thoughts become things

“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

Thoughts-become-Things 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.

Like a room without a roof

January 16, 2018 24 Comments

“My whole life has been an effort to find freedom—freedom from myself, freedom from my own fears.”—Helen Mirren
happy

As a journalist, I was taught that the lede (the opening paragraph) of any story is my big chance to catch a reader’s attention. Tell them who, what, where, when and how—right up front.

Course in Miracles doesn’t do that. It tills the soil, prepares us slowly for the insanely radical notion that we’re not so much “observing reality” as we are creating it.

A few people have commented on the difficulty of previous lessons. A theme of sorts has emerged—How in the heck can I possibly believe my thoughts are meaningless?

So I’ll try to explain:

Any thought that falls into one of the following categories is basically meaningless:

Life is hard.
I’m separate and all alone.
I’m limited.
There’s not enough to go around.
I have to struggle.
I’m not worthy.

Every thought that falls into one of these categories is meaningless . It’s simply NOT TRUE. It only appears that way because we secretly (or not so secretly) put our attention there.

The first few lessons of the Course serve as a giant eraser to gently remove those meaningless thoughts. Then, there’s space to focus on all the things that actually ARE true.

Things like ease and grace, being connected to everything, experiencing great abundance, seeing that who I am is love, recognizing that my role here on Planet Earth is to be a big giant light to illuminate the dark places.

Lesson 16 (I have no neutral thoughts) is meant to dispel the belief that your thoughts have no effect. It goes so far as to say that there is NO EXCEPTION to this fact. And furthermore, every thought either furthers the illusion (the meaningless) or it furthers your role as creative light bulb.

I can’t stress enough how exciting this lesson is. We, my friends, no longer have to cope with what we observe out there. We don’t have to face reality. We get to create reality.

And with that, I’m signing off with one of my all-time favorite songs.

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

Marching toward the land of freedom

January 15, 2018 24 Comments

“Let us hope that in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. ”—Martin Luther King Jr.
martin-luther-king
In America today, we pause to celebrate one of my top heroes. Sorry Wonder Woman, you’re on the list, but Martin Luther King Jr., who has such a remarkable way with words, snags top billing in my writerly heart.

Everyone knows about his “I have a dream” speech. I’m betting your community has organized an event today where somebody’s going to read it. But this great man gave something like 450 speeches per year and wrote five books. Having a dream is only the beginning.

One of his key beliefs was spiritual purification. You can’t go out stirring up change until you’re clear inside, until you’re speaking Truth as the universe sees it. This is where A Course in Miracles comes in.

Lesson 15 says My thoughts are images that I have made.

It’s pretty hard to believe that what we’re seeing out there is the product of our thinking. Good news is you don’t have to buy it as this point. You just have to do the simple lessons. And to trust that in some not too distant tomorrow, as we surrender more and more of the past (all the stuff we so stubbornly believe is damned well true) our thoughts will begin to create a new dream.

Because as Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently professes:

** Love transforms enemies into friends.

** Trust triumphs over hatred and fear.

** Spiritual upliftment is a better expenditure than defense.

** A person-oriented society out trumps a thing-oriented society

Let’s honor my man today who once said, “we are in dire need of creative extremists.”

Here’s to his dream of a beloved community.

Why Amazingly Awesome morphed into Extraordinarly Epic

October 12, 2017 9 Comments

“You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.” –Anthon St. Maarten
epic

My catchphrase over the past few years has been, “Something amazingly awesome is going to happen to me today.” I’ve repeated it every morning for nearly five years. I even wrote a whole book about its life-changing power.

However, I recently had to gag my catchphrase, bind it and tie it to a chair in the cellar.

Amazingly awesome had lost its magic. For me, it had become rote, shorn of energy. I repeated it the way most of us answer the question, “How are you?”

“Fine,” we say, without really thinking.

I needed some new mojo!

So I’m happy to report that my new morning mantra is this:

“Something extraordinarily epic is going to happen to me today.”

Speaking of extraordinarily epic, here are a couple fun manifestation that recently landed in my inbox:

”I just wanted to write you and tell you that you are helping me slowly change my life! Here’s a little bit about what I was suffering from before. I am an openly gay Latino, who’s older brother is mentally handicapped, and who’s parents are very low income. To top it off, I decided to move incredibly far away from home (Miami, Florida to Los Angeles, CA) to pursue the Hollywood dream (as we well know, one of the hardest careers to attempt.) This past year, my grandfather, grandmother, and aunt all passed away within three months of each other.

“My family has always been very loving and accepting so this was a hard blow. My career was at a standstill. I was drowning under negative thoughts. My talent manager suggested I give your book a shot. I was skeptical, not gonna lie. But I started to notice a few shifts as I tried out your experiments. I realized I have an incredibly supportive and loving fiance, a job to pay the bills, etc. So maybe it wasn’t that bad. My parents call every morning with “Good morning, superstar.” (Which I used to roll my eyes at.) Before you know it, by the third exercise, my manager called with some good news about being cast in a TV series.

“WHAT?

“I bought my mom the book in Spanish and sent it to her right away. She started trying it out as well as reading it to my brother. She then received a random $100 check from her bank. When she called to ask, they said that upon review they realized they had charged her too many fees way back in 2010!!! So she decided to have my dad try it. He has been working a Grocery store for about 30 years now. He just got offered a better job at a Jewelry Store company making more money.

“I JUST ORDERED E3!!! I am beside myself at how I allowed myself to forget that life is not that bad! I’m on my last exercise of E2 and simply counting the small miracles around me is amazing.”

Speaking of E-Cubed, here’s a fun one from the Red Pill experiment:

“I started the Red Pill Corollary on October 4, 2017 at 1:17 pm. (This
experiment asks readers to manifest 8 things).

“I don’t have photographs because, well I rarely take photographs of anything, mostly because I’m too busy enjoying the moment and I forget. Nothing happened on day one. But the last day everything happened.

• A Belly Laugh = Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford interview with This Morning for Blade Runner

• A Toy from my Childhood = 3:10 pm Oct 6 I donate my time to FrogskinU tending to their social media needs. Ook Pik posts funny things and they randomly showed up in the feed. Today, when I saw the name I remembered as a little girl I had a stuffed toy called OokPik, it was white with an orange beak and orange feet. OokPik was at my side was six years old having my tonsils removed. All that to say, Ookpik was my loved childhood toy.

• Your Favorite song from High School = I often turn on random online radio stations when I am illustrating. This station played not one but three of my high school fav’s: Bob Dylan Knocking on Heaven’s Door, Aerosmith Dream’n and then “We Will Rock You” by Queen, the last song was always played at every high school volleyball warm up 🙂

* #222 = At an intersection in Montreal, where I live, there is a special four-way walk sign that counts down allowing only pedestrians to use the street access. It counts from 20 down to 0. As I was walking up to the intersection I could see three of the crosswalk count downs at the same time from where I was standing, each showed the number 2. I saw 2 2 2 this happened at 12:15 p.m October 6th.

* Beach Ball = While waiting for Illustrator CS4 to open, I noticed the Macintosh beach ball spinning while I waited, that doesn’t happen very often but did happen at 1 pm.

• Senior Citizen in a fashionable hat = October 6 at 12:10 pm, After picking up some groceries I was walking on the sidewalk I passed a beautiful African woman with a brilliant, purple, sparkly, pill box shape hat, it wasn’t a hat really, it was wrapped perfectly around her head. It was lovely.

• A Smile from a baby. While working in social media, in the feed appeared a photo of a 2-year-old boy with the biggest smile. October 6 at 12:45 pm.

• A billboard with message for me = There are not many billboards in the area where I live. I am grateful for that. The only billboard message I can claim is a quote that appeared when I opened my personal Twitter account. “Faith is to believe what you do not see. The reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” – St. Augustine.

“The post was at 4:22 pm from Iran Lawrence 🙂 This is relevant to me, because recently along with your book I’ve been reading books by Marianne Williamson Everyday Grace and The Gift of Change and Deepak Chopra How to Know God and your ebook E-Cubed. The quote in my Twitter feed resonated with me as I’ve been reading books that are moving me in the direction of faith and belief :)”

“Thank you. I am looking forward to reading more of your books.”

And I look forward to hearing more about your manifestations. Have a great evening, my friends.

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just-released, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

Prosperity is a decision we get to make

October 27, 2015 28 Comments

“Everything you need is deep within you. Upon your request, upon your insistence, upon your need and stating that need, stating your intention, it will arise.”—Michele Longo-O’Donnell

Like everyone else on the planet, I learned ages ago that opportunities for pain and suffering are always going to be available and that if I was going to live with intention, it’s best to steer clear.

I’d have never become the author of 17 books, a reporter for People magazine and a world traveler if I’d accepted the onslaught of “negative invitations.”

“That’s not possible,” naysayers always insisted on telling me. “It’s hard to write a book. Even harder to sell it. You’re an unknown from Kansas. You got B’s in your journalism classes, for God’s sake.”

“Talk to the hand,” I’d always say to those voices. “That may be your way of seeing things, but I choose a different reality, a higher path.”

But in 2008, after three years of ever-increasing income, even being in a position to turn down a fourth project for National Geographic, I took the ego’s bait.

By then, a constant stream of bad news dominated the headlines. My profession, journalism and book publishing, was among the hardest hit by the global downturn. Publishers were cutting back their lines, lowering their advances. Many of my colleagues in the newspaper business were suddenly without work.

Again, I normally don’t listen to such nonsense. I much prefer a spiritual reality that proclaims abundance no matter what the circumstances. But by 2009, after little by little letting the dire news seep in, I plucked the aforementioned recession invitation out of the trash. I decided to take just a peek.

The party was in full swing. My agent was repeating the “nothing’s selling” mantra over by the punch bowl. Regular clients were on the corner sofas, moaning about the economy and their need to buy less.

Before I knew what happened, I bunny hopped right into the middle of the celebration. I began singing the “ain’t it awful” blues along with the party’s deejay. I told anybody who’d listen about my hard times.

Before long, I convinced everyone I know that my career as an independent author was over. I even fooled them into believing that, after all these years on my own, I was old, washed up and as yesterday as the History Channel.

I actually reveled in the sympathy.

Then one day, I got out my beat-up copy of Think and Grow Rich. As I read Napoleon Hill’s words about “thoughts being things,” I suddenly got it.

Look how powerful my thoughts and words had been. Look what I’d done to myself. If I can create this disaster with nothing but my thoughts, I can just as easily create the opposite.

When I think back about it now, I’m slightly embarrassed. How could I have fallen so bumpily off the wagon I’d use so successfully for so many years? I know good and well how this stuff works. I know that I create my own reality. I know that listening to dooms-dayers is the most futile exercise in the world.

I wasted no time using Hill’s famous advice.

Within a week, I had two new assignments. A new book contract came next. Rather than live frugally, the advice my friends were freely passing out, I decided to spend the summer overseas, volunteering and letting my newly-recovered faith pay the bills.

That decision to say, “I am prosperous and, of course, I can afford to travel overseas to volunteer” was the beginning of a more fruitful life.

Needless to say, I’ve taken that beautifully-engraved invitation and ripped it to shreds. And don’t bother sending anymore. Because from now on, my RSVP’s to any negativity will say one thing, “Have a good time. But don’t expect to find me there.”

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 its equally-scintillating sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.

Why it’s only prudent to give every event in your life a five-star review

July 21, 2014 29 Comments

“Our thoughts have the power to instantly release positive energy, or to entangle energy.”—Michele Longo-O’Donnell

I’m reading Dr. Joe Dispenza’s book, You are the Placebo. Here’s the fifth sentence: “On a beautiful Southern California day in April, I had the privilege of being run over by an SUV in a Palm Springs triathlon.”

Say what? The privilege of being run over? That day, when he broke six vertebrae, changed his life forever. The work he’s doing now as a speaker, author and researcher would never have happened without the experiment he conducted after doctors told him his one chance of ever walking again was to have a very complicated Harrington rod surgery.

He was 23, just cocky enough to think, “I am going to heal myself. I am going to put all my conscious attention on this intelligence within me. I am going to surrender to this greater, unlimited power and allow it to heal me.”

Doctors, of course, thought he was plum nuts. But nine and a half weeks after the accident, he walked back into his life—without a body cast or surgery. Within ten weeks he was again seeing patients at his chiropractic clinic and training with weights.

No matter what happens in our lives, we have the choice of how we will interpret it. For me, it only makes sense to proclaim “This is the best thing that ever happened to me.” No matter what it is.

Yesterday, a treasured member of one of my power posses told two stories that perfectly illustrate this principle.

She lives on a farm, by herself, and noticed last week there were hundreds of wasps swarming her grill. Sure enough, she opened the grill and found a wasps’ nest as big as a Frisbee. At first, like any sensible person, she panicked and began pacing. But only for a short time. Only long enough to remember this important truth: “I have control over the energy I put forth into the universe and this is not what I want to emit.”

She calmly let go of her wasp dilemma and said to the universe, “Okay, this is your deal. I’m going to trust this will all work out.”

On Friday, she noticed the wasps were no longer circling. Very gingerly, she opened the grill and the Frisbee-sized wasp nest was gone. Disappeared. No longer.

That same week, her car broke down on the side of the highway. Her phone, she noticed, had two percent power left. Once again, she started to panic. But again realized, “I only want to put out clear, trusting energy.”

On a hunch, she pulled down her visor and a card fell out. She’d completely forgotten she had AAA roadside assistance. And with her 2 percent phone power, she called and patiently waited while a very slow-talking operator finally took down her details. Within 10 minutes, a tow truck showed up, delivered her car to a repair shop and took her safely to where she needed to be.

The next day her car was ready and, when she pulled out a card to pay, was told: “No charge. Your car’s still under warranty.”

“Under warranty?” she said. “My car is more than 10 years old.”

Not only that, but the tow truck driver asked her out on a date.

So I ask you? What energy do you put out when things do not appear to be working in your favor? It’s always your choice.

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.

The universe is like the order taker at McDonald’s. It can’t give you a Big Mac if you keep ordering an Egg McMuffin.

February 1, 2014 30 Comments

“Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.”–Plautus

I’ve missed you guys. I’ve been busy polishing up E-Cubed, the follow-up book to E-Squared, and decided that since I haven’t been here on the blog for awhile, I’d post a brief excerpt from the new book.

It’s from an experiment about how our words have power and how they prophesy the future.

In a nutshell, it’s an experiment to prove that you can’t talk lack and poverty and expect an abundant life. You can’t continue to harp about how bad everything is and expect it to get better.

Enjoy!!!

When I turned 50, I threw my hands in the air and basically decided that my life was over. My many years of being a tall, hot blond were about to come screeching to a halt. Or at least that’s what I kept telling everyone.

Having supported a friend who is older than me through menopause, I knew good and well what was coming. My skin was going to wrinkle and shrivel up, my ovaries would do a disappearing act and my emotions were about to compete with the Coney Island Cyclone for number of ups and downs.

I was like Paul Revere, riding my “woe is me” horse through the night, “Menopause is coming. Menopause is coming.”

One day, while rigorously going through yet another book on how to cope with this horrible affliction, I finally got it. I am prophesying the future with my words and expectations.

My insistence on looking for signs of impending doom, my repeated chants of “Is it me? Or is hot in here?” were paving the way for a difficult transition into a new phase of life. Even the name of this very natural life cycle (crone, anyone?) lays a stone in the road ahead.

I snapped the cover of that book closed, called my friend and said, “Thanks for loaning me that book on the symptoms of menopause, but I’m coming over right now to return it.”

From that point on (except those times–yes, Taz and Jim, I did occasionally still get bucked out of the saddle), I began to declare and still declare to anyone who will listen:

“My best days are ahead of me.”

“Girl, you are looking SO GOOD today!! (that’s when I was talking to the mirror)”

“I’m getting stronger and younger-looking every day.”

“Health is flowing through me like the River Jordan.”

Joel Osteen tells the story of a high school buddy of his. This guy was the star of the football team. He had thick, curly hair. What we girls used to call “a real hunk.”

Every time, Joel asked him what he was up to, he’d say “Oh, not much. Just getting old and fat and bald.’

“I must have heard him say that 500 times,” Joel says. “I hadn’t seen him in 15, 20 years and ran into him the other day. And you know what? He ended up being a whiz at predicting the future. He was old and fat and bald.”

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