…or, more precisely, from the Divine Feminine in all of its aspects, including Ma Nature. I grew up mainly with my mother and sister, and in the mountains and streams of Colorado. The things I have loved most in my life had a radiant and light-filled quality, and I was always drawn to where light gathered. It tends to collect and pool around the feminine and all natural forms.

Everything I know I’ve learned from the mothers and the grandmothers. This is my rampage of appreciation for the feminine–for their forbearance and grace in the face of overwhelming challenges, prejudices, and atrocities that were elucidated in the Manifesto for Conscious Men.

As a portrait photographer and being-based life coach, I spend a lot of time attention on giving form to essence, which is essentially genderless and birthless and deathless and never has a bad hair day. But as a carnal and incarnate man I can also appreciate the shapes and forms that essence takes in feminine form. Let me count just a few of the ways in which I am grateful to this beautiful and divine reflection.

• I appreciate the earthiness and low to the ground hipstrength of the feminine, and what David Whyte calls its no-nonsense compassion, how it leans into pain and difficulty.
• I love how the feminine connects and communes to all beings equally and simultaneously with a sweet and diffuse awareness.
• I love the feminine’s capacity for joy and laughing at life’s foibles.
• I love the ferocity and strength of the feminine and how beautiful it is when it is claimed and expressed.
• I love the tempestuousness and swirliness of the feminine and it’s capacity to be four seasons in one day.
• I love the multi-sensory, multi-dimensionality quality of the feminine and it’s sensitivity to the unseen realms.
• I love the feminine relationship to work..they don’t seem to over-identify and lose themselves in it like I do.
• I love the supple fluidity and occasionally demure quality of feminine grace.
• I love feminine silence.
• I love how the feminine expresses nuance, texture and variety in form and in the way it appreciates that form. The  pageantry and celebration and costume changes for their own sake.
• I love how patient and wise the feminine is in opening my own inner aperture and landscape to what is possible.

Most of all I love the divine feminine for the ways it entices, cajoles, eludes, dances, shines, attracts, confronts, and rests in life as life and draws all to her and from her, with an in the bones acceptance and poise.

So to all the women out there, Happy Mothers Day, whether you have birthed a biped this lifetime or not.

See the related post: My Fear of Being Veer: Reflections on the New Masculinity.

You Might be Nutritionally Neurotic If You…

• Have eaten, or are eating, baby food because it is more “pure”.
• Carry enzymes, antacids, homeopathics, probiotics or some other pre or post-meal “antidote.”
• Own a food scale. Or can tell at a glance what a food portion weighs in grams.
• Strain and rinse your cottage cheese.
• Strongly factor your dosha, blood type, lunar, Vedic, Mayan, or Incan calendar into your meal preparations.
• Chew a certain number of times each bite or put the fork down between bites.
• Have bought and use your own dehydrator.
• Grow your own sprouts or wheatgrass.
• Have a juicer that costs more than your car.
• Hold food products over your solar plexus and muscle test it before you put it in the cart.
• Work at a grocery store or farmers market so you can get the discount or first pick.
• Use dietary habits as a dating deal-breaker.
• Understand the difference between wine that is ecovine, organic, biodynamic, sulfite-free, and sustainable.
• Have given up on eating out. Or have friends who have given up on eating out with with you.
• Buy monthly shipments of E3 Live, Zri, Monavie, Zamu or similar products in lieu of health insurance.
• Are familiar with “the mother” of apple cider vinegar or kombucha.
• Make your own almond milk, cheese, or nut butters.
• Make your own granola.
• Are crystal clear on which grains are gluten-free and which actually contain gluten.
• Have tried Raw, Primal, RAVE and Vegan at various points in your life.
• Have one kitchen cabinet that is full of supplements (+1).
• Had to install a separate standalone cabinet or refrigerator for your potions and supplements (+2)
• Must take a cooler or series of Tupperware containers with you at all times.
• You own a set of those food-combining placemats.
• Regularly ask what temperature your food was prepared to.
• Get into passionate discussions about farm-raised and wild caught fish and the pollution in the Atlantic vs the pollution in the Pacific.
• Have foods that you are intolerant to, allergic to, and sensitive to and check in on their status regularly.
• Get anxious when you need to get your food cache through airport security or customs.
• Can’t remember the last time you ate something as it was described in the menu.
• Don’t have to keep your food segregated from your roommates because they won’t eat it.
• Regularly consume green things with names like borage, wheat grass, cholorella or blue-green algae.
• Know what the Master Cleanse and the Liver Flush are and have tried both.
• Carry your water only in glass bottles (preferably blue).
• Can’t eat the Kosher or Special Vegetarian meal on the plane either.
• Time or track the length of time your food takes from source to table.

Scoring System

0-5: Answering yes to 0-5 of the questions indicates a low level of nutritional eccentricity. You have gentle preferences that allow you to pass in mainstream society. You can still go out and possibly still eat pizza.

6-10: Answering yes to 6-10 questions indicates you are beginning to develop mild nutritional affectations and sensitivities and are beginning to confine your grocery shopping to organic markets and health food stores.

11-16: Your food sensitivities and associated rituals are beginning to significantly hamper  your ability to socialize, travel, and eat out. You generally cook or chop for yourself because no one really gets it like you do. You have mercola.com bookmarked and order supplements online to save sales tax.

17-22: You give dehydrated apple chips at Halloween and are also probably convinced you have anemia, candida, hypoglycemia, or any other myriad of maladies that that require constant care and attention. You tend to these over a big bowl of greens and people don’t get too close for fear of catching whatever it is you have.You see food as medicine, energy and vibration and are rigorous, some may say, militant, in dictating its source, preparation, and overall lifecycle, planetarily and otherwise.

23 and above: Answering yes to 23 or more indicates a high level of  nutritional fundamentalism. You are a sensitive, unique individual who is also your own nutritional guinea pig and lab rat, constantly on a quest for the next miracle nutrient or trace of contaminant, with little time for anything else. You are either a professional triathlete, chronically ill or both. Either way you should stay away from kids and teenagers because they spread germs and eat like crap.

See the related post: You might be spiritually neurotic if….

You Might be Spiritually Neurotic If you..

• Have more white and purple clothes in your closet than any other color.
• Know the difference between Ganesha, Gangaji and Gurmukh.
• Put up your dreamcatcher in a hotel room.
• Have tried both holo and hemi sync and the theta goggles.
• Have ever purchased a Q-link, Em-wave, or healing crystals on credit or layaway.
• Make a wish or another ritual when you see repeating numbers on a clock.
• Have five or more close friends who are doulas, energy healers, or shamans.
• Say a prayer of gratitude when you put a key in a lock.
• Own both the brown Animal totem book and the purple rock/crystal book.
• Consciously charge or energize popcorn and other snack foods with your hands.
• Have used a pendulum to dowse a major life decision.
• Can describe the difference between an angel, archangel, avatar, and ascended master and know a few by name.
• Have a special bindi you like to wear for kirtan.
• Have your own energy worker, astrologer and animal intuitive.
• Require your friends and family to call you by your spiritual name.
• Know when to use the rose quartz and when to use the smoky quartz.
• Have helped at, camped at, or somehow greased your way into, a big spiritual workshop or event you couldn’t afford.
• Have  a medicine pouch either in your car or on your person.
• Have feathers or white sage in your car or bathroom.
• Have slept out for Amma.
• Have done the spiritual triple crown: Bali, India, and Esalen.
• Own both the hardcover and softcover versions of ACIM.
• Regularly travel with your own incense, mala, singing bowl, tingshaws, or zafu.
• Play either crystal bowls, a harmonium, or digiredoo or tabla.
• Know the difference between sri and zri.
• Know your sun, moon, and rising sign.
• Prefer to buy or price things in multiples of 9 or that add up to 9 ($108).
• You use phrases like “cut cords”,  “held space”, “star seeds” or “twin flames”.
• Check the Vedic astrology to make sure it is “in the flow”
• Have “grounded” your car.
• Have run up a Sounds True bill higher than  your grocery bill.
• Resonating with someone or something is both the Alpha and the Omega.
• Feel uncomfortable when someone handles your mala.
• Have the words Light, Star, Love, or Rainbow in your email address or online dating profile.
• Have aspirations to build a better Burning Manor Rainbow Gathering camp next year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scoring System

0-5: Answering yes to 0-5 indicates a very low level of spiritually neurotic activity and behavior. I have no idea how you found me and my website. Spirit must be playing  a trick on you.

6-10: You are beginning to develop mild spiritual affectations and energetic sensitivities, but there may still be hope to re-enter mainstream society if you move back to the midwest. Fast.

11-15: Code Indigo (6th Chakra): Your daily life and spiritual life have begun to blur into a smear. You are beginning to show clear signs of being an odd duck in a queer pond and have begun the dismantling process or your regular waking life.

16-20: Code Orange (2nd Chakra):  You don’t just do this on Sunday mornings. You speak the lingo and know the secret handshake. You are also past the point of return. Get into the body for the next plunge down the rabbit hole.

21-26: Code Red: (1st Chakra): Spiritual hardcore.  If you aren’t one of my coaching clients yet we should talk. This is the final push. You likely either live on the West Coast or in a van down by the river. Fortunately for you, your sangha does too so you don’t care anymore.

27-32: Code White (TP Point): The only difference between someone who is enlightened and one who isn’t is the one who is enlightened knows there is no difference. You are There and You Are That. Congratulations. The Paranormal is your new normal and you have come full circle.

Nobody else understands you but since there are no Others in your dimension of experience Its all Good.  Thanks for being you.

Also see: you might be nutritionally neurotic if…

I have a flair for finding very obscure independent and documentary films. The so-called “categories” the Netflix algorithm cooks up for me string together unlikely adjectives like “visually striking cerebral foreign movies” and “understated biographical documentaries.”

I love stories about people who “find the grain in their own wood.” Especially really eccentric artists and musicians, geniuses, misfits, and social underdogs who persevere despite overwhelming odds and succeed on their own terms. There is something completely riveting about watching a soul express what it was born to do in an unvarnished way. To me, these true originals creating against all odds deserve an Oscar.

An iconoclast is “a person who attacks established or traditional concepts, principles, laws, etc.” But most of the people chronicled in the list below aren’t overtly against anything. They are strongly for something, following their own calling and the creative impulse so closely and intently that the warp and woof of societal norms bends and shapes in their wake. Still they don’t look up. They do what the do, be who they be, out of love.

So here is my list of obscure documentary films that deserve an Oscar. Click on a link below to see a trailer or related clip.

• Agnes Martin: With my Back to the World
• A Man Named Pearl
• Born Into Brothels
• Emmanuel’s Gift
• Ram Dass: Fierce Grace
• Hoop Dreams
• Into Great Silence
• Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind
• Man on Wire
• My Flesh and Blood
• Rivers and Tides
• The Cruise

Check out at least one or two of these films and let me know what you think.

I am here….

to be fully present and available to Life.

and to let your light shine.

to see the extraordinary in the ordinary

peace amidst chaos

and love in all beings.

It is a small thing changing everything.

To let your Basic Goodness and beingness be.

This is my gift, given freely.

Passing through this called me.

–Doug Ellis April 2010

It takes a lot of discipline and commitment to organize a life around clear, full expression. To continually ask if something is artful, heartful, and True.

If you do, or are ready to, begin living a fully-expressed life, I invite you to contact me. You are the kind of being I like to co-create with.

Music has been a deep and integral part of my life and my first spiritual practice. I still remember buying my first album–Pink Floyd’s The Wall– in fifth grade. When the weather or life turns, I turn to music and start making mixes. These are some of my favorite women songwriters and songs with heart and soul. I hope you enjoy it.

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 who got into Wikipedia before I did, is 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, UK radio show. though if that interview aired I never heard it.

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

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:

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