One of my great joys in life is visiting bookstores, browsing the aisles, discovering what’s being published and by who, and paging through books that seize my attention. Sometimes, I jot down the names of the books and download them later onto my iPad for a fraction of the cost of the print book. But other times, I feel that I want to take the book home in physical form, plop down on the couch, and get lost in it. On a recent visit, one of the books I brought home was E3 – (E cubed) by Pam Grout, a sequel to her wonderful book E-Squared.
None of the ideas in either of these books is new. The ideas have been around for decades, maybe centuries, but I was first introduced to them in 1973, when I began reading the Seth books by Jane Roberts. Esther and Jerry Hicks and Louise Hay have also popularized these ideas. The basic premise? You get what you concentrate on. You create your own reality. It all begins from inside.
But Grout excels in the way she presents the material. She’s funny and sometimes irreverent and the nine experiments she poses are fascinating. So I decided to try one of the activities in Experiment 5: Your New BFF Corollary (or Money: It’s Not Complicated).
The “sub-hypothesis” of this particular experiment is, to quote Grout, “If I give money away, I will receive even more money. It’s an unalterable principle. What you give comes back to you multiplied and running over. She and her daughter tried this experiment when they were in Chicago. They took a stack of $5 bills and left them at bus stops, taped to park benches. Pinned them into clothes in stores. With each bill, they left an anonymous note about the abundance of the universe and how this was just one small sign of how much the person who found it was loved. What happened to her within a few weeks of conducting this experiment was that E-Squared hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
OK, I thought. I’ll give this one a try. I dug through my wallet for all my $1 bills – I had just five – and thought about the anonymous note I would tape to the bills. I decided Grout’s note would do just fine. There’s a photo at the top of the note and one of the bills. The universe is ever abundant. This is just one sign of how much you are loved. I typed several copies of the note, cut them to size, taped them to the dollar bills, and dropped the Scotch tape in my purse.
Rob and I went out to dinner that night and I taped the first one to the inside of the restroom door at the restaurant. The second one went under a container on our table that held condiments. The third went on my neighbor’s windshield. The fourth was taped to the windshield of a random car in the parking lot. The fifth one was taped to the inside door of the restroom at Barnes & Noble. I thought about how I would feel if I found one of these – startled, amused, a really good WTF? moment.
Within 48 hours, I received a $150 rebate from ATT that I wasn’t expecting until May. That afternoon, Rob and I got a call about a possible ghostwriting project. My next foray will be with $5 bills and I’ll expand my venue beyond restrooms and car windshields! But first, there are some other experiments from this marvelous book that I intend to try. I’ll report back from the field of potential!
I love the E-Squared book, fun experiments. Because of your post, I took seven $1 bills and had my 13 year old son help me craft the notes. I then drove around with my 15 year old daughter taping them to car windshields. What fun! As I was taping a dollar to a windshield, my ex-husband called my daughter and she told him what I was doing. He laughed and asked, “Why in the world would she do that?” and my daughter said, “To spread happiness, I guess”. Indeed!
Stephanie – what a great story!! And how funny that your ex calls as you’re doing this. Your daughter’s response was perfect!
The best part is that he always hated when I donated or gave away money; he simply didn’t understand it. He said “If you’re going to give money away, give it to me!” I guess I’m still up to my old tricks. 😉
Too funny!
A similar thing happened to me about 20 years ago, but not with money, more like a kindness for a kindness. I was walking my dog in the neighborhood I was living in at the time and came across a flyer for a lost cat. It was obviously written by a child and it just looked so sad to me..impossible to see from the road..hard to read. I felt compelled to help out somehow, so I took the flyer down, rewrote it and had really nice flyers made at a print shop. At the time, I was pretty desperate to get out of my current living conditions and into a better apartment. In order to get the flyers posted over as much of the area as I could, I’d walked much farther than usual and came across a “for rent” sign for a PERFECT place. I never found out if that poor little kid ever found his cat, but I ended up getting to rent the house. I never forgot the feeling that making of the flyers and finding the place were more deeply connected than just by happenstance.
What a beautiful story! I bet the kid did find his cat!
How fun. A good story! 🙂
Debra, good to see you!
🙂
The essential doctrine in my particular spiritual journey has two parts. The first: DO NO HARM. THEN DO AS YE WILL, The second: WHATEVER YE DO TO OTHERS SHALL COME BACK TO YOU THREEFOLD. These ‘experiments’from her book certainly seem to demonstrate the truth is the second doctrine, and is wonderful. I think it is probably important to practice these random acts of kindness, ie, the leaving of money with a note of universal love, to do it with a TRUE sense of paying it forward and not necessarily to receive something in return. I think THAT is the ‘secret’ message in the author’s book…..do this giving with genuine love in your heart. What a great and informative post!
This sounds like fun! I’ll look for the book and try the experiment with the money as well. Why not? 🙂
I think you’ll enjoy the book, DJan. All the experiments are cool!
Whoa…. really?!?! This is amazing!
& fun!
I ran across this recording of Napoleon Hill where he talks about being given the secret of abundance by Andrew Carnegie. It seemed to work for Carnegie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM5nFg8gQ0Y&spfreload=10
And it also worked for Hill.