ACIM – Page 2 – Pam Grout

It’s my birthday and I’ll blog if I want to

February 17, 2023 67 Comments

“I was wise enough never to grow up.”–Margaret Mead

Just so you know, this is not a plea for birthday wishes. I already feel blessed by each and every one of you. I know (except when I occasionally get cranky) that I’m deeply loved and, if anything, I want to give birthday wishes.

Because that’s how it works. When we’re filled up with love, with the truth of who we are, it can’t help but gush over to everyone in our vicinity—even if it’s the vicinity of a blog. I write these posts for one reason. I love to write them. I do it for me.

And, yes, that’s another gravitational rule of life. When you do what you love most in all the world, it brings blessings to you AND spills on to others like an over-running cup.

When I blather on about the largesse of the world, I occasionally hear comments like “You’re out of your mind.” And I say, THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!

My mind, as useful as it is, has never delivered much joy. It’s too busy keeping track of stuff, making to-do lists and filing all the reasons I should focus on the human meatball part of myself. But boy, when I get “out of my mind,” all I experience is joy and a beautiful awareness that I am so lucky to have occurred at all.

Today’s Course lesson is “There is nothing to fear.” So my third birthday wish for all of you is this: Get out of your fear-producing mind, recognize the Truth and enjoy a big honking birthday celebration on me. #222 Forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

Here’s to a more spacious view

February 10, 2023 11 Comments

“Little by little, you will turn into the whole sweet, amorous universe. Love will surely burst you wide open into an unfettered, booming new galaxy.”—Rumi

Mention the word manifesting and most people think of material items posted on their vision board. To manifest, as popularly advertised, is to bring new cars or jewels or lovers into one’s life.

But manifest, in its true definition, means to create a field that makes something perceivable to the senses. Thoughts and beliefs have energetic patterns that create specific fields from the vast, unknowable, infinite potentialities that erupted along with the Big Bang.

The possibilities are way more than a tiny human brain (the reducing valve, as Aldous Huxley described it) can begin to understand.

Our brains take one microscopic facet of life (say, the human meatball named Pam), place it in the center ring and hitch everything to that 42-foot (the standard length of a center ring in a typical 3-ring circus) field.

Deep grooves of habit diminish the vastness, the spaciousness of what’s truly possible. My dear friend Bob and I were talking about the sheer ridiculousness of believing we understand anything.

Even science can only study the 4 percent of the universe that’s visible. The other 96 percent, the invisible energy we only surmise is there because of its gravitational influence on the four percent we do see, remains unknowable.

So the best we can do is build models or fields that manifest one particular limited reality. Every religion, every culture, every personality is nothing but a manifested field. And, thankfully, none of them are solid or permanent or really anything except a pattern that we manifest with our ongoing attention.

I guess where I’m going with this long, esoteric blathering is that while I’m here, interacting on this fragile zone of earth and sky, I intend to unhitch my attention from the limited center ring and focus instead on life’s incredible vastness, on its never-ending gifts. I mean what are the odds that this collection of subatomic particles that pretend to be Pam even occurred on this rocky planet? What an extraordinary gift!

So call this your weekly reminder that what is manifested now (what we see on the news, in the world) is nothing but a temporary field, one iteration of possibility. By simply removing focus from “what appears to be” and putting it on “what else might be?,” we can create a field that more closely resembles life’s Truth: love, nothing but love.

Before I let you go, I also want to mention that I met yesterday with the incredible Cherie Anderson who created this Sunday’s fundraiser for the Taz Grout 222 Foundation. She gave me a brief preview (including my small part) and let me just say, that it’s going to be the bomb. A love bomb! There’s going to be tapping and a love exercise from Mr. Rogers (yes, that Mr. Rogers) and well, I’m just happy she invited me along for the ride. If I understand correctly, Cherie chooses a different good cause every month and then hosts a mini, on-line workshop where all proceeds go to said good cause.

If you happen to have time this Sunday, check us out here. I’ll be there. I’m sure Taz will be there with her ginormous light and spirit. And, of course, the 222 love energy will be there.

Have a ridiculously remarkable weekend, my friends, and if happens to include this Sunday’s “Will You Be Your Valentine” event, I’ll see you there. #222 Forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

There are only two options

February 5, 2023 25 Comments

“I belong to the Church of What’s Happening Now.”—Flip Wilson

Despite its wordy reputation, A Course in Miracles is overtly simple. Boiled down, it offers two options. You either live in love or you live in fear. That’s it. Those are your only choices.

And since fear is False Evidence Appearing Real, that shrinks your choices even further. You can’t NOT live in love. You can’t NOT be love. So choice B is an illusion.

The essence of your being is love. And there’s not one thing you can do to change that. Whatever you believe you might have done has absolutely no impact on who you really are.

And those other bozos out there? How you see them can also be effortless. At all times, they’re either offering love or they’re offering a call for love. And guess what? Since now you know your true identity (big, bounteous love), it’s easy to see right through their illusion.

The Course makes no bones. It offers unspeakable happiness. And all it takes is changing our minds about the world and about who we think we are.

Suffering is only possible when we believe the evidence the ego takes to the courtroom of our minds. But when you start to realize that its wildly creative, fear-based misinterpretation of the world has changed nothing, you’re free to announce case closed. Love is all that is.

The illustration for this post (today’s Course lesson, My holiness envelops everything I see!) was created by Alberto Agraso, an incredible illustrator originally from Spain, now living in Canada. I discovered this fabulous Course artist when he sent a proposal for this year’s 222 Foundation gift.

Although we’ve chosen a different candidate, I fell in love with his work and I’ve sent it on to my editor at Hay House in the hopes they can publish an illustrated book or a card deck, making the Course even easier to grasp. I did my bit to make its profound wisdom easier to digest in my book, The Course in Miracles Experiment, but now it’s Alberto’s turn to simplify it even more.

Thank you, Alberto, for being a bright light. And thank you everyone who offered such incredible ideas for changing the consciousness of the world. As always, the announcement for this year’s gift will be made on February 22 (2/22).

#222 Forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

Let me invite you to a different kind of party

November 29, 2022 27 Comments

“Happiness, when done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.”—Mary Oliver

It occurs to me that my blog posts all say the same thing. I wrap them up, of course, in different packages. But basically, they assert some variation of this theme: 1.) That our natural state is peace and happiness and that 2.) Our feckless egos tell us just the opposite.

The trick, of course, is deciding which idea to feed.

The ego is pretty mouthy and insistent. It runs like stock market ticker tape, constantly announcing that something is wrong, that something needs to be fixed.

I notice that when I place my attention on the random thoughts profusely supplied by the ego, they clump together and create whole Hollywood-worthy productions, complete with set designers and dancing penguins.

But when I feed idea #1, that my natural state is peace and happiness, I evoke a self that’s more generous, open and spontaneous, one that can respond to whatever happens to be at hand.

My thoughts, I’ve noticed, are like legos. They literally build things. One thought leads to the next and to the next and so on.

And while thoughts, when guided by the ego, can certainly construct a lot of heavily-encrusted delusions, it’s important to remember that they ARE just that: delusions. They simply are NOT true. They’re habits that our long-standing attention has temporarily set into concrete.

The good news is the delusions can be dismantled, blown to smithereens, by simply returning to idea #1.

As the Course in Miracles likes to remind me, when I let go of self-deceptions and images I’ve falsely worshipped, fear disappears and only love remains. When I give up suffering, anxiety and doubt, the awareness of eternal peace and happiness, my natural state, can’t help but come pouring in.

Welcome to the celebration of a different kind of party. #222 Forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

The freaky math of gratitude

November 21, 2022 19 Comments

“I will give thanks to you forever and with my whole heart.”—Book of Psalms

Between the above quote and the story I’m about to tell, you can probably surmise that I went to church yesterday. A dear friend joined the Unity church here in town so, of course, I went to cheer her on. That’s what possibility posses do—celebrate each other for any and all spiritual leaps. Go team!

The speaker at the church service reminded us of the Bible story of the fish and loaves. It happens to be a favorite of mine because its math equation doesn’t add up to what we consider “normal, scientific reality.”

5+2=5000 is not an equation that computes for most of us. It doesn’t match what we were taught in school. Every reasonable, educated adult knows that five loaves and two fish do not feed 5000 people. But that’s only because, alongside math, we were taught the erroneous subject of scarcity and limitation.

When you use the equation of gratitude, when you add blessings to “math problems,” the resulting sums are skewed in your favor. Gratitude compounds and expands everything – even material things.

Jesus and his 12 disciples took 7 measly items (5 loaves and 2 fish) and, by blessing them, by giving gratitude for them, grew their larder into a feast for 5000.

So today someone emailed me they’d “lost $280 in cash and did I have any practices that can find the lost money or an equivalent?”

Here’s my answer, dear correspondent: Give thanks for whatever you have left, whatever you happen to have now. Even if it’s only one dime. If there’s no dime, give thanks that the sun came up this morning. And that your heart is still pumping blood throughout your body. Give thanks that you get to experience this precious life, even when it doesn’t feel so precious!

Every word or thought or even breath of gratitude multiplies whatever you have. It renders old school math problems irrelevant. It adds up to truth and the unfathomable math of miracles.

I know I repeat this over and over and over. (I figure I can get away with it because it happens to be Thanksgiving week here in the United States.) Counting blessings turns even the tiniest of things into monster-size blessings, abundance and, yes, miracles that defy all laws of mathematics. Happiest of holidays, my friends!

#222 forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

A tale of two miracles

November 16, 2022 51 Comments

“Writing music is my second career. My first career is to be happy.”—Jewel

I have never had what’s considered a normal career, the kind with insurance benefits and retirement packages. Instead, I spent the years people typically use to “climb the career ladder” pursuing interesting adventures and, like Jewel, investigating practices that encourage peace, wonder and spontaneity.

I’ve come to believe that this state of pure aliveness is my natural state (yours, too) and that other states of say, stress, impatience and fear are the result of an erroneous belief system. I’ve been known to blame society and old cultural paradigms for trapping me inside the box, but I realize my own mind is also guilty of misappropriating truth from time to time.

That’s why I believe sharing miracles (the only conversation worth having, in my opinion) is so important. So here are two:

At today’s possibility posse, Jay mentioned his intention to forgive the Catholic church. We all have those institutions and legacies that seem to have hurt us. Jay, a cradle Catholic who LOVED the church, was devastated when a priest, upon learning they were gay, refused to give communion. At the time, Jay wrote the church off, but in their desire to live the most authentic, open life possible, knew forgiveness would eventually be necessary. When Jay was ready, they said it out loud. “I now forgive the Catholic church.”

Soon after, Jay opened their old childhood jewelry box and found a very unusual Catholic medallion.

“I’ve seen lots of Catholic medallions, but never one like this. Where did it come from? I know I didn’t put it in there.”

What Jay did know is that once you make a sincere intention, you better hang on to your hat. Especially when said intention includes the F word. Because the universe–the field, God, whatever you want to call it–takes that shit seriously. Signs will start showing up like the owls who inundated Harry Potter’s muggle relatives with invitations to Hogwarts.

In the last month, Jay has been invited to four Catholic funerals. The willingness to open to new things (that’s all forgiveness really is) resulted in a priest apologizing, a canter singing “Panis Angelicus,” the song Jay’s mom sang every year and more importantly, Jay being willing to look the very priest who slighted them in the eye, and say, “I forgive you.” In other words, Jay is now free. They even reported doing a rosary the other day.

Despite its reputation, forgiveness is the path that opens us to all good things. It has nothing to do with letting someone off the hook. It’s simply a realization that nothing or nobody can hurt us. That’s true freedom.

Another climbing out of the box miracle occurred at All Souls. A beautiful young woman shared that she’d been asking the question so many of us have—what is mine to do right now? How can I make a difference? How can I help mend the world back together? One night during this period of soul-searching, she had a vivid dream, a dream that seemed realer than normal reality. She was sitting on the couch in her living room when a little blond girl with blood coming out of her nose and her ears approached. Needless to say, the woman picked her up, held her tight and comforted her. The little girl said she’d lost her parents, so the woman hugged her even tighter. They shared a beautiful, holy connection.

When she woke up the next day, she read in the paper about a bombing overnight in Ukraine where many children and their parents were killed and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she had lovingly ushered that little girl into the next realm.

It was a stunning moment. All of us who heard her story knew it to be true. Truer and more real than “normal” reality.

As we climb out of our heads, as we escape the four walls in which we endlessly circle, we discover that our true purpose may be happening in a cosmic realm. And that anybody or anything we forgive heals not only us, but the entire world.

I love you, people.

#222 Forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

The brilliance of not having a clue

August 23, 2022 16 Comments

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite. It could bring back a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”–Anais Nin

I’m a sucker for a good manifestation story. And two recently plopped into my inbox that I’ve decided to share because they’re both Exhibit A in demonstrating the power of letting go.

While most of us are great at setting intentions, creating vision boards and choosing the manifestation of our dreams, few of us are savvy enough to stop there. Rather, we make an intention and immediately follow up with “our plan” for how this is going to happen.

Rarely, if ever, does it happen that way.

The universe, thankfully, has a gazillion and 222 ways to deliver our blessings, ways that we, with our best laid plans, can’t even begin to conceive.

For example, my new friend Joe (I love that so many of you send me emails) was working at a shipyard when first introduced to the Course in Miracles. His co-worker, a zealous ACIM fan, shared so many miracle stories that Joe decided he needed his own copy. He could, of course, have trotted down to the nearest bookstore or ordered it online. But instead, he simply decided “I HAVE to have one.” Shortly thereafter, he came to work to find 100 or so lockers installed in a long empty hallway. At random, he opened one of the lockers and there, on the top shelf, was a brand spanking new leather-bound copy of the Course in Miracles. It even had gold leaf pages. He didn’t mention whether or not his name was etched into the front cover.

Another E-Squared reader, after happily manifesting blue cars and butterflies, decided to up her game with purple dragons. Sure, she saw a stuffed purple dragon at a toy store and counted that as a win, but recounted that she had asked for dragonS, as in more than one.

Later that week, after a thunderstorm, Mary’s husband invited her outside to enjoy a sunset. It was so stunning that she ran to get her camera. While reviewing the pictures the next day she noticed that clearly outlined against the sweeping bright orange and magenta clouds were two well-formed purple dragons.

The moral of these stories is that our limited brains are not equipped to understand the infinity of the universe. Not only that, but we’re trained from a very early age to cut off large parts of our consciousness. I’ve often compared it to donning a pair of Spanx. We squeeze our immense beautiful selves—our radiant, multidimensional connection to all that is–into a tight, often uncomfortable belief system that thinks it knows best.

What I now know is that “not having a clue” is my best strategy for approaching most everything, leaving a wide open stage for the universe to show off its marvels.

If you’re anywhere near Kansas City on September 18, I’d love to meet you (and so would Karen Drucker and all the other fabulous musicians) at the Amazingly Awesome 222 Foundation Benefit Concert at 4 p.m. at Unity Temple on the Plaza. It’s going to be epic. #222 Forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

No expectations, no problems

July 26, 2022 33 Comments

“If the fire for happiness burns in you, there will be a moment of courage when you stop, step away from the force of conditioning and let yourself be still.”—Gail Brenner

Anyone who has ever read any of my books or follows this blog knows I have a deep and abiding love affair with quotations. I heard the following Hafiz quote the other night at a birthday party for a former researcher at the HeartMath Institute.

This was before the Jewish Mexican crooner wearing silver lame came out to serenade us on the rooftop overlooking Lake Chapala. Yes, we have fun here in Mexico.

For example, last night, I had the choice: naked yoga or the movie, The Peanut Butter Falcon. Let’s just say, Shia LaBeouf and Zak Gottsagen had just as much chemistry in the movie as they did on the Academy Award stage that year.

But I digress.

The quote I want to marry goes like this: “The subject for tonight is love. And for tomorrow night, as well. In fact, I know of no other topic for us to discuss until we die.”

This quote is all I’ve been thinking about. And it’s all I’ve been doing here in Mexico. Today, I went to a Course in Miracles meeting at noon and we ended up staying to talk about love for five freakin’ hours. I mean, how blessed can a gal be.

And here’s the thing. My day went nothing like I planned. On today’s “alleged” agenda was a hike up into the mountains with the hikers I met last Friday. Well, it poured down rain this morning and my thoughts, as thoughts are wont to do, tried to raise a few objections, attempted to start a field of resistance.

But instead, I took Lao Tzu’s advice about laughing at my thoughts, and guess what? I got to spend the entire day talking about love and possibilities.

Perhaps my favorite story was shared by a former student of Bijan Anjomi, a former Mr. Universe who teaches effortless prosperity. They were in Toronto one Saturday and somebody asked Bijan–“Is there anything you haven’t done that you’d still like to do?” He joked, “Well, I’ve never been arrested.”

That night, relaxing in his hotel room, Bijan had two knocks on the door. The first was a friend who just happened to stop by with one of his favorite foods. The next was the Toronto police.

Sure enough, he was handcuffed and taken down to the station. He told the officers he was flying out the next day and they assured him that was not going to happen because it was a Saturday night and no judge would be able to hear his case until Monday. He didn’t panic. He didn’t fret. He sat in his “cell” meditating, knowing he’d be on that flight the next day. I probably don’t need to tell you. He WAS on the flight the next day. A lawyer friend who knew a judge got the misunderstanding cleared up.

I love this story SO MUCH for two reasons: a) It demonstrates how quickly our words manifest and b) it shows how if you continue to laugh at all thoughts and embrace whatever experience shows up in each moment, life becomes effortless, peaceful and, yes, fun.

So, my friends, the subject for today is love. And for tomorrow. And for every day until we die. #222 Forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

Living in the present tense

June 8, 2022 26 Comments

“Thoughts that are oriented to the past and the future serve only to restrict and limit the amount of animating current that is available to vitalize your expression.”—Ken Carey

How many of you got up this morning and said, “well it’s time to start looking for my nose?” Not only would that be bat sh*#t crazy, it would be an utter waste of your precious time.

Yet, that’s what we do every moment when we worry, when we go out looking for answers and information to help us navigate our lives.

Everything we need to know and do is right here in this present moment. It’s the portal through which we escape the conceptual prison that keeps us stuck in the past, fretting about the future.

Lost as we are in the spinning commentary of our minds, we fail to notice the clear, specific information being supplied to us by an energetic flow of infinite knowledge. We can’t lose it any more than we can misplace our noses.

I recently read Michael Singer’s new book, Living Untethered. Over and over, he makes the point that our minds, oriented to interpret and make predictions based upon the past, are of absolutely no help on our spiritual journey.

Our minds, he says, might “know” what they experienced, but they have no clue what they didn’t experience. Basically, he says, the mind’s data is statistically insignificant — .00001 percent of what’s really going on. It’s a bunch of reactionary noise that doesn’t deserve the authority and credibility we give it.

Without my mind’s silly hold on reality, I notice these is a natural, simple unfolding to my life. I notice my breath, birds singing, laundry spinning, life emerging.

My main intention is not to interfere, not to energize thoughts of the past, fears for the future. To rest in the Divine Dance of immediacy. #222 Forever, my friends!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

Expand what you believe is possible

May 10, 2022 35 Comments

“If you think bending spoons is cool, wait until you learn to bend your whole life.”—Martha Beck

Back in 1981, Bud Tribble, who at that time was a new hire at Apple, suggested that his boss possessed the superpower of creating “reality distortion fields.”

What he meant is that Steve Jobs could take what everyone else believed was utterly impossible and inspire his teams to do it anyway. Tribble said he got the term from an episode of Star Trek where aliens created new worlds using mental force.

What he didn’t bother to mention is that this same superpower is engrained in all of us. We all create our world, 100 percent of the time. Except instead of using our imaginations and going for what others believe is impossible, we get up each day and compress our world back into the mold we used yesterday. And the day before that.

The Course in Miracles says it like this: “I see only the past.”

Talk about a waste of a superpower. We could literally imagine into existence a more beautiful, just and compassionate world, one that works for everyone. The past story of scarcity and separation is getting creaky and old. All the forces trying to hold it in place are literally falling apart.

That’s why it’s the perfect time to use our superpowers of imagination, creativity and love. If we refuse to fall for the story that impossible things can’t be done, we can literally regenerate everything.

But we have to give up our training, our rules, our old, sad story. Each of us is a whirlpool of individual consciousness inside a vast universal consciousness. If we can give up the past, meet each moment anew and ask for help from what I often call The Divine Buzz, things that were once dubbed impossible can become “well, duh!” Here’s to regeneration, imagination and peace. #222 Forever

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest book, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World) that has just been turned into an app. Badass ACIM (badass-acim.com)