peace – Page 2 – Pam Grout

The one who will catch me

May 14, 2018 42 Comments

“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I am becoming will catch me.”–Baal Shem Tov 1 d

Many years before Garry Shandling made his transition, he had a NEAR transition, commonly called an NDE. In 1977, he was in a car accident, in critical condition and in a hospital for two weeks with a ruptured spleen. He remembers a voice and a very clear choice: “Do you want to stay and continue being Garry Shandling?”

Lately, I’ve been asking myself a similar question. Thankfully, mine doesn’t involve wrecks or death or crushed spleens, but I’ve been wondering what I want to do with this collection of molecules named Pam Grout.

The current arrangement seems rather static, wooden, even a bit boring. Maybe it’s my dad’s death. Maybe it’s because I’m not currently writing a book. My thoughts are restless, ready for a change.

At the same time, as I observe my thoughts and notice there is disappointment, sadness, lack of clarity, I also know there is a bigger part of me woven into the despair. This other part is much wiser, much more loving. It’s working behind the scenes with this message: “Relax. I got this. Just fall into my arms.”

That’s what ACIM Lesson 134 is trying to tell me.

I am not my thoughts.

To forgive is recognizing my thoughts are not the rock solid truths I believe them to be. To forgive is to recognize their flimsiness, to simply watch them as they disappear into the native nothingness from which they came.

This lesson also emphasizes that I don’t have to fight to save myself or kill dragons or erect heavy walls to make myself safe.

All I have to do is rest in the loving arms of “the one I am becoming” who is already here, probably with a big net, ready to catch me.

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

That time I failed to take the red pill

April 20, 2018 82 Comments

“When we don’t stop daily to inventory all the gazillion things going right in our lives, the crazy voices in our heads try to make us their bitch.”—From my book, Thank & Grow Rich
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Thank you, my beautiful friends, for your emails inquiring about my whereabouts. I reckon it’s a desired outcome when people notice you’re missing.

To be honest, I’ve been hijacked the last couple days. My father passed early Tuesday morning. It wasn’t completely unexpected (he has been ill for several years) and it isn’t like I don’t know life never really ends. Most times, I agree with my friend, Betty, who when she hears someone is about to pass, gleefully remarks, “Oh, I’m so excited for them.”

It’s more that I used the drama (my father had three families and each seemed to have different ideas and plans about his passing) as an excuse to not take the red pill.

I didn’t start my morning with my Course workbook lesson or my AA 2.0 program and I didn’t ask for the help of the Holy S. In other words, I have neglected to smoke what I sell here on the blog, in my books.

I’m no longer beating myself up over it. My favorite words, as y’all know, are “It’s okay.”

This week, in fact, has been Exhibit A in just how powerful the Course really is.

It’s a portal, I guess you could say, into that bigger reality that’s possible to all of us. On this limited physical plane, life sometimes sucks. But as the Course teaches me (over and over), these thoughts and perceptions are NOT real. There is a much bigger Truth going on. I am a multi-dimensional being and this higher truth is forever available IF and WHEN I choose to hook up.

This week also pointed out the importance of daily maintenance. It’s like an exercise program. You don’t do it for a week, look in the mirror and say, “Hey, looking good. Guess you did it. Guess you can quit now.”

I pretty much have to open that workbook every morning. It’s not like it’s really asking too much. How hard is it to open a book and read the 5-minute lesson? If I was being asked to take a pill for some horrible illness, I’d ingest it with religious fervor.

ACIM Lesson 110 is that constant reminder: I am as the Dude created me.

I can pretend to be a dysfunctional, crazy woman with all sorts of agendas and vendettas or I can remain who the Dude created me to be: an eternal spirit bringing peace to all the world. The power in this one phrase (not to mention the power of just getting up each morning and committing my day to a higher truth) can undo the past, can redeem the world.

Like Neo in The Matrix, I always have a choice. The blue pill (where I remain unaware of my power) or the red pill where I discover reality without the preprogrammed script.

Glad to be back, my friends. May we all continue to celebrate the red pill’s joyful truth.

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.

Look past appearances

April 2, 2018 20 Comments

“Man’s concept of his world built on the experience of the five senses is no longer adequate and in many cases no longer valid.”— Shafica Karagulla
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Right now, the planet you call home is spinning at a rate of roughly 930 miles per hour. It’s orbiting the sun at an astonishing 66,486 miles per hour. But unless you just polished off a couple pitchers of beer, you probably aren’t aware of any such movement. That’s just one tiny example of how we distort reality.

ACIM Lesson 92 tells us that we see what we decide to see—nothing else, more more.

Very early on—say, sometime around birth—our minds establish a pattern of perception and then proceed to filter out everything else. In other words, we only “experience” things that jibe with our very limited perception.

I told the story in E-Squared about a girl from the Philippines who told me that it was weeks, if not months, after she arrived in the United States before she noticed that some people here had red hair, including people she knew and dealt with on a regular basis. Red hair was inconsistent with what she had been conditioned to see and expect. So for several months, she was subjectively blind to red hair, seeing it as the brunette of her culture.

Our brains are designed to be efficient, not accurate. Our brains are designed to show us a hologram of our beliefs and expectations. So we take the 400 billion bits of information that are offered each second and we begin screening. We begin narrowing.

I’ll take that bit of information over there, and let’s see—this one fits nicely with my ongoing soap opera about the opposite sex.

ACIM Lesson 92 tells us that all our concepts and judgment, all things we take for granted are distortions and that TRUE seeing only come through light. This lesson reminds us that we’d all roll over laughing if we really understood the nature and insanity of what passes for thought.

When we see through our eyes (which basically report a likeness of our flesh suits, a carbon copy of our beliefs) we see weakness, lack and division.

But there is another way of seeing. Through the strength of our light.

Today, I’m grateful that as I give up the “hologram” I see with my eyes, I will begin to see the radiance, the brilliance and the love that shows up in light.

A tale of two perceptions

March 27, 2018 8 Comments

“The ego seems to want us all to have big buts.”—James Twyman

A Course in Miracles has lots and lots and lots of pages, but it sorta boils down to this:

At every moment, I either perceive the world from love or from my ego.

The ego is the pernicious voice in my head that I often refer to as the ass hat. It typically pipes up with some version of “Eeks! Fix this! Run!”

It usually goes something like this: “This is a mistake. Don’t even try. It’s too hard, too risky, too much work.”

Love, on the other hand, says things like: You are more than enough. (And so is everybody else) You have an important role to fulfill. (And so does everybody else.) Your mere presence is enough to change the world.

ACIM Lesson 86 is all about making the choice. Which voice has the floor?

More miracles from the annals of magic and enchantment

March 26, 2018 18 Comments

“One of the greatest paradoxes of your physical senses is that your eyes actually show you what you believe, not what you see.”—Mike Dooley 1ab

So I’m sitting in a French café in Mexico, having just finished a travel article on a Brazilian steakhouse I visited in the United States. What a small world!

ACIM Lesson 85 is yet another review, reminding us that when we give up our story, when we surrender our grievances, miracles begin happening.

And to prove it, here are a few stories that recently made a bow in my inbox:

1. I have received many blessings because I see the world differently and I now “see” the many gifts and blessings that easily flow to me. I want you to know that I too left $10 bills (10 of them) in random places in my small hometown. I attached positive messages to them. I can’t describe the feeling of pure Divine Bliss I felt each time I left a bill. My eyes filled with tears and my heart filled with so much love!!!

I have received an abundance of blessings. It’s like money and good things easily flow to me. My husband and I recently went on a cruise to beautiful and majestic islands. Every place we visited was filled with beautiful people and pure Divine Bliss! I woke up every morning and asked the Universe for a gift. I received many gifts. A positive message from a stranger, a seashell from a beautiful little girl, a jar of island bbq sauce from a new friend we made on the ship, an oragami dragon from a cruise ship waiter, and are you ready for this? I WON A FREE CRUISE in a raffle I spent $20 dollars on!!!! I’m a believer Pam! The more I have fun and feel good, the more good I receive!

Thank you Universe God! Thank you Pam for both books!

P.S. the button I asked the universe for showed up on a beautiful beach in the Bahamas!!!

2. After losing my expensive black sport sunglasses last week, I thought for experiment #2 which I started last evening, I would see how many people were wearing black sunglasses for the next 48hrs ( in hopes that I could channel my lost ones somehow).

Okay ready Pam? So I’m thinking to myself how am I going to find people wearing black sunglasses since I spend most of my day working from home? And even if I did get out it would be around evening time when most people wouldn’t be wearing their sunglasses, unless of course you’re Jay-Z. And then I heard tomorrows forecast was calling for rain ugh! So, I’m really thinking now I had better change experiment #2 to looking for the dull beige colored cars. Probably see more of them than people wearing black sunglasses right? But..

It happened today after giving up a weekends long search in my car the place I last remembered seeing them. Once I sent out to the universe my pursuit for black sunglass wearing people, I then took a quick work break and went out to do an errand. It wasn’t ten minutes into my car bopping around looking for these men in black( or ladies) when I heard a rattle and there came my black sunglasses flying out from somewhere landing on my floor mat! I’m telling you I looked everywhere is this car and they were not there!

I’m a slight skeptic when it comes to magical moments and I know it’s just sunglasses, but I’m a gonna be a believer in FP from now on:) Watch out universe!

3. I am a 4th grade teacher in Las Vegas, NV. I was so moved by your book E Squared that I felt compelled to share a few of the experiments with my students. My students were manifesting purple trucks, rainbow cars, and gold Lamborghinis! I was so amazed at their enthusiasms, and elated that they were witnessing the power of their intentions that I plan to take it out into the school system.

4. And maybe my favorite: Went to a Beach Boys concert last night and all these months reading your blog helped me unleash immense joy and gratitude in the form of all night dancing.

Well, duh!

March 23, 2018 63 Comments

“Feel at home in the universe, enjoy its innumerable marvels. Be active in it, contribute to it, participate in the healing. This is where Reality is.”—Richard Rohr
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I suppose it was inevitable. That I was going to fall in love with Ajijic and that I would be invited on epic adventures.

Beings as I rank rather high on the woo-woo spectrum, I was asked yesterday to join a group of women who were driving to Foco Tonal, an energy vortex about an hour’s drive from the community. And, yes, there was a shaman and the perfect interpreter (who just “happened” to be there) to explain how the ascended masters send powerful energy to this particular spot on the planet.

We (my new best friends—I love how everyone’s your best friend when you’re open) all buzzed and vibrated and felt such joy that we were together and that this was happening. We ended the night drinking margaritas at a Tiki bar on the beach near shirtless men fishing, kids splashing and dogs romping in the surf. Yes, it was an extraordinarly epic day.

ACIM Lesson 82 reminds me that my function is to let go of everything I believe. And that when I do, the perfect people will show up and the perfect days will unfurl before me.

I was also reminded yesterday at the morning meditation (we gather every morning at 9:30) of one of the most powerful proclamations that we send out into the world thousands of times a day.

I AM_____________.

According to James Twyman (who started this community), I AM is the name of God and that whatever we attach to it (I am miserable, for example or I am overweight or I am tired) invokes the power of the Big Kahuna.

Here’s what is going to follow my I AM for today:

I AM joyful.
I AM peace.
I AM the light of the world.

I’d love to hear your I AM’s for this glorious day:

The rumble in the jungle inside my head

February 8, 2018 24 Comments

“If you sucked all the thoughts out of your head, you’d find nothing but peace.”—Jill Whalen

“Wonder what we’re having for dinner?’

“I knew I should have shaved. My massage therapist has got to be grossed out by my hairy legs.”

“Are those birds chirping on the CD or are they outside?’

The above is a small sampling of the thoughts I noticed during my massage at the Mont-Tremblant Fairmont Spa. Here I am having one of the best massages of my life in one of the most beautiful spots on the planet and the voice in my head decides it’s time to play color commentator.

ACIM Lesson 39 (My holiness is my salvation) tells me, in no uncertain terms, that my holiness is the answer to every question.

In fact, the only thing that could ever prevent me from enjoying my badass holiness is that little voice, the chatty asshat that seems to talk constantly.

That’s why, whenever I have the presence of mind to do so, I separate myself from the voice by simply observing it. I like to think about it in third person so I’m not tempted to take it on as my identity.

And just so you don’t get the wrong idea, I’m having an absolute blast on this travel writing assignment in Quebec. The amazing awesomeness (the gratitudes I text to my possibility posse) from this morning were: dog sledding with a handsome Canuck who was the spitting image of Jesus, having fondue in a cabin with the last living Algonquin chief and a four-course dinner at a mountain lodge built by a friend of Jackie O.

Have a marvelous Thursday. According to my friend, Christine, who creates a calendar each year documenting useful holidays, today (February 8) is “Laugh and Get Rich Day.”

Indescribable happiness: a lesson in focus

January 12, 2018 60 Comments

“Don’t put the past in the cupboard of your flesh.”—Claudia Rankine

I’ve got a confession to make. I’m starting to question my commitment to these daily Course in Miracles lessons. Not my commitment to doing them myself, but my crazy idea of blogging about them every day.

Here’s why: I’m seeing the lessons through your eyes. And I’m thinking yuck, who wants to talk about being upset and meaningless worlds. To read lesson 12 (see I can’t even write it), click here.

Luckily, this lesson also offers a side note in focus, as in “we get what we focus upon.”

Later in the lesson, I’m guaranteed that once I give up my meaningless thoughts and ideas, I’ll find a much more pleasing reality. It says that once my thoughts and assumptions are erased, I’ll find indescribable happiness.

So today, I’m going to tell a story about erasing meaningless thoughts and assumptions.

Anand Giridharadas is a young Indian-American journalist. His book, True American, won all sorts of Best Book of the Year awards. It’s about a Texas vigilante who walked into a Dallas mini-mart ten days after 9/11 and shot Raisuddin Bhuiyan, an enterprising Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh.

Bhuiyan survives, ends up getting to know his swatstika-tattooed perpetrator, befriends his daughter, even tries to free him from death row. Let’s just say the book is incredibly inspiring and shows that beneath the labels (our meaningless thoughts) is a much deeper story.

But my story today is about Giridharadas himself. He’s 30-something, politically liberal, very PC. The other day a middle-aged white guy came to install a stove in his Brooklyn apartment.

The white guy asks, “So……Where are you from?”

That all-too-familiar question usually raises red flags. “Here we go again. Another redneck racist making assumptions about my brown skin.”

But he chose to give up that meaningless thought.

Rather than deliver his stock, wiseass, cut-him-off answer (Cleveland, because well, he was born and raised by Indian immigrants in Cleveland), he decided to engage, to give him the answer he knew he wanted. “I was born in Cleveland, but my family comes from India.”

The stove repairman smiled and said, “That’s what I thought. My brother married a woman from India. She has become the light in our family. We were a pretty dysfunctional family and then she turned everything around.”

So, yes, it’s easy to assume we know the way people are, the way this day is going to go, the truth about the way the world works, but once we give up our meaningless thoughts, a beautiful new indescribable happiness is free to come streaming in.

Have the best weekend of your life, my forever friends!

Every moment is mine to create

January 11, 2018 12 Comments

“Just remember life is all an illusion…..it’s your creation and you can dismantle it and re-create at will.” ― Nanette Mathews

A friend from one of my possibility posses made a very profound joke (yes, jokes are often profound) the other day.

She said, “I have three daughters. Each one of them has a different mother and none of them are me.”

Each of her daughters sees her through their own eyes. Like all of us, they see what they’ve decided is true.

All the people in our lives, all the circumstances, all the “good and bad” are the outpicturing of our thoughts.

Lesson 11 in the Course sounds kinda bleak at first read: My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.

But remember, the flip side is also true. Your meaningful thoughts show you a meaningful world. This lesson begins to introduce the main thesis from my book, E-Squared. Your thoughts create your reality. Your thoughts determine the world you see.

And as you break to pieces the indoctrination and programming that currently holds you hostage, you get to see and experience a brand new world. You get to produce and direct a whole new movie.

And speaking of movies, here’s a song, I’ve adapted when I need to wash an old
thought out of my hair.

Have an epically extraordinary day, my epically extraordinary friends.

Like housebreaking a puppy

January 2, 2018 50 Comments

“We are all captives of a story,”—Daniel Quinn cars

For more than 100 years, physicists have known that Newton’s classical view of physical reality doesn’t work at its core. The subatomic realm so defies all reason and logic that most scientists, scared to endanger their academic credentials, have more or less ignored the fact that life is nothing like what we pretend it is.

In fact, the world is so freaky—particles popping up out of nowhere, time slowing down and speeding up, particles reacting and communicating with each other even when separated by thousands of miles—that the main thing scientists have done with this information is develop technology that allows us to blow each other up, send text messages and nuke leftover black-eyed peas.

We now have inscrutable proof that the two main fundaments of physical reality— space and time—are nothing but extremely convincing optical illusions.

As Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, a physicist popularly known as Dr. Quantum, says, “It boils down to this—the universe doesn’t exist without a perceiver of that universe.”

And that’s what the Course in Miracles is all about. It advocates the idea that consciousness creates the material world. It says we humans decide in advance how we’re going to experience life, that we choose beforehand what we want to see.

The problem is, we all look at the world with a giant chip on our shoulder.

So to change the course of our lives, we must actively see and expect a different reality. Most of us, devote time and attention (our consciousness, if you will) to things we don’t want.

But it’s nothing more than a bad habit. And like any bad habit, it can be changed with conscious and deliberate effort.

Which is why I go through the Course lessons every year. Which is why I’ve made mind training my number one priority. I often compare it to housebreaking a puppy.

You just keep taking it back outside and showing it a different reality until one day, it finally realizes, Wow, there’s a whole big world out there. And it’s a lot more fun to pee on trees and bushes and fire hydrants than on Pam’s ratty old house slippers.

Your mind will be astonished by the beauty that’s available when you put it on the spot. Deep peace will appear. Great ideas will materialize and expand. Joy will rise up.

The only thing you need to do is devote your mind only to things you want. If you want peace, think of peace. If you want love, think of love. If you want Jimmy Choo pumps, think of Jimmy Choo pumps. Do not think about how peace looks impossible or that love seems fleeting or that there’s no money in your bank account for Jimmy Choo pumps. Keep your mind focused only on what you want. And anytime that puppy starts heading toward those slippers, pick it up and take it back outside.

But for today, there’s simply Lesson 2: “I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me.”

For a quick minute, you simply look around and acknowledge that you have given meaning to whatever happens to cross your view.

For example, I’m currently giving meaning to a big globe, a peace tree I recently bought from an artist in Haiti, an encaustic painting I made when writing a story for Cooking Light about art camps in Carmel.

That’s it. One simple day at a time. Just know, that you do not have to seek peace and joy and love. It is your natural state and will come pouring forth once you make space in your mind.

Have an extraordinarily epic day, my beautiful friends!

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.