For those who choose to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.
Amma Fundraising Kirtan Party in Ojai CA
Fundraiser for Amma Karunamayi with musicians/performers Amy Arani, Judy Piazza, John Bagdasarian, Michael Reidinger and friends and a delicious indian dinner to support Amma Sri Karunamayi’s upcoming visit to Southern California.
Amma Fundraising Kirtan Party Ojai CA – Images by doug ellis
Life Coaching, Spirituality & Transformation
Friends with Silence
Befriending silence is like having a whale whisper in your ear
or sharing a sandwich with a planet.
A humbling and ridiculous mashup.
Only grace can make you feel both so precious and tiny.
You don’t even need to make the first move.
Silence is already there. And here.
Dissolving aloneness into all oneness with infinite patience.
Might as well stay still.
When it takes you, you want to share it,
the hushed moment.
But moment is all there is,
a moment in a moment in a moment.
Maybe you can feel it between these words.
Maybe you too are a friend of silence.
When we meet
we’ll greet each other with the space inside.
Maybe it will quietly smile.
Gymkhana Pictures: Official Photos of 2011 Thacher School Gymkhana
I photographed the Thacher School Gymkhana once again this year, and found myself again in awe of the skill, grace and poise of these young citizens, and pining for a horse to adopt for a year and a chance to return to high school.
Gymkhana 2011 Thacher School CA – Images by doug ellis
Gymkhana is a term used in the United Kingdom, east coast of the United States, and other English-speaking nations to describe an equestrian event consisting of speed pattern racing and timed games for riders on horses. These events often emphasize children’s participation and may be organized by a recognized Pony Club or a 4-H club.
In most of the western United States, this type of competition is usually called an “O-Mok-See” (also spelled O Mok See or “Omoksee”) competition, a term derived from a Native American phrase meaning “games on horseback.” However, the term gymkhana is used in California. This event was held here in Ojai, CA.
My Fear of Being Vir: Musings on the New Masculinity
I avoided moving to California for a long while, partly because it was Mill Valley and I had this irrational fear about becoming a mousey, mossy, androgynous Randy-o- the-Redwoods spiritual drifter. I was a solid and peak-bagging mountain man and wanted to keep that rocky mountain edge. In retrospect, I see that I didn’t trust my water nature and emotional self enough to make the leap until I had a compelling reason and community to dive into.
If you haven’t seen “The Man from Marin” and Vir, I will include a link to it here below so you can have some context for what shape that fear might take:
I have since embraced my inner Vir, or at least made a kind of truce and acceptance of that flavor of masculine expression. I’m still warming up to the other end of the spectrum, that sort of militant rigidity some men get after a men’s weekend orwatching too much cage fighting or learning tips and tricks from the PUA community. I am still working on embracing my inner tough guy.
A couple conscious man resources:
No list of feminine/masculine writings would be complete without mentioning David Deida. I really love the Way of the Superior Man and Blue Truth. They are great articulations of polarity and spiritual partnership. He also has a good DVD of a live workshop in Australia that I had but have lost track of.
Another is the podcast and blog The New Man by Tripp Lanier. The tagline of the site is “Beyond the Macho Jerk and the New Age Wimp”.
I can definitely relate to that balancing act…teetering somewhere between Veer and Mike Tyson. To clarify: I am teetering in jeans and not in bell-bottomed Lululemon pants.
Everything I Know I’ve Learned from Women
…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.
Art & Design, Life Coaching, Online Reputation Management
Clarity: Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing
Manifestos, Mission Statements, and Being Values-Driven
Anything standing between where you are now and where you would like to be is clutter. Key to cutting through or stepping beyond it is remembering the “Big 4:”
- Discover who you are.
- Decide what’s important.
- Do what matters.
- Keep on keeping the main thing the main thing.
The key to that is really taking the time to do the inner work to get clear on whats here now and what matters to you. It is a discipline that pays huge dividends in your work/life balance because it gives you permission to say no to the things that keep you from moving from good to great, or from what Gay Hendricks, in the book the Upper Limit Problem, calls your Zone of Excellence to your Zone of Genius. Just as importantly, it gives you a compelling “why” that makes all the “footwork” fun instead of a chore.
And..it frees up huge energy! “The most powerful way to live a more energetic, happy, rewarding, and meaningful life is to identify your strengths and use them to serve a cause greater than yourself.–John Gordon.
Manifestos, Mission Statements and Taglines
The Unibomber gave “manifestos” a bad and desperate name but it is one of the most fluid and powerful ways to articulate and focus your core values around the value you provide to your customers. I absolutely love these little pieces of crystalline business prose and helping people create, embody, and actualize them.
For examples, see my photography manifesto here and a really great blog post on manifestos for art, life & business here.
There is also a tech sabbath manifesto which you can download a PDF of by clicking here or visiting their website at www.techsabbath.org.
Carrie & Danielle have an absolutely fantastic design/creation manifesto at: http://carrieanddanielle.com/style-statement/teachings/
Fast Company is always an inspiring resource for business vision and ideas and there is an interesting article and video called How to Write a Mission Statement that Doesn’t Suck.
Conscious Business Resources & Coaches
There are an increasing number of conscious business resources that can help you stay focused on the core principles/values that uniquely define your passion and your business. I am listing a few of my favorites below.
Greg Habstritt has launched numerous businesses and business coaching programs including the Engaged Entrepreneur and Simple Wealth. He has book called The Branson Effect with an online assessment you can take that identifies your core passions driving your business success. He calls it your Success DNA.
My top five success drivers in my success DNA are:
1. peace
2. authenticity
3. elegance
4. beauty
5. creativity
I make sure that each of those are liberally sprinkled into any of my projects and the business and marketing planning I do.
Take the Success DNA assessment for free at www.authorityformula.com.
I have also taken the Passion Test with Chris and Janet Atwood twice, and am currently serving as Photo Editor for the online magazine Passion Test Daily. Keeping my own top 5 passions front and center helps me clear through my own organizational clutter and direct my life energy in directions I love most. You can check it out at www.passiontest.com.
Some Favorite Business and Marketing Coaches
There are many, many amazing conscious business and conscious/spiritual marketing coaches and consultants, but some that I find myself tuning into on a regular basis include Jeanna Gabellini, Jim Bunch, and Brian Whetten. I encourage you to contact any of them if there message resonates with you.
- Jeanna Gabellini at Masterpeace Coaching
- Jim Bunch at The Ultimate Game of Life
- Brian Whetten at Selling by Giving
- Seth Godin at his blog on Squidoo.
If you have any other conscious business coaches or resources you love, please feel free to share them here.
Life Coaching, Spirituality & Transformation
A Whole Lotta Nuthin’
As someone who has sampled most every self-improvement and human potential morsel these past twenty years, it is funny and ironic and more than a little paradoxical they have circled me back wide-eyed to the Baby I Always Was.
The only real reason to ask questions is to drop the questioner. Even the most complex system is at its best when it is transparent and invisible. It is true and makes no sense that we kick up so much dust for a whole lotta nuthin’.
So if you are evolving your mindset with NLP, affirmations, inquiry, visualizations, coaching, EFT, meditation, mastermind groups, morning pages, rampages of appreciation, vision boards, strict media diets, stringent friendship requirements, or any other myriad ways of thinking better , you are in the business of leveraging your isness by forgetting thought.
If you are evolving your environment with feng shui, professional organizers, stylists, home stagers, energy clearers, astrocartographers, or any other myriad of ways of improving your habitat and workspace, you are in the business of leveraging your isness by removing external distraction and noise.
If you are evolving your skillset with trainers, teachers, online videos, mentors, workshops, seminars, books, and practice, you are in the business of leveraging your isness by becoming unconsciously competent in skill.
So it starts simple and it ends simple. As Sogyal Rinpoche says about meditation, good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
–TS Eliot
Jeddah Mali at Stillheart Institute
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).
Gallery Updates
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