meditation – Pam Grout

The most important thing

September 13, 2019 20 Comments

“We all have the opportunity, the privilege, the responsibility to give our best to life.”—Lynne Twist

A Course in Miracles makes no bones.

If you truly want to partake in the spiritual transformation it promises, you have to first master your mind.

To underestimate the mind’s immense power is a huge mistake. How we think is the determining factor in every aspect of our life.

This ACIM staple was demonstrated last weekend when 19-year-old Bianca Andreescu became the first Canadian to win the US Open. Her win over Serena Williams was a huge surprise to everyone….except her.

Andreescu has been visualizing winning Grand Slams, down to the holding up of the trophy, since she was 14. She even wrote herself a fake winner’s check when she was 15.

“A lot of people work on the physical part of things,” she says, “but the mental part is the most important. It controls your whole body.”

Andreescu gets up every morning and meditates, clearing her mind of all thoughts of the past and the future.

Although she didn’t cop to using my “Something amazingly awesome is going to happen to me today,” she did admit to taking “15 minutes every morning to visualize myself having a good day.”

As Martina Navratilova noted about her tennis game, “Everyone knows how to bang the ball. Andreescu brings the something extra that makes all the difference.”

“It’s so crazy, man,” Andreescu said after besting Williams 6-3, 7-5 last Saturday. “I’ve been dreaming of this moment for the longest time.

The $3.85 million she pocketed, a sum she manifested to help fly her parents to her many international matches, proves what the Course preaches and what Andreescu has been practicing since she was 14. As they both say, “We create our reality with our mind.”

Speaking of creating reality, I want to thank you all for your interest in my new Course in Miracles book. I’m told by Hay House that the landing page (where you can pre-order and get the gifts I mentioned) should debut in early November.

Now, go out there, my friends, and have the most epic, the most extraordinary weekend of your entire life.

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest book, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

No longer listening to my brain’s cliff notes

August 22, 2018 12 Comments

“Thinking the physical world is all that matters is like shutting oneself up in a small closet and imagining there is nothing beyond it.”—Eben Alexander

gabby One of the great joys in my life is knowing the universe is so much bigger than anything I can conceive, in knowing that miracles (or what we call miracles) reside right on the other side of the veil I’ve imposed with my very limited brain.

As cool as the brain is, a veritable network of millions of neural pathways, it actually puts up a tremendous barrier to Truth. It limits, it takes all the available input and boils it down to what I call “Cliff Notes for Dummies.”

Sadly, our Cliff Notes are restricted to what we’ve decide to let in, to what we’ve erroneously pick up from our culture, our family upbringing and the six o’clock news.

As the Course in Miracles reminds us, we would be astounded, literally blown away, if we had even the slightest idea how many limits we have placed on Reality.

While we’re here, living on this physical plane, we put the brain’s two pounds of wrinkled mass on a pedestal. We believe everything it tells us, listen to its crazy promptings, its tendency to focus on the past and worry about the future. I amaze myself with how much time I sometimes waste thinking about some person who “did me wrong” or about some financial dilemma. Not a good expenditure of my valuable time.

The brain is so NOT reliable that, I believe, our very highest calling is to distract it as often as possible. That’s why meditation is so important, why I proclaim gratitude for everything that happens. These practices put an end (or will eventually) to the crazy person blathering in the brain. Once the brain gets out of the way, Truth can’t help but rise up.

I really hate to knock my brain. It has accomplished a lot in my life, but from here on out, I’d like to officially appoint it as secretary of my neurology, digestive system and other things it’s proficient at and leave the rest to Source, to Truth, to the Reality of Pure Bliss.

Four portals to transcendence

August 13, 2018 22 Comments

“An awake heart is like a sky that pours light.” ― Hafiz
portal

The good news is you can use anything to find God. Beauty, art, even suffering offer portals to life’s transcendent moments.

The trick is to recognize that the Divinity we seek is within us. It’s within every person, within every situation. There are no exceptions to this rule.

The judging mind continually tells us something’s gotta change. This is wrong. You gotta do something and fast.

But when, as ACIM Lesson 225 tells us, we finally recognize the Divine in everything, it becomes obvious. And we wonder, “How could I not have seen it, this presence that permeates all things?” It’s conspicuously apparent.

In the meantime, here are my favorite portals, the ones I use most frequently to shut down the asshat in the brain that taunts and tempts me to believe in a hologram that it made up:

1. Meditation. Katy Perry, Hugh Jackman, Madonna, Clint Eastwood and Kristen Bell are just a few celebs who use meditation to find inner peace. (another synonym for God)

2. Nature. There’s reams of evidence that the simple act of going outside improves concentration, eliminates headaches, and even eases stress and depression. Tao Master Mantak Chia, who teaches his students to meditate with trees, says trees are natural processors for releasing negative energy. According to the Taoist viewpoint, trees, because they’ve been around for a while, grounded in one place, are able to transmute energy and absorb universal forces.

3. Creativity. When I’m immersed in writing or any other creative pursuit, time literally hangs suspended. At times, it evens feels like I’m touching the hem of the divine. People think they want to write a book or a movie because they want to be David Lynch or Joyce Carol Oates. They want to be interviewed by Oprah. But the real present under the creativity Christmas tree is that joy, serenity and peace become your most ordinary state of being.

4. Gratitude. Practicing gratitude, more than penciling a written list is to practice alchemy. Looking for the good in life literally changes things. Physically changes things. Financially changes things. Mentally and emotionally changes things. It literally rearranges atoms. Living on the frequency of joy and gratitude causes cataclysmic reverberations. It takes you straight to the Divine Buzz.

So doesn’t really matter which portal you use. I just find it comforting to know there are a gazillion paths to God.

“My mind is a bad neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”–Anne Lamott

July 5, 2017 27 Comments

“Thinking the physical world is all that matters is like shutting oneself up in a small closet and imagining there is nothing beyond it.”—Eben Alexander

One of the great joys in my life is knowing the universe is so much bigger than anything I can conceive, in knowing that miracles (or what we call miracles) reside right on the other side of the veil I’ve imposed with my very limited brain.

As cool as the brain is, a veritable network of neural pathways, it actually puts up a tremendous barrier to Truth. It limits, it takes all the available input and boils it down to what I call “Cliff Notes for Dummies.” Sadly, our Cliff Notes are restricted to what we’ve decide to let in, to what we’ve erroneously pick up from our culture, our family upbringing and the six o’clock news.

As the Course in Miracles says we would be astounded, literally blown away, if we had even the slightest idea how many limits we have placed on Reality.

I amaze myself with how much time I sometimes waste thinking about some person who “did me wrong” or about some financial dilemma. Not a good expenditure of my valuable time.

The brain is so NOT reliable that, I believe, our very highest calling is to distract it as often as possible. That’s why meditation is so important. It puts an end (or will eventually) to the crazy person blathering in the brain. Once the brain gets out of the way, Truth can’t help but rise up.

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 about-to-be released, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

What’s in your hologram?

August 1, 2016 15 Comments

“The separated ones have invented many “cures” for what they believe to be “the ills of the world.” But the one thing they do not do is question the reality of the problem.”–A Course in Miracles

We live in a quantum age where people can instantaneously text each other across the planet, repair detached retinas with nothing but laser beams and use little handheld devices to get money-saving Groupons.

Yet, in our thinking, our applications of these new truths, we’re lagging sorely behind. We’re still using industrial age thinking. We’re not using the incredible power of our consciousness. Our consciousness that can and does create worlds.

We’re more than a century into this new quantum reality and we’ve barely budged in our thinking. We haven’t even begun to use these startling new processes in our personal lives. Instead, we invest our thoughts, our power, if you will, in victimhood, in this idea that life happens to us. Our consciousness is mired in old ways of doing things, old ways of thinking.

This warped view of reality wouldn’t be an issue if our thoughts were mere puffs of smoke, blown away by the next breeze.

But our thoughts are insanely powerful.

Like radio signals, our thoughts broadcast our beliefs and expectations out into the quantum field (or what I like to call the Field of Infinite Potentiality) and bring back into our lives an exact vibrational match.

Quantum physicists have proven that it’s impossible for us to look at anything without impacting the thing we’re looking at. It’s called the observer effect and while it has wreaked havoc on everything we thought we knew about the way the world works, it’s actually quite exciting. Because it means:

1. We’re not stuck with the 3-D reality we think is reality.
2. We’re not helpless victims.

What we now know is that everything we think is an objective world “out there” is nothing but a reflection of what exists in here. And by “in here” I mean the consciousness that is doing the observing.

Frank shared a wonderful story yesterday at my Possibility Posse that illustrates this perfectly.

He was subbing at one of the middle schools here in Lawrence. He was running late, didn’t have time to get still, to get his spiritual game on. First period came and went.

“Man,” he thought to himself, “this middle school has the worst kids I’ve ever taught.”

Luckily, the next period was what they call “planning period.”

Since he was a sub and didn’t have anything to plan, he took the 50 minutes and meditated.

And guess what? The kids in periods three through sixth were “the best kids he ever had.”

Remember, folks, the world we see out there is a hologram of what’s in our consciousness.

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 about to be released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy

Invasion of the Body Snatchers has nothing on the bratty voice inside my head

March 29, 2016 36 Comments

“The running commentary that dominates my field of consciousness is kind of an asshole.”—Dan Harris, ABC Nightline Co-anchor

My brain is a magnificent instrument. It keeps track of where I left my keys, remembers that 3 times 9 is 27 and files away lessons on how to drive.

But it often acts as my #1 nemesis.

It doesn’t seem to know when to shut up. It chatters incessantly. It likes to categorize, compare, label, judge and define. It perpetuates the idea that life is a problem to be solved.

It distorts the indestructible field of creativity, joy, beauty and freedom that is right here at any moment I can get my mind to shut the F*&k up.

When the heart over-functions, we get dizzy, light-headed and develop heart disease. When cells over-function, we get cancer.

When our brains over-function, we become slaves to a ridiculous little asshat in our heads that lies through its teeth.

That’s why, whenever I can, I separate myself from the voice. I observe it, notice it’s back on the treadmill, spinning its fearful little stories.

And I smile.

Because I know that its days are numbered. More and more of us are waking up, realizing that the voice is an imposter. We’re getting it that all we have to do is be still. Be still and know.

In the stillness, the Truth that has never ceased to be comes streaming in.

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

Dancing with the Stars…. and the moon and the people in the coffee shop line

November 6, 2014 22 Comments

“Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair…”
― Susan Polis Schutz

Today, I’d like to introduce you to what I consider one of the most important spiritual practices. Erupting into spontaneous dance. In places besides dance floors.

Here are five reasons it’s as important as meditation:

1. It cuts thought off at the knees. All spiritual practice is about getting out of our own way, letting go of all the thoughts that block the Divine Buzz. The majority of our thoughts are boring re-runs from yesterday, the same ole to-do lists, fears and gripes.

And the Truth is that life works just fine without our incessant input. In fact, the more we distract the yammer, the better things actually work. This may seem counterproductive, but your right and perfect path will show up once you quit trying to figure everything out. It’s all the figuring and fretting that keeps it away. Dancing shuts down the mind so Truth can emerge.

2. Dancing puts you on the same wavelength as the F.P. As I’ve repeatedly said, you can’t watch ABC if you’re tuned into NBC. When you’re joyfully dancing, you’re on the same channel as the Big Guy. Which, of course, makes it easier for the F.P. to pour out all those countless blessings with your name on it.

3. It makes other people happy. I spend a lot of time in airports. And for the most part, the thousands of people waiting for flights are doing the same thing. Staring at their cell phones. One day in the Cincinnati airport, my daughter and I spotted (well, there was really no possibility of missing him) this tall gangly young man dancing jubilantly through the terminal. By himself. We were sitting at a Chick Fil A (this is before I began boycotting them) when he zoomed joyfully by. We both began laughing and like the young children in the German fairytale, The Pied Piper, we began to follow him.

Who can forget this wonderful scene from the movie, The Full Monte, where these unemployed steel workers began tapping their feet while waiting in the unemployment line?

4. It heals your body and other ailments. My friend, Betty, is 82. Most of her peers, when they get together, discuss one thing—their health or lack thereof. What she discovered when she took up dancing, the conversation (between Fox Trots) became elevated and people forgot all about their health issues. They actually started having fun, feeling young again.

5. It jars you into a new reality. Worldview 2.0, the exciting new paradigm I write about in E-Cubed, is all about leaving ruts and mental architecture that squeezes us into a tiny, uncomfortable box. Worldview 1.0 includes dancing, of course, but, once we’re grown-up, it only occurs when there’s alcohol and a dance floor. By dancing in places where others don’t expect it, you jump out of the box and your consciousness can’t help but follow. Again, life forms around our beliefs and expectations (our consciousness), so the more we can expand our beliefs and expectations, the bigger toehold life has to flow in.

I’ve shown this one before, but it’s worth repeating…..

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.

Move over, Garmin! Following your joy is the best GPS

September 22, 2014 9 Comments

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.”—Emily Bronte

One afternoon, when Taz was four, she was playing “mom” in the backyard with her friend, Ashley. Ashley had taken her turn being “mom” and had dutifully washed the pretend dishes, hung up the pretend laundry and ordered her pretend daughter, Taz, to pick up her toys.

When Taz’s turn came, she said, “Okay, now I’m the mom. I’m going to go meditate.”

It was one of my proudest moments. My daughter believed that’s what moms do first.

I don’t remember her friend’s response, but I do know this. The most important thing anyone can do for themselves is to get in tune with the Divine Buzz.

You can read all the books, follow all the steps, write affirmations to the moon and back, but unless you begin to feel this invisible, yet palpable buzz, this infinite force that flows through you and connects you to all that is, you will spend your life searching.

It’s all right here. In this moment.

Meditation is one way to feel the Divine Buzz, but there are countless paths. Above all else, align with whatever feels most joyful. This instinctual, incurable buzz is the best GPS I know.

Why I’m rooting for the Seattle Seahawks and why their new game strategy has the power to change the whole world

January 24, 2014 47 Comments

“There are so many things telling you that you can’t do something but you take those thoughts captive, take power over them and change them.”—Russell Okung, Offensive Tackle for the Seattle Seahawks

I don’t consider myself a football fan. I’ve probably watched one game this entire season.

But I just found out (okay, so I’m probably late to the party) that the Seattle Seahawks meditate, that their coach Pete Carroll believes his players should quiet their mind and focus on the now moment and that their star quarterback regularly gets out a yoga mat.

Is this frickin’ awesome or what?

I mean this is a sport known for brutal behavior, where guys like Bear Bryant were ballyhooed for refusing to give water breaks, where coaches throw balls at player’s heads.

So when I found out that Pete Carroll is completely rewriting the sport of football, I got excited. It’s one more notch in my viewfinder that says the world is changing for the better.

We have a new pope who believes in love. We have companies like Patagonia who actually run ads urging us not to buy the jacket. Not only did their fabulous ad campaign own up to the environmental cost of making their R2 coat, but it urged all of us: “Don’t buy what you don’t need. Think twice before you buy anything.”

And now we have a Superbowl team that gets it. A team that is winning and succeeding because they know life shows up according to your thoughts.

Now that I know that the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks recruited his team partly on positive attitude, that he actually cares about the personal lives of his players and that he knows that having a quiet mind and positive thoughts is every bit as important as lifting weights and performing on the field, I’m yelling, “Go Seahawks!!!”

Tell me in the comments section below how you’re going to follow the Seahawks’ stellar example.

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

Want visible proof of your thoughts in action?

July 22, 2013 17 Comments

“One reason that so few of us really achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything particular.”
– Tony Robbins

Big shout out today to Light Watkins, a meditation teacher from Venice, California. I offered a prize (although don’t know if Light knew this) to the first person to post a video of the Einstein wands.

Lots of readers have been asking for visual instructions. Apparently, the written explanation in the book was less than crystal—although for every request I’ve received for further instruction, I’ve gotten three “my mind has been blown” thank you notes from readers who figured it out and were astounded.

One reader told me he took his homemade Einstein wands to his favorite pub and performed party tricks.

I’ve tried sending photographs of my own Einstein wands, but as many an Avengers fan can attest: there’s nothing like a good “action movie.”

Thanks, Light, for making this movie.

And check out his sight here.

Giant blessings to all! Make this week extraordinary!!

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