Anne's Note talks about Life in Texas. The Main article, Healing Ourselves, guides us to be gentle with ourselves while we heal from past hurts. The Healthy Living article, The Body-Mind Connection, shows how the thoughts of our mind can affect the health of our body. The Anne Talk is Happy Wait Day. Anne suggests how to make waiting EZier. The Featured Product this month is Anne's first book, Offbeat Prayers for the Modern Mystic.

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

Living EZosophy, July 26, 2016
Published Weekly on Tuesday Mornings

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

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  A Note From Anne

Life in Texas

Dear ,

It's still summer, meaning plenty of hot, humid days. Texas has a way with hot that few places rival. I am grooving on the sunny weather. It is a privilege to live where it's sunny. The sun gives me a little zip. Living at the point of clean is a good experience. Since our house is for sale, we keep it cleaner than we normally would, in case we have a showing, and we are having showings.

Living as if we are going to hop out of here at a moment's notice is over. After planning to move for more than a year, the thrill is gone, the disappointment of not having a fast exit is over, and our lives are back to abnormal. I've never found a normal to my life because of the vast changes in my way of seeing things. What seemed the norm yesterday is an antiquated activity today. Life predictability has its bonuses, but it has its limits as well. I love living on the edge of new. New is in the mind, and whether we've been in a job for 25 years or lived in the same town forever, the power of new is always available. Shunryu Suzuki calls it "the beginner's mind."

I've had my new book at the point of ready to go to the printer for days. The title has changed four times and the layout work is time consuming. I want to get it finished, but I would rather get all the errors corrected than to rush its completion. The latest title, and I hope final title, of my latest book is Words Make a Difference. The subtitle is Affirmations, Visionary Statements, and Revolutionary Ideas for Transforming Ourselves, Our Culture, and Our Planet.

Life is good here in Texas. and I'm sending you a blessing of new – May you live on the edge of new and see the novelty of each moment, encounter, and event, and, of course, may you make life EZier and EZier.

Anne

  Main Article

Healing Ourselves

Are you ready to live from your deepest essence? Are you tired of being slung around by your emotions? Have you tried everything but still end up at the doorstep of suffering? Emotional healing is a progressive activity, and wanting to be finished right now can contribute to our demise. The demands we put on ourselves are not only uncomfortable; they are impossible to accomplish.

Not even the best of chefs can throw together a gourmet meal in a few minutes. Often the flavors of a dish must ripen. The most tantalizing dishes take hours to cook, but before the cooking, a great chef has to master the art of cooking. The art transcends recipes. A master chef learns to be one with the food. It is as if the food speaks as to how it can best blend its components and tastes so as to brim with sensual delight.

We are like the food, the chef, and the art of cooking. We have to be a master of all three in order to live our lives from the center of well-being. TV shows are often preceded by a message like, "Live from the Kennedy Center." We have to be the one who says to and of ourselves, "Live from the center of peace, intuition, creativity, and love – I present "Me."

Before we can move from the self-centered me, to the oneness of the we, we must move to the me that is okay about life. This "me" needs to be fluent in the tools of living. This "Me" must have:

• Healed their issues with their parents. Most parents don't intentionally set out to hurt their children, but if your mother accidentally ran over you with the family car, it still hurt. There are sure to be residual effects. If you seek to get revenge on anyone, it points to having a revenge pattern. This is one effect from unhealed family of origin issues. You try to get even with your parent through your partner. You try to catch them in a mistake or have long, ongoing conversations in your head that make them wrong.
• Healed their issues with their siblings. If you find yourself to be ultra-competitive and jealous of those who succeed in your field, you probably are suffering from sibling rivalry. My older sister had an IQ of 160. She was no doubt brilliant. She graduated magna cum laude from everything. She was my primary mentor in life and she supported me with a zeal. None-the-less, I never felt that I could measure up, and that inadequacy showed up as jealousy and a sense of shame and failure. The egoic mind is clever: it hides these life guiding principles from us, in our subconscious mind, if they do not match our self-image.
• Mastered the ongoing internal dialogue so it doesn't go haywire all the time. The mind must have learned to relax and let itself off duty. The mind must have something bigger than dialogue to comfort it. The mind seeks stillness. We have to learn to be mentally still.
• Learned to trust that life operates on our behalf. We might not like everything that life serves us, but until we trust there is something occurring that we can’t see, we operate as a “poor me” in life. We not only feel sorry for ourselves when we live from a "poor me" position, we also scare off people. It's uncomfortable to be in the presence of an energy sucking vampire. We have to give up getting someone to fix or take care of us.

While some people awaken instantly, like Paul on the road to Damascus, most people have to do some work. We don't know what led to the day of Paul's blinded by to the light experience, but he probably had done some previous healing. Maybe he repented his sins against others and awoke to his misunderstanding of spiritual principles. Buddha sat around a long time under the Bodhi tree before he got it. While it seemed as if nothing was occurring as he sat, we can suppose that the time he sat under that tree gave him time to heal. Jesus took 40 days in the desert to meet his demons. If the masters themselves had to take time to heal their personal stuff, then it follows that we are called to do the same. They had to heal this sense of the little me so that it didn't trip them up at every turn and sabotage their quest for enlightenment.

We can't stay stuck in the healing process, but we can't avoid it either. There is an inner voice, an inner psychiatrist, an inner presence that serves as a compass for our healing and our lives. Our primary function is to learn to hear our guidance, develop a sense of discernment concerning our intuition, and to follow the course of the heart. This intuitive voice steers us in the right direction, it engenders humility, and attracts healers and ideas that can accompany us along our way. It is a voice that erodes narcissism and promotes altruism. It is the voice, feeling, and hunches that move us through the stages from the Me to the We and delivers us into the promised land of being.

Waking up takes time, and there's not a timetable. The time is always now, but when we are looking through fogged lenses, we will see better when we stop to clean the lenses. While we think that enlightenment will fix everything, it won't. When we get enlightened or have that life definitive mountaintop experience, that's when the real work begins. Let's be patient with ourselves, because when we are, our lives get EZier and EZier.

Anne

  Quotes

"Things only seem inconvenient when you hang on to the way you think they should be."
-- Joshua Becker

"If we are greedy, the world is something to be exploited. A person looks at the forest and sees timber. Buddha looks at the forest and sees nature."
-- Radha Burnier

"The mind is the slayer of the real. It is the diamond that cuts the diamond: it is the thorn that removes the thorn. The mind that is the slayer of the real has to slay the mind itself. The illusion maker has to be slain."
-- Radha Burnier

  Featured Product This Month

  What is EZosophy?

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  Healthy Living

The Body-Mind Connection

Years ago no one thought our minds played an active part in our health. The medical profession treated our bodies like machines. Now, more than 55% believe in the body-mind connection. What we think and feel affects our health.

When we are close to someone, such as a boss or family member who is routinely critical toward us, we suffer. We worry about how to say things and have long running, energy draining, mental conversations about how to deal with them when we see them. We expend a tremendous amount of energy after our encounter, defending ourselves or trashing them. These internal conversations, the ones we have control over, can be as harmful as our actual encounters. When we worry, stress, and strain, the cells in our body react, and they are not happy. Healthy cells are happy cells, and when we are stressed, our cells lose their vitality and our immune system is negatively impacted.

Once my husband and I had the same doctor. My husband responded after one of his appointments, "Her bedside manner lacks." I knew what he meant. She seemed curt and cold. I always left my appointment feeling like I had done something wrong. I decided that on my next appointment I would change the way I felt about her. I imagined her talking to me in a relaxed and respectful tone. I saw us as friends, not adversaries. I imagined it was fun to visit her office. As I waited in the waiting room, I filled my head with friendly thoughts toward her. The appointment was amazing. She took plenty of time, joked, and addressed each one of my concerns with genuine empathy.

We are all intuitive. The doctor could feel my good vibes and reacted accordingly. While this story turned out well, it might have gone a different way. She might have behaved poorly toward me, but I would have been different. I would not be filled with the dread I had of going to see her. I always feel better when I imagine a good encounter than when my inner narrative is filled with trying to do the right thing, getting someone to like me, being ashamed they are in my life, defending myself, saying I don't deserve to be treated like this, or seething in anger and irritation.

Changing the way we look at people is a health booster. Gandhi said the best way to conquer our enemy is to make them a friend. Transforming the way we look at people is helpful to everyone. We never have to be at the effect of another’s ill will. Sometimes we can change the way others see us, and that's helpful, but we can always see others in a better light, and when we do, we can be assured that we will be healthier and healthier.

Anne

  Anne Talks

Today's Anne Talk is Happy Wait Day. (WAIT: Wonderful Adventure In Time)
Time: 5:00.

Which One Are You?

There was an old woman who stood in a line.
She whined and pouted as she waited her time.
She stuck out her tongue, and acted the part
Of a put-out female without any heart.

There was a great woman who stood in the queue,
Good naturedly smiling, her grace she imbued.
She beamed and sparkled in sheer delight.
Patience her virtue, she was happy and bright.

  Anne Art

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  Anne's Schedule

All times here are Central Time.

Sunday, August 21, 2016
11 AM Service: "Spiritual Freedom"
Carmel Temple
1208 Pennsylvania St.
South Houston TX 77587
Phone:713-944-0014

Sunday, August 28, 2016
11:00 AM Service: "Get in the Spirit"
Unity of Brazosport
507 S. Brooks St. (Hwy 36)
Brazoria, TX 77422

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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.