“All the things that truly matter—beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace—arise from beyond the mind.”–Eckhart Tolle
Art by Jesse Stone
Hello loves! I just yesterday flew to Ajijic, Mexico for another glorious month in the Sierra Madres. I’m here to write, to hike and to enjoy this stunning climate.
While here, I’m playing around with my new spiritual hobby — self-inquiry. Calling it a hobby is a huge disservice, because I’m in this for keeps, to wake myself up, to become more aware of well, awareness. As Jed McKenna says, “All of life is either appearances or awareness and one of them isn’t true.”
Like most humanoids, I’ve been conditioned to rely on my mind when seeking information and/or guidance. But honestly, I’m losing interest in what my thoughts are telling me.
I find them to be laughably limited, sometimes dark and well, I’m discovering it’s quite possible to have a productive, meaningful life without taking them seriously. Thoughts, as far as I can tell, are mostly good for building walls of resistance, judgment and fear.
Thoughts, of course, don’t go away (or at least mine never have), but as I quit believing everything they yammer on about, I find myself more open to life as life is.
I’ll keep you posted as I spend this month like Madeline (the plucky heroine in the Paris house, covered with vines) saying “pooh-pooh” to any and all “thoughts” in the zoo.
Or even better, I’ll channel the big Poobah–Winnie himself who once wisely asked, “Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?”
“The moon is high and here I am.”—Bruce Springsteen
So I just listened to the five videos from Eckhart Tolle about “Conscious Manifestation.” I noted several interesting ideas.
Taz’s friend Molly took this lovely photo of moi.
Like me, he wrote down his intention to write the book that became “Power of Now.” Granted, he wrote his on a piece of paper and I wrote mine on a beach with a stick, but no one can argue that it didn’t work out for both of us.
He talked about an inner urging to share the ideas in his now-classic book, like somehow he sensed it was coming. His desire, he said, was to accelerate its manifestation.
As I mentioned last week about the sunflowers in Plum Village that were in existence even before they blossomed, Tolle’s masterpiece was already an actuality, just not in material form.
Tolle also talked about the subtle distinction between two states of manifestation consciousness.
Don’t just BELIEVE you will receive whatever it is you’re attempting to manifest.
You have to KNOW you have already received it.
There’s a gaping difference. The first comes from a place of lack. The other comes from the fullness of who you really are: a powerful creator with all the resources and backing of the universe.
The other piece I related to was the acceleration. I feel a couple new projects picking up speed. As most of you know, I’ve been on a sort of self-imposed hiatus, maneuvering to regain my balance after the big shock of 2018. During my two weeks in the forest, I had a beautiful dream with a clear message that it was time to shift back into gear.
In the dream, Taz and I were both visiting some giant resort. There were many others there, mostly strangers. And Taz and I would each go off and do our thing, visit with a friend, take a swim, etc. But we would always come back together. And it felt so peaceful, so right. We both knew we were there for each other, that there was nothing to fret, nothing to worry about. And I woke up knowing in a whole new way that Taz and I have had many lives together, would likely have many more and that everything was right in the universe.
I’m not sure I could say that with conviction until now. Somehow that dream gave me permission to accelerate the new projects, to fully live this new reality.
So stay tuned, my friends. I’ve got some new projects on the horizon and, like Tolle said, I’m ready for acceleration. #222 Forever
“No one can make you unhappy. Your imagination alone does that.”—Mooji
ABC correspondent and Nightline anchor Dan Harris wrote a book about meditation.
After interviewing Eckhart Tolle and other spiritual gurus, he started to notice that the running commentary that dominated his own consciousness was, as he says, “kind of an asshole.”
Which is what ACIM Lesson 218 tells us. Within each human being is a deep well of joy and glory. The reason this is such surprising news to us is because we’re all driving (and walking and living) under the influence of the asshole in our consciousness.
“How could you?” we reprimand ourselves anytime we eat something we shouldn’t, anytime we score less than perfect 10’s on job evaluations, anytime we have a “bad-hair day.”
We’re downright mean to ourselves. We go to war with those parts of ourselves we deem as bad—the jiggly upper arms, the desire to dance in church, the pull we feel to skip work and write—and only end up crippling humanity as a whole.
The answers, we’re taught, are:
Control. Discipline. Protection.
But willpower only separates us from our true nature, only creates static that keeps us from recognizing that we are part of something thrilling and unfathomable that may never have happened before in the entire galaxy and may never happen again.
Harris decided to deactivate his asshole through meditation and claims, in the title of his book, that he’s now 10 % Happier.
The Course takes it even further, claiming that unceasing (yes 100 percent) joy is our birthright.
It reminds us that everything we see, everything we believe, is just a story we made up. It tells us that, in Truth, we are spirit. We are light. All those voices, those wars going on in our head, are nothing but chunks of the collective consciousness that we can either believe and defend against or transmute with gratitude.
The real me, the Course tells me, is kind, giving, in deep communion with all of creation. The real me is a true force for love.
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.
“To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker is freedom.”–Eckhart Tolle
Psst! All you Course in Miracles fans. I had a revelation today. I realized that the reason the big, blue doorstop never gets read is because readers get stuck on all the words and throw the proverbial baby out with the dishwater.
Today’s lesson, ACIM 199 is one of those WTF lessons. It immediately triggers a reaction.
What do you mean I’m not a body? I have mirrors. I see the wrinkles, the cellulite. This books is utterly ridiculous!
And down it goes!
This lesson happens to be the one that’s repeated most often so I decided I’d better point out what it really means.
My body is sorta cool and all. It’s very useful when taking selfies. It’s kinda fun to dress it up, match it with shoes and earrings. But it’s more like a cage than a real thing.
So forget that part of this lesson. Focus on the “I am free” part of it.
For example, I am free to pick a different reality today.
I am free to let go of all those made-up rules I learned as I was growing up.
I am free to create my life at will.
I am free, especially from the limitations of my body.
The body, for the most part, represents the egoic mind, the part that believes you can only be one place at a time, the part that believes your thoughts are private, the part that believes everybody (or at least the everybodies that aren’t in you contacts) is out to get you.
When you claim your freedom, there is really only one question to pose: “Wouldn’t it be cool if__________!!!
Whatever follows that declaration is what you’re creating. You can continue to look at the world you see now OR you can create a new one. The one we see now is old news, it’s what we created over the past few decades. It’s one of many superpositions in the quantum field. It’s no more permanent than a peach.
We can create a new reality. But first we have to realize that we are free to do that. We have to quit staring at what appears to be. We have to start imagining.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we all realize how much we really love each other?
Wouldn’t it be cool if we spent our days expressing our creativity?
Wouldn’t it be cool if every person was housed and fed and aware of his freedom?
I love you guys so much. Thanks for joining me on this journey. I’d love to hear your “Wouldn’t it be cool if_____’s!!! in the comments section below.
Life is supposed to be extraordinarily epic! As we begin to recognize that truth, the same ole, same ole will wither and die from lack of use, from lack of attention.
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.
“Evade every influence that keeps you frozen in the past. ” ― Rob Brezsny
I’m in Seattle this weekend giving a couple playshops at East West Bookshop so I’m going to make this quick.
If you haven’t heard of this inspiring little bookshop, let me just say it’s a nonprofit (I love when money isn’t the prime objective) and it’s run by members of the Seattle Ananda community who follow the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. His book Autobiography of a Yogi is a spiritual classic. In fact, if you click here, you can read a post I wrote about Paramahansa when he was just starting out.
But we’re here to talk about A Course in Miracles.
ACIM Lesson 68 (Love holds no grievances) is an extremely potent lesson. It says I can’t really know my full beautiful loving self if I hold grievances. It tells me in no uncertain terms that any of my ‘he done me wrong’s, any of my ‘life’s not fair’ clog up the pipes of the badass I really am.
But to make it really clear, I’m going to tell you a story Eckhart Tolle once told, “If we had little cameras inside our bodies that showed us what happens when we held grievances, we’d never have a grievance again.”
Talk about a mike drop.
Well, as Arnold would say, “I’ll be back.”
Love, only love,
Pam who is sorta sleepless in Seattle
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
“Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”
― Eckhart Tolle
Our consciousness shapes and molds the reality that plays out in our lives. And there are many levels of consciousness, each with different rules, principles, characteristics and attributes.
For example, if you reside in the victim consciousness (“Things happen TO me,” “Life sucks and then you die” are a few standard thoughts from this level.), you can affirm and intend all you want, but your consciousness, the driver of your reality, which believes affirmations and intentions are a bunch of hooey always gets the last word. When you spend most of your waking hours in that consciousness (and it’s a very popular consciousness), your channels are plugged up. All the good that wants to come your way can’t get through.
Because we live in a multi-dimensional universe, there are dozens of different levels of consciousness, oftentimes residing in one person. For the purpose of this discussion, I’ve broken it down into four major consciousness categories. Each of these levels has dozens of subsets, all that play out in different ways in our lives. Let’s just say that my goal is to move closer to level four.
1. “The damn, not again” consciousness. The starting gate for most of us is some manifestation of victim consciousness. It varies from person to person, but the over-arching theme is we have no control over anything that happens in our life. The best we can do is work really hard, cross our fingers and hope that all the “shit” we hear about out there will somehow escape us.
2. “The woo-hoo! This is getting cool!” consciousness. One of the next levels (again it plays out differently in each person) is where we realize we have a say. We learn there are energetic laws that are just as reliable as physical laws. We discover that our thoughts are units of mental energy that play out in the world just as powerfully as the principles of gravity or aerodynamics.
Usually we move in and out of this consciousness, mixing it up with other levels. We still feel separate and still retain some of that “poor me” consciousness. In fact, we spend nearly as much time talking about what we don’t want as what we do. We still believe the things we want are out there, in the future, something we have to strive for.
3. The “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” consciousness. I am very happy to report that I spent nearly the entire year of 2013 in this consciousness. I got up every morning, celebrating, feeling good. I got up on the right side of the bed nearly every morning and boy, did things come to fruition for me. My book hit the New York Times bestseller list. I traveled to six different countries on four different continents. I got all kinds of new writing gigs. Editors contacted ME which, if you’re a freelance writer, you’d know never happens. I got emails from people all over the world, telling me how much they liked my book. And while all that was really cool and I’m intending it to happen again in 2014, the best part really was how blessed I felt.
And this is where the distinction should be made. People believe they will be happy when they achieve a certain level of success, when they find the perfect lover, when they heal from cancer. But that’s not how it works. All those things are byproducts of being happy.
This is one chicken vs. the egg that is not in question. Being grateful, being happy, feeling blessed ALWAYS comes first. In fact, most people say that when their “stuff” finally comes, the material things they got into this “thoughts creating reality” business in the first place they realize they’re beside the point. And that the gift, the real gift, is the joy they now see in the little things—the cute little heart the barista made into the foam on the latte, the squirrel running along the fence in glee, the softness of cashmere sweater you pull over your head.
4. “I am one with all” consciousness. In this consciousness, which I must admit is not yet a 24/7 theme for moi, there is no sense of separation from anything. This consciousness knows it is one with Source. It knows it’s an indelible part of the F.P. It knows you are an unlimited being, hooked up with all that is. In this consciousness, everything is eternal and everything else (your thoughts, your reality) is subservient to this bottom-line spiritual Truth. When we’re lucky enough to view life from this consciousness, we are totally surrendered to the “all that is” and know nothing is missing from our life. And, in fact, by yielding to that consciousness, by giving it permission to play out in our lives, we come to realize that all those little intentions and manifestations we so dutifully held in our consciousness are small potatoes compared to this. It’s so much bigger and grander and woo-hoo’er than anything we could have ever imagined.
“People love their mental prison cells because it gives them a sense of security and a false sense of, ‘I know.’”—Eckhart Tolle
I LOVE this picture with 15 of God’s adorable angels. It was sent to me by the inimitable Becky Buckman, who is teaching the principles of E-Squared and E-Cubed to inmates at a maximum security prison in Nashville, Tennesse. As she says, “I love teaching LOA to these ‘tough on the outside” men who are continuing to expand the way they think and empower themselves.”
I was so thrilled that my fabulous publisher, Hay House, donated books for their next session beginning November 8. I also want to thank Becky for inventing a new word from my name. She now says, “She is groutful, which is one step better even than being grateful.”
I hope she’ll report back with results of this upcoming eight-week class, but in the meantime, here’s a blog post (as I mentioned I’m in Helsinki this week, rocking the casbah at the Glo Art Hotel) from Linda Ford, a Martha Beck master coach who has blessed us here on the blog in the past. Take it away, Linda:
THE POWER OF NOT CLOSING DOWN
Remember when you were a kid playing with your friends, and you lost the game you were playing, or you came-in last at the race, or you realized that you just couldn’t keep up or compete with your friends? Do you also remember walking away with a temper tantrum and saying out loud in frustration: I don’t want to play anymore!
We may be grown-ups now, but many of us still react this way when life doesn’t give us the relationship we’re longing for, the job we desire, or the house of our dreams. And unfortunately, many of us see our disappointment and frustration as a reason to close down, especially if you’ve been waiting a long time. It’s the grown up version of I don’t want to play anymore.
I have a client (who I’ll call Mary). She’s gone through years of feeling frustrated and despondent because she never seems get what she wants. Life is one big struggle. She recently experienced a huge disappointment when a job she had high hopes of getting and which she had invested a lot of time interviewing for, didn’t pan out. Here’s what she told me:
I feel as if I’m back in the trenches, starting all over again. Other people don’t seem to go through this prolonged crap that I go though. How long is this going to go on?
Mary’s tendency to want to close down when she doesn’t get what she wants is a pattern that also shows up in her relationship life. She goes on dates, and ends up feeling depressed and disappointed that the guys aren’t a match for she’s looking for.
What Mary and many of us don’t get, is that when circumstances don’t match up to our desires—when we experience red flags that something is not quite right with a job or a date—it’s not because we’re unlucky or unable to attract, or because we’re not favored by the gods. It’s just that we need more fine-tuning and personal alignment. We need to do the inner work.
We don’t get what we want because we continue to play out a vibration with our words and feelings that tell the universe that we don’t want to play anymore. And in that moment of disappointment (and it’s a pivotal moment!) we make the decision (and the huge mistake) for the umpteenth time, to close down and let our negative emotions sweep over us and dictate our energy. And once again, the door to everything we want gets slammed shut in our face.
What if instead of seeing your disappointment and frustration as just another indication that you’re unlucky or cursed, you saw it as an opportunity for fine-tuning your desires? What if you saw the job or relationship you didn’t get, as an opportunity to line up with a bigger and better version of what you want? What if you saw your defeat as an opportunity to practice unconditional self- love? What if you saw the let down as a way to get CLARITY?
People who are getting what they want in life don’t go off in a temper tantrum. They stay in the game. They don’t buy into the thought that they’re unlucky, or that life is out to get them. They prefer to hang out with and stay attuned to their desires rather than their disappointments. They are grateful for the clarity that’s emerging.
As savvy as we all are about the principles of the law of attraction, many of us still hold onto the belief that there are outside (external) forces that are blocking our success. We just love to pass the buck and blame something, anything but ourselves. We still secretly love to believe that some people are favored by the gods while others have been left out. We still partly believe that it’s about the family we were born into or the boss who keeps denying you that promotion. These old paradigms of thinking from the outside-in—even if they occupy just ten percent of our thinking—interfere with our ability to manifest the life we crave. Why? Because we end up NOT taking full responsibility for the quality of our thoughts and feelings. We resist doing the inner work.
What if you could finally accept that whatever is manifesting for you in life is one hundred percent because of the way YOU think and feel? What if you could finally start living from the INSIDE OUT?
The brilliant Joseph Campbell said: The gods will give you want you want, but you have to be ready for it.
I love this quote because it reminds me that I am in the control box. I am steering my own ship. And the only thing I (and Mary) have to do is get ready for the delicious life that’s waiting for us to step into.
Linda Ford is a Master Coach, personally trained by Martha Beck. Her mission is to help people get out of their own way and THRIVE. http://www.attractalife.com
Pam Grout is the author of 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.
I’m in Seattle this weekend giving a 
