ellisbarker.com

Stop Loving Yourself

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

That may sound stupid. Perhaps it is. We’ve certainly been told ad nauseam about the benefits of doing the opposite.

The problem, really, comes in how we look at and embody love. Think of those you consider “loved ones”–parents, family members, spouses, children, etc.–and how you actually treat them. Too often we burden those we love with expectation, judgment, and recrimination. Loving us means they should do certain things in a certain way. If not, we treat with some manner of disdain, as though by loving us they have demeaned themselves in some way. Can an emotion couched in such attitudes be called love?

What If It Doesn't Have To Be Difficult?

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How do you look at…work, relationships, life?

A challenge?

A fight?

A struggle?

A losing proposition?

I’m not sure if it’s a “western civ” thing or a modern world thing, but often it seems we view parts of (or the whole of) our life as some type of confrontation. We go to war with life. We have to fight for what we want, conquer obstacles to happiness or success, defend against enemies who intend to take what is ours. There is always some battle to be fought.

The Gravity of Thought

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Gravity, as generally understood, is a good thing. It keeps the coffee in the mug and the mug on the table. It allows the pitch to be hit or caught. More or less, it makes life on this planet possible. Without it, we literally have no idea where we would be.

Yet, though it is ever present and necessary, more is not better. When we are overcome with a sense of gravity, a sense of weightiness and importance, we begin to close down. Suddenly everything feels more significant and fear of some perceived loss arises. Life gets heavy and less fun.

Thoughting vs. Thinking

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Surely thought is the most powerful force in existence. You can use thought to achieve full aliveness or to effectuate your own death. You can use thought to create a new story or song or product. You can use thought to redirect the course of your life and the lives of others. Everything we create or experience is rooted in thought.

But thoughts are more numerous than the stars in the sky and by their sheer volume they often overwhelm us. They exist inside and outside us. For much of the time we are barely treading water in a non-stop torrent of thought that pollutes our stream of consciousness.

Baby Feet

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Could it be that we attain our spiritual apex when we, as infants, discover our feet? Our eyes are undeveloped and so our range of vision is limited. People, at that stage in our development, are forever getting in our face and demanding our focus. However, when they move away, everything is soft and liquid and lovely. This peculiar thing appears in the glow – it later becomes known as a foot – and captures our attention. Instinctively we reach out, stretching far beyond the known world, and meet it. There is a burst of sensation, exciting, satisfying, as we feel this amazing thing which sends waves of pleasure through us. We are the universe. Everything registers within us.

On Communication

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

For the most part we think we are good communicators. We may not necessarily enjoy all aspects of it (i.e. public speaking) and we may stumble with or over words and phrases, but we can get a point across. If we have to turn up the volume a little bit, it’s no big deal. We can make ourselves be heard.

Communication, however, is a two-sided affair. Even if you are talking to yourself, there is the one speaking and the one listening (or the one writing and the one reading, etc). The speaking role is the one that often comes most naturally. We seem to have an innate urge to express ourselves and language quickly becomes the default means. How often are young children told to “use your words”? Early in life, speaking becomes the acceptable way of seeking reward or necessity. Hell, some even attempt to require it of pets! We associate speaking with power and influence. Be they ministers, entertainers, or politicians (ugh), we elevate and attend to those who speak effectively.

Who's In Charge Here?

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There’s something fey about intuition. Hearing “Well, I just had a feeling,” is an unsatisfactory experience. Often an intuitive hit is likened to making a guess, taking a chance. On any given coin flip, one has a 50% chance of being right.

But it goes beyond that. Modern society has less respect for the heart. We have the internet, the accumulated wisdom of the world, just a tap away. We have AI. We have satellites orbiting the earth tracking our every action. Such things are creations of the modern mind at work. And we adore the mind.

Who? Me?

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“A genuinely lazy man is always misunderstood.”

from A Deadly Shade of Gold by  John D. MacDonald

Okay, yes. Sometimes the world does just beg for the middle finger—most days, come to think of it—and sanity says it’s time to go bye-bye. Have you noticed what’s really going on out there? Who wouldn’t want to call time out every once in a while? Self-preservation is not reserved for the faint of heart.

Rise Or Fall - The Choice Is Yours

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.”

Pierre Tielhard de Chardin

It’s a lovely image. A summit of consciousness and love. A point of reward for those who have held fast to an often solitary pursuit at the end of which they will be united with a most genuine tribe. Of course, summit suggests a climb, a prolonged effort. Yet that too is an ongoing reward to those who accept the challenge. Access to the summit path requires a conscious choice and a steely commitment. Though the actions required are of simple nature, this is the uncommon way.

How Einstein Empowered the Individual (and Broke the World)

Sat, 21 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The adjective relative, derived from the French relatif, landed in the English language in the 15th century. But for the sake of argument, let us assume the word gained a new life with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

Any work which allows for the bending of space-time surely allows one license to exercise the right to perspective. Each of us possesses the possibility of a unique perspective (only a possibility because if one fails to exercise the thought muscle he will simply parrot the perspective of another). The wealth of art, ideas, and products we have access to derives from our inherent uniqueness. One size does not fit all. One’s take on an object or a notion is indeed relative.

The Path

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The path into the light seems dark,
The path forward seems to go back

Tao Te Ching

As we charge headlong into tomorrow, always chasing more, better, faster; always believing the noise we won’t pause to consider; always trusting our head (the least knowledgeable, most easily exploited part of our being) above all, how can we maintain a connection to a path, much less devotion to a principle?

Perhaps we expect highways, not paths. On highways the drive is smooth and clearly delineated. On highways we travel fast across a surface prepared by the labors of others. On highways we travel the same road as countless others.

What If Life…

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

is like the Doberman that lives halfway down the block—fierce, rigid, and frightening in its austerity—

Until

You throw it a bone and make nice?

Trashing The Past

Thu, 15 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The past just kind of sits there minding its own business. It really can’t do anything. Neither, of course, can the future. Only the present contains action.

When one turns his attention to trashing the past or the inhabitants thereof, the main question that comes to mind is why. What does one hope to gain by launching a full-on assault on something that doesn’t actually exist?

Some possibilities:

The avoidance of comparison to morally and intellectually superior predecessors
The masking of intellectual laziness
A respite from an under-developed self
The attention of the similarly challenged

Trashing the past is, above all things, an act of misdirection. One who casts blame denies responsibility. One who attacks the past accepts no responsibility for today’s solutions. One who lies about yesterday cannot be trusted today.

On Leaders and Leadership

Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Each of us is a leader. Each of us is a follower.

Some days we lead only ourselves. Perhaps it is as simple as bathing, eating, and completing a two-item todo list. Even so, we must lead ourselves to take each of these actions. On very low energy days when the sofa has its claws in us, we assess, commit to, and manage at least the bare minimum activity the day requires. Even such simple things do not happen on their own.

If It Makes You Happy

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The love of pleasure is destined by its very nature to defeat itself and end in frustration.

Thomas Merton

Why should it be so, that one becomes frustrated with pleasure? On a very basic level love and pleasure are intertwined. One loves what brings pleasure. Perhaps not at first—pleasure often appears with the taint of guilt which only fades with time and repetition—but eventually.

Is it possible to have love in the absence of pleasure? It is not uncommon to hear an athlete remark on the love of suffering. However, is it not more likely that the endurance of physical pain triggers a psychological pleasure? The belief that one can endure more than the next fellow is most definitely a stroke to the ego. Is it truly a love of suffering, then, or a love of the feeling of superiority?

On Building a 2nd Brain

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Who among us is not drowning in information? It’s everywhere. Things we ought to know. Where once we may have had a set of encyclopedias, a few history books, a few novels, and the Bible, we now have hundreds of notes, epubs, pdfs, rss feeds, and bookmarks pointing toward all corners of the universe. It’s so pervasive that the notion of “building a second brain” (an external yet personal repository of stuff) has spawned a software niche of PKMS - personal knowledge management systems. Because having stuff means maintaining stuff. The available applications, like their reason for being, are a growing, seemingly endless, and quite fascinating rabbit hole–a rabbit hole in which to store one’s rabbit holes.

Inside Out

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There is a saying. When a life breaks, when a heart breaks, there is a crack so the light can get in. Comfort lives in that notion. Something, this outside light, waits to heal us, to make things better. Kiss it and make it feel better. Most of us learned that in childhood and had that belief reinforced in many ways. No matter the ailment, there was an external remedy. An aspirin for a headache, a physician for an illness, a teacher for the ignorant, a minister for the soul. The world is organized in that way and it is good. We follow the Fall so we are broken, therefore sickness, pain, and evil.

Subtraction

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Simplifying your life is so difficult. Everything is pulling you to be more complex.

Yvon Chouinard

As surely as an oak gains rings over time, we gain junk. Our junk may take the form of items, titles, roles, beliefs, stories, or nearly anything else. Much of life, we are taught, is about accumulation—degrees, certifications, clients, family, money, property, toys—and the more we accumulate the more we must accumulate to contain all that we have accumulated.

Stop Signs

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The cook is disappointed in a dish and it ends up in the garbage…

The golfer hits a relatively poor shot and angrily flings his club…

In the midst of a fine day you bang your toe on a piece of furniture and descend into anguished tears…

Some little thing occurs that is not part of the plan, that is not quite the expected outcome, and it elicits a reaction so out of proportion as to appear comical, if not a sign of derangement, to an observer. Likely some degree of shame, perhaps masked as rationalization, follows. If only it was the casserole or the golf shot or the furniture placement that was to blame, life would be so easy. One could find a new recipe, put in additional practice, hire an interior designer, and solve that nasty outburst issue once and for all.

Giving Up

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up.

Cormac McCarthy from The Road

But giving up need not be a permanent condition.

The Independence Fallacy

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I wonder if this isn’t a western or, more particularly, an American thing. Surely Americans seem to treasure and dwell on independence more than others. The country, after all, was inaugurated with a Declaration of Independence, though no one could successfully argue the country is actually independent. At no time since its founding has it been less so. The degree to which this is problematic is debatable of course.

It seems, though, that the value of independence does not scale inversely. Meaning, in one given life independence has limited benefit. Obviously, we begin this journey of life wholly dependent and at some later point the idea of being “independent” captures our imagination. Something tells us our growth and joy demands it. In fact, most of us do just the opposite. We go from being dependent on a small group (i.e. family) to being dependent on an ever larger group. We actually become interdependent. We distribute our dependence across an ever-widening network–family, friends, fellow students, co-workers, community–but fail to admit that necessary reality to ourselves or to others. Growing up is a nurturing of delusions.

Oh To Be You

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What does it mean to be yourself?

How can you be anyone other than yourself?

If, in any given moment and facing any given situation, you consider how George Washington might respond and act in that fashion, surely you have not become George Washington. You are still you. You may have modeled your behavior on an interpretation of George Washington’s behavior, but the action you took (or did not take) was yours.

The Cloud Dweller

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The line between writer and written thing interests some. I see it as the line between a cloud and the naked sky.

I don’t recall whether I first discovered Doctor Zhivago in novel or cinematic form. However I came upon it, though, it made quite an impression. For reasons I cannot name, other works of Boris Pasternak have not interested me. I have sought out none of his other work.

The story of that novel, the import of which is hard to imagine today, excites nearly as much as the novel itself. In Lara, Anna Pasternak, great-niece of the poet/novelist, tells that tale. I was struck by the persona of Pasternak, revered in a land that has long revered its best writers, and by the force of will that resulted in his great work. Such was the power of his early poetry and translations, it is said, that Stalin directed his security services to leave the writer alone. For a time, beauty—the beauty of language—made him untouchable.

Heart First

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Jesus said to them, “Why do you tremble? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts?”

Luke 24:38

“Follow your heart” is advice that often arises at pivotal points in one’s life. Yet, presumably, as one moves through life one gains wisdom, in the form of experiences, lessons, mental models, and more, which ought to prepare and improve one’s ability to reason and make decisions. Yet when facing an important decision, such as a school choice or a mate or a career, the best counsel we receive is to disregard the very faculty we have been developing and instead trust our instinct, our heart. This may follow of the heels of a pro/con list or some other mental exercise, but the final say, we could infer, is better removed from the mind and entrusted to the heart.

The Old Ways

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Over the holidays I completed Kent Nerburn’s trilogy about Dan, a Lakota tribal elder, doing his best to preserve the “old ways.” In our world intent on streaking toward technocracy, what is more out of fashion than seriously considering something as archaic as the practices of Native American Indians? But as the divide between–let’s call it–the analog and the digital becomes increasingly irreconcilable, it seems that analog is the way to go, choosing wisdom over knowledge, choosing peace over conflict, choosing the spiritual over the physical.

Mind Your Mind When You're Being Mindless

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

To entrain may be defined as to pull or be swept along or to gradually fall into rhythm with. So one might loosely define entrainment as the process by which one body is unknowingly influenced by another. For instance, two people in rocking chairs will tend to synchronize their rocking, or two musicians will fall into the same rhythm, even two pendulum clocks will “entrain” to the same rhythm. Entrainment is a phenomenon seen throughout nature as a means of engendering harmony.

Separation Anxiety

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

How does one separate the work from the worker? The art from the artist?

If one possesses a backbone hardened by principle, each week, it seems, some new entity stakes out an absurd position. The CEO of an airline that cannot run on time takes a position on a state election law. A musician discriminates against his audience based on vaccination status. An athlete blasts a private company with a suddenly controversial logo. People of wealth or name recognition, don’t you see, are blessed with a wisdom surpassing mortal understanding.

On Safe Spaces

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the coaching world, we talk about “holding space” for our clients. It’s sort of a liquid term, but in essence it means creating a “safe” and open psychological space that encourages exploration and allows the client to communicate freely and without the inhibitions judgment brings. In practice, a capable coach manipulates that space much like the zoom on a camera - zoom in to create security, to encourage genuine introspection, to spotlight internal blocks to one’s goals; zoom out for perspective and real world solutions or expectations. If one believes answers lie within, such is a useful exercise as it honors our internal wisdom and looks for the best expressions of that wisdom.

Showdown in Storytown

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Tis JFK season in Dallas. Today marks 61 years since the dastardly event. As has been the case since at least 1995, writers, researchers, and folks fascinated by the assassination are convening in town to commemorate, present, debate, and outright argue about every conceivable angle of the killing, its lead-up, and its follow-on. I attended the first day of one such conference and found it fascinating. Though far from obsessed, I do have an interest the assassination. As a murder mystery, I consider it unsolvable. As an historical event, I consider it a still-evolving hologram of modern political power and its far-reaching tentacles.

The Lost Art of Exploration

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One could be forgiven for thinking exploration a thing of the past. Even with deep outer space we talk like we have a pretty good handle on the entire universe going back to the “Big Bang.” If we can make up a story about it, well, that’s as good as knowing. No matter that science is just another one of those stories. This little planet? We have Google Earth for that. Just pinch to zoom.

Paragraphs

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Paragraphs.

I like ’em. Big, meaty ones that wander and soar and beg a rereading.

But they are so out of fashion.

In a current “bestseller” by a lovely fiction writer, on a 32-line page with only two lines of dialog, in the year of our Lord 2024, I counted fifteen paragraphs.

Is our collective attention span so pathetic that this is necessary? What do editors (are they still a thing?) think about this? This is a “major” piece of “literary fiction,” I think (though I doubt my ability to define either of those terms), and it’s a fairly representative page. And I’m not talking James Ellroy thought bombs every six syllables. Just a lot of short paragraphs. I had to wonder, if the author saw no points worth expanding, why was I reading this? Payback for my once over-reliance on Cliffs Notes?

Gain, No Pain

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

No pain, no gain.

Who hasn’t heard that gem before? Who hasn’t accepted it as truth?

For whatever reason, we tend to glorify suffering. Accomplishing things should be hard, should come with a dear cost. Otherwise those things lack value. If you’re not willing to suffer for A, B, and C, you’re just lazy and no account. Back in the day we had to work for what we got. You wouldn’t understand…

As Tyranny Approaches

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Boethius was something of a star in Italy. By twenty-five years of age he was a senator and by the year 522, while still in his early forties, he became head of government services and endeavored to address the rampant corruption in government. However, within two years he was railroaded, imprisoned for treason, and executed.

While imprisoned Boethius penned The Consolation of Philosophy, an astounding work in which he seeks to make sense of his rise and fall and of the meaning of life. Though Boethius sought guidance from “Lady Philosophy,” his true consolation came from spirituality:

A Friend Like Sam

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“We’ll take the car and drive all night. We’ll get drunk. We’ll go fishing and stay away until she’s gone.”

Sam from Casablanca

In any gin joint in any town in any part of the world, there’s liable to be a Rick needing a Sam.

Stress Fracture

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It is a measure of our times that stress (aka worry, aka anxiety) has become simultaneously a curse and a badge of honor. As if invoking a code word for special or superior, many boast of being “stressed.” Yet it quickly turns into a catchall excuse for a failure or a misstep or an unkindness. It is a statement of one’s perceived importance that is actually far more revealing of one’s lack of awareness.

What We Have To Fear

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“It’s not that we fear the unknown. You cannot fear something that you do not know. Nobody is afraid of the unknown. What you really fear is the loss of the known. That’s what you fear.”

Anthony De Mello  from Awareness

The older I get, the brighter the light that shines on my ignorance. So much I thought I knew has already been lost, proven wrong, outdated, or fallen out of favor. To let go of that baggage, the accumulated non-intelligence of many decades of modern life, is freeing in many ways. To begin anew is satisfying, for to begin anew is to disentangle oneself from knowledge and shame and memory, the very things to which we cling so desperately, the things we believe determine our future. In each moment we are presented with the opportunity to choose ignorance or curiosity over the thoughts we collectively label the past. One choice leads to fearlessness.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

title: “Contact”

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I+++ title = “Falling” author = “ellis” date = 2024-12-17 draft = false +++

And you will know exactly who you are, forever, by knowing what it is that you love.

Mark Helprin from Winter’s Tale

Perhaps you have dreamt of falling and awakened with a start, heart racing, sweat beading. When one falls, grasping is a reflex action. Any thing more solid might be a target, a savior to arrest, to slow, or to cushion the fall. But for what does one grasp when all surrounds, the life and comfort one has known, fall away?