Anne's Note provides her Declaration of Inner Dependence. The main article, Welcome to Our Friends: Illness and Death, reminds us that illness and death can be valuable teachers in life. Healthy Living shows us how Less Plastic: Fantastic. The Anne Talk is Relationship Patterns and Healing Them Teleseminar. The Featured Product this month is The I AM Affirmations CD.

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

  A Note From Anne

Dear ,

In recognition of America's Independence Day on July 4, 2015, I'm including below my own declaration, which you may want to consider adopting too.

Declaration of Inner Dependence

I, __________________, a spirit of the United States of Consciousness, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for myself and others, and for posterity, do ordain and establish this Declaration of Inner-Dependence.

I, __________________, am inner dependent. I am fully dependent on the source within to provide me with a sufficiency of all things necessary to live a passionate, joy-filled life. When I settle my mind and release the thoughts that drag me down, I am immersed in the deep, quite place of fulfillment. I declare that this inner space is non-failing and all-providing. I am a part of this grand intelligence and choose to live my life in accordance with its provisions. I depend on the substance within to care for my every need. The unfailing spiritual activity within me provides goodness and mercy in my relationship with self and others, my financial affairs, in my career, body, mind, and feeling nature. I accept the inner presence as my instant, constant, non-ending abundance of all good things. God is the source and the I Am of me is the re–source. I am like my creator, Source and Re-Source.

Furthermore, I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal in spirit, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Furthermore I know myself to be the creator of life, liberty, and happiness in my world, and, as an inner dependent, I know that I am richly blessed by everything, everyone, and every situation. So Be IT!

Copyright © 2005 Anne Sermons Gillis. Feel free to copy.

Happy 239th Birthday, America.

May Peace Prevail.

Anne

  Our Friends: Illness and Death

Welcome to Our Friends: Illness and Death

“That which is not smaller than aids is larger than aids.” Can you imagine my surprise when I awakened one morning to that thought? Taken aback, I searched my mind to make sense of the enigma. The thought seemed out of context since I didn’t have AIDS. Regardless, I listened as the following ideas rolled off my mind.

What is your relationship to aids? If you are smaller than AIDS, it will be your enemy. If you are larger than AIDS, it will be your teacher. We are accustomed to seeing everything that isn’t joy-filled, healthful, and bright as our enemy. The medical profession fights disease. We seek to be positive thinkers by canceling negative thoughts. This perspective causes looming shadows in our culture. We seek to destroy the enemy rather than to embrace the light. We run from the things we view harmful. The faster we run, the more we fuel our fear.

Fear is the real word for enemy. What is not smaller than fear is larger than fear. If we are smaller than our fear, it runs us. On the other side of the fear coin, we cease running; we latch on. We identify with fear and think we are the fear. We live with a sense of resignation and hopelessness. We hang on to others and try to get them to take care of us. We become helpless, immobilized, and powerless.

Illness is healing in process. Illness is the body clearing what harms us. Sometimes the process of cleansing is so radical we die, but, dead or not, the emotional healing continues. Illness, as a teacher, gives us time to deal with our emotions and make amends to our bodies.

Belief systems harm us. Viruses and bacteria can’t harm us; they can only hurt our bodies.  We are not bodies; we are spirits. Who we really are is only affected by love or by the upsets that hold love out. We believe that health is a positive and that dying is bad. It has only been in the last 20 years that we began to build systems to support conscious dying, illness prevention, and the idea of illness as an ally.

When you are ill, ask these questions of your illness and see what you learn. It does not matter whether you have AIDS, cancer, or a sore throat; all illnesses provide alternative learning perspectives.

• What have you come to teach me?
• What can I do to assist this transformation?
• How can you help me understand who I am?
• How can I treat my body with more love?
• What can you tell me about living?
• What can you tell me about dying?
• What can you tell me about health?
• What can you tell me about myself and how I view myself?
• How can you help me heal the false concepts I have about myself?
• What can you teach me about power?
• What do you want with me?
• What do I need to do?
• Whom do I need to forgive?
• Whom do I need to make amends with?

Let the illness be okay. Don’t run away. Our mind serves as an inner barbeque pit that incinerates well-being. It patrols 24/7 in its quest to punish, control, and drive us. Give up the guilt. As Bob Mandel says in Open Heart Therapy: “Guilt is the mafia of the mind.”

Dialogue with your illness and write down the answers. Learning from death or illness does not mean you have to die; learning contributes to your experience of living. When it comes to the idea of illness, we are sick! We medicate, abdicate, and extricate ourselves from illness. We too often go after a disease in the same way we would go to war. We don’t need a war on cancer; we need answers and compassion. Maybe we could call cancer “can serve”; then we could receive the gift rather than solely identifying with limits and pain. Can we face illness, regardless of its magnitude, so that we can be bigger than the disease?

People die. Conscious people, nearing the time of transition, tend to be luminous. Facing death allows people to drop the mask; see what is truly important. Death gives us the chance to stop the running. I have been with people who are near death who refused to admit they were dying. It seemed tragic that they were not able to say good-bye to family members, clean the slate of their consciousness, and be aware of what was happening. They could not accept the gifts death brought with it.

It is common in Eastern cultures to prepare the consciousness for death. People are trained how to think and what to think when death occurs. According to Eastern philosophy, the thoughts held at the time of death are important and have great impact on what happens to us during and after death. Gandhi murmured God’s name when shot. Martin Luther King called out to his Lord in the last seconds of his life.

The discipline of Japa, or repeating the name of a Higher Power with the inner voice, assures that when one dies, he or she is focused on the highest thought available. If you find yourself facing sudden or unexpected death, think of your Higher Power. You can repeat “Om,” which is the sound of creation and known as the primordial seed sound. Call to Jesus, Buddha, or any of the saints. A favorite name for this infinite power is “I Am that I Am.” The Bible says “Run into the name of the Lord.” This means to let go of the mind control that figures and schemes to keep the body safe.

Our mind must learn to surrender itself to a power greater than itself. Ramana said "When the mind rests in its source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you." If one has not learned to surrender the thinking process by the time death arrives, that is a good time to start.

If you are ill or facing death, befriend not only your dis-ease; give a voice to the internal conflicts. Let them have a say and then let them go. Give up the need to be a spiritual worrier. Give up the drama about your illness or fate. Take responsibility for your perception and illumine your life with the love of your being. Illness and death are strange bedfellows, but they are not bad. They are opportunities, not punishments. Embrace the process, and when you do, you will find that life will be easy or at least easier.

Anne

Featured Product This Month

  What is EZosophy?

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  Healthy Living

Less Plastic: Fantastic

Pope Francis recently delivered his encyclical on climate change. "The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish."

In keeping with his call to Catholics to care for creation, here’s something for you to consider. If you use plastic liners for your trash cans, or reuse plastic grocery bags for your trash cans, then throw the filled bags away, they will end up in landfills. It takes up to 1,000 years for them to break down and many of them blow away and end up in the ocean. These bags contain chemicals that are harmful to plants and animals, and the ones that end up in the ocean often trap or kill fish and other ocean creatures and contribute to floating garbage heaps.

The best solution to avoid using plastic trash can liners or grocery bags as liners is to compost your leftover fruits and vegetables, then recycle what you can, and the rest of the trash will be dry so you don’t need a trash can liner.

If you are too busy to be a do it yourself garbage facility, you can use biodegradable trash bags. BuyGreen.com manufactures BioBags for trash liners as well as doggie poop bags, resealable storage bags, cling wrap, and leaf bags. From the BioBags website: “BioBags are made from a resin derived from plant starches, vegetable oils & compostable polymers and can be consumed by micro-organisms that live in our soils. Because of this, our bags can also be readily composted along with organic waste in municipal composting facilities. BioBag isn’t a large petroleum-based plastic bag company that now conveniently dabbles in the new business of compostable bags. We are, instead, a small company of dedicated employees, who are fully committed to ONLY producing certified compostable bags and films.”

Never put plastic bags in your recycling carts because they jam up the sorting machines. When you have plastic bags, you can take them to a grocery store that recycles for their customers.

Let’s give the pope some hope! Let’s take our reusable grocery bags to the store, refrain from using plastic grocery bags as trash can liners, and be considerate and responsible when we dispose of our refuse.

Anne

  Anne Talks

This week's Anne Talk is Anne's Relationship Patterns and Healing Them Teleseminar. It provides insights into relationships so we can make better choices, once we notice the choices we've been making that no longer serve us. Time: 1:03:09

  Anne Art

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Click the image to see a larger image.

  Quotes

"Relationships boil down to two things: I like you right now, which is a function of my present sense of okayness, or I don't like you right now. This says I'm afraid you won't like me, or in my eyes, you're so much less or more than I that either I cannot get your affection or, if I can get it, it's not valuable because I don't think you are valuable."
— Anne Sermons Gillis

"Overwhelm is created by the endless litany of problems the mind can imagine and the ever-growing list of things we think we need to do about them."
— Nirmala

"Stopping the egoic mind is the most important action you will ever take."
— Anne Sermons Gillis