The Dude – Pam Grout

The Dude’s watch list

September 6, 2024 33 Comments

“Transcendent moments of awe change forever how we experience life and the world.”– John Milton

I was going to call this post “the Freaky Math of Gratitude” and then I remembered I wrote one a few years ago called exactly that.

That post, if I must say so myself, made an excellent point so I’ll include it (the original) below for a bit more oomph to the idea I’m about to share.

Unlike math formulas, gratitude doesn’t work in a linear fashion. It doesn’t add up the same way as the simple 2+2, 5 x 7 equations we learned in grade school.

Because it works on many dimensions and because it’s powered by love, it multiplies in a way rationalists can’t understand. Heck, I’m not even a rationalist and I don’t understand how blessing some tiny fragment of a perceived problem causes it to magically transform.

For example, let’s say I only slept 2 hours last night. When I say “thank you” for those two hours instead of bemoaning the other six I’ve been trained I also need, I feel less tired. Try it. Let me know how it works.

The observer effect, a well-known and undebatable principle in physics, addresses the bizarre phenomenon in which the act of observation alters the behavior of that which is being observed.

All matter is wave-like and because particles exist in multiple states simultaneously, the position (the observation) I choose collapses that reality into a definite state. So I can either collapse the gratitude state (and feel rested) or I can collapse the “aint-it-awful” state in which I need more Z’s. Both waves, always available.

The Course in Miracles says that, even our “wretched illusions” (that’s a bit harsh, if you ask me) contain a hidden spark of beauty. Which is where gratitude comes in. It ignites that itty-bitty spark of beauty.

I’m a fan of itty-bitty. Love that it only takes “a mustard seed.” Mustard seeds are so small you practically need a magnifying glass to see them.

Because our dominant paradigm is so hepped up on “more, more, more,” “the bigger the better,” it totally overlooks the immense power of a tiny idea whose time has come.

Lots of regenerative, loving ideas are coming, my friends. And they all start with that tiny mustard seed of gratitude.

Here’s to having the very best weekend of your life! And if you’re so inclined, read on for the last time I wrote about the freaky math of gratitude. #222 Forever!

“I will give thanks to you forever and with my whole heart.”—Book of Psalms

Between the above quote and the story I’m about to tell, you can probably surmise that I went to church yesterday. A dear friend joined the Unity church here in town so, of course, I went to cheer her on. That’s what possibility posses do—celebrate each other for any and all spiritual leaps. Go team!

The speaker at the church service reminded us of the Bible story of the fish and loaves. It happens to be a favorite of mine because its math equation doesn’t add up to what we consider “normal, scientific reality.”

5+2=5000 is not an equation that computes for most of us. It doesn’t match what we were taught in school. Every reasonable, educated adult knows that five loaves and two fish do not feed 5000 people. But that’s only because, alongside math, we were taught the erroneous subject of scarcity and limitation.

When you use the equation of gratitude, when you add blessings to “math problems,” the resulting sums are skewed in your favor. Gratitude compounds and expands everything – even material things.

Jesus and his 12 disciples took 7 measly items (5 loaves and 2 fish) and, by blessing them, by giving gratitude for them, grew their larder into a feast for 5000.

Every word or thought or even breath of gratitude multiplies whatever you have. It renders old school math problems irrelevant. It adds up to truth and the unfathomable math of miracles.

I know I repeat this over and over and over. (I figure I can get away with it because it happens to be Thanksgiving week here in the United States.) Counting blessings turns even the tiniest of things into monster-size blessings, abundance and, yes, miracles that defy all laws of mathematics. Happiest of holidays, my friends!

#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).

Of course, I’d love to

August 23, 2024 27 Comments

“I’m amazed that I can make up such amazing stuff.”—Willie Nelson

I failed to add this to my earlier post, so for those who are interested………

I’ve written about Willie Nelson before—how he credited gratitude with turning his whole career around. Last weekend, I finished his latest book—Energy Follows Thought. I mean, how can I resist a title like that?

He believes, like I do, that our lives are created out of the things we place our attention upon. As we all know, there’s an awful lot of possibilities to choose from.

And more often than we care to admit, we fail to put our attention upon ease, grace, peace and other desirable items from the universal jukebox.

At last week’s P.P. (possibility posse), my friend mentioned an afternoon she blew by obsessing about the difficulty of some technological glitch that needed to be fixed on her website. After several hours of trying, she remembered. “Oh, I have a personal assistant. Maybe she can figure it out.”

She called the P.A. who promptly answered, “Of course, I’d love to!”

Which inspired me to write this post, mostly to remind myself (after all, that’s why I write them) that the Dude ALWAYS gives the same answer. “Of course, I’d love to.”

“It is my great pleasure to show you in three-dimensional, living color the out-picturing of whatever you choose to focus upon.”

Our part? Get on the right frequency and, as J.C. pointed out, “the fish will jump into the boat.”

Have the most incredible, interesting and fun weekend of your life. #222 Forever!!

Bursting with possibilities

August 10, 2023 15 Comments

“The things we believe carry a charge.”—Rick Rubin

Joyous 222^nd day of the year. I’m still in Spain on my ‘book tour’ and my sister is here for a week before commencing a trek on the Camino de Santiago.

Yesterday, we visited two archaeology museums, one showing the ancient Roman Theater I mentioned a couple blog posts ago and the other, the site of a Phoenician settlement from roughly 1100 B.C. Both were fabulous.

Archaeologists at the Phoenician site, because they’re only able to excavate a small section, are unable to determine a lot of important facts. Yes, they can tell the age of the pottery shards and the bones, but they can’t even begin to speculate about population size, for example. There’s simply not enough data.

Which is how I feel about any assumption or judgment I might be tempted to make. I don’t have enough data to accurately know that so and so is “wrong.” Or that such and such shouldn’t have happened.

In our human minds, we often conclude we have everything figured out, that we know exactly how things should be. But never do we have all the “facts.”

The only “fact” we can absolutely know for sure is that the Universe, the Dude is going to show up with amazing, beautiful, perfect gifts.

If—and this is key–we don’t block it with erroneous assumptions we’ve made from the tiny section of life we have so far let into our awareness.

Whenever we judge, whenever we resist, whatever we think we have figured out is never the whole picture.

All we can ever really know is that, when it comes to the Dude, peace, joy, freedom and love will always be the only items on the menu. On that, we can depend.

#222 Forever!

How do you interface with reality?

April 5, 2023 7 Comments

“The blue pill isn’t nearly as much fun.”—Donald Hoffman

So I love Jeff Bridge’s line from the movie The Big Lebowski. When bowling hotshot Jesus Quintana comes over to taunt his team, The Dude so wisely pronounces, “Well, that’s just like your opinion, man.”

Most of what we think of as fact is merely an opinion.

Because reality is so vast and unfathomable, we use our reducing valve, Aldous Huxley’s nickname for the human brain, to form opinions and beliefs that we then render into what we call reality.

The brain’s neurons form pathways that allow us to see only our opinions, only our interpretations. And as we focus there, those pathways harden like concrete.

We’re born as little human love bombs. Very quickly, we learn to sync our interface, our neural pathways with the people, the culture, the world around us. It’s an interface that sees reality as limited and separate. It’s an interface that asks us to be afraid, to be very afraid.

Today’s Course lesson (#95) asks me to examine my personal interface with reality, to look at how I so often allow erroneous interpretations and opinions to drag me around like tin cans on a “Just Married” car. It asks me to let it all go, to recognize my opinions and interpretations are simply NOT true.

Instead, it encourages me to see myself as united with all creation, limitless in power and in peace. It says there’s a much deeper and meaningful interface, one where I’m complete and healed and whole.

As for everything else? “It’s just like your opinion, man.” #222 Forever!

Advice and why I never give it

March 11, 2022 46 Comments

“Only wonder leads to knowing.”—St. Gregory of Nyssa

I am frequently asked for advice. On writing. On marketing. On how to go on after losing the one person you can’t live without.

I find it rather humorous that anyone would think I have any kind of good answers. First off, I’m hopelessly unqualified. My mantra, you may remember, was pilfered from Sergeant Schultz, the fictional sergeant in the old TV series, Hogan Heroes, who regularly proclaimed to Wilhelm Klink, “I know nothing.”

It was only a month ago I found out bed linen tags are always on the bottom left side. I could have saved myself 50 years of guessing which side was the long side (and usually getting it wrong).

If anything, I’m a middleman who has made a career writing about where I — when and if I remember — go for answers.

And it all boils down to this: I stop feeding my thoughts (man those guys are insatiable) and head to the Source. There’s a reason I appointed The Dude as the CEO of my career, why I let him handle all the details.

When I get into coherence, I find silence, peace, aliveness and maybe not ALL the answers, but at least guidance for what to do right now. When I stop, bring my attention back to this moment, it opens a portal.

So no, I offer no formulas, no all-important guidelines, but I do know this. Living in this right-now moment, in bewilderment and wonder is a mighty fine place to start.

And just so you know, I DO plan to have a word with the Big Guy for waiting so long to fill me in on the sheet situation.

Have the very best weekend of your life, my treasured friends. #222 Forever

Receiving the frequency loud and clear

May 17, 2021 58 Comments

“Remind yourself that you are not the mind and that its problems are not yours.”—Sri Nisargadatta Mahara

You gotta love the Dude’s persistence. Even with our chatty minds constantly looking for problems and judging everything they see, The Dude still manages to make contact.

I’ve spent a couple weeks purposefully aware of The Dude as I’m out in a forest, far from most distractions. It never ceases to amaze how creative The Dude is in making Itself known. Like that picture on this post. I don’t know if you can see, but out in the middle of nowhere, in a place where few people go, I found a bounty of wild pink roses and two other colors of wildflowers, all in one place. It felt like a gift just for me.

I also want to share, since I’m eager to get back to listening to nature, a couple stories from the old inbox where the Dude (I’m so grateful He never gives up) was able to make contact. Enjoy!

A week ago, I did one of your E-Cubed experiments while I was visiting my dad in his tiny town. I had so much fun, distributing notes with $5 attched. I felt more happy and relaxed about money than I had done in a long time. The result was simply outstanding. I was expecting an inheritance from my aunt and didn’t know how much it would be. This morning $114,000 landed in my bank account. Wow!! Wow! Wow! I wasn’t expecting that but I’m so happy and excited to receive it. Now I really know the Universe has my back.

2. “A couple of weeks before your girl left this planet my son also left very unexpectedly, only in his early 20’s I was in shock at first, then hysterical and then unable to even think.

“I found myself sitting at the kitchen table late one night when I said out loud, Jake please just let me know you are ok, that you’re still here. In that instant all the lights in my house went out. I was even stupid enough to go out and check the fuse box which was just fine. He kindly left the power points working so I could turn on a lamp and boil the kettle. I almost phoned an electrician but I couldn’t bear anyone in my home at the time. I waited three whole days before I finally sat back at the table and said, ok ok Jake I know it’s you. And the lights came back on. All the hairs on my arms stood up. It’s also the day I stopped crying. I was still so sad because I missed him so much but it gave me a peace I had never had before. For the first time I truly knew we never die.

“I felt guilty telling most people because they wanted to see a hysterical grieving parent but although I was still sad I was at peace. Not long after I saw you had a daughter who had also passed and it was very comforting to read your thoughts especially at times when I’d forget the truth.”

3. The last story comes from yesterday’s possibility posse. Yes, I was able to Zoom in from the forest. One of the members was riding their bike on the Lawrence trail (that “just happens” to be 22.2 miles long) when they noticed their patootie was sore. At that moment, they looked down and saw a padded, comfort bicycle seat, discarded and ready to use.

I’m telling you folks. Despite what your asshat mind tries to tell you, the universe is bountiful and waiting for you, like E.T., to phone home. #222 Forever

Diving into the quantum playground

December 9, 2020 14 Comments

“When one is still and listens, one begins to be in touch with a mysterious element that is within each of us, which can transform and shape us and can help to transform the world.” — William Segal

So I’m participating in this Qi Gong experience for the next two weeks. There are 175 of us from 15 countries. It feels holy, as if, together, we are creating a field of healing, of peace and and of love.

We’re going beyond the Newtonian realm of form and hooking into the unseen.

As Cynthia Li, a San Francisco M.D., said in our opening session, “We’re not defying nature’s laws. We’re tapping into higher laws.”

Qi (sometimes written as “chi”) is basically a synonym for the energy I talk about in E-Squared. It’s invisible, therefore making it a little harder to trust for some folks, but in Qigong, we tap into both the visible, earthly dimensions of energy and the formless subtle dimensions that form the blueprint of our lives.

Most of us, of course, use blueprints we downloaded from our parents, from our culture. That wouldn’t be so bad except most of it focuses on limitations, on scarcity, on what we can’t do. Qi focuses on what we can.

The energy field Qi Gong taps into is an embodied energy that opens us up to what scientists call Dark Matter and Dark Energy. I know dark sounds well, kinda dark. But it’s really just the 96 percent of the universe that we can’t see. Astronomers know it’s there based on its gravitational influence on the four percent we can see: all the stars, planets and galaxies.

They can confirm its existence using computer models, but they still, 40 years later, can’t figure out what it actually is or what it’s made of. All they really know is there’s an invisible force that affects the velocities of stars and other phenomena in the universe. As science writer Richard Panek explains, “It’s on a cosmic scale so weird astronomers couldn’t even believe it at first.”

Well I, for one, believe it, tend to call it “The Dude” and plan to spend the rest of my earthly life tapping into its miraculous properties. As yet another scientist, Albert Einstein, said, “I only want to know God’s thoughts. The rest is just details.”

Speaking of details, applications for the 2021 grant of Taz Grout’s 222 Foundation will be accepted through December 31. If you or someone you know has a big idea that can change the consciousness of the world, send it to taz.grout.222.foundation@gmail.com.

Well, duh! 3 life hacks I was reminded of (once again)

February 29, 2020 25 Comments

“When the world is in turmoil, it’s time to ‘go fugitive,’ to slow down and receive rather than impose, to feel rather than think. That way we’ll be ready when it’s time to break out of our limited belief systems – for breaking out of our limited understandings is what it will take.”–Carolyn North

You would think a person who writes books on spirituality and limitless possibility would know exactly what to do when her thoughts go squirrely.

Sadly, that’s not always the case. Like last week, my mind was in full scatter-bomb mode, firing away with non-stop insecurity, doubts and well, let’s just say, you’re lucky you weren’t in the vicinity.

Thankfully, I’m blessed to have very wise friends who reminded me of the following:

1. “Ya know, Pam, that’s just a story.” Boy, did I ever need to be reminded that no matter how something might look, it’s just one story (out of a gazillion) and it’s not permanent or fixed. When you zoom in on anything, you find energy and a bunch of atoms that move around all the time. So why would I ever invest in a story that didn’t feel good? Especially when a simple change in focus moves energy and atoms into a completely different configuration.

2. “What do you think the Dude thinks?” I was moaning about lack of clarity, complaining that the decision I was trying to make was clear as a chocolate milkshake. That’s when my friend, Cindy, very gently pointed out that I could always consult with the One who knows. Why didn’t I think of that?

3. “What my thoughts think of me is none of my business.” We’ve all heard this piece of advice, “What other people think of me is none of my business.” But this one knocked my socks off. Even my own thoughts aren’t my business. Not my real business, not my God business.

Most of my thoughts were created by a culture that tells me how I should and shouldn’t act, that tells me what’s appropriate for a woman my age. As the Course so gently reminds me in lesson after lesson, I am not my thoughts. So whatever stream of negative nonsense that marches through my noggin’ is really none of my business.

My business is to stay present, to keep reaching for stories that make me happy and to trust that the Dude has already worked everything out.

Oh, one other thing I learned this week. A collection of ladybugs is called a loveliness. Fish come in schools, dolphins in pods, but ladybugs, come in “a loveliness.”

Let’s talk about love, bay-bee!

April 4, 2018 15 Comments

“Only in love are we free.”—Alan Cohen

dude Yesterday, I made a new friend, explored a new street, wrote a blog post, took photos and sat by the lake watching diving pelicans.

Adventures—even if something small like walking down an unfamiliar street—keep us fresh, new, keep us from falling into old patterns.

The most insidious pattern to which I fall prey is believing that a certain set of attributes can describe who I am.

“Hi! I’m Pam. I’m a writer. I’m a mother. I get nervous speaking in public.”

Like a four-year-old who insists on watching Frozen over and over and over again, I cling to these attributes with a tenacious grip. As if anyone could limit love and light.

ACIM Lesson 84 encourages me to go deeper, to go beyond a paltry little list of attributes.

This lesson (I am as the Dude created me) is repeated over and over and over again throughout the Course. And today, I’m asked to repeat it over and over, every hour.

It’s a way of shaking the etch-a-sketch, of having new adventures. It’s a way of contacting the truth about myself, the truth that knows no fear, the Self that cannot conceive of loss or suffering or death.

So I’ll say it again. I am as the Dude created me.

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.