FIRST CORINTHIANS 13, CHRISTMAS VERSION

Author Unknown

Anne and Jim

 If I decorate my house perfectly with red velvet bows,

strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls, but do not show love to my family, I'm just another decorator.

 

 If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but do not show love to my family, I'm just another cook.

 

 If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home, and give all that I have to charity, but do not show love to my family, it profits me nothing.

  

If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, attend a myriad of holiday parties and sing in the choir's cantata but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.

  

Love stops the cooking to hug the child.

  

Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the husband.

  

Love is kind, inexhaustible, willing to push our physical limits.

  

Love doesn't envy other's home that has

coordinated Christmas china and table linens.

  

Love doesn't yell at the kids to get out of the way,

but is thankful they are there to be in the way.

  

Love doesn't give only to those who are able to give

in return, but rejoices in giving to those who can't.

  

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes

all things, endures all things.

  

Love never fails. Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust.

But giving the gift of love will endure.  Merry Christmas!

Money Drama

News about the economy often serves as a trigger that moves us from EZosophy into Hardaholism. If we cannot be responsible listeners, if we are going to use the news as a freak out trigger, then let's not listen to or read the news. Even if we are addicted to negative excitement about money and the economy, we always have a new choice in the present. 

Abundance is an experience, not a dollar amount. We will not hear about the true nature of abundance on television, read it in the paper, or on the internet. Looking within, having the immediate and direct experience of abundance, and healing our personal issues about money, help us to remain centered in the source of real prosperity. Drama is a stress disease. Worry is a mild form of drama. Give it up. Our health is more important than the juicy thrill of upset. Think of Easy Money, not Hard Cash. In the midst of an abundant life, do not pay homage at the altar of lack.

I found that when I stopped suffering about money, I tended to attract more opportunities to receive or earn money. My family suffered endlessly about money or the purported lack of money. It was a mystical and magical event to free myself from the family financial patterns. The freedom I experience, every time I drop the money drama, is a miracle. 

Dropping the struggle and suffering around money in no way means not paying our bills or keeping our agreements around money. Dropping the drama is about letting go of the addictive emotional dialogues around money. If you are typically stressed about money, even though your bills are paid and you have money in the bank, then you may be a money addict. I was a money addict,; everything in my life was centered around money.But I’m recovering. Enjoying life in the present is the easiest way to let go of money drama, and being present and open to life brings forth treasures from the depths of well-being – gifts of the spirit. 

Check out my prosperity products to accelerate your healing process around money and lack. http://www.annegillis.com/Books-CDs-Etc.html You may also want to participate in the 40 Days to Prosperity Program or the Pray it Forward Prosperity Program. Remember the promise, “I have come so that you might have life and that you might have it abundantly.”

Eat Right for Your Life

Alcohol slows your metabolism for three days after you drink. A 15 minute walk after a meal raises your metabolism for 2 hours. Many of the same people who say they don't have the time to eat healthy, seem to have the time to shop. They spend hours looking for the perfect scarf or accessory for an outfit. The time we spend taking care of our health, determines how we look and feel - that dress that took so long to shop for, will eventually be cast off, but our bodies, which our most important possession, are here to stay. Our health is more important than our appetites and shopping trips. When our bodies are not well-nourished, our outlooks are changed.

Recently I ate a combination of fruit and vitamins that didn't sit well in my stomach. I thew up. My thoughts during the hour before I threw up were bazaar. My body chemistry made my head swim. The moment I completed the physical purging, my mind and emotions cleared. SO if you feel defeated by life, have low energy and feel as if you are in a rut - take a look at your diet and exercise. Try one week of exercise and better eating and see what affect it has on your overall outlook on life. And have a great day.

New Thought Henry Wood (1834-1909)

I'm doing a talk on the epigenesis of Unity and I ran across this information on one of the not so well known founders of the New Thought Movement. It has links to a number of free New Thought ebooks by Henry Wood *

"Those who are doing the most to uplift the world are those whose intensity of faith first reconstructed their own souls."  Ideal Suggestion, page 128

Henry Wood (1834-1909) can be described as one of the pioneers of the New Thought movement, even though he was neither a minister nor the founder of a church or center. A successful businessman and author, Wood was forced by ill health to retire. He somehow came across the principles later known as New Thought, was healed, and sought to help others to learn to heal themselves. He was one of the founders of the Metaphysical Club and at one time served as its president.
Wood, along with Horatio W. Dresser, was one of the two New Thought authors specifically singled out for praise by William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience. Here is what James had to say about New Thought, known at the time as "mind cure":

The plain fact remains that the spread of the movement has been due to practical fruits, and the extremely practical turn of character of the American people has never been better shown than by the fact that this, their only decidedly original contribution to the systematic philosophy of life, should be so intimately knit up with concrete therapeutics. (p. 94)

On the same page, James, after describing "a good deal of the mind-cure literature" as "so moonstruck with optimism and so vaguely expressed that an academically trained intellect finds it almost impossible to read it at all", states in a footnote that he considers Horatio W . Dresser and Henry Wood "far and away the ablest of the group" of mind-cure authors.
Wood was the author of twelve books that were highly successful, selling in the tens of thousands and going through numerous reprintings. A few of them are still in print and for sale online. All of them are available as Google pdf files. They can be reached by clicking on the titles listed here.
1887 Natural Law in the Business World
1890 Edward Burton
1892 God’s Image in Man
1893 Ideal Suggestion Through Mental Photography
1894 The Political Economy of Natural Law
1896 Studies in the Thought World
1898 Victor Serenus
1901 The Symphony of Life
1901 The Political Economy of Humanism (rev. ed. of 1894 book)
1903 The New Thought Simplified
1905 Life More Abundant
1908 The New Old Healing

For whatever reason, the Google pdf file of Henry Wood’s Ideal Suggestion Through Mental Photography (1893) is missing pages 107-110. Page 107 simply reads, "PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS FOR IDEAL SUGGESTION". Here is the text of the other three missing pages:

PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS FOR IDEAL SUGGESTION.

______

Instructions for the use of the Suggested Ideals contained in the following pages.
FIRST. — Retire each day to a quiet apartment, and be alone IN THE SILENCE.
SECOND. — Assume the most restful position possible, in an easy-chair, or otherwise; brethe deeply and rather rapidly for a few moments, and thoroughly relax the physical body, for by suggestive correspondence this renders it easier for the mind to be passive and receptive.
THIRD. — Bar the door of thought against the external world, and also shut out all physical sensation and imperfection.
FOURTH. — Rivet the mind upon the "meditation" (left-hand page), and by careful and repeated reading absorb its truth. Then place the "suggestion" (right-hand page), at a suitable distance from the eyes, and fasten them upon it for from ten to twenty minutes. Do not merely look upon it, but wholly GIVE YOURSELF UP TO IT, until it fills and overflows the entire consciousness.
FIFTH. — Close the eyes for twenty to thirty minutes more; behold it with the mind’s eye, and let it permeate the whole organism.
SIXTH. — Call it into the field of mental vision during every wakeful hour of the night.
FINALLY. — If disordered conditions are chronic and tenacious, there need be no discouragement if progress is not rapid, nor if "ups and downs" occur. Absorb the ideals REPEATEDLY, until no longer needed. The cure is NOT magical, but a NATURAL GROWTH.
Ideals will be actualized in due season.

FIRST MEDITATION

Man through a careless or mistaken consciousness separates himself from God, and this produces infelicity and dis-ease. Thought confers subjective realism either upon ideal entities or upon seeming bad conditions. What we dwell upon we become, or at least grow like. Thought must have an outlet, otherwise it stagnates. God is the great normal Reality for it to rest upon. Consciousness must be open to the divine harmony, else it becomes disorderly and abnormal. It takes on character from that to which it links itself, — God, if it be God; change and discord, if materiality. It is therefore easy to be outwardly and morally correct and yet be un-Godly. The highest human consciousness is that of God, and this is "Godliness which is great gain." To change from a controlling self-consciousness to a ruling God-consciousness, is to find harmony and health. The vision must be clarified so as to behold God everywhere, within and without, as all Life, all Love, and All in All. Discord cannot long abide the divine companionship. Take the NAME, and through the medium of the outer eye engrave it on the tablet of the inner consciousness.

GOD

IS

HERE

* Source page New Every Moment This is an interesting site as well.

Mind Heart

Never Mind

The Hardaholic Mantra

Food for Thought

What is your relationship with food? Do you break up and binge, then make up and vow to eat healthier?

It's tough when someone tells us our life styles are self-destructive. Yet deep inside we know when we at war with ourselves. We participate in food wars (aka known as eating junk), wars with friends and others and wars that attack our self-worth. Still, when it comes to eating, unless we are drunk, drugged or out of touch with reality, we have inklings of what kind of foods are good to us and for us. Our food problems tend to be more about staying on track than about amassing more information.

Given the mounting evidence of how physically liberating it can be to eat fresh unprocessed foods (see you  knew that didn't you) wouldn't it be great if there was a thought that would help you stay on track with your eating? Happy days. There is a thought. This amazing thought can help you stay slim, eat well, and help you maintain your perfect relationship with food. Okay, maybe that is a little over the top, but - it really is a fabulous thought. Drum roll - "My health is more important than my appetite." Isn't that a powerful thought to have when ordering food, milling around at a party or grocery shopping? This is a reminder to us that we value our health.

If you had to rate your relationship with food, would you get a good rating? There used to be a restaurant report on TV and the host would give "The Slime Report." The term referred to slime in the ice box. Some food inspector would come unannounced to check out the cleanliness of the restaurant. The reporter took the filthiest restaurants and gave their health scores. It was gruesome. You are your health inspector. Don't let you relationship with food be a slime report; make it a health fair. Keep this thought in a special place where it is easily accessible, "My health is more important than my appetite." I'm counting of you, to eat good food - you know you want to and I hope this thought can reinforce your choice for healthier living. Yum, yum. Eat well and prosper and may the fork be with you.

The Grass is Always Greener

One of my favorite morning exercises is to sit on my exercise ball and bounce to music. I turn on the oldies station and flail around to the music. I am often surprised to hear the lyrics of the songs of my younger years and the wisdom imparted. This Petula Clark song is powerful. I always disregard the lover’s aspect of contemporary music and latch on to the deeper content.

Check it Out – this is a well done video.

Life is never what it seems, we're always searching in our dreams
To find that little castle in the air
When worry starts to cloud the mind, it's hard
to leave it all behind And just pretend you haven't got a care
There's someone else in your imagination
You wish that you were standing in their
shoes You'd change your life without much hesitation
But would you if you really had to choose?
So, don't look around, get your feet on the
ground It's much better by far to be just who you are

The other man's grass is always greener
The sun shines brighter on the otherside
The other man's grass is always greener
Some are lucky, some are not
Just be thankful for what you've got

Many times it seems to me there's someone else I'd rather be
I'm living in a world of make-believe
I'd stay in bed till nearly three with nothing there to worry me
It'd seem to be the life I might achieve

But deep inside I know I'm really lucky
With happiness I've never known before
And just as long as you are there beside me
I know that I could ask for nothing more
And living can start with the love in your heart
So with you all the time, all
the treasures I long for are mine

The other man's grass is always
greener The sun shines brighter on the other side
The other man's grass is always greener
Some are lucky, some are not
But I'm so thankful for
what I've got

Yes, the other man's grass is always greener
The sun shines brighter on the other side
The other man's grass is always greener
Some are lucky, some are not
But I'm so thankful for what I've got

Don'tcha know it now?

My Green Drink

I usually wake up hungry. I don't like to exercise on a full stomach so I drink this green drink. It takes away the hunger and provides great nutrition - at least in my mind.

1/3 cup organic unsweetened  cranberry juice
Heaping teaspoon of spirulina
3 tablespoons of hemp hearts
1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses
2 tablespoon of freshly ground flax seed (use a coffee grinder)
2/3 cups of pure water

Mix it up and drink. You may have to acquire a taste for this but it is brimming with vitamins, minerals and high quality protein.

Happy Piddle Day

I love to have a piddle day. It’s a day I can go with the flow of my wanting to ramble with my doing. We often piddle during the day and them realize we have done none of the important things on our “to do lists.” Then we feel guilty and think, “I didn’t get anything done today.” I think it is important to have days when we just piddle. Often we do little cleanup tasks when we piddle that organize our lives Piddling soothes nerves. Piddling is a part of nesting. Piddling makes our lives easier. Everything in our lives needs a wild uncharted space. Giving ourselves piddling time provides that space. Happy Piddle Day.