Joyous 2/22! The day Taz and I officially announce this year’s recipients of the Taz Grout 222 Foundation awards!
Per usual, there were countless submissions with countless, beautiful ideas for uplifting consciousness.
Thank you one and all for your creative pitches.
Our mission, as you know, is to amplify projects that rewrite the dream of the modern world from separation, consumption and acquisition to the dream of creativity and self-expression.
We believe the pursuit of happiness comes from human solidarity, simple living, respect for nature and empowerment of all people.
Taz, of course, has a much wider viewpoint and reminds me constantly how important it is to tune into an infinite mindset where nothing is impossible. Otherwise, she says, you keep imagining and creating the same old thing.
To that end, we have chosen two projects this year — alongside a few continuing favorites such as Lovelights, the Ubuntu camps in South Africa, and the local Taz Grout Community Garden.
I am honored and excited to introduce the 2026 recipients of the Taz Grout 222 awards:
The Earth Elders. It doesn’t take a PhD to recognize that the materialist, capitalist story is breaking down. That it’s so obvious and in-your-face is actually great news because it makes it impossible to argue for upholding current paradigms.
We believe it’s time to create a new, more satisfying story. Or in the case of this global nonprofit, a return to an ancient story of being one with all life, with the earth, with each other.
Earth Elders works to preserve indigenous knowledge systems, turning to ancient wisdom for the oh-so-necessary project of global transformation. It honors deep connections with the living earth and anchors in a more abundant and satisfying reality than the one we’re currently hurtling towards.
Not only are the elders creating what they call an earth shield, an initiative that safeguards 52 biocultural territories, but they’re establishing 13 Earth Schools (with more to come) and advancing laws and policies that recognize nature as conscious with rights, spirit and a voice.
In 2013, more than 150 indigenous leaders came together in the Sierra de Santa Marta in Northern Colombia to address the man-made crisis facing the world. After days of spiritual ceremony, they were given clear instructions and a roadmap from Mother Earth.
We are so proud to support that roadmap that guides humanity back into balance with the living world. Not to mention, how thrilled I am that a couple of the indigenous elders offered to say a prayer and give an offering in Taz’s name.
I will be sharing a few anecdotes from the elders in the near future including one that involves a ritual with King Charles and a nearly-extinct white butterfly.
Equal Measure Arts. She had us at donuts. When Leigh Kellis wrote to nominate Equal Measure Arts, a new-ish nonprofit in the Portland, Maine Arts District, she not only sent a fabulous video of her singing, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but she offered to send donuts.
Turns out, when Leigh’s not serving as Sam Monaco’s sidekick in this innovative recording studio that serves immigrant and low-income kids, she owns a thriving donut shop.
But what really put this pitch over the top is that Equal Measure Arts stands for EVERYTHING the Taz Grout 222 Foundation looks to support: changing consciousness (making music, after all, should be available to everyone), inspiring creativity (this recording studio gives kids a place to tell—er rather sing!—their story) and trusting in the beneficent force that wants to guide and inspire us all.
Monaco, who already owns a solar-powered music studio inside an 1840’s farmhouse, says he was “compelled by a force behind himself” to create this inclusive nonprofit in the Portland Arts District.
To name just a few projects, they’ve already recorded four traditional songs from Maine’s indigenous Wabanaki culture, now featured at the Portland Children’s Museum and launched the careers of several young recording artists including Alma June and the Persian Cats and Adele Edelawit, who describes herself as a coastal cowgirl originally from Ethiopia.
Thank you, Leigh, and just know I plan to fly there later this year to claim those donuts.
Here’s to interrupting our regularly-scheduled programming and to knowing that all things, all people, all worlds are imperturbably connected.
“Believing in a friendly universe is the life jacket that keeps us from sinking into a sea of despair.”—Dwyane Johnson
I’ve about decided that the reason Taz, my cosmic board president, and I started the 222 Foundation is so that I, a mere mortal who still gets swept away by the world’s seeming divisions and polarities, will be yearly reminded of the gazillion people who are out there hatching beautiful ideas of kindness, generosity and creativity.
Yes, our board just reviewed all pitches for the 2026 award that will be announced, as is our custom, on February 22.
And wow! There is a powerful undercurrent of awakening that’s happening beneath the surface, a tsunami of love counteracting the old, unraveling story.
To name just a few: there’s a group in Detroit starting an old growth Giant Sequoia forest, a couple doctors who have turned their backyard into affordable housing, a studio that gives immigrant kids the chance to record their own music, a filmmaker whose documentary of the Hadzabe people in Tanzania’s Yaeda Valley demonstrates the beauty of regeneration and contentment and, yes, endless possibilities,
As one of the Hadzabe leaders said, “Everything I need, I find in my land.”
That’s the secret to everything—knowing that everything we need is always available, right here, right now.
Or as another application reflected, “We never really got kicked out of the garden.”
If we believe we were kicked out (as our society teaches us) we become fearful, our nervous systems get jacked up and we begin defending. We begin fighting. We completely forget who we really are. We settle for a degraded image of ourselves and what we’re capable of.
Ken Wilber once called today’s humans, “flatlanders” because they don’t know the depths of the field to which they are connected. Instead, they see a flimsy, illusory reality dished up by people who, because they don’t know who they are, feel fearful and needful of hoarding, protecting, exploiting.
But that story will never hold in the long run. Mainly because it is NOT true. Any system based on lies is inherently weak.
That’s why Gandhi was able to use his superpower –- what he called ahimsa – to radically alter the course of history.
There is a dynamic life force in each of us. It connects us to all things. It can change all things.
That’s why upgrading consciousness is the mission of the Taz Grout 222 Foundation. We aim to remind humanity of who they are in truth—lovers, creators, beholders of beauty.
Let’s together speak a radically new story, a beautiful, truthful story into existence.
“I am the patriarchy’s worst nightmare.”—Elizabeth Gilbert
There’s an episode in the tv series, Shrinking, where the characters, clad in nothing but their underwear, tramp into the ocean to communally discuss whether or not one of them should adopt a baby.
I dig the idea of getting into the sea whether it’s literal (as in their case) or metaphorically, because it means stepping into something completely unknown, surrendering to waves that aren’t predictable or controllable. And I especially love when we do it communally as a human family.
If I believed in New Year’s resolutions (I absolutely don’t—humans, most of which are already walking anxiety disorders, do not need any more pressure), mine would be something about diving headfirst into the sea, into life without parameters, without expectations, without any idea of what’s going to happen next.
The reason resolutions (or, in my case, the lack thereof) are on my mind is because I will be ringing in 2025 on an African savanna, far from civilization’s reach. In other words, this post is to tell you, my dear comrades in spiritual mischief, that I probably won’t be chiming in much for the next three weeks.
Instead, I’ll be with the Taz Grout 222 Foundation that is supporting LoveLight Africa’s Ubuntu summer camps in 2025. Ubuntu, of course, means “I am because we are” and, yes, it’s summer right now in South Africa.
Rather than simply pony up financial support, I decided to jump in, to also offer my presence and assistance to the amazing Robin Goff who started this consciousness-changing outreach as an offshoot of the Light Center that just happens to exist 30 minutes from my home.
I’ll have a full report on February 22 (2/22) and, for anyone with an innovative idea for rewriting the dream of the modern world from consumption and acquisition to the dream of creativity and self-expression, by all means, send a pitch with the description of your big idea to: taz.grout.222.foundation@gmail.com. We still have money to give away!
For those new to the party:
The Taz Grout 222 Foundation was launched to honor my brilliant daughter who spent 25 short years on the planet inspiring everyone who knew her to live and love better. Her heart possessed more capacity than mine will ever possess. Everything she stood for was some variation of these themes: create relentlessly, love fiercely and do quiet, kind things for the underdog.
Every year, the foundation offers a grant to a project or a person (often both) who, as Liz Gilbert said in the above quote, represents the patriarchy’s worst nightmare.
We look for projects that address the following ideas:
1. A change in perspective is our greatest need. We believe all people (no exceptions) long to be generous and create beautiful things.
2. Today’s hopelessness is based on false premises. We look to defy the old story of scarcity, lack and the need to fight for resources. We aim to prove that the universe, once liberated from no-longer-working paradigms of scarcity, is generative and endlessly abundant.
3. The us against them model is kaput. We believe all humans are interconnected and that even tiny actions have great significance.
As we start this new and exciting year, never forget that the single most important thing you could ever do to change the consciousness of the world is to be tender and merciful to yourself.
As Taz forever reminds me, “Time here is short and precious. So, please, mom, be kind to yourself and venerate every delicious moment.”
“Let your broadcast of love bless the world.”—A Course in Miracles
Reading through E-Squared to update for the upcoming 10-year-anniverary edition, I was struck by the opening dedication: For Roosky. May your light forever shine.
Roosky, of course, is one of Taz’s gazillion nicknames: Taz-a-roo which led to Roosky which led to the dedication and my hope that the light and love she so clearly conveyed would bless the world. At the time, I was assuming its broadcast would continue here in the flesh.
But as Virginia Francess Sterrett said, “As long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, you simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.”
That’s the goal of the Taz Grout 222 Foundation. Not so much to battle, because well, battling just keeps the crazy going, but to defy space and time by keeping alive Taz’s incredible light. Every year on February 22 (that’s today friends!), we give a gift to an innovative project or person with a big idea to change consciousness and therefore the world.
In times such as this, it’s vital to recognize that behind-the-scenes, beneath-the-news there’s a completely different story going on. There are so many of us who only want to love and serve and who really believe with our entire hearts and souls that a more beautiful world is not only possible, but is right now, as we speak, gathering breath.
As usual, the foundation got lots of great pitches for lots of worthy projects. And as always, I consulted Taz (I’m just her ground crew, after all) to finally settle on the following projects for this year’s 222 Foundation gift:
I. I have fallen in love with Bill and Pat Taylor who started the Southeast Asia Foundation to, as they say, give back to the Universe for the countless blessings they’ve enjoyed in their lives. Not only does every single penny go to their mission (all operating expenses come from their own pocket), but they show up themselves, boots on the ground, to make sure every one of their projects begins with and is guided by locals. They take their inspiration from Lao Tzu, insist on both sustainability and religious inclusion and act on the words from an oval river rock Pat once gave to Bill for his birthday: “You cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good you can do.”
Thanks to Bill and Pat’s beautiful work (their tagline is “It takes a girl to raise a village”), the 222 Foundation has chosen to fund seven libraries in rural Siem Reap, Cambodia: four for kids, two for high schoolers, one for university students and one for the community. Taz LOVED books and worked at the Grinnell library when she was at university so having access to books, rare in rural Cambodia, is a must for promoting literacy and providing access to new possibilities.
We’re also funding a chess club and providing filters and fuel for water purification towers in Siem Reap. Mostly, we want Bill (he even shared a wonderful 222 story from when he was a 9-year-old Boy Scout) and Pat to know how much we appreciate their open hearts, generosity and unflinching belief that “it’s not merely about the money. It’s about each girl knowing that somebody some place in the world loves her and cares about her and encourages her to make something of her life.”
2. The other project Taz led me to support (isn’t she just brilliant?) is Craftroots, an artistan collective I was able to visit twice when I was in India last month. Once again, I fell in love with their mission. Yes, I fall in love A LOT!
Craftroots works with more than 17,000 artists in rural villages, keeping alive 72 ancient Indian arts and crafts. They aren’t out to scale their model or grow profits or production. Their aim is to bring a conscious shift in society by putting beauty into everything.
The artisans, mostly underprivileged women, aren’t viewed as laborers. Rather, they make up a sisterhood where each artist is genuinely respected, celebrated and encouraged to see their work as an offering to the divine—the divine in themselves and the divine in all life. Artisans pray together, read inspiring quotes each morning and focus on Truth: oneness, belonging and kinship.
Founder Anar Patel (to the right) also participated in ServiceSpace’s life-changing Gandhi 3.0 and says working with rural artisans is the greatest privilege of her life. She described it as her form of worship.
The 222 Foundation’s form of worship is looking for creative ways to burn through our culture’s prevailing trance of scarcity and lack and to provide a pinhole through which new possibilities and ways of being can shine. We are honored to support the above two projects and to remind everyone that there is light waiting for all of us to find. Happy #222!
“What we need now is more people who specialize in the impossible.”–Theodore Roethke
Happy 222, my brilliant, beautiful friends! As you know, today is the always-auspicious day where we celebrate Taz by picking a project with the vision and the chutzpah to radically shift how we see the world.
I’m overjoyed to announce this year’s recipient. It’s an organization that stands for every single principle of the Taz Grout 222 Foundation. It radically overturns all cultural beliefs about money, about how systems work and especially about what motivates people. Spoiler alert. It’s not what economists have been telling us.
ServiceSpace, an all-volunteer organization with more than a half million volunteers from around the world, is so subversive that my editor at People magazine could never wrap her head around it when I pitched it to her. “But how does it work?” she kept asking.
It works on the daring spiritual principle that Taz stood for, that I’ve made my career writing about. Namely, that the world is wildly abundant and that people, above all else, want to give. You know that economic maxim about people being selfish and wanting only to maximize self-interest? It’s complete and total B.S.
ServiceSpace has been defying the big fat lie of scarcity for 23 years. It all started in April 1999 when Nipun Mehta, a Stanford-trained engineer, decided to give up his cushy dot.com job to follow his heart’s urging. The standard narrative of success felt so hollow, he said. Why not go for the longshot?
A fan of Gandhi, who urged us to “be the change we wish to see,” Nipun started “giving” as an experiment. He started with money (he gave to charity), moved to giving of his time (volunteering at a hospice) and then decided he’d go full-time, giving of himself unconditionally. No job. No strings attached.
If nothing else, he has proven that acts of revolutionary generosity are generative.
ServiceSpace today is a network of more than 600,000 volunteers who purposely chose projects you can’t monetize—like kindness, compassion, love. They’ve been an incubator for free restaurants, a free news service (good news, that is), a network of free inspirational speakers, a free rickshaw service and they’ve given away hundreds of millions of dollars in free tech services.
ServiceSpace operates on three principles:
1) Everything is strictly volunteer. Money is NEVER charged.
2) No one ever ASKS for money. Many charities do good work, but they end up spending much of their energy and resources in fundraising. That creates a field of neediness, the exact opposite of ServiceSpace’s unwavering belief in abundance and the goodness of mankind.
3) They focus on small actions. Let’s take care of whatever we can touch, give to whatever is in front of us.
But mostly, they upturn deep-seated assumptions:
What if we decide to trust people?
What if we completely drop the quid pro quo?
What if we defy what the business world callssuccess?
What if we create a whole different kind of ecosystem?
What if generosity actually generates more generosity?
I’ve written extensively in my books and here on the blog about the gift economy, but I’ve come to appreciate Nipun’s wording better. He calls it a gift ecology because ecology creates a deep web with branches spreading everywhere.
I’ve been volunteering with Service Space for several years now. Among other things, I’ve helped transcribe the inspiring, beautiful, makes-me-soar Awakin Calls that bring together tens of thousands of folks around the globe every Saturday. I’ve taken part in numerous ServiceSpace pods and feel so blessed to be a small part of the deep shift in consciousness this gritty, ragtag team is giving to the world.
In closing, I’d like to rerun a piece I wrote many years ago that features Taz and, to my way of thinking, fits right in with the ServiceSpace values.
But mostly, I want to thank all of you for believing in me, in my magical Taz and the profound 222 consciousness that IS bringing light to the world.
Let’s do this thing:
The world is a magical place. What we’ve been offered so far is anything but.
Let’s start with our current economic system. It’s made up. It’s a random agreement we’ve all agreed to participate in. But it’s not real.
It was designed by the reptilian part of our brain, the part that’s scared, the part that hollers, Danger! Watch out! Protect yourself!
It’s based on artificial lack and rampant, unsatisfying consumerism. It can never give us what we really want. One of its key tenets, in fact, is to encourage us to seek things we already have. To keep the economy growing—the holy grail, according to the current paradigm—we’ve been forced to monetize all the gifts we were given coming in . . . things like health, water, entertainment, food.
Even self-help books promote the very peace and well-being you already have—or did, before we laid our economic story on top of it.
Until our financial paradigms got all up in Mother Nature’s face, we were gifted with everything we could ever need.
When you build anything, particularly an economic system, on faulty information, it should come as no surprise when it fails to satisfy.
Here are a few of the bald-face premises on which dogma of the Western world is built:
That we face an indifferent universe. Everything we do, everything we believe, is predicated on the idea that we live in an indifferent and sometimes even antagonistic universe. To be successful, we think we must bend it to our will. Exert control, use discipline. To believe the universe might know what it’s doing, to think it might actually love us and have a plan for our lives, is antithetical to every lesson economists teach.
Is it really just a chance coincidence of random molecules that we are conscious and breathing and listening to Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole play “Over the Rainbow” on a ukulele?
2. That there’s scarcity and lack. The current economic system touts insufficiency and promotes the preposterous notion that important things are missing in your life.
Once it supplied all your basic needs (food and shelter, both of which were originally provided for free by Mother Nature), it was forced to come up with fake stuff to sell you—things like deodorant, plastic banana slicers, dancing Santa decorations, and other things that don’t serve human happiness. In many ways, the economy Adam Smith helped create is little more than a government-sponsored pyramid scheme.
The assumption of scarcity is one of the central axioms of economics. It’s regarded as objective truth. However, like most “objective truths,” it’s nothing but a projection. Like the people watching shadows in Plato’s cave, when we break free from our chains, we can see very clearly that the world is wildly abundant.
And I’m not talking just metaphysically. Vast quantities of food, energy, and other resources go to waste every day. Yes, half the world is starving, but the other half throws away more than enough to feed them. There is more than enough to go around.
Even more abundant than the material world is the spiritual world: the creations of the human mind—songs, stories, films, ideas . . . all the stuff we call intellectual property.
Once we take off the blinders, throw overboard the story we’ve been sold, we can see how truly abundant the world really is.
3. That we’re separate. The current financial system is based on the idea each of us is an isolated fragment, disconnected from each other and from nature. It operates under the false assumption that what happens to someone over in Africa has no bearing on you or me. It’s based on the idea that we can pollute this river over there or extract that ore down there without affecting ourselves.
Any Economics 101 professor will tell you that maximizing self-interest is normal, that competition is in your DNA.
But when we give up our cultural story that it’s a dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself world, we can’t help but notice that human cooperation is actually the norm. People love to help each other. Ask for directions if you don’t believe me. People will fall all over themselves to help.
I would argue that giving to your fellow man is a human need.
Tim Cahill, founding editor of Outside magazine, told me this story when we were in Namibia a few years ago:
While walking to the Swakopmund Convention Center for a presentation he was giving to the Adventure Travel Trade Association, he asked a local, balancing a basket on her head, for the quickest route.
Noticing this stranger was on foot, she asked him, “What time do you need to be there?”
When he told her, she immediately pivoted and said, “C’mon. Let’s go back for my car. Otherwise, you’ll never make it.”
This is who we really are, lovers of life just waiting for the chance to help.
My daughter, a card-carrying member of Oxfam, helps host what the international confederation calls a Hunger Banquet at her college every year.
Upon arrival, each guest draws a random ticket assignment to a particular “seat” at the world’s economic table. Fifty-six percent (representing those who live in dire poverty) sit on the floor and get maybe a handful of rice and dirty water. The 42 percent who represent the middle class might get a sandwich and a card table. The remaining 2 percent get white tablecloths, china, and a feast fit for a king.
The purpose of the banquet is to open our eyes to the fact that economic disparity and location, income, and available resources depend a lot on randomness and dumb luck.
But what ends up happening (and this is where our notions of the world get seriously threatened) at these Hunger Banquets that Oxfam has staged in dozens of countries is that the 2 percent, when faced head-on with the 56 percent sitting on the floor, end up sharing their gnocchi, asparagus, and artichokes in pesto cream sauce.
Given the chance, people consistently do the right thing. This is what’s true. This is what our inner impulses instruct us to do.
Once we let go of our ridiculous notions of “the way the world works,” we get ample proof that there’s absolutely no need to protect ourselves from each other, from nature’s cruelty, or from our own inner impulses.
4. That our purpose in life is to value things that just don’t matter. The economic system, as it currently reigns, encourages us to go against our highest nature. It encourages us to seek money above all else. It creates a hierarchy that certain people are better than others. It tells us that having more stuff makes us happier. It teaches us to hoard resources, to value a big car more than, say, an old-growth forest. Anyone who has ever spent time in an old-growth forest can tell you there’s a lot more satisfaction to be found under a 2,000-year-old redwood than in the Lincoln MKX Matthew McConaughey drives around in TV commercials.
Our overblown consumer culture is a massive exercise in missing the point.
What the current financial paradigm offers us is not natural. It’s not what we really want. The best things in life, as the old saying goes, are not things. Derek Sivers—the brilliant entrepreneur who started CD Baby and sold it for $22 million, 95 percent of which he gave to charity—said he’d love to buy trained parrots to fly around every mall in America squawking,
“It won’t make you happy. It won’t make you happy. It’s not what you really want.”
What we do really want is to give of our gifts and talents, to be of service. We want to love. We want to be generous. We need to do these things. It’s what makes us happy, what brings us alive.
Real security lies in becoming more of who we really are, in traveling light, being free in mind. Money, which is nothing but a bunch of green paper and plastic cards and numbers in a virtual cloud somewhere, is temporary, ephemeral, malleable. It’s a symbol and works best when it’s circulated. It gets stagnant sitting in one man’s hedge fund.
As Nipun likes to say, “Love is truly a currency that never runs out. #222 Forever
“If you have love in your heart, then your very life will bring about a transformation of society.”—Krishnamurti
It’s that time of year, my friends, when I take pitches for the 222 Foundation I started to honor my magical daughter, Tasman McKay Grout, who died in 2018 from a cerebral aneurysm.
As I’ve written before, Taz landed here on planet earth with indiscriminate and generous love. She was beautiful, brilliant, had wild light running through every cell.
To honor her vision, the 222 Foundation is committed to changing the dream of the modern world from consumption and acquisition to the more meaningful pursuit of creativity and self-expression. We believe happiness comes from human solidarity, simple living, respect for nature and the empowerment of all people.
Here are the guidelines for the yearly award:
Each year on February 22 (2/22), Taz Grout’s 222 Foundation will award a $10,222 grant to an innovative project or person with a big idea to change consciousness and therefore the world.
We look for projects that support the following ideas:
1. All people long to be generous and create beautiful things.
2. The story of scarcity, lack and the need to fight for resources was made up and is no longer valid. We aim to prove that, once liberated from outdated paradigms, the world is generative and endlessly abundant.
3. We believe all humans are interconnected and that even tiny actions have great significance.
The more creative the project, the more likely it is to be chosen. In the past, we’ve funded a coffee shop in India run by survivors of acid attacks, a forest of 2222 trees (hey, every tree helps), a school in Nepal and a random acts of money project in the Pacific Northwest. The 222 Foundation also gave away grants of $222 to the favorite charity of the first 22 folks willing to post a Stay-at-Home dance during the beginning of the pandemic. I particularly loved that project because it involved all my favorite things: dancing, creativity, making a difference and spreading joy.
In the 5-week Laddership Pod I just finished with ServiceSpace, I met dozens of folks from all over the world who are doing beautiful things. I learned about an NGO that builds schools out of discarded plastic water bottles and another that figured out how to purify water using plastic bottles and the sun. These projects appeal to me because they incorporate the Course in Miracles maxim about “the holiest places on earth being where an ancient hatred becomes a present love.” And while my dislike of plastic water bottles isn’t exactly ancient (although I get closer to that description every day), it certainly represents a letting go of judgment, a transformation of, at least, my consciousness.
Above all, the 222 Foundation is committed to generating new possibilities.
Next year’s grant will be awarded in less than four months on February 22 (2/22).
If you or anyone you know has an idea to help bring about a change in consciousness, please consider applying for the 2021 grant. It’s easy to apply. Just send a description of your big idea to taz.grout.222.foundation@gmail.com.
I hope you, my friends here on the blog, will help spread the word.
Also for your listening pleasure, I’m posting my new favorite song by the indie band Cloud Cult whose music is informed by Kaidin Minowa, whose two short years on the planet has transformed countless lives.
And as always, go out there and have the VERY BEST weekend of your life. #222 Forever
“If we seek beauty, it will spill into our lives.”—Mary Pipher
So the title of this post “Sit. Feast on your life” came, not from a self-help book, but from my daughter Taz’s bedroom wall.
Being an artist myself, I allowed her to decorate her room however she chose. She drew a three-foot, eerily-accurate octopus on one wall, for example, and hung crystals, Korean ornaments and even a dinner fork from her ceiling. Last January, I visited Meow Wolf in Santa Fe and, call me a deluded mom, but their now-famous art installations have nothing on Taz’s bedroom.
On one wall, she penciled inspiring quotations—things like “Live what you love” and “You can see the whole world from here.” Any one of them would make a great blog post. Thank you, Taz, as always for being my inspiration.
I chose “feast on your life” because that’s what I believe we’re here to do. Not to complain about how life should be. Not to fight with reality.
But to look with love and wonder at the life we do have. To say thank you that we got the chance to be here on planet earth, to experience all there is to experience. As Rumi said, “This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. Welcome and entertain them all. Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.”
I notice that when I meet my guests at the door laughing and grateful for whatever comes, I become a happier person, a better friend, a wiser decision maker. That’s enough of a goal for now.
Have the best weekend of your life, my treasured friends! 222 Forever!
“If you’re thinking, ‘but my life is upside down,’ don’t worry. How do you know down is not better than up?—Shams of Tabriz
This is the beautiful light that inspired the 222 Foundation. Taz Grout! 222 Forever!
We used to have lions and tigers and bears (Oh my!) to frighten us on our journey through life. Now we’ve got a little device no bigger than a deck of cards. As we navigate this new time in our planet’s history, it’s vital that we don’t debilitate our nervous system, that we don’t let thoughts of fear pitch a tent in our minds.
By all means, check in on the latest health and safety recommendations, but right now, while things are going down on the planet, it’s more important than ever to practice spiritual principles.
A Course in Miracles asks me to focus on this: I am complete and healed and whole. I am united with my brothers and sisters, secure in light and joy and peace.
In this week’s lessons, I am asked to remember these Truths for five minutes every hour. Now that sounds like a huge commitment (and in the interest of complete transparency, I’ve never once, in all my years of practicing the Course, remembered every waking hour), but making the intention to put spiritual principles above my addiction to my phone helps me retrain my mind. It makes it more likely that when some fear tries to flag me down, my automatic response is not panic, but a proclamation of the truth the Course is teaching me: That I am safe, that I am in perfect harmony with all there is and all there ever will be. Today’s lesson goes so far as urging me to do my part in bringing happiness to all the world.
While on the subject of happiness, I must tell you I have had SO. MUCH. FUN watching all the Stay-at-Home dances that have been posted throughout webland. So far Taz’s 222 Foundation, thanks to the first 22 dancers, has given money to orphans in Ghana, No Kid Hungry, Trans Lifeline, Reece’s Rainbow, an Emergency Rescue in upstate New York, a House of Hope, Warrior Dogs and a bunch of other amazing organizations. As Mr. Rogers advised us, Look for the Helpers!
Thanks one and all for playing along. It is my belief that our greatest longing is to be of service, to make the world a better place. And why not have fun while doing it!
So I’ll end today’s post with a quick question. How are you spending your mental time? Are you dodging lions and tigers and bears or are you stepping up your spiritual game?
Okay, one more question. I have considered moving these posts to my FB page. They automatically post there anyway, but I’d love to hear in the comments section below if you enjoy getting them as an email in your inbox (like this) or if you’d rather just find them on my FB page when you’re so inclined.
“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance–Martha Graham
Two days ago, I woke up discouraged and lethargic. The crazy uncle in my head was concocting a major soap opera. Act I: Woe is Me, starring Pam Grout. Act II: We’re all going to die.
And then, during the commercial break, I remembered: “Oh yea, you’re a Course in Miracles student. This is the time to ask for a miracle. This is when you ask J.C. and the Holy S to replace the grievance in your head with true perception. I uttered a hesitant, mousy “Help!”
I turned to my phone (not normally recommended for escaping soap operas) and there, awaiting me on Twitter, was Jack Black dancing in his skivvies, cowboy boots and cowboy hat. He called his masterpiece a “Stay-at-Home” dance. It was the exact miracle I needed.
I immediately shared on Facebook, proclaiming his gift to the world a more potent morning pick-me-up than my A.A. 2.0 program.
So thank you, Holy S! Thank you, true perception! And especially thank you, Jack Black, for reminding me that one of the best ways to serve the planet is to get on a higher energetic frequency. Especially right now. Those of us who know about the power of consciousness, who know it’s our energetic vibration that creates the framework for our lives owe it to the world to radiate glee, joy and well, goofiness.
In recognition of this truth, the directors of the 222 Foundation (Taz and me) convened and decided to offer a new challenge for changing the current consciousness of the planet. To reiterate our mission, we believe all people long to be generous and create beautiful things, we believe all humans are interconnected (even when they’re home alone) and we believe tiny actions have great significance.
Right now, for example, I’m enjoying the notes and pictures from the Random Acts of Money project we funded in Snohomish, Washington. The inimitable Kimmy Rhoads, who pitched the project, is turning money into art, adding encouraging notes and changing people’s lives.
Speaking of changing lives, the Taz Grout 222 Foundation is offering $222 to the charity of choice to the first 22 daring dancers who are willing to post a video of their own Stay-at-Home Dance. Maybe you want us to reward your local food bank? Your free health center? Your community art center?
Post your dance here or on FB, Twitter or Instagram. Tag the @TazGrout222Foundation. Just make sure to send a link in the comments below. Weird costumes are encouraged.
For those who are thinking, you want me to do what?$%!!!!, I offer this video interpretation of my own interpretation of Jack Black’s now viral dance. I look forward to seeing your creations!!!
“Let us not look for you only in memory. You would want us to find you in presence, beside us when beauty brightens, when kindness glows and music echoes eternal tones.”– John O’Donohue
Yes, my friends, it’s here. The auspicious date for announcing the 2020 recipients of Taz Grout’s 222 Foundation. Every year, to honor my radiant, brilliant daughter, Tasman McKay Grout, the 222 Foundation gives a grant to an imaginative project with the chutzpah to radically change the consciousness of the planet.
I’m a sharp P on the Myers-Briggs scale which indicates I tend toward being flexible, spontaneous and open-minded. Good qualities, right?
Except when you need to narrow down options, to make decisions. So receiving 100 applications for this year’s grant was well, way outside my comfort zone. I wanted to fund them all.
Thanks to some assistance from my “board” (that is to say a coffee consultation with my friend, Never-Say-No-to-Fun Rhonda), I finally picked these three:
1. A Taz Grout forest of 2222 trees in southern India. The tree planting idea started when someone nominated climate activist Greta Thunberg. I love that she’s young, brutally honest and 100 percent committed.
Plus what could be more imperative right now than changing our climate story? Particularly, the story that humankind is separate from the natural world, that material possessions are more important than our planet’s air, water, soil and trees. This home of ours is alive, sentient and we must do everything we can to exit the feedback loops that tell us we are lord and master.
Greta made this wonderful video detailing a natural climate solution. This magical tool sucks carbon out of the air, costs very little and has the ability to repair our natural environment.
The Taz Grout 222 Foundation will plant 2222 trees this year through Project GreenHands, a grassroots ecological initiative established by the Isha Foundation. I chose GreenHands because it was started by the illustrious Sadhguru (check him out if you haven’t already) and because Taz’s forest will be in India near some of her ashes and last year’s 222 project.
2. A Taz Grout school library in the Annapurna region of Nepal. Taz was an avid reader, maybe because I started reading to her when she was still in the womb. She kept lists of all the books she read each year. In college, she worked at the library. So supporting literacy for girls in rural and impoverished Nepal is the perfect fit for the 222 Foundation.
I fell in love with Hands in Nepal from the moment I opened the email from director, Jan Sprague. HANDS (it stands for Humanitarian Acts in Nepal Developing Schools) does amazing, heartfelt work. Everyone in the organization is a volunteer.
Jan, like me, lost a child and doesn’t belief in death. She knows our children will always be with us, here and now. It was her other son, Danny, who actually started this wonderful nonprofit that builds schools and libraries. My plans are to go to Nepal later this year for the installation of the plaque honoring Taz. I look forward to extending Taz’s family into the rural Himalayas. This video is the perfect primer of this outstanding organization.
3. Last project honors Taz’s commitment to relentless creativity. If you read my books, you know Taz and I had a thing about anonymously gifting small bills and leaving encouraging notes about the wildly abundant universe. Kimmy Rhoades, a kindergarten teacher in Snohomish, Washington, applied for the 222 grant with her visionary Random Acts of Money project.
This generous soul loves giving money away to strangers, proving that old school financial assumptions, traditions and habits block the more accurate truth that freedom is available for everyone. She drops bills of all denominations–on hiking trails, biking paths, in parking lots and stores. Often in the form of origami fish or paper airplanes, her money bombs blast, as she says, the ridiculous notion of scarcity right out of the water.
With the help of a 222 grant, her kindergartners’ natural creativity and the love notes she plans to attach, her secret mission will seed 222 messages of hope for all.
This video isn’t Kimmy’s project, but you get the idea:
Right now, for example, I’m enjoying the notes and pictures from the 
Thanks to some assistance from my “board” (that is to say a coffee consultation with my friend, Never-Say-No-to-Fun Rhonda), I finally picked these three: