Anne's Note talks about Taming Tragedy in our Lives. The Main article, The Empathy Project, invites us to create a new dimension of compassion and empathy. The Healthy Living article, Green Clean, shows you a quick and easy way to clean your silver items. The Anne Talk is Reality Check. Learn how Anne handled her bounced reality check. 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, June 28, 2016
Published Weekly on Tuesday Mornings

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

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  A Note From Anne

Taming Tragedy in our Lives

Dear ,

Today we walked our trash lined street. It may be another month before the trash is picked up. For first time readers, our area is recovering from a recent flood. One of the neighbors is upset and says he is going to hire a crew to pick up his trash and dump it at our precinct commissioner's office. It is comical to see the lengths people will go to when they are upset.

While this action is extreme, there is something admirable about his drive to clean up the stinking furniture and water-soaked dry wall from his property. If everyone had a relentless drive to clean up their internal trash, we might not live in a world where developers create flood zones for the people downstream. We might not have people buying low-lying properties at cheap prices and others building properties that are destined to flood.

It is easy to blame and shame in situations like this, but it takes an enlightened person to see what is wrong, do what they can to improve or fix the situation, and then to leave it alone. The way to leave things alone is to stop complaining about them once the situation is over. When a disaster or crisis first hits, it's natural to share our upset, but to continue the dialogue for weeks, months, and years is simply the practice of BITCHCRAFT. Just saying!

We will flood again. This area is low lying, but to use that as an excuse to worry until it happens or to complain about it every chance we get, is crazy. While craziness is not bad in itself, it is an ineffective way to use our resources. Crisis brings out the good, the bad, and the unusual. Let's apply the EZosophy philosophy to all aspects of our lives, and when crisis hits, take the EZ way out. Tragedy is difficult, but suffering about it is a choice.

Anne

  Main Article

The Empathy Project

Undergraduate school is a blur, but a few things stand out. I took classes in recreation therapy and sometimes we took on the limits of the populations we would be serving, in order to experience a partial view of their lives and limitations.

We had to spend one class period breathing through a straw. This gave us some insight into people who suffer from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). It was tough, but it was an effective way to create empathy.

The most impactful experiment occurred when I spent a day on campus in a wheel chair. People ignored me, stared with pity, and I was faced the physical difficulties of living in a world built for those who could walk and run. That was more than 45 years ago, yet I vividly remember how marginalized I felt and the responses of the people who looked down on me or looked away as they passed by. I have never since looked at people who are wheel chair bound the same way. Now they are equals, and before, I was unaware of my prejudice. I felt sorry for people in wheel chairs; fortunately, I moved from sympathy to empathy.

In later life I experienced a simulated poverty experience – what is was like to live on minimum wage and have a dependent family. Another experience created living in the Middle East in a war zone. I experienced disease, lack of clean water, a punitive educational system, and the angst of not knowing where the next bomb would come from. I had to perform a surgery simulation with improper tools and spend time in a dark cave like area. I would hear a loud explosion, then the area shook as if a bomb was landing a few feet from where I was hiding.

We are isolated in our culture. We hang out with those of similar resources. We ride around in cars by ourselves when carpooling might give us a medium for developing or deepening friendships. We chose convenience and want to be sure we can leave when we want to and not have to wait on another. Our busy lives often dictate who we relate with and how we relate to others. But in that busy-ness, we lose a part of our hearts. We lose touch with humanity as we separate ourselves from the greater whole.

I've never ridden the transit system in Houston or the downtown train. I have no idea what it is like to live on the bottom or to have to rely on others or public transportation to get around. I am teachable and plan to ride the bus from The Woodlands to downtown Houston and ride the train around the city, just to view life from another perspective.

I challenge you to limit yourself in some way. The following suggestions are ones you might try. These experiments may give you an understanding of how others live and create a new dimension of compassion and empathy. You may want to get friends or family to join in your personal Empathy Project.

• Bathe with a small pail of cold water each day for a week. You have to use this water to wash your hair and meet all your bathing needs. While this seems like a drastic experiment to some, there are many people who don't have clean water to bathe in. While in India, at the foothills of the Himalayas, I had one small pail of water to bathe with. The temperature was in the 30’s F. during the day and my room was not heated. I didn't bathe daily, but that experience not only gave me an understanding of what others endured, it exposed a sense of entitlement I had about water and showed how much of our precious resource I wasted. I actually felt clean after bathing with a limited amount of water. Try this. I think you will be shocked at what you might learn.
• Talk to a homeless person. Ask them about their lives. Once I spent about an hour on a public street talking to a homeless man. I asked him how he ended up on the street. He had a long series of mishaps that led to his homelessness. He told me about his injured feet. I asked to see them. He took off his shoes and showed me his frost bitten and bleeding feet. I held them in my hands and sent them all the love and energy I could muster. I listened and I think in some way he was served because I saw him, really saw him. If you chose to do this, of course, be safe. I was on a very public street with others walking past. It is always imperative when we move outside our comfort zones, that we remember our personal safety.
• Do not spend any money for a week except to buy food, pay bills, or to cover your transportation costs. This self-imposed money restriction plan provides insight into the limits under which 45 million Americans live. There is little hope in their future and they have no money to buy clothes, eat out, or for recreation. This experiment can also reveal toxic spending patterns.
• Wear the same outfit all day for two days. You don't change when you get home from work. You don't wear special exercise clothes. Many people don't have the luxury of choosing what to wear. See what it is like to live without a choice in your wardrobe.
• Breathe through a straw for 10 minutes. How does it feel to have impaired breathing? This gives us empathy for those who have COPD and asthma.

Make up your personal experiments of voluntary suffering. In EZosophy we work to eliminate ego driven suffering, but when we choose to walk in the shoes of others, we expand our limited perspective. For more than I year I refrained from eating for ½ day a week. It was a fast for peace. While it may not have been the whole-hearted demonstration of Gandhi, it made the idea of peace real in a personal way.

Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy creates burden, but empathy opens the doors from which love flows. Challenging ourselves to move out of our comfort and convenience zones moves us into a place where we invite more than a few family members, colleagues, and friends into our hearts. As loves stirs and light shines into the hidden places and spaces in our lives and hearts, we can be sure that life will be EZier and EZier.

Anne

  Quotes

"Spirit sends instructions all the time. Often we are like the student who, when taking a test, fails to read the instructions. When the exam is returned, the student finds that she has missed all the questions because she didn't follow the instructions. Our life is our exam. We need to follow God's instructions, but first we need to learn how to hear them."
— Anne Sermons Gillis

"It is important for the spiritual seeker to use these intense times as growth experiences, but equally important that we use our day to day encounters, our personality quirks, and the distasteful behavior of others as opportunities for spiritual growth."
— Anne Sermons Gillis

"Our consciousness is limited by thoughts and belief systems. God consciousness is not limited. Unless we explore the highways of inner space, we fail to recognize the unending potential of consciousness. Expanded consciousness provides an endless reservoir of wisdom, intelligence, creativity, abundance, and love. A mind that extends beyond its local field of awareness is fulfilling its destiny. Seek to expand your consciousness and you will experience freedom."
— Anne Sermons Gillis

All quotes are excerpts from Offbeat Prayers for the Modern Mystic, by Anne Sermons Gillis.

  Featured Product This Month

  What is EZosophy?

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  Healthy Living

Green Clean

Why would I share a picture of my silver necklace? It’s a treasure I bought many years ago in Mexico. This morning my necklace was dark black. It was tarnished to the point I thought I’d lost it. I had been meaning to clean it, but months turned into years and I’d neglected it too long.

It’s always been a difficult piece to clean. The polish gets stuck in the little holes and won’t come out. Then there a white residue on the chain and in the holes. Cleaning each bead individually was difficult and not too effective. But this morning I had the absolutely easiest time cleaning my necklace.

Here’s the secret. Boil a pot of water. Add a tablespoon of baking soda and a folded piece of aluminum foil. Try one quart of water to one tablespoon of baking soda. I just dumped the baking soda and didn’t measure. It worked fine. Place the folded aluminum foil on the bottom of the pan then dip your tarnished item in for 10 seconds and remove with tongs. My necklace was so black I repeated this four or five times. I took it out and rubbed it with plain baking soda and a cloth. Then I rinsed and the results were stellar.

This is an easy, inexpensive, and healthy cleaning solution. The silver cleaner I used before smelled like a chemistry lab and I ended up with a dark residue under my fingernails. I’m sure the toxicity rate was off the charts, but this EZ silver method is just the cure for our tarnished silver pieces. Take the plunge. Go healthy when you clean.

  Anne Talks

Today's Anne Talk is Reality Check. Click to learn how Anne handled the situation when her reality check bounced. Time: 0:30.

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  Anne Art

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  Anne's Schedule

All times here are Central Time.

Sunday, July 17, 2016
11 AM Service: "Creating Ease"
Unity of Brazosport
507 S. Brooks St. (Hwy 36)
Brazoria, TX 77422
Phone: 979-798-4171

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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.