Course in Miracles – Page 4

Be the pilot light

June 25, 2020 32 Comments

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put new ideas into the world.”—Robert McKee

It’s a hot Thursday afternoon here in Lawrence, Kansas so I decided to sit down at my trusty computer and send out a couple stories, all of which inspired me. Hope they bring cheer to you, as well.

1. First story is about Helen Schucman, one of two scribes of the Course in Miracles. In 1965, when she unexpectedly joined Bill Thetford in the idea that “there has GOT to be a better way,” she noticed a psychic switch within her flipping on. For example, when Bill was traveling in the Virgin Islands, she sent him a mental message to bring her back a Florentine gold pin, which he actually did.

Another time, when they traveled to the Mayo Clinic, she saw a clear mental image of a nearby Lutheran Church. She even asked the taxi driver to drive around Rochester trying to locate it–to no avail. Soon thereafter, Bill found a picture of the very Lutheran Church she’d seen that had ironically been torn down to build the Mayo Clinic.

She’d get messages that say, a friend was thinking of suicide. She’d stop in the middle of working on a research paper and instruct Bill, “Quick! We must send (the friend) a message that the answer is life, not death.” And sure enough that friend had been depressed and had picked up a gun.

Another time, at an airport, she felt “waves of misery” from a woman named Charlotte who was terrified of flying. She and Bill ended up sitting with her on the plane, even holding her hand.

The point is, when you finally tire of the sad, lonely story dispensed by the world and sincerely ask for the “other way,” a power switch opens up within you. A power switch you can use to help the world.

2. Congressman John Lewis calls it a pilot light. This beautiful man has been involved in the Black Lives Matter movement (although differently named) since he was 23. He’s now 80 and, even though his skull was fractured during the Selma to Montgomery March, even though he has seen eight decades of racial injustice, he still believes in the reality of Martin Luther King’s beloved community.

In an interview with Krista Tippett, he said he still holds “this sense of faith that what you’re moving toward is already done. If you visualize it, if you can have faith that it’s there, it is already there.”

He said that weeks of training in non-violence enable him to see the spark of the divine in every human being, even those who beat him. He called it one of the highest forms of love.

“You can beat me, arrest me, take me to jail, but in spite of that I’m going to still love you. It’s a very demanding notion,” he admitted, “Not just having faith in yourself or faith in your movement, but faith in your enemies. In spite of the darkness of the hour, you have to believe, and you can never, ever give up on any possibility.

“If you’re a pilot light, you’re going to be around. If you’re a firecracker, you just go off. You’re here one moment, and gone in the next moment.

He called it revolutionary love, a fundamental shift inside our souls. It’s the “other way” advocated by A Course in Miracles.

3. The last story comes from a big-hearted reader named Naren Desai. He is currently coordinating a growing collection of photographers who not only share beauty with the world, but donate half of all proceeds to support charity. Hope you will consider supporting his Pictures for Progress that recently entered into a partnership with Trader Joe’s.

Here’s what he sent to my inbox:

“I am also starting a new Covid-19 “Spread the Love” campaign that has roots in some of the things I learned from you. In short, randomly handing out images to neighbors reminding them of the beauty in the world. Just wanted to say thank you and let you know you are thanked nightly in my gratitude sessions with the universe or FP.”

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Maybe that’s why so many cool 222 stories keep coming my way. I just learned Adam Levine has a 222 tattoo and the below song (which makes me cry) was produced by his 222 Records.

So those are my stories for today, kids. Have a great evening, a great weekend and keep being the pilot light.

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).

Oopsy! The formula has a glitch

May 12, 2020 14 Comments

“The greatest healing would be to wake up from what we are not.”–Mooji

Here on Planet Earth, we’re taught a formula for success. Get an education, get a guy (or gal), collect some stuff, collect more stuff, keep your eye on “the other” to make sure he (or she) isn’t getting more than you.

This formula has endless reinforcement: non-stop ads (“use this quick-fix to eliminate those problems you didn’t know you had”), social media (wow! Look at your FB friend’s shiny new car or vacation), television news (can you believe what that “other” just did?).

We’re so bombarded with this unspoken “formula” that we never question its validity. Or bother to ask ourselves if we really want those things?

The Course in Miracles says all of it–the whole shebang–is an illusion. An illusion that reinforces separation. Teaches good and bad. Encourages us to blame, to feel guilty, to cast about like victims.

I realize that after generations of following this formula, it’s rather scandalous to learn that it’s all a big scam. That NOTHING we’ve mastered so far is even real.

But it’s also kinda comforting. Kinda cool to know I’m not this limited little body. Kinda exciting to recognize that the learned formula has but one purpose: to protect, defend and maintain this one physical body.

The Course says p’shaw to all of that. It says I am not my body. Rather, I am many forms. Present everywhere. In music. In the stars. In every loving word or act.

Why would I waste all that on a silly little formula?

As many of you know, the You Can Heal your Life Summit is going on now. Hay House is offering LOTS of free movies, interviews, meditations, etc. My interview with fellow Course teacher Robert Holden is coming up later today. If you haven’t already signed up for this free series, you can do it here.

Love you guys to the Big Dipper and back.

Nothing can hurt the real you

March 18, 2020 79 Comments

“Control your own mind. Or somebody else will.”—Tony Robbins

Thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been using to keep me from jumping on the fear train.

1. Needless to say, I turn to A Course in Miracles where I’m assured that my claim to miracles is not dependent on the rituals of medicine, economics, religion, government, etc. I get miracles for free because of who I am, because of what (not who) the Dude is. And I remember my mantra: I could see peace instead of this.

2. I practice gratitude. For example, how cool is it that, right now, all that is not essential is being stripped away. Who can even look at ads for tanning beds or smart wash carpet cleaners?

Although Greta Thunberg got a jump on most of us when she refused to comply with society’s accepted structures (school, business as usual, etc), she was basically saying what we’re all being shown right now.

Our culture and its dominant messaging is created by consultants and think tanks and marketers who see us, not as human beings, but as suckers who are only here to buy their stories, their brands and their products. All of that nonsense is going down.

The guy who hoarded all the toilet paper is really no different than the current “winners” of the capitalist, anti-life system we’ve all been playing into. Now, we can see it for the sham it is. It offers no real security. It’s all made up. For this I say hallelujah!

3. I’m also grateful we’ve got proof of what we spiritual types have been touting for eons: we are all connected and interwoven. We’re all basically the same person.

And if a tiny invisible virus can spread across the globe this quickly, if it can upend everything we mistaken believed was our security, think how fast we could transmit a different, truer story. A story of love. Of connection. Of oneness.

Now’s the time to forget monetizing, marketing, media. I’m using this enormous gift of time by turning to the natural world that isn’t complaining, isn’t worrying, isn’t stockpiling.

It continues to give of its gifts–music (thank you birds), impending shade (thank you trees), beautiful colors (thank you flowers).

And I ask myself, what gift do I have to give?

That’s all any of us ever wanted to do anyway. To love and to give of our gifts.

Many folks are eager to return to “life as we knew it,” but I no longer want to cling to that made-up world.

I’m eager for the new one that’s emerging. Birth, as we moms know so well, is messy, sometimes painful. But wow! Look at the gift on the other side.

This is our opportunity, guys, to create a better, truer, more loving world.

Well, duh! 3 life hacks I was reminded of (once again)

February 29, 2020 25 Comments

“When the world is in turmoil, it’s time to ‘go fugitive,’ to slow down and receive rather than impose, to feel rather than think. That way we’ll be ready when it’s time to break out of our limited belief systems – for breaking out of our limited understandings is what it will take.”–Carolyn North

You would think a person who writes books on spirituality and limitless possibility would know exactly what to do when her thoughts go squirrely.

Sadly, that’s not always the case. Like last week, my mind was in full scatter-bomb mode, firing away with non-stop insecurity, doubts and well, let’s just say, you’re lucky you weren’t in the vicinity.

Thankfully, I’m blessed to have very wise friends who reminded me of the following:

1. “Ya know, Pam, that’s just a story.” Boy, did I ever need to be reminded that no matter how something might look, it’s just one story (out of a gazillion) and it’s not permanent or fixed. When you zoom in on anything, you find energy and a bunch of atoms that move around all the time. So why would I ever invest in a story that didn’t feel good? Especially when a simple change in focus moves energy and atoms into a completely different configuration.

2. “What do you think the Dude thinks?” I was moaning about lack of clarity, complaining that the decision I was trying to make was clear as a chocolate milkshake. That’s when my friend, Cindy, very gently pointed out that I could always consult with the One who knows. Why didn’t I think of that?

3. “What my thoughts think of me is none of my business.” We’ve all heard this piece of advice, “What other people think of me is none of my business.” But this one knocked my socks off. Even my own thoughts aren’t my business. Not my real business, not my God business.

Most of my thoughts were created by a culture that tells me how I should and shouldn’t act, that tells me what’s appropriate for a woman my age. As the Course so gently reminds me in lesson after lesson, I am not my thoughts. So whatever stream of negative nonsense that marches through my noggin’ is really none of my business.

My business is to stay present, to keep reaching for stories that make me happy and to trust that the Dude has already worked everything out.

Oh, one other thing I learned this week. A collection of ladybugs is called a loveliness. Fish come in schools, dolphins in pods, but ladybugs, come in “a loveliness.”

Big, fat juicy thanks all around

November 5, 2019 121 Comments

“If you have the right music very loud on the radio, you get about 50 more miles from your tank.”—Hunter S. Thompson

It’s gratitude month, my friends. And as I do every morning with my possibility posse, I simply must share three amazingly awesome things that recently transpired.

Numero uno. Dr. Christiane Northrup who may just be the most generous person in the world recently made an Instagram video about my new book. My editor asked her to possibly provide an endorsement (after all, she’s a well-known and very famous expert) and wow! Not only did she provide kudos, but she made this fun little video, completely unprompted. She even said this was the first time she’d ever been able to embrace A Course in Miracles and she wanted my book (when it comes out in January) on her nightstand. As I said, WOW!

Second really cool thing is that Karen Drucker, the uber famous touring musician, speaker and retreat leader (and winner of the Tarzan calling competition when she was 13) has offered to throw a benefit concert for the 222 Foundation.

The Unity Temple on the Plaza has agreed to host this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on May 3 in Kansas City. Karen, who will be playing and singing songs from her 15 albums, will present along with Greg Tamblyn, me, Emmy-nominated Stowe-Good and other like-minded friends. And, just so you know, we’ll be presenting the song Karen and I wrote called, “Something amazingly awesome is going to happen to me today.”

We are hereby affirming that this consciousness-bending show will alter the world forevah!!! The 222 Foundation is all about moving the needle and this benefit concert is guaranteed to rev up the engine. Make plans now to be there.

Third reason I can barely sit here in my chair is that an auction has just begun for the 52 paintings that were created by the German artist, Sigrid Drobner, for the 222 Foundation.

flower2 After Taz passed last October, this artist who I had never met promised to paint a special flower (and make a 3-D butterfly) every week of the year in Taz’s honor.

People sometimes say they’re going to do things, but this amazing artist actually followed through. She sent me one of these gorgeous paintings every single Saturday for 52 weeks. I can’t even begin to express how much her generosity has meant to me, how often it picked me up when I was wondering what in the heck I’m still doing on this planet.

And now she is auctioning them off with ALL PROCEEDS going to the 222 Foundation. Here’s what she says: “If anybody wants to make an offer, they can easily write an email to my address s.drobner@buntezeiten.de.” The auction, she says, will end December 1.

Again, my friends, never forget that support, love, generosity and abundance is the reality of the world. We simply have to let go of old school ideas that tell us otherwise.

I love and appreciate you all SO, SO much. I’d love if, in the comments section below, you share three of your own blessings. Let’s keep watering those seeds. course experiment

In collaboration with “the other side”

October 21, 2019 25 Comments

“End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass.”—J.R.R. Tolkien

I’m not big on labels, but if anyone asked, I’d normally sum up my book’s main topic as miracles or gratitude or maybe how to manifest.

When I wanted assistance from the other side, I’d usually appeal to the generic universe or the Holy Spirit or what I often call “The Dude.”

Last thing I expected is the journey I’m on now. A journey of collaboration with loved ones who have a much bigger perspective.

The universe is sneaky like that.

Last week, I mentioned a guest post from a dear friend who has been communing with the other side for a lot longer than me. We connected after Taz passed. Among other things, he has a podcast called “You Bet Your Afterlife.” He’s an incredible writer with great depths of wisdom and humor. Please enjoy this piece from Keith Boyer that I begged him to let me post here. It’s a letter to his dad:

“Happy” as a descriptor isn’t generally applied to death. Not in our spoiled and materialistic Western culture, anyway, blinded by the shine of gold as it is. But now, a half century later, thanks to you, I see the Light and I feel you, everywhere.

When you graduated Earth School I thought my world had ended. Your little buddy, your “George,” the last of the immediate breed, was lost, lost, lost with your last breath, never to be found.

Seeing the family gathered around the living room when I arrived home that evening, their faces told the tale I couldn’t bear to hear. It was no surprise, yet it was abruptly shocking. I was 12, you 42. Your life’s mission was, seemingly, prematurely accomplished and suddenly I felt older than time itself.

The boy was lost and no one could find him, not even himself. But guess what, Dad? I found a new me.

Not necessarily improved, at least not noticeably until many more miles had accumulated on my odometer, but new and different, with adventures that lay before me over roads that would take me places I’d never before dreamed. I wandered aimlessly down Bereavement Avenue to Terror Street, around Mystery Circle to Ecstasy Highway, and ultimately arrived via Grateful Valley back to the Land of Love, my birthplace, my homeland.

Your love was lost to me, or so I thought then, but guess what, Dad?

Others have taken up your love torch during my lifetime, often to my utter surprise and always to my total delight.

To no one’s surprise, Mom — my heroine, my earthly savior — instantly took up yours and carried it with hers, higher and brighter than any other, to my eternal gratitude. Bless her, she carries it still. You chose well, sir, the best of the best, and I thank you.

More unmistakable, unconditional love was provided just in the nick of time– humbly, graciously, and freely by grateful survivors of one of your diseases, the one I inherited.

I thank you for it all.

For the laughs and the joys and the games with the boys, for the kisses from the girls.

For the feasts, for the drink, for the hunger for more, for the unquenchable thirst for truth wherever it lay hidden.

For the gathering storms of self-inflicted trouble, for the questions with no answers, for the sickness, for the wounds, for the healing.

For the fears, for the tears, for the nights under bright lights, for the creeping, short-lived shadows.

For the grief, for the rage, for the simmering bitterness — the toxic cocktail I guzzled so long that ultimately, helplessly erupted from my guts like St. Helens herself and jolted loose my miracle out of nowhere. Shoot, thanks for the siblings, even. Wink/nudge.

You’ve known all along, and you came back. You knew time and space were powerless to stop you, so, by and through Conquering Love you reappeared to save me from myself.

You demonstrated with dizzying dazzle three decades and change after your departure that, after all, you’ve gone exactly nowhere. Then the best lessons began to rain down on me, drenching me with developing insights and visions that have ripped a lifetime of scales from my eyes and allowed me to see you and everything in existence as we all really are, as we’ve been since before time was birthed.

Light. Energy. Vibrational beings, all. Love taking form, just for awhile.

When I sang my impromptu concert for you tonight, you were there, front and center, thrilling with love and compassion for your new George. And guess what, Dad?

I felt it in every song. I’ve been feeling you again for many years now, at long last, after burying you inside myself for so, so long while I wandered, lost, in search of US.

But I don’t have to tell you that WE are now found, and new George is okay. Nay, blessed beyond measure. With friends in spirit I don’t always feel I deserved in life, yet here they are. Have you met Mark the mountain man, Carrie the tattooed hippie chic, my Colombian sparkplug Adriana? And Big Rod makes a mean pizza from scratch, so be sure to look him up. All gone-but-not-gone, too soon.

“Daddy” Dick and Joyce will blow your mind with their talents, their genius, both singly and combined. Your spirit hands will be red from applause, if they’re not already. Joyce is a new arrival, but things happen mighty fast in your dimensions, or so I’m told, and she’s quite the quick study.

Oh, Dad! What an amazing, getting-my-money’s-worth life it’s been so far. In its own time, the reunion to end all reunions will be ours. I so look forward to the concert you and I and our friends will perform, that royal bash I’ve been planning on the far side of the moon, and to the zippy trips we’ll take across the cosmos and back. Finally, to maybe give it a go in other lives with new stories to live.

Hope you’re well rested by then. We’ve got 50 Earth years and counting to make up for.

Thanks again, Dad. Love beyond words to you, good sir. You and I may be the only ones who appreciate our paradox, but the life you launched me into, with all its apparent imperfections, is precisely perfect, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Happy anniversary, Dad. Mission accomplished, indeed.

Your body is eavesdropping on everything you say

September 19, 2019 30 Comments

“Being a mother means a love that’s deeper than anything you can imagine. The love is beyond Earth and beyond time and space, and it’s a connection that will be constant.”—Beyoncé

I knew Beyoncé, like me, is a Course in Miracles fan, but who knew she would also put into words the very thing I feel about being a mom?

Nothing in my life has compared or will ever compare to the experience of being Taz’s mom.

Her legacy is still my most important commitment. The 222 Foundation that honors her vision (Create relentlessly, love fiercely and do quiet, kind things for the underdog) means everything to me.

The picture on this post was featured on the Sunday front page of the Topeka Capital-Journal after Taz and I created this book (she drew the front cover) on recycled grocery bags for Earth Day 2002. She was 9.

Because I’m focusing on her Foundation and my new Course in Miracles book (that comes out in January) and because I’m heading out of town tomorrow for my first travel assignment in more than a year, I am choosing to run an email that came in yesterday that truly MADE. MY. DAY.

E-Squared featured the Jenny Craig experiment about changing your thoughts about your body. And the Course is very clear that it is our mind, not our body, that steers the ship.

This beautiful email from Kelly sum it up quite nicely:

“I decided to write because I’ve now consumed three of your books, starting with Thank and Grow Rich and then both E-Squared and E-Cubed. I wanted to share a personal observation of anecdotal evidence around weight loss.

“My body is what gives me the hard proof that law of attraction principles are real and absolute. I discovered this long before I discovered your books, so wanted to tag a thought on to the experiment you offered around blessing our food.

“Not only do I bless my food – I bless my body. I think you mentioned in one of your books that our bodies have around 30 trillion cells. I have a daily ritual where I look in the mirror and say “I love you! You’re SO beautiful! Thank you!” and then I hug myself and I talk to my body and all its cells like I talk to my cute little beloved cat “I love you SO much. Thank you, body! I love every single cell inside you! Thank you, cells! I love you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

“I started doing this when I realized that each of us is basically our own personal universe with all these amazing cells. Essentially, we (what we speak, what we believe) act as “god” (or creator) to those cells.

“When I first started this practice many years ago, the excess weight I’d been carrying around melted off. I’d have people asking me what I was doing, and I’d give them the utterly confusing answer “I’m just loving myself.” I know that’s not what they wanted to hear. They wanted to hear “60 minutes of cardio every day followed by juice fasts and eating only cabbage!” Because it’s just too hard to believe that loving yourself can produce those kinds of results.”

Thank you, Kelly, for reminding us that loving ourselves DOES produce those kinds of results.

And thank you for sending the following song that, like you said, gets my happiness vibes going.

There’s nothing to fix

July 24, 2019 38 Comments

“No exercise is urged except a deep relinquishment of everything that clutters up the mind, and makes it deaf to reason, sanity and simple truth.”—A Course in Miracles

Since 2012, Jimmy Kimmel has run a “Mean Tweets” segment on his late night talk show.

Celebrities ranging from Julia Roberts to Bette Midler to Barack Obama read aloud tweets sent by real internet trolls. George Clooney, for example, read, “If that gross, ratty old man can get a girl, the rest of you regular guys must be swimming in…” well, the tweet in question used a synonym for a small cat.

I use the same approach for the “mean tweets” in my head. Laughing is the only way to deal.

Because if I try to fix a “problem” I’m ragging to myself about (say, I notice my ego telling me I’m being lazy or getting fat or some other such nonsense), I only make it real. It gives my brain the message “this is dangerous,” “this is wrong.”

It actually takes a temporary reality and turns it into a problem. In quantum speak, it collapses the wave of a particular superposition, turns it into a material particle, makes it true.

When I believe some jerk “done me wrong” or that I’m in danger in some way, I literally pitch a tent in a “field” that’s not in my best interest. When I decide I’d better “fix this thing,” I add heft to the reality that something’s wrong.

Self-help, as it turns out, is anything but helpful.

If, like George Clooney, I read the “tweet” out loud and poke fun at its ridiculousness, it deactivates the brain’s danger signal. It says, “oh, that’s interesting,” allowing me to remain free, flexible, open and available for a more pleasant reality.

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

Love, only love

February 10, 2019 103 Comments

“The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.”—Rumi
taz from willem 2

Long time, eh? Especially for a writer like me who believes in exercising her creativity on a daily basis.

Words have seemed a bit clumsy lately. How can I possibly summarize the journey of the past few months?

If anything, I’ve learned death isn’t the end of a relationship. Rather, it’s an invitation for a different type of relationship.

After Timothy Leary died, Ram Dass, his colleague at Harvard in the 60’s, was asked how he felt about the loss of his long-time associate?

Ram Dass answered, “What loss? He’s still with me.”

A different interviewer asked Julia Roberts, whose father died of throat cancer when she was 11 or 12, if she regretted never having had an adult relationship with him. She said, “Are you kidding? He’s with me ALL the time.”

Tasman still feels very present, living within me, changing me, walking through the world with me.

Whenever I veer off the path, when I choose to resist this new reality (which causes me to stiffen, suffer and basically hurt myself), she sends a sign. Like at a coffee shop the other day. An unknown college student sat down at the adjoining bookstore’s baby grand and played one of Taz’s old contest songs. Readers from around the world continue to send pictures of 222. Dear friends continue to offer up support and unconditional love.

I’m constantly reminded I have but one choice–to bow to the mystery, to recognize that whatever’s happening here is more profound than I–at least while in this body–can begin to understand.

I haven’t abandoned my beliefs in joy and gratitude. It’s just that now a gauntlet has been thrown for me to enlarge my reality, to view life from an elevated context, to truly smoke what I’ve been selling the past six years in my books and workshops.

I plan to head back out into the world soon. I recently turned in the manuscript for the Course in Miracles book. Look for ACIM for Badasses in early 2020. I’m giving a workshop in California in a couple weeks and I’ll be making the official announcement of the first recipient of the 222 Foundation on, you guessed it, February 22.

I continue to be inspired by the magical gift of my daughter. And I’m grateful I get to carry forward the beautiful world I experience through her eyes.

The celebration coursing through your body

September 18, 2018 17 Comments

“You are defined by how great your thoughts are.”—Henry Winkler
henry-winkler-emmys-2018
Henry Winkler won his first Emmy last night for best supporting actor.

I have no idea if the 72-year-old actor has even heard of the Course in Miracles, but I do know he uses its principles in every aspect of his life.

When he was seven, he began imagining himself being an actor.

Because he had undiagnosed dyslexia, he was pegged in school as “the class dunce, not that bright. Stupid.” His parents practically disowned him because they thought he was lazy.

He called it ironic that he went into a field where reading was part of the drill. Monday’s script read-throughs on “Happy Days” where he played the leather-jacketed, bequiffed Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli filled him with dread.

But along the way, he learned something important, something ACIM Lesson 261 tells us. We live and move in a ginormous field of love and information.

He was unable to learn by using his eyes. Or his brain. So he learned by getting quiet and simply listening. By accessing the ginormous field of love and info coursing through his body.

“I have to wait,” he says.

But without fail, whatever he needs to know literally drops into his awareness.

The trick, he says, is getting beyond the neurosis in your brain. Once you wash anything that bothers you out of your body, everything you need to know is right there.

“Your inner voice, your instinct knows everything.”