Ajijic – Pam Grout

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).

When your reality gets out of control

August 18, 2021 23 Comments

“To be empowered—to be free, to be unlimited, to be creative, to be genius, to be divine—that is who you really are.”—Joe Dispenza

So I’m back from Mexico after a month of mountain hikes, glorious mighty companions (that’s what we Course students call each other) and lots of fresh air, fresh food and fresh ideas.

In my absence, my garden beds have been starring in their own reality show, “Plants gone wild.” Nothing makes me happier than seeing what nature does when left to its own devices.

As I’ve been weeding and taming and wrestling the plants back into their borders, I got to thinking how reality, too, can get out of control. Especially when we leave the country of who we really are. When we supersede the love we were born from and still essentially ARE with cultural narratives, media hysteria and emotional attachments.

As I repeat, ad infinitum, the reality we see is nothing but a mental projection resulting from a conglomeration of our beliefs, thoughts and history.

What we see and experience is a real time neurological interface with particles and waves that we have condensed down to matter with old programming. Even though, in the quantum world, we are completely new and different than we were one millionth of a second before.

So my focus right now is returning to proto-Pam, the true Self before the beliefs and programming and what my friend, Jay, calls societal implants were installed.

Every morning, I go out and lay in my backyard, flat on the ground, connecting with who I really am before Newtonian paradigms and 65 years of history took over.

It’s actually quite beautiful. I find nothing but love and light. Hope you’ll go outside today, feel the truth and join me in returning the world back to its original creation. #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)

It’s a-shining in me…now

July 27, 2021 14 Comments

“The ego is the party pooper that prevents us from dancing into the middle of the ballroom floor.”—Francis Lucille

Buenas dias, mis amigos! Spending a month in Mexico’s Sierra Madres is the perfect antidote to hot Kansas summers.

Long mountain hikes, $1 green juices and, of course, the Namaste community makes for an easy dive into today’s Course in Miracles lesson: The peace of God is shining in me now. It’s also making me toy with the idea of resuming my travel writing.

As I’ve shared before, I had no idea (always the preferable plan) how I was going to realize my intention of traveling the world, but Source knew just how to work it out.

Ever since that editor at Ladies Home Journal called to ask if I did travel writing (and I very wisely answered “of course” even though I wasn’t totally sure what that meant), I’ve been writing about foreign cultures, countries and ideas. And, in the process, traveling the world.

Which brings me to the word “try” and why I avoid it by any means necessary. As Thomas Keating said, “to try to accomplish things by force of will is to reinforce the false self.”

The false self, of course, is the part of us that believes life is hard and that we have to seek to find what makes us happy.

Although I’ve repeatedly said “the biggest secret in the world is that we all really love each other,” another biggie in the lies-we-believe department is that happiness is out there somewhere. When in reality, happiness, joy and, yes, peace is our natural state.

And every time we try to attain that, we forget that we already have it.

Take my beautiful new website, for example. It was pretty clear my old site needed an update, but rather than work to find and interview designers, the perfect designer came to me. Out of the blue.

Out of the blue, by the way, is a synonym for the Dude, at least in my vocabulary. Thank you SO MUCH, Ioana Stoica, a Romanian designer who read one of my books and emailed me to volunteer.

So today, no matter what big plans you have, I hope you’ll take today’s Course in Miracles lesson to heart. And here to make it easy, is Jimmy Twyman’s song, “The peace of God is shining in me now.” #222 Forever

The body is overrated

December 16, 2019 27 Comments

“If you want to make yourself miserable, you have endless opportunities because always, someone will do something you do not like.”–Sadghuru

Hey, my friends. I’m heading to group (I guess it’s my Mexican Possibility Posse) and, after that, to a natural hot springs. So I thought I’d post this excerpt from one of the two free books you get if you preorder The Course in Miracles Experiment.

I wrote this funny little freebie with 25 strategies created by the ego to keep us from the peace and joy to which we’re entitled. Enjoy!

Strategy #5: Create defective containers.

To separate God into the illusion of many parts, like the many pieces of a flower pot dropped on the floor, they’ll need containers. They will begin to believe these containers (they’ll call them bodies) are their identity.

And since these bodies choose not to live in Eden, not in the moment, they are not of God and, therefore, not eternal. In other words, they are defective or will seem that way outside Eden. These container/bodies will need constant attention. They will need to be fed, watered and rested on a daily basis. They will take so much time and attention (read: distraction) that their true identity will be lost.

They will name these bodies (I’m Sue and you’re Frank) and spend countless hours providing for their upkeep.

They’ll spend one-third of each day working at jobs they don’t like to provide feed and shelter for these containers. They’ll spend another third of their day resting their containers. They’ll protect them from what they perceive to be constant dangers with locks and protective clothing. They’ll go to doctors to find things wrong with their containers. They will be so distracted with all the things that “could go wrong,” they’ll forget that it is only their “wrong mind,” their “not of God” mind that created the whole thing. They will soon believe the container, the always-vulnerable container, is who they are.

A body could never contain God, so therefore, it will be my greatest invention, my most potent tool. Fallible, aging bodies that require constant attention are the ultimate distraction. The irony, of course, is they will be so distracted by caring for these bodies that they’ll never know their bodies are their own doing and that, at any moment, they could return to Eden.

The blueprint of who they are in Reality can never be interrupted. The separated ones, if only they knew, contain order, harmony, balance, peace and wholeness.
They wear bodies in the illusion according to the image they hold in their thoughts. They change their bodies by their beliefs, but they believe they are victims of these bodies.

Reflective note (Or addendum now in the 21 st Century): Like Dorothy, who had the ruby slippers all along, they can come home anytime. But they’re too busy looking for the Wizard and wandering all these yellow brick roads to ever figure that out.

Judgments deter miracles

December 13, 2019 26 Comments

“The mind continuously creates hypotheses.”—Marilynne Robinson

A couple days ago, at a wonderful vegan pizza restaurant in Ajijic, Mexico, I saw a sign that said, “Listen to your heart, not your habits.”

That could just as well be ACIM Lesson 342. Our brains are on autopilot. They’re wired to look for threats. To automatically mobilize around anything we judge to be scary.

The Course says it’s all a bunch of bunk.

James Twyman made a great point at Satsang yesterday. He brought up medieval knights. With all their breastplates and helmets and other assorted armor, you have to wonder—how did they even move, let alone guard their castles?

And that’s us. Walking around with way too much armor. Our judgments, our hypothesis, our masks make it kinda hard to move. They keep love away. They deter miracles.

So today, instead of galvanizing myself against something horrible coming at me, I’m gonna focus on the other story. I’m gonna commit to beholding beauty, to pointing out all the things I love.

And anytime my brain makes yet another hypothesis, I’ll laugh. And I’ll say, “But did you see the egrets stretching their necks to the sun? Did you see the sweet father walking hand in hand with his daughter to school? Did you see the look in that lover’s eye?

Running with the stars

December 6, 2019 26 Comments

“I’m writing a book. I have the page numbers done. Now, I just need to fill in the rest.” –Stephen Wright

Happy Friday, my friends. Before this day gets away, I want to send a quick update. I’m in Ajijic, Mexico, hanging out with James Twyman and his wonderful Namaste community. You might remember I was here in early 2018.

Every morning, the lesson from A Course in Miracles is written on a big blackboard and we gather for an hour of singing and hugging and talking Truth.

Today’s ACIM Lesson (“I can be free of suffering today”) is a perfect reminder that we get to choose. At any time, we can step into joy and freedom, be released from the illusion that something is wrong, that something is other than it should be. Our perception (which is really another word for deception) doesn’t begin to show us everything. It only shows us what we’ve decided is true.

As James pointed out this morning, the only thing that keeps us stuck in our current illusion is our fear of letting go and expanding into everything. That’s what the Course promises.

If you’ve been hanging out on this blog for awhile, you likely know my take on A Course in Miracles–the book you guys practically forced me to write–is about to drop.

Hay House is putting together a landing page where anybody who preorders can get a couple extra free books that I also wrote to go along with it.

For those who are ahead of the curve and have already ordered, here’s a big shout out. And know that you can claim your free books ASAP by simply sending an email to Cathy Veloskey at cveloskey@hayhouse.com.

Hay House also wants me to tell you that Art & Soul, Reloaded, the eBook version, is on sale for $1.99 during the month of December. That’s less than a cup of coffee. And worth a whole lot more—especially if you’re feeling the pull to create. It’s available on Amazon, Nook and iBooks.

In other news, I’m actively fielding pitches for the upcoming 222 Foundation award. If you’ve got a great idea to move the needle, an idea for changing perceptions and therefore changing the world, by all means, send your proposal here. The deadline is December 31.

In closing, I’d like to end with this wonderful thought from the poet David Whyte. He says the ultimate touchstone of friendship is the privilege of having been seen by someone. You guys have definitely seen me, been here for me, walked with me, believed in me and accompanied me on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

Thank you SO MUCH, my friends.

All of us. Together. Forever.

Light and joy and peace abide in me

April 3, 2018 7 Comments

“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive: love, peace and justice.” –Mr. Rogers

Okay guys, it’s nearly 5–when the rest of the world finally pronounces it to be Happy Hour. We know better. Every hour is meant to be happy hour.

However, here in Ajijic (the relaxing side of the wall), the electricity just came back on so I’m going to make this post super short.

Speaking of short, ACIM Lesson 93 is one of those lessons where, if I was the editor, I’d put a big fat period right after the heading.

What more do you need to know? Your true identity is light and joy and peace. And any other crazy idea about who you are is just a ridiculous, boring, no longer-useful re-run.

Time to get out the remote and turn that warped illusion off. For good.

And with that I’ll close with Jimmy Twyman’s take on Lesson 93 because as he says, singing, is like praying twice.

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her new book, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

Well, duh!

March 23, 2018 63 Comments

“Feel at home in the universe, enjoy its innumerable marvels. Be active in it, contribute to it, participate in the healing. This is where Reality is.”—Richard Rohr
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I suppose it was inevitable. That I was going to fall in love with Ajijic and that I would be invited on epic adventures.

Beings as I rank rather high on the woo-woo spectrum, I was asked yesterday to join a group of women who were driving to Foco Tonal, an energy vortex about an hour’s drive from the community. And, yes, there was a shaman and the perfect interpreter (who just “happened” to be there) to explain how the ascended masters send powerful energy to this particular spot on the planet.

We (my new best friends—I love how everyone’s your best friend when you’re open) all buzzed and vibrated and felt such joy that we were together and that this was happening. We ended the night drinking margaritas at a Tiki bar on the beach near shirtless men fishing, kids splashing and dogs romping in the surf. Yes, it was an extraordinarly epic day.

ACIM Lesson 82 reminds me that my function is to let go of everything I believe. And that when I do, the perfect people will show up and the perfect days will unfurl before me.

I was also reminded yesterday at the morning meditation (we gather every morning at 9:30) of one of the most powerful proclamations that we send out into the world thousands of times a day.

I AM_____________.

According to James Twyman (who started this community), I AM is the name of God and that whatever we attach to it (I am miserable, for example or I am overweight or I am tired) invokes the power of the Big Kahuna.

Here’s what is going to follow my I AM for today:

I AM joyful.
I AM peace.
I AM the light of the world.

I’d love to hear your I AM’s for this glorious day:

Important news flash: There is only one problem left in the world.

March 20, 2018 22 Comments

“Through His power and glory all your wrong decisions are undone completely, releasing you and your brothers from every imprisoning thought.” —A Course in Miracles

According to my friend, Christine, March 20 is the International Day of Happiness. She also says it’s Alien Abduction Day. But we won’t get sucked up (pardon the pun) into that.

I leave today for Ajijic, Mexico where I’ll be spending nearly three weeks with a Course in Miracles community started by James Twyman. I wrote about him in my book, Living Big.

So I’m going to re-run a post I wrote a couple years ago. It speaks to ACIM Lesson 79 (Let me recognize the problem so that it may be solved). Enjoy!

This may come as a shock, but there is only one problem in the world today.

Despite all its many wily manifestations, this one problem is the same for all of us.

It’s a problem of perception. Our perception is the ONLY thing we need to heal. If we pray for healing of the body (or money issues or relationship struggles or any of the other myriad “problems” we think we have), we only reinforce the belief that there’s a problem.

There is no problem. There is only wrong perception. There is only the story we make up to entertain ourselves or frighten ourselves or… heck, I don’t know why we persist in investing all our energy into solving all these problems.

A few years ago, I became Facebook friends with a beautiful, wise woman named Ley Love.

Her story so inspired me that I asked her permission to share it with you.

With no further adieu, here’s Ley’s story:

Twenty years ago, i was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. It had been apparent that i had suffered the problems that come with the label for all of my life. After being diagnosed with the condition, i set out to discover all there was to know about the subject, so that i could be informed about my own condition. I read countless books, read websites, pamphlets, talked to others with Bipolar, anything i could find to understand why i was the way i was. I wanted to heal and thought that information was the best way to do this.

Today, i can see that all of that reading, the years spent pouring over information that would inform me of who i was being, was totally counter-productive. In fact, all it did was to teach me more about ‘How to be Bipolar”. I noticed that as time went by, i began to develop even more of the symptoms i had been reading about and life began to become unbearable. I suffered major anxiety, deep depression, panic attacks, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, low self esteem, OCD in many many forms, Agoraphobia (I didn’t leave my house for two years), I had countless problems in all of my relationships, self harmed and had basically completely closed down and given up on life. I had no hope of ever recovering and wanted to die.

This was the ego’s story.

Today, since studying ACIM, I am symptom free of nearly every one of those problems! I am happy, healthy, in love with life extremely grateful for all that ACIM (and god of course) has done for me. My only want in life now, is to be able to share this wonderful system of healing with others. To show people that there is a way out of the seeming nightmare that life can be and to give hope that what the course in Miracles insists can happen, DOES happen! I am the living proof.

I encourage anyone that wants to exchange the nightmare for the beautiful dream, to study this course. It is truly life-changing and has saved me from the depths of the hell that i thought i was living in. You can have this too. All it takes is a little willingness to see things a different way, God will do the rest!

Let love lead the way :-

And that’s it from Ley. I’ll talk to you again soon from sunny Ajijic!!

Hasta la vistas, babies!!!

Love like crazy

March 4, 2018 59 Comments

“Let go all the trivial things that churn and bubble on the surface of your mind.”—A Course in Miracles

Okay, universe, I get it!

I may be dense, but when I hear something enough times (say like 42), I have no choice but to acknowledge that the bigger thing has come a’knocking. It has an assignment it wants me to take on.

So when my schedule slows down (probably when I’m in Ajijic, Mexico in a couple weeks), I plan to create a book proposal for compiling these daily Course in Miracles lessons into a handy-dandy reference guide. So thank you guys for being so persistent.

And I probably should mention that when I first conceived E-Squared, my bestseller to date, I totally pitched it as a starter kit for understanding the Course. In my proposal, I even mentioned that God had a giant PR problem. That those who claimed to be his minions were not doing him (I prefer the less masculine pronoun “it”) justice.

Because here’s the thing. This unseen energetic force is the biggest badass on the planet. It isn’t limited or finite or a last-minute relief team. Why wouldn’t everyone want to feel this buzz? To use its infinite power? To enjoy its guidance and blessings.

I called the book God Doesn’t Have Bad Hair Days. As you may know, it was published back in 2005 and proceeded to do a ginormous nosedive into oblivion. A few years later, I found a different publisher and reissued it with the new title. Let’s just say that it did okay. #1 New York Times okay!

This new book, that we in this community are creating together, will be a paraphrasing of the ACIM workbook.

For example, Lesson 63 (The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness)is basically saying that when I give up my old story (that’s what forgiveness is), I’ll find nothing but peace and joy. In the meantime, my role here is to be happy and spread molecules of merriment throughout the planet.