The Anne Report, Kosmic Komedy, shows us how humor can make our lives EZier. The Main article, The Pathless Journey, reminds us that our path to Spirit is our servant, not our master, and every path finally leads to Home. The Healthy Living article, Coping With the Drama of Life, gives us four ways to make our life's dramas EZier. The Anne Talk is Healing the Money Disease: Money Safety, From the Money Doctor. The Featured Product This Month highlights Anne's second book, EZosophy: The art of EZ or at Least EZier Living. Click for Anne's Books. Click for What is EZosophy? Click for Abundance Affirmations.

The EZ Mantra: "Everything can be EZ or at least EZier." -- Anne Sermons Gillis

Living EZosophy, February 13, 2017
Published Weekly on Tuesday Mornings

Phone: 281-419-1775
Email: anne@annegillis.com

Anne's Websites:

  The Anne Report

Kosmic Komedy

Dear ,

I started a new yoga class. We stretch and bend facing a lovely garden at the local Presbyterian Church. I was the first one to arrive this morning, so I picked up a copy of the weekly newsletter. I was blown away by their social consciousness, a characteristic often askew in traditional churches these days. Each paragraph I read made me feel mushier and mushier. I had a sappy attack. They support sustainability, have a recycling program, and are challenging their congregation to a plastic fast for one day of lent season. They openly and unabashedly welcome refugees and support efforts like Heifer International and Habitat for Humanity. What a treat for me to discover how much bigger their heart is than I had positioned myself to realize. Love comes in so many packages.

Seasons are slippery in southern Texas. One day it’s freezing and the next it’s 60 degrees. Nature is playing the hide and seek game. There’s an imp running the show and having a grand time listening to humans kvetching about every dip and rise in temperature. The changeability is like our daily lives. We get set in one direction, then the road detours the other way. Is there a cosmic comedian laughing at the way we fight what’s happening? Are humans the stomping ground for cosmic comedy? We are entertaining. We are flexible, creative, generous, greedy, open-minded, self-righteous, and self-effacing. There’s so much wrapped up in one human. I had a mystical experience in 1992 in which I entered the cosmic comedy zone. It was delightful. My point: we take ourselves too seriously.

Jim and I are going to a luncheon sponsored by the Neptune Society on Valentine’s Day. The Neptune Society is a provider of cremation services. It is our anniversary. Anyone who doesn’t think it funny for us to go to a business meeting about cremation on our anniversary and Valentine’s Day, has no funny bone. I am tickled about it. Life is the perfect setting for drama, but there’s plenty of room for comedy too. A Sufi master walks into a bank to cash a check. The teller asks him to identify himself. He pulls out a mirror and looks at himself, “Yep, that’s me.” See, I told you there was room for comedy.

That’s it for the Anne Report. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Tomorrow is the love day. Do your part. Be EZ on yourself and others. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Anne

  Main Article

The Pathless Journey

Some believe one religion, tool, or technique is the only way. With this wide-sweeping assumption, they miss the point. Religion tells us how to prepare to meet and experience God/Stillness/the Universe. The preparation is a mindset that allows that meeting to occur. Too often we argue about the proper preparations: there’s only one way to do this; there’s only one way to prepare. We worship the path to spirit, not spirit itself. The path might be Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Nature, or Islam. Often, we choose our path based on an accident of birth, not through rigorous introspection, and we argue, with limited information and experience, that our way is the only way. While paths or teachings are most helpful to prepare us for God or a higher plane of living, a path is still only a path.

My friend, Dr. Mark Weiss, expresses the sentimentality and righteousness that some feel about their one and only path in his poem, Getting’ It.

Gettin’ It

I go out on Saturday night
and dance and sing with God
and the Sunday mornin’ button down preacher
says, “You missed it.”

And it’s gonna be hard for you
to get it
cause you was out playing with God
on Saturday night.

Our path is our servant, not a master, and once we realize the majestic nature of Unconditional Love, we move into a new level of freedom. Without a path looming over us like a jealous lover, our choices take on a braver, more creative, and ingenious quality. Even though we are thrilled with new levels of flexibility and infinite possibilities, we realize that we don’t always know what we really want or what’s best for us. One person expressed this with the phrase, “We have broken pickers.” This means that our ability to choose the best for ourselves is compromised. Our wounds do the picking, and the results are less than desirable. But, we’ve wised up. We realize we can do a prayer treatment, or picture what we want, and we can surrender our request with a proviso, such as:

• May I receive this or something better.
• May this be for the highest good of all concerned.
• May this have the most beneficial outcome (MBO).

Adding these qualifiers puts us in a protected position, but it requires the ability to surrender. I once had a friend who wanted a certain outcome, but he did not realize that his picker was broken. He asked me to picture a specific business deal going through. I protested. I couldn’t do that. I could only ask for the highest good. He determination was fierce, and he finally made the deal. It turned into a nightmare, both emotionally and legally. He could have avoided a lot of pain, if he had been able to surrender. He is an “I did it my way” kind of person.

While setting intentions and goals can be enlivening, going after the wrong things can be life denying. Planning our lives while in a state of surrender to the highest good, brings our Higher Power into the process and relieves us from carrying a burden about our desires and goals. It’s easier to accept defeat when we realize that there is a higher plan in motion in our lives. Then the defeat becomes the bricks that build our new lives.

Once we decide what we want and ask for the best for all concerned, we need to set up the best circumstances for our desires to flourish. If I wanted to meditate, I wouldn’t sit on a freeway median and meditate. I’d sit in a quiet space, free of interruptions, turn off my phone, close the door, and finally meditate. While the preparations are helpful, and even at times endearing, they are not the meditation itself.

The preparations are what we call the journey and every spiritually savvy person knows, it’s not the goal that’s most important, it’s the journey. Yet this seasoned piece of spiritual wisdom misses another point: when we experience life directly, without journeys, goals, and desires, the path disappears, and we slip into a state of peace. The experience itself does away with the path. If I used a map to get to New York City, I would no longer need the map when I arrived. I wouldn’t even need the road from Texas to New York.

We will go on many journeys, beseeched by the temptation to idolatrize our paths. We will smash our idols, not once, but many times. There will be many paths and countless moments of enlightenment, and, ultimately, we will arrive home. Every path leads home, even if it takes a legion of angels and a thousand lifetimes to arrive. We are homeward bound and bound to glory. Relax; don’t take it all so seriously, because when you let go, everything will be EZier and EZier. It’s not a dress rehearsal. Our lives are the play of consciousness, and it’s time to play!

Anne

  Quotes

Anne Quotes

"Life is mysterious. Strange turns lead to interesting places - places that common sense and predictability could never have taken us. As we learn to go with this flow, we find that even in the midst of animosity, chaos, and uncertainty, life continues to blossom."

"Now doesn't have any wiggle room. It's not then, it's not was; it's now. And it is always now."

"Life is good all the time. Perceptions vary."

  Peaceful Relationships Retreat

Noel Marshall and Bob Warner invite you to join them for the Peaceful Relationships Retreat: Creating Inner Peace During Stressful Times, sponsored by The Oracle Institute. It will be held at the beautiful St. John's Retreat Center at 2615 St. Beulah Chapel Road, Montgomery, TX, on March 23-25, 2018. Based on the work of Marian Head, this retreat will guide you through discovering the "Revolutionary Agreements" (Truth, Acceptance, and Gratitude) and integrating them in very practical ways into your life. See this flyer for more information.

  Shareables from Anne

The World's Best Weight Loss Secret

Thought Freedom

40 Days to Abundance

  Featured Product This Month

At last, the reprint of EZosophy: The art of EZ or at Least EZier Living, is out. If you've been wanting an EZier life, this book provides a clear path toward EZ.

EZosophy:The Art and Wisdom of Easy or At Least Easier Living is a simple philosophy that radically changes lives. It is a book for the spiritually-based reader who no longer values the ego driven struggle of contemporary life.

EZosophy will help readers:

• Give up Hard Attacks. Hardaholic no more.
• Drop the drama.
• Make your life EZier. Ease is not indolence. Rather, ease is the art of accomplishment without struggle.
• Learn to identify ego driven suffering (EDS).

Click here to learn more about Anne's book, EZosophy.

  Anne's Books

Click to learn about Anne's books.

  What is EZosophy?

Click to learn about EZosophy.

NOTE: If you are viewing this on a cell phone, be sure to scroll to the right to see the other column.

  Healthy Living

Coping With the Drama of Life

We are trained to be who we think we are, not who we really are. Remember Pavlov’s dogs? Ring a bell? The dogs were given food when a bell rang. Soon, when the bell rang, they started salivating, before they received the food. Later they were not fed the food, but they still salivated when they heard the bell.

We are like the dogs. We are trained to have a certain level of drama in our lives. We are so accustomed to drama, that we can ring a bell in our heads. The inner bell has little to do with our lives or our circumstances; it just stirs up drama as needed.

We cannot change unless we wean ourselves from our drama. We must develop a sense of safety and calmness in our bodies. I have a friend whose life is rapidly changing. She does yoga twice a week. She says that she could not withstand the pressure of the change without the stabilizing practice of yoga. When we try to make a change in our lives, we take the excitement but forget to calm ourselves, and our systems can’t handle it. We go into overload. All changes require more quiet time, more centering, and more solitude. We simply can’t add more to our load without supporting the drama of change. All change, whether positive or negative, is drama, and we must deal with the drama. We have to de-stress, and eating is not the way to do it!

Here are four EZosophy ways to deal with the drama.

• Use the eight-word miracle mantra: “Everything can be EZ or at least EZier.”
   
• Practice conscious breathing. Count your breath throughout the day, when you think of it. Breathe in, to the count of four, out, to the count of six. This breath helps settle down our bodies and brings oxygen to our organs. When we subventilate, our organs starve for oxygen. It’s drama at a cellular level.
   
• Meditate: If you don’t have a meditation you use, or have difficulty with traditional meditation practices, try some guided meditations.
  
  Here are a few of my guided meditations:
  
  Celebrate Life
  Light Meditation
  Now Meditation
  
  
• Practice the EZosophy Vows. Click the link to read them.

It takes support and retraining to release ourselves from being who we thought we were, to being who we really are. The above steps help. My book, EZosophy, offers support as well. You may purchase it on my website, linked above.

If you have any healthy living tips for the newsletter, send them to me at anne@annegillis.com.

  Anne Talks

Healing the Money Disease: Money Safety, From the Money Doctor

In this video, Healing the Money Disease: Money Safety, From the Money Doctor, Anne talks about the safety we seek through the money in our lives. Time: 6:10

  Anne Art

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  Anne's Schedule

All times here are Central Time
unless otherwise specified.

Sunday, March 18, 2018
10:30 AM: "Synchronicity"
After service: “Synchronicity Workshop”
Centers for Spiritual Living, Clearlake, TX
18096 Kings Row, Suite D
Houston TX 77058
The Center opens at 10 AM for community, in the Common Room.

Sunday, April 8, 2018
10:30 AM: "Synchronicity"
Unity Circle of Light
25817a Gosling Road
The Woodlands, TX 77389
281-681-8883

Sunday, April 22, 2018
11:00AM-12:00PM: "Emerge and See”
Unity of Brazosport
507 S. Brooks St. (Hwy. 36)
Brazoria, TX 77422