I Got You, Babe!

“Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination.”–Rob Brezsney

In the movie, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray wakes up every morning to Cher belting out the lyrics of the popular 1965 hit, “I Got You, Babe.”

For much of the movie, the self-centered weatherman resists and cusses and hates the time loop he finds himself in.

Finally, he decides to try a different perspective, to open himself to the idea that maybe there’s something else at play. Maybe he’s not the axis around which the world revolves.

Nothing else changes—the same song, the same deejays, the same weather report wake him up each morning. But once he puts down his dukes and begins connecting to something outside himself, he notices everything is different—more alive, more loving.

When he decides to trust in the intelligence outside of himself, when he decides to stop fighting, drop his defenses, “put his little hand in mine….” as Cher sings, life shifts.

So I’d like to pose a little experiment. Here’s the hypothesis, “There is a peaceful, loving intelligence that’s way stronger than any judgment, doubt, anxiety I might feel. And trusting that is all I need do.”

Anxiety and all its insolent cousins arises in the left hemisphere of the brain, the part that calculates, measures, judges. According to British neuroscientist, Iain McGilchrist, the left brain doesn’t know what it’s talking about. It literally makes up stuff. It gives us fake directions for coping with life. Because our society is so left-brain oriented, we all turn to thinking (that scared, calculating left side of brain) to address our daily lives.

The left side comes in handy, but it also causes us to miss the magical reality in which we live. So to test the above hypothesis, I suggest making the decision each morning to trust that, behind the scenes, everything is being orchestrated by a power much greater than ourselves.

Think of those dot-to-dot puzzles we used to do as kids. When you begin, you have no idea what the picture is going to be. It could be an elephant or a lamp or Snoopy, for all you know. Your only instruction is to move to the next dot. One dot at a time.

You don’t have to figure out the whole picture. Or worry about where to go. You just trust that moving to the next dot is your only job.

And that’s enough.

So today and maybe for the next five days, choose to trust. Don’t figure your day out. Or think you have to plan everything. Just trust. The truth that surpasses all things will cheer and sing, “I Got You, Babe.”

#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)