Blog – Page 64 – Pam Grout

Signs from the universe are like whiskers—they keep coming back

April 25, 2016 16 Comments

“Consciousness is the ultimate magic show.”–Deepak Chopra

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I got this tweet this morning:

“Was thinking ‘not so sure I see the signs.’ Then FLOWER PETALS appeared floating in the sky through my studio window.”

Not bad, universe. Way to make a point. Floating flower petals certainly work.

And so I felt inspired to share a couple stories about signs from the universe, one of four gifts promised in the new book.

A week or so ago, I was interviewed by Jenniffer Weigel. She’s an Emmy-award winning reporter from Chicago and does a podcast called “I’m Spiritual, Dammit!”

We hit it off so she sent me a copy of her book, Stay Tuned: Conversations with Dad from the Other Side. It’s a great read and includes a story about one of the clearest signs I’ve heard yet. She was feeling stifled in her job in the newsroom. But you know how it is? There’s the financial security to think about and she’d been doing it for a long time and well, she just wasn’t sure: should she quit or shouldn’t she?

She walked into the newsroom one day and said, “Okay, Dad (he had recently passed), I need a sign. I want to quit this job, but I’m scared. I need you to give me some sort of sign. Make it right when I walk in the door.”

The security guard at the front desk stopped her when she walked in. “Hey, Jen,” he asked. “Are you quitting today or something? Your picture is missing from the wall.”

Her news station features what they call a ‘wall of fame” with portraits of each reporter. Sure enough, there was a space where her portrait used to be.

“I’ve asked the other security guards and nobody seems to know what happened to it,” he went on.

Jen also turned me onto this orthopedic surgeon–Mary Neal–who died in a kayaking accident in Chile and then came back after going to the other side. Dr. Neal, like me, is a huge proponent of miracles. In her book, To Heaven and Back, she says a guiding presence is always with us, always trying to communicate with us.

Although she relates one miracle after another in the book, I’d like to share the following story about a sign, that like the missing wall of fame portrait and like floating flower petals, is anything but subtle. I like that in a miracle.

Neal’s stepfather George planted a Bradford pear tree at his home many years ago. He placed it right outside the window by the breakfast table, but had become dismayed because, unlike the other Bradford pear trees in the neighborhood, this one never blossomed. It got bigger and healthier every year, but it never bloomed. In fact, he was so dismayed after years of waiting that he told his wife, Dr. Neal’s mother, that he was going to cut it down in the spring and plant a new one.

Unfortunately, he died before he got around to it. The day after Dr. Neal and her mother had to remove his feeding tube, they sat down at the breakfast table for morning coffee and gasped. The Bradford pear tree that had 24 hours earlier been completely barren was bursting with huge perfect pink blossoms.

Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the about to be released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.

Your body has self-healing superpowers

April 22, 2016 39 Comments

“Life is not about healing; it’s about accepting that we are already healed.”–Annie Zalezsak

Yesterday, I invited readers to share a meme from the old paradigm, a meme they are now re-writing, thank you very much.

A wonderful reader named Bob brought up a meme that is in our face night and day. “Getting old means your body is supposed to fall apart.”

This meme is such a big player in the current paradigm that I thought it deserved its own post. We are constantly being slapped around with the crazy idea that our bodies are plotting against us.

Just watch an hour of television. The drugs ads warn us into great vigilance:

Better watch out for this symptom.

Make sure you’re aware of that problem.

It’s only a matter of time until your body is going to reach out and strangle you.

Here’s the ad I’d like to run:

Your body is a self-healing masterpiece. It is brilliantly equipped with natural self-repair mechanisms that fight infections, repair broken proteins, kill cancer cells and keep you in tip-top shape. The only thing that ever stops it from doing its job is your ridiculous belief that it is not your closest ally.

I got this story the other day from a reader of E-Squared. It was one of a long list of things she says she manifested:

“I regulate my own health. If I ever feel like I am going to have an allergy attack or something in my body hurts, I simply give myself command not to entertain it, and the allergy attacks and pain go away immediately. I used to pop anti histamine almost daily in spring and summer seasons. I have not taken any allergy medicine for a while now. I simply tell myself, I don’t believe in allergies and I am the overlord of my body and nervous system. My body obeys what I ask, nicely of course 🙂

“Using this, I have stopped allergy attacks, aches and pains, fever, upset stomach etc. experimenting with my own abilities is just so much fun! Anytime I meditate, I reach a new level of self control and enhancement of my ability to control my own health.”

And lastly, I thought I’d re-run this blog post from a year ago about this very topic. Enjoy!!

“It’s supposed to be a professional secret, but I’ll tell you anyway. We doctors do nothing. We only help and encourage the doctor within.”–Albert Schweitzer

At the party of “anything is possible,” there’s always the one cranky uncle who sits over in the corner. More times than not, the belief that stubbornly refuses to budge is the body as in “My mind has no control over my health, disease, aging, weight and any other fool thing my body decides to do.”

So today, I’ve got a packet of Reese’s Pieces and, like Elliott who was able to lure E.T. out of hiding, I’m hoping to lure out that curmudgeonly uncle to at least take a spin on the dance floor.

Reese Piece No. 1: Dr. Lissa Rankin’s book, Mind Over Medicine. After years of being a physician, Dr. Rankin finally got fed up with the seven minutes she was allowed to see patients and the refusal by her colleagues to acknowledge the most powerful component of a person’s health: their beliefs and their thoughts. Initially, she was as hard-nosed and closed-minded as any doctor, but after investigating 50 years of peer-reviewed medical literature (New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association, to name a few), she found ample evidence proving that beliefs play a powerful role in a person’s biochemistry and to ignore those findings was irresponsible, a betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath.

Reese’s Piece No. 2: The body is wired to heal itself. Our bodies are self-regulating, healing organisms, constantly striving for homeostasis. But instead of teaching our children this all-important fact, we teach them they need someone or something outside themselves to heal. The minute they get a fever or an ear ache, we rush them to that all-knowing doctor. This, at a very early age, cements in the fallacy that our bodies can’t heal themselves. Most of the thoughts in our default setting are planted before age 5.

Reese’s Piece No. 3: Placebos are often as effective as drugs. Patients have been able to grow hair, drop blood pressure, lower cholesterol, watch ulcers disappear and cure about every other symptom after being treated with nothing but sugar pills. It was their belief they were getting “medicine” that cured them, not the medicine itself.

Dr. Bruce Mosely, a surgeon and team physician for the Houston Rockets, performed arthroscopic knee surgery on two of ten middle-aged, former military guys. Three of the 10 had their knees rinsed (without the scraping) and the other five had no surgical procedure at all. It was an exercise in just pretend. After two years, all ten believed their surgery was a success. What Mosely discovered is that the bigger and more dramatic the patient perceives the intervention to be, the bigger the placebo effect.

Reese’s Piece No. 4: Our beliefs are the hinge on which our bodies function. Rankin tells the story of a guy with tumors the size of oranges. After begging his doctor to try an experimental new drug he’d read about, he was treated with the drug and his tumors disappeared. Several weeks later, reports hit the airwaves that this new drug was not as powerful as originally thought. The tumors returned. His doctor, by now savvy, gave his patient a placebo, telling him it was a stronger form of the drug and that the ineffective trials had been using too little of this powerful drug. Once again, the tumors from his stage 4 lymphoma began to disappear. Finally, the FDA pronounced the drug ineffective and pulled it off the market. The patient, who had been rapidly recovering, died within a week.

Okay, enough candy. I could go on and on about how 79 percent of medical students develop the symptoms they’re studying. Or about the woman with a split personality who has diabetes in one of her personalities and normal sugar levels in the other.

But I’m not a doctor and would never dream of prescribing anything.

But I do know this:

We should teach our children that their bodies have self-healing superpowers.

And we should quit hexing ourselves by looking for disease.

And we should remember that if chimpanzees can lower their blood pressure at will, something Harvard doc, Herbert Benson, discovered in his research, there’s probably not much we CAN’T do to heal ourselves.

Uncle, are you ready for that dance?

Hello! Do you really want to hang on so tightly to that idea?

April 21, 2016 36 Comments

“It’s not what you don’t know that kills you, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t true.”
–Mark Twain
If you’re a parent, your kids have undoubtedly accused you of T.M.I. It stands for “too much information.” That’s what I want to address today.

Over our lifetime, we receive T.M.I., most of which is T.M.F.I. (“too much false information.”) I’m talking about such accepted concepts as:

“Life is hard.”
“It takes a long time to accomplish anything of value.”
“Relationships are continuously challenging.”

These accepted bits of information are what British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins calls “memes.” In short, it’s a concept that explains how ideas, behaviors and styles spread from person to person within a culture. Like genes, they self-replicate, mutate and are capable of playing havoc with our lives.

Most of us are unaware of how big a role memes play in the way we experience life. They’re like the kitchen junk drawer that’s filled with a bunch of forgotten items: a dried up magic marker, rusty scissors, old birthday cards from people you don’t even remember and keys that probably used to open something although you’re not sure what.

For those of us interested in manifesting and creating our own reality, it’s important to clean out the junk drawer, to examine the memes that run our belief systems.

Here are a couple popular memes I have decided to abandon:

1. “It’s necessary to get 8 hours of sleep.”

Who came up with that figure? It certainly wasn’t Thomas Edison who liked to boast that he slept but three or four hours a night and that he sometimes worked for 72 hours straight. The Course in Miracles makes it very clear that the only thing that makes us tired is our thoughts. And, of course, our commitment to the meme that you MUST get eight hours of sleep.

That particular meme has been a boon for the pharmaceutical industry that has made a killing out of Ambien and other sleep drugs.

I prefer this meme: “I always get the right amount of sleep.”

2. “If you’re overweight, you should diet.”

Ahhhhh, right? Whoever generated that particular meme should be marched to the guillotine. Dieting only resets your metabolism lower. It should be obvious to all of us that diets DO NOT WORK!! Except for the diet industry that has made billions off that big, fat lie.

I prefer this meme: “I can eat whatever I want and maintain a perfect weight.”

3. “It’s imperative to put your nose to the grindstone if you want to make any money.”

Also known as “nothing good comes without hard work,” this little myth perpetuates a lot of pain and suffering. The truth is everything originates with our thoughts. EVERYTHING. In fact, when you do what you love, working is more like playing. It’s big fun, the thing you’d do even if you weren’t being paid.

Hard work plays no part of it and besides, what exactly is a grindstone?

My meme of choice regarding finances is this: “The more fun I have in my work, the more money I make.”

What are some of the memes that run your life?

All you gotta do is ask: a Friday love story

April 15, 2016 14 Comments

“The universe waits for the perfect time to whisper in your ear, ‘Look this way.’”—Amy Poehler

Thought I’d share a fun story to kick off the weekend.

A chiropractor from Marco Island was reading E-Squared. She asked for a sign about her relationship with her boyfriend who, after a beautiful winter together in Florida, was returning to Canada. Before boarding a plane to Tennessee (they were both flying to a friend’s wedding), she got very still and, from her heart, said, “Hey dude, I could use a sign about this wonderful man who is heading home soon to Canada!”

Here’s what happened:

1. The flight attendant congratulated them on their marriage. That was odd since a) they are not married, b) they are not engaged and c) they hadn’t mentioned they were heading to a wedding.

2. The taxi driver also congratulated them on their marriage. Again, why would he say something like this out of nowhere?

3. That night at dinner, after returning from the ladies’ room, she found a card waiting for her. It was from her boyfriend and it said, “When you know, you know.” Yep, even though she had no idea this was coming, he asked her to marry him.

4. The next day, at the wedding, where she was a bridesmaid, guess who caught the bouquet?

Congratulations to the happy couple. And congratulations to all of us who are starting to get it, that indeed the universe is just waiting for us to ask.

Manifesters who do too much

April 11, 2016 36 Comments

“She would think things so hard that they showed on her face.” –Amanda Palmer

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I got an email the other day from a reader of one of my books. “Help,” she said, “I just can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. I meditate every day. I’ve made at least three vision boards. Every morning, I make lists of positive aspects. I’ve got a focus wheel (These last two are practices recommended by Abraham-Hicks). And nothing is happening.”

I was exhausted just reading her email. And here’s what I told her after I took a few deep breaths: All of those practices are fabulous. I’m an avid fan of Abraham-Hicks myself.

And I also know how tempting it is to work hard, to try, try, try.

But when we “try so hard,” we negate Truth. We put up roadblocks to all the good that wants to manifest before our eyes. It’s as if we go brain dead and forget that all this “stuff” we’re trying to manifest is already ours. This is important to say again. Everything you’re trying to manifest is already yours. It’s sitting right there in your field of potentiality, twiddling its thumbs.

But because you’re on a different wave length (the wave length of I don’t have it, the frequency of I’d better get on my running shoes and move faster, try harder), it’s invisible to your eyeballs.

All of us are already living the life most extraordinary (on one of the FP’s channels), but because we’re focused on all we don’t have or on what we’re trying to get, it’s fuzzy and not something we can put our hands on. It’s surrounded by static.

Just like a filmmaker decides which of many objects his lens focuses upon, we get to decide if we want to zero in on the stuff in the foreground (what we have now) or if we’re prefer to shine our lens on something else. We’re the cameramen.

It’s important to remember that reality is never static or complete. It’s an unending process of movement and unfoldment. We choose what to unfold, what to put in our lens, where to point our viewfinder.

Another trio of miracle tales to fuel the love train

April 6, 2016 6 Comments

“Only if there are angels in your head will you ever possibly see one.”—Mary Oliver

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Despite what it says in the newspaper, despite what your mother told you, despite what society insists is rock solid truth, it’s important to remember Shakespeare’s adage, “Nothing is either good nor bad. Only thinking makes it so.”

Your thinking regulates what is allowed into your life experience and what boogies on over to the next guy. You get to decide. You have the final say.

And since my thinking believes in miracles, magic and moving right past the bouncer who says, “You can’t go in,” I hear stories like this each and every day.

Linda, from my gratitude posse, shared this one yesterday:

“Several months ago, tickets for Bruce Springsteen in Kansas City went on sale. I really wanted to go, but did absolutely nothing to get tickets. I just decided I would be going and didn’t think about it again.

“Yesterday two tickets appeared through a friend of a friend. And now I’m going to see Bruce on Thursday.”

This one came in today’s email:

“My horse Mission, an off-the-track thoroughbred that I have had for about a year, never lays down. Yesterday, I mentioned this to my mom.

“Before I went to bed last night I read the section in E-Squared about synchronicities and how often, just reading about them, causes one to “occur.”

“The next morning, I am in the arena with Mission and, as I observe him, I say, “You know, you look sleepy. I think it’s time you just took a little nap.

“So I simply sat down next to where he stood. To my utter awe-mazement, Mission proceeded to lay down RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF ME.

“If you are not a horse person, you might not know that this is not typical horse behavior–especially for THIS horse.

“Not only did he lay down, he stretched out full-length and WENT TO SLEEP.

I have lovely photos of our 25-minute duo power nap.”

sleeping horse

And this last one came in a month ago and got temporarily “lost” in my giant file of miracle stories:

“I thought I would send a few examples as to how your books and blog have helped me and my family.

“My four kids are grown and three no longer live in KCMO. This past Christmas I was able to visit my two oldest daughters in LA. It was the first Christmas we have been able to spend together since 2004. Even though we are very close it is easy for time & distance to prevent us from talking about concerns and needs. In January, my two daughters and I began a daily “Today I pray for…” text.

“In a short 3 weeks all 4 of my kids had long standing problems solved and hopes answered. My oldest daughter got a contract that benefitted her career, my second daughter’s boyfriend got a better paying full time job, my son received two different job offers from companies offering the kind of job he has been seeking since he graduated in 2011, and my youngest daughter received confirmation that she would be receiving much needed money for college. Our daily prayers were not specifically for those things, they were about feeling peace, understanding, creative inspiration, whatever we felt the need for that day. It was after all those things lined up I realized, “Wow! that was fast!”

Thanks everybody for doing this blog with me. I am so, so very grateful.

Life-changing reminder to tattoo upon your body

April 4, 2016 35 Comments

“I don’t have issues. I have subscriptions.”—Greg Tamblyn

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I’ve noticed an odd tendency among readers of my books. Some of them make the disturbing assumption that I have my s*%t 100 percent together.

While that’s certainly a beautiful notion and, in Truth, we are all perfect, beautiful, loving agents for God, I sometimes forget.

So here’s the tattoo-worthy reminder:

Successful people feel fear and doubt and have bad ideas.

It’s vital to remember this. Because when we feel fear or doubt or have a bad idea, we too often decide there’s something wrong with us and that we’ll never write that book or find that relationship or do the thing that our heart is bugling out for us to do.

I gain the strength to follow my heart’s bidding by hanging out regularly with what I now call my possibility posses (nee: power posses). As songwriter Greg Tamblyn reminded us yesterday, everybody needs to find a group of abnormal people to commune with.

We’re abnormal in that we tell stories that defy what society tells us in normal. We tell stories about miracles and possibilities. We witness to the fact that when we get on the right frequency, the bigger thing has plenty of room to work with us, to guide us, to bless us. And when one of us is having an “issue” or even a “subscription,” the others of us can gently point out that: “yep, that’s one story. But there are a gazillion others.”

All of us are all full of stories. Why not be abnormal and choose the ones that instill peace and joy and light?

Kicking cancer in the nuts, a free trip to Hawaii and other miracle stories

April 1, 2016 14 Comments

“Plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”–Alan Watts

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Joyous Friday, my friends!

As ya’ll know, I love sharing miracle stories. Here are a couple that recently showed up:

#1: “So, my head is still spinning from the aftermath of what happened this weekend. I recently finished E-squared, did the 9 experiments and was blown away at the results.

“I put it out there from my heart that I wanted to travel to Hawaii with my wife. We have been talking about it for eight or nine years.

“After finishing your book, I made the intention, put it out there to the energy field. Friday night at 7:23pm at Buffalo Wild Wings (cheat meal for me), our in-laws, who had no idea about any of this, invited us to go! I was awestruck.”

#2: “Just wanted to say something about giving up long held beliefs as fact. After participating in a friend’s self love webinar over a period of several weeks, I got to see a lot about how we hold on to various personal, cultural, national and international beliefs.

“I examined my own, and saw the power they have over me, over my life, and my body. For most of my life, since I was 11, I have had it that I am fat and overweight (yes, both!), and as a result I have dieted for most of my life.

“Just by giving up cultural, personal, national and international beliefs about dieting, I have lost more than 30 pounds WITHOUT dieting! I didn’t ‘watch’ what I ate. I didn’t give a second thought about having a second helping. Basically, I ate what I wanted to eat, when I wanted to eat. Some may call it intuitive eating. When I wanted ‘unhealthy’ food I would have it. When I wanted cream with my cake, I would have it.

“What I have further noticed is how these beliefs can easily creep in… time to re-examine them and give them up again…”

#3: This last story came yesterday in a phone call. My friend, Annola, from my power posse was diagnosed with cancer last year. She was given three months to live. She freaked out for awhile and then decided, “hell, no! I’m not going to let some doctor tell me what’s going to happen in my life.” At yesterday’s appointment, her doctor, who has already been amazed and inspired and wondering what in the heck she’s smoking, declared her 100 percent cancer-free.

And lastly, because it IS Friday, here’s a fun Dance of Freedom video.

Have the best weekend of your life, my friends.

The 5 kinds of capital that out-trump financial capital

March 30, 2016 84 Comments

“The spiritual lens—even just the nightly gratitude list–is starting to rewrite the story of my life. I feel like I have been snatched out of the fire, salvaged, saved.”—Mary Karr thank and grow

You might have seen my post on Facebook, where I gushed in glee about my new book. Hay House, my publisher, moved up the pub date (that’s publication date, not a day where I lift pints of hearty ale) from October to August.

It’s now available for pre-order so I posted the cover and wrote two sentences about my excitement. That tiny mention sold enough books on Amazon to move it to #1 in New Releases in New Thought. At least for a day. I was blown away.

That being said, I want you to know that I don’t view this blog as an advertisement or a marketing tool. In fact, yesterday, I paid to have all ads taken off my site. I figured it was the least I could do for those of you who so generously take the time to read my posts.

I write them out of sheer joy. I write from my heart and I view them as a gift to anyone who cares to read them. I’m not out to monetize this website.

Which is why I don’t use my blog to promote what’s known as affiliate programs. You know–those posts that have the same spiel, the same wording and everything, from five different people. While there’s a certain kind of mad genius in promoting someone else’s program or product in exchange for a percentage of sales, I choose to turn down such invitations because I don’t view you as “a list.” You are my compadres in spiritual mischief, my friends, my sounding board. If I write about something, it’s because I’m genuinely excited about it.

Financial capital, the goal of affiliate marketing, has glaring limitations. It’s fine, but it’s not why we’re here. The riches I talk about in my new book, Thank and Grow Rich, are not the kind you find in a bank.

One of the chapters, in fact, is called Becoming the Warren Buffet of Happiness. The book talks about amassing a different kind of capital. Five different kinds: spiritual capital, social capital, creative capital, adventure capital and alchemic capital.

We acquire these riches by getting on a frequency of joy and gratitude. By taking off the blinders that block the presence and the radiance and the unforced generosity of the universe.

My service is to this presence. And to you, my dear friends, who have put a little bit of trust in me. For that, I say thank you, thank you, thank you.

Pam Grout is the author of 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and its equally-scintillating sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment

Invasion of the Body Snatchers has nothing on the bratty voice inside my head

March 29, 2016 36 Comments

“The running commentary that dominates my field of consciousness is kind of an asshole.”—Dan Harris, ABC Nightline Co-anchor

stillness

My brain is a magnificent instrument. It keeps track of where I left my keys, remembers that 3 times 9 is 27 and files away lessons on how to drive.

But it often acts as my #1 nemesis.

It doesn’t seem to know when to shut up. It chatters incessantly. It likes to categorize, compare, label, judge and define. It perpetuates the idea that life is a problem to be solved.

It distorts the indestructible field of creativity, joy, beauty and freedom that is right here at any moment I can get my mind to shut the F*&k up.

When the heart over-functions, we get dizzy, light-headed and develop heart disease. When cells over-function, we get cancer.

When our brains over-function, we become slaves to a ridiculous little asshat in our heads that lies through its teeth.

That’s why, whenever I can, I separate myself from the voice. I observe it, notice it’s back on the treadmill, spinning its fearful little stories.

And I smile.

Because I know that its days are numbered. More and more of us are waking up, realizing that the voice is an imposter. We’re getting it that all we have to do is be still. Be still and know.

In the stillness, the Truth that has never ceased to be comes streaming in.

The Blog

Signs from the universe are like whiskers—they keep coming back

Like this:

Your body has self-healing superpowers

Like this:

Hello! Do you really want to hang on so tightly to that idea?

Like this:

All you gotta do is ask: a Friday love story

Like this:

Manifesters who do too much

Like this:

Another trio of miracle tales to fuel the love train

Like this:

Life-changing reminder to tattoo upon your body

Like this:

Kicking cancer in the nuts, a free trip to Hawaii and other miracle stories

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The 5 kinds of capital that out-trump financial capital

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers has nothing on the bratty voice inside my head

Like this:

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