MEA

Mine is the Self-Observer. I do not need to draw my power from someone else’s view of my worth. I manifest my own outcomes from a field of infinite possibilities.

Every summer I watch my family prepare themselves for our epic drive north from Baja California to the United States. We bundle into our minivan and take four days to traverse some of the most desolate and striking countryside I have found on the North American continent.

I’m either an idiot or a visionary, depending on who you listen to. I’ve made my share of mistakes and some of them whoppers.

Until Covid-19 came along, MEA was figuratively a one flavor ice cream shop. You might say we offered the best chocolate ice cream in the world—our popular one-week themed workshop in Baja. And then along came Covid, and like the rest of the world, we were forced to do the pandemic pivot.

Currently, we’re in a collective transition that may be more profound than anything I’ve seen in my life. People are quitting jobs and changing careers. They’re moving from their homes or apartments. Ending relationships. Taking up new spiritual interests.

I have a fetish for words (and people) that are making a comeback. Recently, I imagined that “conviviality” was one of those words. Ngram showed that it’s used three times as much today than it was forty years ago.

According to the Mayan tradition, the universe is a unified force where everything is related—you, me, animals, plants, minerals, everything. As the Mayans put it, "I am the other you. You are the other me." In other words, we belong to each other.

My co-founders, Christine and Jeff, and I frequently get asked this question when people make the MEA pilgrimage to our coastal “calle sin nombre” at the end of a bumpy, dusty road. The terrain often makes them a little suspicious.

Juneteenth (June 19) is a holiday celebrating the 1865 emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. Last night, sculptor Dana King’s 350 ancestral sculptures were unveiled as a new work of radically inclusive art in the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park as conceived in concert with MEA alum Ben Davis called Monumental Reckoning.

In our work at the Academy, there is a lot of big magic. From the moment you walk in, the big magic of the place, Baja, envelops you. The oceanfront home, the empty sand beach feels like an LA lifestyle that is just beyond the means of normal people. Then, whales start breaching, huge eagles fly by, big ideas are shared and you are left thinking 'this shit is crazy.'