Can you handle the truth?

“If your mind isn’t cluttered by unnecessary things, this could be the best day of your life.”–from a message left on my voice mail by The Zing, AKA Ethan Hughes

Who can forget the explosive scene in A Few Good Men when Tom Cruise has Jack Nicholson on the witness stand? Cruise is badgering Nicholson, wanting to know whether or not he ordered a Code Red.

Nicholson, getting redder and madder, finally erupts: “You can’t handle the truth.”

And that, in a nutshell, is the real answer to all naysayers who want to know why all the good stuff happens to everyone else.

Until we can get on the frequency of gratitude, our connection to the bigger thing is blocked. Our bandwidth can’t handle the eternal, infinite love of the Divine Broadcast that’s always, always airing possibility, joy, freedom.

We’ve clogged up the connection by giving the floor to our inner anxieties, our fears, our time-sucking melodramas. Like Cinderella’s stepsisters, we’ve crammed life’s unending beneficence into our tiny shoes of old judgments and antiquated programming.

A Course in Miracles aims to upgrade the bandwidth of our consciousness. It’s entire purpose is to rewire our nervous system, rewrite old habits and literally change the chemistry of our brains.

And that’s where gratitude, as ACIM Lesson 215 reminds me, comes in.

Until I can look at every single person and event in my life and see its beauty, its radiance, its shimmering love, I will not be able to handle the truth.

Have the very best weekend of your life, my fine-feathered friends.

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.