Pete Holmes – Pam Grout

If I had to pick just one

July 8, 2018 23 Comments

“It’s all about having a clean antenna.”—Pete Holmes
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As a travel writer, I get this question a lot. What’s your favorite country? Or city? Or destination in general?

I have a couple pat answers. Either I answer with the country or city or destination I last visited—because, after all, that’s what lovers of travel do. They fall in love with every place, everything, every person.

Or I point out that, just like you don’t want pizza at every meal, you can’t narrow your favs to just one. It depends on an evolving string of moods and desires. Favorites change.

The one question I’ve never gotten, however, is what’s your favorite Course in Miracles lesson. If anyone every did ask, I’d undoubtedly pick ACIM Lesson 189.

Here’s why:

1. It promises a world alive with hope and blessed with perfect charity and love. I mean, what more could you ever want? Or need?

2. It also promises that this world, when seen anew, keeps us safe from every form of danger or pain. Again, not a bad guarantee.

3. It says the real world, the one we block with all our fears, offers endless wells of joy. This is what’s actually there, folks, when we let go of our holograms of malice and attack. These problematic holograms are NOT REAL. We made them up and continue to invest in them by staring at them, believing in them, trying to fix them. Let me repeat. They are NOT real.

4. And this is probably my all-time favorite part about this lesson. I don’t have to do anything. The universe will show up with endless benevolence and generosity the very minute I open the valve. It promises that boundless joy is what’s natural and, as soon as I ask, it will show up. Like ASAP. God, it says, will be there in joyful and immediate response.

5. It also says, “forget this world, forget this course.” Come with wholly empty hands. It tells me to let go of every single thought the past has taught, every idea I learned before now.

So favorite destination? No idea. Favorite Course Lesson? 189. Maybe I’ll throw the rest away and practice 189 every day for the rest of my 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.

Manna, pennies and umbrellas from heaven

February 20, 2018 18 Comments

“Our bodies resonate with the love and power of creative cosmic rhythms dancing through every cell in our beautiful beingness. “—Ramon Ravenswood

penny

Pete Holmes, one of my favorite comedians, created and stars in the HBO comedy, Crashing. I discovered him through my friend, Jessica Ortner, who interviewed him on her podcast, “Adventures in Happiness.” Holmes also produces a podcast (it’s called “You Made it Weird”), pens cartoons for The New Yorker and provides the voice for the E-Trade baby.

During the production of Crashing, a widely-praised comedy on HBO, Holmes noticed things like umbrellas showing up out of nowhere. If it started raining–poof!—an umbrella would miraculously appear. Whatever he needed—be it a set piece or a costume change or a yellow vase for a bouquet of roses—it showed up, almost magically. “I didn’t even have to ask for it,” Holmes says.

In his case, it was his crew that worked the magic. But it’s the perfect metaphor for ACIM Lesson 50—I am sustained by the love of God.

What I’ve noticed is that once we rid ourselves of the old “life sucks” paradigm, once we get it that the universe has our back, really cool things begin appearing in our lives. As you know, I get stories all the time from readers of my books who are miraculously bequeathed things like blue squirrels, Mercedes C300’s, 50 pounds of pork (these are just a few recent examples from my inbox).

I call it manna—gifts from the universe—that literally fall from the sky when we really, really let go of this idea that we need to be fearful, that we need to worry.

My dear friend, Annola, laminated a sign for me and everyone else in my possibility posse. When laid on the dashboard of my car, it reflects this sentiment in my front window: “Everything always works out for me.”

It’s my motto and today I repeat again and again, “I am sustained. I am sustained. I am sustained.”

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.

“We need a million Martin Luther Kings to show up right now.”—Kyle Cease

November 16, 2016 43 Comments

“The brain, as smart as it is, is also kinda stupid.”–Pete Holmes

Today, in one of my posses, we were talking about the brain’s Reticular Activating system (RAS). It’s about the size of a gumdrop, it’s located at the base of the brain stem and its job is to sort and evaluate incoming data. It sends what it thinks is urgent to the active part of the brain and steers the non-urgent stuff to the back. But as it’s organizing, it’s also busy interpreting, drawing inferences, and filtering out anything that doesn’t jibe with what we believe.

Very early on 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 the girl from the Philippines who told me 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.

The RAS came up today because well…..there was some fear around last week’s election. It came up because some of us were worried and wanting to protect ourselves from what we think might happen in the future.

That’s why I’ve made “training my mind” priority numero uno. On a daily basis, I instruct it to look for beauty. Encourage it to seek out the bigger picture, to focus on the love and the seemingly impossible.

Yes, my mind and its RAS is an incorrigible slacker. Keeps wanting to return to familiar old ruts. Keeps listening to the spin doctor that looks at the world as a potentially scary place. Insists on focusing on the “information” from my five senses, from the news media, from the default setting that says, “Be careful. Worry. Don’t even think about learning to trust.”

So I just keep getting back up in the saddle, directing my mind to focus on what I know to be Truth. That everybody in the world really loves each other and that kindness is always the answer.

When we choose kindness and generosity in whatever situation we find ourselves, to whomever happens to be in front of us, it opens a crack to see a whole different reality.

That tiny twist—a smile, offering a hand, even just being generous in thought—changes the inner landscape. It reminds us, “Here’s how the world could be.”

Generosity doesn’t fit the narrative, not in a me-me-me world. And that’s the very thing that shakes up the old story, the dominant paradigm.

I also shared the beautiful experience I recently had with a Trump supporter who wrote me an email lambasting me for being a hypocrite. Instead of deleting it (as I might have done in the past), I wrote him back and thanked him for pointing out where I have built a wall between me and one of my brothers.

Because I know we’re all one, I know that anytime I make any kind of judgment, I’m actually casting out a part of myself.

It’s not what I want to do.

And you know what? He wrote me back and thanked me. In other words, I made a new friend.

I think it’s time for all of us to make some new friends. It’s not us against them. It’s us, all here together.

As Ted Mosby once said (well, Josh Radnor, the guy who plays him on “How I Met Your Mother”), “It’s not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even – or rather, especially – when we’d prefer not to be.”

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.
It Is What It Isn’t

Being fearless is jumping even if you are afraid

June 9, 2015 24 Comments

“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”—John Milton

The Universe is even better than the post office at delivering blessings. In spite of my shortcomings, miracles just keep on showing up. My weekend at Omega couldn’t have been more perfect. Perfect weather. Perfect group (the 35 souls who took the Magic and Miracles workshop were all beautiful geniuses who helped make the workshop SO EASY) and I even got the perfect rental car at LaGuardia—a powder blue VW beetle.

As you regulars to the blog know, workshop and easy are not words I usually say in the same sentence. I’ve talked a lot about my discomfort and fears that, as I often say, get so active that I’ve considered buying them a training bra.

The other blessing in this regard is something the comedian Pete Holmes told my friend, Jessica Ortner, on her Adventures in Happiness podcast. He said it took four years before he was comfortable doing standup. Four fricking’ years! Which makes me feel okay that, even though “my year of speaking dangerously” ended in March, I can “deeply love and accept myself” even when I’m still scared.

AND most importantly, I can continue to jump even when I am afraid.

For those who are interested, here’s my TedX talk where I definitely jumped anyway.

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.