Jeddah Mali at Stilheart Institute

My friend and spiritual mentor Jeddah Mali made a rare U.S. appearance at the Stillheart Institute in Woodside California on April 15th-17th, 2011. Below is a slideshow and event photo gallery of the images from the event:

Spiritual Retreat at Stillheart Institute with Jeddah Mali – Images by doug ellis

If you would like to deepen your sense of being and feel inspired by our global interdependence and your role in it, by all means please join us! Howard Martin, Vice President of HeartMath, will also be making an appearance to discuss the Earth’s electromagnetic fields and what this is increasingly revealing to us about the interaction between human beings and the Earth.

The setting and venue are world-class.

The registration page and full details can be found here: http://jeddahmali.com/california-april.php

I will be there photographing the event and offering portrait sessions to the attendees.

Here is some of what you can expect in this two day experience of global harmony:

We will look at the universal laws that govern existence, and how a better understanding of these laws will enable us to transform our thinking and realign our intentions towards individual and collective health, happiness and harmony.

We will examine our predisposition for peace and contentment, and see that we are hardwired for harmony – both individually and collectively. We will be exploring the truth of that within our own experience and where we might be freer and clearer in our understanding and experience (and thus bestow freedom and clarity upon the world).

We will look at the options that are available to humanity at this time of increased challenge and examine the poignant questions:

• What does the future world we desire require of us now?
• And what are the most viable options for achieving this on an individual, societal and global level?

We will also share some of the ground-breaking science on the Earth’s electromagnetic fields and what this is increasingly revealing to us about the interaction between human beings and the Earth.

Please join me in spending two days with Jeddah at this incredible event, with special guest Howard Martin of  (Heartmath / Global Coherence Initiative).

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.

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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…

One of the things I love best about Buddhism and Taosim both is its brevity…quick little bites of wisdom like the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path that you can spend your whole life embodying. Simple but not always easy. As Walt Whitman once said, “Truth is simple. If it were complicated everyone would get it.”

Just in case you love lists as much as I do, I’ve taken the liberty of writing down the Eightfold Path and Lao Tsu’s Four Virtues below. Feel free to post them on your fridge or whatever feels right.

Note: the substitution of”Right” to “Wise” in the Eightfold Path below is the new progressive version, presumably because it seems less dogmatic and right/wrong than saying “Right Understanding” etc.

Eightfold Path

• Wise Understanding (realizing the cause of suffering)
• Wise Intention (motivation to end suffering)
• Wise Speech (speaking in a way that promotes clarity)
• Wise Action (behaving in ways that maintain clarity)
• Wise Livelihood (supporting oneself in a wholesome way)
• Wise Effort (cultivating peaceful mind habits)
• Wise Concentration (cultivating a steady, focused, ease-filled mind)
• Wise Mindfulness (cultivating alert, balanced attention)

Lao Tsu’s Four Virtues

• Reverence for all life
• Sincerity
• Gentleness
• Supportiveness/Service

I’m a big proponent of hiring and/or choosing friends and mates for character/qualities like these..because they tend to be perennial. Skills/techniques come and go and fall in and out of fashion. The classics like the Four Virtues only improve over time.

Or..going for broke spiritually without going broke financially.

Or..why the Eckhart Tolle park bench and spiritual shabby chic is way overrated.

These are a few of my tips and recommendations from 23 years as a sometimes earnest, sometimes disenchanted, often dazed and confused consciousness cosmonaut and spiritual polyamorist.

A few breadcrumbs as you make your way down the spiritual path.

Tip 1:Don’t dabble. Don’t try to squeeze it in on the weekends or 2 weeks a year on vacation. Follow the sage advice of Sri Ramakrishna who said, “Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.” Throw yourself completely into the spiritual washing machine tosses you out. As quickly as possible get over the idea that it is out there..there is no out there out there.

Cure the addiction to spiritual seeking the way some people do with smoking–chain-smoke the whole dang carton in the car in the garage until the thought of ever going to another workshop again makes you feel sick. Up-level your addictions to things that are at least partly wholesome and light-filled and then let release those too.

Tip 2: Don’t Forget the Inner Journey
Of the Buddha’s Three Jewels (buddha, dharma, and sangha) the most important of all in his view was sangha. And you
will find fellowship and friends at retreats, conferences, workshops and other spiritual gatherings but the real spiritual journey is the 18 inches from your head to your heart. For some that is a solo journey, others find the passageway through comnitted relationship.

Tip 3: Give Yourself Permission to Float and be Soulfish
Be clear about what you are up to..tell your friends and family up front that you are going to be a spiritual self-obsessed odd one for a while until either your money, cultural conditioning, or resistance wears out.

Tip 4: Don’t over-rely on invisible means of support. As spiritual as it may seem to renounce all your worldlies, American culture doesn’t support or even acknowledge 21st century sadhus. Being a spiritualized poverty case can make you sensitive to all the wrong things. It’s not more spiritual to be poor and living on a park bench for two years won’t make you Eckhart Tolle. The New Earth needs karma yogis who can live powerfully in the material and spiritual and bridge both worlds.

Tip 5: When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.
I’ve made a semi-professional lifestyle out of traveling in spiritual/transformational circles with evolved and conscious beings. You can too. There is a temptation with consciousness exploration or spiritual practice to get more and more extreme or esoteric or weird in pursuit of truth..its not better or worse, just weirder, and a symptom of being what is affectionately known as a “bliss junkie” or monkey.

Because more and more people are opening to new dimensions and realities of being, lots of spiritually powerful places and techniques are really exploding in popularity. That means they are hiring and you can work in exchange for attendance/room/board or real money. Might as well get paid to be who you are, do what you love, and actually live like you are on retreat or in a conscious loving workshop 24/7, instead of having peak experiences and post-workshop traumatic stress disorder when you slink back to your cubicle like an occupational veal calf.

Likely Stops on the Journey of the Peace Pilgrim

Yes, the “path” is a pathless one, a gateless gate, a journey and not a destination..and still..there are space/time coordinates where other peace pilgrims and members of our tribe are likely to gather. These are a few to help focus your spiritual wanderings.

Groovy Workshop/Seminar Places Where People will Love on You No Matter What

• Esalen Institute
• Omega
• Hollyhock
• Feathered Pipe
• Harbin Hot Springs
• Findhorn
• Mount Madonna
• Nine Gates Mystery School

Conferences & Events With the Vibe

• Bhakti Fest
• Burning Man
• The Rainbow Gathering
• Yoga Journal Conferences

Buddhist/Meditative Havens & Sanctuaries

• Spirit Rock
• Plum Village
• Dhamma Vipassana
• Deer Park
• Green Gulch
• Tasajara

Where the Energy/Healing/Intuitive Types Go

• Carolyn Myss
• Barbara Brennan
• John of God
• Theta Healing

Where the Cerebral Types Go

• Integral Studies
• Alan Watts
• Andrew Cohen
• Ken Wilber
• Robert Thurman

Where the Movement and Yoga Types Go

• Kripalu
• Yoga Journal Conference
• Moving Center School
• Nia Now
• Five Rhythms

Spiritual Colleges and Universities

• California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)
• Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP)
• Maharishi University of Management (MUM)
• Naropa University
• Pacifica Graduate Institute
• University of Santa Monica (USM)

Spiritual Mentors & Teachers

• Adyashanti
• Byron Katie
• Eckhart Tolle
• Gangaji
• Jeddah Mali

Tools & Techniques

• The Hoffman Process
• The Sedona Method
• The Diamond Approach
• Holotropic Breathwork
• The Work

Enjoy the journey! Feel free to share your experiences and recommendations here.

Have you noticed the new premium on essence and the space around things? A ping-or-be pinged world demands constant curating and can create bone-weary word fatigue so deep even a 100-character tweet washes over us in a haze.

The virtual becomes hollow so fast that even among hardcore digiterati there is a head to heart flight to “slow food”, email curfews, wisdom circles, and community gardens..anything embodied and unplugged.

Thankfully, technology can help silence itself and our tech gadgets are getting smart at filtering pesky thought forms, blocking  popups, silencing robot telemarketers.

We are now learning to do the same with our energy hygiene—to filter our influences at etheric level, to block lower and increase higher frequencies and make conscious choices about who/what/where we let our beingness be. In these transitional times, it is increasingly vital that we become fluent in energy cultivation and exchange and learn to speak the lingua franca of life, and synchronize to wiser, broader rhythms.

An etheric digital divide is forming in the New Earth. Knowledge workers are being replaced and eclipsed by light workers. A light worker in the broadest sense is someone who helps others grow in love or holds space and energy to create what desires to be done. Light workers are people who live cultivating, directing and applying light consciously, who up level every situation and environment by their “mere” presence.

Doreen Virtue’s definition of a lightworker is: those who volunteered, before birth, to help the planet and its population heal from the effects of fear.

I love this definition because it includes way more people than just energy healers, clairvoyants, or those in the traditional helping professions. There are thousands of flavors of light workers in all occupations and roles of society.

If you are a light worker, you may have noticed (and smiled) at the fact that you now have a seat at the economic and political table. Not just the kiddie massage table off in a darker corner somewhere, but the real grown-up middle of the dining room, silverware and service table.The personal economies of shamans of energy and space are transforming from microeconomics to macro. The empaths/healers/clair-anythings who were at the fringes and margins of society are being pulled into the middle  by necessity. No longer confined to spiritual refugee camps like Sedona, Boulder, or Marin County, energy and vibrational “bridge people” now have the critical mainstream mass to catalyze global transformation.

This is bigger than just a woo-woo healing weekend thing, crystals, Tarot cards, or a Reiki master. I’m talking about a whole new way of living where we don’t wipe our feet on being en route to crossing off a task. I’m talking about measuring and graphing the vibration of your website or a thought or a song in a concrete, tangible way, and deliberately creating a certain frequency as a kind of lighthouse beacon to your tribe. I’m talking about calibrating every single thought, color, fabric, space, sound, smell with a level of specificity that would make David Hawkins gasp.

We are moving beyond knowing to unpacking the resonant vibrational signature of something. Beyond personal illness to a broader awareness of its role in the planetary ascencion.  Beyond being entertained to deeply appreciating. Most importantly from human doing to human being.

Light workers are leading this silent revolution in vibration. This wave of conscious energy movers, healers, and shakers is the second or third generation or second wave of “cultural creatives” and pioneers in the New Earth.

Conscious beings of light and love are taking their seats at the head of the socioeconomic table and it’s happening now. Can you feel it?

How will your vibration help shape this new Earth?

Please post comments below and visit the resources below to learn more.

Related resources:

• Carolyn Myss (www. myss.com)
• David Hawkins (www.veritaspub.com/)
• Karla McClaren (www.karlamcclaren.com)
• Barbara Brennan (www.barbarabrennan.com)
• ISEEM (www.issseem.org/)
• Lynne McTaggert (www.theintentionexperiment.com/)

Anusara Yoga Immersion 2 Teacher Training with Amy Ippoliti. Solstice Center, Boulder, Nov. 2010

Anusara Yoga Immersion 2 with Amy Ippoliti – Images by doug ellis

Reweaving

Because my interbeing with all things is infinite, I vow to continually evolve my web.

Because everything between my conditioning and who I truly Am

..is clutter, I vow to choose freedom and cut the thread.

The rub:

Infinitude creates and destroys and loves them equally; it won’t settle for mere maintaining or tidying up.

I haven’t yet found how much clarity I can stand.

Haven’t seen how much perfection I can face with eyes raised

or how much creativity/ambition/shakti I can pour into this vessel without cracking

but I trust my beingness.

I trust my nervous system

I can let go of fantasy and fall in love with my empty hand.

Leaving things behind is just the start.

It takes a Bodhisattva’s heart and Manjushri’s sword to cut the old thread.

To face the darkened corners,

the emotional dust bunnies,

the half starts, half-hearts, and promises only spoken

until all that is left is love.

If you are living this unweaving,

Can you see what is without adornment or improvement?

And not just see it, but feel it, with baby soft eyes and an open heart?

Can you embrace your helplessness? The ncompletes?

And can you rest? Really deeply rest,

trusting the wisdom of the dazzling dark, the dew of a new dawn?

The way life ceaselessly, effortlessly unweaves and reweaves itself.

It’s breathing us,  reweaving us, now.

Can you feel it?

—Doug Ellis

Ojai Experience at the Ojai Foundation – Images by doug ellis

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.

On May 13-17 2011 I will be making custom publicity portraits at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC for the Conversation Among Masters 2011 coaching conference. It promises to be an action packed and exciting event.