A whole new instruction manual

“None but ourselves can free our minds.”—Bob Marley

Not long after he returned from India, spiritual guru Ram Dass was speaking to a group in New York. He was decked out in a flowing white robe and beads. A woman in the audience stood up and asked, “Why are you dressed like that? Aren’t you Jewish?’

Without missing a beat, he answered: “Only on my parent’s side.”

All of us are SO MUCH MORE than the genetic makeup of our bodies, the heredity of our families. We are literally God in drag.

ACIM Lesson 71 (Only God’s plan for salvation will work) tells us that trying to be anything else is crazy ridiculous.

The ego’s plan (if only this were different, I’d be okay) is like following a map of Peoria to navigate the streets of London. Or like using a do-it-yourself bookshelf manual to fix your vacuum cleaner. God’s plan is to know that everything IS OKAY! To celebrate that fact with full frontal abandon.

This lesson also has one of my all-time favorite passages, one I use nearly as much as my “Something extraordinarly epic is going to happen to me today.”

What would you have me do?

Where would you have me go?

What would you have me say, and to whom?

The answers I get from this practice are the only instruction manual I could ever need.

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