Stay close to the love
“Everything rises to truth.”—Emma Curtis Hopkins
Oh my gosh, you guys! I’m super excited and grateful and well, I probably oughta warn you right now: this post may get a bit annoying.
For one thing, I’m heading out tomorrow on my first travel assignment in a really long time. I’m going to the Yerkes Observatory (widely recognized at the birthplace of modern astrophysics), visiting Hugh Hefner’s first Playboy Bunny Club (now a 5-Diamond Resort and Spa), ziplining, hitchhiking with one of the country’s last mailboats (it delivers mail to the old Gilded Age mansions on Lake Geneva) and well, generally having a ball with a bunch of crazy travel writers.
Later this month, we’re finally dedicating the Taz Grout Library that the 222 Foundation built in Nepal and, in less than two weeks, the incomparable Karen Drucker is coming to town for the Amazingly Awesome Benefit concert. I recently learned that Karen launched her piano career on the piano of none other than Carole King. I already knew she’d won a Tarzan calling contest with Carol Burnett when she was 14, but how was I to know that she later babysat for Carole King’s kids?
However, the main reason I’m bursting at the seams with joy is because it feels like I’m finally breaking up with the story in my head. And by the story in my head, I’m referring to the cultural fabrication that used to run my life. I no longer identify with much of anything my ego tries to spoon feed me. Notice I’m not saying my ego quit trying to control the narrative. I’m saying I no longer buy its tiny, tidy lies. At least most of the time.
For a long time, the ego’s story seemed normal, the way life was. Of course, I nodded obediently when it suggested that my job was to “find” spirituality, that I needed to seek happiness and joy.
But now I see that all those things I so dutifully attempted to forge connections with already exist within me. My natural state is happiness and joy. I’m discovering this raw, unnamable current of peace is inescapable once you break up with the ego and its desperate fabrication that something is missing, that things aren’t fair.
As I said, I’m a bit giddy with joy. But that’s okay. Because that’s who I authentically am. #222 Forever!
Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).
