“What good are all the courses, initiations and headstands if, in the end, the ego does the leading.”—Tosha Silver
You wouldn’t go on a date without brushing your teeth.
Or write a resume without adding your phone number.
So why do we persist in starting our days without tuning into the Divine Buzz?
This Divine Buzz, F.P. (take your pick) is a loving force, folks, that wants nothing but to connect with us, to guide us, to bestow upon us every blessing we could possibly think up and a bunch we haven’t even come up with yet.
But instead of tuning in to this ocean of awesomeness, we’re tuned into this other frequency that limits the transmission. Anne Lamott recently wrote about a book signing in Wichita, Kansas where she was, as she describes it, “in whiny baby mode.”
On that transmission, the mothership couldn’t locate her. Couldn’t help her transcend her bad mood.
But by tuning into the frequency of gratitude, the “oh yea! I’m an author and I get to travel around and meet my readers. How cool is that?,” the “mothership” came to the rescue.
The mothership is always circling, always waiting with answers to every single need. Our only mission, and why wouldn’t we choose to accept it, is to stay on that frequency of gratitude where it can get through.
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 the just-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.
“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” –Aibilene Clark, from the book and movie, The Help
This is a shout-out to the anonymous person who taped uplifting affirmations to the bathroom stall at the Sandbar’s new sub shop in Lawrence, Kansas.
Your words reminding me that “I am beautiful. I am powerful. I am capable of great things” made me so happy and reminded me that the simplest of things, the tiniest of actions can impact the world.
Your affirming words not only added joy to my day, but they elevated the energy of every person I encountered from that moment forward.
I once saw a comic strip where the boss scolded his employee who went home and took it out on his wife who then screamed at the kids. In the last frame, the toddler is sitting outside on the front porch shaking her finger at the puzzled dog.
That boss had no idea the chain of events he started when he chose to criticize rather than encourage.
You’re probably heard of the parlor game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, which suggests that any two people on earth are, on average, a mere six acquaintance links apart.
I like to think of those beautiful human bonds when I get discouraged, overwhelmed by the issues in the news. It’s tempting to wonder what I, one solitary person from Kansas, can do to solve the political chasm, what I, a single mom with a couple twitter followers, can do to stop gun violence.
And then I remember. I can invite my neighbor over for ham and eggs. I can bake a casserole for the new mom that just came home from the hospital.
Yes, we’re all different, have varying political beliefs and religious affiliations. But every last one of us eventually shows up in the same bathroom stall.
One tiny sheet of paper. Five simple lines. Tiny actions sending beautiful ripples out into the universe.
Leave a comment below with the words you’d like to leave on the door of your bathroom stall.
Pam Grout is the author of 16 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.
“I pray for the change in perception that will let me see bigger and sweeter realities.”
–Ann Lamott
My favorite thing in the whole world is miracles. I’ve been a student of ‘A Course in Miracles’ for 25 or so years. The TV series I created is set in an ecovillage called Milagro Springs. Milagro, of course, is Spanish for miracle. And I spend my life looking for miracles which, according to my way of thinking, is actually recognizing Truth.
Miracles are natural and normal and happen all the time…once we give up antiquated ways of thinking.
I also love sharing miracles. My new friend Michelle Dobbins, who writes the fabulous blog, Daily Alchemy, devotes Monday to shout-outs or what she calls “Monday raves.” As she says, it’s a time to notice and get excited about the wonderful things in our lives. For more above raves, she suggests Lola Jones. Check out Lola’s fun and fabulous rave movie here.
So it’s Rave Monday (thank you Michelle) and I’d like to take this opportunity to rave about the following two miracles:
The first happened to my friend, Kris. Over the weekend, she lost a favorite necklace. It fell off sometime before, during or after a party. Because there’s snow on the ground, she knew it could be anywhere, buried deep in a bank of snowflakes. At first, she freaked out. It’s her favorite necklace. She frantically began retracing her steps, digging through snow in front of the party, exhausting herself with mental energy—“Oh, no! How will I ever find my necklace in this weather?”
And then suddenly, she got it. That energy, that fear and crazy belief that finding it would be hard could only keep the necklace away. She began to affirm how easy it is to find misplaced items. Within a couple hours, she found a phone that had disappeared a few months ago, a pair of sewing scissors she’d been looking for and one other thing that had mysteriously gone missing.
Her partner went back over to the party and within minutes, called, “Hey, your necklace was right there in a snow drift in front of the house.”
The other miracle happened to yours truly. To set the scene, I have to tell you that my hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, has a really cool, old school downtown with lots of coffee shops, local boutiques and art galleries. We are very proud of our downtown and worked hard to….shall we say…dissuade a big mall from coming in. But the downtown Parking Nazis are rabid. If you park downtown and don’t deposit a quarter or two (hey, what can I say? It’s dirt cheap), you’re going to return to find a yellow envelope under your windshield wiper. Sometimes two or three. It’s as sure as the sun coming up.
I was running late (as usual) to meet my friend, Joyce, for lattes on Saturday. I jetted across the street and remembered, “Ah shucks. I forgot to feed the parking meter.” But I was late and lazy and decided to just make the intention that a wall of protection would surround my car. I do this a lot when I’m driving. Fast forward two and a half hours. Yes, Joyce and I can really talk. I go back to my little car, innocently sitting there with NO TICKETS!!! In fact, the parking meter had 45 minutes to go. So thank you, kind person who fed my parking meter and thank you, universe, for responding (AS ALWAYS) to my last-minute intention. Life is so good!!!!
Pam Grout is the author of E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.
“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” –Aibilene Clark, from the book and movie, The Help
I’m sending a shout-out today to the anonymous person that taped uplifting affirmations to the bathroom stall at Mirth Café in Lawrence, Kansas. Your words reminding me that “I am beautiful. I am powerful. I am capable of great things” made me so happy and reminded me that the simplest of things, the tiniest of actions can impact the world.
Your affirming words not only added joy to my day, but they elevated the energy of every person I encountered from that moment forward.
I once saw a comic strip where the boss scolded his employee who went home and took it out on his wife who then screamed at the kids. In the last frame, the toddler is sitting outside on the front porch shaking her finger at the puzzled dog.
That boss had no idea the chain of events he started when he chose to criticize rather than encourage.
You’re probably heard of the parlor game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, which suggests that any two people on earth are, on average, a mere six acquaintance links apart.
I like to think of those beautiful human bonds when I get discouraged, overwhelmed by the issues in the news. It’s tempting to wonder what I, one solitary person from Kansas, can do to solve the political chasm, what I, a single mom with a couple twitter followers, can do to stop gun violence.
And then I remember. I can invite my neighbor over for ham and eggs. I can bake a casserole for the new mom that just came home from the hospital.
Yes, we’re all different, have varying political beliefs and religious affiliations. But every last one of us eventually shows up in the same bathroom stall.
One tiny sheet of paper. Five simple lines. Tiny actions sending beautiful ripples out into the universe.
Leave a comment below with the words you’d like to leave on the door of your bathroom stall.
“What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs?”
–A Course in Miracles
Every town has one. The mumbling guy on the street. The woman in all-black who frequents coffee shops carrying a three-foot cross. Those intriguing characters that always make you wonder. In Lawrence, Kansas, where I live, we have a whole contingency of such characters. Dennis, who typically wears a Spiderman outfit, never leaves home without his “daughter” Cheryl, a plastic doll he either carries or pushes in a stroller. Over the years, Cheryl has “grown up” from a baby doll to a bigger doll until now she’s the size of a storefront mannequin which, in truth, she actually is.
Pranksters kidnapped Cheryl the other day and the local police force, taking it quite seriously, put out an A.P.B., which thankfully resulted in an immediate recovery. Dennis and Cheryl are local celebrities. Dennis even has his own fanpage on Facebook.
The point I’m trying to make is that Dennis is no different than the rest of us. His world, although a slight deviation from what’s considered normal, is very real to him. Just as the world we’ve made up in our minds is very real to us. But both—Dennis’ world and the world we “see” and believe in with such a tenacious grip—is fiction. Neither constitutes Reality.
Reality, according to physicists who study these things, is that we are all connected. We are all one. In fact, the biggest secret in the world is we all really love each other.
We only “see” this other reality, this separate, divided, ugly world, because we imagine it to be that way. Illusions are as strong in their effects as is truth.
Because we continue to repeat and believe in the world we see on the six o’clock news, we continue to see the all hell-breaking-loose world of destruction and limits. Because dodging minefields is our source of vision, we continue to see a world of doom. Through our rote insistence on fear, we have created a fearful world.
But it’s no more real than the world of Dennis.
We have enslaved the world with our fears, doubts and miseries. By simply changing our vision, by imagining what “could be” instead of believing in “what we think is” we can literally change the world. The inner always creates the outer.
Instead of swimming in the insane culture-wide obsession with pathology, we should revel in the endless flood of miracles.
Isn’t it time to give up the world we keep re-running in our mind, to overthrow the status quo? A new more imaginative and free world is possible. But we must retrain ourselves to look through optimistic eyes. To say “thank you” and recognize all the beauty and largesse in our lives.
