While many plan for the New Year, I am not on the goal standard. My cause is the BE cause. I am not a goal digger. Being here now is the greatest show on earth. I’m semi joking here. I have nothing against goals, it’s just in the paradigm of non duality, we stand in an area that doesn’t require getting things accomplished in order to be okay. The okayness appears first then the doing follows from that space. When our doing flows from a natural inner knowing, it flows easily and doesn’t require the traditional methods to bring forth accomplishment.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
What the Opposite of Making a Difference? A Be Cause
My cause is a be cause. I don’t want to be all that I can be. No army for me. If I spent my life being all that I could be, would I have anytime left to enjoy my life – to live my life?
We live in a productive society. Indolence is not a virtue, but many of our values, those get-ahead, make-somebody-of-yourself; make-a-difference values, are not conducive to life itself.
I am not trying to make a difference because who I am is the difference. In living and being open to the next encounter, a difference is made. If I wasn’t there, things would be different. Difference is everywhere with or without me. Life itself is full enough and arranged so that I don’t have to get in there and clean up a mess. Life is not a mess. If there are any messes around, maybe I’ d be the mess. But even saying that I am a mess is another attempt by the mind to create a problem. The mind creates its value and meaning by fixing our messes. We love messes. It’s the mind that messes with life. We act like our messes are tragedies, but our messes are our messes and we guard them closely. We intellectually and emotionally guard our stash of drama and mayhem. Our mess makes us special.
Drop the drama, drop the pain - realize we’re all the same.You’re not broken, you’re not wrong - life is perfect; sing it’s song. There is something right with us. Let’s get in there and look for that. Life is beautiful, let’s look for that beauty. Pathology (Pathology is the study and diagnosis of disease and I using this word to describe our mental states) is not all it’s cracked up to be and it’s a lie. Lives are not pathological, they are mythological. We are a part of a grand story. We don’t need to be reduced to the “what’s wrong, fix it” game when we can tune into the presence of what’s right. And in the words of songwriter and singer, Tim Bays, “life had many speed bumps, its detours and its sorrows, but a thousand things went right today and will again tomorrow.”
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Making a Difference?
All of my life I had dreams of making a difference. I wanted to change the world. The journey started when I was a junior in High School. I wrote a paper on US Latin American affairs, studied US Latin relations and was chosen as a church delegate to visit Washington, DC and New York City. In Washington I met with my congressman and with my senator’s aid. I toured the congressional and senatorial building and even had lunch in the congressional dining room. I looked around and tried to imagine who those important people might be. In New York City I met with UN officials and studied the process of world cooperation in government.
The seeds of ambition were nurtured over the years through my participation in politics as a teen Democrat. My father was a member of the NC House of Representatives, so I had a blast as a page when I was only 13. I campaigned for zero population growth in my early twenties. I started attending national and international gatherings for planetary healing. In the early 90’s I was one of the hosts of a small international event held in rural Texas. We decided to take a break from the business and I put together a spur of the moment talent show featuring conference participants. I was the master of ceremonies. Due to some intense mystical occurrence, I entered an altered state of consciousness. It was the realm of divine comedy. The show was awesome and somehow the boundaries and borders melted between participants and we became a global family. The experience did not end for me at the close of the show. All night I lay awake filled with the most incredible energy. It was the light of comedy. It came in waves. It seemed like comedy heaven.
I was so inspired that I started a campaign to have a court jester type person in the US House of Representatives. In my altered state it seemed like terrific idea. I wanted to perform for the president in the congressional building for a joint session of the senate and the house. I vividly imaged that occurring. When I came off my visionary mountain, I dropped the idea. Some things that seem to make sense when I am on a spiritual high seem ridiculous when I re-enter the ordinary world.
The next year I was invited to a conference in The Philippines. It took place in the congress building in Queson City. There was a parallel conference which included theater people from around the world. They put together a show to be held in the congress building. I was hanging around watching practice when group leader asked me if I would represent the indigenous of North America and do a performance. I said responded affirmatively, but explained that it would be an offense for me to represent another culture, but I would do something appropriate to honor the American indigenous. I gave a dramatic depiction of how the early settlers depended on the indigenous for survival and how later we met them with a sword, decimating their people, lands and culture. I asked for forgiveness and begged again that they show us the way to a sustainable planet. There were thousands of people in the audience including diplomats, ambassadors, cabinet members, the heads of the military, indigenous datas (that’s the leaders), the members of the house and senate and the president. It was not exactly as I had pictured it, but the key ingredients of my dream were there: performing in the congress, a joint session and a presidential attendee. For me it was a powerful demonstration of the mind and heart in unison to create and manifest a dream. It seems that in wanting to make a difference, I was the one who benefitted the most. This was one of many extraordinary experiences that have taken me from pillar to post of life’s adventure.
PS… A friend, who had international prominence, told me I needed some impressive pictures and news stories in my PR kit. She had her picture on the front page of the Sun (England). I thought, why can’t I have my picture on the front page of an international newspaper? This little adventure birthed a picture with the president, the international delegates (and you could really see me) on the front page of all the major newspapers in the Philippines. So goes my “Law of Attraction” story. We called it manifesting in those days, not the LOA, but thinking, creating, allowing and receiving were the same then as they are now.
The seeds of ambition were nurtured over the years through my participation in politics as a teen Democrat. My father was a member of the NC House of Representatives, so I had a blast as a page when I was only 13. I campaigned for zero population growth in my early twenties. I started attending national and international gatherings for planetary healing. In the early 90’s I was one of the hosts of a small international event held in rural Texas. We decided to take a break from the business and I put together a spur of the moment talent show featuring conference participants. I was the master of ceremonies. Due to some intense mystical occurrence, I entered an altered state of consciousness. It was the realm of divine comedy. The show was awesome and somehow the boundaries and borders melted between participants and we became a global family. The experience did not end for me at the close of the show. All night I lay awake filled with the most incredible energy. It was the light of comedy. It came in waves. It seemed like comedy heaven.
I was so inspired that I started a campaign to have a court jester type person in the US House of Representatives. In my altered state it seemed like terrific idea. I wanted to perform for the president in the congressional building for a joint session of the senate and the house. I vividly imaged that occurring. When I came off my visionary mountain, I dropped the idea. Some things that seem to make sense when I am on a spiritual high seem ridiculous when I re-enter the ordinary world.
The next year I was invited to a conference in The Philippines. It took place in the congress building in Queson City. There was a parallel conference which included theater people from around the world. They put together a show to be held in the congress building. I was hanging around watching practice when group leader asked me if I would represent the indigenous of North America and do a performance. I said responded affirmatively, but explained that it would be an offense for me to represent another culture, but I would do something appropriate to honor the American indigenous. I gave a dramatic depiction of how the early settlers depended on the indigenous for survival and how later we met them with a sword, decimating their people, lands and culture. I asked for forgiveness and begged again that they show us the way to a sustainable planet. There were thousands of people in the audience including diplomats, ambassadors, cabinet members, the heads of the military, indigenous datas (that’s the leaders), the members of the house and senate and the president. It was not exactly as I had pictured it, but the key ingredients of my dream were there: performing in the congress, a joint session and a presidential attendee. For me it was a powerful demonstration of the mind and heart in unison to create and manifest a dream. It seems that in wanting to make a difference, I was the one who benefitted the most. This was one of many extraordinary experiences that have taken me from pillar to post of life’s adventure.
PS… A friend, who had international prominence, told me I needed some impressive pictures and news stories in my PR kit. She had her picture on the front page of the Sun (England). I thought, why can’t I have my picture on the front page of an international newspaper? This little adventure birthed a picture with the president, the international delegates (and you could really see me) on the front page of all the major newspapers in the Philippines. So goes my “Law of Attraction” story. We called it manifesting in those days, not the LOA, but thinking, creating, allowing and receiving were the same then as they are now.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Life and Lovers
Life goes by so fast. I wrote the following piece in 1999 – it seems like a just few minutes ago- when my relationship with my then lover and now husband was fresh and shiny. I’ve heard it did that three bad relationships can do more for your awakening than one easy comfortable relationship. Somehow I think I’ve wrapped several tough relationships and a few good relationships into this one and have manufactured both pain and pleasure. For those who think relationships are the answer; they are not. For those who think being alone and single is Mecca, forget that also. Each state, alone or in a relationship, has its fire and its pleasure. Nothing in form, whether it be health, people, success or accomplishment, offers permanence or lasting satisfaction. What we seek through the acquisition or disposal of things, people and circumstances never delivers us to the Promised Land. All that said I couldn’t resist sharing the following. Here’s to life and lovers:
I am undergoing an experiment. Is life there to support me if I let it? If I stay in the moment will each succeeding now be enough? Will I give up the need to be guided anywhere because there is nowhere to go? Can I give up the need to have things different because I know deeply that the world of satisfaction is not reached through self improvement? Can I give up the need for change and variety long enough to undo my inability to see what is already here. What is here is enough, but because of my conditioning I look outside to others, to the possibility of money bringing freedom and to success as the conductors of happiness.
I cannot fault myself for this journey. True I have frequent failures.. I have enough frequent failure points to take my mind anywhere in the land of doom and gloom. Even free trips are often too expensive. I can no longer afford the luxury self criticism. It eats away at my aliveness. The mind can be like a reckless drive. I get in my mind, turn it on and then go for a ride, but it’s not a joy ride. I become a reckless thinker and my reality crashes. I believe that life is a series of problematic occurrences that need fixing. Oh what an endless web we weave when once we practice mental disease. Mental dis- ease is a practice and I have gotten so good at it that I forget there's any other way of perceiving. I suffer from perception deception.
So it’s true, "I am not soaring away into the boundless bliss of infinite love," but I am soaring. I have acted on the courage to free myself from my latest prison. I am roaming in a life that is more dictated by wants than by needs. I have met the challenge of my heart and have become open to new love.
When I was young it was so easy to surrender to love. I did not know who I was. There wasn’t much to give up or to give from. I gave myself in order to become someone. Now I know who I am and so when I surrender, I give into much more than hoping I will become someone. I know I am already someone. Now I give into allowing that I can become even more if my heart is open. I have known how to be who I was when alone, now the risk is the vulnerability of being myself in the presence of one who can see me.
I am both honored and afraid of this journey into intimacy. Sometimes my mind spins in a mad dance of potential outcomes. I get dizzy and spin out of control. Other times I rest in a deep contentment. I feel dizzy when I look into my lover’s mind and heart. There is excitement in the newness, but as I glimpse the purity of the daily encounter, my mind relaxes. I watch the tea cup brush his lips. These things are becoming familiar, but none the less they are sacred. Does familiarity breeds contempt? Who can look upon the sun closing her eyes and not be touched again and again? So it is with he and me, those familiar things I long to see and repeat for me a thousand times.
So here’s to all you lovers – a little mushiness, a little sanity and plenty of “when it comes to relationships, the experts don’t exist!”
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Time
Sometimes time seems so big it just stretches out giving me a forever feeling – it takes a noble stand behind me. What a spacious gift, a queen’s delight.
Sometimes time stands before me shrinking while issuing frantic demands; it runs away and gives itself to others, leaving me with toppling tasks and breathless beginnings. I get a paupers gift, but never enough time for anything.
If I could seize the clock and make it give and never take, then I suppose I’d be awake. I’d live in now and not beyond, time would not march, it would just sing along with me in perfect time. © 2009 Anne Sermons Gillis
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Is Freedom Doing Your Own Thing?
Recently I cleaned out some old files. I found delightful little snippets of insights tucked away; they were forgotten over time. Today these quotes would be online, but in the old days we received our quotable wisdom "Xeroxed" on a piece of plain white unrecycled paper.
I thew some of them away, but this one - I have to share. Unfortunately, as with many of those quotes, the author is unknown.
This one is entitled "Doing Your Own Thing - Is That All?"
There is to me a terrible agonizing loneliness in trying to live for the self alone. Fritz Perl's declaration of freedom has often been quoted, "I do my thing and you do your thing." The quote is actually:
"I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I; If by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
There is some valid truth in those words as well as some extortions as well. To me there comes an underlying sadness as I read them. How much more appealing is the version written by Gestalt psychologist, William Tubbs:
BEYOND PERLS by WALTER TUBBS
If I just do my thing and you do yours,
We stand in danger of losing each other
And ourselves.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations;
But I am in this world to confirm you
As a unique human being
And to be confirmed by you.
We are fully ourselves only in relation to each other;
The I detached from a Thou
Disintegrates.
I do not find you by chance;
I find you by an active life
Of reaching out.
Rather that passively letting things happen to me,
I can act intentionally to make them happen.
I must being with myself, true;
But I must not end with myself:
The truth begins with two.
Back to my insights:
When I was young, ideas flowing from Perl and Ayn Rand were exotic. As a kid working on my need to individuate and break away from limited beliefs, I counted on it being okay for me to be me, and I thrived on rugged individualism. I did not want to be a compilation of others' expectations or needs. But now I am an adult; I do as it says in First Corinthians 13, "When I became an adult, I put away childhood things. " As an adult, I clearly understand the interdependence of friends, families, communities and countries and understand that me doing my own thing was an integral step in growing up - but it was only one step of many. If I started walking over a bridge and stopped in the middle and stayed there, I would never get to the promised land.
It is sad to see those whose growth was stumped, those people standing on the bridge. They are emotionally challenged especially when they see the world only through the eyes of me, my, myself and mine. This mindset is the genesis of the need to control, power grabbing and the fear of lack.
Sometimes I am afraid of people that seem to be in life only for themselves. I forget that they are still like children, clutching to ideas and actions, that they believe will make them safe and lovable.
Freedom for me arises when I give up my fear and forget about protecting myself from people who differ from or disagree with me. Mind me, I am not talking about living in a physical war zone, I am speaking of living in an ideological war zone. Freedom comes when I choose to love first. Freedom comes when I choose to love before the other person understands me or likes me. Safety comes when I show up in life undefended, unwilling to put up walls or to erect verbal angry righteous walls.
Our country is polarized. One of the talking points in a certain belief systems is, "Freedom is not free." This is a great truth; however, freedom for one cannot come at the expense of another. Freedom is not free because freedom means giving up our need to be right, our need to win and our need to triumph over others. Ultimate freedom is an internal state. Freedom is more about not being washed around by emotions or not freaking out over world events and conditions. Freedom comes when we live by an internal code of ethics that makes no ones existence wrong. Freedom can not be bought, legislated or fought for. It was imperative to free slaves with a legal decree, but prejudice and hate still haunted the lives of then freed slaves as it does today for those of color.
I'm skipping around here with the word freedom - it is a word we use so often - we casually throw that word around, but to me freedom is what I seek. I am not seeking a freedom from the oppression of others, I am seeking freedom from the oppression of me. Freedom to me is about freedom from the ego. And I will say that the more I remain present and open to life as it is, without mentally figuring everything out and just letting what is, be - the more freedom I feel.
So back to us - together. We are not islands. We think we are independent as a unit, but how many of us grow our food or provide fuel for the cars we need to take us to work. Where does our money come from? Other people. We are woven together in our physical needs and in our emotional needs. I thank William Tubbs for reminding me and hope that you know that I know that we are in this together. For better or worse.
I thew some of them away, but this one - I have to share. Unfortunately, as with many of those quotes, the author is unknown.
This one is entitled "Doing Your Own Thing - Is That All?"
There is to me a terrible agonizing loneliness in trying to live for the self alone. Fritz Perl's declaration of freedom has often been quoted, "I do my thing and you do your thing." The quote is actually:
"I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I; If by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
There is some valid truth in those words as well as some extortions as well. To me there comes an underlying sadness as I read them. How much more appealing is the version written by Gestalt psychologist, William Tubbs:
BEYOND PERLS by WALTER TUBBS
If I just do my thing and you do yours,
We stand in danger of losing each other
And ourselves.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations;
But I am in this world to confirm you
As a unique human being
And to be confirmed by you.
We are fully ourselves only in relation to each other;
The I detached from a Thou
Disintegrates.
I do not find you by chance;
I find you by an active life
Of reaching out.
Rather that passively letting things happen to me,
I can act intentionally to make them happen.
I must being with myself, true;
But I must not end with myself:
The truth begins with two.
Back to my insights:
When I was young, ideas flowing from Perl and Ayn Rand were exotic. As a kid working on my need to individuate and break away from limited beliefs, I counted on it being okay for me to be me, and I thrived on rugged individualism. I did not want to be a compilation of others' expectations or needs. But now I am an adult; I do as it says in First Corinthians 13, "When I became an adult, I put away childhood things. " As an adult, I clearly understand the interdependence of friends, families, communities and countries and understand that me doing my own thing was an integral step in growing up - but it was only one step of many. If I started walking over a bridge and stopped in the middle and stayed there, I would never get to the promised land.
It is sad to see those whose growth was stumped, those people standing on the bridge. They are emotionally challenged especially when they see the world only through the eyes of me, my, myself and mine. This mindset is the genesis of the need to control, power grabbing and the fear of lack.
Sometimes I am afraid of people that seem to be in life only for themselves. I forget that they are still like children, clutching to ideas and actions, that they believe will make them safe and lovable.
Freedom for me arises when I give up my fear and forget about protecting myself from people who differ from or disagree with me. Mind me, I am not talking about living in a physical war zone, I am speaking of living in an ideological war zone. Freedom comes when I choose to love first. Freedom comes when I choose to love before the other person understands me or likes me. Safety comes when I show up in life undefended, unwilling to put up walls or to erect verbal angry righteous walls.
Our country is polarized. One of the talking points in a certain belief systems is, "Freedom is not free." This is a great truth; however, freedom for one cannot come at the expense of another. Freedom is not free because freedom means giving up our need to be right, our need to win and our need to triumph over others. Ultimate freedom is an internal state. Freedom is more about not being washed around by emotions or not freaking out over world events and conditions. Freedom comes when we live by an internal code of ethics that makes no ones existence wrong. Freedom can not be bought, legislated or fought for. It was imperative to free slaves with a legal decree, but prejudice and hate still haunted the lives of then freed slaves as it does today for those of color.
I'm skipping around here with the word freedom - it is a word we use so often - we casually throw that word around, but to me freedom is what I seek. I am not seeking a freedom from the oppression of others, I am seeking freedom from the oppression of me. Freedom to me is about freedom from the ego. And I will say that the more I remain present and open to life as it is, without mentally figuring everything out and just letting what is, be - the more freedom I feel.
So back to us - together. We are not islands. We think we are independent as a unit, but how many of us grow our food or provide fuel for the cars we need to take us to work. Where does our money come from? Other people. We are woven together in our physical needs and in our emotional needs. I thank William Tubbs for reminding me and hope that you know that I know that we are in this together. For better or worse.
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