An Impressive July Lineup for MEA Santa Fe.
I feel like a little kid at Christmas time who has asked for a bunch of gifts and can see the shape of the presents under the tree—a Hot Wheels track, a GI Joe, and a basketball. I can hardly wait to rip open the wrapping paper and start playing. Of course, as a 63-year-old, my gifts nowadays are the friends and thought leaders we attract to MEA—the gifted facilitators we are fortunate enough to co-lead workshops with. And believe me when I tell you that next July is shaping up to be a time of many gifts.
Pico Iyer is one of those gifts—a beautiful human being with the perfect alchemy of head and heart, a philosopher’s eye for making the divine accessible, and a wanderlust spirit that makes travel feel transcendent. He and I will co-lead a workshop at our Santa Fe Ranch on how to make sense of the seasons of our lives.
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”
- Pico Iyer
Learn more here: The Seasons of Life with Pico Iyer (July 8-13)
My co-founder Jeff Hamaoui regularly quotes Stanford lecturer BJ Fogg and his “tiny habits” theories, so you can imagine how excited he is to co-lead this workshop. I love how BJ has curated his unique life experience into being who he is today.
“In order to design successful habits and change your behaviors, you should do three things. Stop judging yourself. Take your aspirations and break them down into tiny behaviors. Embrace mistakes as discoveries and use them to move forward.”
- BJ Fogg
Learn more here: Tiny Habits, Massive Changes with BJ Fogg (July 15-20)
When the famous Christian mystic Richard Rohr first came for a visit to our Ranch in Santa Fe two and a half years ago, he was so impressed that he decided to go to MEA as a student. I’ve had the good fortune of becoming close friends with Richard and celebrating birthday weekends with him and his Executive Director of the Albuquerque-based Center for Action and Contemplation, Michael Poffenberger. This workshop will focus on spirituality for the second half of life.
“Much of the work of midlife is learning to tell the difference between people who are still dealing with their issues through you and those who are dealing with you as you really are…by the second half of life, you learn to tell the difference between who you really are and how others mirror that or not. This will keep you from taking their insults and praise too seriously. I doubt whether this kind of calm discrimination and detachment is much possible before your mid-fifties at the earliest. How desperately we need true elders in our world to clear up our seeing and to stop the revolving hall of mirrors in our tracks.”
- Richar Rohr
Learn More Here: Falling Upward with Father Richard Rohr and Michael Poffenberger (July 22-27)
All three of these workshops will fill up and have just been added to the MEA website, so the sooner you enroll, the sooner you can be guaranteed you’ll be unwrapping your own gift in July.
-Chip
