“Once you identify a choice that your culture has made on your behalf, you are free to begin forging a new one.”—Philip Shepherd
My most important practice is non-resistance. Me and Elsa—letting it go. Over and over and over again.
Like today’s Course lesson advises, “Give up your tight control of what you see.”
Personally, I want to give up my tight control of what I see, what I think, what I believe.
I was pondering this common phrase today. “But that’s just human nature.”
It’s often used to explain away all sorts of less-desired behaviors, things like fear, jealousy, greed, anger. And it’s billed as inescapable, “just the way it is.”
But that doesn’t ring true for me. I would say 100 percent of these kinds of projected behaviors are anything BUT human nature. Our true essential nature is love, peace, acceptance and joy.
And anytime, we feel less than peaceful, less than innocent, less than “what a freakin’ awesome world this is,’ we are resisting something and projecting whatever we’re resisting onto a screen outside ourselves.
Another myth I’d hereby like to bust is the prevalent belief that it’s your job to figure everything out. When you rely on your precious mind to solve some issue that’s troubling you, it produces thoughts—lots and lots of thoughts.
The intellect, as great a tool as it is, relies on old files stored in the brain. It churns up stories revolving around the above myth—that others and their “human nature” are out to get you. And these thoughts, which are endless and self-reinforcing, only breed more thoughts.
So today, let’s all join Elsa, belt out a joyous “let it go.” And relax in the boundless peace that is our true nature.
“Identities and opinions are the least interesting parts of people.”—Maria Popova
So I just returned home from one of my Possibility Posses (P.P.), checked my email and saw a comment on last week’s blog post that said something to the effect of “so grateful you keep writing these.”
I took that as a sign to share a little something we discussed today.
Possibility posses, far as I’m concerned, are non-negotiable. The important part isn’t so much what we say, but the frequency we create by being together, by focusing on a different narrative. Someone last week even mentioned that the story he was about to share wasn’t as important as the energetic field he intended to create.
I always think of Jill Boelte Taylor’s Ted Talk about the stroke that shut down the left hemisphere of her brain. That’s the logical, conceptual, mathematical part of our brains. While that part wasn’t online, she looked at her hands and saw, not the flesh and bone and fingers we normally associate with hands, but two intermingled clouds of energy.
So the field or the “cloud of energy” to which we commit is one of upliftment and possibility, of a story beyond what we’re often enmeshed with in our culture.
Are we really these bodies? Or are we conjoining fields of energy, fields that we, by our very presence, can use to reach towards light and love or what I like to call, the way things really are.
I know it’s a popular sentiment in the self-help arena to figure things out and fix things with our minds. But I’ve noticed the mind, more often than not, gets in the way.
I compare thoughts, those fields of energy dispensed by the right side of our brains, to birds. Yes, that purple-bellied, green-eyed warbler may still be flying around your yard.
But if you don’t put seed in the bird feeder, it’ll soon fly away. In other words, if you keep putting the same suet out for the same old thoughts, be it thoughts about money or your childhood or whatever else keeps squawking around your awareness, it will continue to vie for your attention and darken your cloud of energy.
So that’s why I only feed “birds” that feel good and why I continue to show up at my possibility posses whenever I can.
“The present is whispering to us, “Come and play, come and risk.”—Philip Shepherd
When Philip Shepherd graduated from high school, he had a choice. He could follow societal convention, study physics at Trinity College in Toronto. Or he could fly to London, buy a bike and cycle across Europe, Middle East, India and eventually end up in Japan studying Noh Theatre.
As he says now, “I knew instinctively that if I stayed in my culture, it would win.”
Like many of us, he noticed early on that adults followed a lot of well, ridiculous rules and customs.
Had he not defied traditional expectations, he likely wouldn’t be the pioneer he is today. I probably would never have heard of him or gone to his life-changing workshop last weekend in Brooklyn, Wisconsin.
As he points out, everything in the accepted culture is tied to safety. And if we’re not aware of patterns we’ve inadvertently adopted, they will continue to run and run and run.
From the moment I first read about Shepherd (thank you, DailyGood), I resonated with his work of finding guidance, not in our heads, but in the living present. The workshop was aimed at noticing barriers that dull us to the world around us and finding the spaciousness and fluidity that is our natural state.
Until we let go of what we “know for sure” (as he says, the head is like a medieval fortress), we have little choice but to blindly follow reactive patterns.
I’ve always called it changing consciousness, opening to higher dimensions. As all you party-goers here at the blog know, that’s the mission of the Taz Grout 222 Foundation and the reason I keep writing these blog posts. Well, I also happen to really, really LOVE writing and opening myself to whatever the muses instruct me to purvey.
And today, I want to share a trio of stories that touched me and defy the cultural Kool-aid which, as we’re starting to recognize, doesn’t satisfy or even taste good anymore:
1. Money is perhaps the most entrenched belief in our culture. “The more, the better,” the story goes.
But Jeffrey Lee, who owns 1200 hectares of land on the eastern edge of Australia’s Kakadu National Park, turned down the opportunity to become that country’s wealthiest man. The uranium deposit on his land is worth $5 billion. Mining companies had pestered him for years, offering exorbitant amounts to purchase his family homeland.
Finally, to escape the incessant pressure, he traveled to Paris to make his case before the World Heritage Committee.
“I believe this land and my cultural beliefs are more important than mining and money,” he told the committee that was able to officially protect Koongarra and his indigenous Djok way of living.
2. The next belief that’s firmly wedged in our societal enculturation is the idea of “the other”—that we are separate and that we must defend against the “opposition.” I got a kick out of a quote Philip shared: “Stereotypes are a great time saver.”
Anyway, Destiny Smith could have saved a lot of time and, according to conventional reality, been pretty mad at the stranger who rear-ended her car. But after learning he was 97-years-old, had no license, no insurance and virtually no family (his wife had recently died), she ended up befriending him, finding him some nursing assistance and now visits him a couple times a week.
3. Last story is about a former police officer named Denis Chagnon. In 1996, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given three weeks to live. Rather than take the recommended chemo and pain meds, he started to experiment with the energy he was starting to notice in his body.
It started as a way to comfort himself. He began placing his hands on areas of his body where he was in pain. Before his mind could begin lecturing him “this is ridiculous and you heard what the doctor said,” he noticed he was able to move energy, was able to eventually dissipate the blocks that were creating the cancer throughout his body. He had what society calls “a spontaneous remission.” But was it? Chagnon now works as an energy healer in his hometown of Val des Monts, Quebec, Canada.
So that’s my Friday offering and this is my big chance to wish you (and everyone you love-in other words the whole world) the most fabulous weekend of your life.
“Our love for the world keeps eternity wide and bright and full of potential.” — Nick Cave
Like any conversation, a good blog post attempts to keep the reverberations going.
So just a quick postscript to yesterday’s words:
I like to think my cosmic daughter added these thoughts to my thoughts about loving the world:
“Despite what the culture prescribes, there is nothing that needs to be added, nobody you need to become.
“In fact, other than the mind’s nonsense, nothing could ever be wrong.
“Any method or technique that pretends to offer something or somewhere to reach at some nebulous future (in other words, anything that’s not now) by its very nature starts with the assumption that something’s wrong.
“Even a goal of self-discovery only keeps you on the path. But there is no path. You’re already there.”
“I’ve learned that when they call you crazy, it usually means you’re onto something.”—Jacqueline Novogratz
Happy Monday, my peeps! I know I typically send out Friday missives — mainly so I can wish you the most astounding weekend of your life, but thought I’d mix it up a bit.
Plus, while walking around my yard this morning, counting new lilies, adoring the clematis, reveling in the morning’s avian Opus #143, a voice clearly spoke to me—“This is your mission, Pam.”
“Say what?”
“You heard me. Your life’s work is to notice, give thanks, be joyful. And don’t let anybody tell you that’s not enough.”
“Even with all the potential causes, protests, issues I keep hearing about?”
Yes, I’ve been regularly hitting up the Dude with the question, “What is mine to do?”
This morning’s answer couldn’t have been clearer.
“Love your life, create a field of joy, expand your presence.”
Not the presence, it emphasized, that the world maintains you “should” expand — get more likes, attract new followers, sell more books– but the presence of peace and possibility, of imagination, new ideas.
But what about all the “shoulds” I inherited from my culture: that I “should” build my 401K, keep my fingernails painted, rid my lawn of all those beautiful yellow flowers that eventually turn into white wispy delights?
The rules are extensive, many buried beneath awareness, taken for granted, believed to be absolute duty as a responsible human being.
These invisible “shoulds” are buried in the left hemisphere of our brains, the rational, pragmatic side that constructs a map of the world that currently dominates reality. It alleges I “should” put up defenses, stay safe, stay separate, stay loyal to the dominant narrative. And sadly, that map has formed a world with little room for awe and wonder.
But it’s the awe and wonder, the beauty of it all, as Dostoevsky said, that can save the world.
So, no, I have not identified any new assignment, any new cause. But I have been given full-throated permission to abandon all “shoulds,” to simply walk through life as a loving, energetic field of presence. To forever enjoy “this very now” and be open to the unbounded truth that surpasses all maps, all limitations, all “shoulds.”
Here’s to enjoying a ridiculously rowdy, sensuously satisfying week, the best of your big, beautiful life.
“Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination.”–Rob Brezsney
In the movie, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray wakes up every morning to Cher belting out the lyrics of the popular 1965 hit, “I Got You, Babe.”
For much of the movie, the self-centered weatherman resists and cusses and hates the time loop he finds himself in.
Finally, he decides to try a different perspective, to open himself to the idea that maybe there’s something else at play. Maybe he’s not the axis around which the world revolves.
Nothing else changes—the same song, the same deejays, the same weather report wake him up each morning. But once he puts down his dukes and begins connecting to something outside himself, he notices everything is different—more alive, more loving.
When he decides to trust in the intelligence outside of himself, when he decides to stop fighting, drop his defenses, “put his little hand in mine….” as Cher sings, life shifts.
So I’d like to pose a little experiment. Here’s the hypothesis, “There is a peaceful, loving intelligence that’s way stronger than any judgment, doubt, anxiety I might feel. And trusting that is all I need do.”
Anxiety and all its insolent cousins arises in the left hemisphere of the brain, the part that calculates, measures, judges. According to British neuroscientist, Iain McGilchrist, the left brain doesn’t know what it’s talking about. It literally makes up stuff. It gives us fake directions for coping with life. Because our society is so left-brain oriented, we all turn to thinking (that scared, calculating left side of brain) to address our daily lives.
The left side comes in handy, but it also causes us to miss the magical reality in which we live. So to test the above hypothesis, I suggest making the decision each morning to trust that, behind the scenes, everything is being orchestrated by a power much greater than ourselves.
Think of those dot-to-dot puzzles we used to do as kids. When you begin, you have no idea what the picture is going to be. It could be an elephant or a lamp or Snoopy, for all you know. Your only instruction is to move to the next dot. One dot at a time.
You don’t have to figure out the whole picture. Or worry about where to go. You just trust that moving to the next dot is your only job.
And that’s enough.
So today and maybe for the next five days, choose to trust. Don’t figure your day out. Or think you have to plan everything. Just trust. The truth that surpasses all things will cheer and sing, “I Got You, Babe.”
“I don’t want to wait for the world to change to be free.”—Byron Katie
Joyous Tuesday, you brilliant beings of light!
I am just back from Ireland where my mister and I searched and found his family roots.
We celebrated Mother’s Day with a wild pack of mountain goats while hiking in the Burren, met half the population of the tiny Aran Island of Inis Oirr and “just happened” to land our tickets to the Book of Kells at precisely 2:22. Thank you, Taz!
I could go on and on about the synchronicities—meeting just the right person at just the right time, finding fairy rings, happening on to St. Bridget’s Well (and leaving notes), sitting next to Taylor Swift’s table….But, because I’m busy catching up with my life here (amazing how much a garden can grow in 15 days), I’m sharing a fun story that popped into my inbox this morning. Thank you, Laura:
“I bet you get tired of readers and followers sending you manifestation stories they think are funny. I’ve been feeling a little flat after manifesting a very big thing…like scared it will never happen again so I’m re-reading/doing E-Squared.
“Exercise 1: my plantar fasciitis went away (thanks Dude),
“Exercise 2: “Show me a yellow bike” Yeah found my bike in 24 hours.
“Exercise 3: I’m on holiday in Dordogne, France (manifested this) and I’m in love, feel like I’m home. Decided I’m gonna manifest a house sit for this time next year.
“Today on a hike, I met a French hiking group and they were chatting with us. My new friend is doing a house sit here and now and is also pining to return. I introduced her to a lady (my French is better) and explained she is house sitting.
“This lady then busts into perfect English “Voila! I need a house sitter next May. May I contact you?” LOLOLOL does it count if my friend manifested this? Or should I give it another 24 hours. Luckily, I didn’t start laughing about this until I was alone. Cheers Pam, thanks for getting me out of my mini funk.”
So first of all, I NEVER get tired of readers sending manifestation stories. And I’m honored that my words played a tiny part in eradicating funk of any kind. And I love sharing these stories, because, to me, the story of magic and possibility is the only conversation worth having.
I also treasure this photo sent from a “Thank and Grow Rich “group in Dripping Springs, Texas.
I am dripping in love for all of you.
Here’s to Tuesday and all the magic it offers if we only take the time to look.
“In the end, every single path leads back here to love.”—Elizabeth Gilbert
First, a big sloppy thank you to all of you kind, beautiful people who posted such compassionate words right here on this very blog.
It’s never comfortable admitting your shortcomings, especially in a culture that expects perfection and constant progress. But I couldn’t continue to blog with a straight face without owning up to this hugely significant life event and the lapse in my own practice.
What was so clearly shown to me (As the Course says, nothing is against me, everything is for me) is that, despite my looking the other direction, I was never abandoned. The loving life force from which we all spring never left its post. This Divine Grace (call it the Dude, Cosmo K, whatever works for you) is eternal, immovable.
There’s nothing any of us can do to sever our connection. It can’t be done. It’s who we are.
Our thoughts, on the other hand, could use a little work.
So often we use the powerful mojo of our thoughts to create what the second of the Ten Commandments called “a graven image.” This is an image that looks real, that sure seems to be causing us problems. But it’s a version of life that’s not valid. It hides the truth, blocks the miracle.
So glad to know that, like Dorothy with her red ruby slippers, I can click my heels at any time and return home.
“We have great opportunities to see great beauty every single day.”—Rick Rubin
Here’s Taz, her cousin Zach and me some 25 years ago.
True confession: I recently fell off the wagon of awesome and bomdiggity. A recent family tragedy slipped me an unexpected mickey.
Normally, my spiritual practice involves overlooking false realities such as fear, misery and disconnection. I don’t give much attention to the commentary, judgement and mental bluster my thoughts sometimes churn up.
But the death of a young, vital cousin of Taz’s threw me off my game.
For the most part, I don’t believe in death. I feel every bit as connected to my daughter as I ever did. Our love and deep bond is indestructible.
But it doesn’t make the physical loss of our beloveds any less jarring. And that sneaky asshat never ceases looking for opportunities to throw in its two-cents. ‘Life sucks,’ might have been one of its recent protestations. I might have even failed to send gratitudes to my posse for a day or two and/or ignore my daily Course practice.
Thankfully, life itself—its real dynamism, its budding trees, its stunning avian orchestra—continues to show off and show up for me, continues to point out that life never ends, and that except for my misguided thoughts and beliefs, it definitely DOES NOT suck. I recently read and related to a statement about “being a willing accomplice to the scandal of another spring.”
I am so grateful that life (and my ACIM practice) persists in reminding me of what’s true behind appearances, that it instructs me to continue counting my blessings and choosing to put my attention on beauty. And to always–no matter what–make room within myself for life’s unending immensity.
When I’m open to other dimensions — higher dimensions than ones we habitually focus upon — material appearances lose their hold. When I train my attention on possibility and collaborate, instead of arguing with reality, miracles continue to find me. And I return to the peace of my true nature.
“We can’t see what we don’t believe.”—Deepak Chopra
I mentioned the Telepathy Tapes in my last post. Many of you report having now listened to this podcast that offers compelling proof that the materialist paradigm in which we’ve long believed is not quite the “whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God.”
The fact that the Telepathy Tapes have become a phenomenon points to the fact that humanity is undergoing an unparalleled transition.
People everywhere, people you’d least expect are conceding that consciousness is the driver of reality. Peer-reviewed, double-blind studies are proving that all we perceive and experience springs from our thoughts and beliefs.
In one of the episodes, Ky Dickens, the creator of the podcast, mentions Lawrence Anthony, the South African conservationist I wrote about in E-Cubed. He’s the guy who rescued a herd of elephants who were slated to be slaughtered. Before transporting them to his Thula Thula game reserve, he spent time with them in the wild, befriended them, made them feel comfortable.
When he died unexpectedly of a heart attack on March 2, 2012, the elephants he had saved trekked 12 hours through the Zululand bush to form a circle around his home. They hadn’t even seen him for 18 months. How could they possibly have known?
The postscript to this story is that for several years on the anniversary of Anthony’s death, the same herd of elephants returned to his home, formed a circle and paid their respects.
The Telepathy Tapes also details a parrot that could read its owner’s mind and an animal communicator that was able to figure out why Ky’s new rescue dog was having trouble adjusting to his new family.
Stories like this shake our belief systems to the core. And beg the question, “What else is possible?” “What are we missing when we stubbornly cling to conditioned ways of seeing the world?”
In September, I’m joining a stellar group of 20 presenters in Paso Robles, California, several of whom are animal communicators and horse whisperers. I said yes to this invitation, not because I’ve decided to suddenly jump back on the lecture circuit, but because I want to hear what these amazing people have to share. All of them have opened to a broader perspective than the one currently going around.
Not only will I be presenting, but all of us (yes, that includes you if you accept this invitation) will be participating in discussion panels, Q&A sessions and connection circles.
The Journey On Podcast Summit runs September 18-22 at the Journey On Ranch and the Paso Robles Expo Center. I guarantee you will never see the world the same again.
