting past things I have read in ACIM. Things like
“ You are one self, the holy son of God, united with you brothers in that self, united with the Father in his will..”
Any suggestions on how I can look past that in order to better explore,understand, incorporate ACIM in my life?
Thanks!
You are One, with and of the universal creative force, with and of all living beings, united with All.
Wahoo!
It’s crazy. One of the world’s great spiritual texts and it’s damned hard to digest half the time. Part of if it so encouraging. Part of it is like ink blots. My strategy is to underline the parts that resonate and when I need a spiritual “hit” I look for my underlined passages.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful song! It brought me a LOT of JOY!
So glad to hear it! Joy is the true essence of spirituality.
Pam! Yay! thank you for your interpretation of today’s lesson. I feel lighter and happier, and that is a miracle! And those buggah words like “salvation” and “atonement” often trip me up!!!! I just love your take on the CIM lessons. This is my second year to read & practice daily workbook and feel so grateful to read your interpretation. God knows we need to lighten up. Depending on the day I simply replace the word “God” with “Love”, She with He, and “Child of God” instead of “Son of God”. And I just love, love love: I am as The Dude created me. Thank you! Keep it up. and love the song too.
I am as the Dude created me. Love, love, love it!
Thanks Pam, I love that song and you’re posts too of course. Kind regards, Mick
Sent from my iPad
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I am more than happy to get your little mantra of JOY stuck in my head.
Let’s replace all the old tapes and the old paradigms with joyful, giddy, gleeful truths.
Hi Pam – so happy you are rewriting the language of ACIM. Here – let me assist you with this massive task…We need to find substitutes for the following ” God; Sin; Penance; Salvation; God’s Son; His Son; Father; Atonement; God’s Will; Will Of God” ( and that is just for starters LOL !) I must admit- I focus much more on your post and just skim through the ACIM lesson – so jarring I find the language . ( I don’t even do the lesson because of it) BUT I get a lot out of your posts and give myself daily reminders about not having “meaningless thoughts” when I think them and about reaching for joy when I can . Thanks Pam – love your work!
I totally relate to all you’re saying here Janet. I don’t “do the lesson” the CIM way, I do it The Pam Grout way because the lessons just confuse me, and they take me back into the fundamentalist religion I was raised in which is not helpful for me today. I have trouble reading the words without “hearing” what they meant in my religious upbringing, so I read Pam’s post and revisit it several times during the day and that’s what works for me. Can’t wait for the Pam Grout CIM Workbook- it will be so much more accessible for most people and hopefully reach and inspire many more people than the original – which will be amazing for our world I reckon! 😁
Thanks for the list, Janet! I was so inspired I mentioned you in today’s post.
Hey Pam I LOVE your mantra! I love that The Dude (or Super Dude as I’ve now nicknamed Her) only makes 10’s!! That means it doesn’t matter that I am not what society labels a “10” because I AM one whether anyone else knows it or not! Yay! I also love that The Universe wants perfect happiness for me 100% of the time. That probably means that I can ask for ANYTHING I truly desire that I KNOW will bring me joy and Super God will say HELL YES!! Heehee! Cool. Very cool indeed. Thanks for reminding us of the joyful delight that life is meant to be for all of us ALL of the time. (That almost feels naughty! 😉) Have a splendid day dear Pam and friends here in “Blog Land” 💖
Oh Jenny …I SO resonate with what you are saying here. My upbringing was in a devout Lutheran religion – so not fundamentalist as such but BIG on the punishment of God if you didn’t love or obey “HIm”. Coupled with a little girl (me) who was able to have out of body experiences, have clairvoyant type experiences and psychic ability – I found it such a puny crappy explanation of what God was. I still shudder about it 50 years on. And I still never got to understand how you could “love ” a God who was hell bent on terrorizing you ! SO uggghhh…the language of ACIM !
Yep – punishment, eternal damnation, exclusion from “The Kingdom” (to be established on earth when Jesus returns…..) etc etc. I felt like a permanent sinner (even though actually I was a very well behaved obedient child/teenager/young adult!) So it seems many of us had very similar experiences of really just not feeling good enough or loved by “god”. Thank goodness for people like Pam Grout and the many wonderful teachers today who have totally transformed the way many of us see God, the world and our place in it. 😊
Love you, Jenny Louise!
I love the little ditty you came up with and I hope you’re feeling it within. ~ Blessings, KK
AMEN Jenny Louise AMEN !! LOL!!
Heehee! 😁
Perfect happiness? Looks like a marijuana leaf 😀🙏
Perception–a rather funny thing! Love you, Jeff!!
I would come visit you if they lock you up for singing that little diddy out loud all day long. 🙂 Singing is a good way to remember. Sometimes we forget though, that it applies to everyone! Even those we think are just awful people. I have to remind myself that everyone was made perfect just as they are for some reason. I just don’t know the reason. 🙂 We are all 10’s. I like that a lot. Great job once again. Thanks.
Good to know I’ll have a visitor if they ever lock me away. I appreciate it!
I’ll bring homemade cookies too. 🙂
Thank you for your amazing posting!!
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I love this so much. You are an amazing blessing. Thank you for following your gifts. We are all blessed because of your “wee bit of willingness.”
Wee bit is all it takes!
Pam, take your time with this book. It is a huge spiritual assignment, but you’ve been blessed with the gift of love and lifhtheartedness which will guide you each day. Blessings to you and the book and all the lives you will touch💖
Thanks so much!
O thank you thank you, Pam. <3 <3 <3 !!!