Know the Now

“The highest to which man can attain is wonder.”—Goethe

Happy gratitude week, my brilliant, big-hearted friends!

This annual celebration calls for nothing less than a passage from my old standby, Thank & Grow Rich.  

But first, I want to tell you about the South American songbird I just discovered.

The black manakin, that hails from dry scrublands near the rainforest, not only has a weird call—sorta like a squeaky-sounding chuckle, but the male manakin performs backward somersaults so fast that human eyeballs can’t see them.

It’s only when video of the avian gymnasts is slowed way down that our limited range of vision can appreciate the show. We literally can’t see their flips under normal conditions.

The black manakin provides a worthy reminder that there is a WHOLE heck of a lot of reality going on that escapes my notice. Like angels who might be hovering around beside me. Or miracles surreptitiously being orchestrated while I sit here in my office, delighting in stories about rainforest songbirds.

The point is there is SO MUCH happening behind the scenes that it is but a disservice to myself to believe I know how something should go down. Thinking I somehow understand reality only limits what’s possible.

Every moment is utterly new and unique and if I try to assign it with some kind of meaning or label it with something old school like say, words, I basically recreate the past.

I prefer what renowned physicist Arthur Eddington concluded. “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.”

That’s why I consider wonder and gratitude the best use of my time.

So, as promised, here’s a short passage from my 2016 bestseller, Thank & Grow Rich: A 30-Day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy:

Ode to Joy

“If your mind isn’t cluttered by unnecessary things, this could be the best day of your life.”–Ethan Hughes (AKA, The Zing)

Gratitude?

Really?

Isn’t that sort of, well, lame?

You just wrote a pair of powerhouse books about energy and infinite possibility. And now you’re just gonna sell out and write about something pantywaist like gratitude? That’s so basic, so flimsy, so 101 . . .

Hold on, Sparky.

The gratitude I’m talking about in this book is anything but flimsy or 101. Let’s call it ferocious gratitude. In-your-face gratitude. None of the namby-pamby, sunshine-and-lollipops crap.

Because here’s the thing. When we don’t stop daily to inventory all the gazillion things going right in our lives, the crazy voices in our heads try to make us their bitch.

When we don’t militantly count our blessings, the voices start jabbering, telling us that life sucks, that we suck. They’re like the ticker crawl at the bottom of a news broadcast, running continuously in a nonstop loop.

As long as we keep tuning in to these voices, we fail to notice the incredible gift we’ve been given: to be here on planet Earth, to have this day, to enjoy this cosmic adventure. As long as we continue to etch their bald-faced lies deeper and deeper into our psyches, we cloud over our profound transformative connection to the field of infinite potentiality.

By simply stopping every day and registering our connection to this bigger thing, this undeniable, unchanging Presence, we start to notice a deeper truth, a happier reality. We start to notice an eternal broadcast airing its joyful melody quietly beneath the static.

No offense to Napoleon Hill, the author of the self-help classic on which my book title riffs, but the real power is in not thinking. If you want to override your brain’s unfortunate habit of leafing through your past and creating a hologram to match, forget thinking. And start thanking. And I mean thanking everything. The bills that are stacking up. The doctor’s report you weren’t expecting. The buffoon of a boyfriend who drank an entire bottle of tequila last night and puked on your new Oriental carpet.

When we practice this brand of ferocious gratitude— what I have dubbed the extreme sport of gratitude—we come to realize that all the striving, the endless struggle, the perpetual scrambling for our place in line, is unnecessary. In truth, it’s counterproductive and actually blocks the energy field that is and always has been available to sustain and guide us.

Brazen gratitude provides a portal, an entry point straight into the heart of the very field of infinite possibilities my other two Hay House books introduced. It puts you on an energetic frequency, a vibration that calls in miracles.

That’s it folks. Happiest of Thanksgivings–the best of your life!!!

#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)