Course in Miracles – Pam Grout

Wrong is not a thing

April 8, 2024 60 Comments

“God does not share these weird beliefs with you.”—A Course in Miracles

Another “find” from my road trip to Iowa.

I LOVE road trips with all my heart. I love seeing new sights, experiencing new places and finding things I had no idea even existed.

This weekend’s version included stumbling on to Free Cookie Friday, meeting a delightful Jamaican expat who runs a food truck in tiny Lamoni, Iowa and hiking across a high trestle bridge. And that was just the first few 24 hours.

Road trips also have a way of pushing the limits of what I’m able to imagine. All of us are shaped by what we perceive, what we allow ourselves to see. And once we define something, we’re blinded to the bigger truth of it. We literally reduce our apertures.

What I’m finding in my morning practice is that with a slight shift in awareness, the narrow band of awareness widens. I notice the whole world starting to hum.

It’s also becoming clearer to me that life doesn’t have to be the way we think it is. The division, the wars, the greed is just one system, one way of understanding the world. It’s far from a complete picture. Quite easily, we can begin to transcend this particular way of thinking.

And it starts with knowing that it doesn’t have to be this way. How often do we shrug and think, “Well that’s just the way it is.” “That’s just the way our system works.”

But is it really that way or have we limited what we can perceive?

The practice I’m doing now is opening a portal to something bigger. This Voice, as I guess I’ll call it today (I was relieved to recently learn that Hindus have 330 million different names for God) isn’t so much about getting answers, but about feeling a connection, a Divine Buzz, a different way of seeing the world.

The reason I chose the above headline is because I want any of you who are trying the 30-day experiment to know that there is no right or wrong way to do it. Wrong and right are just concepts that live in that narrow band of perception.

Happy Monday, friends!

#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)

Safe in a world that loves and protects me

March 8, 2024 42 Comments

“If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.”—Leonard Cohen

Albert Einstein is reported to have said that the most important decision anyone can make is whether or not they live in a friendly universe.

One of the gazillion reasons I practice what I call ferocious gratitude is because it allows me to live in a friendly universe. It enables me to see every person as a friend, every situation as happening for my good.

It grants me the privilege of stepping out into the world expecting things to always work out for me. No matter how it might appear.

I’ve been thinking about my early travel days before cell phones provided we wayfarers with non-stop contact, GPS and all sorts of perceived safeguards.

No matter what situation I found myself in, things had a way of always working out. Even the time I landed in Germany without knowing how to reach the friend I was staying with. Or the time I lost my motorcycle key in the Greek ocean. Or the time I was left in the middle of the north island of New Zealand by a boyfriend who decided he didn’t like me anymore.

I’m not suggesting I didn’t panic a time or two. Especially in countries that converse in different languages. But always, 100 percent of the time, it worked out.

What I now know for sure is that there is a life force that always looks out for me. Like today’s Course lesson says, “I am safe in a world which protects me and loves me.”

This force, this guidance, this love will never abandon me. And the only reason some of you might be rolling your eyes and sarcastically thinking, “Right, Pam” is because you don’t yet trust how supremely loved you are.

Fear is the ONLY THING that can ever get in the way of this non-stop loving care. Worry, disbelief and all its mean girl cousins can block the awareness. But it’s never not available.

Once you come to trust this fact your whole life changes. You know that everything you could ever need will be rolled out before you like a gorgeous Persian carpet.

Last summer, when I was in Spain, my sister, my Mister and I lost the keys to our apartment. This is something I’m known to do, but let’s just say my compadres freaked out just a tad little bit. We were at the beach, we had left our phones, our money, our credit cards in the apartment and well, nobody on that beach in southern Spain spoke anything but their native language. And my months of Duolingo hadn’t covered, “Help! I’m currently penniless in your country.”

For a short frantic time, as we pawed through the sand, I was pretty curious how we were going to access our place again. Especially since the phone number of the mighty companions who had so generously offered us their beautiful pad on the beach was dutifully entered in the cell phones back in the apartment. They were in Canada, we knew no one else, and, well, all rational reasonable people would have believed we were screwed.

Except I had a quiet confidence (from years of accessing that friendly universe) that somehow this, too, would work out.

Eventually, of course, like Max from the Where the Wild Things Are, we sailed across years, across days and back into our very own apartment where–maybe not hot dinner–but our phones, our money and our credit cards were waiting for us.

We might think these man-made conveniences provide some sort of safety net. But truly, friends, our real security, our real peace of mind come from the ever-so beneficent universe that waits patiently for us to release our fears and come back home.

Once again, dear mighty companions, have the very best, the most astonishing weekend of your lives!!

#222 Forever!

Human brain: master of deception

January 4, 2024 33 Comments

“Draw a boundary and then erase it. Because it is a fragment of your imagination.”—Buckminster Fuller

This was one of three hedgehogs Taz and her many emissaries sent my way on January 1. Bodes well for an extraordinarily epic year!!!

For those who might be wondering, I began Lesson 1 of A Course in Miracles on January 1, as I do every year.

And it’s not because I’m a slow learner (although, admittedly, that could figure in), but because I love the daily reminders of the world’s “indiscriminate generosity.”

I love hearing again and again that my fleeting, anxious thoughts mean nothing. (That happens to be today’s lesson).

I love being reminded that my piddly fears were created by a blob of goo in my head that evolved, not to produce genius or peace, but to regulate my body.

The brain’s grand productions (thoughts, feelings, senses) are patterns that come with the job of keeping the body in check. They don’t begin to show the boundless, astonishing energy field in which we live. The Gospel of Thomas says it like this: “infinite love is spread out upon the earth and men don’t see it.” To which I will add, thanks to the reducing valve known as the brain.

The Course offers a seismic shift in the way we perceive the world. By changing our perceptions, we literally begin to live in a different world. As the Course says, “In this world, the unconditional care of God (the Dude, in my lingo) becomes our experiential reality and the worldly assaults fade into insignificance. We are carefree and know we are taken care of. Anxiety is replaced with celebration.”

One of the things I’m celebrating is the amazing, brilliant people I get to meet, one of whom called me a “messenger” yesterday. This is after I balked at her insinuation that I was a teacher. Again, I don’t see myself as a teacher, but rather a person who likes to share her toys.

Her story, a perfect example of the guidance we can expect once we give up our patterned thoughts, is so cool I thought I’d share it here. About a year ago, she started getting a nudge to leave her job and move abroad. She wisely said, “Okay, show me!” No sooner did she consent to listen than she was further guided to move to France.

France? I think I might have gone back to my regulated thought patterns at that point, the ones that insist “that sounds like a lot of trouble.”

But she surrendered and kept tuning in to her guidance. The moment she committed, she started meeting people from….France, started noticing doors opening up. Everything proceeded with ease and grace. That doesn’t mean the brain didn’t try to chime in. But she knows better than to attend to its pointless preoccupations.

So in about a week, she is moving to the south of France where she will be conducting the event we’re doing from her NEW HOME.

I love how easy life can be when we let go of the patterned perception fed to us by our brains. The Course helps us loosen the chains and transform all limited beliefs.

Here’s to a 2024 free of all misguided beliefs and ideas.

#222 Forever!

Just call me Dory

November 14, 2023 34 Comments

“Forgiveness is your number one dance move.”—Maria Felipe

I was flipping out Sunday at one of my possibility posses, raving about a particular line from a recent Course lesson that I must have read at least 43 times. How did I fail to notice this before?

I compared myself to Dory from Finding Nemo, needing to be reminded again and again of something I knew, something I thought I’d mastered.

P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way.

My boos from the posse, who also dug the line, asked me to send it to them. So even better, I decided to write this post about the stunning reminder that, more than anything, forgiveness means breaking mechanical patterns of thought. And that if I really want a future different from the past, I need a brand, spanking new perception, free from unconsciously adopted beliefs and behaviors.

The line that jumped out is this: “The future now is recognized as but an extension of the present.”

We actually wake up every morning expecting more of the same. We live in an always-evolving, intensely loving and creative energy field and we tend to see nothing but the tiny wave of perception we collapsed years ago, mostly revolving around scarcity, limitations and fear.

Because our thoughts and beliefs are such powerhouses, we continue to create our worlds from this outdated information. We continue to see our lives as what we believed them to be yesterday.

And that’s where forgiveness comes in. Where surrender comes in.

If we can completely let go of every single thing we believe to be true and decide to trust — not in our intelligence or our education, but in life as it really is without the blinders, a new reality can begin to unfold.

We begin to recognize that our true nature is happiness. And that once we decide to trust, life works in our favor, people prove trustworthy, news events that seem to repeat themselves can begin anew.

Maybe Dory is actually wiser than all of us. She doesn’t need a past. Or an old story that limits or defines her.

So Dory, here’s to you and a new possibility with the rise of every morning sun.

P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way.

And #222 Forever

Override the programming

October 27, 2023 20 Comments

“Each of us should allow our mind energy to strengthen and expand, not keep it imprisoned within the confinement of limited beliefs.”—Betty Shine

So I’m going to tell you a story that was relayed to me. After you read it, I simply ask that you notice your reaction.

It’s about a woman who needed an extra $83 to pay a bill that was due in four days.

She wasn’t sure where the money would come from, but she knew, as I often like to say, about the power of a wealthy universal benefactor.

She put out the request for the extra moolah and felt immediately called to go to her own bookshelf and open a particular book. It fell open to page 36 where, a crisp $20 bill was lodged. Hmm, she thought.

The next day, a different book beckoned, again from her same home library. She opened it to the second chapter where another $20 bill was being used as a bookmark.

I don’t know what stopped her from immediately going through every book in her possession, but she didn’t until the next day, when a completely different book came to mind. It, too, contained a $20 bill.

The next day, same thing. Later that day, she opened her front door and there on her welcome mat were three one-dollar bills.

So notice. Does this story sound way too far-fetched? Are you scratching your head and thinking, as many admittedly do, that this Pam Grout girl is plum cuckoo?

Well, that reaction is a snapshot of your reigning belief system. We all have one. The limits of what we think are possible. We’re all programmed by our culture, our families, our religions to believe certain things can happen and others cannot. This programming is especially prevalent when it comes to money. We’re taught there’s only a couple ways to get it.

If we can’t perceive something to be possible–guess what?–our little ole’ brains will be unable to see that thing happening. Even while it’s happening all around us.

Let’s take visible light as one small example. Visible light makes up just 0.0035 of the electromagnetic spectrum. That means, even if your belief system is wide open, you still can’t see much of what’s really happening. The energy all around you is more or less invisible.

Compound that with the fact that our belief system, often centered around fear and protecting the body, blocks even more potential. What we “experience” constitutes an oh-so tiny band of frequency.

Right now, with so many fear-based stories floating around in the ether, I, for one, am recommitting to overwrite all old programming. I agree with what Maria Popova recently wrote in her blog, “If we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals and beliefs, we ossify and perish.”

Fear is a low-vibrational state, maybe the lowest. And right now, none of us can afford to stay stuck in old programming. Anything is possible. Absolutely anything.

The Course in Miracles advised me just yesterday to “let no false perception keep me in its hold.”

False perception is really our only problem. Today, I commit to what the Course calls serenity, unclouded, obvious and sure. It can only happen when we override antiquated belief systems, when we allow ALL energy to flow. Peace is possible. Abundance is possible. Right now, I feel both accumulating breath.

Old programming, begone!

#222 Forever

Bursting with possibilities

August 10, 2023 15 Comments

“The things we believe carry a charge.”—Rick Rubin

Joyous 222^nd day of the year. I’m still in Spain on my ‘book tour’ and my sister is here for a week before commencing a trek on the Camino de Santiago.

Yesterday, we visited two archaeology museums, one showing the ancient Roman Theater I mentioned a couple blog posts ago and the other, the site of a Phoenician settlement from roughly 1100 B.C. Both were fabulous.

Archaeologists at the Phoenician site, because they’re only able to excavate a small section, are unable to determine a lot of important facts. Yes, they can tell the age of the pottery shards and the bones, but they can’t even begin to speculate about population size, for example. There’s simply not enough data.

Which is how I feel about any assumption or judgment I might be tempted to make. I don’t have enough data to accurately know that so and so is “wrong.” Or that such and such shouldn’t have happened.

In our human minds, we often conclude we have everything figured out, that we know exactly how things should be. But never do we have all the “facts.”

The only “fact” we can absolutely know for sure is that the Universe, the Dude is going to show up with amazing, beautiful, perfect gifts.

If—and this is key–we don’t block it with erroneous assumptions we’ve made from the tiny section of life we have so far let into our awareness.

Whenever we judge, whenever we resist, whatever we think we have figured out is never the whole picture.

All we can ever really know is that, when it comes to the Dude, peace, joy, freedom and love will always be the only items on the menu. On that, we can depend.

#222 Forever!

The only appropriate response is “wow!”

June 19, 2023 21 Comments

“We should be Grand Champion Lovers of People, and everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone should know it, see it, feel it, experience it, bask it in, and be drawn to it.”—Jen Hatmaker

A British photographer captured this murmuration of starlings. Taz, to my way of thinking, may have been involved.

I have never much liked today’s Course lesson. In fact, in my book, Course in Miracles Experiment, I labeled it an “R.S.O,’ a term that stands for Rip That Sucker Out. Bill Thetford, one of the original scribes, or maybe it was Ken Wapnik suggested (in different terms than mine, of course) that if one of the Course tenets doesn’t resonate, let it go. Don’t get bogged down with it.

But today, when I was reading it, I understood the lesson in a different way. It was talking about resistance and how, when we defend, or set out to solve “problems,” we make whatever we’re defending against real. We literally give our “enemies” or “problems” power. We make false things appear true. Our attention is that powerful.

Bottom line is they’re not real—our enemies or our problems—but by applying our mind’s superpower to their resolution we create perceptions and mental constructs that make us feel trapped. That’s the ego’s whole game.

And why my motto, “I need do nothing” is so vital. Life, without my self-created monsters, without my resistance to the wonder within each now moment is nothing short of paradise. I was telling my possibility posse last week that just walking around my yard is like going on safari, never knowing what new life form I may stumble upon. Granted it’s usually a lily, not a lion, but only a judging mind fails to see the equal beauty in all life—whatever form it might take.

Resistance and its mean girl cousins are just not that interesting to me anymore. This moment is always enough.

#222 Forever!

Living in a more expansive reality

May 15, 2023 32 Comments

“You do not ask too much from life, but far too little.”—A Course in Miracles

Miracles, as most of you know, are my jam. But the word “miracle” is actually shorthand, a convenient description for making sense of those times when life’s fathomless, ever-changing reality pops out into the patterns we’ve all constructed to make us “feel safe.”

Despite the patterned overlays, life can’t really be collapsed into a manageable framework.

So when things happen that defy our dumbed-down version of reality, we call them miracles. The dictionary defines a miracle as “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws.”

The Course in Miracles defines miracles as everyday occurrences, says they’re natural, goes so far as to claim that if they’re not happening on the daily, something has gone wrong.

Let’s take this weekend, for example, where, in America at least, we celebrated Mother’s Day. According to consensus reality (that manageable framework we construct to feel safe), I probably shouldn’t expect a gift from Taz. I mean, it’s rather difficult to deliver physical items when you’re bodiless, right?

Except if you manage to “whisper in the ear” of a former colleague of your mom’s, direct her to a 222 necklace and ask her to buy it, drive it over to Lawrence and deliver it just in time for the big holiday.

Some will roll their eyes and write this chain of events off as coincidence. But keep in mind that I have only seen this photographer once in the last 40 years. She didn’t even know where I lived.

But then, she “just happened” to see FB pictures of the dedication of Taz’s Hangout and well, the so-called “miracle” was set into motion.

After the ceremony—which was the coolest thing ever (Taz’s friends came, Big Brothers/Big Sisters made cookies and coasters and the perfect space for Bigs and Littles to hang)–I was feeling a little emotional and overwhelmed and wishing I’d told more stories about Taz. I let myself droop for a day.

And this is the real kicker. Right before Kate, the photographer, walked out my front door, she said, “You should forgive yourself!”

Say what? I mean, that’s exactly what Taz would have wanted me to do. So what if I got nervous and blew my little five-minute speech, didn’t take advantage of that opportunity to gush about my Tasmanian supernova?

So not only did Taz manage to deliver a physical gift, but she comforted me with the exact words I needed to hear.

So I’ll pass her words on to you. FORGIVE YOURSELF!

And trust that if you can loosen the reins of “safety” and drop the need to “see reality” according to conditioned patterns, miracles will drop into your life on the dippity-do-daily!

#222 Forever!

Are you dimensionally challenged?

May 11, 2023 20 Comments

“Pessimism doesn’t change the world. Seeing the bright possibility on the horizon, and declaring it real, is the act of faith that can get us there.”—Barbara Kingsolver

I have to restrain myself from starting every post with “OMG!” Blathering on about my lettuce patch and climbing purple clematis and the fox who makes his rounds in my neighborhood probably makes me sound uncool, unworldly.

But dang it! Why not find the wonder within the moment, revel in the life that’s exploding everywhere around me?

Cynicism has long been the prevailing fashion, but is it really true? Is half-full all there is to see? Or just a conditioned viewpoint we’ve spent years building up and believing in?

Today’s Course in Miracles lesson asks us to refrain from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. It asks us to see a different world and to think a different thought from those we have thus far been practicing.

It says any thought that’s not life-affirming is a lie. Any thought that doesn’t take possibility into account is limited and untrue.

And while a lie believed might temporarily act as law, by shifting our gaze slightly to “the now,” we can neutralize and dismantle it.

Looking at life with wonder and thanksgiving is the doorway into a higher dimension, a place where another, more beautiful voice will always have the floor.

I also want to let you know that this merry, merry month marks the grand opening of Taz’s Hangout at the Douglas County Big Brothers/Big Sisters headquarters. It’s a new space where Bigs and Littles can hang. Taz’s friends and many of my friends are gathering today to officially “cut the ribbon.” BBBS is even changing the official address to 222.

So I continue to be amazed, to celebrate and to see possibilities and declare them real.

#222 Forever!

Prepare yourself for miracles today

April 17, 2023 68 Comments

“The world is an exquisite place if you can just stop for a moment.”—Chris Rush

The above headline is from yesterday’s Course in Miracles lesson. It might be my favorite lesson. But then I say that about a lot of the lessons.

Preparing for miracles is more or less my intention every day. To open my mind, to change the story I’ve long believed. As long as I limit myself to what everyone else accepts as possible, as long as I cling to what my culture tells me is statistically likely, that’s all I will ever see.

The Course says life comes with miracles a thousand times as happy and wonderful as those I could ever dream of or wish for. And that if I just surrender what I learned is possible, I will be led and guided every moment of every day.

As you know since you’ve joined this party called a blog, miracle stories drop like rain into my inbox.

I got one yesterday from a brilliant filmmaker in Moscow who was reading, E-Squared. She asked to see something that everyone knows is impossible—something that just couldn’t happen because of the snow, the cold, the….you get the picture. Yet, the very thing she asked to see (a butterfly) appeared within moments.

She said she was covered in goosebumps and wanted to cry from delight. Me thinks, that’s a reasonable plan (being covered in goosebumps) for every day.

And why not? I’ve been thinking about how we create reality. And how we don’t really start “creating” until the third act when everything on the stage of life has already been drawn up and decided upon.

But what if everything that has been drawn up, always by someone other than me, is completely wrong and only appears to be true because that’s what was created back then.

If we truly create our reality, then we need to let go of all beliefs that were automatically bestowed upon us by well-meaning parents and a culture that has historically invested in fear and scarcity.

Here’s a story that happened this weekend that I was trained to believe is preposterous, outlandish. The adjective “crazy pants” might have even occurred to a couple members of my possibility posse when I shared this with them yesterday.

But you know what? I am tired of believing in limitations and beliefs that offer so little, that preach protection and safety and you better watch out for those “other guys.” Why would I need to protect myself from life that only wants to give, that only wants to love me fiercely?

So I’d had a restless night and was sleeping in Taz’s room. The sun hadn’t yet come up. The birds were just barely starting to sing so I decided to go out and join them, to walk to where I could bear witness to the sun as it rose above the horizon.

All my clothes, of course, were in my bedroom where my partner was offering a contented lullaby of his own (read: quiet snoring). I did not want to wake him. Something told me to look in Taz’ closet. Say what?

But there, on a hanger, waiting for me to notice, was a long skirt and a jacket, perfect for my walk. I didn’t recognize the skirt as something Taz had ever worn and, believe me, I gazed on that girl’s beauty and style with great interest and love every time I saw her. The skirt was way longer than her normal size. I’m a good three inches taller than she was. The skirt was….drum beat…my size, my exact perfect size.

Needless to say, I went on a delightful walk in the outfit prepared just for me.

So yeah, it could have been Taz’s. But how much more fun to see it as a miracle that was prepared especially for me at the exact moment I needed it. And, from this point on, to know with complete surety that I don’t need to hoard things or prepare for things because what I need will always be provided by life that holds me in its ever-loving arms.

#222 Forever!