Making money and living a conscious life are not mortal enemies. So suggests May McCarthy, who over the last 35 years has founded and grown seven profitable companies, in a variety of industries including fashion retail, telecommunications, healthcare software, and capital equipment, that employs 250 people and bring in more than $100 million in annual […]

Lots of people only know the name James Paul Brown for his unique paintings that appear on bottles of Sunstone wines. But that isn’t even half the story, as a short conversation with the now octogenarian Mr. Brown reveals. During our short talk at Sunstone Winery headquarters in Santa Ynez, James Paul tells me he […]

Nearly a year-and-a-half after the closure of Montecito Café at the Montecito Inn, Los Angeles-based restaurant group Scratch Restaurants has announced the opening of the first of four concepts at the historic Coast Village Road hotel: Frankland’s Crab & Co will open its doors on Friday, April 6.  Chef-owners Phillip Frankland Lee and Margarita Kallas-Lee […]

The beginning of Bonnie and David Paul‘s The Freedom to Choose Project came more or less out of the blue 15 years ago when the couple were on the faculty in spiritual psychology at the University of Santa Monica. An inmate at a California prison who had been inspired by a story she read in […]

It takes nine months for humans to gestate in the womb from conception to birth. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the same period has elapsed since the Santa Barbara Consciousness Network events went on hiatus as founder Forrest Leichtberg began to incubate a new format for the gatherings. Complications with logistics combined with a desire […]

I really can’t recall how many time shivers ran up and down my spine as I talked with Martin W. Ball last weekend about his upcoming talk at Unity of Santa Barbara this Saturday, March 2, when Ball – one of the world’s leading experts and proponents of entheogenic/psychedelic medicines and an authority on the […]

Bill Wich’s involvement in the ManKind Project and other self-discovery weekends goes back more than 25 years. He went through the entire MKP training, quickly rising to the role of full leader, and helped developed curriculum over the years. Much of what he developed over decades was the basis for The Work, a documentary film […]

On the 26th of January, while driving south from Santa Ynez back to Redondo Beach, I went through Montecito and thought about my friend Missy. I knew she had been evacuated during the Thomas Fire, and again shortly thereafter, a second time, as a result of the mudslide. We had spoken only briefly in the […]

Authentic Relating (AR) Games – the ongoing gathering to go beyond surface conversations established in Santa Barbara by husband-and-wife Simon D’Arcy and Tamra Rutherford – returns from an extended three-month hiatus (due to the Thomas Fire and a change is schedule) next Friday, February 23. This month’s theme is “And, What’s Underneath That?”, a provocative […]

Jeff Farrell was born in 1937 in Detroit, Michigan, and was raised in Wichita, Kansas. He and his father quickly understood that he had a passion for swimming when he plopped into the pool at 3 years old. His father had to jump in with his new business suit on to save him; after he […]