Lawrence – Pam Grout

Hitch a ride on the magic carpet

February 18, 2020 7 Comments

“Enchantment is never in short supply.”—Bayo Akomolafe

I live in a college town. Right across the river is a funky little downtown with a wide assortment of late-night entertainment—bands, comics, pubs, deejays. Let’s just say adult beverages are frequently consumed.

If you show up the next morning, there’s always money laying around. Sometimes even $100 bills. A few locals I know fund their entire existence from the loose change.

But you gotta know to look for it.

Just like life’s magic. If you don’t slow down, if you’re not open, if you refuse to dive below the surface madness, you could miss it. Lots of people do.

That’s why I love the miracle stories that so frequently land in my inbox. Why I love sharing them with you–to remind you that, “you gotta know to look.” Ergo:

1. “I am reading your latest book The CIM Experiment and can’t tell you how much it has changed me. This morning I was mailing a box to my grandson in Georgia. As I took my box to the car in the garage, I noticed a small piece of pink paper drift to the floor. It was the return address from an envelope my grandson had sent. I figured it must have somehow gotten on my clothes and just happened to fall to the floor in the garage.

“When I got to the PO, the clerk told me I had the zip code wrong. I whipped out the torn piece of paper and sure enough.

“Miracles happen everyday. Who says the Big Kahuna isn’t there always guiding you, helping you, loving you? When I realized what had just happened, my heart filled with joy and I drove down the snow-covered roads of Michigan with a smile on my face and joy in my heart. I am loved! Before you, I doubt I would have even thought about this small incident.”

2. “The last 12 months have been some of the happiest, most peaceful, and most abundant of my life. I owe so much of that to your books.

“Earlier this year a friend invited me to go to Italy with him. I didn’t have a ton of money or interest in Italy but I thought “sure, could be fun!” So I went. My flight home was two days after his so I had some extra time in Italy by myself at the end of the trip. I was flying out of Rome so I thought I’d just book a hostel in Rome and hang out for two nights. But there was a part of me that wanted to go back to Naples to meet up with a girl I matched with on Tinder.

“It was going to be more expensive, a couple hundred dollars, to take trains in and out of Naples, but I decided to take a chance on the most exciting option and head to Naples. Finances be damned!

“I had THE BEST time in Naples. I saw wonderful things, made new friends, and my heart was full. Then, on my way back to the USA, I had a layover in Dublin. My flight out of Rome was delayed so I missed my connection. The next flight to LA wasn’t until the next day so they put me up in a hotel in Dublin for the night and gave me two delicious free meals. On top of that, the airline sent me a check for $670 for the inconvenience! So the cost of my impromptu Naples excursion was covered with about $400 to spare! Wooh! I couldn’t believe that the money truly did come in to make that “foolish” adventure possible.”

I can’t thank you enough, guys, for continuing to bless me with your miracle stories.

I will be announcing the recipients of this year’s 222 grant on……2/22. Stay tuned, my friends.

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest book, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

Moving towards the “thing” that gives you goose bumps

May 15, 2017 12 Comments

“What I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts.”—Mary Oliver

The facts of the dominant paradigm insist you can never write a book, be a comedian, make it as an artist.

But facts are only placeholders until the higher truth emerges. That’s why it’s so important to keep moving towards the “thing” that gives you goose bumps.

Back in February, the Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj gave a show at Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Kansas.

He told a touching story about his dream to be a comedian. He grew up in a small university town, was a nerd, a smart kid. He studied political science in college. But after seeing Chris Rock’s standup show, “Never Scared,” he got the goose bumps. It was the big one, the thing he wanted to do.

He started making comedy YouTube videos of him with a photoshopped Conan O’Brien. He put that vision in his mind. He started moving in that direction.

Today, you’ll find plenty of YouTube videos of the nerdy immigrant kid from the small college town—only now they’re of his one-man show, or of him on The Daily Show or as emcee of the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.

Anything can be manifested, but you gotta start with a vision.

What gives you goose bumps, my friends?

Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the recently released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.

Why the parlor game “Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon” gives us hope

October 18, 2013 71 Comments

“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.

“Without the distraction of the world’s guidance, you can finally hear your own undivided genius.” –Tama Kieves

March 29, 2013 4 Comments

“The instant it is welcome it is there.” –Course in Miracles

Earlier this week, Jewels Johnson, the creative mastermind behind the ever-inspiring Law of Attraction Radio sent me an email with this message: “I want you to write a script. It’s about this amazing humanitarian who knows Nelson Mandela, Prince Charles and the Dalai Lama. Richard Branson will bankroll.”

I had to smile as I wrote back, “Yea, I know.”

I knew because I made the intention several years ago to win an Oscar. While I’ve done everything I know how to do (written a couple amazing scripts, had plays produced here in the Midwest, sent a few pitches to Hollywood agents), I had no idea how a writer from Lawrence, Kansas, with exactly zero contacts in the movie biz, was going to make that happen.

What I did know is that if I focused solely on the end result, letting go of all seemingly brilliant schemes on my part, I wouldn’t be required to work out the details.

In fact, any attempt from me could only get in the way. Trying to work out the process of how something will happen is invariably our biggest stumbling block.

Here’s why: By concentrating on how to work something out, you’re making the assumption it’s not already worked out. If you made the intention, it’s worked out, awaiting your consciousness to tune into the right radio station.

The other boo-boo of trying to “work it out” is coming up with a finite plan, a process for getting from A to B. We think we know how everything should work and we don’t have a clue. Our planning sets up nothing but limits.

Here’s an example. Everybody wants to win the lottery.

There’s nothing wrong with winning the lottery, but that’s a very finite way to achieve abundance. The Universe (the field of potentiality, God, whatever you choose to call it) is infinite. It can create abundance in three thousand bazillion (and even that number is a limit) ways. So by intending to win the lottery, you give the Universe a grand total of one option.

I much prefer to rely on Its plan which is always so much cooler, so much more exciting than anything my mind can conceive.

As always when making an intention, I simply have to remove all blocks (normal human fears), open the gates and let it come pouring in.

And, as I will repeat again and again, we let our dreams flow in by focusing on “unceasing joy” and knowing that all the world’s goodness is our birthright. Let the universe haggle with the details.

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

“Man is all imagination.” –William Blake

March 26, 2013 4 Comments

“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.

“Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” –Roald Dahl

March 4, 2013 4 Comments

“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.

How the parlor game “Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon” gives us hope

January 17, 2013 1 Comment

“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.

Don’t face reality. Change reality.

December 4, 2012 No Comments

“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.