Reality – Pam Grout

My mind can always use a good boggling

May 1, 2023 56 Comments

“Miracles happen all the time. People just fail to notice them.”— Lorna Byrne

Tami Simon interviewed Lorna Byrne yesterday on her podcast, Insights at the Edge. I met Lorna in London a few years ago when we were both speaking at a Hay House conference. It was fun to hear from Lorna again, so I went back to read what I’d written about her in my book, Thank & Grow Rich.

Written before 2018, the year Taz graduated to the bigger, freer perspective, this excerpt about Lorna was the perfect way to re-boggle my mind, a trick I use whenever it tries to, as minds are wont to do, override reality. Hope you enjoy:

Lorna Byrne’s family was told she was retarded. She stared at walls, played with imaginary friends, acted “different” than the other kids. By the time she was 14, she was diagnosed dyslexic, so her dirt-poor Irish family saw no reason to continue buying schoolbooks and clothes and they pulled her out of school.

As it turns out, Lorna Byrne was actually a lot “smarter” than the rest of us. She sees things the rest of us miss. Miraculous things, beautiful things.

It wasn’t walls she was staring it. She was listening to angels, who forbade her from revealing their presence. Not yet, they said.

Her parents, the angels clearly instructed, would commit her to an institution if she told them. The angels had other plans for her life.

To this day, she sees these beings as clearly as we see our children texting their classmates on cell phones. “They are my teachers and friends,” she says.

One of her many “imaginary friends” was her brother Christopher, who had died before Lorna was even born. It wasn’t until she was 15 that she found out that the rest of her family, caught up in the limited physical plane, believed Christopher had left the planet when he was 10 weeks old. Their strict adherence to conventional reality precluded their seeing Christopher, the angels, and many things that, to Lorna, are an everyday occurrence.

Lorna sees spirals of light, sparkly colors, and waves of energy that the rest of us miss because we’ve been trained to block out all “atypical” information. She often sees dark energy, for example, in people experiencing illness in their bodies.

Her angels led her to interact with nature, taught her how to see. She grew to love and trust these angelic beings, who often asked her to open her hands to find holograms of stars or flowers made of light. They’d shine and expand from her hand as far as she could see.

Lorna, who grew up Catholic, uses the terminology angels to describe the magical entities she interacts with on a daily basis. It jibes with her religious beliefs, and it’s a useful word that most people can identify with. Angels— we’ve all heard of those.

Everything these magical beings ever told her came true.

Once when she was playing with a childhood friend, she could hear her friend’s father, who was far away at the auto body shop where he worked, calling for help. They ran to the shop and found him unconscious and bloody, under a car that had toppled on top of him.

Another time, she saw two young bike riders get hit by a bus. She saw them continue to ride, peacefully and without a care, on up to heaven even though ambulances and paramedics were scrambling around the leftover bodies.

When she was 10, one of her angels pulled down a big screen in the middle of the river. A vision appeared on the screen of a tall, handsome red-headed boy.

“Remember him,” they said. “You will meet him in a few years, and you are going to marry him, have children. You will be very happy.”

The angel also told her God would take him back to heaven when he was still young. Not the kind of thing you want to hear about your future spouse, but Lorna had long ago learned to believe everything they told her.

When she was 16, Joe, the guy in the vision, walked into her father’s shop and applied for a job. And sure enough, the two began dating, eventually fell in love, and got married, just as the angels predicted.

They were also right about Joe’s health. After marrying in 1975 and having four children, Joe began suffering poor health and died in 2000. Their youngest child was only five.

After Joe’s death, at the angels’ prompting, Lorna went public. Her angels had always told her she would eventually write books. She just laughed. But she’d also learned to heed their instructions.

At last count, this diminutive, soft-spoken, uneducated Irishwoman has written four books. She has gone on to appear on BBC, in The Economist, and at gatherings all over the world.

Lorna says all babies see angels and spirit, but about the time they speak their first words, they “learn” what’s “real” and what’s not.

It is only when we begin conforming to the strict paradigms of our culture that we lose touch with this magical world that surrounds us.

Methinks, it’s time to unravel our own strict beliefs about what is and isn’t possible and to reconnect with this magical world.

#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).

This year’s Nobel Prize proves our minds render reality

December 9, 2022 28 Comments

“Our willingness to place unjustified faith in immediate perception leads us to an inaccurate and starkly limited vision of reality.”—Brian Greene

This video of how we render reality was kindly sent to me by Michael Dawson of the Action Factory who recently interviewed me on his podcast. See how the figures suddenly pop up.

I was super jazzed to learn that the main tenet of my long-time spiritual squeeze (A Course in Miracles) was just awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics. The three physicists who landed the prize called it “experiments with entangled photons,” but to quote the Scientific American headline that announced it, “The Universe is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winner Proved It.”

What that means is that we, as observers, literally create the world from our minds. In other words, we’re not interacting with a fact-based world of material objects, but with our own perceptions. Yes, it appears that objects, our bodies, etc. are real and solid, but John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger, the Nobel award-winners, just proved the key supposition of quantum theory: that local realism is false.

This means that, when not observed, material objects are not there. Nothing exists until it is perceived. Like the first lesson of the Course says, “Nothing I see means anything.” And it goes on to say that I’m the one that gives everything I see its meaning.

This idea that nothing has a position until its observed has been a prediction of quantum theory for years, but it was so stunning that nobody could believe it to be true. It makes absolutely no sense. Even the scientists making the calculations figured there HAS to be a loophole. The Nobel committee, even though they didn’t like this crazy idea that the observer “creates” the “world,” finally consented to award the prize after Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger were able to eliminate every single escape clause.

What this means for non-scientists like me is that I literally render the world I see from my own consciousness. The nature of reality is defined by how I choose to look at it.

This is throw-out-the-streamers news because it means that the parody of life I’ve thus far created can be rewritten. Individual consciousness, profoundly limited by senses, egoic ideas and cultural messaging, can surrender and synchronize with a vastly greater reality. I mean, how cool is that?

We can literally render a different world. We can relinquish our minds, our consciousness, our beliefs to a reality that transcends time and space.

So that’s my science lesson for today, folks. As I repeatedly say, “Go out there and have the very best weekend of your life.” #222 Forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

Change your story, change your life

June 19, 2017 14 Comments

“The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.” –Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Several years ago, People magazine sent me to interview one of the runner-ups on the reality show, The Bachelor.

The assignment was to find out if reality shows truly depict reality. Although we reporters are taught to be objective and simply report facts, I’m savvy enough to know that reality, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder.

The bachelorette I interviewed was very clear that reality shows are anything but true. Early on, she was cast by producers as a certain character, a certain personality type (namely, the partier) and then everything that fit that story line was shown on TV and everything that didn’t was left on the cutting room floor.

Even though we may not be television producers, we all edit our life experiences to fit the stories we make up. If our story line is that our boss is a jerk, for example, everything that furthers that plot goes straight to the active part of our brain.

If our story is that our significant other is lazy, everything that jibes with that scenario is registered and magnified.

The gazillion good things our boss and our partners do get left on the cutting room floor.

We literally can’t see them. Likewise, if we believe life is hard or that money is difficult to come by, we find evidence to further that story line in our lives.

At the base of the brain stem, about the size of a gumdrop, is a group of cells whose job is to sort and evaluate incoming data. This control center, known as the reticular activating system (RAS), has the job of sending what it thinks is urgent to the active part of the brain and to steer the nonurgent 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 our story.

The good news is you can change your story. And, in so doing, change what the RAS sends to the active part of your brain which, in the end, will change every plot point in your beautiful, glorious life.

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.

The most important question you will ever ask: What are you willing to believe is possible?

May 19, 2014 33 Comments

“Let your mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave.”—A Course in Miracles

Let me guess. You probably watched some TV show last night—maybe the season finale of “The Good Wife” or “Game of Thrones” or one of the other hot shows that TV execs like to run on Sunday night. According to Nielsen, an average of 124.2 million viewers tune in Sunday prime-time. That’s a lot of eyes.

Whatever you watched, you didn’t for a moment believe it was factual information. You knew the story you sat glued to was the creation of some evil genius scriptwriter. You might cringe at Tyrion being set up by his sister or sigh over Alicia Florrick’s latest lawsuit, but you knew the moment you turned the TV off, it was basically irrelevant to your life.

That’s how I view most of what the world calls “reality.” It’s made-up. It’s a mental construct that was created not by a scriptwriter, but by a world gone mad. This dominant paradigm that we call “reality” has gone unquestioned for far too long. The “news” that we so worry about is no more real than “Game of Thrones.”

We only THINK we’re bound and gagged by the world’s reality.

It’s not real, people, and, at any time, we can suspend our investment in these fictional stories of separation and problems and dysfunction. It’s up to us to create a more joyful reality. It’s all a matter of where we focus our attention.

We draw from the field of infinite potentiality carbon copies of what we expect and believe. I expect and believe that “something amazingly awesome” will happen to me each day. So, of course, it always does.

Expectations and beliefs are powerful. They also create “reality.”

Tell me in the comment sections below, “What are you willing to believe is possible for yourself and for the world?”

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.

“Reality” is a mental construct–make yours joyful

May 9, 2014 10 Comments

Thought for the day:

Our beliefs are cultural constructs and only as “true” as the investment we place in them. Reality is malleable and formed from consciousness. We can either join lockstep with the cultural paradigm or we can create our own reality, our own path.

We’re all in ruts, but we can break free. In fact, there’s great support from the universe once you begin walking in that direction.

“I would rather be out on the fringes with angels and miracles and other wondrous things.”—Richard Bartlett

June 6, 2013 2 Comments

“Discard the classical mess.”—Bruce Lee

Thanks to flat-screen technology, our television sets are no longer shaped like boxes. But they still show us a “box of life” that is limited and constrictive.

For every piece of “news” you watch on TV, there are millions of other possibilities. The conscious mind can only pay attention to one observational frame at a time. So instead of investing in the teensy reality shown on TV, I prefer to ask “What if?”

“What might happen in the next moment?”

“What is possible if I let go of everything I know?”

“How would life be if I surrendered all my beliefs?”

“What if everything is absolutely perfect?”

The only reason your life looks the same today as it did yesterday is because that’s what you’re looking for.

The only reason the news seems so negative is because that’s where we invest our energy.

Playing make-believe, as we did as children, is a much holier tact. In fact, what we see and believe as “reality” now is simply what we’re currently “making believe” is true.

Once you loosen the rules and let go of all those “facts” you learned in school, all the patterns you picked up from your family and culture, you will begin to see a whole different reality.

Right now, you’re stuck in habitual patterns of perception. You miss all kinds of miracles because you focus on what is “known.” You believe in the stringent “rules for life” that have been given you. Those arbitrary rules encase you in a little box that’s not much bigger than that flat-screen TV.

My new intention is to notice what is different and new. To think about extraordinary things and to continually ask questions about what is possible.

As chiropractor Richard Bartlett says, “When we change our consciousness around what is possible, rather than being limited by a reality construct dominated by what isn’t possible, we discover that we are actually able to employ quantum energies and principles in our day-to-day lives in unexpected, and fun–and miraculous–ways.”

He suggests cultivating the habit of asking powerful, mind-altering questions. By asking open-ended questions, you train your right brain to respond to signals from your subconscious.

If you ask questions such as “Why can’t I do this?,” you cultivate the skill of obtaining useless data. It’s important to quit focusing on what’s the same, what’s familiar. As he so correctly points out, “All situations in life are merely patterns of light and information.”

To change anything in your life, change the frequency, density, and or quality of the light patterns that make up that reality.

Here are some “what if” questions of mine that you’re welcome to borrow:

“What if cancer could be healed instantly?”

“What if I wake up tomorrow and look younger?”

“What if 2013 is my best year ever?”

“What if I start each day with a completely clear slate?”

When you ask different questions, apply a different reference frame, you get different—and I would suggest better—information.

It’s like a deck of cards. Pick a reality, any reality.

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

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

May 14, 2013 2 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.

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. 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.

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.

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