Blog – Page 51 – Pam Grout

21 reasons to be of good cheer

December 23, 2017 16 Comments

“The journey to the light starts with a candle. Once it’s lit, darkness has gone forever.” ― Adriano Bulla

Merry, Merry, my friends!

As you know if you’ve spent any time at the party known as my blog, I’m here on Planet Earth to change the dominant paradigm. My mission is to spread the news to anyone who will listen that life is constantly conspiring to send blessings.

Which is why I loved interviewing the Kansas City Secret Santa who passes out $100 bills. People magazine sent me out to interview him. Twice. It was a hoot and a half to join him, to see the expression on people’s faces when he’d peal a couple hundys off his stack and hand them over.

So in the interest of continuing my long-standing journalism career, here are 20 additional reasons to be of good cheer this illustrious holiday season:

1. A 9-year-old boy from Ohio decided that instead of the $300 X Box, he wanted to buy 30 blankets for 30 homeless people. **

2. Two former Wall Street tycoons started a free ride share service for families of cancer patients. Think Uber, but without those annoying credit card bills.

3. A woman in Pennsylvania built a life-size Snoopy dog house (complete with our favorite beagle wearing a Christmas hat) at her desk.

4. A Milwaukee man transformed an abandoned mall into a Winter wonderland for 100 kids from the Boys and Girls Club. He created a gingerbread house, an ice-skating rink and a sledding hill.

5. A police chief in Massachusetts who impersonates Santa learned sign language so a hear-impaired girl could finally talk to the jolly ole soul.

6. A flight attendant and two passengers entertained passengers after their flight from Denver to Virginia was delayed for an hour because of snow. You can listen to their mandolin/ukelele performance here.

7. The Pope who just turned 81 threw a huge pizza party for sick kids. As he told his fellow revelers, “A joyous spirit is like good land that grows good fruit.”

8. A reporter showed up for his interview with an autistic student who had been suspended for wearing a banana costumer wearing a grape costume.

9. An opthamologist from Grand Rapids, Michigan not only gave up his Saturday to treat an elderly patient who needed an eye injection, but because the snow plows didn’t run that day, he carried her from her car into the office.

10. A major league baseball player donated his $9 million mansion and 100 acres of land to a charity that provides camps for children with special needs and chronic illness.

11. When a middle school in south Dallas put out a call for volunteers to help with a “Breakfast with Dads” event, 600 men showed up.

12. After a Texas first grader sent a letter to Santa asking for food, blankets and a ball for her brothers, 900 people (at last count) from around the world responded by sending blankets.

13. In Fort Collins, Colorado, an anonymous donor bought every single toy at Goodwill so that each child shopping with parents got one free gift.

14. An 8-year-old New Jersey boy collected more than 1000 Christmas toys for children of Puerto Rico. NBA manager Brandon Eddy alone sent 11 boxes.

15. A convent in eastern France took in 56 African refugees.

16. An anonymous donor dubbed Santa B paid off $40,000 of layaway holiday bills in Everett, Washington.

17. A diner in Scottsdale, Arizona left a $2000 tip on a $17 bill.

18. Policemen in Shawnee, Kansas, instead of giving out traffic tickets are giving out, $10,000 in cash.

19. A senior in Lancaster, Texas gave away two pair of Vans tennis shoes to special needs students after they complimented him on his stylin’ footwear. The thing I like most about this story is that the video he posted on Twitter has been viewed more than 3 million times. Who says people don’t want good news?
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20. The Innovation Show, a podcast in Dublin is giving away a free interview with yours truly on Christmas Day. Aidan McCullin, who recently read E-Squared and received blessing after blessing (a crisp 50-pound note on the ground next to his car, for starters) said it was his gift to spread good cheer to the world.

**Microsoft heard of his good deed and gifted him with the Xbox anyway. Proves my thesis that the more you give, the more you receive.

Have an extraordinarily epic holiday, my friends!

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.

Your deed to the world’s most valuable real estate

December 21, 2017 17 Comments

“Eventually you will see that the real cause of problem is not life itself. It’s the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems.”—Michael Singer

mind

I’ve got a holiday gift that, should you choose to accept it, will change every aspect of your 2018. It’s a deed for an exclusive piece of real estate that needs nothing but your decision to chop up and carry away extraneous bits of debris.

This plot that you already own and have been tending for all the years of your life is your consciousness. It’s the sum total of your beliefs. It’s the thoughts you spend the 1440 minutes of each day animating into your life.

There’s probably a corner with beliefs about your body, about how it operates, what it needs, what it’s capable of. This part of your real estate, which seems inescapable, gets a lot of attention. Most of us use it as a mask, as a shield to keep our true selves hidden and to keep the largesse of the universe from getting in. It’s a tiny, tiny piece of who we really are.

There’s also a dusty basement in your real estate that’s cluttered with beliefs you picked up from your culture. This lineup of beliefs includes things like what is and isn’t socially acceptable. Your need to be liked. Your beliefs about your gender, your race.

Your family, of course, left a few boxes down in that dusty basement, as well.

There’s the room with your beliefs about money. Is it hard to come by? Is there more where that came from?

I can’t stress enough how important this piece of real estate is. Your consciousness, your expenditure of your 1440 minutes per day determines everything.

You can use it to create your own beliefs, your own vision. Or you can continue stepping around and dealing with the debris.

Each and every one of us gets to decide how we spend our consciousness.

I heard an interview with the incomparable Terry Crews last night. He’s a former NFL football player, one of the stars of Brooklyn 911 and a recent Time Magazine “Person of the Year.” Even though he grew up with an abusive father in Flint, Michigan where, as he says, he DID drink the water, he made the decision to take control of the real estate of his consciousness.

He decided that, despite the limitations his culture and his hood tried to brainwash into him, he was going to take charge and interpret his life on his own terms. He decided to create opportunities and possibilities.

He decided to BE what he wanted to be—before there was any evidence that reality could be true. That decision to take charge of the deed of his unique real estate completely changed his life. He went from the hood in poverty-stricken Flint to being a huge movie star and artist.

Never forget. It’s your consciousness. It’s your deed.

Do your art. No matter what. No matter where.

December 11, 2017 14 Comments

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”—Kurt Vonnegut James-franco-mcdonalds3

Creative capital is my jam. I wrote about it in Thank & Grow Rich. My latest book, Art and Soul, covers nothing else.

Unlike financial capital, creative capital is virtually unlimited. It has no floor, no ceiling. And every last one of us has total access.

We don’t need money to get started, or certain conditions to be in place. We access our creative capital because it’s there, because it’s who we are.

I read a cool story about James Franco yesterday. He hosted Saturday Night Live last week, was just nominated for a Golden Globe for his new movie, The Disaster Artist. It’s about filmmaker, Tommy Wiseau, who is willing to do whatever it takes to access his creative capital.

Like the filmmaker in the movie, Franco let nothing stop him from pursuing his art. It didn’t matter that he had no money, no acting roles, no degree. He didn’t even have a car when he moved to Los Angeles to attend a hole-in-the-wall acting school. And, because he’d been fired from two previous jobs, he couldn’t even get a job waiting tables. That didn’t stop him. He was determined to follow his dream.

He finally landed a job at the one McDonald’s near the ratty apartment he shared with two friends.

And guess what? He practiced his art there.

“I was given the late shift drive-thru position. I wore a purple visor and purple polo shirts and took orders over a headset,” he says. “But soon I started putting on fake accents with the customers to practice for scenes in acting class.”

He tried Italian, British, Irish, Russian, Southern.

“People actually found them persuasive. I was asked to give Italian lessons to a cute young woman who thought I was from Pisa,” he says. “And I went on several dates as a thick-tongued kid from Bed-Stuy, even though my only brush with the actual place had been through watching “Do the Right Thing.”

Within a few months, Franco’s determination to mine his creative capital won him a commercial for Pizza Hut. He has been working in the business ever since.

The point is, there really is NO EXCUSE for not answering the door when the muses say, “Knock. knock.” You don’t need money. You don’t need the right equipment. You don’t even need talent, as Franco’s character Wiseau clearing demonstrated with his movie, Room.

Creativity is the province of all of us.

So roll up your sleeves. Get started today.

How to change the optical illusion of your life

December 4, 2017 12 Comments

“Man’s concept of his world built on the experience of the five senses is no longer adequate and in many cases no longer valid.”—Shafica Karagulla
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A Course in Miracles is a thick, dense book that most of us who rank high on the woo-woo spectrum own, but very few actually read.

I get it. It’s not a picture book.

Because it’s my main spiritual squeeze, I’m asked a lot of questions. But here’s all you really need to know. The Course tells us consciousness creates the material world. And that we get to decide how we’re going to experience life, that we get to choose what we want to see.

This would be truly good news except for one small fact. Most of us have a monstrous chip on our shoulder. We think life sucks or that it’s here to be endured.

So we use our butt-kicking consciousness to create a problematic reality.

Our brains gather pieces of data from our five senses, but, quite frankly, the data is imprecise and not the truth about the real world. Quantum physicists present incontrovertible evidence that our experience of the world doesn’t match physical reality in any way, shape or form.

There’s a new book out called Champions of Illusion. I’m happy to report this book by Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik IS a picture book. They’re professors of neurology and physiology who, since 2005, have hosted a Best Illusion of the Year contest. This collection of mind-bending illustrations will definitely challenge the veracity of your perception.

As the authors write:

“Your brain creates a simulation of the world that may or may not match the real thing. The “reality” you experience is the result of your exclusive interaction with that simulation.”

They define “illusions” as the phenomena in which your perception differs from physical reality which, sad to say, includes most all concepts and judgments of the world that we take for granted. Our minds establish a pattern of perception and then proceed to filter out everything else.

In other words, we see things that aren’t there and fail to see things that ARE there. We distort the world to jibe with our very limited perception.

All we have to do to change the optical illusion of our lives is to annul our ongoing grudge against the world and actively see and expect a different reality.

That’s what the Course is all about. It actually says we were created to live in eternal joy (say what?!), that nothing can hurt us and that every passing moment offers a thousand different treasures.

I can’t wait for that picture book to come out. How about you?

Why I’m the luckiest person on the planet, Episode 124

November 29, 2017 12 Comments

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual”—Henry David Thoreau

Facebook reminded me this morning of a memory from a year ago. It was a photo of my daughter and me riding horses at the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

While that was an epic moment and I’m over-the-moon grateful that I’m invited on so many over-the-top experiences, I’m actually feeling blessed because of all of you and the inspiring stories you send my way.

It’s as if I have my own custom self-help channel right in my inbox.

Yesterday, for example, a wonderful author named David Bugay told me that he and his wife decided to change their story about their neighbors. There’s an experiment in my book, E-Cubed where I encourage people to flip a long-held belief, to look for evidence supporting the opposite reality of whatever story they’ve been telling themselves.

I call it the Simon Cowell Corollary after the world’s most famous “judge,” because when we divide and label and judge everything, when we believe our stories are absolute fact, we lose half our options, half our personal freedom, half our energy.

So David and his wife, who moved to California from Michigan, had invested lots of energy into their story that people weren’t as friendly in their new town as they had been in the Midwest. They actually told themselves for a whopping three years that their neighborhood just wasn’t warm and welcoming. But what if that was just a story, what if that reality wasn’t absolute fact?

To test it, they decided to throw what they called a driveway party. They invited all their neighbors to come hang out in their driveway. Well guess what? Their neighbors turned out to be really cool and just as friendly and just as welcoming as their friends in Michigan.

“The driveway parties have completely changed everything,” David told me. “We have them every few months and we’re now all fast friends. Your books have completely changed our perspective and touched so many lives.”

Here’s another fun story:

“A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to come across your book, “E-Squared”. I loved it so much I started reading your “Thank and Grow Rich” book. I wanted to reach out to you to let you know just how much your books have impacted my life.

I have an upcoming trip to NYC, so I was hoping to get tickets to see one of my favorite talk shows, “The Chew.”

Well, after a few days of checking for tickets, a producer from “The Chew” emailed me asking if they could showcase one of my own recipes on their show. (I’m a food blogger.) I said “OF COURSE!!” A couple of weeks ago it aired on their show with my photo and everything! I emailed the producer to thank him for this amazing opportunity and also to tell him that I’d be visiting NYC this month. He replied back immediately and told me to let him know when I’m there so that they could get me into a taping. How miraculous is this?? I just wanted a ticket to the show, and I got even more!
angel
Last story today is from Japan. How cool is it that my books are also bestsellers in Japan. A reader asked for a sign (one of the experiments in E-Squared) and saw this while sitting in the park. Doesn’t get much clearer than that?

I know we tend to believe the secret to happiness is doing fun and enjoyable things. But the real secret to happiness is having fun and enjoyable thoughts.

Have a great hump day, my oh-so-inspiring friends!

Do you collaborate with the universe or make it your enemy?

November 27, 2017 21 Comments

“I have no purpose for today except to look upon a liberated world.”—A Course in Miracles

Ask any physicist. We live in an interactive universe. Physical forces respond to how we think, what we expect, how we behave.

That’s the cool news. The not-quite-as-cool news is that most of us, instead of collaborating with this awesome force that spins worlds and expands galaxies, wage war against it. We literally put up our dukes and dare it to fight when it just likes to say, “chill, dude. Have a lemonade.”

Believe it or not, the universe has a thing for you. It wants to guide you. Bless you. Lead you on riveting new adventures.

So if you’re wondering whether you’re engaged in the most effective collaboration with the universe, here’s a guide:

Collaborators high-five their riches. They know they’re heirs to incredible wealth.

Combatants says things like “Riches? You’ve got to be kidding me. Can’t you see I’m struggling here?”

And to them I’d like to say–Look the hell up. Notice the sky’s ever-changing masterpieces for starters. It’s a veritable art museum up there and, baby, nobody’s charging admission.

Collaborators inhabit every moment. They gobble up “the now” with the same rapt interest as departing airplane passengers staring at their phones. What did I miss? Who called? Who texted? Every moment has just as much new intel as any smart phone once we commit to paying attention.

Combatants live everywhere but in the moment. They’re buried in their phones, in yesterday’s disgruntlements, in tomorrow’s worries.

Collaborators zero in on possibilities. They know nothing’s set in stone, that change is exciting and they celebrate all the ways any situation can go.

Combatants cuss. They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. Instead of realizing that every person, every situation offers a plethora of fascinating opportunities, they build a monument to their woe is me!

So to summarize, my fellow collaborators, today we’re going to high-five our riches, inhabit every moment and zero in on the infinite number of possibilities the universe dishes up today and every day.

“God is not the pushover some people would like you to believe.” — Alex Frankovitch

November 24, 2017 16 Comments

“Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”–sticky note on Stephen Colbert’s computer

If you read E-Squared, you might remember the chapter with the myths about God—that he’s a he, for example, and that he plays favorites and that he likes to makes black check marks after your name.

As the experiments in E-Squared proved, those myths are big fat whoppers. And to fear this force field, this presence that has traditionally been labeled God keeps us from living the life most extraordinary.

One of the biggies I used to believe is that if I surrendered to God, to the universe, I’d be required to work with starving babies in countries with Ebola and typhoid and other unmentionable diseases. I attribute this to the stream of foreign missionaries that came through my home when I was a kid.

What I’ve now come to realize is that the only thing God asks of me is to expand His goodness, to love as much as I possibly can and to create ridiculously beautiful things.

There’s a reason we humans have longings to write and dance and sing—-because that’s what God designed us to do. All of us are bestowed with talents that we’re meant to use to uplift each other. Yes, we are meant to be happy!

Yesterday on Thanksgiving (isn’t it so cool there’s an official holiday to do the thing I practice every day?), I was reflecting back on my year. It struck me that by simply showing up and using the gifts I was given, I received the following extraordinarily epic experiences from the universe:

1. I was invited to Verona, Italy where I danced to a 12-piece orchestra at a 16th century estate that once hosted Winston Churchill and Lady Di and stood on Juliet’s famous balcony. For good measure, I even shouted, “Wherefore art thou, Romeo.”

2. I was slathered by volcanic ash and sand at the Puning Hot Springs and Spa near Mount Pinatubo, Philippines. Yes, that’s me on the left in the above photo.

3. I walked 40 miles of the Cotswold Trail in England. It’s where the PBS show “Father Brown” is filmed.

4. And I got to help break the Guinness World record for most zombies ( I used beet juice for blood) dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
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The list of cool things the universe (God/FP) blessed me with this year goes on and on.

Normally here on the blog, I share cool stories from readers about their gifts, but since my own unending blessings are fresh in my Thanksgiving-infused mind, I decided to use a couple as proof that God only wants our good, only wants to bless us and only wants us to use what we love to expand Its glory.

Those old beliefs that God has something distasteful for us up his sleeve is fake news. God’s will is only love and peace and really fun experiences for all. Drink it up, my friends!

In honor of weekend “movies,” thought I’d post this awesome Ted Talk I happened to catch earlier today.

Have the best weekend of your life, my fine-feathered friends.

#Metoo Why I’m escaping the abusive relationship of my ego and its pernicious henchmen

November 16, 2017 29 Comments

“Your story doesn’t hold a candle to who you really are?”—John O’Donohue
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I’ve heard all the stories: Weinstein, CK, yada, yada! And here’s what I know.

There’s not a misogynist alive that’s half as bad as the abuser in my brain. Perhaps you know him? The voice that tells me and everybody else that’s living and breathing that something is wrong, that something needs to be fixed.

The Course in Miracles calls this voice the ego. It’s the opposite of love and it shows up as fear. It’s a big fat liar and, pardon my ****, it’s full of shit. It runs on three main themes: “Do Something. Fix this. Run.”

It shoves us away from what we’ve been put on this earth to do—to love, to connect, to create ridiculously beautiful things.

I’m currently compiling a playbook of the ego’s many manifestations. Here are just a few:

1.The ego encourages us to find our identity in a psychology manual. Let me just say that you will never ever find even a single clue to your true reality in a psychology book. The DSM and other psychological “theories” are basically a rogue’s gallery of the ego. And as long as you insist on staring at their symptoms, you will never contact the deep interiority that exists within you.

2.The ego tells us security, money and more, more, more is the holy grail. I saw a funny cartoon in the New Yorker the other day. A forlorn caveman, dressed like Fred Flintstone, is sitting in a cave with a half dozen giant boulders. He says to his partner: “I thought getting bigger rocks would make us happier, but I guess I was wrong.” One of the ego’s craftiest ploys is to make us believe that material things—fancy houses, expensive purses, etc.—is what’s missing in our lives.

3.The ego encourages us to look for the flaw in the tapestry. Amazing miracles are happening around us, literally 24/7, and we completely miss them all because we’re focusing on the problem. I’m sure that when Moses put out his staff to part the Red Sea, there was a follower or two complaining about the mud in their sandals. This gigantic sea was literally separating into two, leading them to the Promised Land and they were focused on the gunk between their toes.

To put it bluntly, the ego is a destructive force that rises up pretty much every time we get close to the land of milk and honey.

But here’s the good news. Nary a single one of the ego’s stories is in any way true. And since we’re the ones who created the ego (in a misguided attempt to protect ourselves), we can let it go at any time. We can connect with the true part of our Self—our sea-parting magnificence, the unwounded part of us that the ego has never been and will never be able to touch.

The mysterious case of top-secret collusion

November 10, 2017 18 Comments

“Nobody’s ego or belief systems are of any value to society at all. The world is neither good nor bad nor defective, nor is it in need of help or modification. Its appearance is only a projection of one’s own mind. No such world exists.”–David R. Hawkins
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My mom was a pianist and church organist which meant the soundtrack of my childhood was hymns and Broadway tunes.

One of my favorites to sing came from the musical, “Annie Get Your Gun.” Annie Oakley and Frank Butler, playing one-upmanship, sang “Anything you can do I can do better. I can do anything better than you.”

I think of that song whenever I think about J.C. You know the cute guy with the beard and sandals that, according to the Bible, told us point blank that “Any miracle he can do, we can do better. We can do any miracle better than him.”

So far, I’ve yet to walk on the Sea of Galilee or turn water into my favorite glass of Cabernet, but neither activities reside on the top ten of my bucket list.

I’m more motivated by miracles of love, where people who used to hate each other realize they don’t. Or where some limiting belief that kept me stuck in an old pattern gets turned into a whole new possibility.

So why has it taken us so long to embrace J.C.’s exhortations to perform miracles?

One simple reason. We’ve spent the last 2000 years colluding with our egos, getting our intel from that little voice in our head that tells us we’re powerless and that it’s better to play it safe.

The ego is a crafty mother that has been yanking our chains for too long. It’s loud and it lies and it dishes up the fake news that we are nothing but crumbling bodies destined to die horrible deaths.

It tells us that other people are scary. That we must protect ourselves.

But it’s all smoke and mirrors.

It’s time, guys. We’ve got to quit colluding with the ego. We’ve got to quit colluding with our wounds, with our problems.

Instead, we must join forces with the light, the love, the creativity and the beauty inside each and every one of us.

And, as I like to say on Fridays, have the best weekend of your life.

Don’t buy your diagnosis

November 8, 2017 19 Comments

“Reality is so vast that there is no way from our small place in the universe to see it all. We create cultural constructs of our knowledge and try and make the whole vast infinite universe fit in our tiny little boxes.”
― Lyssa Danehy deHart

Whatever affliction you believe about yourself is a hoax. It’s a tiny box that you continue to animate by your belief in it.

I know it seems like stone-cold fact that you are depressed or financially challenged or still suffering the aftermath of something your parent did or didn’t do.

But it’s just not true.

It seems true because you’ve collapsed the wave of that reality. In the quantum world, the observer (that’s you expecting and believing things are a certain way) interacts with all the possible superpositions (the world’s unlimited possibilities). Once you collapse the wave (the particular state or affliction you’ve been colluding with), all other possibilities vanish. As you feed those thoughts, that one reality grows more and more solid.

So if you really insist on believing in your affliction, just make sure to couch it like this:

I am temporarily having thoughts about being depressed. Or being poor. Or_________________.

And know those thoughts are one tiny possibility and that there are even more superpositions (possibilities) where you are ecstatically happy and financially secure and completely free from anything at all that occurred in your past.

The superposition you feed with your attention is the one you will animate into your life.

So which wave do you choose to collapse today: That you’re a hot mess? Or that you’re hot shit?

The Blog

21 reasons to be of good cheer

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Your deed to the world’s most valuable real estate

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Do your art. No matter what. No matter where.

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How to change the optical illusion of your life

Like this:

Why I’m the luckiest person on the planet, Episode 124

Like this:

Do you collaborate with the universe or make it your enemy?

Like this:

“God is not the pushover some people would like you to believe.” — Alex Frankovitch

Like this:

#Metoo Why I’m escaping the abusive relationship of my ego and its pernicious henchmen

Like this:

The mysterious case of top-secret collusion

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Don’t buy your diagnosis

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