A Note From Anne

Dear ,

This week I returned home from visiting my sweet little grandbabies. Mama Elizabeth and babies are doing well. The babies are still in the hospital, but are progressing. They are tiny miracles and just their presence is a blessing. I watched their every move with pride and fascination. Just their existence makes them lovable and popular.

Let’s be like the babies this week and remember that just our existence makes us lovable, and with that in mind, let’s complete the cycle by seeing the resonate lovability in everyone. I will, if you will. Tag. You’re it!

Anne

  Looking for Love

I talked with a friend last week. It was evident she was unhappy. She had not felt loving toward her mate in a long time. I replied, “Everyone wants to feel loved.” Her reply, “I don’t feel loved.” It surprised me because what I really meant was that when those around us don’t feel our love, they get a little bent out of shape. I was thinking her mate was probably less affectionate because she had withdrawn her positive regard from him. People know. We can’t wait for someone to love us. We have to be the one to start the cycle. We need to walk into the room of life and be what’s happening, not look for what’s happening.

There was a song in the 80’s called, “Looking for Love.” The lyrics go:

Well, I spent a lifetime lookin' for you
Single bars and good time lovers were never true
Playin' a fools game, hopin' to win
Tellin' those sweet lies and losin' again

I was lookin' for love in all the wrong places
Lookin' for love in too many faces
Searchin' their eyes, lookin' for traces
Of what I'm dreamin' of
Hopin' to find a friend and a lover
I'll bless the day I discover
Another heart lookin' for love

At the end of the song the singer finds his true love and no longer has to go to bars for love hunting. If the song had one more verse, it might go:

“I was still looking for love in all the wrong places. Hoping your love could fill up my spaces for me, that you’d set me free. So I’m back on the move with something to prove. I’ve slicked back my hair and put on my boots. I’m stuck. I’m so outta luck. So I’m looking again in all the wrong places, thinking there’s love in external places. You see, I gotta be free, to be crazy me.”

People who love to search will not give up the search. The pursuit is enticing and addictive. The few who give up the hunt for a lover may actually look for love within. The idea of loving ourselves is a step toward turning off the voices on internal criticism, but love by choice is an efforting kind of love.

Love is effortless. We don’t really need to look within for love; we just need to look. Love is the very nature of life. It is the container for all creation. It’s off to even say we are “Looking for Love.” Love is a presence that calls only for awareness. It is unconditional and always available.

All searching is for love. The search takes many forms, such as trying to find an elixir, uncovering a secret, or finding a soul mate, but regardless of the disguise the journey takes, it is a quest for love. It’s natural to look for love because we are made of love and we want to experience our true identities. Everything is made from love, but the search is the problem. It’s like a donkey that is looking for donkeys. If he doesn’t think he’s a donkey, all the other donkeys will not look like donkeys either. What he really needs is the awareness that he is a donkey.

This is not about giving up external loving behavior or not having kind and generous thoughts about oneself; this opening refers to something deeper. It is about the open secret – the love we seek is here already, always, unconditionally present. Tune in, and as you drop the search and stop the mind, you’ll find a stillness, and this stillness is who you are. You can’t manufacture it, destroy it, or earn it. It’s an irreversible deal. I recently read a post that said, “As an antidote for overwhelm, I’m falling in love with stillness.” This is true wisdom, for love and stillness are intertwined.

The movie, The Secret, was about the law of attraction; our minds not only bend reality, they create and attract circumstances and events based on our emotionally connected thoughts. As profound as the knowledge is, it speaks to a paradigm that is based on fulfilling our wants and desires. It is a plan that keeps us rearranging our lives to try to get them right, but the open secret (a phrase coined by Tony Parsons) is this immediate availability of unconditional love. It is the true secret. It is the secret that stops the search and lands us in the awareness of who we are.

When we establish ourselves in the stillness, the game is over. Life reveals itself in a new and perfect way. There is nothing to fix, no proving ourselves or trying to cover up our fragilities.  Each moment brings a deeper and deeper sense of awe. There is no teaching that can take us there. Even the idea of grace seems a little off because it seems to say that at a particular point in time one of us is favored. But this love is extraordinary. It takes the sting out of life and puts the step back in.

It is my hope that in pointing in this direction these words will awaken in you a new kind of desire to stop everything and to tune into this love. I can’t say how, but the how is already in the realm of your knowing. All I can say is be aware, be awake, and be still.

  Quotes

"If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather, feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie; the emotion will be the truth."
– Eckhart Tolle

"You carry your wound. With the ego, your whole being is a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you; everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound. Who has got the energy? But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, so ready, just waiting on the brink for anything."
– Soho

  Anne's Books

Standing in The Dark

EZosophy

Offbeat Prayers

Click here to see all three of Anne's books

What people are saying about Standing in the Dark:

"Standing in the Dark, by Anne Sermons Gillis, isn't just another positive thinking book. It's a book about the difficult times in life and what we can do to make it through them. It does, however, give us positive ways to make life easier. It's a short book, but it's one that may just turn your thinking on its head, which will probably be the best thing that's happened to your thinking in a long time. It's about how to bring more ease into a life that isn't easy all of the time. Anne discusses six main areas of life: Ease, Mission, Health, Relationships, Money, and Loss."
  – Charles David Heineke

Now available on Kindle. Click for details.

What people are saying about EZosophy: The Art and Wisdom of Easy or at Least Easier Living:

"Although most conscious people understand that life doesn't have to a struggle, the "how to" has been missing... until now. Anne's book makes it "easy."
  – T. Harv Eker - Bestselling author and Founder of Peak Potentials Training

Now available on Kindle.
Click for details.
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What people are saying about Offbeat Prayers for the Modern Mystic:

"I love your book. It is filled with much wisdom, humor and heart. Really beautiful."
  – Alan Cohen author, Enough Already, mentions Anne and EZosophy on page 99

Now available on Kindle.
Click for details.

  What is EZosophy?

Click the graphic above to find out.

  Theosophical Society

Anne Sermons Gillis currently serves as the president of the Houston Lodge of the Theosophical Society.

We encourage our members to live a life in service to humanity, in stillness through mediation, and in study of ancient wisdom.

"Recognition of the unique value of every living being expresses itself in reverence for life, compassion for all, sympathy with the need of all individuals to find truth for themselves, and respect for all religious traditions."
   --The Theosophical World View

Meetings are held on the first and third Saturdays at 10 AM Central Time in Houston, Texas.

For more information visit The Houston Lodge or visit our national organization at http://www.Theosophical.org.

  Mom & Twins

Thomas and Reynolds Wann
with Mom Elizabeth
(Anne Sermons Gillis' daughter
and Anne's first grand sons)
Click for larger image

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

  Anne's Services

  Schedule Anne

You may reach Anne by phone at 281-419-1775 or click the button below to contact Anne by email. Anne is also available to officiate at weddings and funerals.

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  Anne's Schedule

All times here are Central Time.

An Event for Your Consideration

Here is an upcoming spiritual event that may be of interest to you.

June 5-8, 2014
Co-Creators Convergence Conference, Year 2

  Healthy Living

Dryer Sheets

I don’t use dryer sheets. It’s been so long since I used them, I forgot my reasoning. I knew the chemicals they put off caused breathing problems, but I wanted more. Why do my guts shake when I see someone using dryer sheets?

My findings were disturbing. It seems bad enough that dryer sheets are made from fiberglass, but the sheets include these chemicals:

• Benzyl acetate: Linked to pancreatic cancer
• Benzyl Alcohol: Upper respiratory tract irritant
• Ethanol: On the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Hazardous Waste list and can cause central nervous system disorders
• A-Terpineol: Can cause respiratory problems, including fatal edema, and central nervous system damage
• Ethyl Acetate: A narcotic on the EPA’s Hazardous Waste list
• Camphor: Causes central nervous system disorders
• Chloroform: Neurotoxic, anesthetic, and carcinogenic
• Linalool: A narcotic that causes central nervous system disorders
• Pentane: A chemical known to be harmful if inhaled

Source:

http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/articles/toxin5.php

Even though you may not be sensitive enough to experience immediate effects, toxic chemicals build in the body and, overtime, we suffer from toxic overload. It’s called a body burden. http://www.chemicalbodyburden.org/whatisbb.htm

Liquid fabric softeners can be as bad as dryer sheets and the Environmental Working Group recommends we skip those as well.

There are some healthy dryer sheets and liquid softeners on the market, but before you purchase them, be sure to research the ingredients in your products. You can also save money and be sure you are toxic free. Try one of these alternatives:

• Make wool dryer balls.
• Try adding 1/4 cup (or less) of either vinegar or borax to your laundry wash cycle or add 1/4 cup vinegar to the rinse cycle.
• Aluminum balls take out the static and you can make your own.

One out of ten children in the U.S. has asthma. We can’t always control our air quality, but we can make good choices when we wash and dry our clothes. Some people find it burdensome to change chemical based home living to healthy home living, but if we make one change at a time, the task might even seem like an adventure. Some people spend weeks searching for that special outfit or lipstick shade while others spend hours on news sites. Our health should be more important than our appearance or our hunger for news. Check out your fabric softeners, whether sheets or liquid, and if you find toxins, it’s time to make that change.

  Anne Talks

Love is Now (14:55).

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Editor/Publisher: Charles David Heineke of TheDoorway.org.

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