LOA – Page 45 – Pam Grout

Do your beliefs block the flow of the world’s limitless abundance?

March 15, 2013 4 Comments

“A child of God is a magnet for all things good.”
–Marianne Williamson

I’m more or less illiterate when it comes to anything electrical. I know what a plug looks like and I know how to attach it to a wall socket. Beyond that, I draw a blank.

But there’s a device used in electronics that provides a good metaphor for understanding why some intentions are so easy to manifest and why others seem darned near impossible.

The device is called a resistor and basically (All you electricians out there, please forgive my simplistic explanation) what it does is reduce the amount of electrical current flowing through a circuit. Resistors limit the number of electrons that can flow past a given point at any one time.

Our beliefs about ourselves and about the way the world works serve as resistors, blocking the flow of the world’s limitless abundance. Our beliefs are the brakes that stop the natural, always-flowing current of good.

Let me give you an example. Most people believe money is limited and hard to come by. That’s a resistor.

On the other hand, they don’t believe health or intelligence is limited. Just because I’m healthy doesn’t mean you can’t be healthy, too. Steven Hawking’s brilliant intellect doesn’t prevent Matt Groening or Steven Spielberg from using their brain power.

But when it comes to abundance, the belief there’s only so much to go around is a big, fat resistor, much better at blocking the flow than tungsten, carbon and other popular resistors.

The other family-size resistor is believing you know how to best accomplish a particular goal. Let’s take traveling, a popular intention for many. Most people I talk to believe the best way to become a world traveler is to get a job so they can accumulate enough money and vacation time to visit say, Cape Town or Monte Carlo or even Denver, Colorado.

I, on the other hand, had no expectations one way or another. I knew I had a burning desire to travel, but I had nary a clue how to make that happen. What I did have is the wherewithal to acknowledge I had no clue. It was abundantly clear to me that if I was going to jet around the world, my only option was to give it up to the universe.

I let it go completely, trusting the universe was a heck of a lot smarter and more abundant than me.

Instead of following the “accepted path” of slaving away and accumulating money and vacation time, I now travel for free. The universe led me into travel writing, an occupation I’m not even sure I knew existed when I first made the declaration that I wanted to be a world traveler.

Money? Who needs money?

In the world of electronics, resistors sometimes come in handy (they can create heat and light), but for me, who longs for a life of ease and grace, I prefer to keep the flow as wide open as I possibly can.

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

Let the universe do the heavy lifting.

March 14, 2013 6 Comments

“Thank you for lifting this corner of the curtain so I can see the Truth, maybe for just a moment, but in a way that might change life forever.”
—Ann Lamott

As anyone who has read my book, E-Squared, knows, I’m prone to looking for and acting on signs from the Big Guy. Recently, I’ve had two questions about the same issue so that tells me it’s time to address.

Here’s the question: “What if I make an intention and it doesn’t happen?”

First and foremost, DO NOT BEAT YOURSELF UP! Do not ask yourself, “What am I doing wrong?” Do not make the erroneous conclusion that the universe does not have your back.

In fact, the very best tact when you’re unable to find your intention is to say, “THANK YOU!!!” “Thank you for showing me that I still have..…oh, maybe just a tad bit of resistance.”

And then go out and do something really fun, something that makes you sing with joy. If you can’t think of even one thing that makes you smile, that’s a sure sign your channels of love and joy are not as open as they could be. Again, no biggie. Feel free to borrow one of the many things I do when I notice my channels are blocked with twigs of negativity and self-doubt:

** Dance around the house. Put on some lively music and go for it.

** Get a stack of dollar bills and go out and give them away. I know a guy who uses hundys, but I’m still more comfortable using ones.

** Sing a happy song as loud as you possibly can.

Your only job (and that word probably demonstrates part of the problem) is to go out and get happy. When you’re happy, life works. In fact, number one on my hit parade of intentions is something I borrowed from Yogi Bhajan: “To make myself so happy that others get happy just looking at me.”

When manifesting, you’ve undoubtedly heard that “How is not up to you.” These days, I’m not even so sure “What” is the best strategy. I prefer to focus on “Why?”

Why do I want money? So I can have an amazingly awesome time.
Why do I want to write books and blog posts? So I can use my God-given gifts.
Why do I want a meaningful, expanding relationship? So I can be a more loving person.

That’s what all of us really want—to have an amazingly awesome time, to use our gifts, to be loving human beans. And I’ve discovered that when I start “being” those things, the “whats” flow like a hawk in a tail wind.

The universe wants to give us every good thing. It is only our resistance that stops it from stampeding towards us like a herd of wild mustangs.

“You are here to fly at full wingspan, for the glory of the One who sent you.”–Marianne Williamson

March 8, 2013 3 Comments

“It’s right underneath your fingers, baby. That’s all you have to understand. Everything is right underneath your fingers. –Ray Charles

When a kindergartner bails off the monkey bars, the principle of gravity works even though he has no clue what gravity is or how to pronounce it. Likewise, spiritual principles are at work in your life whether you understand them, can pronounce them, or even want them.

Take a standard 8-1/2 by 11-inch piece of paper. If you drop it from shoulder level, it’ll most likely fall to the ground. But if you take that same piece of paper, fold it just right, add a paper clip to the bottom, you can sail it across the average Burger King.

The paper still weighs the same. It’s still the same color, the same texture. But by applying the principles of velocity, force and lift, you make what used to be an “impossible thing” possible.

Seven hundred thousand pound planes now fly through the air, not because we changed the law of gravity, but because Wilbur and Orville Wright learned higher laws that transcend it.

By learning and applying spiritual laws, you, too, can transcend anything. Once you discover that the world operates according to universal spiritual principles that, like gravity influence your life at every moment, you can fling wide the doors of creativity, love and joy. And here’s the kicker. These spiritual principles are more profound than physical laws and affect your life whether you’re aware of their existence or not.

Any light blub with a working filament and an electric current has the potential to light up a room. It doesn’t matter whether that light bulb is big or small, round or square, yellow or white. It doesn’t matter where it’s been or how it was used in the past. If a light is plugged to its source, it’s going to dispense light.

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

“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.

“Everybody is a magnet, attracting to themselves that which they are.” –David Hawkins

February 28, 2013 4 Comments

“Don’t worry. Be happy.”
–Bobby McFerrin

Okay, so you’ve made some goals, set some intentions. But, so far, nothing has shown up. Wanna know why?

You’re trying too hard. You’re trying to force things instead of just relaxing and connecting with the power and genius of the universe.

See this picture. It’s green bean seeds from Experiment No# 6 (The Superhero Principle) in my book, E-Squared.

The reader who sent me this picture made the intention that the back row of seeds would grow faster than the front row.

It worked like a charm, because she knew there was nothing she could personally do to make those green beans grow faster. Except be willing. She had to surrender and believe that her focus and attention was enough.

With most goals and intentions, the ones where there’s something we perceive we should do, we think surrender is not an option. We insist on trying to make our intentions happen. We use force, we manipulate. We get personally involved instead of letting go and letting the majesty of the universe do its glorious thing. The tactic of aggressiveness sometimes works, but it invariably employs “weak energy,” an energy that will always play second fiddle to the simple power of willingness.

Willingness brings openness and flexibility and new possibilities. It’s the prerequisite for changing anything in your life, the starting point for manifesting goodness.

I understand your desire to push, to go, go, go. It’s the cultural norm. We’ve all heard some version of these statements:

“You have to fight for what you want in this world.”

“You have to put your nose to the grindstone.”

“Nothing comes easy.”

“If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.”

But there is another way. And it’s simple willingness.

By cultivating a willing mind and being willing to approach things in a new way, you’ll come from a place of power. You’ll find an energy that unifies, that encourages wholeness.

Yes, this energy is invisible (making it a lot harder to trust for some folks), but, in reality, it’s more tangible and powerful than forcing and grunting and groaning will ever be.

To change your life for the better, you simply connect with the power of the universe and then step back and allow it all to unfold with ease and grace.

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

“What is the most important thing we can think about in this most extraordinary moment?”–Buckminster Fuller

February 27, 2013 2 Comments

“Seek the highest that is in you.”
–Lundbergh

The quality of our life is in direct proportion to the questions we ask. If we ask important questions, we’ll get important answers. The universe will always match us question for question, answer whatever it is we ask.

So why not ask big questions, think big thoughts? Why not ask, “What if?” on a daily basis.

Instead of “How can I stretch this paycheck to the end of the month?’ we should ask, “What can I give that would make me sing with joy?”

Instead of wondering, “What’s the closing price on Janus worldwide?” or “How much is the shank loin at Safeway today?,” we should be asking, “How can I grow into the loving, wise, inspiring person I am meant to be?”

Everyday, I like to ask myself what I call “miracle questions.” I like to ponder big things.

Anything is possible, but we have to imagine it first. The more big questions we ask, the more we dare to say, “What would it look like if….?,” the bigger our lives will become. Putting your attention on something calls it into existence. We can literally reshape and redesign our lives by asking bigger questions.

Here are three big questions for starters:

1. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

2. What one thing can I do today to bring wonder and brilliance to my awareness?

3. How would I live my life if I were the only person on the planet?

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

“Perception selects, and makes the world you see.”–Course in Miracles

February 25, 2013 7 Comments

“The world is only in the mind of its maker.”
–Course in Miracles

Who in their right mind would walk into a restaurant, take a look at the menu and then order the dish they least desire?

Likewise, who would go shopping at Nordstrom’s and opt to carry the rack’s ugliest outfit up to the sales counter?

Yet, that’s what most of us do in our thinking, in our conversations. We focus on things we don’t want to happen. We focus on the fear, on the negative, on the lack.

And those decisions have a much bigger impact on your life than one ugly dress or a dish you can’t stand. You literally draw out from the universe whatever you focus upon. In other words, you get what you order. It’s an unalterable law.

Some make the argument that they can’t help what they think, that they have no control over the thoughts that pop into their minds. If you want to continue to believe that, it’s your choice. But just so you know, that argument is a monster-sized bucket of bull.

At every moment, we make the choice where we focus our energy. Always. One hundred percent of the time.

I’m not denying that our minds habitually return to the worn-out groove of thoughts we’ve had in the past and that it takes some re-training to start a new habit of focusing only on what we want, but we have the capacity to do it.

And, I hope you’ll join me in focusing only on new possibilities, on love, on what our world could become. Yes, it’s a radical thought, but it sure as heck beats thinking about the same ole, same ole from yesterday.

I’d love to see comments from people. What are you choosing to focus on from here on out?

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

What distinguishes the people who are living their dreams and those who are not? Thoughts, nothing but thoughts.

February 15, 2013 4 Comments

Here it is, 4:30 my time, and the day has gotten away from me. Like every day, miracles have lined up to greet me and blessings have called out my name. As I get ready for next week’s South Pacific adventure to the Cook Islands, I’d like to share this quote from Rhonda Byrne who was interviewed earlier this month by bookish.com, a new outing by USA Today and six U.S. publishers.

Daniel Lefferts, the interviewer, posed a question that many people ask.

What advice would you give to people who have a hard time believing in the law of attraction but want to?

Here’s what she said: “Our thoughts seem so insignificant but, in truth, they have created and continue to create our world and our individual lives. Try and find a single thing that has not been created by thought. The way we feel about other people and interact with other people comes from our own thoughts. We can’t speak without thought. Any action we take, even to lift our arm or to stand up, comes from thought. Cars, planes, railways, buildings, cities, ships, technology, music, art and all things created by human beings not only began with thought but were created and materialized through thought. We accomplish our work through thought, and live every moment of our day through our thoughts. If you really examine everything in the world, you will realize that it was thought that caused it and created it. And so then ask yourself, if human beings have built everything there is from thought, how can I say that thought is not powerful? What distinguishes the people who are living the life of their dreams and those who are not? The ones who are living the life of their dreams thought they could do it, and those who are not, didn’t think they could do it.

And here’s what I say in E-Squared: Okay, just say it: “How can something as simple as a thought influence the world?” Let me just point out that a hundred years ago nobody would have believed songs sung by a bunch of American Idol contestants could pass through brick, glass, wood, and steel to get from a transmitter tower to your television set, either. Nobody would have believed a cell phone no bigger than a deck of cards would allow you to talk to your sister 2,000 miles away.

Your thoughts, like the 289 TV channels and like your voice on the cell phone, are vibrational waves. When you hear Eminem rapping about his daughter Hailie, your eardrum is catching a vibrational sound wave. When you see Brad Pitt’s cane or Madonna’s single leather glove (accessories they wore to the 2012 Golden Globes), you’re seeing patterns of vibrational light waves.

And that’s what your thoughts are—vibrational energy waves that interact and influence the Field of Potentiality (FP). Every thought you have, have ever had, or ever will have creates a vibration that goes out into the FP, extending forever. These vibrations meet other vibrations, crisscrossing in an incredible maze of energy. Get enough energy together and it clumps into matter. Remember what Einstein said—matter is formed out of energy.

The field of potentiality simply follows the energy you send out. And your thought vibrations draw similar vibrations. Here’s one small example: A few years ago, I remember thinking I wanted a potato masher. I didn’t mention it to anyone. I just made a mental note: Next time you’re at Walmart, buy a potato masher. That very night, my friend Wendy, who was cleaning out her drawers, stopped by with a couple of no-longer-needed cooking utensils, including a potato masher.

Another time, I decided I needed more laughter in my life. Within a couple weeks, I began dating Todd, a funny co-worker who eventually became a comedian.

The coincidences we see in our lives are just energy and the FP at work. Most of the time, we employ energy inadvertently, totally oblivious to the fact that what we think, say, and do makes a difference. Consequently, we constantly activate this power to follow the patterns we already believe in.

People think Jesus is the be-all and end-all, because he was so good at manipulating energy and matter. But, as he so poignantly pointed out (although these aren’t his exact words), “You, too, are da’ man.”

From struggling single mom to multi-millionaire

February 12, 2013 1 Comment

“In dreams there are no impossibilities.”
–Janos Arany

Caryn Johnson always knew she wanted to be an actor. In fact, she says her first coherent thought was, “Man, I’d love to act.”

Even though she grew up in the New York projects, theater and what she called “pretending to be somebody else” was a big part of her life. This was back in the days when Joe Papp brought free Shakespeare on trucks to her neighborhood in Chelsea. She also watched lots of movies with her brother, Clyde, and her mom, Emma, who was raising the two kids on a single salary.

“When I saw Carole Lombard coming down some stairs in a long satin thingy, I thought, I can do that,” she says. “I wanted to come down those stairs and say those words and live that life. You could be anything, up there in the movies. You could fly. You could meet alien life forms. You could be a queen. You could sleep in a great big bed, with satin sheets in your own room.”

By the time she was 8, she was acting for the Hudson Guild Community Center, a children’s daycare/theater/arts program, also near her neighborhood.

Her life took a detour in high school when her dyslexia caused her to get mistakenly classified as “slow, possibly retarded.” She dropped out of school, became a junkie and forgot all about her acting dream. By the time she was 19, she was a single mom herself.

The good news is she HAD kicked the drugs. In fact, her daughter’s father was the drug counselor who helped her get off the junk. But the bad news is he wasn’t cut out to be a father. He split a few months after Alexandrea was born.
Caryn was a high school dropout with no skills. In fact, the only thing she knew how to do was take care of kids. She took a job as a nanny and moved to Lubbock, Texas with the friend who hired her. Eventually, the friend moved to San Diego and Caryn and her daughter gladly followed.

When the relationship went south, she found herself stuck in California with no money and no skills. She didn’t even know how to drive, a major hindrance in freeway-happy California.

“I had no high school diploma,” she says. “All I had was me, and my kid.”

Oh, yeah, and that “Man, I’d love to act” dream. During the day, she learned to lay bricks, went to cosmetology school. At night, she played around with an experimental theater troupe. For a while, she did hair and makeup for a funeral home supplementing her income with a welfare check, “worrying about how to get my kid more than one pair of shoes, or how to make $165 worth of groceries last for a month.”

Through it all, she continued to believe that “anything is possible.” She continued to believe that she could be like Carole Lombard, floating down stairs in satin.

“Acting is the one thing I always knew I could do,” she says.

Her unwavering belief finally unlocked the door. In 1983, famed Hollywood director Mike Nichols happened to catch her performance in an Berkeley experimental troupe, the Black Street Hawkeyes. He was so blown away by the characters she played that he signed her immediately for a one-woman performance, the Spook Show, on Broadway. Steven Spielberg caught that show and cast her as Celie in The Color Purple. By then, she’d changed her name to Whoopi Goldberg.

“No one ever expressed this idea that I was limited to any one thing, and so I think it terms of what’s possible, not impossible,” Whoopi says in her memoir, Book. “I knew that if you come to a thing with no preconceived notions of what that thing is, the whole world can be your canvas.

“Just dream it and you can make it so. I believed a little girl could rise from a single-parent household in the Manhattan projects, start a single-parent household of her own, struggle though seven years of welfare and odd jobs and still wind up making movies.

“So, yea, I think anything is possible. I know it because I have lived it. I know it because I have seen it. I have witnessed things that ancients have called miracles, but they are not miracles. They are the products of someone’s dream. As human beings, we are capable of creating a paradise, and making each other’s lives better by our own hands. Yes, yes, yes…this is possible.

“If something hasn’t happened, it’s not because it can’t happen, or won’t: it just hasn’t happened yet.”

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

Mean people don’t suck: The Rosetta Stone for “Knowing thy Enemy”

February 11, 2013 6 Comments

Once, in a three-bedroom pension in Austria, I got locked in a tiny bathroom. I hollered out to my hosts, “Help! I can’t open the lock.” They spoke no English so obviously they didn’t rush to my aid. Instead, they probably scratched their head, wondering what the crazy American girl was yammering about so early in the morning.

Not wanting to miss even an hour of my fabulous solo Eurail adventure, I got louder and louder in my attempts to arouse their assistance. Finally, they came to the door and started asking what I presumed were questions, but since I speak no German, I had no idea what they were asking.

This story (and, yes, for those who are wondering, I finally did get free from that tiny 3-foot by 4-foot lock-up) demonstrates what I think is going on in the world today, particularly American politics. People are speaking two different languages.

Since I’ve spent much of my life writing books about what I consider to be the biggest secret in the world (that we all really love each other), I’d like to offer some translation assistance:

1. What they say: Life Sucks
What they really mean: I’ve memorized an emotional state of suffering and have set up neural pathways that can see little else. Secretly, I know the world is beautiful.

2. What they say: You suck
What they really mean: I’ve picked up cues from my background that suggest you’re different from me. So I’m scared and prefer to keep my distance. In reality, I love you and know we are one.

3. What they say: Your politics suck.
What they mean: I’ve learned this unfortunate habit of jumping to conclusions and shutting out all evidence that differs from my safety zone. I’d really like to shut up long enough to hear what you have to say. I know we have more in common than we have differences.

Or if that fails, do what I do. Play the opposite game. When people start spouting unhappiness, inanities and misinformation, I know they’re simply replaying old tapes and need my love more than ever.

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