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:
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).
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….
Just for Fun, Life Coaching, Spirituality & Transformation
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…
Life Coaching, Spirituality & Transformation
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.
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.
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.
Enjoy the journey! Feel free to share your experiences and recommendations here.
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.
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:
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
~ Mary Oliver
Who I Am
I behold and am beheld by the beauty and intelligence of light. I am a messenger, explorer, and spaceholder. I am also an empath/healer/writer/marketing professional/webmaster and spiritual life coach.
What I do
Why it matters
See www.dougellisphotography.com and www.dougellisphoto.com for some of my current work.
One of the things I love about being a professional photographer is seeing my photographs get used..online and in print. I also love lists and this post covers both topics.
Let’s say you just took or purchased some great new portraits or event photos. Now you have all these .jpgs on a disc or on your computer and you’re not sure what to do with them so they are sitting there just gathering dust.
Here are 30 fun and generally affordable ways you can leverage the power of your pixel magic and share it with folks who want a better sense of you:
E-marketing/Slideshows/Websites
Printed/Products/PR
I hope these lists have inspired you to use your new photos. If you would like to add more options or clarify, please feel free to add comments/updates using the post tool below.
Thanks so much and Happy Holiday season.
Light and love,
Doug
Photography, Spirituality & Transformation
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
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This list is of a different focus than the longer list of favorites and sponsors, and is instead a short list core practices I use to shift my state and re-connect me to what is essential, life-affirming and self-renewing. In the book Leadership and the New Science, Margaret Wheatley writes about how nature and life [...]
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