placebos – Pam Grout

The wisdom of woo-woo

April 22, 2021 40 Comments

“I am what I pay attention to. I literally surrender my life force to it.”—Becca Brewer

In the corner of my living room sits a small black rock given to me by a bare-chested medicine man from the Cook Islands.

“Pa,” as he is known, plucked it out of a jungle river in the South Pacific Island, handed it to me and said, “Put this in the north corner of your living room and you’ll become a millionaire.”

I drink water from a blue glass bottle that I set outside in the sun to purify. This suggestion comes from Dr. Hew Len (the ho’oponono guy) who says “blue solar water” removes recurring and no-longer useful data running in my subconscious.

And I believe that every single hedgehog that shows up on the first of every month is sent to me by my precious Taz.

Admittedly, these techniques are rather unorthodox, definitely not something my accountant or my doctor would prescribe.

I follow them because I happen to know that reality is fluid and that wherever I put my mind, my finances, my body and my life will follow.

Beliefs and expectations are SO powerful that placebos (fake treatments like sugar pills, saline injections, and sham surgery) cause bald men to grow hair, high blood pressure to drop, ulcers to heal, dopamine levels to increase and even tumors to shrink. And although pharmaceutical companies would rather keep this on the down low, placebos relieve symptoms on par with real medication. Actual biochemical changes in the body make you wonder–—or it should—how “factual” facts really are?

So, yes, there are people who call me crazy, think I’m too woo-woo for drinking blue solar water and placing exotic black rocks in my home. But I don’t care. I’m rather proud that I use the luminous superpower of my thoughts and beliefs to imagine, expand and create.

And while the verdict’s still out on the blue water (I DO notice I’m less and less interested in all sorts of cultural expectations), Pa’s rock, which I carried home in my suitcase, was added to my living room just a few months before E-Squared hit No#1`on the New York Times bestseller list, right before it was translated into some 40 languages.

I was visiting the Cook Islands for this travel assignment.

As Harvard researcher, Ellen Langer likes to say, “It is not our physical state that limits us. It is our mind-set about our own limits, our perceptions that draws the lines in the sand.” #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)

“Facts” are opinions, holding down reality until we can move beyond

June 29, 2018 30 Comments

“Our thoughts hold more medicine than many of the astonishing breakthroughs of our time.” — Kris Carr

In leafing through my frayed, worn-out copy of the Course this morning, I ran across this quote: “It’s a distortion to believe there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot control.”

It goes on to say that the body is nothing but a learning device for the mind and that its abilities are way overrated.

It’s always, 100 percent of the time, the mind that needs correction if the body is acting up. If anything, our bodies are a giant distraction. They’re not who we really are.

To believe my body, this temporary container is my identity is to miss the whole point.

The body is one of the ego’s greatest inventions, its most potent tools.

Fallible, aging bodies that require constant attention are the ultimate distraction. The irony, of course, is we become so distracted by caring for our bodies that we never stop to recognize that our bodies are mirrors of our beliefs. We alter them, even make them sick, with these beliefs.

Our beliefs and expectations, in fact, are so powerful that placebos (fake treatments like sugar pills, saline injections, and sham surgery) cause bald men to grow hair, high blood pressure to drop, ulcers to heal, dopamine levels to increase, and even tumors to shrink. And although pharmaceutical companies would rather keep this on the down low, placebos relieve symptoms on par with real medication.

In other words, it’s our beliefs that do the healing.

Our beliefs animate, sustain, and motivate all that we see. Blaming life for our misfortunes is like accusing our smart phones of running lousy apps. We’re the ones who downloaded them. Life simply serves as the projector of our beliefs.

Few of us truly understand the potency of our thoughts and consciousness. Each thought is a seed, a unit of mental energy that plays out in the world as powerfully as gravity or the principle of aerodynamics. Thoughts that carry sufficient intent, emotional impact, and conviction of belief (whether true or not) will take root and stimulate materialization.

So if you believe that life is an unending struggle, that bodies have no choice but to deteriorate or that most guys are jerks, that’s the script that will play out in your life.

Life itself is never painful. It is only a mirror of our beliefs. We “fix” problems by recognizing them as a case of mistaken identity and then changing the inner belief, the inner cause.

Where we get stuck is putting so much faith in a particular belief (“But it’s true that I have no money.” “It’s true that I have cancer in my genetics.”) that we cannot conceive that it’s not fact. We’re convinced it’s “God’s own gospel truth.”

Facts, despite what scientists, teachers, and CNN tell you, are opinions, holding down material reality until we can move beyond.

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.