psgrout

Marching toward the land of freedom

January 15, 2018 24 Comments

“Let us hope that in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. ”—Martin Luther King Jr.
martin-luther-king
In America today, we pause to celebrate one of my top heroes. Sorry Wonder Woman, you’re on the list, but Martin Luther King Jr., who has such a remarkable way with words, snags top billing in my writerly heart.

Everyone knows about his “I have a dream” speech. I’m betting your community has organized an event today where somebody’s going to read it. But this great man gave something like 450 speeches per year and wrote five books. Having a dream is only the beginning.

One of his key beliefs was spiritual purification. You can’t go out stirring up change until you’re clear inside, until you’re speaking Truth as the universe sees it. This is where A Course in Miracles comes in.

Lesson 15 says My thoughts are images that I have made.

It’s pretty hard to believe that what we’re seeing out there is the product of our thinking. Good news is you don’t have to buy it as this point. You just have to do the simple lessons. And to trust that in some not too distant tomorrow, as we surrender more and more of the past (all the stuff we so stubbornly believe is damned well true) our thoughts will begin to create a new dream.

Because as Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently professes:

** Love transforms enemies into friends.

** Trust triumphs over hatred and fear.

** Spiritual upliftment is a better expenditure than defense.

** A person-oriented society out trumps a thing-oriented society

Let’s honor my man today who once said, “we are in dire need of creative extremists.”

Here’s to his dream of a beloved community.

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her new book, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

Make it fun. Make it yours

January 14, 2018 85 Comments

“I always wanted to be part of a small revolution.”—Quote from The Post
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A Course in Miracles is like anything. You make it into whatever you want it to be. My guiding philosophy is that unless something is fun, it’s not sustainable.

So you can be bothered by the language. In lesson 14, for example, (God did not create a meaningless world), we delve into that controversial G-word.

Or you can make it fun. You can appreciate it for the rebellious and revolutionary program that it is. You can notice the part about ditching your own personal house of horrors, the line about moving towards perfect peace.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappo’s, is the poster boy for making perceived un-fun things fun. In fact, he walked away from the first company he built (he was 27 and it was worth $265 million) because it just wasn’t making him happy.

Zappo’s (which does make him happy) is built on weirdness, creativity, being adventurous and doing whatever it takes to give love. In corporate speak, love=customer service, but, take it from me, it’s love, pure and simple.

Like the Course, Tony eschews perfection (“jump in fast, make mistakes, it’s all okay”) and old paradigms. On a dare, he named his venture capital firm Venture Frogs (who does that?) and every day, he does something outside the business norm–like dye his hair red or wear a mohawk.

He lives in an Airstream, spends most of his non-working time outdoors (says he has the world’s largest front porch) and knows without a doubt, that if it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing.

So if a guy who doesn’t even like shoes (he says he owns three pairs) can turn a billion dollars online shoe company into a rockin’ good time (a tour of their Las Vegas headquarters is better than a self-help seminar), I’m thinking we can transform this wordy blue book into weird, boisterous, meaningful fun.

Who’s game?

Paper, plastic or the teeming dazzle of life its own self

January 13, 2018 11 Comments

“By figuring things out, by labeling them, we restrict what we let into our awareness, we block the field of infinite potentiality that wants to come forth through us.”– From my book, E-Cubed

A couple years ago, I was invited (for free) on a cruise to Bermuda with three sexy chefs from the Bravo show, Top Chef.

There were private cooking classes, Quick Fire challenges and meet and greets with bad boy celebrity chefs Ash Fulk, Angelo Sosa and Spike Mendelsohn.

And while this travel writing assignment certainly illustrates how amazingly awesome things started happening when I began giving up meaningless ideas, I’m telling you this story because of the cardboard cutouts. That’s me in the picture with the cardboard cutouts of the three guests of honor.

You also see cardboard cutouts at the movies—Kevin Hart and The Rock, for example, are currently at my local theater posing for their movie, Jumanji. College basketball fans often hold up cardboard cutouts or big heads, as they’re known, to distract the opposing team.

So what does that have to do with Lesson 13 from a Course in Miracles?

The purpose of the first 50 lessons is to unravel all thoughts that block our good. To help us realize that everything we see is a cardboard cutout. It’s a picture of the past frozen in time, serving as a stand-in for the real thing.

We decided long ago that life is this certain way and that’s all we can see.

Our crafty brains literally reconstruct empty shells, caricatures of the teeming life that exists in every now moment.

We look at the people in our lives and don’t really see them, not as they are now. We look around at the world we inhabit and see nothing but the cardboard cutout of our story. The invisible grace, the never-ending abundance is invisible to us. top2

I’ve seen cardboard cutouts of Angelo Sosa and I’ve seen the real thing.

Believe me, the cardboard cutouts pale in comparison.

Indescribable happiness: a lesson in focus

January 12, 2018 60 Comments

“Don’t put the past in the cupboard of your flesh.”—Claudia Rankine

look depper I’ve got a confession to make. I’m starting to question my commitment to these daily Course in Miracles lessons. Not my commitment to doing them myself, but my crazy idea of blogging about them every day.

Here’s why: I’m seeing the lessons through your eyes. And I’m thinking yuck, who wants to talk about being upset and meaningless worlds. To read lesson 12 (see I can’t even write it), click here.

Luckily, this lesson also offers a side note in focus, as in “we get what we focus upon.”

Later in the lesson, I’m guaranteed that once I give up my meaningless thoughts and ideas, I’ll find a much more pleasing reality. It says that once my thoughts and assumptions are erased, I’ll find indescribable happiness.

So today, I’m going to tell a story about erasing meaningless thoughts and assumptions.

Anand Giridharadas is a young Indian-American journalist. His book, True American, won all sorts of Best Book of the Year awards. It’s about a Texas vigilante who walked into a Dallas mini-mart ten days after 9/11 and shot Raisuddin Bhuiyan, an enterprising Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh.

Bhuiyan survives, ends up getting to know his swatstika-tattooed perpetrator, befriends his daughter, even tries to free him from death row. Let’s just say the book is incredibly inspiring and shows that beneath the labels (our meaningless thoughts) is a much deeper story.

But my story today is about Giridharadas himself. He’s 30-something, politically liberal, very PC. The other day a middle-aged white guy came to install a stove in his Brooklyn apartment.

The white guy asks, “So……Where are you from?”

That all-too-familiar question usually raises red flags. “Here we go again. Another redneck racist making assumptions about my brown skin.”

But he chose to give up that meaningless thought.

Rather than deliver his stock, wiseass, cut-him-off answer (Cleveland, because well, he was born and raised by Indian immigrants in Cleveland), he decided to engage, to give him the answer he knew he wanted. “I was born in Cleveland, but my family comes from India.”

The stove repairman smiled and said, “That’s what I thought. My brother married a woman from India. She has become the light in our family. We were a pretty dysfunctional family and then she turned everything around.”

So, yes, it’s easy to assume we know the way people are, the way this day is going to go, the truth about the way the world works, but once we give up our meaningless thoughts, a beautiful new indescribable happiness is free to come streaming in.

Have the best weekend of your life, my forever friends!

Every moment is mine to create

January 11, 2018 12 Comments

“Just remember life is all an illusion…..it’s your creation and you can dismantle it and re-create at will.” ― Nanette Mathews

A friend from one of my possibility posses made a very profound joke (yes, jokes are often profound) the other day.

She said, “I have three daughters. Each one of them has a different mother and none of them are me.”

Each of her daughters sees her through their own eyes. Like all of us, they see what they’ve decided is true.

All the people in our lives, all the circumstances, all the “good and bad” are the outpicturing of our thoughts.

Lesson 11 in the Course sounds kinda bleak at first read: My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.

But remember, the flip side is also true. Your meaningful thoughts show you a meaningful world. This lesson begins to introduce the main thesis from my book, E-Squared. Your thoughts create your reality. Your thoughts determine the world you see.

And as you break to pieces the indoctrination and programming that currently holds you hostage, you get to see and experience a brand new world. You get to produce and direct a whole new movie.

And speaking of movies, here’s a song, I’ve adapted when I need to wash an old
thought out of my hair.

Have an epically extraordinary day, my epically extraordinary friends.

Transcending the chatty asshat in your head

January 10, 2018 23 Comments

“We cannot create anew with the same ole, same ole, same ole.”—Sherrie Taylor-Jones

Larry King was interviewing some swami. He asked him about his mind, “How does it get so quiet in there?” The swami answered, “It IS quiet in there. That’s its natural state.”

Everything else (the incessant mental verbalizing) is just a crutch we non-Swami types use to buffer the world. The never-ending chatter narrates the world for us, slicing and dicing it to fit our personal story. Its purpose is to keep us distracted and disoriented.

Most of us are too close to the “roommate in our head” to be objective, to fully realize its overriding power over us.

As Lesson 10 of A Course in Miracles says: My thoughts do not mean anything.

After years of identifying with the thoughts in our head, it can be confrontational to hear that our “precious thoughts” mean nothing. To learn that they’re simply useless mental commotion that we devised to filter reality. It’s particularly shocking to hear our thoughts are not who we really are.

It doesn’t even matter if the thoughts are telling us nice things. Doesn’t matter if they’re spouting spiritual wisdom or telling us we should proceed immediately to our beds and pull the covers over our head. Either way, that voice is not us.

Just for kicks, stop for a second and make the voice in your head say, “John Jacob Jinkleheimer Smith.” Now, make it say it in a sultry voice.

See. It’s at your command. And it’s busy, night and day.

We mistakenly believe this ongoing sideline color commentary keeps us safe. But, as we come to learn in the Course, the non-stop vocalizing mechanism keeps us trapped. It keeps us from knowing who we really are.

So for today, take it from Larry King’s swami and start to observe the “roommate in your head.” Realize that chatty voice is not you. And know that true freedom comes the moment we decide to transcend it.

Yesterday: a tragedy and comedy all in one blog

January 9, 2018 16 Comments

“Keep it light, so light that the pull of old, sad stories cannot keep you from playing, dancing—cannot hold you down.” –Toni Labagh

juke My mind is like the jukebox in a sticky, smoke-filled bar. It has been playing the same old records for years. Yesterday it kept dropping quarters in the Country & Western slot. Maybe you’ve heard some of my favorites: Poor Me, Not Again, I Really Must Be a Loser.

What a huge relief to have the lessons from the Course reminding me that those familiar oldies are false ideas. They’re simply not true.

For years, I actually believed my thoughts. I believed that something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t doing life right.

Yesterday, a couple of the old melodies started playing in my mind. Because I know every word by heart, I started to sing along. The old verses are as familiar to me as old Supremes songs—only mine aren’t always in tune.

Before the Course, I’d have probably kept those lyrics going for days. I am so grateful that now I can watch those thoughts from a distance. I know not to take those oldies seriously, not to adopt them as my identity.

What’s even better is knowing there’s another consciousness, a jubilant, gleeful, brilliant consciousness that invites me to boogie on a much better dance floor.

Lesson 9 is: I see nothing as it is now.

As this lesson (which you can access at the link) says, I don’t have to believe I’m seeing the past, the false, the old familiar jukebox standards.

I just have to offer a tiny bit of willingness. The bigger thing will take it from there.

How easy it that?

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just-released, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

Taking the wrecking ball to worn out mental constructs

January 8, 2018 35 Comments

“There comes a point when you know, without doubt, without hesitation, that you cannot go back to your old life. You cannot be who you once were and also have a new life with new riches.”— Julie McIntyre

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The past sometimes comes in handy. Like when I’m ordering a pair of sneakers on Zappo’s.

Eliminates a lot of back and forth shipping if I know I wear a size 9. Or when I come to an intersection. Knowing what that red octagonal signs mean prevents a lot of unnecessary collisions.

But other than a few useful details, the past is mostly a prison. It prevents me from seeing and experiencing life as it is now.

Instead, I see my labels, my prejudices, my judgements–all constructs that block the Truth. When I continue to regurgitate my past, the glorious field of infinite potentiality (the FP) can’t get in. Nothing can ever change.

Lesson 8 in the Course in Miracles is: My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.

I know it might seem rather pointless to look at my thoughts and call them out as the posers they are.

But it doesn’t matter what I think of the exercises. It just matters that I do them. What’s really pointless are all the decisions and assumptions I made about what’s best for me in the past.

The Course is about letting go. It’s about giving up old mental constructs and surrendering to the all-loving, all-powerful energy force that’s bigger, bolder, brighter, and, yes, stranger than anything I’ve yet seen.

This Sacred Buzz is life itself. Life, which—no matter how many walls I erect, no matter how seriously I screw up—is always there waiting with arms open wide.

You say tomato. I say toe-mah-toe!

January 7, 2018 39 Comments

“Why get rich quick when you can be rich now?”—Alan Cohen
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I got a question yesterday from a newbie to the Course in Miracles and thought I’d address it today since it relates to today’s lesson (6): I see only the past.

She said she was stymied by the idea that Sandy Hook and the Holocaust were illusions or holograms. It didn’t seem quite right to ignore the fact that people died.

And while I am no expert on the Course in Miracles (or really anything for that matter), I would like to share my take on it.

When we focus on the past, we ignore the astounding love and grace of right now. To really experience this moment (which is unique in all the world and has never happened before) can make tears roll down your cheeks. It’s that beautiful. We don’t notice because we see only the past.

So it’s not about ignoring tragedy. It’s about NOT ignoring what’s possible right in this moment. I myself don’t want to miss it.

I heard this story the other day. Two celibate monks were crossing a river at the same time as a beautiful, sexy woman. She slipped in the water so one of the monks put her on his back and carried her over. The other monk was aghast. He silently stewed about his friend’s indiscretion: “That’s against our vows. We’re not supposed to touch female flesh.” Finally, able to bear it no longer, he questioned the other monk who replied, “I set her down four hours ago. It seems you’re the only one still carrying her.”

Also want to answer a couple other questions that have popped up:

1. Who am I to pontificate about the Course in Miracles? This question, by the way, came from my own head. I don’t profess to be an expert about really much of anything. I’m a seeker and, over the years, have explored everything from rebirthing, h’oponopono and tapping to Abraham-Hicks and Byron Katie’s The Work. I love them all. I just keep coming back to The Course because well, that seems like my path. It’s not everybody’s tomato nor does it profess to be. All roads, as they say, lead to Rome. I like it because I’m a sucker for miracles and being happy.

2. Will I continue to do this the whole year? That’s a really good question that’s yet to be answered. That’s my intention and as long as it’s fun for me (again, always my bottom line), I’ll be doing it.

3. Which Course in Miracles book is the right one? There’s really only one and it comes from the Foundation for Inner Peace. It’s blue and has the workbook (which is what I go through every year), the text and a manual for teachers. It’s dense and often hard to read and understand. That I’ve stuck with it all these years surprises me as much as anyone. If you don’t feel inclined to buy the book that some have called a useful doorstop, I’ve started (as of yesterday) including a link to the lesson in each post.

That’s it for now, my beautiful, wonderful friends. There are probably other questions, but I’m off to my possibility posse. Oh wait there’s one other thing I should probably mention.

Lots of people who read my book E-Squared are focused on manifestation. And today’s lesson—I see only the past—explains those times when the new car or the new job or the new iPhone X seem stubborn about not showing up. The manifestor is stuck in the frequency of the past where, indeed there was no new car or new job or iPhone X. As Elsa sings, “Let it go. Let it go.”

In this moment, anything is possible and everything is here.

Wonder Woman’s true superpower

January 6, 2018 22 Comments

“If you need to stop an asteroid, you call Superman. If you need to solve a mystery, you call Batman. But if you need to end a war, you call Wonder Woman.”–Gail Simone
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Anyone who has ever attended one of my workshops knows I LOVE Wonder Woman. I have t-shirts, action figures, even underwear.

On New Year’s Day, a group of us were talking about last year’s movie. Most of us gushed praise, raved about Gal Gadot’s unquestionable badassery. Except for one naysayer: “I thought it was too violent.”

That got me to thinking. A true changemaker would never perpetuate the “old way.” A true changemaker would see that slaying bad guys just keeps the crazy going.

We will never be truly free until we move beyond the mistaken belief that bad guys exist.

Which is sorta what Lesson Six says: I am upset because I see something that is not there.

So sure, I can work to overcome all the “evils,” the “bad guys,” the “problems.”

Or I can retrain my mind to see a different reality.

Don’t get me wrong. I still LOVE Wonder Woman. I will still take her action figure to my workshops. I will continue to stand in Wonder Woman pose.

And I will remind myself (three times today, according to my Workbook lesson) that just like movies aren’t real, all those upsets I think I see are nothing but holograms that will radically change, not by fighting them, not by poking spears into their guts, but when I train my mind to see them differently.