beauty – Pam Grout

Bring the invisible to the foreground

January 13, 2021 35 Comments

“Reveling in love is one sure way to see through and beyond yourself to the wider world.”—B.J. Miller

For those following the Course in Miracles lessons (either in the book or on the Badass app), you’re probably noticing that the first few lessons present a rather shocking expose.

That what we see isn’t real. That what we think isn’t true. That the world is a lot less solid and stable than we’ve been led to believe.

This declassification of the ego’s secrets isn’t anything new. For more than a century, physicists have been pointing out the rather inconvenient truth that nothing is as it seems.

The world out there is simply a hologram, a transient play of light and space that our crafty brains solidify into an image.

The earth looks flat, but it really isn’t. The planet looks like the center of the universe, but it really isn’t. The ego likes to rush in and crowd our thoughts with illusions, things that really don’t exist.

And here’s why it’s important to cut through the façade. Why the Course calls out the brain for its propensity to automatically adjust images to align with the past.

Because there is another beautiful, miraculous dimension that we miss. To be fair, our neural pathways are trying like bloody hell to protect us—or rather protect our material bodies—but in doing so they edit and leave out all the good stuff.

If you’ve ever been snorkeling or scuba diving, you understand the concept. Beneath the ocean, beautiful in its own right, is a teeming world of color, wonder and astonishing life. But until you go deeper, you never know this other world is there.

Most of who you are is invisible. The love, the light, the truth of you is impossible to see until you give up your belief in the ego’s alleged safety devices (AKA illusions).

The past, the known isn’t bad per se. It’s just that there’s a lot more life to be had when you bring the invisible, as the above headline suggests, to the foreground. #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)

What are you programmed to believe about your body?

March 6, 2020 53 Comments

“Don’t let your mind bully your body.” – June Tomaso Wood

What? My yoga “tights” don’t look like yours?

Being the observant person that I am, I can’t help but notice that the current rendition of my body looks nothing like the bodies on the covers of magazines.

For one thing, it’s many decades older. It has a lot more wrinkles and spots. And if some orbiting alien is currently collecting earthly specimens, it might be tempted to catalog me as a completely different genus than say the women you see in the average movie or TV show.

If I’m not vigilant, this glaring dichotomy could cause serious emotional pain. Like all women, I’m blasted 24/7 with ads and FB posts and magazine articles insisting on the importance of microblading my eyebrows, retinoiding my collagen, twilighting my hair color, black lacing my fingernails.

And as for body size, I’ve been socially engineered my entire life to be a size 8. Or is it a 6 these days?

The cultural pressure is so intense that looking in the mirror can be an act of sheer confrontation. Even JLo recently admitted she doesn’t always like what she sees.

So to counteract the non-stop marketing messages, I decided to get up this morning and write a quick thank you note to my 64-year-old body that, as Mae West says, “is no model because models are an imitation of the real thing.”

10 (of countless) reasons I won the body lottery:

1. I have two eyes. They may not be contoured and properly highlighted, but they both work. They allow me to see birds and tiny frogs and the purple crocuses that were poking up yesterday with new springtime hats. They enable me to see this computer screen and to binge (if I so choose) a Netflix series. Thank you, precious eyes.

2. I also have two fully-functioning legs. Their skin isn’t as tight as it used to be, but they still get me from Point A to Point B anytime I want to go. They can still skip, run around a pickleball court and they can still dance. Boy, can they dance. Kudos to you, legs!

3. I have a torso (that can still perform downward dog), 4. a full head of hair, 5. a nose, 6. a mouth (that gets to sample lots of extremely tasty morsels), 7. fingers, 8.toes, 9. ankles, 10. knees–all of which work like a champ, all of which deserve daily thanksgiving.

It’s insane, really, how lucky I am.

So sure, society and marketers and producers of useless stuff will continue to find ways to make me feel less than. They’ll keep advertising stupid products and ludicrous ideas of how I’m supposed to look.

But I declare my freedom. Instead of heeding their ridiculous potions, lotions and notions of beauty, I will just keep saying thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

You are incredibly precious

February 9, 2018 15 Comments

“O God, help me to believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is.”–Macrina Wiederkehr
god's handwriting
In the interest of time (I don’t want to miss the maple crepes at Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello), I’m going to offer you the beautiful words of Macrina Wiederkehr, a Benedictine nun from Arkansas:

“You are incredibly precious! In the sacred moments offered to you each day, robe yourself with that truth. Linger with it in each new moment given to you and consider how you might bless those you encounter simply because of the truth of who you are. Hold on to your ephemeral staff and memorize these words: I am incredibly precious.”

Being incredibly precious is ACIM Lesson 40 in a nutshell: I am blessed as a son of God.

It’s your invitations to see yourself as you really are. The truth will astound you.

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.

Have you claimed your gifts today?

October 26, 2017 11 Comments

“We rush through our days in such stress and intensity, as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world depended on us. We worry and grow anxious; we magnify trivia until they become important enough to control our lives. Yet all the time we have forgotten that we are but temporary sojourners on the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly in the infinite night of the cosmos.” —John O’Donohue

I know. I probably sound like an ad for a bank. Come in, open a new checking account and claim your free ice chest. fall colors

But that’s not the kind of gifts I’m referring to. I’m talking about the continuous stream of gifts bestowed by the natural world. As I was driving home from pickleball this morning, I noticed a brilliant scarlet branch on a maple tree just blocks from my home. It literally made me gasp.

Every day, nature presents us with unbelievably beautiful gifts: stars that are billions of years old, fuzzy caterpillars crawling across our paths, hydrangeas, yellow butterflies. The gifts seem to be endless once you take time to look.

Even those who live in inner cities receive the gift each morning of the breaking dawn, signaling the possibility of a new day. As my new favorite poet, John O’Donohue says, “You never know what will land on the shoreline of tomorrow.”

So sure, material gifts like ice chests and toasters and, for that matter, new Michael Kors purses are okay. But the gifts I prefer remind me that I live in a galaxy that is one of a gazillion galaxies that has hundreds of billions of stars and enough gas and dust to make hundreds of billions more.

And because of my inseverable connection to this expanding, cosmic mystery, I have the responsibility to also create new things.

I believe that’s why all of us are here. To behold our wonderous gifts and to keep the creation going.

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just-released, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.