The material world: it’s a temp job

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”—Niels Bohr
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Are you thinking about righting that over-turned apple cart I talked about yesterday?

Not so fast.

ACIM Lesson 114 continues to emphasize that what I think I see with my eyes is nothing but a made-up illusion.

What IS REAL is the fact that I am spirit.

The ONLY surety is that I am a multi-dimensional energy field upon which no body can impose limitations. Which means anything material I see out there is temporary, at best.

This is REALLY GOOD NEWS. Knowing this fact is invaluable when wanting to upgrade your life. Any issue or problem that seems to be starring in your life story can be easily changed. This is a statement worth repeating often.

The only reason that thing you’re not crazy about seems so stubborn (say lack of money or struggling relationships) is that you keep animating it into your life with your attention.

My possibility posse last week launched a commission to over-ride some of the belief systems that hold this crazy world in place. And first thing on the agenda is declaring all apparent problems to be temporary, ephemeral.

Acknowledging that any situation that doesn’t make us feel connected and in love and wanting to break out in dance(say the political situation or societal divisions) is far from written in stone.

Again, it only seems that it is because we keep staring at it, pointing at it, pronouncing it true. Woe is us!

It will only stay “true” as long as we continue to invest our energy into it.

As Buckminster Fuller so aptly said, we can’t change the existing reality by fighting. We can only change it by building a new model that makes the existing one obsolete.

And it all starts by knowing…..it’s not real. It’s temporary. It’s on the stage of my worldview because I put it there with my belief that it’s permanently etched on stone tablets.

So bloody reassuring to know that it’s not.

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.

Take the gift, dammit!

“Accepting the idea there were going to be no problems was a greater adjustment than one might think.”–Glenda Green
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The standard paradigm goes something like this: life is hard, it requires a constant influx of dinero and, if you’re lucky (knock on wood) and nothing goes wrong, you might be able to enjoy your final years with a brief retirement.

What if I told you it’s all utter nonsense? And that your search for legal tender, convenience and even spiritual enlightenment is a big fat waste of time.

Do you really think you’re here “to create a brand?” Or to market Doritos or buy inflatable swimming pools? Do you really think tracking your market share, your 401K, your days until the weekend is a valuable pursuit?

In ACIM Lesson 97, we learn we are spirit. And that the party line we so diligently march towards is nothing but a ridiculous made-up story.

We’re encouraged in this lesson to enjoy the spirit’s gift. The gift that’s already here. The gift that requires not one iota of effort from you or me.

Picture the dude as Oprah.

You get a gift. And you get a gift. And you get a…..

You get this gift even if you Ef up. Even if you never get off your couch. Even if you’re constantly devising evil plans to get back at your college adversary.

It’s life, baby, and it’s here, coursing through your veins, and there’s nothing you can do stop it.

So forget your feeble fears, your efforts to amass fortunes, to collect things.

Forget you even have a body. Just rest in the vibrancy of spirit that lives and moves and animates your blessed self.

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.

“Nature is the art of God.”—Sir Thomas Browne

“Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine.” — Janine M. Benyus

Carousel of Happiness

In my new book, E-Cubed, there’s an experiment I call “Nature vs. News.” The idea is that the natural world has important messages to share.

So needless to say, I’m getting lots of “messages” about this very topic.

Spirit, Southwest Airline’s inflight magazine, just ran a story about Scott Harrison, a woodcarver in Nederland, Colorado who built a Carousel of Happiness.

But he wasn’t always so happy.

After a tour in Vietnam ended abruptly after seven months (his knee was shredded by a grenade), he was airlifted out of the battlefield and returned to an America that as he says, “wouldn’t look a soldier in the eye.”

To cope, he drank, took drugs and “isolated.” After getting a degree at the University of Texas, he migrated to San Jose, California where he worked in a boatyard, eventually building himself a 32-foot schooner.

In his continuing effort to avoid human contact, he sailed alone, deep into the Pacific. He was out of his mind, sobbing with grief and remorse, hoping for a big storm to capsize his boat and put him out of his misery.

Instead, on the 8th day at sea, a 30-foot whale surfaced beside his boat and swam beside him for three or four hours.

For reasons he can’t explain, he says, “It made me feel loved in a way I’d never been loved before.”

In fact, as the whale looked him in the eye, he got the message loud and clear: “You belong among the living.”

He sailed back to California and has never been the same.

The second story comes from Larry Dossey’s new book, One Mind. Evidently on April 14, 1865, the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in the Ford Theater, his dog, Jib, was back at the White House where the president’s aides couldn’t figure out why the normally calm and quiet pooch was running in frenzy. No matter what they tried, they couldn’t calm him. He ran in circles until finally he collapsed on a rug near the President’s desk. Somehow, Jib knew his master was in trouble long before the aides finally got wind that their boss had been shot.

So, as I suggest in the book, it might be time to spend more time listening to nature’s Divine Buzz than to the messages on those four-inch screens.

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.