For those who choose to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.
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Life Coaching, Spirituality & Transformation
Legacy and Lineage Off the Clock
My birthday falls just four days after New Years Day, so a kind of “double whammy” of cultural and personal aspirations sends me into a frenzy of trajectory-setting this time of year.
It is strange, lacking both progeny and a wife, to have a strong feeling of wanting to leave a legacy, but here it is. I want to become and express the best version of myself in service of something larger than this life. 2012 I think will be key for that through synthesis, synthesizing being and doing, time and timelessness, and melding the experiences, influences, and talents of 43 years into something deeply personal enough to be universal, and vibrationally true enough to be timeless. With ease and grace.
Yes.. let me be known for following, with clear-eyed compassion, a heroic, even mythic life journey, with an ease and lightness that inspires others to do the same. People after can live it forward.If and when space/time pancakes in 2012 like some expect it to, I say let it collapse into something great. Let my life being a living puja that the world is meant to be free in and life was made to be enjoyed. If it is enjoyed in the 5th dimension beyond the grid of space and time, all the better.
I’ve never expected anything, especially relationships, to last, and often pretend I’m nearly dead, so its not so strange I consider legacies.
What is a little strange is how rarely our legacies relate to our personal goals. There are so many seen and unseen forces that can live through us and leave a breadcrumb trail behind us on our behalf even when we forget or choose not to. I’m proud and excited for my sister who recently, at 40, discovered the gift of silence and spaciousness and has learned to love the very same unstructured time that used to tyrannize her.
If I have a choice/influence in the matter of a legacy at all it is in paying attention to the people and places that open me to new frontiers of experience and ways of being.
I think that is why I have lived most of my life in beautiful and inspiring places like Aspen, Esalen, Ojai, Santa Barbara and Carmel.
Why my pantheon of influences is multi-clultural, multi-dimensional, and both incarnated and not.
Why I don’t use an alarm clock or carry a watch. With people, slow is fast and fast is slow.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Eckhart Tolle spent the two years on the park bench, Joseph Campbell 5 years in the cabin with his books, or Julia Butterfly-Hill 2 years in the branches of a redwood named Luna.
There’s something there. In the commitment to the chrysalis. This post is to the people who inhabit and tend those sacred places and inner spaces and fires, who organize their lives around them and soak them into the marrow of their bones in a way other people can feel and recognize.
In 2012, here’s to renouncing entitlement and sacrifice and living true lives that burn hot and leave a glow for others to see by. See you around the campfire.
Life Coaching, Spirituality & Transformation
Whats So Cool About Esalen Institute?
You mean..
Apart from being the birthplace of the Human Potential Movement, and resting on 22 acres of some of the most ruggedly stunningly beautiful coastline in North America? 
Apart from the hot springs and schmorgasbord of every kind of movement/artistic/creative/spiritual/deep change workshop you can imagine?
Apart from the fact that their 50th anniversary is coinciding with this whole 11/11/11 thing?
And the long smooth slippery and patented strokes of the Esalen Massage?
Well..there are quite a few other cool things, things I learned when I spent 5 weeks there as a work study participant in fall of 2005. If you haven’t dropped out of society yet, try it, you’ll like it!
- There is amazing wholesome and nourishing organic food, grown a few steps from the kitchen.
- There are the famous natural hotspring tubs and glass walled showers on cliffs overlooking the pacific.
- There are great conversations with fantastic people who have lived there on-proprerty or are visiting from all over the world.
- There is a fantastic meditation hut over a creek and a quiet and private beach and lots of room to just meander.
- There is an arts center, gallery and festival.
- There is a preschool that looks super fun.
- There is an intellectual/research brain trust called the Center for Theory and Research that was started by Michael Murphy in 1962 and is still going strong.
But to me and my Apollonian temperament, the best of the best is that the whole place (its values, buildings, people (past and present) and future vision is organized around supporting and accelerating our evolution and transformation. Something in the air, the light, the place fosters that inner alchemy in just the right way for you, whether that takes the form of a gentle and private retreat and soak, histrionic and out of character role playing (ie, The Max), or some esoteric woo woo sister Moon practices to rock your whole personality structure to the core and shake your Etch-A-Sketch clean.
This about says it: “It is a place, as Thomas Wolfe said about America, “where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.”
All this and more and more is why, starting November 10th, I am excited to become the new Marketing Communications Manager at Esalen. You’re invited to celebrate that and yourself, by nourishing yourself as deeply as you care to.
Oh, and here is the link to the PDF of the new catalog that just came out.
And you can get a print version mailed to you too. How cool is that?
See you soon.
Doug E 
A Photography Invocation
Photography to me is both a celebration and quiet vindication for all the ways society tries to keep us small.
As the subject, it is an opportunity to presence yourself consciously and step into and be witnessed in your unified greatness. It is a rare and healing thing.
How often are us grown-ups seen and appreciated for the miracle we truly are? Photography gives one permission. Light is the language unity speaks. Everything else is a bad translation.
This is the start of a new incarnation.
How you presence yourself is a choice.
You’ve earned the right to live
as a triumph of light.
You’ve earned that face
and Life’s weathering upon it.
Why hide it?
Step through and let
your eyes smile with mine.
I see you.
Also see: One Photographer’s Prayer.
Why Do Photographers Wear Black?
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
Doug Ellis Not Wearing Black
They’re grieving what might have been.
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
Nostalgia–like being in the darkroom but with a slightly different sour smell.
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
So they don’t accidentally bounce light off a lighter fabric.
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
Because it looks so artsy and darkly European.
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
Peer pressure and habit.
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
It is the city color of Manhattan and don’t all photographers want to live in LA or NY?
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
Because it matches their equipment.
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
Because they may need to subtract light and can slip it over a fill card in a pinch.
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
For invisibility and stealth.
Why do Photographers Wear Black?
To hide the flash powder.
Doug Ellis is a professional light-bringer, photographer, and spiritual/somatic life coach. His life is dedicated to heart-centered expression and the healing power of deeply seeing and being seen. He still wears black, mainly to photography conferences and workshops in New York or LA.
Just for Fun, Life Coaching, Spirituality & Transformation
Thoughts: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
I don’t believe in beliefs but if I did one might be that our brains secrete thoughts the way our other organs secrete hormones or neurotransmitters. They’re not really good, bad, or ugly, that was just a catchy title that squirted through.
Sometimes I’ll secrete a thought that seems like a fantastic point of departure to a faraway land–an eccentric is a pioneer turned inward-- and I’ll wait on the dock with it and enjoy its company while it rattles around looking for a happy home in a photo, journal or blog.
Other times I’ll have a judgement disguised as an observation–people who wear leather vests are lost in a haze of Harley noise, bourbon, and cigarette smoke–so I’ll add another repentant thought over the top to cancel it out: I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you.
Still other times I will think something prideful about how thoughtless I am–Wow, so quiet. Like a cat or a zen master. Oops wait, they don’t think that.
Less frequent but more fun are the times when I consciously take advantage of the mind’s infinite innocence and naivete and slip it a placebo–Sting is on his way over for breakfast.
I cleaned my apartment in just under an hour this morning with that one perched on my shoulder.
What is your relationship to thought? Can you say me what your next thought will be?
Just for Fun, Life Coaching, Spirituality & Transformation
Suffering: You’re Soaking in It
“If suffering made a sound we would hardly be able to hear ourselves think.”
–Master meditation and grief teacher and poet Stephen Levine
The last thing a fish would invent is water. In the same way the last thing I noticed I was addicted to was suffering.
It was everywhere, I was soaking in it. My body was wafting a feeling tone of bone-weary sadness and lethargy from every pore. The pain body took up occupancy then slimed every square inch before bolting all the windows and doors to make sure my identification with it, as it, was complete. Its jangled and spiky vibes were systemic, pernicious. As Adyashanti would say, I was “Velcro’d”.
Where I was was off. If I was there, even I wished I wasn’t. Kids would go find another room to play in. Dogs would growl. Even my body odor smelled like it belonged to someone else.
Have you ever tried to out-affirm, out-pray, deny or step over that kind of pain? To stuff a steamer trunk of %dc# like that into a space no one would recognize? There is nothing more pathetic and painful than watching someone do that to themselves. The heart knows the truth.
So, you might ask, how did feeling like Eeyore become my drug of choice? Who knows. All I know is it did feel familiar, in the sense of family, or ancestry or at least collective. Like the uh-oh you get in your gut when you step off the plane onto the tarmac of a war-ravaged country. Its not really personal until you make it so. Then the parasite of suffering sucks up to a new host.
Looking back, I can see how I was continually gathering evidence of not enough, animating it with my attention, fertilizing it with the foods I ate, the way I held my body, even the way I breathed. My first few breaths of each morning were puffed into this gloomy little ghost, the rest of the day spent idly stroking it with two fingers…one of encouragement, one of dread. And I was so proud of that angst, protective of it as mine, my special artistic and intuitive sensitivities and pessimistic proclivities. As if brooding made me European and mysterious instead of just an annoyingly brooding American. Pride and shame together make a kind of emotional epoxy.
So how did I get unstuck from the addiction to suffering?
I’ll tell you: merging onto the highway today (which takes time in an old 4 cylinder Subaru) I realized that what I thought was “being in my heart” was actually a lie: I was leaking energy to my feelings and giving my power away to my feelings of separation. Compassion had turned to wallowing, self-care to neuroticism.
Today I chose to let go of wanting to be controlled by that feeling, and instead to re-claim and re-direct my energy and love to someone else that can truly benefit. In choosing to cut that cord, I feel my energy rise, spine lengthen, and heart expand.
If I get caught by that feeling again, I can rest in knowing that feeling is arising in or on that which I Am, and not the other way around. And if I really look deep within, I can’t find anyone home to actually take posession of that little package of pain.
And that is a huge and blessed relief.
Perfectly Broken: Following Your Voice Home
“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”—Leonard Cohen
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees through the desert for a hundred miles repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”—Mary Oliver
Denying the soft animal of your body makes it sad and can also make it sick.As Carolyn Myss says, “if you don’t have passion you do have symptoms.”
The main reason I love helping people fully express themselves is because I know how much it hurts not to.What a painful lie it is to feel invisible, voiceless, separate.
What hasn’t happened lately that you are grateful for?
What is the simplest or most outrageous thing you can be, do, or say now in service of what you love most?
Doug Ellis is a professional light-bringer, photographer, and spiritual/somatic life coach. His life is dedicated to heart-centered expression and the healing power of being deeply seen.
Just for Fun, Life Coaching, Spirituality & Transformation
Being Here is Triumph Enough
Existence Exists
Here Is
Life Lives
Here I Am. Here You Are.
If its some random chaotic accident, why not make it a happy one? If it is an expression of Divine Intelligence or cosmic grand plan then might as well shoulder and savor the responsibility as best a mortal can.
There is not a dang thing we can do or undo to change it.
So, be here reverently or resistantly but pretending not to be here hurts and being non-reverent is kind of ugly.
Here belongs. You belong.
Its a miraculous sleight of hand that we could even think that “something is wrong,” or, “I’m not good enough” when you consider that:
- The odds of you being that lucky egg-getting sperm to make it to the egg are 1 in 12,000,000,000.
- The odds of the Earth supporting complex life the way it does are under 0.01 per cent over four billion years.
The odds of you finding and reading this post are probably similar.
Thank you for reading these words.
18% of the world, about 1.2 billion people can’t read at all much less own a computer.
Feeling lucky yet?
A few inspiring sources:
Curating or Collecting: Saying Yes to Your No
Our Creations As Extensions of our Energy Bodies
I have accumulated a lot of nice photographs and sometimes, despite all and even during all, my meditating, will hatch a good idea or two. When these thought forms and little energetic dopplegangers pile too high I begin to feel menaced and overwhelmed by my equivalent of what Spaulding Gray used to call his “Monster in a Box” –a 1600 page and still growing unfinished novel that he carried around in a huge cardboard box next to his writing desk like a kind of cancerous creative sidecar. For all I know it is buried next to him now still throbbing with promise.
To keep that little creative “Mini Me” at least life-sized if not smaller, I set a challenge to myself to do a portfolio review and delete the four weakest images from each of my photo galleries. That got me thinking about curating vs collecting and the clarifying power of a discerning no. A compassionate and loving respectful no, an open-hearted no, the kind that Steve Jobs, King of the Delete Key, alludes to when he says “I am as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.” Put another way, he is as proud of the no as he is of the yes.
A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. ~Gandhi
How often do you do a life review? When was the last time you said no?
Curating vs Collecting: In Art and Life
Curate as a verb actually means to “be in charge of”, and is one of the most underappreciated skills and talents in the arts and in consumerist American culture. Those disciplined choices, all that “negative (no) space” , make the difference between a fine art museum and a warehouse of stacked canvases. Even more importantly, curating makes the difference between all these little creations and choices being in charge of us and us being in charge of them.
As an online reputation consultant, I frequently remind clients that saying no is the difference between having a recognizable identity and brand niche and being tossed into the brand bargain bin (picture Williams-Sonoma vs Walgreens).
Curating is a different mind-set and skill-set than creating. That is why there are writers and editors, artists and museum curators. Until I have my own agent or editor, I have to set aside time and head space specifically for one or the other. Trying to both at once is stultifying to the creative process and not quite rigorous enough for the curation. I generally put a piece away for weeks to months and come back to it with fresh eyes and perspective for a more critical review.
Ansel Adams said that “twelve significant photos in any one year is a good crop.” I still aspire to that kind of discipline, even in these Google Image and stock image crazed times where sheer volume and keyword density appear to reign supreme commercially.
Life as Your Canvas
Its not that there is something wrong with collecting–every curated body of work has to start with a collection, after all. It is when we use a collection as defense, and a kind of insulation or padding to feel safe that we begin to serve it instead of the other way around. There are areas of my life where I curate and areas where I collect. I’m noticing that the areas I curate are the areas where people can most readily connect and relate to. I tend to collect in domains of life where where I feel insecure or uncertain, interior, private backwater eddies, subconscious material that hasn’t quite taken shape yet or that I haven’t felt clear enough to shape yet.
- Areas of life I curate: food/diet, movies/entertainment, books, beliefs/thoughts, camera gear, photos.
- Areas of life I collect: acquaintances, experiences, spiritual teachings/trainings/, computer documents, ideas, files, music.
Creating Space for the Next Creation
As an empathic, intuitive and introverted person I can spend a good length of time in that murky cloud of creative chaos and the momentum and solitude of it is fertile soil for the next creation. But as much as I like my alone time I realize its not so healthy to stay in the output mode and all the clutter it generates indefinitely. It has an infinite incessancy, and I feel like an industrious creative little beaver, that must keep gnawing wood or its front teeth will grow too long for its mouth and pierce through the tongue. Meanwhile my creations pile.
Then I know it is time to curate again, time to clear the creative cache. When I want more clients and clearer head, I clean my car and throw away papers.
It is a personal regenerative cycle that informs the next evolution of creation and gives me at least the illusion of doership in whatever it is that life is expressing through me.
Photography, Spirituality & Transformation
Hanuman Yoga Festival Pictures
My photographic interpretation of the 2011 Hanuman Yoga Festival, Boulder CO June 16-19, 2011.
Hanuman Yoga Festival Boulder CO – Images by doug ellis
Gallery Updates
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