“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!
**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.
“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
“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.
“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!!!
“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.
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.
“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.
“The whole universe stands on tiptoe waiting to assist you in miraculous and amazing manifestations.” –Constance Arnold
I’m sure nobody but my editor noticed that I deleted one of the paragraphs about Barbra Streisand in the anniversary edition of E-Squared.
In version one, I mentioned that her intentions to be a glamorous movie star were SO STRONG that she, with her unconventional looks, had little choice but to manifest a voice powerful enough to lead her to stardom on Broadway and eventually the movies.
Yesterday, I heard an interview with the multi-hyphenate superstar where she basically said the exact same thing.
“Thoughts transcend matter,” she told Robert Rodriguez when he asked how she could possibly have achieved all she has over six decades. “With a strong enough will, you can manifest anything.”
“People wonder how I can hold notes for as long as I do,” she said. “I will it to happen. Like the Goethe quote says, ‘at the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to work with you.’”
She also mentioned that she gets very quiet and listens, that she tunes in to what feels right.
What feels right to me these days is exactly that–to be very quiet, to erase all ideas I learned about what is and isn’t possible. And especially to walk away from fear.
Fear is rearing its head across the planet. Everyone is dividing up, taking sides, casting blame.
We humans are capable of such atrocity. But we’re also capable of such love, such beauty, such creativity, such light. And since, as Barbra pointed out, thoughts transcend matter, I’m putting all my thoughts and energy into love only love and the life force that holds the infinite.
“Gratitude is thinking in tune with the cosmic intelligence. It can change more than a mood; it can change a world.” — Brother David Steindl-Rast
Happy Friday, my brilliant amigos. I’m just back from Oaxaca and wanted to post a couple thoughts.
On the flight to Mexico, I happened to catch the movie, Book Club, the Next Chapter, with Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen and Candace Bergen.
Although their current book club read was NOT E-Squared, it sure could have been.
The whole plot revolved around following “the signs” which started by leading them on an exhilarating adventure to Italy. One of them even said, “Ignoring the signs is what ruins a life.”
It’s like I always say, the universe constantly attempts to get our attention, constantly tries to bless us, guide us, interact with us.
All we have to do is make space for it to get through. Nothing could be more important to living a fulfilling life than leaving room for ‘the Dude’ to make contact.
For me, it’s often as simple as stopping to take five deep breaths. Or laying on the ground in my backyard. Or simply pausing to notice the incomprehensible presence that transcends my feeble understanding.
Otherwise, we get swept up in somebody’s else’s vision or rules or ideas about the world.
And when we focus our energy on the news (the “olds” is my preferred moniker) or the job we feel stuck in or ‘the look’ someone gave us at the traffic light, there’s NO room left for what else could be possible.
I’ll end with this recent quote from my beautiful comrade Lisa Natoli:
“If your awareness is on the body, pain, symptoms, stories excuses, problems, difficulties… that is resistance and blocks the light from flowing. This light is pure intelligence and creative power. Turn your attention/Awareness to the light of you, to how strong you are, how powerful. You are a creative being of pure light.”
Okay you pure beings of light, let’s all turn our attention away from the past and make room for the Dude, the signs, the whatever-you-like-to-call-it and trust it to lead us on an adventurous and meaningful weekend.
“Magic is done by hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.”—Terrence McKenna
Someone left this for me in Quebec. Thank you!!!!!
For anyone who follows me on FB, this blog post will come as no surprise. I happened to read a quote by Rick Rubin, the legendary music producer, that I loved SO MUCH that I posted it on my FB author page.
It was all about how we reduce Source and misperceive data. How our worldview is created from this very limited set of beliefs, most of which revolve around utility and survival.
Scientists even have a name for it: our DMN which stands for our Default Mode Network.
So, being who I am, I went down a Rick Rubin rabbit hole. I’ve ordered his book. I’ve listened to a couple of his podcasts and well, the reason he brings out the transcendent from a veritable who’s-who of musicians is because he believes in what he openly calls magic. There’s something that happens. It can’t be explained. Or predicted.
But the stage can be set by encouraging artists (and really anybody else who wants to live a life most extraordinary) to find space for things that don’t fit into our tiny little narratives (our DMN).
He also says the belief in an idea (say a particular song or style of music) is more important that the truth in the idea.
What we call “truth” comes from “I know” mind. And “I know mind” is extremely limiting.
Thankfully, it’s not the only game in town. Sure, our rational selves have built up a lot of history, a lot of armaments.
But there is SO. MUCH. MORE.
And that’s my intention: to escape “I know mind.” To be released from all limitations, all identities, all DMN’s.
And since I’m also a sucker for a good story, here’s a recent email I particularly liked:
“As you know, I traveled to Spain this summer to visit my son who was studying in Seville. I brought your E2 book along and was doing the experiments.
“I was conducting Experiment #2 and put it out there I wanted to find some wheat while in Seville. Don’t know why I chose this, maybe my Kansas farm girl coming out. My husband, son and I were touring the Cathedral de Sevilla and it was truly awe inspiring–filled with great paintings, tile work, carvings, etc. Everything was on such a grand scale. I was searching for wheat in any of the art forms but was not seeing any.
“Right before we left there was a display of one of Spain’s saints. Right there in the display was REAL WHEAT. Not a picture of wheat, but the real deal. I had seen no other plant life inside the cathedral before this.
“The added bonus of the day was that I saw another Kansas crop in Seville. I saw Bar Alfalfa that night while wondering around the alleys. Alfalfa is not a common name, so it took me by surprise. Apparently there is an Alfalfa District in Seville too!”
“I feel nothing but deep gratitude to be part of this whole cosmic mess.”—Nick Cave
One of my possibility posses is currently running a month-long experiment. The question we’ve posed is this: “What would life be like if we knew just how deeply loved and forgiven and taken care of we really are?”
If we knew this fact beyond a shadow of a doubt, how would we approach each day?
With nothing to fear or worry over or question, the only reasonable expenditure of time would be to just stop and enjoy everything this astonishingly beautiful world has to offer.
The only reason life so often seems the polar opposite of our “hypothesis” is because we’ve been programmed to believe the polar opposite. From the time we’re born, we’ve been trained into a life story that tells us we are each a separate self, competing with all the other separate selves in a world that’s dominated by scarcity.
And, unfortunately, the brain is partial to its old patterns and familiar pathways and goes out looking for things to affirm them.
Which is why I continue to share miracles stories, to keep reminding myself and others of things that aren’t rational or “normal” or conform to what we’ve been taught.
Here are three I heard last week:
Eighteen years ago, when he was 21, “Joe” was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He was given a few months to live. Doctors wanted him to immediately begin chemo. He said, “no.” Rather than put “that poison” as he called it, into his body, he proclaimed he was healthy and free. That, he said, was his divine right as a perfect child of God. Well, guess where “Joe” was when he shared this story nearly two decades later? Hiking the Appalachian trail.
The second story is from a woman who had attended a Zoom pop-up possibility posse back in 2022. At the time, she had just been admitted into a long covid clinic in Montana where she was told her lung function was 50 percent. She was having to move back to her mom’s home in Minnesota. Well, when she wrote to me last week, she was currently in the Caribbean island of Dominica, having a blast and getting ready to travel to Peru.
Lastly is a story from a woman who had read the first version of E-Squared. While doing the Volkswagen Jetta experiment, she skipped right over yellow cars and butterflies and decided to look for luxury BMW X’s. Sure enough, she spotted many during the 48-hour experiment, but within a few weeks, she was also presented with “an offer she couldn’t refuse” to see one every day in her own garage. Yes, she now owns a BMW X.
So friends, I ask you today–what would your life be like if you threw aside the limited narrative your brain keeps weaving? What if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were deeply, deeply loved, 100 percent safe and always being looked after?
