Fall Maple and Victorian House In Ojai

If you missed my original missive describing the events surrounding my pre-emptive strike on a midlife crisis, you may want to click here to get oriented.

Or just read on to learn what 14 months in my spiritual vortex/washing machine here has shaken out.

My overarching intent in moving was to count on and not repeat myself–a full-time and expensive endeavor. Financing my faith, not my fear, and doubling down, I spent a third of my net worth on personal and professional development in 2009.

People are shaking the Etch-A-Sketch and having it shaken for them willingly and unwillingly all over the US now, alone and with families. I was fortunate to be able to do it somewhat on purpose and alone. By mid-year the reinvention experiment definitely got out of the laboratory, but by then I was relaxed enough that I could tell my new life was unfolding according to some larger plan.

The Ojai valley is healing, powerful tribal land. Wise, no nonsense grandmother medicine.  I feel it most in the sparkling, dazzling dark silence.  It’s rich and hazy..steeping in it too long might make me unfit for life anywhere else. I found myself wondering if “healing” might sometimes be a socially condoned substitute for “escaping” or “resisting” in the same way that “trying” is wanting approval for something that one has no intention of doing.

The energy of “The Nest” is slow but strong, and shook my creative tree in the best possible way last year. I was gone at least a week every month in 2009, spending almost 80 full days actively immersed in retreat, educational and workshop settings, including The Sedona Method, The Work, Awakening Coaching Training, Soul Purpose Institute, Transformational Leadership Council, University of Santa Monica, and silent meditation retreats with Adyashanti.

These are a few improbable but possible truths, breadcrumbs really, that I have followed down the rabbit hole during these quasi times.  I can’t say that I found myself so much as lost parts of the old me I don’t even miss.  Other parts came to life to take their place, and I am definitely not the same person I was even six months ago.

One of the side effects of living in the vortex is the certainty that you are missing something–including certainty.

Random Musings

I have realized that I am unabashedly aligned toward beauty. And the underdog. And nature. And silence.

Without frogs, stars and crickets you got nothin.

It is clear that no one really knows what they are doing and there is no such thing as a grownup.

Because it was so close to my way of seeing and being, it was a real ah-hah to realize I was building websites and making pictures as an act of healing—creating favorable conditions for someone to clarify and express their Essential Nature with light. I was basically doing energy healing with congealed energy in the form of pixels..it still surprises me, even now, to write it..

The deepest addiction is to I—but quitting it cold turkey—well, not for everyone. Two words. Park Bench.

Ojai is supposed to be the cult capital of California (possibly the world) but I haven’t been recruited, likely because I have now become too open minded and spiritually polyamorous to drink any one flavor of Kool-Aid.

I have eaten an incredible number of avocados, oranges, and coconut bars but my main staple is Nick and Rob’s Power Burrito.

If you are thinking of making the leap..know that you will never feel quite ready. Conditions are never favorable enough. Never. And there is no perfect place. But the good news is that the universe and everyone in it genuinely wants you to succeed, especially if you are authentically expressing your soul’s purpose And, grace often comes in the form of all the things that don’t happen..as my friend Steve D’Annunzio says, “Rejection is God’s protection.”

I see now how I imposed my own ceilings and limits based only on what I believe I can handle. It was completely made up and I see that now.

So is any moral or pattern or directional conclusion you may draw from any of this.

Until next time, safe journeys,

The other, older, and much much wealthier Doug Ellis, known as “Deadly Doug” owns the Aston Villa Football Club in the UK.  Brady Haran of  BBC Birmingham TV had some fun winding the home fans up with a series of  “investigative pieces” with me in July 2006 where they asked me to suggest what I would do with the team. Not being a soccer fan, I had no idea what all the fuss was about and had to move quickly to bring myself up to speed to come up with a few evocative ideas having very little to do with soccer or the merits and esteemed lineage and of this fine club and its players.

I was also interviewed for a Birmingham radio show. though if that interview aired I never heard it.

It was all in good fun, and got some people seriously confused as I received a few emails either vilifying or praising me as they thought I was the other Doug Ellis with actual plans for the club.

Here is the link to the full article on Doug Ellis’s Grand Plans for Aston Villa Football Club.

Clips highlighting the investigative Googling and video editing skills of Mr. Haran as he tracked me down in Colorado:

• doug ellis not cheap
• doug-ellis-grand-plans-for-aston-villa-cheerleaders

Of all the CA central coast towns I visited in October 2008, why am I living in this one? This small (pop 8,000) agrarian hot, dry, hilly place?

Locals ask it like I’m prescient or sagely; others like I’m a total idiot. Either way, it’s a question I can only answer with a shrug after being here a week. The Ojai Valley, like the Roaring Fork Valley, has a kind of feminine grandeur and strength and softness..I couldn’t have left for anything less. Ojai chose me as much as I chose it.

Intuition is only right 100% of the time, so who am I to know why? Why did Thoreau choose Walden Pond? It’s “not wise to ask the whys.”

It’s definitely not because of Brothers & Sisters or because Ted Danson and Mary Steemburgen and Reese Witherspoon live here.

It’s not entirely because Krishnamurti had his residence and retreat center here and you can still feel his energy and presence in the orange and avocado orchards.

It may not even be because of the Chumash Indians who settled peaceably here 13,000 years ago doing Chumashy things like paddling around in canoes, trading shells, making baskets, and painting on cave walls.

It might be because Ojai means “moon” and “nest” both. I am so so ready for a nest.

It is at least partly because it is a sweet high vibe valley with hills on two sides like the one I left, and two crops of oranges (and orange blossoms) a year, and all the avocados and strawberries you can eat.

It is partly the great tennis club and the guys there and the fact that there are two varieties of health food stores and a super groovy farmers market.

It was partly looking at my vision boards on my office wall in Snowmass Village and feeling like a total fraud and hypocrite for living out of alignment. It was partly working with Jeddah Mali and Rod Stryker and this Masters program in Spiritual counseling at USM.

It was partly knowing at least one person here..thanks Kathleen!

Mostly it is that I feel great here, and that people seem to know me and recognize me in advance or out of time..I keep bumbling into these surreal moments of familiarity that are almost like déjà vus without their repetitive threadbare quality. Wasn’t the check-in process on Fantasy Island something similar? More than just a cursory “we’ll leave a light on for you,” it’s as if my entire life’s itinerary has been pre-arranged, booked and lifted skyward, first-class.

The handshakes here are solid, the smiles genuine. “Oh, Doug Ellis? We’ve heard all about you and you’re good friends with so and so and know such and such? Great to see you again! (for the first time), go past the thing, you know past the doo hickey, and turn left at the burning bush and go see <blank> and tell them blah blah sent you,” all in a rapid fire sort of pidgin English shorthand reserved for longtime locals who can fill in the blanks. And I’m just nodding and smiling dumbly and on to the next adventure.

The paranormal has become my new normal.

Leaving Colorado was rough. It was like ripping off a bandage or something that happened to someone else. I drove fast out of Glenwood Self Storage under the cover of darkness with my back turned to Mt. Sopris.. She held such powerful and loving space for me the past 12 years. I can feel her still like this rock goddess lover who doesn’t yet know we have parted.. I can trace her contours with my hand by heart, and was afraid to say goodbye to her, of incurring her Kali/Pelee wrath and staring down my own grief.

Mostly though it is because I am almost 40 and I have been hearing people like Carolyn Myss say things like “finance your faith, not your fear” and even Susie Ormon, who says things like “Do what right for you before you do what is right for your money.” How could I coach people through transitions without navigating my own? Since I was bored and tired with myself I thought why not create my own crisis? What a privilege to create your own crisis instead of having one foisted upon you.

What if David Whyte was right?

“What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.”

Click here to read the full poem entitled What to Remember Upon Waking.

In three months I have shed hundreds of pounds of magazines, furniture and extra detritus of living, cleared out my storage shed of two years, left a steady job at a creative and prestigious nonprofit just days before the financial meltdown. All of this swirling chaos and fear has added a sense of drama and excitement to the endeavor, as if I were a ship captain taking my little dinghy out of safe harbor and into the eye of the hurricane. I should buy an eye patch.

For those of you who have thought of reinventing yourselves, your life, truly becoming one with life and refashioning it to suit the new expanded you, I say jump in, the waters fine.

Blessings and Namaste,

Doug E