Gandhi – Pam Grout

Here’s to a different matrix of success

March 1, 2023 14 Comments

“Chasing wealth is not the answer. I’ve crunched the numbers. And sitting in a cheap fishing boat with my family is so much better than sitting on an expensive yacht.”—Nick Offerman

While I joyously soaked in Gandhi’s wisdom during the January retreat in Ahmedabad, India, I also learned about his protégé, Vinoba Bhave, whose book Moved by Love is one of many seeds I brought back with me.

I finished his book yesterday and can genuinely gush that I am now officially a Vinoba Bhave fangirl. He’s most famous for walking the length and breadth of India and inspiring wealthy landowners to give away 4 million acres of land to the less financially fortunate.

But the thing that most moved me was his approach to creating change, starting with a goal of freeing society from the bondage of money. I’m pretty sure Taz had a hand in this book coming my way.

Bhave was very clear that money is incapable of solving problems. Believing it is (and aren’t we sold that story from birth?) blinds us to real possibility. A revolution, he says, needs Spirit, not organization and structure.

One man, rooted in Truth (what Gandhi called ‘soul force’), is all that’s needed for Spirit to move, all that’s needed to create societal change. Bhave’s mission was to root out discrimination of every kind and for wealth and property to be shared by all.

I mean, who doesn’t want that really? It is only fear and our belief that we are separate that keeps that beautiful vision from being a reality.

Bhave was fearless. Because he knew he was more than a body, he had no need to protect it. Again, it’s the polar opposite of how we‘re trained from birth. He was able to give everything he had—his labor, his intelligence, his time and his thoughts–to this magnificent vision because he knew who he represented: the highest spirit in all of us.

Never did he coerce anyone to give up their land. In fact, he made it clear that if privileged landholders didn’t feel inspired to donate a piece of their property, he didn’t want it. He was giving them an opportunity. Because that’s what all of us really want—to give, to love, to make our hearts large enough to include everyone.

I could never repay even a fraction of the blessings I’ve been given in this lifetime, but at least I can share stories like this one. Hope you feel as inspired as I am right now. #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)

Upside down, flipped over, never the same

January 27, 2023 18 Comments

“It’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”–Bertrand Russell

British author Terry Pratchett once remarked that while most of us believe people (authors, poets, filmmakers) create stories, the truth is just the opposite.

Stories create people.

The stories we believe about ourselves and about the world shape us into the people we become. If we believe life is full of problems, we spend our lives solving problems. If we believe we are separate and alone, we fail to enjoy the deep connectedness in all of life.

The stories that wreak the most havoc are the subtle, cultural ones we don’t even realize we’ve subscribed to. The inherited perceptions we believe are absolute truth, unalterable, just the way it is.

As anyone who reads my work knows, I’m all about capsizing engrained stories. It’s the mission of the Taz Grout 222 Foundation. It’s why I begged my publisher to turn the pages of E-Cubed upside down. It’s my deepest prayer—that humanity will be released from all false stories of lack and fear.

In India, I experienced a completely overturned story that I will be musing about for the rest of my life. ServiceSpace that invited me to the Moved by Love retreat operates solely on the gift economy. That means everything is given out of love. There’s nothing transactional. Ever.

It’s so far removed from the accepted narrative that when I tried to pitch a story about it, my editor at People magazine couldn’t wrap her mind around it. “But how does it work?” she kept asking until finally concluding it had to be a fairytale and that I was missing something.

To be at the retreat was to witness insatiable generosity day after day, to enter a field where it’s safe to let your guard down, safe to wonder if, “Maybe this depth of kindness and care is actually human nature?”

It’s impossible to put this kind of experience into words. Words, after all, are a way of stopping possibility. Once you name something, it becomes that thing—no longer fluid, no longer bubbling with potential. It becomes difficult to “see” it any other way.

To state one small example: a tree. Is it simply a plant? A green blob with a brown stem (something kindergartners regularly draw)? Or, according to the capitalist story, a product we exploit for our own needs?

What if trees are trying to help us? I met several people at the retreat who regularly converse with trees including a prominent politician from Austria who finally left politics to do something he feels can better change the world. A Japanese calligraphy artist told the story of walking into a forest and having a particular tree say to her, “Hi! I’m Greege.” I think I might have the name wrong, but the tree definitely introduced itself and she has since met trees in three other locales (the California redwoods, for one) that she has introduced to each other. She and I decided we’d keep in touch by sending messages through trees from our respective homes across the planet.

All I know is that life is intertwined, interdependent and radiant with love.

We may think we’re trying to get something (a better job, more love, a bigger social media following), but the rock bottom truth is all we really want — the only thing we’ve ever wanted — is to give, to serve and to love with every fiber in our body.

Gifts keep pouring into my life including the opportunity to participate in this online “Be Your Valentine” fundraiser with all proceeds going to the Taz Grout 222 Foundation. Click here for the deets if you’re interested:

Have an amazingly awesome weekend, my loves. #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).

Fall in love with the world you can’t even see yet

August 3, 2020 37 Comments

“Perceptual bias affects nut jobs and scientists alike.”—Martha Beck

India won its freedom from British colonial rule in 1947. Mahatma Gandhi, who led the nonviolent battle, used to say, “India will be independent as soon as its people can see it in their own minds.”

In other words, they had to focus not on what they saw, but on what they wanted to see.

As long as we feel beholden to outside circumstances, put stock in the world as it appears to be, we are stuck in small emotions, small visions.

The world is changing at warp speed. We’re in the midst of the biggest planetary evolution of our time. Those of us who know that an invisible energy realm (what I often call the field of infinite potentiality or the F.P.) governs the material realm are the pioneers who must call forth the new world. A world where everybody belongs, a world where everybody is fed and nurtured and loved.

I realize it doesn’t exactly look like that now, but we–with our thoughts, emotions and consciousness—are being called to play the starring role in the new world that’s being born.

It’s up to us to tap into the world’s natural abundance and joy. It’s up to us to change the story from lack and scarcity to plentitude, from transaction to trust, from fear to love, from separateness to unity. Love and possibilities are everywhere around us except where we suppress it with limited perception.

Everything we need is already here but we must fine-tune our seeing. We must bring forth that which we can’t see yet with our eyes.

Who’s game to join me in this new vision, from problem state to possibility state? Let’s fall in love, let’s be dazzled with the world we’re calling forth. #222 Forever!

And for those who are interested, here are a couple recent podcast interviews.

https://www.unityonlineradio.org/messages-hope/love-never-dies-conversation-pam-grout

https://soundcloud.com/thground/pam-grout-taz-222

Looking With the Eyes of Love: A guest post by Amy Zoe

August 7, 2013 3 Comments

“It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

Not only do I get daily emails from readers, but I’m lucky enough to go for coffee or bubble tea or lunch with readers who live close by. Amy Zoe, a writer and life innovator (don’t you just love that title?) from the Kansas City area, contacted me a month or so ago for just such a get-together.

We had a fabulous conversation and she offered to share her talent on my blog. As you all know, I’m all about Show and Tell.

So here’s the amazing Amy Zoe shouting out from the love train:

If you’ve ever endeavored to manifest intentions, you know your thoughts wield a lot of power. It’s as if our thoughts spin a web in the mind of consciousness to capture and make manifest the desires of our heart.

This creative process is not limited to our want for material things, but also expresses itself within our daily interactions with others.

Often, when we engage in communication that doesn’t go well, we attach to our negative feelings and focus attention on what we don’t like about the other person’s behavior, or worse, we decide that we dislike them entirely.

When we focus our thoughts and emotions in this way, we may not recognize that we are manifesting and potentially creating more of what we do not want. If we value improving our interactions with those we find challenging, we have the opportunity through our intentions and feelings, to manifest something entirely different.

Here’s an example from my own life…

For several years, I worked with a woman many of my colleagues considered “difficult.” At times, she was abrasive, condescending, and arrogant towards people at work. Most of my co-workers had written her off as a bad seed and avoided interactions with her.

I, also, had moments of finding her behavior challenging. After one particularly bad exchange, I knew I needed to shift my thinking or our relationship would be doomed to a back and forth of perpetual pettiness.

In that moment, I opened myself up to seeing her differently. I decided that instead of focusing on her “bad behavior,” I wanted to see all of her beauty and understand her complexity.

As a result of setting those intentions and putting a little love behind my thoughts, I began to be exposed to another side of her that was in stark contrast to how many viewed her.

I saw how excited she was to share her professional experience with others, her willingness to provide opportunity to those who were new to her profession, her generosity to those she worked closely with, and ultimately her exceptional talent within her field.

I also began to understand that in most instances her challenging behaviors were just momentary responses to feeling overwhelmed, her gruffness, the result of a life marked by personal difficulty, and more than anything else, I sensed how alone and insecure she felt.

These insights helped me tremendously in my interactions with her. No longer was I inclined to rush to judgement when I perceived she was being curt. I had a newfound respect and compassion for her that alleviated much of the heaviness that existed in our previous exchanges. My picture of her was based on something much larger than an isolated moment in time.

When our professional paths separated, I could genuinely say that I cared for her well-being and knew I would miss her.

If an exchange with someone leaves us feeling less than congenial, instead of getting behind feelings of anger and resentment, we can choose to get behind feelings of love and kindness. We can envision our conversations with that person being authentic and set the intention to see what is beautiful about them.

This path does not guarantee others will change their behavior, as they are co-creators in the relationship. It does, however, afford those of us setting the intentions, to see that person through the eyes of Love…the most powerful force in the Universe.

Amy Zoe is a writer, teacher, life innovator and mother. She holds a BA in psychology from the University of Iowa and has served as a human resources professional.

A lifelong seeker of spiritual truth and aspirant of personal growth, Amy is committed to inspiring others to identify their passions, chart a course, and navigate life at full capacity.

Her writing can be found on her website: http://www.abelovedlife.com.