The Anne Report, The Transformative Power of Gratitude, shows how an attitude of gratitude can remake life's events for us. The Main article, Making a Space for Personal Development, suggests that we can choose to make a space for growth, instead of waiting until the Universe forces us to make one. The Healthy Living article, Releasing and Renewal, encourages us to learn the language of our true Self. The Anne Talk, EZosophy: More Machines - Momagenes, gives some advice on when we should be "doing" or "being." The Featured Product This Month is Anne's book, Standing in the Dark. Click to read What is EZosophy? Click for Abundance Affirmations. Click for Shareables From Anne.

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

Living EZosophy, November 20, 2018
Published Weekly on Tuesday Mornings

Phone: 713.922.0242
Email: anne@annegillis.com

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  The Anne Report

The Transformative Power of Gratitude

Dear ,

Thanksgiving marks the start of the gratitude season. Current spiritual wisdom recognizes the power of gratitude and how it can turn our mind away from envy or loss and renew our attitudes and our lives. We cannot hold the truth of our being in a container that sees only the past. Gratitude turns old wineskins into new wineskins.

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend." Melody Beattie thus defines the transformative nature of gratitude.

While life pulls us into many directions, and leaves us drowning in duty, obligation, and lack of time, gratitude offers a life raft. It pulls us out of a problematic world and delivers us into the land of majesty.

People talk about how blessed they are, yet when we stop and feel that sense of deep enoughness that accompanies a lack of longing, when we feel gratitude in our hearts and bodies, our muscles and minds relax. Gratitude realization transforms blessings into miracles.

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving Day. May your gratitude and appreciation continue to grow as you step into the holiday season. Just for today, forget what is falling apart and focus on what is falling together. And remember that everything can be EZ or at least EZier. That’s it for the Anne Report.

Anne

  Main Article

Making a Space for Personal Development

When I return from a spiritual journey, I have to sit for a while. I feel like I’ve outgrown my skin. I must either stretch the old skin or grow a new one. But whatever metamorphosis takes place, it must take place in the dark. The transformation can’t handle a lot of glitter or go go. It’s like developing a photographic film. The process takes place in a dark room, and, if by chance, the light makes an appearance, the picture is ruined.

We live in a culture that provides Ferris wheels but doesn’t provide darkrooms for the living. And this over-extension of life’s demands keeps growing. None-the-less, when I come back from a mountain top experience, I make life move aside, so I can germinate.

In 1988 I went on a trip to New Mexico. The brochure painted a mental picture of women easily walking up and down the mountainous terrain to seek a vision. Nowhere in the promotional literature did it mention fasting alone, in freezing weather, without a tent, for three days. Thirteen women went out for 10 days into the mountains. We sang, cried, walked, cooked, shared, and danced. It was life-changing. Layers of shame and pain dissolved as we faced the peril of harsh weather, learned to count on each other, and sought our vision.

Each woman met with a council of elders before we were to go out alone. I was only dressed from the waist down as I met the council of women elders. They painted me from the waist up, prayed for me, and sent me to find my spot on the mountain. I searched for hours for the place where I would merge body, mind, and soul with the spirit of the land and the animal and mineral inhabitants. I eventually chose a space that felt right. I could see for miles in any direction, and wherever I looked, there was no trace of my people. I was physically alone, fasting and praying, for three days.

After three days, the women made their way back to the campsite. We were flying on dreams and visions. As with all mountaintop experiences, and we were literally in the mountains, our time together ended. We trekked back to the lodge. I had to stop intermittently because of Montezuma’s revenge. I was thin, exhausted, and more vulnerable than I realized. My masks were stripped away. The normal walls that allowed me to face society were down. My friend picked me up from the Lama Foundation. I felt like a happy, but stunned animal. It was difficult to talk about what happened. How could I speak of transformation when I didn’t know who or what I was any more.

Once she picked me up, our first task was to eat. When we got to the restaurant, I was barraged with people’s thoughts and energy. This was at a chilled-out, hippie style, New Mexican restaurant, not a loud, brassy place. I asked my companion to walk in front of me to shield me from the bright colors, the noise, the thoughts – it was too much. We settled in, but I knew I was a stranger in a strange land when I couldn’t remember the technology of money. What was it? How do you use it? I was not functioning like a conventional human. I was walking in an undefended, expanded realm of consciousness. As we sat, my memory resurfaced as I remembered the things we call normal. I began the journey back to the world of form, convention, and habit.

I learned two things from the trip:

• If I want a vision, a higher way of seeing things, I have to go into a metaphorical darkroom. I need to set aside time from my ordinary life, to go unbothered into the dark. Light is creation, but dark is the formless space where I can rest, restore, and see that which lies beyond what can be seen by the mind.
• If I have a vision, or just a mental remake, I must give it time to integrate into my consciousness and life. In yoga, when we do our stretches, we take a moment between each pose, so the action can settle in the body, and at other intervals we take long moments of relaxation. We end with a long relaxation. We “do nothing.”  Life is like that. If I land on a mountaintop, running down it is no way to get home.

We need dark places in our lives, and if we don’t make them, the Universe makes them for us. If we are immersed in constant activity, or self-hatred, something will give. We might lose an important, but demanding, account. We might contract the flu and have to stay in bed for weeks. I decided, when I was young, that I would provide time away from the stressors of life. I had little money, but I could fast for a day. I could go camping alone for a day or two. I could take a day-of-silence. I made the space. I would go in my back yard and lie on a blanket and talk to Mother Earth, while watching the insects crawl, listening to the birds sing. It seems to have worked. Not that there’s a formula: I just figured that if I set aside time to listen, that I wouldn’t need a rap on the knuckles to wake me up.

I wanted to arrive at the same aha experiences people arrived at from being laid off, contracting cancer, hitting the bottom, due to alcohol and drugs, without having a catastrophe to wake me from my stupor. Fortunately, the only hell I’ve had to go through was the hell of healing my emotional wounds. That work is so consuming that adding a calamity to emotional work, seems like a very difficult path to navigate.

We all have an innate wisdom calling us to consciousness. It wants us to hear it, feel it, and follow it. I might be off, but I believe that in today’s fast-paced society, we have to make room for space, tranquility, and expansiveness in our lives, because when we go into the deep, dark, velvet of existence and pay attention to that call, our lives become EZier and EZier.

  Quotes

Anne Quotes

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 Featured Product This Month

  What is EZosophy?

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

  Healthy Living

Releasing and Renewal

One of the things we fast discover when we understand there is more to life, is the depth of our restrictions. We realize that we have life-defeating messages stored in our head that inform us how and what to think. While some of this advice and information is okay, much of it is destructive. When we explore our subconscious mind, we are appalled at the beliefs we find. These beliefs took us down a path of forgetting. We forgot our original innocence and remain stuck, in many ways, in the mindset of a three-year-old. We have become fluent in a language that we were never meant to learn. We are fluent in the language of who we are not.

We must learn a new language. We must discover the language of our true Self.  The following statement is a hybrid consisting of affirmations and denials, designed as an affirmative prayer of well-being, restoration, and renewal.

Statement of Releasing and Renewal

I no longer sit on the sidelines of my life. The coping mechanisms of the past are released and dissolved. I am no longer a child, and I easily get my needs met, in new and wonderful ways. I don't have to be invisible to be safe. It’s safe for me to be seen and noticed. It's safe for me to be important and honored. I break all family traditions of suffering, secrets, and pain, and emerge into a new life of love, thanksgiving, and blessing. My body responds with a new-found vitality and zest for living. All systems are on go. As I enter the live stream of well-being, my mind is at rest, as the sounds of divine restoration become the music of my soul. I rest in the safety, love, and light of spirit. And it is so.

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

  Anne Talk

EZosophy: More Machines - Momagenes

Anne's video, EZosophy: More Machines - Momagenes, gives some advice on when we should be "doing" or "being." Time: 2:12

  Anne Art

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  Abundance Affirmations

Join Anne's Facebook Group

This group is a place to post uplifting affirmations and thoughts about prosperity and abundant living. Let's create a right relationship with money so that we feel comfortable about money. Let's use money as it's meant to be used, and not as a way to accumulate power or to fill a void. We don't need money to buy more stuff. We need it to create a world that works for everyone. We want to cast off old beliefs of lack and reclaim our natural state of abundance.

  Shareables From Anne

The World's Best Weight Loss Secret

Thought Freedom

40 Days to Abundance

  Anne's Schedule

All times here are Central Time
unless otherwise specified.

Sunday, December 23, 2018
11:00 AM-12:00 PM:
"Celebrating Christmas in Your Heart"
Unity of Brazosport
507 S. Brooks St. (Hwy. 36)
Brazoria, TX 77422

Contact Anne to book your event:
713.922.0242 or anne@annegillis.com.