Lawrence Ellis, Spiritual Teacher and Spiritual Activist
Bio
Lawrence comes from peoples of Africa and Turtle Island (North America). He is a mix of African (several Southern and Western African peoples, with spiritual affinities with the Dagara and Yoruba peoples), African American and Tsalagi (Cherokee) peoples. Raised away from his ancestral homelands and from many (though not all) of his ancestral traditions, much of his life has focused on returning to those traditions, and on bridging the best of ancient wisdom and contemporary innovations.
Lawrence is a complexity-science organizational consultant (one who applies insights from the study of complex systems in nature, society and science to human organizations) & spiritual activist, whose initial training in both fields was at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he studied the application of Gandhian nonviolence to individual & large-scale change.
His life mission focuses on supporting what has been called “The Great Turning” (Joanna Macy) / The Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor (many Indigenous peoples of the Americas) / ”The Great Work” (Thomas Berry) / ”The Shift”, among other names – shifting our planetary culture from ecological destruction, global violence on unprecedented scales and other ills, to a life-sustaining civilization. He is especially focused on combining the best of ancient wisdom traditions with contemporary innovations that promote systemic change – from personal to political to planetary – in the footsteps of luminaries like Mahatma Gandhi, Wangari Maathai, Joanna Macy, Nelson Mandela and others. His particular niche centers on similarities between several ancient worldviews (especially Buddhist & many Indigenous), and contemporary complexity science – all of which view the world as radically interconnected. Perhaps the greatest revolution of our time is in the way that we see the world, and live in it from that vantage point – a reemphasis for many ancient cultures, and a shift for many modern cultures – of seeing the world as holistic, ecological, and deeply interconnected. Much of Lawrence’s work centers on highlighting this worldview of interconnectedness, and on cultivating practices and forms of social organization that embody it.
Lawrence has developed a range of ways to bring his work into the world, including consulting and activism. A former director with one of the world’s oldest change-consulting firms, Interaction Associates, and later as an owner of his own consulting firm, for more than twenty years Lawrence has worked with community-based, corporate, non-profit and public service organizations using complexity-science and conventional approaches – from leading highly successful redesigns of divisions of progressive multibillion dollar corporations and designing & facilitating a conference at Princeton University on complexity-science approaches to combating HIV/AIDS globally, to extensive work with numerous human rights & environmental organizations. Most recently, he has been involved in an exciting California-wide initiative designed to improve access to healthcare for key populations. Lawrence is the Founder & President of Paths to Change, a 15-year old consulting & training company.
Lawrence's grassroots activism and organizing – from leadership in civil disobedience campaigns that have won back wages and benefits for exploited low-wage workers, to leading one of the most effective coalitions that worked against California’s Prop 8 – has gained national attention, and high praise from legendary activists such as Dolores Huerta, Van Jones and Molly McKay.
While Lawrence’s work draws on universal values, he is especially rooted in Buddhist communities, and in his ancestral African & Native American traditions, as a respected spiritual teacher, leader and activist. For years he practiced in the communities around Vietnamese Zen master and Nobel Peace prize nominee, Thich Nhat Hanh – and co-founded the Mindfulness, Diversity and Social Change Sangha (Buddhist practice community) in that tradition. For several years he served as the Buddhist Peace Fellowship representative to two interfaith committees for workers’ rights. As a Buddhist Teacher, he is mentored by meditation master and popular author, Jack Kornfield, and also by eco-philosopher, systems theorist and Buddhist scholar, Joanna Macy.
Lawrence is active in the movement to return Two Spirit peoples to their rightful leadership and other traditional roles in their tribes. Related to this undertaking is the endeavor to provide the world with models of exceptional gender, sexual orientation and spiritual diversities that are wholly integrated into societies – as embodied in the Two Spirit traditions – and to reinvigorate the traditional roles of many Two Spirits as guardians of ceremonies and practices affirming the interconnectedness of all life. He is increasingly active in similar movements in African Indigenous spiritual communities. He is a Senior Advisor to and Associate Producer of "Hidden History", a 90-minute documentary on the sacred spirituality of Two Spirit people and their counterparts among Indigenous peoples on all continents.
He is also involved with the production of two additional films focusing on these themes, one to document an historic gathering of Two Spirit and Twin Spirit leaders in 2008 and the other featuring a rare interview with the great Two-Spirit scholar, poet and activist, Paula Gunn Allen. At the invitation of Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, he represented the U.S. in a yatra (journey) in India commemorating Gandhi and Martin Luther King.