Anne's Note celebrates This Newsletter's Birthday. The main article, The Library of the Mind, reminds us that our mind's library can be limiting as well as informative. The Healthy Living article, Shake Your Buddha, introduces some benefits of Dahn Yoga. The Anne Talk is Anne's short video, The Opposite Is True. The Featured Product this month is Anne's The One Year Seminar.

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

Living EZosophy, January 5, 2016
Published Weekly on Tuesday Mornings

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

Anne's Websites:

  A Note From Anne

Dear ,

I am glad I decided to write this online newsletter. It was a decision I made after a business coach cajoled me to do it. Maybe I was reluctant because I put out a hard copy newsletter for more than 10 years and sent out an online newsletter before the internet services were savvy enough to handle multiple mailings from one person. Yet 4 years ago, I entered into newsletter land. Happy Birthday to the EZ Secret Newsletter. Here’s the first edition of the EZ Secret Diet Newsletter.

The first little while was difficult. I did the pictures, the layout, and wrote the articles. I was not the right editor and the publication was riddled with mistakes. I decided to offer free things to people who picked out my mistakes and emailed me with a list. Charles Heineke responded and, in the summer of 2012, volunteered to layout the publication, correct the mistakes, offer ideas for content, and send it out. That made it much easier for me and I am grateful to him for these years of selfless service.

At the beginning I planned to focus more food, but as the issues evolved, I came back to my EZosophy principles. The mental diet is as important as what we eat, and there are many more articles on food than there are on ease. I’ve been sharing those for more than 27 years, and even though I have not landed in the Land of EZ, I visit frequently. My life is easier since I started the EZ (pronounced easy) plan in my life. Thank you for reading the newsletter and for spreading the word on making life EZier and EZier.

Anne

  The Library of the Mind

I just discovered a service called HooplaDigital.com. I accessed it from my online county library account. I can download free audio books, watch videos, or read e-books. I installed the app more than a year ago, but only recently looked into its capabilities. I’ve now listened to two audios and I’m excited about the seemingly boundless content available.*

This literary world was at my fingertips, but I didn’t know it. How much rests at the tip of our minds, in plain view, that goes without notice and what obscures our noticing? What shields the mind and keeps it going around in a small, exclusive-to-us area?

The shield, or many call it the veil, is a self-constructed box of words, ideas, and beliefs. Let’s call it the library. It’s like our minds house books and we check them out; we choose whatever content suits our yearning. Want some drama? Just pull out the collection on grievances. Want to feel superior? Choose from a wide variety of “Why I’m better than you” content. Want to feel better? Pull from the self-improvement section. The library is so full that we endlessly bounce from one section to the other, until something puts a hole in the wall and we see or experience something that can’t be categorized in our library.

The audio series I just finished, streaming from Hoopla, “Breakfast with Buddha, Lunch with Buddha, and Dinner with Buddha,” is about a semi-cynical New Yorker who loses his parents, cherished wife, and job. He had no shelves for these books in his library. His flakey sister, or at least in his world she is considered flakey, marries a famous Rinpoche who becomes his teacher. The series spans a decade and, bit by bit, Otto Ringling, the main character, finds his personal library shattered. He gets irritated, sometimes recalcitrant, but as his world dissolves, he finds another world that ushers in peace and equanimity. He discovers that when he put down his concepts and rested in the stillness, which he accessed through meditation and self-reflection, that his life itself was valuable regardless of his losses and failures.

Otto learned what most of us suspected all along, you can’t trust your mind. Unfortunately, we are so heavily identified with our minds that meditation (or some form of mental quietness) and surrender, which could bring about what we truly want, are purposely overlooked, so that we can continue watching the shows housed in our minds - our favorite sitcoms, dramas, and game shows. We believe these shows are our lives and we desperately hang onto them. If they are jeopardized, we try to defend and protect them. This takes energy, lots of energy, actually all of our energy, and therefore we feel justified in our familiar entertaining, yet stuck, positions. We remain immovable because we are too tired to deal with anything else.

There are no suggestions on how to leave the library, and even the description above describes only part of this fabulous experience of spiritual development. Yet the knowing about this process helps when we need to kick our spiritual butts. When we set our own traps, we have to take responsibility for the results, but first we have to waken to our part in the play of life. When we show up to life, pay attention, and allow the vicissitudes of life to work their magic, we eventually catch on! Everything is okay even if the world is spinning out of control. We are not of this world, and, while we want to handle our world with care, we don’t need to use it as fodder for endless mental drama.

Happy New Year to everyone. May you use this year to create a life that is EZier and EZier and may you have the wisdom to lay your burdens down.

*HooplaDigital.com can only be accessed through membership in your participating local library. Here are 10 other online sources for free audio books. And here are 224 Places For Free Audio Books Online.

Anne

  Quotes

Quotes I found in an old notebook.

“You are good. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
— B. Rata

Love note to self: “I’m out to get you.”
— Unknown

Note from God: “I’m giving you a great seat.”
— Unknown

“We slice and dice reality until it becomes a fictional tale that matches our beliefs.”
— Anne Sermons Gillis

  Featured Product This Month

  What is EZosophy?

Click the graphic above to learn more.

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

  Healthy Living

Shake Your Buddha

One of my clients asked years ago if I knew about Dahn Yoga. I looked it up but essentially forgot about it until I attended a health fair, and, come to find out, there was a Dahn Yoga center in my area. I attended one class, and, typical to my behavior, I bought a video. I love videos and I’m not fond of driving to classes. Here’s the very short version of the video I purchased.

Dahn Yoga is often referred to as “brain yoga.” The moves wake up and balance our brains. There is a long section in my yoga video where one shakes or makes tiny bouncing movements. Even though it was fun, I doubted that such an action could produce beneficial results, but I was wrong. In an article an acquaintance sent from her blog, she explains how jiggling benefits us.

“Much of the stiffness and joint pain we feel as we get older is actually the stiffening of the fascia, a thin layer of tissue that encapsulates muscles and joints. … The theory is that the friction created between the layer of skin and the muscles when we shake massages the fascia.” —  Lori Epperson

It looks like Jerry Lee Lewis had it right about shakin' it, and if we all shake our Buddha or our inner spiritual nature with some outer shakin’, we, too, might remember what we sprinted up the steps to do!

  Anne Talks

Take a minute to watch Anne's video The Opposite Is True. Click the player button to start the video. Time: 1:20

  Anne Art

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  Anne's Schedule

Call Anne to Schedule Your Meeting.

10:30 AM-12:30 PM  “EZosophy”
Thomas A. Glazier Senior Educ. Center
16600 Pine Forest Lane
Houston, Texas
For information contact:
Lisa Rice at lrice@pct3.com

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.