John O’Donohue – Pam Grout

More than a random configuration of molecules

May 8, 2018 15 Comments

“There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness, where there’s a seamlessness, and where there is a confidence and tranquility. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.”—John O’Donohue
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So I got this comment yesterday. It started by thanking me for clarifying the lessons in A Course in Miracles, a blogging pursuit I started January 1. But it went on:

“I cannot wait to hear what you say about lesson #128, because even in my 4th year (of doing the Course in Miracles), I don’t get this one.”

Being a long-time Course student who is still puzzled by many of the lessons, I couldn’t wait to find out which one she was talking about. I actually leafed ahead. And here’s what I have to say about ACIM Lesson 128:

First of all, I glommed on to the part towards the end about asking for help, about being still and resting (always a worthwhile goal) and opening my mind to my Guide. That’s what I call the Holy S.

And then, I broke it down. The world I see holds nothing I want. The operative words are the world I SEE. Because the world I SEE is just my version of a bunch of random molecules. I’m not really Pam. Pam dies. Pam is just a made-up story, a fairytale.

My brain (like all human brains) takes in sounds and light and crafts a story that matches my beliefs and expectations. It’s not real.

Perhaps magician Derek DelGaudio said it best. In 2016, after winning Magician of the Year, he was asked how he first got interested in magic. His interviewer wanted to know if he’d seen a particular magician or a particular trick or a….

He stopped the interviewer and said, “It was never anything I saw. My imagination was captured with what I couldn’t see.”

And there you have it. The juice is what we can’t see. When we strip away the labels, the boxes, the random configuration of molecules, we find our essence.

We find the world we DO want. We find the intoxicating, invigorating, ecstasy of who we really are.

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.

I am the light, baby

March 2, 2018 22 Comments

“Everyone is involved whether they like it or not in the construction of the world.”—John O’Donohue light

We did it! Made it through the first 50 lessons (and the review) where we learned the world is nothing like we thought. It’s actually malleable and responds to what we believe and think and say about it. We’re the artists, the creators, the only people we can hold accountable if, for some reason, our world doesn’t appear like we think it should.

ACIM Lesson 61 is a biggie. Get this one lesson (I am the light of the world), get it deep in your bones and boom, everything changes!

Not only are you light (underneath the wah-wah-wah of the hamster wheel of thought), but being light is why you’re here. It’s your rai·son d’ê·tre.

Since I happen to agree with John O’Donohue who says, “Music is what language would love to be if it could,” I’m going to let the following song (I’m sorry for those whose browsers don’t read my song links) communicate today’s lesson.

Love you guys! Have the best weekend of your life.

Writing a different caption

January 27, 2018 9 Comments

“There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility and our hearts to love life.”—John O’Donohue

Each week, The New Yorker, on the last page, offers a blank cartoon. Readers are invited to compose and submit clever captions. This week, for example, a giant gingerbread man is lying in a hospital bed with six doctors in chef hats peering down upon him.

Editors choose three caption finalists and then readers vote.

It never ceases to amaze me how widely-varying the captions are. One simple cartoon, three astoundingly different captions.

This popular contest demonstrates just how completely different individual perceptions are. We may think everyone sees the world just like we do. But au contraire, my friends.

ACIM Lesson 27 says: Above all else I want to see.

I want to let go of my false perceptions, my own personally-captioned cartoon. I want only to see the insanely beautiful truth in everything. In everyone.

That sycamore tree in my yard is literally pulsing with life. The sky overhead offers a stunning new canvas each day. Each of my fellow humanoids are, as Hafiz says, “God speaking.” Today, above all else, I want to see the holy, the good and the beautiful.

#Metoo Why I’m escaping the abusive relationship of my ego and its pernicious henchmen

November 16, 2017 29 Comments

“Your story doesn’t hold a candle to who you really are?”—John O’Donohue
red sea

I’ve heard all the stories: Weinstein, CK, yada, yada! And here’s what I know.

There’s not a misogynist alive that’s half as bad as the abuser in my brain. Perhaps you know him? The voice that tells me and everybody else that’s living and breathing that something is wrong, that something needs to be fixed.

The Course in Miracles calls this voice the ego. It’s the opposite of love and it shows up as fear. It’s a big fat liar and, pardon my ****, it’s full of shit. It runs on three main themes: “Do Something. Fix this. Run.”

It shoves us away from what we’ve been put on this earth to do—to love, to connect, to create ridiculously beautiful things.

I’m currently compiling a playbook of the ego’s many manifestations. Here are just a few:

1.The ego encourages us to find our identity in a psychology manual. Let me just say that you will never ever find even a single clue to your true reality in a psychology book. The DSM and other psychological “theories” are basically a rogue’s gallery of the ego. And as long as you insist on staring at their symptoms, you will never contact the deep interiority that exists within you.

2.The ego tells us security, money and more, more, more is the holy grail. I saw a funny cartoon in the New Yorker the other day. A forlorn caveman, dressed like Fred Flintstone, is sitting in a cave with a half dozen giant boulders. He says to his partner: “I thought getting bigger rocks would make us happier, but I guess I was wrong.” One of the ego’s craftiest ploys is to make us believe that material things—fancy houses, expensive purses, etc.—is what’s missing in our lives.

3.The ego encourages us to look for the flaw in the tapestry. Amazing miracles are happening around us, literally 24/7, and we completely miss them all because we’re focusing on the problem. I’m sure that when Moses put out his staff to part the Red Sea, there was a follower or two complaining about the mud in their sandals. This gigantic sea was literally separating into two, leading them to the Promised Land and they were focused on the gunk between their toes.

To put it bluntly, the ego is a destructive force that rises up pretty much every time we get close to the land of milk and honey.

But here’s the good news. Nary a single one of the ego’s stories is in any way true. And since we’re the ones who created the ego (in a misguided attempt to protect ourselves), we can let it go at any time. We can connect with the true part of our Self—our sea-parting magnificence, the unwounded part of us that the ego has never been and will never be able to touch.

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just-released, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

Have you claimed your gifts today?

October 26, 2017 11 Comments

“We rush through our days in such stress and intensity, as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world depended on us. We worry and grow anxious; we magnify trivia until they become important enough to control our lives. Yet all the time we have forgotten that we are but temporary sojourners on the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly in the infinite night of the cosmos.” —John O’Donohue

I know. I probably sound like an ad for a bank. Come in, open a new checking account and claim your free ice chest.

But that’s not the kind of gifts I’m referring to. I’m talking about the continuous stream of gifts bestowed by the natural world. As I was driving home from pickleball this morning, I noticed a brilliant scarlet branch on a maple tree just blocks from my home. It literally made me gasp.

Every day, nature presents us with unbelievably beautiful gifts: stars that are billions of years old, fuzzy caterpillars crawling across our paths, hydrangeas, yellow butterflies. The gifts seem to be endless once you take time to look.

Even those who live in inner cities receive the gift each morning of the breaking dawn, signaling the possibility of a new day. As my new favorite poet, John O’Donohue says, “You never know what will land on the shoreline of tomorrow.”

So sure, material gifts like ice chests and toasters and, for that matter, new Michael Kors purses are okay. But the gifts I prefer remind me that I live in a galaxy that is one of a gazillion galaxies that has hundreds of billions of stars and enough gas and dust to make hundreds of billions more.

And because of my inseverable connection to this expanding, cosmic mystery, I have the responsibility to also create new things.

I believe that’s why all of us are here. To behold our wonderous gifts and to keep the creation going.