Escape from the trance

“To save the planet, we don’t need technological breakthroughs or vast amounts of capital. Essentially, we need a radical change in our thinking and behavior.” – Rob Hopkins

German mystic Meister Eckhart said, “God is at home. It is we who have gone out for a walk.”

Because we are distracted by a long litany of misery, we don’t even notice God or the truth about who we really are.

The world we’re seeing now is a byproduct of decades of enculturation, decades of believing that we are limited to these physical meat suits. Most of our fear comes from trying to protect them. Until we turn our back on all that is emerging out of the chaos of our current thoughts and beliefs, we will continue to miss the light.

One of the main lessons from A Course in Miracles is “I am not a body. I am free.”  It’s repeated A LOT. It says that if we can just get that one lesson, if we can learn to embrace the part of us that’s bigger than our body, our lives will come alive in a whole new way. Our bodies are nothing but a resource, a tool, a conduit for a higher level of consciousness.

What’s missing for many of us is the wisdom to recognize we are much MORE than our body. Once we get this, we can travel through reality in a whole new way.

Let’s take Taz, for example. As I’ve mentioned before, we had a ritual involving hedgehogs. Whichever one of us said that silly word first on the first day of each month won the prize of a lucky month. We started this game when she was in junior high.

To this day, she sends me a hedgehog on the first of every month. Sometimes, it comes as a photo or a text from her old phone. On May 1 of this year, I was doing a podcast with the wonderful Course teacher, Lisa Natoli. While we were chatting, a hedgehog crawled into her back yard in Maine. She said it had never visited before.

Tasman McKay Grout, even though she’s busy doing her God work out there in the cosmos, still finds time to bless me with this monthly reminder. Yesterday, September 1, she must have been in the mood to show off. Because she sent me not one, but four hedgehogs. Two of them came from readers of this very blog—one whose daughter dreamed of a white hedgehog and another who was sent a pair of socks tricked out with, you guessed it, dozens of hedgehogs. She said, “I knew right away this was meant for you.”

During the first months after Taz’s passing, I failed to notice the hedgehogs. But as Meister Eckart points out, “it was me who was out for a walk.”

Meister Eckhart also said, “If the only prayer we ever say is thank you, that would be enough.”

So thank you, Jodi, and thank you, Rosa, and thank you, Taz, for helping me realize that I am, that you are the energy, light and consciousness that animates the body, not the body itself. Love you forever. #222Forever

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).