Jack Kerouac – Pam Grout

Don’t let the past assault your now

May 7, 2018 13 Comments

“We lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”—Jack Kerouac

Kum Back, a bootleg album packaged in a plain white jacket, rubber-stamped in red or blue ink and released in January 1970, demonstrates everything you need to know about why I go through the lessons in the Course workbook every year.

The album, sourced from a multitrack tape recording of the Beatles at Twickenham Film Studios, is an early version of Let It Be. Recorded by Glyn Johns, the band’s engineer, this unauthorized bootleg features Paul McCartney singing out of tune, John Lennon botching lyrics and more than one poorly-conceived guitar lick.

The point is the Beatles, the bestselling band in history, were far from perfect. They had to practice. In fact, by the time Beatlemania swept across the globe, the music-bending group had honed their skills at tiny clubs in Hamburg for three entire years.

They practiced over and over and over again.

Someone commented to my musician friend, Cindy Novelo, “You’re such a genius. I wish I had your talent.”

Cindy quickly responded, “Well go home, practice an hour today and every day for 20 years and you’ll have my talent.”

Letting go of my old story takes practice. My brain has been running the bootleg album–the inferior album of limitation—most of my life.

But it’s not real.

And I’m ready to let go of those ill-conceived guitar licks.

That’s why I get up every morning and flex my ACIM muscles. That’s why I get up every morning and devote my day to peace, to joy, to seeing love in everything.

ACIM Lesson 127 encourages me to free my mind. It encourages me to let go of all laws I think I must obey, to surrender all limitations in which I’ve placed my faith.

None of it is true.

The only thing that’s true is love. Love has no opposite. Love can’t change. Everyone’s included.

Today, I escape from every limitation, every cultural paradigm as I practice letting go of the past.

And before I close, thought I’d make a couple quick announcements:

1. The Hay House World Summit is underway. That’s where 100 speakers, folks like Mike Dooley, Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra, bestow really cool inspiration. The best part is it’s totally free. You can access it here. My interview on being on the Joy and Gratitude Frequency is available now.

2. My latest book, Art & Soul Reloaded, was chosen as an Amazon Book of the Month for May. So if you haven’t read it, you can score the Kindle version for a mere $2.49. Find it here.

Have an extraordinarily epic day, my friends.

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.

There’s more where that came from

April 15, 2018 8 Comments

“Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.”—Bill Watterson
kerouac
The perks of being a writer are many. One of my favorites is hearing from readers. I get more emails than I can begin to answer. I get emails in Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese and languages I can’t even identify.

Recently, I’ve been hearing from a cool couple of chicas in Ketchum, Idaho who have formed their own two-woman possibility posse. They started with the experiments in E-Cubed, then E-Squared and they’re now working their way through my latest book, Art & Soul, Reloaded. Terra regularly send updates and photos including a classic of her possibility partner hiking through gorgeous mountains in a bright red tutu.

They’re being wildly creative and having a blast which, to my way of thinking, is the absolute best way to instigate spiritual growth. Lots of teacher will tell you otherwise. They’ll encourage you to make lists of your issues, to rehash old stories, to follow five or six or seven steps that will eventually get you “there”—wherever “there” is.

ACIM Lesson 105 tells us it’s time to reverse all that starting with our view of giving. Giving, despite what we’ve been taught, involves no loss. None whatsoever.

Everything we give—joy, creativity, adventures in tutus—creates expansion. It creates growth. It generates more.

Anything of value, anything worth having will increase exponentially when you give it away. That’s why I encourage people to create things, to make things, to give away their gifts.

Forget the lists, the problems, the issues. Quickest route to spiritual growth is to play, create and give. Like my Ketchum friends, you’ll quickly come to realize there’s an endless more and more where that came from.

What the holy bigwigs failed to mention: spirituality’s missing ingredient

April 13, 2018 34 Comments

“Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence everything is alright forever and forever and forever.”—Jack Kerouac

The God most of us believe in is an invention of man, fabricated for the sake of convenience. We accept this human-made God as an indisputable fact. But it makes no sense. If God is love, if God is perfect and if God is all the other beneficent descriptions we ascribe to him, why would he toss anyone into a lion’s den?

And pardon me for being cheeky, but why would anyone in their right mind want to hook up with a capricious and unjust god who gets his jollies from punishing them?

ACIM Lesson 103 is another attempt to set the record straight. It tells us that joy is what we should expect from God. It tells us that perfect happiness is our birthright.

I loved Janet Mitchell’s comment yesterday—here she was having mind-blowing out-of-body-experiences, clairvoyance and psychic ability and the church was schooling her about a puny, punishing God.

How could we have fallen for it?

Far as I’m concerned, one of the best descriptions of the Dude is outrageousness. I mean look at J.C. He was walking on water (when he wasn’t turning it into vino) and he was taking material objects (fish, loaves, etc.) and multiplying them.

That’s pretty outrageous. And that’s what we’re here to do. To be outrageous. Bold. Dazzling.

Dominant paradigms have tried for years to rope us in, to keep us in line. But that’s what we’re undoing with the Course.

What we learned is all backwards. We are not here to play it safe. We are here to be the light. To shine our brilliance. To risk. To love. To spread our joy. Just like Eugene Plushenko: