Choosing a more nourishing narrative

“What time but now can truth be recognized?”—A Course in Miracles

With all the uncertainty right now, it’s tempting to fill in the blanks with despair. When we don’t really know what’s going to happen—with the pandemic, with the economy, with the daily unrest—it’s easy to fast forward to fear.

Lately, I’ve been doing just that, listening to my ego instead of the Voice for Truth.

My ego is like a panther, perched and ready to pounce at the first sign of mind wandering.  If I go even a day or two without meditating, without counting my blessings, without tuning into a higher truth, that ornery ego slithers right in like a slimy used car salesman.

It tries to convince me that things NEED TO CHANGE. That things are definitely NOT OKAY. In my case, it especially likes to throw down the old “childless mother” card.

“You have good reason to feel sorry for yourself. You lost your only child, for God’s sake. You have every right to be miserable.”

And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Moping around. Focusing on what the Course calls “the valueless.”

In other words, I was focusing on a narrative that doesn’t serve me. It doesn’t serve my happiness, my highest intentions or the expanded awareness to which I am committed.

Just like I choose between eating junk food or healthy, nutritious meals, I choose between thoughts that are valueless (“Eeks! Everything’s going to hell”) or thoughts that are valuable (“This next breath is a lot more real than anything in the news, anything in my past.”)

Some argue that digging up the deep-seated past, addressing unconscious childhood wounds, failed relationships, etc, is how we feel better.

But I’ve discovered that the Course is right. The past is a valueless narrative with a bottomless pit. Most of it’s not even true–or not true right now.

It is only in the present that I can be free. More time, more rehashing, more ‘woe is me!’ never works.

The Course in Miracles urges me not to use these excuses, not to employ these grievances to attack myself. Those things, it tells me, reside in the lower frequencies. They’re fine, if I want to spend the rest of my life there–in the material, in the limited, in the fear.

But I made a commitment to Taz, to God and to myself that I was going to live in the higher frequency, the expanded consciousness, in what the Course calls, “the ancient peace I carry in my heart.” That’s where Taz is, that’s where we’ll all be eventually.

Every day, I get this choice. To chose a narrative of sorrow and pain. Or a narrative that brings me joy. For me, it has to be a daily practice.

A couple things that have brought me joy recently: The Space X flight a couple weeks ago was launched at exactly 2:22 my time. I enjoyed concocting the homemade yard sign in the above picture.

And this morning at Dunkin Donuts, we drove to the window only to be told that our lattes were paid for by the car in front of us. We offered to pay for the car behind us and the guy at the window said, “That’s what’s been happening all morning long.”

That’s love, guys, the only thing there is when we commit to focus on the nourishing narrative, the expanded consciousness, the Truth.

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest book, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).