perception – Pam Grout

It takes a crazy person to even try this

January 25, 2021 36 Comments

“Except for the unquestioned thoughts you’re believing, life is always good.”—Byron Katie

So we’re three weeks and a day or two into the Course lessons for this year. And while I certainly hope you’re every bit as pumped up as you were on Day #1, I happen to know from personal experience that enthusiasm sometimes starts to flag about now.

Which is why I want to post this reminder of why we’re doing this, why Morpheus said “There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” It can be summed up with one word: unbelievable.

According to Webster’s, the word unbelievable is an adjective describing something (an event) as extraordinary and difficult to believe.

Like the email I got the other day from a mother whose daughter sent her a cloud formation of E2 reminding her (from the other side) to read my book. Or the 13 crazy squirrels who all stopped and silently meditated with a friend of mine.

These things seem inconceivable, far-fetched. It’s like Gayle King said to me when I was on her show many years ago. “C’mon, Pam!”

But miracles like these are only un-believable because our beliefs are wrapped up in rationality, materiality, limitation. Our egos, the poster child for these beliefs, base everything on what it takes to gain approval, to “stay safe.” Our culture gives us an unwritten rule book that does not allow the unbelievable to happen, not with all that fitting in we’re required to do.

Our cultural belief system holds us in a pattern that precludes us from hearing the still small voice that is always trying to support us, to help us. The cultural pattern, championed by our loud mouth ego, revolves around fear—What will they think? What if they don’t like me? What if I get sick? What if……..

Remember Amanda Eller, the hiker who got lost for 17 days in the Makawao Forest Reserve without her phone, her wallet or her water bottle? Once she let go of the fear (something our culture trains us NEVER to do) she was very clearly guided—eat this, walk this way.

Today’s lesson tells us in no uncertain terms that our ego goals have nothing whatsoever to do with our own best interests. The ego goals are good for maintaining culture, for maintaining the status quo, but they are not useful tools for accessing the benevolent voice that will rise up when you move past fear. Once you begin to recognize that everything you believe, do and think is a product of cultural conditioning, you begin to access more and more of the unbelievable. As the Course reminds us, if miracles are not happening on the daily, something has gone wrong. #222 Forever

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) that has just been turned into an app. Badass ACIM (badass-acim.com)

Putting on my big girl panties

January 24, 2018 32 Comments

“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.” – Richard Bach
12hide
When I was a kid, I loved playing hide-and-go-seek. One of us would be “it” and the rest of us would hide in mom’s closet, underneath the coffee table or, if we were playing outside, behind the neighbor’s shed.

The whole point was to find someone who wasn’t really missing. One exuberant “olly-olly-oxen-free” was all it took to reunite all the players.

ACIM Lesson 24 contends: I do not perceive my own best interests.

The world we perceive is like a game of hide-and-go-seek. We think we’re here to find all the things that are missing.

We think our best interest is to spend our lives looking for problems and devising plans to make them right. We think our best interest is to follow seven steps to financial freedom or three steps to being highly effective or to mastering the perfect bod.

In other words, we perceive problems, limitations, things that need fixing.

But what if our best interest is to recognize that nothing is missing? To admit that it only appears missing because we spend our time looking for it.

When I say, “I want this,” it makes the assumption I don’t already have it.

When I say, I need to be healthier or more spiritual, I embark on a journey to find the very things that are already my birthright.

It is only my decision to seek something that makes me perceive that it’s concealed.

Course in Miracles reminds us that we already have all the love, all the abundance, all the joy we need. And at any time, we can quit playing pretend and just say “thank you!”

As Robert Scheinfield says, “We are all quantum special effects animators.

I can pretend to be lacking. Profess the need to be skinnier. Or wealthier. Or shacking up with Mr. Right.

Or I can acknowledge that I’m the one who made the obstacle course. And call olly-olly-oxen-free.

And with that I’ll end with this excerpt from E-Cubed:

Peter Jackson was paid $20 million for the script of King Kong.

You’re not getting paid to create drama, so methinks it’s time to write a different script.

Here’s how:

1.Give yourself an Academy Award for the amazing “drama” you’ve created thus far. In a world that brims with beauty and plenitude, the fact that you have been able to create such a convincing “story” of lack and struggle is truly an accomplishment. The special effects you have employed to overlook the world’s unending largesse are truly mind-bending. Take a bow and ask yourself, “If I have been this successful at creating separation and pain (and believe me, we’re all worthy of gold medals), then what else might I create with a little imagination?”

2. Use the feeling for rocket fuel. Once you get it that everything is your creation, you can use that intense feeling to propel you into a different story. The only reason you’re still starring in the same, worn-out show (it should have been canceled in 1998 when Seinfeld went off the air) is because you’ve pitched a tent. You’ve completely forgotten that there are lots of other destinations on the map. Because you endlessly harp about where you are and what’s going wrong, you’ve driven in the stakes. At any time, you can move to a different location, a different story, a different reality.

3. Zip it up. You may not like the site of your present tent, but there is no need to tell the world about it. No matter where you’re camped, there are blessings and miracles nearby. Instead of bellyaching about the script, the campsite, the life you’re currently experiencing, focus in on everything that’s going right. Once you begin to use your laser superpowers for possibilities, miracles, and joy, you will suddenly find yourself on a whole new stage, accepting a whole new Oscar.

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,

Defy the lie: why the “F word” and I roll deep

September 5, 2017 32 Comments

“Last night I lost the world, and gained the universe.” ― C. JoyBell C.

According to the Course in Miracles, forgiveness (the F word) is the answer to everything. But like God, love and other important concepts, forgiveness comes with a cargo-hold full of baggage and is not well understood.

Forgiveness doesn’t suggest overlooking something someone did to me. The F word, according to the Course, means it’s impossible for anyone to DO something to me. For me to think, even for a brief moment, that I understand the world from the tiny bits of my perception is to make a huge mistake.

All I can see, all I will ever see, is what the viewfinder of my limited perception shows me. If my perception is fixed, nothing can come between the goal that it has chosen.

Let’s say I choose the perception that so and so is a misogynistic asshole. If that perception stays fixed (meaning I refuse to forgive) nothing—not a miracle, not a sign, not an evidential slap in the face, can allow any other truth to manifest for me.

Likewise, if my perception is convinced that money is hard to come by, the world’s unlimited abundance cannot get through my blockade. It’s right there, eager to unfold in my life, but my perception has put up orange cones.

Forgiveness means knowing my perception is forever tiny and incomplete. Forgiveness means knowing I am blessed and that every single thing that happens, every single person who pushes my buttons is a gift. Everything is FOR me. Nothing is against me.

Forgiveness is to defy the lie. To defy the lie that something is wrong, that life sucks, that so and so is a horrible evil person.

The coolest thing about forgiveness is it relieves me of having to make judgments. Knowing I can’t and don’t understand the whole relieves me of having to decide what’s good and bad, decisions I’m incapable of making. It literally frees me. And that’s why the F word and I roll deep.

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.

Important news flash: There is only one problem left in the world.

September 26, 2016 15 Comments

“Through His power and glory all your wrong decisions are undone completely, releasing you and your brothers from every imprisoning thought.” —A Course in Miracles

This will probably come as a shock, but there is only one problem in the world today. Despite all its many wily manifestations, this one problem is the same for all of us.

It’s a problem of perception. Our perception is the ONLY thing we need to heal. If we pray for healing of the body (or money issues or relationship struggles or any of the other myriad “problems” we think we have), we only reinforce the belief that there’s a problem.

There is no problem. There is only wrong perception.

As you know if you’ve read my blog, I’m all about smooth and easy. Joy and fun. Anything else is but wrong perception, a story we made up to entertain ourselves or frighten ourselves or… heck, I don’t know why we persist in investing all our energy into solving all these problems. Why we spend so much time identifying problems and coming up with 7 steps to get rid of them.

A few years ago, I became Facebook friends with a beautiful, wise woman named Ley Love. Her story so inspired me that I asked her permission to share it with you. If you’d like to hear more from Ley (I lap up her every word with relish), she can be found at https://www.facebook.com/ley.tog/

And, as promised, here’s Ley’s story:

Twenty years ago, i was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. It had been apparent that i had suffered the problems that come with the label for all of my life. After being diagnosed with the condition, i set out to discover all there was to know about the subject, so that i could be informed about my own condition. I read countless books, read websites, pamphlets, talked to others with Bipolar, anything i could find to understand why i was the way i was. I wanted to heal and thought that information was the best way to do this.

Today, i can see that all of that reading, the years spent pouring over information that would inform me of who i was being, was totally counter-productive. In fact, all it did was to teach me more about ‘How to be Bipolar”. I noticed that as time went by, i began to develop even more of the symptoms i had been reading about and life began to become unbearable. I suffered major anxiety, deep depression, panic attacks, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, low self esteem, OCD in many many forms, Agoraphobia (I didn’t leave my house for two years), I had countless problems in all of my relationships, self harmed and had basically completely closed down and given up on life. I had no hope of ever recovering and wanted to die.

This was the ego’s story.

Today, since studying ACIM, I am symptom free of nearly every one of those problems! I am happy, healthy, in love with life extremely grateful for all that ACIM (and god of course) has done for me. My only want in life now, is to be able to share this wonderful system of healing with others. To show people that there is a way out of the seeming nightmare that life can be and to give hope that what the course in Miracles insists can happen, DOES happen! I am the living proof. 🙂

I encourage anyone that wants to exchange the nightmare for the beautiful dream, to study this course. It is truly life-changing and has saved me from the depths of the hell that i thought i was living in. You can have this too. All it takes is a little willingness to see things a different way, God will do the rest! 😉

Let love lead the way :-

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 just released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.

Change your perception. Change your world

April 8, 2015 19 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.

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 recently-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.

Important news flash: There is only one problem left in the world.

June 27, 2014 7 Comments

“Through His power and glory all your wrong decisions are undone completely, releasing you and your brothers from every imprisoning thought.” —A Course in Miracles

This will probably come as a shock, but there is only one problem in the world today. Despite all its many wily manifestations, this one problem is the same for all of us.

There is no problem. There is only wrong perception.

I recently became Facebook friends with a beautiful, wise woman named Ley Tog. Her story so inspired me that I asked her permission to share it with you. If you’d like to hear more from Ley (I lap up her every word with relish), she can be found at https://www.facebook.com/ley.tog/

And, as promised, here’s Ley’s story:

This was the ego’s story.

Let love lead the way :-

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 soon-to-be-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.

“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.