My 2021 travel plans
“Look for the little hints of magic glittering at the corners of your life.”–Martha Beck
As a grounded travel writer, I’ve had to use my imagination this year. Instead of exploring new countries, I’ve traipsed through my little town’s 54 parks. Instead of elephants on the savannahs of Africa, I’ve oohed, I’ve aahed over giant local tortoises. I’ve hugged a lot of trees—which, believe it or not, often hug me back.
But mostly, I’m practicing living in magical realms. In different dimensions that have always been here, but I’m frequently too busy to notice.
It takes some dislodging of old patterns, of recognizing that looks can be deceiving. Readers of my books know I have a thing for quantum physics. Studying the science behind what I think of as “reality” helps me escape the trap of form. As I said in E-Squared, the material world “aint what it’s cracked up to be.”
Rather than detracting from life, learning about my illusions actually enhances it. I’ve said it before, but I have to keep reminding myself that nothing is solid. Physicists exposed that fallacy more than 100 years ago. Things we see are 99.999999999 percent empty space.
Those “things” we think we see out there, according to David Bohm, are “a phenomenon of connecting light rays which go back and forth, freezing them into a pattern.” Our brains literally make up a story based on our frozen patterns. Everything is actually energy.
Even my body is not solid or stable. At a cellular level, it’s in constant flux. My stomach lining is replaced every five days. Skin is reformed every two weeks. I have a completely new set of lungs than I did six months ago. The very oldest cells in my body are at most 10 years old—which, come to think of it, could explain my behavior at times.
At an atomic level, this turnover occurs at breakneck velocities. And my eyes trick me. As one rather startling example, this big rock known as Planet Earth is whizzing through the galaxy at 67,000 miles per hour.
Which gets me to the headline of this post. Rather than depending on what my eyes show me—an illusory world at best—I’m leaning in to the kingdom of magic, the world of infinite potentiality where anything and everything is possible. Once I let go of my brain’s many fabrications, I begin to notice all kinds of miraculous things. Perfect solutions show up. New adventures (which can be had anywhere, at any time) unfurl before me. I even get messages from Taz who according to conventional old school thinking is nowhere to be had.
Starting tomorrow, like I always do, I’ll begin Lesson #1 from A Course in Miracles. The first 50 lessons are there to help me unravel illusions, to transcend the fear that insists my number one goal should be protecting the body. I’m reading a wonderful book by a Buddhist teacher who suggests repeating this four-word mantra: “This is a dream.”
I’ve been repeating it a lot and even saying it “out loud.” It’s amazing how much lighter everything feels when I approach life this way, when I recognize that all my problems are just fascinating dramas that I literally concocted out of empty space and frozen light patterns.
Perhaps the children’s song, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” says it best. “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream.”
That merry river is where I’ll be in 2021. I hope to see you there. #222 Forever
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) that has just been turned into an app. Badass ACIM (badass-acim.com)