“There is an ever present goodness threading through the natural world, evident in every act of kindness and love made visible.”—Carrie Newcomer
On the plane ride home from Spain, I fell in love with a pair of four-year-old twin girls, wearing matching flowered dresses.
We first met in the Madrid airport where they had ingeniously created their own playground behind the airport terminal seats.
I couldn’t help but watch as they skipped, giggled and chased each other, exuding a natural sense of joy.
And I began to wonder. If that’s how little humans come into this world, wouldn’t it make sense that a 40-year-old or a 60-year-old, with considerably more years to enjoy their life, would be even more bubbly and gleeful? With normal development, seems they’d be ecstatic by now.
Today’s Course in Miracles lesson says that’s not just theoretical. If we can accept the truth about ourselves and allow our natural light to shine, we, too, can experience a natural sense of joy.
In fact, we already have it. It’s just temporarily covered up by all our crazy thoughts and beliefs. Over the course of our lives, we gather up a lot of ideas about who we are, what we’re capable of, what is possible.
But everything we have picked up and put into our belief basket is just a story that hides our inner four-year-olds, secretly grinning with love.
Have the best weekend of your lives, my loves. I adore you and am just so grateful for each and every one of you who takes the time to read my crazy musings.
“The things we believe carry a charge.”—Rick Rubin
Joyous 222nd day of the year. I’m still in Spain on my ‘book tour’ and my sister is here for a week before commencing a trek on the Camino de Santiago.
Yesterday, we visited two archaeology museums, one showing the ancient Roman Theater I mentioned a couple blog posts ago and the other, the site of a Phoenician settlement from roughly 1100 B.C. Both were fabulous.
Archaeologists at the Phoenician site, because they’re only able to excavate a small section, are unable to determine a lot of important facts. Yes, they can tell the age of the pottery shards and the bones, but they can’t even begin to speculate about population size, for example. There’s simply not enough data.
Which is how I feel about any assumption or judgment I might be tempted to make. I don’t have enough data to accurately know that so and so is “wrong.” Or that such and such shouldn’t have happened.
In our human minds, we often conclude we have everything figured out, that we know exactly how things should be. But never do we have all the “facts.”
The only “fact” we can absolutely know for sure is that the Universe, the Dude is going to show up with amazing, beautiful, perfect gifts.
If—and this is key–we don’t block it with erroneous assumptions we’ve made from the tiny section of life we have so far let into our awareness.
Whenever we judge, whenever we resist, whatever we think we have figured out is never the whole picture.
All we can ever really know is that, when it comes to the Dude, peace, joy, freedom and love will always be the only items on the menu. On that, we can depend.
“It is quite possible to leave your home for a walk in the early morning and return a different person—beguiled and enchanted.”—Mary Ellen Chase
One of my favorite things about traveling is that I don’t have a car.
Here in Cadiz, I take long walks beside the beach. To the market. Through the park.
Walking opens up a bigger world than the one allowed through the modern lens of seeing.
It reaches beyond our normal habits of zooming by, minds awhirl, barely noticing life’s countless gifts. In a car, I’d never see the neon pink hibiscus, the lime green parrots flitting in and out of palm trees, the gleeful children chasing seagulls.
When you walk, life extends beyond its normal constraints. It seems rife with possibility, infected with infinity.
Which also happens to be the intention of my writing, both here on the blog and in my books.
As many of you may know, today, August 1, is the debut of the 10-year-anniversary of E-Squared. It was my 16th book, but the first to fly off into the stratosphere, having, at last count, been translated into 40 some languages.
Although I’ll never know for sure which powerful genie took that book under its watchful care, I often credited it to the affirmation I etched into the beach on Tybee Island, Georgia.
On New Years Eve 2012, one month before it debuted, I wrote with a big stick in the sand: E-Squared will be an international bestseller. And then I let the waves take it out into the universe.
This morning, as the sun was rising here in Cadiz, I took another big stick and wrote yet another beach affirmation. This one said: E-Squared=Peace and Freedom for All.
That’s my highest hope. That it will open new possibilities, that it will shift the balance of the world from separation and limitation towards authentic freedom and love. In other words, towards who we really are.
Here’s the scoop from the email she sent out to her pals:
I am a Pam Grout super-fan – and I recently heard that her book E-Squared has been updated with a 10-year anniversary edition. I GOT ALL EXCITED!!
I did all 9 of the experiments 10 years ago when the book first came out and every day and every experiment was mind-blowing and magical.
It was like being a kid again. It’s a very playful book and it will bring you back to being a child again.
So when I heard that there was an updated version, I knew I wanted to do these 9 experiments again.
My initial idea was that I would do it by myself. I love reading and it was just going to be my own private book study.
But then I thought: WHY NOT INVITE OTHERS TO JOIN????? Why not create a book study group??
Why not throw a party??
So I have created a pop-up Facebook group for the month of August 2023 for the Pam Grout E-Squared book.
It’s free. It’s private. But you do need to be on Facebook. And you do need a copy of the book or the audio version.
Pop-up means this is a temporary group – it will be up for the month of August – it’s a place for us to share our experiences with Pam’s book.
IMPORTANT: THIS GROUP IS ONLY FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO PARTICIPATE IN READING THE E-SQUARED BOOK, DOING THE 9 EXPERIMENTS OR LISTENING TO THE AUDIO VERSION.
So you are officially invited to join the party. But most of all, I want you to know, I remain forever grateful and overjoyed to be part of the extraordinary awakening happening right here on Planet Earth.
“Everything’s miraculous if my heart is open enough and I’m present enough to receive it.”- Mark Nepo
It’s official. I have the most generous, open-hearted (not to mention stunningly attractive) readers in the entire known universe. I posted a tiny notice on FB and Instagram about the 10-year-anniversary edition of E-Squared that debuts in six days and wow! Just wow!
I mentioned that I’m on what I’m calling a “book tour” which technically means I’m posting a few photos of me holding the new book while sipping cappuccinos and walking along a two-mile beach in Cadiz, Spain.
It totally fits with my intention that my real “work” is to embrace bewilderment and wonder. To prove that by undoing unconscious conventions that push me towards productivity and speed, I can find true contentment and meaning.
So far, my “book tour” is getting lots of praise. People on social media have been showering me with compliments: evidently E-Squared was a game changer for an awful lot of folks. Many claimed it was their favorite book of all times. So, yes, if I appear red-faced in my “book tour” photos, it’s not because I failed to apply sunscreen. It’s because I’m seriously blushing to think my words have changed so many lives.
Some people even included manifesting stories from when they were doing the experiments in E-Squared. Like manifesting $100 bills or a brand-new house or thinking about scones and clotted cream and suddenly spotting a British flag and grocery store in the most unlikely location of Grapevine, Texas.
My dear friend Lisa Natoli is planning a pop-up Facebook group for posting miracles and stories from the new tome.
So anyway, I’m sheepishly gratified and super excited to hear about all the new miracles that await readers of this updated 10-year-anniversary edition. Besides a new forward, written by moi, it includes a brand spanking new manifesting scavenger hunt complete with treasure map created by mystical artist, Alberto Agraso. He and his amazing wife, Mony, are the ones who so kindly offered this incredible opportunity to spend the summer in the south of Spain where I almost hesitate to add ocean breezes create average high temps in the mid-70’s.
So miracles are afoot, my friends!
I love and adore you all so much and am so grateful for your continuing kindness and belief in me.
“When you really look at something ordinary, it becomes extraordinary.” –The Zen of Seeing
Yesterday, on a walking tour of Cadiz, we saw the ruins of a Roman theater built in 1st century BC. Seating some ten thousand spectators, it is considered to be the largest Roman theater ever built.
The thing that most floored me is that it wasn’t “discovered” until 1980. So for centuries, people have been walking over it, walking around it, walking by it never suspecting it was there. To be fair, a 13th century fortress was built on top of it. But still. The largest ever built!!!
It made me think of all the ginormous beautiful things we so often walk by, the miracles we so blithely fail to notice. How we build fortresses from our many grievances that obscure the radiant presence that is right here, available at all times, no matter what’s going on, no matter where we are.
That’s why the Course in Miracles talks incessantly about forgiveness. That it’s really the only way to finally see “the giant Roman Theater.”
Every grievance, every brother we refuse to forgive, every time we think life should be different than it is creates a fortress against the life that pours through us. Every certainty, every “but it really shouldn’t be happening” blocks the truth—that life is just so precious, that people are incredibly kind and that miracles are happening all around us.
My greatest desire is to let it all go, to surrender to this extraordinary moment. Right now. Right here.
“On you and me and everything, I bestow my ripe blessings and boisterous bliss.”–Rob Brezsny
Happy Monday, my gorgeous, fantastically awesome playmates.
I’ve been somewhat remiss in sharing miracles lately so I’d like to begin with a whopper of a miracle that recently dropped into my inbox.
A reader was experimenting with the “Money is Nothing But Energy and a Reflection of Your Beliefs” corollary from E-Cubed: AKA: Your New B.F.F. She described herself as drowning in debt, but decided to try my suggestion of seeding money anyway.
She said she couldn’t bring herself to use fivers, like Taz and I did in Chicago, but conceded to plant one dollar bills attached with notes of abundance and joy.
I’m sure you can guess what I’m about to say. Soon thereafter, she received a completely unexpected check for $7000, a huge help in planning her wedding.
As the Course so clearly promises, by giving what we most want, we prove that it is ours.
Speaking of the Course, my dear mighty companion, Alberto Agraso, who illustrated the Manifesting Scavenger Hunt map for the 10-year-anniversary edition of E-Squared, has just come out with a beautifully illustrated book of the workbook lessons in A Course in Miracles.
If you thought my ACIM book made it easy to get the lessons, this is EVEN BETTER. I just ordered a copy in Spanish for a friend who, like me, is duo-lingoing the heck out of espanol.
Which brings me to the tale of the two cities. On Wednesday, I’m flying to Spain to spend the summer in Cadiz which is yet another miracle.
I woke up one morning a few weeks ago and found a sticker Taz had made that said, “Say Yes.” It was just innocently lying on the carpet. How it got there is beyond my paygrade.
Anyway, I opened my computer later that day to find an invitation from the one and only Alberto offering his apartment…on the ocean…in Spain…for the summer.
Needless to say, I took Taz’s advice and “Said yes.”
So take this post as your sign that miracles are all around you. Simply drop the old story of lack and separation and open your mind to all the beauty, possibilities and love that the universe so desperately wants to bestow.
“Wonder, amazement, peace, stillness had always been available…they were simply clouded over by my believing thoughts.”—Gail Brenner
Today, in my country, we’re celebrating what we call Independence Day. It’s a noble notion—being free.
But I happen to notice a lot of us aren’t. Not really. We’re trapped inside a web of thoughts and beliefs. We’re stuck inside our heads, using those thoughts and beliefs to pull the noose even tighter.
But freedom is possible. Once we let go of our continuing focus on “problem management.”
True freedom comes from knowing who you really are. Recognizing that you are SO MUCH more than the limited and separate person staring back at you from the mirror.
Your true identity is life itself. You are an infinite being. But instead of using your incredible energetic gift to create, imagine and celebrate, you lock it away inside a tiny, tiny box called “problem management.”
Granted, there are a lot of forces out there telling you you’re not whole, that preach separation and limits. But if you really look, you can’t help but notice that those forces have an agenda that normally has to do with marketing. They want to sell you something that requires you to believe you’re lacking in some way.
The more space we create inside ourselves, the more we empty out old, no-longer working thought systems, the more new things will be free to arise. The energy of life that pours through each of us is rife with infinite possibility.
On this Independence Day, I declare freedom from all constricting belief systems that would suggest I’m separate, that I’m not enough, that I’m anything but light and love and life itself.
Happy Fourth, my beautiful, amazing friends.
We are free. Always free. Except for what we’re thinking and believing.
“Paradise is regained by finding the wonder within the moment.”—Pico Ayer
In 1988, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that by 2023, scientists would figure out how the brain produces consciousness. Five days ago, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Koch publicly admitted defeat and presented Chalmers with a case of fine Portuguese wine.
But he also doubled down, betting that in 25 more years, science would understand the mechanism by which the brain’s neurons produce this thing we call consciousness.
Although nobody’s asking little ole non-scientific me, I would take that bet because consciousness doesn’t originate in the brain. In fact, I believe the brain and all its neural pathways—formulated differently in every person—are actually a deterrent to understanding consciousness.
The brain is designed to take shortcuts. Its purpose is to condense the radiant, always-morphing energy field into a narrative we can understand. It doesn’t begin to show us true reality.
True reality is so vast, so beautiful, so all-encompassing that our puny little bodies can’t begin to hold it all. So we construct—in our brains—a story that fits what we’ve decided is true. Amy Leach, last Saturday’s Awakin Call guest, called it the “tedium of knowing.”
I loved that phrase because that’s what happens when we think we have it all figured out. The brilliance, the wonder, the effervescent energy force cannot get through the conditioning we’ve constructed.
The one facet I do appreciate about the brain is that it’s malleable. So, yes, most of us have grown neural pathways that reflect the anguish of our internal imaginings, but these sagas are only true as long as we keep looking at them. We can unwire our pathways by focusing on what’s really happening in this now moment, giving old habits and constraints less power. That’s why I frequently talk about possibility state as opposed to problem state.
I have no clue where consciousness comes from, but I do know that by focusing on this moment and this moment only, I begin to gradually construct a state of beauty, wonder and grace.
“We should be Grand Champion Lovers of People, and everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone should know it, see it, feel it, experience it, bask it in, and be drawn to it.”—Jen Hatmaker
A British photographer captured this murmuration of starlings. Taz, to my way of thinking, may have been involved.
I have never much liked today’s Course lesson. In fact, in my book, Course in Miracles Experiment, I labeled it an “R.S.O,’ a term that stands for Rip That Sucker Out. Bill Thetford, one of the original scribes, or maybe it was Ken Wapnik suggested (in different terms than mine, of course) that if one of the Course tenets doesn’t resonate, let it go. Don’t get bogged down with it.
But today, when I was reading it, I understood the lesson in a different way. It was talking about resistance and how, when we defend, or set out to solve “problems,” we make whatever we’re defending against real. We literally give our “enemies” or “problems” power. We make false things appear true. Our attention is that powerful.
Bottom line is they’re not real—our enemies or our problems—but by applying our mind’s superpower to their resolution we create perceptions and mental constructs that make us feel trapped. That’s the ego’s whole game.
And why my motto, “I need do nothing” is so vital. Life, without my self-created monsters, without my resistance to the wonder within each now moment is nothing short of paradise. I was telling my possibility posse last week that just walking around my yard is like going on safari, never knowing what new life form I may stumble upon. Granted it’s usually a lily, not a lion, but only a judging mind fails to see the equal beauty in all life—whatever form it might take.
Resistance and its mean girl cousins are just not that interesting to me anymore. This moment is always enough.
“Close your eyes and feel the divine spark, concentrated in you, like a little Dr. Seuss firefly.”—Anne Lamott
The above headline, I realize, sounds like the title of a “Friends” episode: The One with Ross’s Teeth, the One where Joey Speaks French, etc.
But it’s really about the stories we tell ourselves, the life episodes we replay over and over again. We repeat these stories until there’s literally no room for the Divine. They become mechanical, habitual and they run our lives. There’s the story about your nationality, the story about being female or being a parent or belonging to a particular political group.
These extremely confining affiliations become so baked into our day-to-day reality, so deeply conditioned in our minds that we completely forget they’re only stories—temporary and insubstantial. We completely forget that who we really are is timeless, eternal totality.
We were laughing at some of our crazy beliefs at yesterday’s possibility posse, about the many stories that drive our lives. For example, if you don’t wash off your makeup before you go to bed, it’ll age you seven years. Or you should never run your air-conditioner if the windows in the car are open. Thanks, Rhonda’s dad.
My mind went to the vanilla milkshake story from my book, E-Cubed. The One Where a Supersize Batch of Milkshakes (yep, still using that Friends gag) was divided into two and labeled as either a) Sensishake, a low-calorie drink with zero fat, zero sugar and a mere 140 calories or b) Indulgence with high sugar, high fat and a whopping 620 calories.
Test subjects, before and after drinking the identical shakes, were measured for a hormone called ghrelin. Doctors call it the “hunger hormone” because it’s secreted in the gut and signals your body when it’s time to eat. It also slows your metabolism.
What researcher, Alia Crum, discovered was that the ghrelin levels dropped three times more for test subjects who thought they were drinking a fatty shake than for those who believed their shake was the pinnacle of health.
In other words, our stories not only determine our life experience, but they also play out in our bodies. Our stories, our labels, our beliefs—whatever they may be—become true for us.
While the above stories are humorous and a little mind-blowing, we also have “serious stories,” solemn identities we fight like bloody hell to hang on to. No really, I was mistreated by my family. I really DO have agoraphobia. That “other” really is discriminating against me.
As for me, I choose to disidentify from as many labels, as many certainties as I can. And I’m sticking with the story that life, even though I see but a small fragment of it, is here to invoke great delight. In other words, I choose the “The One with All the Glory” episode.
My buddy, James Twyman, invited me to be part of a Mystics Summit.
And while mystic is definitely not a part of my “identity” or my “story,” he asked me to talk about A Course in Miracles which I do all the time anyway. So if you are interested in a free Mystics Summit, you can sign up—did I mention it’s free—at this little ole link right here.
