psgrout

Celebrating the “I don’t know”

January 24, 2024 26 Comments

“Awe is all around us. We just need to know where to look.” — Dacher Keltner

Yes, we’ve been coloring at the local coffee shop.

Quick question. Did you wake up this morning, like a three-year-old, super excited to see what the day might bring?

Or did you open your eyes and make the conclusion that “well, today is likely to be an awful lot like yesterday”?

I think it was Dr. J (or maybe one of his disciples) that said something to the effect of we humans see “through a glass darkly.”

Because we are so convinced we understand life, so darn sure we know how things are, we see through a filter. It’s virtually impossible for us to see life clearly.

Maybe it’s just here in Kansas City Chiefs country, but our headlines are filled with “news” about Taylor Swift.

My algorithm (if you want to know what you’re interested in, just notice what pops up on your device) is filled with stories about the brilliant star’s wardrobe, who she partied with, analysis of her relationship with Travis Kelce.

I chuckle because all those news reports have NO IDEA what’s really going on. None. Zilch. Yet, I hear people talking (Taylor did this or Taylor did that) as if they have some kind of insight.

That’s pretty much what the ego does, feeds us stories straight from our algorithms, straight from thoughts we’ve been interested in before. And then we go on to repeat them, believe them, invest in them. Pretty soon we think we’re experts in something that is pure speculation.

Most everything we believe about the world is pure speculation, fed to us by our egos to limit what we believe is and isn’t possible. Or as Taylor might say, “weaving little webs of opacity.”

What happened yesterday is of NO RELEVANCE to today. What you could or couldn’t do last week is of NO RELEVANCE to right now.

Which is why I celebrate a deep state of not knowing, not figuring things out, not having to be what I thought I was yesterday.

Not knowing leaves room for bright, shiny “sacred new beginnings.”

#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)

Giving it all to the cosmic secretary

January 10, 2024 60 Comments

“Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.”–Rumi

In E-Squared, I mentioned that I appointed “the Dude” as CEO of my career. It was patently obvious that the faulty wiring I’d downloaded from my past had no business making any kind of strategic decisions in the fickle world of freelance writing. Clearly, I needed help.

Recently, I’ve added a new “hire” to the team. I’m calling it my cosmic secretary.

Since my only job, according to the Course in Miracles, is to be a conduit of light, I figure I need outside help to handle the minutia of every day life. The Course says it’s a waste of energy to get bogged down in to-do lists and details and trivia. What’s important is strengthening my spiritual mojo.

So, for now, there’s only one item on my daily task list—stay on the joy frequency. Everything else is assigned to my personal cosmic assistant.

Helen Schucman, scribe of the Course, balked when she was told to ask for guidance on even the smallest of details of her life. Her cosmic secretary (she, of course, referred to it as the Holy Spirit) even specified which winter coat to buy. And it assured her that, despite her objections, it wasn’t intruding on her free will. It was trying to free it. It was attempting to lead her to bigger possibilities.

So rather than depend on my own personal faculties, I’m turning my attention toward the infinite field of intelligence, asking it for guidance and noticing everything gets taken care of quickly, wisely and with supreme grace.

P.S. My cosmic secretary told me to mention she has a lot of colleagues that are currently looking for employment if anyone else needs a hand.

#222 Forever, my lovelies!

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)

Human brain: master of deception

January 4, 2024 33 Comments

“Draw a boundary and then erase it. Because it is a fragment of your imagination.”—Buckminster Fuller

This was one of three hedgehogs Taz and her many emissaries sent my way on January 1. Bodes well for an extraordinarily epic year!!!

For those who might be wondering, I began Lesson 1 of A Course in Miracles on January 1, as I do every year.

And it’s not because I’m a slow learner (although, admittedly, that could figure in), but because I love the daily reminders of the world’s “indiscriminate generosity.”

I love hearing again and again that my fleeting, anxious thoughts mean nothing. (That happens to be today’s lesson).

I love being reminded that my piddly fears were created by a blob of goo in my head that evolved, not to produce genius or peace, but to regulate my body.

The brain’s grand productions (thoughts, feelings, senses) are patterns that come with the job of keeping the body in check. They don’t begin to show the boundless, astonishing energy field in which we live. The Gospel of Thomas says it like this: “infinite love is spread out upon the earth and men don’t see it.” To which I will add, thanks to the reducing valve known as the brain.

The Course offers a seismic shift in the way we perceive the world. By changing our perceptions, we literally begin to live in a different world. As the Course says, “In this world, the unconditional care of God (the Dude, in my lingo) becomes our experiential reality and the worldly assaults fade into insignificance. We are carefree and know we are taken care of. Anxiety is replaced with celebration.”

One of the things I’m celebrating is the amazing, brilliant people I get to meet, one of whom called me a “messenger” yesterday. This is after I balked at her insinuation that I was a teacher. Again, I don’t see myself as a teacher, but rather a person who likes to share her toys.

Her story, a perfect example of the guidance we can expect once we give up our patterned thoughts, is so cool I thought I’d share it here. About a year ago, she started getting a nudge to leave her job and move abroad. She wisely said, “Okay, show me!” No sooner did she consent to listen than she was further guided to move to France.

France? I think I might have gone back to my regulated thought patterns at that point, the ones that insist “that sounds like a lot of trouble.”

But she surrendered and kept tuning in to her guidance. The moment she committed, she started meeting people from….France, started noticing doors opening up. Everything proceeded with ease and grace. That doesn’t mean the brain didn’t try to chime in. But she knows better than to attend to its pointless preoccupations.

So in about a week, she is moving to the south of France where she will be conducting the event we’re doing from her NEW HOME.

I love how easy life can be when we let go of the patterned perception fed to us by our brains. The Course helps us loosen the chains and transform all limited beliefs.

Here’s to a 2024 free of all misguided beliefs and ideas.

#222 Forever!

Wasting my life on fear no longer

December 31, 2023 43 Comments

“If it’s not love, it’s not good enough for you.”—Steffany Barton

The above headline is my New Year’s resolution—not that I put much stock in any intention having to do with willpower.

It’s also a paraphrase of the John O’Donohue quote with which I launched my book, The Course in Miracles Experiment.

I refuse to waste my life on fear because it’s a made-up story that the cultural paradigm uses to hide our true nature. Which is peace, love, joy and light.

Scarcity and limitation are way beneath us, people. And anything that doesn’t acknowledge that is simply put: not true.

Most Unity churches—including the one I go to—offer a burning bowl ceremony at the end of each year. That means writing down everything from the past 52 weeks we want to release. Ya know, things like restrictions, limitations, old patterns. We write these on flash paper and then poof! we burn them. Like that, they’re history.

Above all else, the Burning Bowl ceremony means giving up the past. Releasing every single thing we believe is true about the world, what we believe we’re capable of becoming. Because when we don’t impose our niggling beliefs on life, everything, including ourselves, become brand new. Every single day shines with infinite possibility.

Fear does one thing. It blocks the dynamic life force that pulses within us. But know this: fear and insignificance are nothing but false constructs made up by forces seeking to control us. Forces that benefit from keeping us small and worried and blind to our true nature.

As always, my highest intention for this next year is peace, peace, peace. And to know that what happened in the past is forever irrelevant.

So here’s my wish for all of you open-hearted, brilliant, beautiful readers. May fear begone and may only happiness, peace and joy come your way in this exciting new year.

#222 Forever

Happy, merry, ho-ho-ho!!!

December 21, 2023 41 Comments

“Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.” ― Hamilton Wright Mabie

If I know you—and I like to think I “get” this tribe of sparkly stardust masquerading as humans—you are currently in the midst of creating a joyous, meaningful, love-drenched holiday.

So you probably don’t need yet another wish for peace and light from little ole’ me. But sometimes I just can’t contain myself. I feel so blessed to be alive that I have no choice but to shout love songs from the blog-tops.

So consider this post my holiday wish that each and every one of you beautiful souls will experience enormous blessings of merriment and delight.

I spent last week in Washington D.C. with three friends. One of them nicknamed us the confectionary divas. We made mountains of Christmas goodies and did our best to uplift planetary consciousness.

We also toured Mount Vernon where I learned that George and Martha Washington celebrated the 12 Days of Christmas each year with a hedgehog cake and that George’s most honored hobby (besides believing in the dream of a country with freedom and justice for all**) was agriculture. He didn’t call it regenerative agriculture per se, but he knew the principles the Taz Grout 222 Foundation is looking to honor with next year’s grant were capable of generating life-giving soil. In other words, manifesting aliveness.

I’m buzzed about the candidates who have thus far answered our call for regeneration projects. As usual, we’ll be announcing the recipient on February 22 (2/22).

But for now, I send you tidal waves of love, compassion (especially for yourself) and this quote from Sandra Bullock, “If you dance a little bit each morning, it changes how you walk out into the world.”

Without the old stories we superimpose over our lives, every single day pulses with miracles. Merriest of the merries to you, my beloved friends!

#222 Forever

**He did—in his will–finally free the enslaved who worked at Mount Vernon. My friends and I were serendipitously honored to participate in the laying of the wreath ceremony at the Slave Burial Grounds.

Jason Momoa, the 222 Foundation and Giving Money Away

December 6, 2023 7 Comments

“Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus — an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice.”—Hermann Hesse

As long-time readers know, I started the Taz Grout 222 Foundation to carry forward the beautiful world I experienced through my daughter Taz during the 25 years she hung out with me in this physical realm.

To this day, her fierce and loving spirit lives on, propelling me to reach beyond the story I’ve been told is normal.

The stated mission of the foundation is to change consciousness, to creatively awaken to beautiful new possibilities, to move away from the old, tired story that tells us the world is limited and scary.

Because we focus so much on the past, that has-been belief continues to be regurgitated. The news media works in tandem with what we Course students call “the ego” to repeat woeful tales of lack and sickness.

It works so well because most two-leggeds fear the unknown. They believe what we can’t see is scary. They believe death is the end. They believe everything’s finite. Let’s just say, we have normalized a lot of illusions.

The 222 Foundation works to rewrite that story by giving a grant to a person or organization with the vision to create “a new normal.” This year, Taz and I have decided to focus on regeneration projects.

Which is where Jason Momoa comes in. He recently starred in the fabulous documentary, Common Ground. Along with Donald Glover, Laura Dern and Woody Harrelson, the doc offers a radical vision for rewriting our trajectory through regenerative agriculture.

Already, the Taz Grout 222 Foundation has funded a forest of 2222 Trees in India and a regenerative garden, (I LOVE that it’s called Taz’s Hot Dirt) north of Toronto, Canada.

This year, we’re looking for another regenerative project–the more creative, the better. As far as we can tell, nature is our best teacher. It’s working over-time to get our attention, to show us how we can live without fear on this planet we all share.

Thus far, we have three amazing candidates.

But as I always do, I like to open it up to more submissions. We know there are many projects we have yet to hear about. As David R. Hawkins famously said, spiritual progress in one person is limited. But when we do it together, exponential change happens.

And that’s what we’re aiming for—exponential change.

From scarcity to bounty.

From past to yet unknown.

From lack to abundance.

From fear to love. For everyone.

If you know of a regenerative project (regenerative agriculture or some other kind of regeneration), please send it posthaste to the Taz Grout 222 Foundation at taz.grout.222.foundation@gmail.com

And please, check out the movie, Common Ground.

#222 Forever

Don’t wait another day for your gifts

November 30, 2023 61 Comments

“What modest dreamers we have become.”—Zadie Smith

I’d like to start with a ginormous shoutout to Danielle Cross whose four-word comment on a recent FB post inspired me to write this blog today.

Her kind words, brief though they may be, catalyzed me to share a few thoughts, the first of which is you never know how important a simple compliment can be in another person’s life. It could be a sign, an answer to a prayer or, as in this case, much-needed motivation.

Every last one of you, who take the time to read and comment on my crazy musings, means the world to me. As Ram Das famously said, “We’re all just walking each other home.” So thank you one and all for the overwhelming kindness you’ve shown me over the years.

Today’s Course lesson included the sentence I used for the above headline. Indeed, why wait another day, even another minute to claim your gifts?

The gifts come when we let go of the past, when we quit believing that today is going to be a clone of yesterday, and the day before and the day before that. Absolutely anything could happen today. You could meet the person you’ll marry or start a business with. You might learn something that will propel your life onto a whole new trajectory. Who knows?

Our gifts can only come when we quit investing in the world woven from false premises. Atul Gawande, professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, says 80 percent of the fibers going to the brain’s visual cortex do not come from the retina. Rather they come from the region of your brain that controls memory functions. Our minds remember what to think, what to see. They don’t process what’s really there. They’re certainly not open to infinite potentiality.

Lately, I’ve been using the term “going old” when I fall back into a familiar pattern or choose an option because it feels “safe.” I no longer want to return to what I’ve known. I don’t want to think the thoughts the news media tells me are important. I don’t want to “go old.”

I prefer to get my vision, my thoughts, my marching orders from the Infinite Transmission. When I do, I find that everything I need to know, everything required to live a life of meaning and joy is right there in the now, streaming in loud and clear. Without emotions of the past, without stories from “the old” to disrupt the Infinite Transmission, there is no anxiety, no illness, no anything but everlasting peace.

#222 Forever!

Know the Now

November 20, 2023 20 Comments

“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

Just call me Dory

November 14, 2023 34 Comments

“Forgiveness is your number one dance move.”—Maria Felipe

I was flipping out Sunday at one of my possibility posses, raving about a particular line from a recent Course lesson that I must have read at least 43 times. How did I fail to notice this before?

I compared myself to Dory from Finding Nemo, needing to be reminded again and again of something I knew, something I thought I’d mastered.

P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way.

My boos from the posse, who also dug the line, asked me to send it to them. So even better, I decided to write this post about the stunning reminder that, more than anything, forgiveness means breaking mechanical patterns of thought. And that if I really want a future different from the past, I need a brand, spanking new perception, free from unconsciously adopted beliefs and behaviors.

The line that jumped out is this: “The future now is recognized as but an extension of the present.”

We actually wake up every morning expecting more of the same. We live in an always-evolving, intensely loving and creative energy field and we tend to see nothing but the tiny wave of perception we collapsed years ago, mostly revolving around scarcity, limitations and fear.

Because our thoughts and beliefs are such powerhouses, we continue to create our worlds from this outdated information. We continue to see our lives as what we believed them to be yesterday.

And that’s where forgiveness comes in. Where surrender comes in.

If we can completely let go of every single thing we believe to be true and decide to trust — not in our intelligence or our education, but in life as it really is without the blinders, a new reality can begin to unfold.

We begin to recognize that our true nature is happiness. And that once we decide to trust, life works in our favor, people prove trustworthy, news events that seem to repeat themselves can begin anew.

Maybe Dory is actually wiser than all of us. She doesn’t need a past. Or an old story that limits or defines her.

So Dory, here’s to you and a new possibility with the rise of every morning sun.

P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way.

And #222 Forever

Override the programming

October 27, 2023 20 Comments

“Each of us should allow our mind energy to strengthen and expand, not keep it imprisoned within the confinement of limited beliefs.”—Betty Shine

So I’m going to tell you a story that was relayed to me. After you read it, I simply ask that you notice your reaction.

It’s about a woman who needed an extra $83 to pay a bill that was due in four days.

She wasn’t sure where the money would come from, but she knew, as I often like to say, about the power of a wealthy universal benefactor.

She put out the request for the extra moolah and felt immediately called to go to her own bookshelf and open a particular book. It fell open to page 36 where, a crisp $20 bill was lodged. Hmm, she thought.

The next day, a different book beckoned, again from her same home library. She opened it to the second chapter where another $20 bill was being used as a bookmark.

I don’t know what stopped her from immediately going through every book in her possession, but she didn’t until the next day, when a completely different book came to mind. It, too, contained a $20 bill.

The next day, same thing. Later that day, she opened her front door and there on her welcome mat were three one-dollar bills.

So notice. Does this story sound way too far-fetched? Are you scratching your head and thinking, as many admittedly do, that this Pam Grout girl is plum cuckoo?

Well, that reaction is a snapshot of your reigning belief system. We all have one. The limits of what we think are possible. We’re all programmed by our culture, our families, our religions to believe certain things can happen and others cannot. This programming is especially prevalent when it comes to money. We’re taught there’s only a couple ways to get it.

If we can’t perceive something to be possible–guess what?–our little ole’ brains will be unable to see that thing happening. Even while it’s happening all around us.

Let’s take visible light as one small example. Visible light makes up just 0.0035 of the electromagnetic spectrum. That means, even if your belief system is wide open, you still can’t see much of what’s really happening. The energy all around you is more or less invisible.

Compound that with the fact that our belief system, often centered around fear and protecting the body, blocks even more potential. What we “experience” constitutes an oh-so tiny band of frequency.

Right now, with so many fear-based stories floating around in the ether, I, for one, am recommitting to overwrite all old programming. I agree with what Maria Popova recently wrote in her blog, “If we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals and beliefs, we ossify and perish.”

Fear is a low-vibrational state, maybe the lowest. And right now, none of us can afford to stay stuck in old programming. Anything is possible. Absolutely anything.

The Course in Miracles advised me just yesterday to “let no false perception keep me in its hold.”

False perception is really our only problem. Today, I commit to what the Course calls serenity, unclouded, obvious and sure. It can only happen when we override antiquated belief systems, when we allow ALL energy to flow. Peace is possible. Abundance is possible. Right now, I feel both accumulating breath.

Old programming, begone!

#222 Forever