“If you’re filled with joy and filled with love, you’re a blessing on this planet.”—Michael Singer
Writing this post was also an excuse to post a picture of my amazing daughter when she was still in manifested particle form. She was and still is my best teacher!
Hello, you gorgeous beams of light. I’ve missed you.
When I’m writing (read: doing one of the things I love most in the world), time gets away from me.
WHAT!! It has been a WHOLE month since I last said hello!
So, howdy, friends, and here are some thoughts I wrote today that may or may not go into the new book. Enjoy!
It sounds like a platitude. Happiness is within. But it’s actually true.
As a brand-new human, before your family and culture got ahold of you, you were curious about and overjoyed with everything. You had zero preferences.
Oh look, a spiderweb! You could watch bugs flying into spiderwebs for hours.
Oh, and there’s another little human about my age! Let’s be friends
Oh, and now, mom’s buckling me into a car seat! It’s so exciting. I can watch new scenery outside the car window and wow! imagine the number of treasures I’ll find at whatever venue she’s taking me to.
Oh, it’s the post office. Andthere’s a long line. How marvelous! I’ll be able to observe and smile at countless other versions of me. Wonder why they all look so impatient?
Within a few years, brand-new humans are fully-programmed, fully-trained (Good boy, Johnny!) to know which things make them happy. Having a good job, for example! Or owning a BMW.
And which things make them impatient, frustrated. Avoid those at all costs.
It doesn’t take long to match the energetic frequency of our culture, to collect an extensive list of what is necessary to be happy.
Sorry to break it to you, but it’s all bullsh*t. You can be happy doing anything. Vacuuming the rug, for example, or standing in lines. Even sitting for hours at a computer writing a book.
Trying to force life to match your specific criteria for happiness never works. Programmed preferences are not where happiness lives.
Surrender all preferences, all attachments and look for happiness where it really is: everywhere!
“Nature is encouraging us each day to exist as our blueprint intended — together.” — Zach Bush
I love my local possibility posse.
I get so much inspiration (our mission, you may remember, is to celebrate what’s going right) that, even though I’m in full-blast writing mode, I thought I’d stop to jot down a quick post inspired by today’s get-together.
We frequently use a phrase–“oh, that was definitely a God job”–when something happens outside our realm of understanding. Like when the perfect book drops off the shelf. Or when someone sends unexpected money.
It occurred to me this morning when the “God job” phrase was mentioned that I can now see that everything is a god job. Everything is a gift.
It is only mental commentary that prevents me from seeing that. Anytime I judge any event (not to mention a person) I fail to notice the miracle.
This truth is becoming so clear to me. Every time I decide to hold up a score card and rate something as “undesirable,” my energy flow gets blocked.
I am in such a state of bliss right now because well, my days are really simple.
I walk. I listen. And I write.
As I open myself to more god job energy (which only means I’m not blocking truth), more inspiration pours through. I wake up nearly every morning with new thoughts, new ideas.
I’ve been comparing it to the manifestation process. Whatever you focus upon is animated into your life. Your attention adds weight and gravity and, before you know it, voila!
In order to get back to my book, I’m going to stop here and share instead this joyous email that popped into my inbox last week:
“Hey there! I wanted to reach out to share my story with the experiment, asking for a blessing within 48 hours. IT WAS SO EXCITING!
I came across a podcast interview that you were on, and although I have been following you on social media for the past few years, I didn’t realize you were a writer (duh on me).
“I immediately went on Audible to purchase 3 of your books. I read “Thank and Grow Rich” first and experienced something cool after reading that one, and then I started on E2.
“Here’s what happened…It was July 12th, and I decided to try the experiment. I asked for a blessing, a wink from God to come to me within the next 48 hours. The following day was my birthday, and my fiancé got us a double Queen suite at one of our favorite oceanfront resorts here in Jupiter, Fl. We live close by and stay there at least once a year on special occasions.
“We usually get the same suite, which is BEAUTIFUL. So we walk into the lobby to check in, and this young, sweet girl behind the desk starts giggling when we tell her our name for the reservation. I said jokingly, “What is so funny?” She replies, “It’s your lucky day! We upgraded you to our 3-bedroom Penthouse for no extra charge. This room goes for $3,500 A NIGHT! We then asked if we could stay a second night at the same rate as the original suite and said “absolutely!”
“I finished E3 this morning, and I am so eager to start experimenting. I also host a podcast called “Thoughts can Heal,” and my last episode was about reading your book, Thank and Grow Rich, and what happened when I experimented with one of your suggestions in the book. Thank you so much for all you do to make this world a better place! Heck, if you’d ever like to be a guest on my podcast I would be honored.”
Thank you, Denise, and thank you God (or whatever you want to be called) for always strutting your stuff. Have a great week, friends! Love you to the six-planet parade gracing our night skies right now and back.
“To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health or our circumstances. We must try.” – Roger Ebert
Rachael and one of her own mini-joy producers.
I hadn’t planned to write a post today, mainly because I’m in the throes of my next book deadline.
But then I read this article about the Portland Sidewalk Joy Map and, well, since it’s my sworn mission to share this kind of astounding and important news, I couldn’t help myself.
Here’s the scoop:
Rachael Harms Mahlandt is an artist who curates mini-yard installations created solely for the purpose of spreading a moment of joy to people walking by.
In her hometown of Portland, she has found more than 130 of these sidewalk art exhibits including a rubber duckie exchange, a pollinator seed bank (created in honor of a rescued bumble bee named Harriet), a thimble exchange and 10 tiny hand-cranked music boxes. She created a map for others to also enjoy these secret interactive exhibits and recently branched out to make a map of such installations around the world.
I love this story so much because it’s real news, truthful news. It’s how the world really is when you look beneath the collective focus on turbulence.
I choose not to give my precious energy to the tumultuous story. Because I know that by training my attention on beauty and blessings, I generate more of what I most want to see.
I have been working my self-designed A.A. 2.0 program for more than 12 years, texting daily blessings to my possibility posse. Every single day, I use my superpower of attention to identify moments of love, peace and creativity.
Thought I’d share a sampling from the past few days:
**I appreciate the joy of finding full-formed green beans (it happens, it seems, overnight) in my garden, how their magical appearance reminds me of manifestation (one day they’re not there, the next day they are) and how Source can use anything to remind me of its benevolence.
**I appreciate the yogurt drain pipe I rigged up for our water barrel, the yellow finch feasting on coneflowers outside my front window and Friday lunches with Bekka.
**I appreciate fun convo at Clio on and Leo (it’s a local coffee shop) with fellow North Lawrence voters, taking Azul to her first big concert at the Midland (an old vaudeville theater in Kansas City ) and riding the free trolleys from Crown Center to River Market and back.
**I appreciate community meals at the Sunrise Project, Kansas songwriters at Northside Social and long chat with my sis.
Outside the Sunrise Project where I enjoy twice-monthly community meals.
**I appreciate my always willing meditation partner, that an L.A. DJ gave E-Squared a fabulous shoutout and finding a book I’ve long wanted in the local free book library.
So that’s my public service announcement for today, friends. Love you all more than you’ll ever know.
“Consciousness will whip up whatever we wish to experience and will present it to us in a way that is convincing and believable.”—David Bingham
While I’m slower than a speeding bullet and unable to leap tall buildings with a single bound, I do happen to possess an impressive superpower.
This rock-em, sock-em superpower has the ability to change not only my world, but the world that appears before my eyes.
My superpower is my attention. And how I dispose of it is the ultimate creative act. What I attend to with my consciousness renders the life I will experience.
I can place my attention on lack and limitation or I can place it on life’s never-ending blessings.
I can direct my attention towards displeasing situations and circumstances, to things I want to fix or change or I can actively direct my attention towards beauty.
And here’s the thing about consciousness. Where we choose to look starts hardening up. It becomes the only model we see, not because it’s the only available possibility, but because everything that doesn’t fit (those things we’re not paying attention to) are quickly rendered invisible. That’s why my attention is a superpower.
I heard a definition of abundance the other day that I really dig. Abundance is not about what you have. It’s about how you feel about what you have.
So, as always, you get a choice which phone booth to duck into, which reality you’re going to attend. Perhaps your decision could even qualify as a moral act.
“The real goodness of Life is not to be found in the reasoned spaces of our thinking minds.”—Ameeta Kaul
Yesterday, the website, Inspire Me Today, re-ran a post I’d written 10, maybe 12 years ago. Here’s the link:
In the post, I called for love—instead of being relegated to a Valentine’s card or a chick flick—to be our society’s main curriculum. I said that anything this powerful should be emphasized every day in school, in business, on Capitol Hill.
And then I got to thinking about love itself and how, in our culture, it’s always filtered through the brain. It gets turned into concepts and judgments and rules for who is worthy, who is not.
Love that’s filtered through the brain, asks questions like this:
Does he/she check off all my boxes?
Does she/he behave the way I think she/he should?
To filter love through the brain, where it becomes a mathematical equation, is a huge disservice. To love. To you. To the world.
Love is not a concept. It has no right and wrong, good and bad. It is literally a force, a power, a light. And it is rendered crippled when it’s filtered through our brains.
As complex as human brains are, they’re chiefly wired to keep us safe, to see danger, even when there is none. Because our brains act as reducing valves, they are at best capable of regurgitating past beliefs and boxes and limitations.
I’ve got a new book coming out, hopefully by the end of this year. It’s about a different state of consciousness than the one filtered through our brains. This love/life/light (it really can’t be named or even described) is innate and always present.
It always knows what you need. It always supports you. It’s always loving–not the kind of loving with requirements and standards and judgements. The kind of love that accepts you EXACTLY as you are. Right now. Right here.
In this love lies indestructible, infinite freedom.
“Ask yourself how you can transform this very moment into something radiant and radical and spectacular.”—Elizabeth Gilbert
I often share “You are never gonna believe this” stories here on the blog. And while an eerily spectacular tale recently dropped into my inbox (it involved a completely empty cabinet that suddenly filled with necessary medical supplies), I’ve been thinking more about the gazillion little miracles I walk by every day.
For the past week, I’ve been hosting some of the folks I met in South Africa. Lucien and Theolene are currently attending I.Y.O.U. (International Youth of Unity) at Unity Village, but last week, we did a lot of things that I’ve been known to take for granted—going to a movie theater (neither had ever been), for example, or eating foods from other countries. We even stopped by the local “Make Good Trouble” protest in honor of John Lewis.
They loved EVERYTHING! They were excited by EVERYTHING! They even requested their picture taken with a big yellow school bus.
Maybe more important than making an impact, I should make sure I myself am impacted, that I myself notice and get excited by the countless treasures that exist in every moment.
Sure, things can look scary from one viewpoint, but it’s a mistake to tether myself to that position only, to disregard all the everyday lusciousness, like the hibiscus showing off in my front yard right now or the curly-haired three-year-old who danced her way up to the stage at yesterday’s quilt auction.
Like so many people, I’ve been deeply inspired by Andrea Gibson, the poet who passed last week from ovarian cancer. She said in one of her poems, “Dying is the opposite of leaving” and that, after death, she’d be “more here than ever before.” That certainly rings true-her poems are everywhere now.
She knew to fall in love with tiny things (“every falling leaf is a tiny kite with a string too small to see”) and, after her cancer diagnosis, every single experience became radiant and filled with light.
As Byron Katie once explained to Elizabeth Gilbert (I just read about this in her weekly “Letters from Love”), all she saw when she looked at her was pouring beams of light. Liz pointed out that Katie also saw those same beams of light emanating from the ketchup bottles.
But you get the idea. We see what we decide to see. We create our world with our attention.
So, yes, I will continue to celebrate big, juicy, “impossible” miracles. But I will also celebrate the small and seemingly insignificant. In other words, I intend to fall in love with everything I see.
“To identify as ‘only a body’ is a narrowing of awareness.”—David R. Hawkins
Caution: serious woo-woo ahead!
Feel free to continue seeking.
Feel free to look for another book or teacher or workshop.
Feel free to sit forever on that proverbial pot.
But just so you know, it’s all bullsh*!t.
In actuality, you are already free and whole and have everything you believe you don’t have because well, you think you’re broken or you fell from grace or you still have karma. Gotta keep practicing.
Family and culture passes out a script — “There’s something you need to do,” “There’s somewhere you need to go.”
“You’re not quite there yet,” we hear over and over again.
“Woe is me” makes for some interesting drama (I like a good Netflix show as much as the next guy). Believing there’s some kind of hierarchy (“that person is realized and I’m still working on it”) fits right into the cultural narrative.
But to reiterate, it’s all B.S.
I prefer to use the hologram known as Pam to enjoy, dance, create, hug, uplift, shine light and surrender as much as I possibly can. To let go of all belief in limitations, time, space.
I just read David Hawkins book, Letting Go. This book was particularly poignant for me because he doesn’t use the word “I” to describe himself. The I, the me, me, me, me is where we start to pick up an identity.
Instead, when he’s relating a story that would normally be first person, he simply talks about encountering a particular event that might just as well have been a scene from a movie. As the quote above suggests, he didn’t identify as ‘only a body.’
Because the hologram known as David Hawkins often drove into New York City to see clients, a thought arose “Wouldn’t it be great to have a small apartment in New York City.” And then he surrendered it. He’d be happy to have it. He’d be equally as happy not to. He let go all desire.
The next day, within 24 hours, he had the urge to drive into the city. It was around 4:30, normally rush hour, but there was little traffic. A car pulled out right in front of a real estate office near the area he wanted (or not wanted, it didn’t matter). C’est la vie!
He walked in, made his preposterous inquiry (everyone knows there aren’t inexpensive apartments on Fifth Avenue) and the agent said, “You are one lucky son-of-a-gun. Exactly one hour ago, we listed the only apartment in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue.” It was affordable and had just been painted.
“You can move in any time,” he added.
This scene from his movie happened without effort, without trial and error, without hard work.
So sure, believe the story. Keep practicing. Or let it all go and just have fun being God.
“Once you identify a choice that your culture has made on your behalf, you are free to begin forging a new one.”—Philip Shepherd
My most important practice is non-resistance. Me and Elsa—letting it go. Over and over and over again.
Like today’s Course lesson advises, “Give up your tight control of what you see.”
Personally, I want to give up my tight control of what I see, what I think, what I believe.
I was pondering this common phrase today. “But that’s just human nature.”
It’s often used to explain away all sorts of less-desired behaviors, things like fear, jealousy, greed, anger. And it’s billed as inescapable, “just the way it is.”
But that doesn’t ring true for me. I would say 100 percent of these kinds of projected behaviors are anything BUT human nature. Our true essential nature is love, peace, acceptance and joy.
And anytime, we feel less than peaceful, less than innocent, less than “what a freakin’ awesome world this is,’ we are resisting something and projecting whatever we’re resisting onto a screen outside ourselves.
Another myth I’d hereby like to bust is the prevalent belief that it’s your job to figure everything out. When you rely on your precious mind to solve some issue that’s troubling you, it produces thoughts—lots and lots of thoughts.
The intellect, as great a tool as it is, relies on old files stored in the brain. It churns up stories revolving around the above myth—that others and their “human nature” are out to get you. And these thoughts, which are endless and self-reinforcing, only breed more thoughts.
So today, let’s all join Elsa, belt out a joyous “let it go.” And relax in the boundless peace that is our true nature.
“Identities and opinions are the least interesting parts of people.”—Maria Popova
So I just returned home from one of my Possibility Posses (P.P.), checked my email and saw a comment on last week’s blog post that said something to the effect of “so grateful you keep writing these.”
I took that as a sign to share a little something we discussed today.
Possibility posses, far as I’m concerned, are non-negotiable. The important part isn’t so much what we say, but the frequency we create by being together, by focusing on a different narrative. Someone last week even mentioned that the story he was about to share wasn’t as important as the energetic field he intended to create.
I always think of Jill Boelte Taylor’s Ted Talk about the stroke that shut down the left hemisphere of her brain. That’s the logical, conceptual, mathematical part of our brains. While that part wasn’t online, she looked at her hands and saw, not the flesh and bone and fingers we normally associate with hands, but two intermingled clouds of energy.
So the field or the “cloud of energy” to which we commit is one of upliftment and possibility, of a story beyond what we’re often enmeshed with in our culture.
Are we really these bodies? Or are we conjoining fields of energy, fields that we, by our very presence, can use to reach towards light and love or what I like to call, the way things really are.
I know it’s a popular sentiment in the self-help arena to figure things out and fix things with our minds. But I’ve noticed the mind, more often than not, gets in the way.
I compare thoughts, those fields of energy dispensed by the right side of our brains, to birds. Yes, that purple-bellied, green-eyed warbler may still be flying around your yard.
But if you don’t put seed in the bird feeder, it’ll soon fly away. In other words, if you keep putting the same suet out for the same old thoughts, be it thoughts about money or your childhood or whatever else keeps squawking around your awareness, it will continue to vie for your attention and darken your cloud of energy.
So that’s why I only feed “birds” that feel good and why I continue to show up at my possibility posses whenever I can.
“The present is whispering to us, “Come and play, come and risk.”—Philip Shepherd
When Philip Shepherd graduated from high school, he had a choice. He could follow societal convention, study physics at Trinity College in Toronto. Or he could fly to London, buy a bike and cycle across Europe, Middle East, India and eventually end up in Japan studying Noh Theatre.
As he says now, “I knew instinctively that if I stayed in my culture, it would win.”
Like many of us, he noticed early on that adults followed a lot of well, ridiculous rules and customs.
Had he not defied traditional expectations, he likely wouldn’t be the pioneer he is today. I probably would never have heard of him or gone to his life-changing workshop last weekend in Brooklyn, Wisconsin.
As he points out, everything in the accepted culture is tied to safety. And if we’re not aware of patterns we’ve inadvertently adopted, they will continue to run and run and run.
From the moment I first read about Shepherd (thank you, DailyGood), I resonated with his work of finding guidance, not in our heads, but in the living present. The workshop was aimed at noticing barriers that dull us to the world around us and finding the spaciousness and fluidity that is our natural state.
Until we let go of what we “know for sure” (as he says, the head is like a medieval fortress), we have little choice but to blindly follow reactive patterns.
I’ve always called it changing consciousness, opening to higher dimensions. As all you party-goers here at the blog know, that’s the mission of the Taz Grout 222 Foundation and the reason I keep writing these blog posts. Well, I also happen to really, really LOVE writing and opening myself to whatever the muses instruct me to purvey.
And today, I want to share a trio of stories that touched me and defy the cultural Kool-aid which, as we’re starting to recognize, doesn’t satisfy or even taste good anymore:
1. Money is perhaps the most entrenched belief in our culture. “The more, the better,” the story goes.
But Jeffrey Lee, who owns 1200 hectares of land on the eastern edge of Australia’s Kakadu National Park, turned down the opportunity to become that country’s wealthiest man. The uranium deposit on his land is worth $5 billion. Mining companies had pestered him for years, offering exorbitant amounts to purchase his family homeland.
Finally, to escape the incessant pressure, he traveled to Paris to make his case before the World Heritage Committee.
“I believe this land and my cultural beliefs are more important than mining and money,” he told the committee that was able to officially protect Koongarra and his indigenous Djok way of living.
2. The next belief that’s firmly wedged in our societal enculturation is the idea of “the other”—that we are separate and that we must defend against the “opposition.” I got a kick out of a quote Philip shared: “Stereotypes are a great time saver.”
Anyway, Destiny Smith could have saved a lot of time and, according to conventional reality, been pretty mad at the stranger who rear-ended her car. But after learning he was 97-years-old, had no license, no insurance and virtually no family (his wife had recently died), she ended up befriending him, finding him some nursing assistance and now visits him a couple times a week.
3. Last story is about a former police officer named Denis Chagnon. In 1996, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given three weeks to live. Rather than take the recommended chemo and pain meds, he started to experiment with the energy he was starting to notice in his body.
It started as a way to comfort himself. He began placing his hands on areas of his body where he was in pain. Before his mind could begin lecturing him “this is ridiculous and you heard what the doctor said,” he noticed he was able to move energy, was able to eventually dissipate the blocks that were creating the cancer throughout his body. He had what society calls “a spontaneous remission.” But was it? Chagnon now works as an energy healer in his hometown of Val des Monts, Quebec, Canada.
So that’s my Friday offering and this is my big chance to wish you (and everyone you love-in other words the whole world) the most fabulous weekend of your life.
