Anne's Note suggests ways to Live Life as a Work in Progress. In the Main article, The Mind, the Mind compares to ocean and the mind, and points us to its deep stillness. The Healthy Living article, Cilantro and Pico de Gallo, pairs Cilantro with a recipe for Pico de Gallo. The Anne Talk, EZosophy Training: Make Your Life Easy or at Least Easier, gives helpful and humorous insights into living an easier life. The Featured Product this month is Anne's latest book, EZosophy: The Art and Wisdom of Easy or At Least Easier Living.

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

Living EZosophy, May 24, 2016
Published Weekly on Tuesday Mornings

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

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  A Note From Anne

Dear ,

Today Jim (my husband) and I are working the polls for a state candidate runoff. It is a long day and since it is a runoff, there will be few voters. Working at the polls is always interesting, and I recommend you give it a try. Contact your local favorite county party, Democrat or Republican, and volunteer to be a judge or poll worker for elections. Someone will contact you and tell you where to go for training and you will be assigned a precinct to work in. Until I started working the polls a few years ago, I didn't have a true understanding of the voting process. It was somewhat mysterious, but now I am in the know!

I'm still working on my "Less is More Lifestyle." I am not a good candidate. The sandals in the picture have been sitting in my closet for a while. They are the only custom made shoes I have ever had. I paid $10 for them in India in 2007. The shoemaker traced my foot on a piece of paper and in a few days I had sandals. I'm wearing them today to justify keeping them. Keeping one item is not a problem; it's just I have too many memory infused items that I am not ready to part with.

I'm a work in progress. I love the 12 step saying, "Progress; not perfection." It is an EZosophy philosophy. In the movie, What About Bob?, Bob assimilated the idea of "baby steps" into his life. While quantum leaps in behavior are possible, demanding excellence in everything can have a downside: it doesn't give us room to be imperfect. We are imperfect. We can and do make mistakes. We grasp at things and hang onto life at its edges, but rather than be disgusted with our performance, we need to do what we can and forgive and forget the rest. I have given away a lot of things, anticipating our move, and I've packed things that are more sentimental than necessary and, for now, that will have to be enough.

Anne

  The Mind

Do you remember when you discovered that you did not have to be at the effect of your mind? Did you eventually realize that the mind is more than thoughts? Did you find that there were mysterious parts deep within and that these parts were worth looking for? Did your journey reveal a vast Presence that you found while looking through the mind?

What is this mind that takes us through the peaks and valleys of life? What is this thing that opens, closes, and reopens to more and more grandeur and mystery? Maybe we can only understand the mind when spoken of in symbols or through analogies.

The ocean is big and seemingly endless. It is the home to storms and stillness. There is an ocean surface and beneath there is another world that houses living systems. When we dive into the ocean, we experience one wonder; if we swim there's another experience; if we surf still another possibly exhilarating experience. One can drown in the ocean, and if the ocean goes into our homes, the experience is devastating. But, regardless of our interactions, it's all ocean. There is no ocean independence. Can we go to the end of the Mississippi River and point to the exact place the Gulf begins? The water you called the Mississippi is now the water in the Gulf of Mexico and soon it becomes the Caribbean and then the Atlantic Ocean. You may be able to say "this is the Gulf," but you can't point to where it begins, and the water doesn't just stay put. It travels around the world and it evaporates and rains, only to return to the ocean.

The mind, like the ocean, is indivisible, but there are many parts. The mind has storms, calm and still places, beliefs, and realities. Don't go to the waves and think they are the whole ocean. Don't go to the Gulf and believe that's all there is. Don't go to thoughts and believe they are reality.

When we dive into the mind, do we realize how vast it is – how many mansions we have not visited and how many doors are waiting for us to enter? The mind is not limited to the brain. It is like the river that joins the ocean; there is no line of demarcation.

When the mind is still we can see the many doors of Being, but when it is full of drama and mind junk, the flurry obscures everything and we operate in a haze. That is why almost anyone who uncovers the workings of the mind realizes that they have to spend time in deep stillness. Be it in meditation, contemplation, drawing, dance, song, or sound, the mind must still itself so that That Which is Greater than thought can appear. It doesn't matter how we move beyond thought and mind drama, but it is important that we do so. If we develop the habit of worry, stress, and hurry, we will never reach the depth of who we are and we will remain on the sidelines of life wishing for something that is within our reach.

Unfortunately, when the mind gets desperate, it thinks that speeding up will fix things. The mind digs through reams of information to right itself, but what it really needs is to be still. This is the message of the mind; the message we overlook for a flashier version of the truth is, "Be still. You are not who you think you are." It is only in the stillness that we experience who we are. It is only in the stillness that we can develop trust. It is only in the stillness that we can lay our burdens down. Our mind is like the ocean, with tsunamis and still spots, and when we focus on the tidal waves, our lives become tumultuous; when we focus on the calm, our lives respond in kind.

Join the movement of the mind called EZosophy. It is the philosophy that calls the mind home to its resting place of EZ. It is the invitation to let the mind move into an unending flow of well-being and give up the addiction to mental drama. We can do it. Everyone can become an EZosophist. When we dedicate our minds toward ease and stillness, ease and stillness reach out, teach and guide us, and our lives definitely become EZier and EZier.

Anne

  Quotes

"When you plant a seed of love, it's you that blossoms"
— Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

"Make peace with your past so it doesn’t screw up the present."
— Regina Brett

"Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere."
— Regina Brett

  Featured Product This Month

  What is EZosophy?

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  Healthy Living

Cilantro and Pico de Gallo

People seem to really like cilantro or have an aversion toward it. I am a cilantro lover. When I first moved to Texas, I was introduced to Pico de Gallo. It's like a raw salsa and makes a wonderful condiment. I put it on any kind of bean, eat it like salsa with chips, or use is as a dressing for a salad.

Cilantro

The cool thing about cilantro is that it has health benefits. By now everyone knows that if it is leafy and green, it is healthy, but cilantro also gives us added health boasts.

Most of us are exposed to mercury, a heavy metal, at some point. Our inoculations are often laced with thimerosal. It is a preservative and it is mercury. Unfortunately, even though we know the dangers of mercury, we still use them in our inoculations. Mercury is also used in silver or amalgam fillings. The good news is that cilantro binds the mercury in our bodies so we can eliminate it.

Cilantro also helps us sleep and has anti-anxiety properties.

Add cilantro to any green salad to give it a kick, and try some Pico de Gallo as a condiment for almost any meal.

Recipe for Pico de Gallo

• ½ teaspoon of salt
• Juice of ½ lime
• 1 chopped yellow onion
• 2 chopped tomatoes (I like twice as many tomatoes as onions)
• As much cilantro as you have the patience to chop!

Mix the ingredients and enjoy.

  Anne Talks

Today's Anne Talk is EZosophy Training: Make Your Life Easy or at Least Easier. It's gives helpful and humorous insights into living an easier life. Time: 25:29.

  Anne Art

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