John Lennon – Pam Grout

All in

April 6, 2018 9 Comments

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer.”–John Lennon

child-laughing
Remember when you were in grade school picking teams for say, kickball or Red Rover?

Even if you weren’t the team captain, you knew exactly who you wanted on your team.

Every single third-grader knew who was the fastest player, the most daring, the one most likely to succeed in breaking through the meaty arms of the classroom bully brigade.

Still today we get to choose who’s on our team, who leads the executive committee in our minds. Only now it boils down to two team players.

There’s the ego, the PR person for fear and limits.

Or there’s love.

In ACIM Lesson 96, we learn there’s no middle ground. There’s no maybe’s. The ego and love are incompatible. They can’t be reconciled. So it’s time to decide.

One choice leads to lack, limitations, more of the same.

The other leads to Divine Intoxication.

So will you join me, my friends, on this beautiful Friday in being fearlessly, joyfully drunk on love?

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.

The world as you’ve never seen it before

March 16, 2018 12 Comments

“There’s a voodoo mojo brewing at the go-go”–Bon Jovi
pp32563-john-lennon-war-poster

When John Lennon and Yoko Ono launched their “War is Over” campaign, a deejay asked them, “Isn’t that ridiculous? The soldiers, the Vietnamese? How can you tell them the war is over?”

John, as always, had the perfect answer.

“People need to remember that they’ve got the power—not the government or leaders or teachers.”

His belief that we’ve got to imagine it first was early law of attraction. Who knew? John Lennon may have been one of its first practitioners.

ACIM Lesson 75 (The light has come) is a campaign similar to Lennon’s inspiring campaign.

He and Yoko plastered the message “If you want it, war is over” on billboards all over the world —11 cities from Tokyo to Berlin to New York. They also distributed leaflets and ran full-page newspaper ads. When asked how much it cost, he said, “I don’t really know. But surely less than a human life.”

Yoko re-launched the campaign three months ago.

“When we drop small pebbles, it immediately affects the ocean of the whole wide world,” she said. “We’ll keep doing it. Together. We change and the world changes.”

So today, I’m celebrating my personal change. I’m celebrating that the light has come. I’m celebrating the beginning of true vision, a happy vision, a vision that will replace the other world I created by thinking it was real.

As the Course reminds me, in my thoughts and beliefs lies all power.

And therefore:

I will dwell not upon the past today.

I will see the world, bathed in light, as I’ve never seen it before.

And I will remember what John said, “We–all of us–have the power.”

Lizard or lover? What’s your response to Paris?

November 16, 2015 86 Comments

“Absolutely everything is available to us — sorrow and joy, grievance and forgiveness, horror and transcendence — it’s all on the menu. It’s up to us where we put our attention.”—Josh Radnor

I was lucky. When news of the Paris attacks struck the airwaves, I was standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, gazing out at billions of years of evolution, making it much easier to put things into perspective.

Like everybody else, I have a limbic cortex (AKA the lizard brain) that’s in charge of fight, flight, fear and freezing up.

But I also know, after years of covering such events as a news reporter, that the minute some tragedy happens, people rush forward to help, to heal, to bring forth the higher part of ourselves that loves, only loves.

In Paris, for example, an anonymous musician drug a piano by bicycle to the Bataclan and played John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The taxi drivers offered rides for free. The hash tag #PorteOuverte (it means open door) was broadcast across social media for anyone needing shelter.

And all of us have a choice. Do we live from our lizard brain that’s urging us to fear, to retract, to cower in isolation? Or do we become the lovers, the higher selves that we all know is possible.

Part of the reason I no longer work as a news reporter is because the news (which spotlights mostly beastly anomalies) reports on an antiquated way of life that’s grasping for its last breath. I choose now to report on love and on possibility and the new world that is surging forward.

I know it’s tempting to sit mute in front of the television set or the twitter feed that recounts the gruesome and grotesque. But that only feeds the lizard. The lover in you is just as strong, just as valid. And it wants to act. So your choice.

I’d love to hear in the comments section below the act of love, bravery and kindness you will perpetrate today.

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 its equally-scintillating sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.

“Life is a helluva lot more fun if you say yes rather than no.” – Richard Branson

October 15, 2013 3 Comments

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer.”–John Lennon

Remember when you were in grade school picking teams for say, kickball or Red Rover?

Even if you weren’t the team captain, you knew exactly who you wanted on your team.

Every single third-grader knew who was the fastest player, the most daring, the one most likely to succeed in breaking through the meaty arms of the classroom bully brigade.

We still today get to choose who’s on our team, who leads the executive committee in our minds. Only now it boils down to two team players.

There’s the ego, the PR person for fear and limits.

Or there’s the Field of Unlimited Possibilities (the FP).

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking “no-brainer.”

Pam Grout is the author of 16 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.