Eli Recht Interview

Summary:

• Background: Eli Recht, born and raised in San Diego, CA, currently resides in Carlsbad, CA.
• Profession: Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), EMDR clinician, spiritual counselor, editor, and teacher of Self-realization.
• Awakening: In 2020, Eli experienced a falling away of ego identity and an awakening to the true nature of Reality.
• Service: Dedicated his life to alleviating suffering, cultivating connection, guiding people through life’s journey, and recognizing our shared unconditioned essence.
• Integration: Specializes in blending contemporary psychological knowledge with timeless spiritual wisdom.
• Philanthropy: Donates all income from spiritual counseling to a local animal shelter.

Full transcript:

Introductory Remarks

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump, as you may know, is a long-running series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done well over 700 of them now. If this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, go to batgap.com, and you’ll see them all listed there in various ways. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on every page of the website. My guest today is Eli Recht. Eli was born and raised in San Diego, California, and currently resides in Carlsbad, California. He’s a licensed psychotherapist, EMDR clinician… What is that, EMDR?

Eli: EMDR is an evidence-based therapeutic modality for processing traumatic experiences or PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rick: And as a psychotherapist, you’re an LMFT, which means Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, right?

Eli: Yes.

Rick: And you’re also a spiritual counselor, editor, and teacher of Self-realization. And one thing that’s neat about your spiritual counseling is that you don’t take personal income from it – not that I think there’s anything wrong with doing that – but you donate all the income from that to a local animal shelter out there, which is nice. Animal shelters are dear to our hearts here. And then you just make your living as a therapist. So in a way, it’s nice that you’re able to separate the two. So in 2020, you experienced a falling away of ego identity and an awakening to the true nature of Reality. And we’re going to discuss the whole story leading up to that. And as a result, you’ve dedicated your life to service – to help alleviate suffering, cultivate connection, guide people through the often-confusing journey of Life, and you invite others to recognize our shared, unconditioned essence. And your specialty is blending contemporary psychological knowledge with timeless spiritual wisdom and advocating for the integration of these two disciplines. And that is an area that fascinates me, as it does you, obviously. And so we’ll talk about that quite a bit during this interview. But before we really get rolling with that, it might be good to do the usual chronological accounting of your life. What led up to where you are now that is of relevance to what we’re going to talk about?

Eli: Absolutely, that sounds great. I’m really looking forward to the conversation and let me just start by saying thank you so much, Rick, and to you, Irene, as well for your invitation, and for your generosity, and for the service that you provide for the world in raising the consciousness on the planet. I’ve been a big fan of BatGap for many years. I’ve seen many interviews, so it’s pretty trippy in the best way possible that I’m actually a guest on your channel today. I also want to say hi to everybody tuning in. I hope you enjoy the conversation. I’m sure I will. And I also just wanted to start by saying that I really admire what BatGap stands for, the mission statement. I also have always loved the name that you chose, Buddha at the Gas Pump, because I think it just hits the nail on the head. It really encapsulates the extraordinary and the ordinary all in one.

Rick: Well, thank you. I actually didn’t think up the name, a friend of mine did. I was asking friends for suggestions and when he suggested that, everybody said, “Yeah, that’s it.” And the reason I like it, and I think you just kind of said that, is that one of my motivations for starting this show is I was in a little satsang here in town for a number of years, and we’d meet every Wednesday night for a few hours. And there were people in the satsang who had had spiritual awakenings, but when they told their friends, they would sometimes get a negative reaction, because the friends had an assumption about what spiritual awakening is supposed to be, and they didn’t think an ordinary Joe like their friend could possibly have achieved it. He didn’t float two feet off the ground or glow in the dark.

Eli: Right.

Rick: And so I thought, okay, it would be good to showcase these people and let their friends see that ordinary people like them are having spiritual awakenings. And that being the case, they might also be liable or eligible to have one.

Eli: Absolutely. And that’s what I stand for as well. It’s what I teach all the time.

Rick: Yeah, because I knew people that have been meditating for decades and they thought, “Oh well, I like meditation, but I’m never going to get enlightened in this lifetime so I’m just going to cruise along until I die.”

Eli: Right, right. I was the same.

Rick: Yeah.

My Spiritual Journey

Eli: So maybe, should we start my spiritual journey?

Rick: Yes, please.

Eli: We’ll back up in time.

Rick: Into the way back machine.

Eli: Into the way back. Like you said, I was born and raised in San Diego. I’d say my spiritual journey really starts, my primary spiritual vehicle, you could say, for the first 15 years of life is Judaism. I was raised Jewish in a multicultural, very supportive family. It was a great community to grow up in. You know, I really like the values that Judaism espouses like family and community, and there’s one particular principle called tikkun olam which is a Hebrew word that translates to “repairing the world.” It’s essentially equivalent to selfless service or seva. So I grew up with that upbringing, and of course yummy food, and I was bar mitzvahed at 13. I did the whole thing and was very into it, and I found a lot of meaning from it. Fast forward to middle school, I’m about 15, I think eighth grade or entering high school. In my world history class, we started reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

Rick: Nice. Wow. That was my first spiritual book, but I didn’t get it from school.

Eli: Really? Interesting.

Rick: I was 17 by that time, but we never were given anything like that in school. This was the 1960s.

Eli: Sure, that definitely makes sense. Yeah, looking back, I’m actually surprised that we read that in school, in my private Jewish school, no less.

Rick: Wow.

Eli: So, I read Siddhartha and that was the first time that I was introduced to the concept of enlightenment, and I became familiar with meditation in a loose sense. And my teacher saw that I took an interest in what we were reading. I was asking a ton of questions and just really, really inspired, so she gifted me after class one day this beautiful Tao Te Ching. It was one of my most prized possessions for a long time and it’s sitting behind me right now on my bookshelf. I was blown away and I took it home that day. I read it from cover to cover and Lao Tzu just really impressed me. I didn’t understand what I was reading at the time, but I sensed that there was something deeper going on in life. It just gave me that sense of, “Okay, there’s something else going on here beyond our five senses.” It intrigued me. But that’s really where it was left. It kind of fell into the background, and it was a nice introduction to Eastern thought.

In high school on Sundays, my friends and I would also go visit the Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, California, which is Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery. We’d do a Dharma talk, a meditation, we’d have a really nice free meal, and then afterwards we’d hike up to the top of the hill to see the large Buddha statue. And that was really fun, but it wasn’t anything more than just a great way to spend a Sunday. It was fun and I would meditate from time to time to reduce mental stress and that was that.

Fast forward, I’m approaching 18, I’m graduating high school, entering college. I went to college in Emory University in Atlanta, and I remember feeling like the mind was the pinnacle of human reality. It was the ultimate. That I can control whatever I want with my mind. My emotions are no match for me. I can conquer my emotions. And I sort of became atheist in a way. There was this sort of arrogance or rigidity that formed in me just because I had a strong mind I guess and I thought that that was the ultimate experience of being human. I remember being very insensitive to people when they would ask me things – like “How do I do this?” or “How do I understand this better?” – and I would look at them point-blank and say, “Well, just do it, what’s wrong with you?” Now looking back it’s so awful that I said that, but at the time I was feeling so sure of myself. I was so confident. I realize now that it was a false confidence, and when I was “conquering” my emotions what I was really doing was just suppressing them and storing them in the subconscious mind in the body. At that time as I was entering college, I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which for those of you who don’t know, it’s a disease of inflammation of the intestine and that can be pretty painful. And I didn’t see the connection at the time. Obviously ulcerative colitis is a biological or medical issue. There’s a genetic component to it, so I certainly had a predisposition to it. But looking back, I think that my arrogance and my rigidity and my atheism was part of the constriction of my energy body that ended up leading to this ulcerative colitis diagnosis. I’ll get more into that, but I realized ultimately that at the core of the disease, it was a psychological issue.

Rick: And you were studying psychology in college?

Eli: And I was studying psychology, yeah.

Rick: Right.

Eli: So if we fast forward a couple years, I’m overconfident, and nothing can derail you like a bad relationship. So I got into a relationship, we fell in love, I thought I was going to marry her and we were going to have kids and everything. Life was great, but long story short, it crashed and burned and all these feelings came up that I didn’t know what to do with and I couldn’t contain them anymore. The mind wasn’t strong enough to conquer these feelings and so I fell into a depression. I had some really bad anxiety. I graduated college and had to go back to the drawing board. I had to revisit my identity and who I was because I had lost myself in the relationship. I moved to New York. I lived with my high school friends in an apartment in Brooklyn and it was a great time. We played music, we formed a band. I was a singer in the band and we recorded and toured around the area and all that jazz. It was really fun and I was working at a music brain research lab called the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function up in the Bronx, and they have two wings to the Institute. One side they do music therapy and the other side they do research on the brain to study the impacts, the healing effects of music on the brain. So I was immersed in this sort of musical world, doing research, and living my best life. You know, from the outside looking in, nothing was wrong. Everything was ideal. Everything was perfect. And yet I was still very depressed and anxious.

Rick: You still had the ulcerative colitis, I presume.

Eli: And I still had that, yes. I was put on heavy-duty medications pretty quickly and it went into remission right away, so I didn’t even give it another thought. But looking back, I realized that it was part of the mental adjustments that I was making. And I’ll get more into the colitis because it plays a larger role in my story. So, because I was depressed, even though my external life was perfect for all intents and purposes…

Rick: Did you know you were depressed or in retrospect now you realize you were depressed?

Eli: I think a little bit of both.

Rick: Okay.

Eli: I was definitely aware, especially aware of the anxiety because my anxiety was very acute. My suffering was pretty bad. It was rough. So I started to research happiness and like, is happiness even possible? Can you reach a permanent state of happiness? And of course I rediscovered enlightenment. At the same time, I was steeped in this musical immersion. When I was singing or performing or recording, I would find myself going into higher states of consciousness because I was just in flow. There was a dissolving of boundaries and I felt like I was floating. It just felt very peaceful and quiet. There was no resistance. It was just very open and expansive. And it kind of brought me back to my Tao Te Ching days when I was thinking like, “You know there’s something more here and I’d like to explore it.” So these things converged at the same time, and that’s when three people in the same month told me to read the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. And I remember looking at it and thinking, “This book is so massive. I am not about to read that.” I was reading little books at the time like The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, if you’re familiar with that one.

Rick: I just heard about that book today. Oh, maybe I saw it on your website.

Eli: Yeah, it’s one of the books I recommended in my “Reading Recs” Blog post.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: So I wasn’t about to read Yogananda, but then, because of my anxiety, I came down with sciatica, which was incredibly painful, excruciating.

Rick: Usually old people get that.

Eli: I know, go figure. I had this terrible pain down my left leg. I was bedridden for a couple weeks. I couldn’t work anymore. I couldn’t really move, and I didn’t know what was going on. So of course, my roommate had a copy of the Autobiography and I said, “Well, I have no excuse now. I gotta read it.” So I started reading it, and right away, it just blew my mind. I mean, if you’ve read it, there are some miraculous stories in there.

Rick: Oh yeah, I’ve read it a few times.

Eli: But somehow, even though I was reading things that were so far off what I considered to be reality, I just somehow knew that Yogananda was telling the truth. I implicitly trusted him for some reason. Here was someone who was Self-realized, and he said follow these SRF Lessons, do these meditation techniques, and you’ll get there. And you will be able to achieve this perfect happiness or perfect peace that everyone is really longing for. So I never looked back. I signed up for the Lessons right away. The Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons program required about a year before you could get initiated into Kriya Yoga, which is their highest formal technique. I think now they’ve changed the time between starting and getting initiated. I think it’s shorter now, but at the time it took a year. I was super dedicated. I meditated day and night. I never missed a session. I would push through whatever resistance or discomfort or restlessness I was having, and it was great. As I was doing that, the sciatica was actually being cleared away. I felt like I was being healed. I think it was due to the reduction in stress and the opening up of the mind again to other possibilities. I was very devout.

Rick: And the depression and anxiety and colitis?

Eli: It started to lift. There were no problems with the colitis at this time.

Rick: Okay. That’s right, you’re on meds.

Eli: Yeah. I was super dedicated. I was going to do everything that I possibly could to achieve or arrive at Self-realization. And after a year, I was initiated into Kriya Yoga formally and I took Yogananda to be my Guru and dedicated my spiritual evolution to the path. Kriya is a very powerful technique. At first it was really, really good. I had a lot of bliss and a lot of expansive moments, but over time it started to cause problems. It’s designed to slowly raise the kundalini in gradual incremental steps. It’s a form of pratyahara, meaning that it’s designed to pull in the external energies into the spine and brain. During that process, your spine and brain become like a magnet that pulls in the karmic impressions, or subconscious samskaras, into the spine. So that was happening, but then I started having a lot of problems with the Kriya technique. I was having a lot of pain, splitting headaches, dizziness, and nausea. I couldn’t function after practicing Kriya and I had a flare-up of ulcerative colitis. So the symptoms returned and the medication stopped working.

Rick: Did the practice involve concentration? Do you feel you were straining?

Eli: Looking back, yes. I was.

Rick: That would account for the headaches and stuff.

Eli: Sure.

Rick: And unless we’re going to come back to it, I just wanted to ask about this pulling the impressions into the spine, I think that’s the way you put it, or the karma or something. What was the subjective visceral experience of that that enables you to describe it that way?

Eli: Yeah, it feels like a magnet. With the technique, you’re breathing in a very particular way and carrying energy up and down the spine. And by doing that, you’re turning the breath into energy and the spine starts to magnetize. So, it becomes like a magnet that collects all this subconscious energy.

Rick: Where was it before it got into the spine?

Eli: Well, it’s in the subconscious body.

Rick: In your aura?

Eli: I guess so, yeah.

Rick: Subtle body someplace?

Eli: Like in the tissues or… it’s in the energy body, it’s in the subtle body.

Rick: It’s kind of cooked in the spine when it gets pulled in.

Eli: Yes.

Rick: Right.

Eli: Yogananda would say, “Kriya Yoga roasts the seeds of karma.”

Rick: There you go, yeah.

Eli: So, there was a little bit of like burning and fire and things like that, that would happen. But the visceral feeling of it was really like a drawing in. There was intense concentration in the center and I would feel things starting to collect inward. I don’t know how else to describe that.

Rick: That’s good enough. And it was uncomfortable.

Eli: And it was uncomfortable, yeah. So I got counseled, of course, by people in SRF, out of SRF, and nothing seemed to help.

Rick: Was that a common experience? Did other people report that kind of thing?

Eli: Rarely.

Rick: Okay.

Eli: I mean, it wasn’t totally unheard of, but it was very uncommon to my knowledge. So I kind of had to let it go. I had to let go of the Kriya technique because it was causing too many problems and I couldn’t function anymore. And I had a flare up. I don’t know if Kriya caused the flare up, but it came concurrently. So that was a really hard time for me. I got really sick because of the flare up. I had to stay at home. I was isolating myself. I wasn’t socializing. I felt like I was useless because I couldn’t work anymore. By this point, I’m living in Encinitas. I had left New York. I’d left the band because I wanted a different lifestyle and something more peaceful. And San Diego is kind of my nature, the chill vibe, you know. So it was a really hard time for me because Yogananda says that this Kriya Yoga is the key. It’s the airplane route to God and so if I can’t do this technique, then there’s no hope for me. And I was also not working so I felt like I had no purpose and I was just wasting away. I was pretty dejected and devastated and I felt like I’m sure many people do. I felt like I was a bad devotee and I was disloyal and all these things that come with not being able to accomplish what your Teacher, your Guru, tells you is important. I had to let Kriya go and I focused on my healing journey. I started Ayurveda, which is an Indian dietary system that is tailor-made for your personal physical constitution, and that was helpful. I saw this wonderful doctor in Long Beach, Dr. Jay. And I started doing energy healing.

Rick: The Chopra Center is down in your area too.

Eli: Yeah, it used to be. It’s not there anymore. So I started doing energy healing and I was trained in energy healing. And I did everything under the sun, you name it. Because if I couldn’t focus on Self-realization, then I’m going to focus on my healing because it felt like that was a block standing in the way, even though it’s not. And I’ll get into that too. So I started healing, I started getting better, and then my doctor, Dr. Pratha, who was helping me through the colitis, was explaining to me that oftentimes there’s a large psychological component to the disease. She was a holistic doctor. She was great, and balancing of East and West philosophies. And she encouraged me to get into therapy so that I could talk through my issues and work through what was stuck. So then I started my therapy journey and I saw this great therapist in Encinitas named Matt Jarvinen and he taught me all about defense mechanisms and emotions and how we suppress our feelings and how to allow our feelings to release and work through them. And at the same time, I was introduced to Michael Singer’s teachings. Witnessing consciousness became a really big deal for me, that sort of became my technique.

Rick: Does Michael Singer talk about that a lot?

Eli: He does. Yeah.

Rick: He’s the guy who wrote The Untethered Soul.

Eli: He wrote The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment and he has some great talks and videos as well.

Rick: What does he say about witnessing consciousness that was germane to you?

Eli: So he says basically that you don’t really need to meditate technically, you don’t need to formally meditate in order to awaken, that you just have to get in touch with the witness who is experiencing, or the witness that is the experiencer of all things. He says you have to sit back and get back far enough into what he calls “the seat of Self” and just “relax and release.” You just be aware of whatever disturbance is coming up in your body, and you relax and you release.

Rick: And you would do this like in a meditative practice or you would do it all day long?

Eli: I started doing it in a formal meditative practice where I was sitting down, but as I got better at it I was able to do it all day long. I was able to do it at any point during the day, even during a conversation or something.

Rick: And that didn’t divide your mind at all? Being engaged in the conversation and “Oh I’m witnessing” at the same time?

Eli: It did divide my mind, but I was fully dedicated to Self-realization and I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of that. If a conversation suffered for it, that was fine with me.

Rick: Yeah, or operating a chainsaw or something like that, you want to be a little careful.

Eli: Of course, of course. Thankfully, nothing bad happened. In conjunction with that, I was also seeing a great intuitive guide here in Encinitas named Lora Sorg. And she was helping me personally to clarify the witnessing consciousness and the releasing and the clearing. She calls it the clearing work, the emotional work. So I got really deep into that. And that gave me a lot of hope again because I was able to meditate again. I felt like “I can really make it this time”.

Rick: Did you go back to doing Kriya or your meditation was the Singer thing?

Eli: Yeah, it became relax and release and witnessing consciousness. I did not go back to Kriya, although I tried many times to go back to Kriya, but it would always have the same effect.

Rick: So it sounds like, in retrospect, that you were straining, whereas the relax and release sounds like a much more surrendered, effortless, natural kind of thing.

Eli: Yes. And what I realized later was that I didn’t need any more willpower or straining. I already had enough of that. The next leg of my journey was really about surrender. To let go and allow and relax.

Rick: Yeah, the whole foundation of the TM technique is absolutely no effort. And the mind has a natural tendency to seek a field of greater happiness, and you can utilize that tendency to enable it to just settle down and encounter greater charm as it settles down.

Eli: Beautiful. I never practiced TM. I have some friends who did. I believe there’s a mantra involved too, right?

Rick: Yes, there is.

Eli: Okay.

Rick: But you don’t concentrate.

Eli: Okay. So I started getting better because I started working through these emotional and psychological blocks, you could say, and I was also put on some heavy-duty medications again, another layer of medications, and I went to grad school to become a therapist, to become a counselor. I went to Pacifica Graduate Institute near Santa Barbara. They teach in the lineage of Carl Jung and Depth Psychology and Joseph Campbell and Marion Woodman and all those wonderful people. And just as a side note, sometimes in my classes when we were studying, I would think to myself, “I feel like I’m reading a Vedic text or something” you know. It was so aligned, Jung’s writings. And then I graduated in 2020. So maybe I’ll stop here if you have any questions.

Rick: I was just wondering, you’re taking these heavy-duty medications on top of some other medications. Didn’t you notice some negative side effects from those?

Eli: I did.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: I did. It was rough.

Rick: Kind of dull you out or something?

Eli: Yeah, I think it did. You know what the medications were doing, they’re called immunosuppressants. So they’re really suppressing the energy of the immune system. Because the idea is that your own body is destroying itself. The immune system is acting against you.

Rick: Yeah, it’s going after itself.

Eli: It’s attacking itself.

Rick: Autoimmune disease.

Eli: Yes. So the meds suppressed the energy that was doing that.

Rick: Does that make you more susceptible to getting sick from other things such as COVID?

Eli: It does. Thankfully, I didn’t get anything serious.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. That’s the only question I have at the moment.

The Awakening

Eli: Okay. So, this begins the awakening. COVID hit, I just graduated, everything goes on lockdown, it’s March 2020, and I receive this very strong intuition that said, “Use this time to go inside as deeply as you possibly can and start coming off of your medications.”

Rick: Mm-hmm.

Eli: And that was scary. I mean, I had been listening to my intuition up to this point, so I had a good relationship with it. I trusted it. But, man, coming off of these medications was a huge risk because if I didn’t do it right or if it somehow went awry, I was in serious trouble.

Rick: Are they like benzodiazepines where you could actually go into convulsions and die if it came off too fast?

Eli: No, it wasn’t anything like that. But if I came off of it, let’s say I had a flare-up, if I wasn’t able to contain it, I would potentially have to get surgery and remove my organ from my body or be put on some other heavy-duty meds, something even worse, because there were stages of intensity for medications, and I was about at the second tier. I could have gone one more level, and then it would have been surgery, removal. So needless to say, I was very scared, and I did do this with the guidance of my doctor. She was aware of what was going on. She gave me a bunch of tips. So, warning, don’t try this at home. Doctor approval, I think, is the most responsible thing, and only do this if you really feel like it’s the right thing.

So this is when I had a very powerful kundalini activation because the meds were suppressing all this energy. As I started coming off the meds, all this energy started flowing upwards. It was just an immense amount of heat and I would be sweating for days, almost like I was going to spontaneously combust at any moment. It was just tremendous, and there was some fear that this could be a flare-up or something, but I guess my intuition knew that I had done enough witnessing consciousness and enough therapy to be able to weather the kundalini. Because what happened was as the energy came up, I was able to just let it go. It didn’t get stuck like it used to get stuck because I had opened my consciousness enough. So the kundalini was activated. A few symptoms of that: there was some bliss, some moments of bliss involved. Also a lot of pain and tension and everything else going on at the same time. I felt like I was burning the “pain body” as Eckhart Tolle talks about, you know, burning the karmic impressions of the subtle body. And it reminded me of Rumi’s quote when he says, “I want burning.” I was really excited on one hand that the kundalini was happening because this is the gateway to awakening. This is what a lot of spiritual seekers are looking for. And that was very exciting. I was also having what I call universal downloads. I would just get these massive downloads of information of how things work, like the mechanics of how the universe works, like what is karma, and free will, and how does the unity then emerge into the multiplicity, and evolution and all that stuff. And my memory was terrible. I felt very unstable. My brain was mushy. I needed a lot of grounding. I did a lot of yoga. I remember a couple times I was so overheated that I threw myself into a freezing cold pool just to cool down.

Rick: It’s a good thing you had a background of spiritual training because otherwise you might have thought you were going crazy. Or that there was something seriously wrong and you had a fever or something with all this heat.

Eli: Yeah, well I’m going to get to that because I did think I was going crazy. So I started having these visions that were too quick to catch. I couldn’t really understand what was going on. Later I realized that they were just impressions, visual impressions that were being released.

Rick: Flushed out, yeah.

Eli: Yeah, passing through the field of consciousness and being flushed out. And then, this is around June 2020, I heard a voice. And it said, “You will be awakening soon.” And so I’m sitting there, half of me is like, “Yay, this is amazing, this is what I’ve been waiting for.” And the other half of me is like, “Uh, who’s saying that?”

Rick: Yeah, I was just going to say…

Eli: And like, “Why should I believe you?” and “Am I going crazy?” I know the word “crazy” isn’t PC anymore today, but that’s how I felt. I felt like I was going crazy. And I had just come out of a training in grad school where I was actually working at a crisis center. And I was working with people who were diagnosed with psychosis and schizophrenia. So I knew what it was about. And then I was thinking, “Well, maybe I’m having late-onset schizophrenia,” you know, like this could be. So, I was scared. I didn’t know. But I was also excited. And I kind of just reasoned through it by saying, “Listen, this voice is telling me that I’m going to awaken, and soon.” So, either it happens, and then I can trust it, or it doesn’t, and then I will know that it was my imagination and I’ll go check myself into a psych ward. So that’s kind of how it transpired. But the other thing I want to say about that is that the voice also felt like it was my voice. It wasn’t some other sounding voice. It sounded and felt like me.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: Just on a higher level.

Rick: Like your higher Self talking to you.

Eli: Yeah, exactly. So what I kind of realized or reasoned through was that this is probably my higher Self that’s telling me these things. So at this time, I had this really good friend, Francis Larocque. He’s here in Encinitas. He’s a fantastic healer of all sorts and he was a pivotal aspect of my healing journey. He was helping me through all sorts of different aspects. He was an ex-monk in Self-Realization Fellowship, so we were speaking the same language, and he helped me a ton. And so during COVID, we would call each other and check in to see how we were doing. And he called me one day, and he caught me in one of those states of distress, and I poured my heart out to him. I was like, “Francis, I don’t know what’s going on. This voice is telling me I’m going to awaken. I don’t know what to do. I think I’m having kundalini stuff, but I also feel like I might be going crazy. Can you help me?” He goes, “Well, I have a friend. His name’s Philip Weber, and he previously had an awakening. So maybe I can connect the two of you and he can help you out.” So, okay, great. I felt like this was the Divine Hand bringing me what I needed, and I reached out to Phil, who I know you interviewed about six months ago in June 2024.

Rick: Yeah, and we’ve been having talks about once a month since then.

Eli: Yeah, yeah. Great interview, by the way.

Rick: Well, thanks.

Eli: And so I wrote to him these extensive emails. That was our primary form of correspondence at first, these massive emails back and forth. I shared with him everything that was going on. I wanted to give him the deepest understanding of what was going on so he could make a clear and informed decision. And granted, I wasn’t just pouring my heart out to some stranger. I mean, this was a close friend of Francis’ and Phil was also part of SRF. We had a shared background and I’d heard about him peripherally in other ways. He had served at the Hidden Valley Ashram that I used to go to and was friends with Brother Ishtananda who was the head monk at Hidden Valley, so there was a mutual connection and I trusted him. So I sent him all this stuff. I said, “This is what’s going on” and I was having like chakra things happening too. And Phil wrote back, thankfully, “This does seem to be a genuine awakening. So just trust the process and let it happen.” And he gave me a book called The Leap by Steve Taylor, which I also have back here on my bookshelf. That book talks about different ways of awakening and it goes into the difference between a genuine awakening and psychosis and the importance of still doing our psychological work before awakening and after awakening. That’s really important and we can talk more about that too.

Rick: Yeah. And I’ve interviewed Steve just as a parenthetical.

Eli: Oh yeah, I knew that.

Rick: If people want to watch it. He’s a great guy. We’ve kind of stayed in touch over the years. I have a lot of respect for him.

Eli: Yeah, I have a lot of respect too. And thank you, Steve, for all your help. So, at this time, I started feeling what I called the Nothingness. It felt like I was being erased from the inside out, like Eli was just little by little being dissolved. And I remember saying to Phil, “Well, but I haven’t had samadhi. I haven’t seen the spiritual eye, you know, the star and the colors. And I’m not hearing the sounds of the chakras and all this stuff.”

Rick: Are those things that they talk about in SRF? That you’re supposed to have all that stuff?

Eli: Well, it’s debatable. I mean, Yogananda says that these are parts of the journey to awakening.

Rick: That you may encounter, yeah.

Eli: Yeah, you may, whether you have to have it or not, I guess is up for debate, but I didn’t have any of it. So I was saying, “Phil, I haven’t had the samadhi, I can’t possibly be awakening.” He’s just like, “None of that’s necessary. Don’t worry about it, just relax, just trust the process.” And so one day I heard the voice again, this was in August now, and I heard the voice say to me, “Awakening is imminent, any day now.”

Rick: Wow, it’s so interesting. Keep going, but that’s interesting.

Eli: Yeah, and it also said, “You will be a spiritual teacher.” And that came with a lot of bliss.

Rick: Yeah, makes you wonder about guardian angels or something like that, you know?

Eli: Yeah, yeah. Even after awakening, you don’t get all your questions answered, but you become okay with that.

Rick: Right.

Eli: So anyways, that night after I heard the voice, I remember just feeling like this was my last day on earth as an ego. And I didn’t know at this point if I was going to die physically or if I was just going to die psychologically, but it felt like there was a death approaching. And I remember going through my day, and there was this subtle, very sweet feeling of joy permeating everything. I was just savoring every moment because I knew somehow that this was my last day on earth being an ego. And there was also a lot of grief because I was letting go of some big attachments at the time. And let’s see what happened next. That night I had the impulse to do Kriya, which shocked me. Wait a second, no that’s out of order. Let me go back. It’s hard to remember sometimes.

Rick: While you’re thinking, I’m just going to say it sounds like you were just really ready to pop and there was no two ways about it. It’s interesting.

Eli: Yeah, I think so. I never thought about it like that.

Rick: It’s like this was destined or you were totally ready and it would have happened regardless of what you did.

Eli: I guess so. I guess so. I mean, I was determined. It was the polestar of my life. It was the driving force of my life. Nothing else compared to Self-realization, so I really poured my entire being into it.

Rick: Which reminds me of what many spiritual teachers have said, which is that the most significant indicator of awakening is the intensity of your desire for it.

Eli: I think that’s true. I remember watching a recent interview where you were being interviewed by Yvonne Kason.

Rick: Oh, right, yeah.

Eli: And she asked you that question, like, after all the interviews that you’ve experienced, what is something you’ve taken away? And I remember you saying that the perseverance, that utter dedication to the goal seems to be the common denominator among most of these.

Rick: Yeah. And then one might ask, well, which is the cart and which is the horse? I mean, do you have this vehement intensity because you’re on the brink of awakening, or do you get awakened because you have it? Or, you know, is it ridiculous to sort of try to establish a linear relationship between those two things?

Eli: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it’s probably a little bit of both. Ultimately, it’s all one. It’s really one process that’s emerging. It’s Spirit itself that’s guiding the process. So it is one thing. Which aspect of it comes first? I don’t know. It’s a good question.

Rick: In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali talks about yogis of mild, medium, or intense desire for enlightenment. And then he talks about how the vehemently intense ones are the ones that get it the most quickly.

Eli: That was me. For sure.

Rick: On the other hand, I’ve seen vehemently intense people literally go crazy and have to be institutionalized because they just push too hard.

Eli: Yes, yes. That almost was me.

Rick: We’ll talk more about this crazy versus spiritual conundrum as we go along.

Eli: Sure. So, okay, I remember now this sequence of events. So, there’s this sort of last day on earth and I remember going to bed. And the next thing I knew, there was just pure death. I didn’t wake up. It’s really hard to describe what this feeling was, but the only way I can describe it is to just call it “death.” It was death itself. My entire field of consciousness was just permeated with this utter horrific experience. But thankfully there was no “I” there. There was only this death, so there wasn’t suffering because I wasn’t there. And I don’t know how long that state lasted, but I started to come back. This little “I” came back and emerged out of this death and then I kind of popped out of it. And I was different after that. There was no more fear. I was sort of in this fearless state and I could just tell the difference. I wasn’t always aware that there was fear but I could tell that there was just no fear, and it wasn’t in anything I was doing, it was just the internal experience of the absence of fear. And so I was very open and I went to bed that night and I had the intuition to do some Kriyas, which was very surprising to me. I ended up doing the three perfect Kriyas of my life because I was so open and so surrendered.

Rick: So when you do a Kriya, it means you go through a certain sequence of steps that are in the practice?

Eli: Yes.

Rick: Yeah, okay. How long does it take to do a Kriya usually?

Eli: I think one Kriya takes about somewhere like 15 to 30 seconds.

Rick: Oh, they’re really fast.

Eli: Yeah, like up and down.

Rick: You just scan your chakras or something.

Eli: Yeah. I think there’s a right way to do it and then there are other variations, so the timing might differ. I just remember these Kriyas being so beautiful and perfect and feeling like, “Wow, I finally did it!” And there was no pain. There was just this beautiful feeling of surrender and acceptance. And then I went to bed. And as I was laying down in bed, I remember feeling that Nothingness. But this time, it wasn’t inside of me. It was above my head. And in an instant, I had this realization: I am That. I am that Nothingness. And it immediately just “washed” into my body. And literally like a bubble popping, it felt like the separation fell away. It was as if there was this psychological layer all around my physical form that just completely melted away. And there was no more separation. Whereas before there was sort of me and then a barrier, a boundary, and then not me. That immediately fell away with that realization and there was just this Unity. And it didn’t come with angels coming down from heaven with trumpets like I thought it would, you know. It wasn’t rainbows and leprechauns or whatever. It wasn’t even blissful. It was just like, “Huh. This is Oneness.” And I remember it feeling so peculiar because I would look at my body and like, “Well, I clearly have a body. I feel it. It’s still here, but I know that it’s not me anymore.” It was transparent. It was see-through all of a sudden. And I was the consciousness that was infinite, and just went out without any boundaries from the center of my heart out. And then I went to sleep. It was like any ordinary experience.

Rick: And did you conk out during sleep or was there inner awareness during sleep?

Eli: I don’t remember.

Rick: Okay. Some people talk about that.

Eli: Yeah, I’m not sure. I woke up the next day, August 15th. I remember the day because this is sort of the big moment for me. The next day I knew I was Awake. There was just this knowing, and everything was Love. The Unity was still there, and there was this added layer in the morning of Love that was permeating everything. And I had the realization that Everything is Love, that I am Love, that Love is literally what I am made of, that it’s my substance, my essence, and that it’s the substance and the essence of everything else in the universe. And it was beautiful, needless to say. And with it, immediately, there was this strong impulse to serve right away. Like that moment, as soon as the Love came, there was just this strong impulse to serve. And I knew that part of my dharma was to help people to awaken, and it was to help clear up a lot of misconceptions about Self-realization, because I had a ton of false ideas about Self-realization. And then there was this awakening and it was like, “Oh my gosh, I was so wrong about this.” And I considered myself a pretty intelligent guy. You know, I got good grades in school, I read a bunch of books, and I thought I really understood what it was going to be like. And it was just so different than what I thought it was going to be. You know, enlightenment or Self-realization, it has this sort of exotic mystical quality, like it’s out there and it’s far away and it’s in the future, and then there was this realization like, “No it’s right here, it’s right now! There’s nothing else to it, it’s so simple.”

Rick: Did you ever read Suzanne Segal’s book, Collision with the Infinite?

Eli: I did, I did. Great book.

Rick: That was a classic example of someone having an awakening and having it be very unlike what her preconception was.

Eli: Yeah, exactly!

Rick: And so she was like totally freaked out. Even though she’d been actually studying this stuff for years, she didn’t recognize it because her understanding was dissimilar to the reality of the thing.

Eli: Right exactly, so that’s how it was for me and I just remember feeling like I need to clear up these misconceptions for people. Whatever I can do so that it’s more accessible. Yeah. And the other thing I want to say about service is that I think this is a common experience for those who awaken and experience Unity, that there’s a strong impulse to serve. Not everyone. Some people stay more in the background and act as frequency holders, but I think Bonnie Greenwell said that it’s the modern impulse to serve, that it’s to go back out in the world and serve.

Rick: And that’s also kind of a human impulse. I mean, you see a good movie or you go to a good restaurant, you want to tell your friends about it because it’s something you really enjoy.

Eli: Sure, and thankfully, I had Phil and he was warning me a little bit about this sort of evangelical fervor that can come after an awakening.

Rick: You can get kind of annoying.

Eli: Yeah, you want to be careful that you don’t push it too much. Even if it’s the most amazing thing in the world, because people have their ideas and their beliefs and not everyone wants their worldview to be shaken up. So the other thing about service is that I feel that it’s an important part of the post-awakening embodiment process. Bernadette Roberts talks about this in her writings where she says that you go so far in, you can’t go further in anymore, you reach the center. And then the movement is no longer an inward movement, it becomes an outward movement. It’s an embodiment where the center expands outward and it includes everything. And I think service plays a major role in that embodiment. So not only is it a natural impulse, like you said, a natural human impulse, it’s also a natural impulse that arises after awakening, and it’s also an important aspect to the integration and acclimation of the awakening experience that is to follow.

Rick: Yeah, I guess one way I like to think of it is that when you awaken you recognize or experience your true identity, which is not merely individual, which you’ve just been saying. And so what is it? Well, it’s a Oneness with the intelligence that governs the universe. And what does that intelligence want to do? It wants everyone and everything to evolve. And so here we have a recruit who has actually realized his essential Oneness with that intelligence. So you become an instrument of the Divine.

Eli: That’s exactly right. Yes. And everything you encounter from that point forward you realize is your Self. So you are interacting with your Self in various forms. And what else can you do but love yourself, right? So you’re going to do everything that you can for those who are suffering.

Rick: Yeah. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I think when Jesus said that, he was implying that he is your Self.

Eli: Absolutely. Or St. Francis: “It is in giving that we receive.” That’s maybe another way to say it.

Rick: All those things.

Eli: Yeah. So that was a powerful day for me, but it only lasted a day because the next day I was in ego again. I knew that there was this death that occurred, like this major chunk of ego had been scooped out and thrown away, but there was still stuff left. There was still karma and impressions that needed to be released and worked through and it doesn’t all happen at once. That was another misconception I had, that you just sort of pop into awakening and then it’s done. You’re free, it’s a one-and-done, you know, there’s no other work left, you escape from humanity, you’ve got no responsibilities and that’s it. But that was not the case. So there was a sort of karmic runoff that began on that day. I think in Sanskrit it’s called leshavidya, like the faint traces of ego that have to continue unfolding post-awakening.

And so this began a whole year of what Adyashanti calls the “I got it, I lost it” phase. I was in the “I got it, I lost it” phase for an entire year. And that was in some ways the best year of my life and in other ways the worst year of my life. And I’ll explain. The “I got it, I lost it” is where you get this realization and then you lose it again. It’s like the ego is mortally wounded and then it falls into the background and the awareness and the peace comes into the foreground. But then the ego’s still there and it needs to reassert itself so that it can be further released. It’s part of the purification process. There’s an expansion and then a contraction and it just keeps going like that. I didn’t know it at the time, but I see the “I got it, I lost it” phase as a purification that was happening.

Rick: Yeah. On your contracted days, was it kind of miserable because you were gripped?

Eli: Oh, horrible.

Rick: Yeah, you couldn’t wait to go to sleep that night so you could just be unconscious.

Eli: Oh my gosh, yeah. I didn’t know how deep suffering could go until I experienced that year of my life. In the beginning there was more suffering and the peace was few and far between. So I’d have like a week of just pure suffering and then a day of peace where I got it again. And then it would be a week of suffering, and then a day of peace. And then slowly over the course of the year, it flipped. So, there would be like a week of peace and a day of suffering.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: It reversed for an entire year. And in that year, just a little side note here, I ended up editing Phil’s first book, Grace Happens, which I forgot to mention. That was a big part of our introduction as well. He wrote a book six months before I met him called Grace Happens: An Awakening of Consciousness and he shared it with me when we first met. It was just a manuscript at the time, it hadn’t been edited or published. He gave it to me because he thought it could help me through the process and it did very much so. I know you read it and you really liked it. The book is unique in a way. I haven’t encountered anything like it…

Rick: And you’ve read a lot of spiritual books.

Eli: I’ve read a lot of spiritual books, yes. A lot of spiritual teachings help you get to an awakening. They explain what it’s like as an ego, they show you how to get to an awakening, and they talk about what it’s like after an awakening. But they don’t explain what it’s like in the in-between stage. Very few, I think, explain this. There’s more coming out now about it, but at the time I had no exposure to anything that explained the transition phase from ego-identification to ego-transcendence. Like I said, it’s not just a one-and-done, poof, and then you’re there. There’s a period of time where you have to transition into this awakened state so that you can live it in an abiding way. So, Phil’s book was really instrumental because it outlined his personal journey through that process from a bird’s eye view and also through his journal entries and emails that he was writing during his time. It really validated my experience and gave me the courage to move through the process. And so I bring that up because during this “I got it, I lost it” phase, I edited his first book, Grace Happens. And FYI, he ended up writing a second book called Reflections of Consciousness: Essays on the Journey of Awakening and the Nature of Reality, which is also fantastic. It’s very different. It’s 18 essays on different spiritual topics. And I edited that as well, and both of those books are now on Amazon. And you can get an autographed copy through me or through Soulscape if you’re in Encinitas. But anyways, I edited his book during this “I got it, I lost it” phase. And that was a really interesting experience and one of the best times of my life because I was actually reading what I was going through at the time. And it helped to ground me because I had to be so detail-oriented to edit a book. You know, you’re really focused on every word and misspellings and the deeper meaning and the flow of information. I had to really kind of step out of myself to do it. And that was very healing and grounding and integrating for me.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: And at this time, for those of you who’ve read Grace Happens, you know that Phil was struggling financially after his awakening. And here I was struggling spiritually. So we decided to move in together so that I could help him and he could help me. And we became a great team. And so we were living together at this time during the “I got it, I lost it.” And then after a year, August 2021, this day which I call “the day of the yoking” happened. I woke up that morning and my higher Self was speaking to me again. And this time, I knew to trust it because it told me the truth. It had been proven right, so I knew it was trustworthy. And it said, “Today’s the day. Watch the ego die.” It said a few other things, too. It also said, “From this day forward, I will never leave you.” And it also said, “Now you have permission to teach.” And I trusted that. And so I went about my day and kind of forgot about it. And then that night, I was reading Meher Baba’s Discourses. Meher Baba was a huge influence on my post-awakening journey, especially in that year. I also read God Speaks, which is outstanding for anyone who hasn’t read it. But I was reading this one passage in Discourses where he talks about how in order to get to Self-realization – I’m of course misquoting him – in order to get to Self-realization, you have to absolutely surrender everything to the Guru. And in that moment, I was overcome with this immense devotion to the Guru. Whether the Guru was my higher Self or Life itself or God or Yogananda or whoever I was connected to. God, Guru, and Self are One so it didn’t matter. I just poured. It was almost instinctual, I wasn’t doing it, it just happened. There was this outpouring of devotion and surrender to the Guru. And in that moment, two things happened. Number one, I felt this tremendous yanking at the top of my head. It was so powerful and at the same time I heard very loudly the words, “Get to work!” I mean, I can’t make this stuff up. This yanking was like my consciousness was pulled up and out of my body and with that came this horrible ego death. It was another layer of ego death. Granted, I had been experiencing little ego deaths for this whole year, but this one was an especially large one. And I understood in that moment the meaning of yoga because the root word of yoga, I think in Sanskrit, it means “to unify.”

Rick: To yoke.

Eli: Yeah, “to yoke.” And that’s what it felt like. It felt like my consciousness was being yoked to the universal consciousness so that it could never fall back down. And from that day forward, I never lost the Oneness, that remains to this day. And the “get to work” came with the energy to actually get to work. And that was the last day of the “I got it, I lost it.” There was a permanent Unity that lasted. It became abiding.

Post-Awakening Embodiment

Eli: I knew that the “get to work” was two things. I was going to go back and become a therapist because I had just graduated a year and a half before, but I hadn’t finished all the hours I needed for licensure. In California, you need to get 3,000 hours of supervised client contact to become a therapist, and I’d only done half of that, and during the awakening I was thinking, “You know, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I might not become a therapist, it might not work and I don’t know,” so this “get to work” came with the knowing of “Oh I’m going to be a therapist again.” It came with a lot of intuitive information. So I started looking for a job. I found this great place called Good Therapy San Diego, which I’m still at. It’s been three years and the timing of that was really special. Once I started looking, I immediately saw the post online for a job offer and I knew, “Oh, this is the one. I’m going to get it.” And it became a beautiful career. Katie and Adam Brooks, who are married, are the owners and they’re doing some really great work for the community, and I’m an Office Manager now and a Clinical Partner, and the office was like two miles from my house so it just felt like perfect timing, perfect location, everything was sorted out beautifully. And the other part of the “get to work” I knew was the Teaching, that I was going to begin teaching about Self-realization and helping others get there. I don’t consider myself a Guru. I don’t even really feel like I have anything that others don’t have. I’m not really a teacher, but my role as a “teacher” is to just draw out the wisdom that’s already within people.

Rick: That’s any teacher’s role, really.

Eli: Yeah, exactly.

Rick: If the teacher gives the impression that he has something that you don’t and you can only get it from him, then find a different teacher probably.

Eli: Yes. Amen to that.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: So let’s see what happened next. So I started working and I also started creating a website and I bought a house. So this is now 2022, I believe. I could be getting my dates wrong because my memory, to be honest, still isn’t that great since the awakening. I used to have a great memory before.

Rick: A lot of awakened people say that. Maybe it’s not deficient, maybe it just functions differently.

Eli: Yeah, I think it does.

Rick: And maybe it’s not normal, but maybe it’s preferable.

Eli: Yeah, I trust that it’s okay. And maybe I’m just not needing to hold on to things that aren’t necessary. I just keep whatever’s necessary and I throw away whatever isn’t. You know, I remember reading Nisargadatta’s I Am That and he says something like, “I have no memory. I live only in the present.” So that was helpful a little bit. I think he might have meant something slightly different.

Rick: One way of putting it is that the average person might have like 100 thoughts per minute or whatever time period. And an awakened person might have one or two thoughts. But he’s not missing anything. And most of the 98% of the thoughts were unnecessary anyway. They’re just static. And since he only has two instead of a hundred, then all the energy that was dissipated by those 98 superfluous thoughts gets channeled into the two thoughts and they become much more powerful and efficacious.

Eli: I like that. It reminds me of Michael Singer when he says, “remember, thoughts are just thoughts, and feelings are just feelings.” We place so much meaning and attachment to the thoughts, but they’re just thoughts.

Rick: Yeah, and what reminds me of that is your talk of memory, and so I also include memory in this. I mean, think of how many people cogitate on what they went through in high school, or all kinds of memories that aren’t really serving any purpose at the moment.

Eli: It’s endless. It’s endless. Yeah, so in this period, I started working again, I made a website, I bought a house, I asked Phil to live with me, and my vision was to create a place where we could cultivate peace, so that everybody who came over could feel that peace and get in touch with their inner nature, their true nature. We’ve been doing that ever since, and it’s been really wonderful. We’re “creating a hive,” as Yogananda says, “full of the honey of God.”

Rick: Nice.

Eli: It’s been a really beautiful experience. I started working, and I got off to a rough start because I had all this training in therapy. I knew what I was doing. I’d worked with clients before, but I had never done it from the Awakened perspective. So it was a completely different experience. And I would sit down in sessions and just be so confused and lost because the mind would tell me to do something and then something else would happen. There was this non-doership that was happening. An intervention would just emerge.

Rick: So when you say the mind would tell you to do something, it would tell you to do something that your academic training had instilled in you to do. But then your natural impulse was something different, right? Is that what you’re saying?

Eli: Exactly. And the training is still useful. You still can draw on it and use it, but it was telling me, “You have to follow this exact specific protocol. This is the way that it is.” And then the non-doership would just happen and something else would come out. And then I would get really distressed. So I’m like, “Oh no, I’m doing something wrong.” Even though this awakening is abiding, I’m still not understanding how to live it. This was the embodiment process that began. I was having a lot of trouble with trusting in what was emerging. So I ended up reaching out to a few different people who are on the cutting edge of psychology and spirituality, many who I know you have interviewed. I reached out to James Finley. He had retired. I reached out to Bonnie Greenwell. She wrote me this beautiful email just before she passed and I really appreciated that and so of course she couldn’t help. I emailed Dorothy Hunt and she wrote me this really awesome email that’s still very impactful for me today and I quoted it in one of my blogs on my website called “My Therapeutic Orientation” where I explain my style as a therapist, and she put it beautifully. She said these trainings and these techniques that we have are like arrows in our quiver. In other words, they’re like tools in our toolbox. What changes is now that we allow our true nature to emerge and choose which one we’re going to use in any given moment, but that each moment is unique and each person is unique. So, you know, you can’t have a set way of how you’re going to do things. You have to be able to be open and flow in the moment. So that was incredibly helpful for the embodiment process for me. And I feel that this advice applies to any aspect of life.

Rick: But of course somebody who has been trained in psychotherapy flowing in the moment is going to be quite different than somebody who has no such training. The training is an important component.

Eli: The training is an important component. Yes, the mind is still useful. It just becomes a tool.

Rick: Right.

Eli: It becomes a servant rather than the master, right?

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: But Dorothy was also retired and so she couldn’t help me even though that email helped me. And I had read Suzanne Segal’s book, Collision with the Infinite, and it was edited by Stephan Bodian. And at the same time, Phil was telling me, “You should check out Stephan Bodian, he also does this stuff.” So, I had known a little bit about him and Dorothy recommended this book called The Sacred Mirror which is all about non-dual psychotherapy, basically how to do psychotherapy from a non-dual perspective.

Rick: Is that Stephan’s book?

Eli: John Prendergast, Sheila Krystal, and Peter Fenner are the editors. Adyashanti did the Introduction, and Stephan wrote a chapter for the book. So I had come in contact with Stephan’s work and I decided to reach out to him and thankfully he was available.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: And we didn’t work very long together. We did a little bit of EMDR to clear up some karmic runoff stuff that was getting in the way.

Rick: Remind me of what EMDR means?

Eli: EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s a mouthful that you don’t need to know, but essentially, it’s a highly evidence-based, internationally recognized technique for healing trauma. During this embodiment process, there was some trauma that was starting to emerge that I hadn’t been aware of pre-awakening. Stephan helped me clear some of that up through EMDR, and that’s what introduced me to EMDR, and so now I’m trained in that because it was very helpful for me. But basically, to sum up my work with Stephan, which was super instrumental, and I know you interviewed him as well…

Rick: Couple times.

Eli: He basically just taught me to trust what was emerging. It wasn’t that complicated. Easier said than done, but once I really got that and I understood that, everything started to flow a lot easier.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: And then things just emerged.

Rick: It kind of sounds like your ego, or your individuality, was just sort of by habit still trying to meddle in the situation. And all you had to do was say, “Get out of the way, kid, we got this.”

Eli: Exactly. Yeah, it’s like, “This is where you belong. You belong in the background. You’re still useful, but you’re not in charge here.”

Rick: There’s a saying, “Brahman is the charioteer.” So the ego can sit in the back of the chariot, Brahman’s got the reins.

Eli: Exactly. That’s the experience. So after that, everything started to flow very smoothly and I started to get my sea legs and understand how to live in the awakened state in an embodied way. And that’s been the process ever since. I’m still on that journey. From what I understand, that journey never ends. Every moment is an experience in God’s Self-Disclosure, you could say. Or you’re coming in contact with your Self in new ways. So there’s always learning that’s happening. There’s always a deepening or an integration that’s happening. And that continues to this day.

Integrating Psychology and Spirituality

Rick: Good. Well, there’s still a lot of things we can talk about here. So one thing comes to mind. Have you ever read Peace Pilgrim’s book?

Eli: I haven’t read her book, but I’m familiar with her.

Rick: Yeah, you’d be able to read it in about an hour. It’s this little book, but it’s so cool. And the thing that reminded me of it was – well, for those who don’t know who Peace Pilgrim was, she was this older woman who just completely put herself in the lap of God, so to speak, and started walking around the United States with nothing but the shirt on her back and her little pair of sneakers.

Eli: I love it.

Rick: No money, no food, nothing. She just threw herself on the mercy of the Divine and was totally supported. And she had this shirt on that said “Peace Pilgrim” on the front. And she’d walk around all kinds of places, never endangered and well taken care of. But anyway, I was reminded of her because there’s this graph that she puts in the book where she says that as long as you’re doing your evolutionary thing with individual effort, there’s a gradual ascent. But once you kind of get out of the way, then it’s like a hockey stick. Really, like climate change, it really takes off.

Eli: Sure.

Rick: Your story reminded me of that because it seemed to accelerate after your awakening, and if you think about it, unbounded awareness is like a solvent and any crud that you have in your makeup is not going to be able to persist or adhere with exposure to that solvent. It’s going to start dissolving and it’s going to be able to dissolve much more efficiently with a lot less disturbance than it could when you are isolated as an individual, like throwing a little mud in a glass of water versus throwing the same amount of mud in an ocean.

Eli: That’s right.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: Another analogy that reminds me of what you’re saying is it’s like taking off on a rocket ship. When the rocket ship first leaves the surface of the earth, there’s just this tremendous effort and force that’s required to get lift off.

Rick: Right.

Eli: But then as it leaves the atmosphere, it just kind of coasts. And then it goes off of the momentum that it built already. And so that’s what it feels like, you know, pre-awakening, there’s this egoic, I gotta do and I gotta push and I gotta be and all these things. And then post-awakening, it’s just well, everything just is the way it is. And that’s okay. It’s actually perfect.

Rick: I mean, we hear all these spiritual teachings about how you’re not really the doer, right? And if you’re trying to be the doer, it clashes with the reality of the situation, which is that you’re not the doer.

Eli: Exactly. You have to get out of the way in order for real, positive, impactful doing to happen.

Rick: Yeah. But on the other hand, these people who prematurely tell students to give up the search and just accept things the way they are and don’t do spiritual practices and all that I think are misguiding them. Because there’s a time, as long as you perceive yourself to be a doer, and then you know it takes a thorn to remove a thorn. It might behoove you to do some doing.

Eli: Yes, every method, every technique has its time and its place and its value, right? But you have to know when to use it and how to use it. And you want to meet people where they’re at. You don’t want to give something to someone that isn’t meeting them where they’re at because it’s probably not going to help and it might even harm. So that’s why attunement is really important.

Rick: Yes, I’ve used this saying before, it’s some Indian saying that when the mangoes are ripe, the branches bend down to the level of the people so they can just pick them. A good teacher meets the student at whatever level they’re at and gives them what’s appropriate.

Eli: Yeah, so that’s what I do, I try. I’m not perfect, of course. But I do my best and it’s worked out so far.

Rick: So, some more things. A little earlier, you were talking about how you kind of felt like you were going crazy when you’re going through all this intense stuff. And some people do go crazy. I mean, I’ve been on long courses where people have jumped off balconies and immolated themselves and things like that. And so it’s a delicate dance sometimes. I feel like I’ve gone through some rather crazy phases myself over the course of my decades of practice, especially on long courses like a six-month course where you’re meditating all the time. So maybe we could talk about that, how spiritual development or evolution is kind of a restructuring of your whole makeup and in the midst of that restructuring, you’re not as stable and as integrated as you really need to be to function. And so how do we most artfully and safely navigate the journey and allow all this shuffling and restructuring to take place without ending up in a nut house or going off on some tangent or whatever?

Eli: Well, that’s a good question. I’m not sure I have the greatest answer for you. I think every situation is probably different and you’d have to really understand the context and what’s going on. But I think if you have a general understanding of how psychosis and awakening are similar and yet different, then you might be able to perceive where someone is at and you could help them.

Rick: How are they similar and different?

Eli: They’re similar in the way that when you’re experiencing both, you have access to these subtler realms, the sort of collective consciousness, you could say. Granted, with psychosis, I do think a lot of people are accessing the lower astral or lower vibrational worlds, that’s why a lot of their delusions and hallucinations are dark and scary. But with Awakening, you’re experiencing those subtle realms as well. The difference is that with an awakening there’s a much stronger psychological foundation. It isn’t as porous. When there’s psychosis it feels more porous, and Carl Jung talks about this a lot because he also had this sort of awakening and he thought he was going crazy and he started talking to his archetypes and collective unconscious and all this stuff, so he wrote a lot about this. Essentially, with psychosis, the ego or the psychological framework isn’t stable, it isn’t strong, and so you don’t necessarily want to be doing spiritual work unless you feel called to do that. You want to focus more on stabilizing and grounding yourself. You could always do both maybe if you’re careful. I’m not even totally sure what all the subtler differences are but there just seems to be a much stronger foundation psychologically. It’s like you don’t lose touch with your everyday reality even though you recognize that reality is not ultimate reality, right? The five senses and our world, it’s an appearance in Divine Mind, it’s an illusion. Some people don’t like that word “illusion.” It’s relatively real but it’s not ultimately or Absolutely real. With awakening, you don’t lose touch with that. You still want to function in the world. And so there is some level of ego that’s necessary. You want to have a stable ego. But post-awakening, the ego is not this sort of identity of me and mine and attachments and judgments and interpretations and divisions and you name it. It’s more of just a thin interface. It’s impersonal, but it still allows you to function in the world. So, it’s what allows me to talk to you today. You know, you still need a mind, you still need a body to be able to live.

Rick: It’s like a faculty along with your other faculties that enable you to function.

Eli: Yeah. You still need these tools to navigate the world and serve.

Rick: I want to say more about the psychosis and enlightenment thing.

Eli: Sure, go for it.

Rick: Since you’re on the topic of ego, would you say that it’s not realistic, some people talk about losing all sense of a personal self, and I’ve never been able to relate to that, because if you whack them on their thumb with a hammer, there’s this personal self that sort of doesn’t like that, it tries to pull the thumb away.

Eli: Yeah.

Rick: And they might say, well, that’s just a bodily function or an instinctive thing, but there’s pain felt locally by somebody. It’s not felt by some guy in China when you hit your thumb in San Diego with the hammer. So even though there might be some deeper transcendent awareness that is beyond the pain, there’s still some individuation that experiences things normally.

Eli: Yes, there’s still individuality, you don’t lose that. One thing I would maybe adjust is that it’s not like there’s a somebody, but it’s the consciousness. I mean, consciousness is what’s responding and reacting to pain. There just isn’t this identification or attachment to the pain. There isn’t a narrative. There’s no belief system or story that’s attached to the experience of pain.

Rick: Maybe not a belief system, but like, you and Phil live in the same house, and even though I’m in Iowa, we all have ultimately, fundamentally, the same consciousness. But if you burn your hand on the stove, you feel it. Phil doesn’t feel it. I don’t feel it. There’s some kind of localization that you need, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to respond.

Eli: Of course. You’re still going to feel it. Steve Taylor uses the words “self-system” to describe the difference, like there’s an ego self-system which is more contracted and constricted, but then there’s this awakened self-system. So there’s still a self-system, there’s still some reference point that is having these experiences. It’s just a lot subtler.

Rick: Yeah, well maybe it’s the leshavidya that you said before, the faint remains. It’s not the whole solid center of things.

Eli: That could be.

Rick: But it’s still there just very much attenuated. You may have seen the thing that I did with Adyashanti and Susanna Marie about the loss of personal self. I don’t know, we did that about six years ago or something or more.

Eli: I didn’t see that, I’ll check it out.

Rick: You might like that. Anyway, I’ve always pondered this because various people do say that and it’s not my experience. But I’m thinking, well, maybe there’s something missing. I haven’t gotten there yet. But other times, I think, no, they’re just kind of – it’s like if you had a candle in a dark room, it would easily illuminate the room. But if you put the same candle in the sunlight, it’s generating just as much heat, but you can’t even tell if it’s lit because the sun’s so bright.

Eli: Sure, that’s a good way to put it.

Rick: Or the stars in the daytime. The stars are shining on us just as brightly as they do at night, but you can’t see them because the sun is so bright. So like that, you know, pure awareness is there and there’s still an ego, but it just seems almost lost in the vastness of the Self.

Eli: Ramana Maharshi uses a great analogy about the moon. He says that the ego pre-awakening is like a full moon at night. It’s just massive, right? And it sticks out. But post-awakening, it’s like a sliver of the moon in broad daylight.

Rick: Okay, that’s good.

Eli: So it’s still there, but it’s been shaved away significantly and it’s more in the background. It’s not directing the flow of activity. It’s more along for the ride, but you still need something in order to navigate and you experience pain. Sure.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: It’s just that there’s no suffering because there’s no attachments or expectations or needing things to be different than the way they are.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: There’s just What Is.

Rick: That’s good. I had never heard that analogy from him before.

Eli: Oh really?

Rick: Yeah, I’ll use that one.

Eli: Yeah, another thing I want to say about the ego is that there are some teachings or teachers who talk about annihilation of ego, that that’s what happens, and that is true from a certain perspective, because you are annihilating the identification with ego, so you no longer see yourself as an ego, but another way to say it would be that the ego is just reconstructed or reconfigured or it moves up to a higher way of functioning, like a more efficient functioning, and it can still help to take in your experience and understand what’s going on and reflect on the awakening experience and all that stuff.

Rick: Yeah, you know, there’s verses in the Gita where the ego, which is in control, is compared with a thief, who takes and who appropriates things that don’t belong to him. So the ego, assuming that it is the doer of action, is considered a thief. And so, what you’re saying is in the awakened state, the ego has sort of found its proper place in the hierarchy of the personality and it’s still an essential component of the personality but it no longer has usurped authority. Yeah.

Eli: Exactly.

Rick: Okay.

Eli: Yogananda will say that there’s King Ego and King Soul, and King Soul is the rightful leader of the body and King Ego is the usurper.

Rick: Aha, so yeah, he’s just the court jester, he’s not the king.

Eli: Yeah.

Rick: All right, that’s pretty good. So one thing I was thinking about when you’re comparing psychosis with enlightenment is that – well, awakening, I prefer that word – it takes place on the basis of the foundation of, you could say, a strengthening, a purification, a preparation of the mind-body system, to the point where, you know, awakening is just sort of natural and almost inevitable, as in your case, once one is fully prepared for it. Whereas psychosis, the system can be very weak, impure, discombobulated, incoherent, and there’s a sort of a breaking open, but to what? You’re not in a condition to be incorporating unbounded awareness and function in a whole, coherent way.

Eli: Yeah, that’s my understanding.

Rick: Yeah. And so I think for spiritual seekers, the important point is the motto “safety first,” that you can destabilize yourself with disastrous consequences.

Eli: You can.

Rick: And it’s important to proceed at a pace that is manageable for you with proper guidance, with exercise, with good food, with good sleep, with not taking 500 micrograms of LSD every weekend.

Eli: Yes, please safety first. I’m not a big fan of like forcing the kundalini or doing these really intense breathing or posturing things that can activate it because it can be very dangerous. For me the kundalini did happen naturally, you could say, and it was already almost more than I could bear. So imagine if you’re activating this powerful kundalini energy before you’re ready for it. You know, I’ve heard cases and I know some people who are going through that and it’s just a terrible time.

Rick: Yeah. I’m going to start referring them to you because I get contacted by people who say, I had a kundalini awakening, now I’m living in my parents’ basement, I can’t work, I can’t function, I’m miserable.

Eli: That might happen.

Rick: I always wonder. Are you licensed to deal with people everywhere or just in California?

Eli: So I’m licensed as a psychotherapist only in California. I do in-person in Encinitas and also throughout California virtually.

Eli: But the Teaching, if the goal is Self-realization, then I can work internationally, virtually.

Rick: And you do that already. We’ll talk about that before we close.

Eli: Yes, I do that already and I also do that in person in Carlsbad.

Rick: Okay, good. So another thing I wanted to talk to you about is the correlation, or lack of it – we’ve sort of been talking about this – between awakening and psychological health and integrity and also ethics and morality. Because there are numerous examples of supposedly awakened teachers who don’t seem to measure up by those measures or standards. And it confuses people. It confuses me. And I would like to think that spiritual awakening is correlated with almost saintliness, just a really pure way of living and dealing with people and not harming people and so on. And my own understanding – the way I rationalize when this doesn’t happen, and there are numerous egregious cases – is that the person is just half-baked. It’s not a full development. They haven’t undergone all the necessary integration and purification that ideally they need to undergo, and yet they may have assumed a teaching role and even become quite famous in that role. What do you think?

Eli: Yes, there’s a lot I’d like to say about this. I agree with you. There is a blog post on my website where I do go into this a little bit. It’s “The Ego,” especially “The Ego, Part 2,” where I talk about how there are two processes that go on. There’s the process of Self-realization, which is the evolution of consciousness and the realization of our true nature. And then there’s self-actualization, which is more of a psychological achievement. But self-actualization, I would say, is on the level of ego. It’s just basically achieving a well-adjusted level of ego, and success, and self-identity. And there’s a unified self-concept, but there’s still a separate self there. And so those are two separate processes, in my opinion. They have a lot of intersection and influence on one another, but they’re really kind of distinct processes, where Self-realization is just realizing your true nature. Self-actualization is still in the dream, in the box. Self-realization is waking up from the dream, stepping out of the box, or stepping off the wheel, you could say in Buddhism. And that can happen at any point. You don’t have to be self-actualized to have a realization. You don’t really have to be a well-adjusted ego or know how to function properly to awaken.

Rick: Does it help?

Eli: It certainly does help, yeah, but you don’t have to be that.

Rick: Does the likelihood of Self-realization increase as the ego becomes healthier, or not?

Eli: I think it approximates it. I’m not sure I would ever stake a claim and say that it absolutely increases because Self-realization is a different process.

Rick: We’re kind of wondering about how tight the correlation is. Obviously, it’s not one-to-one, but there’s some stretchiness.

Eli: What I’ll say is that it’s more likely, I think, that you will have an awakening if you are self-actualized, because it’s sort of like the only thing left to do. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s causation.

Rick: Yeah, it might be good to throw this in here too… You say you might have an awakening, but so what? There are many awakenings. There are many degrees of awakening. I think I’ve heard Adyashanti and others say that it’s kind of seductive when you have an awakening to think that this is it and that there aren’t any more, whereas in fact there are many more.

Eli: Right, and if you have an awakening, which you can have at any time – because it’s stepping out of the box altogether – and you don’t have a well-adjusted ego to weather the storm, and you’re not familiar with social norms or things like that, or you’ve got unresolved psychological issues or trauma or abuse and things like that, then you might fall into that trap because you believe that everything is One and so it doesn’t really matter. But I would agree with you that it’s sort of an incomplete awakening. You want that stability as well. The Wisdom aspect of Self-realization would say everything is perfect, everything is One. But it’s incomplete if it doesn’t include the Love aspect. The Love has to be there as well. And that’s where I think the psychology can really help. Because you want to know if you’re hurting someone or not.

Rick: You want to care.

Eli: And that you care, yeah. So I think this is why, this is my explanation for why I believe there are spiritual teachers and those who have achieved lofty states of consciousness, why they end up hurting people and doing these unsavory things. Granted, I do want to maybe give them a little benefit of the doubt by saying that, you know, you can’t judge someone who’s lived in the past from today’s standards. You want to judge them by their standards in the past because things are still evolving. Our understanding of human nature, and psychology, and trauma, and what helps people and what hurts people, and healing processes… these are still evolving in our understanding on a day-to-day level. So maybe there’s some level of people not understanding that. I wouldn’t judge people way back when based on our current standards, but I would say that the more recent you have awakened, I do think the more responsible you have to be.

Rick: Yeah. Sometimes when I talk about this, I have in mind those teachers who might have died now but were alive in our lifetimes and creating some problems.

Eli: Yeah.

Rick: Although many people still adore them and feel like they’ve made huge differences in their lives, which I wouldn’t deny.

Eli: Absolutely. There are still positive impacts that they have made.

Rick: That goes on, which is why we have the Association for Spiritual Integrity.

Eli: Yeah. And I’m a member of that too. I love the Honor Code. That’s why I joined. That’s a big part of my work. I find it very important. So being awake, in my opinion, does not preclude you from doing all these hurtful things. It doesn’t mean you just have a clean slate to do whatever you want. You have to be considerate and ethical. And it’s very important, especially if what we’re wanting is for everybody to realize their true nature, you don’t want these teachers to be a “bad” example, you know? For lack of a better word…

Rick: Right, it can be very disillusioning. And you know, another thing is that if you step into the role of being a spiritual teacher, then it’s not unlikely that you will have people feeling devoted to you or just praising you or adoring you or putting you on a pedestal and thinking that you are super wise and all that. You want to be mature enough so that it doesn’t go to your head. Because pride goeth before a fall, as they say.

Eli: Yes, it does. You still have to be careful. And after an awakening, there’s karmic runoff that can happen. And the process of that looks differently for everybody, but it could go on for years.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: And so you want to stay vigilant, for lack of a better word, of some of these subconscious samskaras or impressions that haven’t been worked through. You want to be careful that those don’t crystallize or take effect without your awareness.

Rick: Yeah, that’s probably why in Zen, or so I’ve heard, I never studied Zen, but they say that once a student has awakened, they have a ten-year waiting period before they start to teach.

Eli: Yes. For me, it was about three years, and I still at times feel like I’m out of my depths, and that’s okay. I just acknowledge that there’s a lot I don’t know, and I’m up front about that. But thankfully I did have inner confirmation that I trust, and also outer confirmation from Phil, who both encouraged me to teach. So I hope and I trust that I am at least a little bit prepared and ready, and that the universe won’t send me someone that I can’t assist in some way.

Rick: And if they do, you can refer them to somebody else.

Eli: And if they do, I will refer them to someone else. Yeah. And I would be fine to say, “I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

Rick: Yeah. Well, I think you have the important quality of humility, and it’s a safety measure for anybody. It protects you from getting bigger than your britches.

Eli: Yes, exactly. And in my psychology field, to get licensed you have to pass a big law and ethics exam. It’s a huge part of our training.

Rick: It would also be cool if all spiritual teachers could undergo the kind of psychological journey you went through.

Eli: Yeah, that would be nice.

Rick: Wouldn’t that be great?

Eli: Maybe someday, maybe in the future as we keep evolving that’ll happen.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: So it’s a big part of my work and I take it very seriously.

Rick: I mean talking about the future, spiritual awakening is really optimum mental health, I think you would agree. And so the mental health profession ultimately, ideally, should be in the job of helping people spiritually awaken. And right now, perhaps only 1% of therapists are thinking that way. But maybe 50 years from now, that will be part of the package. And so you will have all this rigorous training and ethical standards and everything in the spiritual teaching profession as you now have in the psychological profession.

Eli: You and me both, my friend. Yeah. So, that’s part of what I do. I like to blend the spiritual and the psychological and I think that’s the way forward here. I think most of the field of psychology is rooted on the ego level. It’s hard to see outside of that. And it’s very helpful, of course. It helped me, it helps a lot of people, but it’s also incomplete without the spirituality. Because as long as you’re identified as an ego, suffering is in play. Because there’s resistance to reality, there’s resistance to change, there’s fear of the unknown, there’s this feeling that you’re a separate self.

Rick: There’s a lack of fulfillment that’s always going to be gnawing at you.

Eli: Yeah, there’s these narratives and beliefs that we have that we attach to, and so as long as there’s ego-identification, there’s going to be suffering. And of course, psychology is really focused on reducing suffering. So, the way forward for psychology is really to start to bring the spiritual into it. I think it’s not complete without that.

Rick: Yeah. I think that’s the way forward for pretty much all aspects of society. Everything from ecology to the military to just about everything you can imagine.

Eli: I couldn’t agree more. Spirituality has the potential to impact positively every aspect of our lives.

Rick: Yeah, because it’s the most fundamental thing, you know, so it must be fundamental to everything ultimately. Physics and biology.

Eli: Exactly.

Rick: Everything.

Eli: Spirituality is really just reality.

Rick: Right.

Eli: That’s what it comes down to. When you awaken to your true nature, you’re awakening to Reality.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: And science and psychology and ecology and all these things, they’re part of Reality. They’re equally valuable. They just they have their time and their place.

Rick: They’re all like spokes on a wheel and spirituality is the hub.

Eli: Sure.

Rick: Which leads me to another point. You wrote an essay in your Blog about “Rising Mental Illness and What We Can Do About It.” I’ve been thinking about this lately. I’ve heard some various political commentators or others say that they feel like a large percentage of the population is psychotic – maybe we wouldn’t agree with the strict definition of that word applied to 50 percent of society. But when you look at what has happened to certain societies in the past, like Nazi Germany or China under Chairman Mao, it’s like everybody goes nuts, you know? And the people who haven’t gone nuts better keep their mouths shut or they’ll be killed.

Eli: Yeah, I would call that like a kind of mass psychosis. It’s not psychosis in the formal diagnosis way, but it’s a sort of mass insanity.

Rick: It is, and it has happened many times. I was thinking about the war in Rwanda a few decades ago where people were calling each other cockroaches and hacking each other to death with machetes. I mean, people who had been neighbors, you know, who had actually intermarried in little communities, the Hutus and the Tutsis or whatever they’re called. I mean, people go nuts and it’s happened over so many millennia and so many wars have been fought. What is your take on that? Collective mental illness and mental health and what we can do about it.

Eli: Well, I mean, it’s really tragic. It’s sad and it reveals that there’s a sickness in our world. I think that sickness is a lack of knowledge of our true nature. There is a rising mental illness. I do believe it’s getting worse. I think it’s partly due to the fallout from COVID, a number of other factors, the rapid advancement of technology and change and social media for sure, especially among teens, I’ve noticed. Really big factors for mental illness. I think in a nutshell the ultimate solution is to start to bring spirituality into the picture. You have to because it’s not complete without it. You know, psychology is very practical, it’s helpful, it’s got a lot of wonderful tools that I use and it brings focus and helps us navigate our day-to-day lives. But without the spirituality part, it’s lacking meaning, it’s lacking context, it’s lacking this deeper understanding, and there’s no ultimate fulfillment or inner peace if there isn’t that deeper knowing of our nature.

Rick: Yeah. So how does that become a common feature of society as opposed to a rarity? Maybe it’s happening anyway.

Eli: Yeah, it’s definitely happening. First of all I’m thinking about Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point where he writes about how enough people get to this level – it doesn’t have to be more than 50%, it could be any number – where there’s just a tipping point and then it starts to take hold in society. I think unfortunately there may have to be a lot of suffering in order for people to get to this place.

Rick: Yeah, I got an email from a friend this morning. He said, “When are we going to learn?” And I said, “Well, you know, alcoholics have to bottom out very often before they’ll seek help and perhaps humanity is an alcoholic.”

Eli: Sure. You know, suffering is hard to talk about sometimes, especially if someone is in the throes of it, but it’s a form of Grace and it’s embedded into the fabric of our world and reality because it’s part of the impetus to awaken. If there was no suffering, we wouldn’t ever have a reason to evolve or seek our true nature. So I do think, unfortunately, there may have to be some suffering involved. But on the brighter side, it also can take shape, this merging of spirituality, or infusion of spirituality in all aspects of life, it starts with people like you and me who are having these conversations and doing the work that we’re doing. And there are so many people out there who are doing this work and they’re helping the world move forward.

Rick: Yeah. And I don’t want to sound like a pessimist because I’m not, I’m an optimist. I think that we’re eventually going to collectively get to a very nice place. But it would be nice if the trauma that we have to go through to get there were minimized.

Eli: Yes. And we can accelerate that process. We don’t just have to wait for things to change through suffering. We can accelerate the process through being aware. You know, doing our work or doing psychotherapy or learning about spiritual topics and wrestling with our trauma and our past karmic impressions, you know, opening up the subconscious and releasing it and processing everything. We can get there faster if we’re aware.

Rick: Yeah, there’s that saying “make hay while the sun shines.” I think the sun is really shining right now in terms of the opportunities for spiritual advancement, and if you’re interested, you’ll find something. I mean, it used to be that a spiritual teacher’s radius of influence was how far he could walk in his sandals in however many years he lived. But these days it shoots all over the world. Right now there’s 183 people on here and I think some of them are in India and various other places.

Eli: Hi everyone. Yeah, it’s a double-edged sword, the internet. Like anything in this world it can be used for good or for ill, so let’s use it for good.

Rick: Yeah, very true. I think some questions are coming in. Irene’s about to send them over to me. We’ll see what they are, but until those have arrived, what more should we talk about? What else would you like to say that we haven’t thought about that we want to make sure we cover?

Eli: At some point before we wrap up, I can share a little bit about my Teaching service.

Rick: Yeah, why don’t you do that right now and then I’ll have a couple questions for you.

Eli: Okay. So my Teaching service is really focused on Self-realization, that’s the goal. How that manifests in each session is different. I’d like to meet you where you’re at, if you’re coming to me for help, and we just go with the flow and see where it goes. I think one of the skills I feel that I have is that, after attuning with someone, I can start to identify the blocks that are in the way of someone’s realization. I consider that a gift. So over time, we would just start to deepen together and I would guide gently and point the way to your inner knowing so that your intuition can take over and do the rest. We focus on the big “S” Self, of course, and I work with people who are pre-awakening, who want to awaken, and also post-awakening if you’re needing some stability or needing some context for what’s going on. Like you said in the beginning, I don’t make any money from it. It’s completely free of charge. The donation is optional. And all the money goes to the Rancho Coastal Humane Society, which is local here in Encinitas. I visited the campus of the Humane Society. And I saw it with my own eyes. They gave me a tour. And it was beautiful and wonderful. They’re doing a lot of great things for the community, and more than just for the animals, it’s also for humans in relation to animals. So I know where the money is going and I vouch for it. I do work virtually internationally and in-person in Carlsbad, and I work individually and with groups.

Rick: Nice.

Eli: So that’s my spiel for the Teaching.

Rick: Yeah, that’s kind of the way we do BatGap too. We obviously don’t charge for it. But it relies on donations because I don’t do anything else these days to make a living. A lot of the money goes to pay our salaries and all of our expenses. We just paid a lot of money to get a new website design. But we also donate to animal shelters and things like that.

Eli: Beautiful.

Rick: Irene has worked at an animal shelter and is very generous with that kind of thing.

Eli: Oh nice. Yeah, I love animals. And like you said in the beginning, I don’t judge or knock people who do charge for a spiritual service. I think that’s perfectly valid. And if that’s your way to make a living, then that’s perfect. It’s just that I have the ability to not charge and it comes from my heart and that’s just what feels right, that’s what comes through for me.

Rick: That’s great. So on your website people can find details about your spiritual teaching activities.

Eli: Yes, and everything’s personal, it’s fine-tuned to the individual that I’m sitting with.

Rick: But you do group stuff too.

Eli: I also do groups, yeah. I just started a group. That’s been going really well and I’m open to other groups in person or virtually if that’s something people are interested in and if there’s enough demand.

Rick: Good. Okay, so I’ll be linking to your website from your page on BatGap.

Eli: Cool, sounds good.

Questions from the Audience

Rick: Okay, so here’s a few questions. I think we might have three or four of them. The first is from a guy named Abhishek Rai in San Jose. “Do you think it is possible for science to create a pill which accelerates enlightenment? How can we accelerate enlightenment of all 8 billion people on earth?”

Eli: That’s a great question. If there is, I’d like to see it. I’m thinking of Sri M. If you’ve read his book, Apprentice to a Himalayan Master…

Rick: Yeah, I have.

Eli: He talks about how his evolution or his realization was quickened by his Guru who gave him some sort of concoction or drink, and it just forced him out of the separate self. So if that’s true, I assume it’s true, then maybe there is.

Rick: Maybe that was Soma or something.

Eli: Yeah, maybe there is some sort of pill that could happen in the future. I don’t think our technology is there yet, but maybe, I won’t rule it out.

Rick: Yeah. Well, some people think, and I tend to agree, that, although it has its dangers, the whole psychedelic phenomenon, which is really big these days, is a kick in the pants for large numbers of people who otherwise wouldn’t get going with a spiritual practice, and it might be for many people a preliminary thing and they’ll move on to some other practice once they’ve gotten a glimpse of what’s possible.

Eli: Yeah, I would say you don’t want to be reliant on psychedelics. It’s ultimately, I don’t think, going to get you there, but it can help facilitate the process for sure. And at the very least, it can awaken you to the fact that there’s other things going on in this universe.

Rick: Yeah, there’s more to life than meets the eye.

Eli: Exactly. And if that’s what you need to get started on your spiritual journey, then I’d say that that’s useful.

Rick: Yeah. And like you said, well, if science gets advanced enough to develop a pill, well, nature’s pretty advanced and it’s developed a bunch of stuff that has been around for a long time.

Eli: Good point. Yeah. Maybe God already has it figured out.

Rick: Yeah, okay, same fellow, Abhishek from San Jose. “What’s your vision for humanity?” If you have one.

Eli: Well, I think this might be a ways away. It would be a miracle if I could see this in my lifetime, but my vision for humanity is for everybody to awaken, of course, and for suffering to be a distant dream. If everybody was awake and we were in touch with our true nature, then there would be peace on earth. We would live with the knowing that everything we encounter is ourselves and so we would provide love and respect and service and understanding for every aspect of creation, every aspect of the universe. That would change society on every level. There would be no wars, I don’t think. You would still have disagreements, but it wouldn’t be egoic, there wouldn’t be violence, it would just be harmonious and peaceful. So I’d like to see that.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: I hope that answers your question, Abhishek.

Rick: I think there would also be a generosity of spirit in humanity such that there would be an equitable distribution of resources.

Eli: Yes, 100%.

Rick: Nobody would be going hungry or without shelter or any of those necessities.

Eli: Yes, and you would be able to serve others and give of your resources without fearing that you’re in a one-down position or fearing loss of any kind. You would trust that if you’re going to give, then it’ll come back to you.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: So there would be a generosity of spirit and there would be harmony. I mean, there would still be individual differences and you’d still appreciate the diversity of life and all that it has to offer but there just wouldn’t be conflict, there certainly wouldn’t be suffering or wars.

Rick: Yeah. Okay, next question is from Marie Cooney in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and that’s interesting because I have an old friend named Stan Cooney from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that used to play in a band that I was in. I wonder if she’s related. That’d be cool. Anyway, her question is, “Do you counsel people with chronic pain that’s considered mind-body syndrome, such as TMS or PPD?”

Eli: I do work with psychosomatic issues, especially because I have experience in my own life with that. I realized that my ulcerative colitis was psychosomatic, and I worked through that. And I’m completely off meds now.

Rick: And your colitis is gone?

Eli: Colitis is gone. Another thing I forgot to mention was that I do believe I received a divine healing. During the “I got it, I lost it” phase, I did have an intuition that said, “You are now healed of colitis.”

Rick: Hmm.

Eli: So, I trust that, and I haven’t had any issues since. I do work with psychosomatic issues, and I understand the mind-body connection. I’m not familiar with TMS or PPD, what those stand for.

Rick: Irene, do you know what TMS or PPD stand for? She doesn’t know either. All right, but in any case, Marie could contact you.

Eli: Yeah, absolutely.

Rick: But can you work with a person in Philadelphia with this kind of stuff?

Eli: Not for psychotherapy, no.

Rick: But maybe just on a personal level you could give her some tips or something as a spiritual teacher.

Eli: Absolutely, yeah. Even if I can’t work with you in California on a therapeutic level, we could always do Teaching if you’re interested in Self-realization, or at the very least, just reach out. I’m always just wanting to help. So if you have questions or whatever, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Rick: And Marie, if you’re related to Stan Cooney, let me know. I’d love to be in touch with Stan. He was rhythm guitar. I was drums in that particular band.

Eli: Nice. Well, I’m a singer. We can all form a band together.

Rick: Hey, let’s get the band together.

Eli: Let’s do it. Let’s jam.

Rick: Yeah, Blues Brothers. You ever see that movie?

Eli: I did a long time ago, yeah.

Rick: “We’re on a mission from God.” That was a line from the movie. Okay, next question. Ed Dee. These are good grand finale questions here for you.

Eli: Okay, I’m ready.

Rick: There’s three questions, I’ll ask them all together. “What is the meaning of life? Is this all a dream? Why should I participate in it?”

Eli: Okay, three big questions. We’re going into the deep end here. What is the meaning of life? Well, it depends on who you ask and how you look at things or what perspective or what lens you’re looking at things through. I would say a few things. Number one, the meaning of life is whatever you define as your meaning of life. You get to choose. I would also say from the level of consciousness that the meaning of life is to realize the Self, to realize our true nature, and there are a lot of spiritual masters who talk about how all of creation is really just consciousness evolving so that it can know itself. So that would be the purpose of life according to that level of understanding. And then the other thing I would say is that everything by virtue of its existence has meaning. It has inherent meaning. We don’t have to overlay meaning onto anything because every form, every being has its own inherent meaning already embedded in it just because it exists and it has value and it plays an important role in the world, and if it didn’t have an important role to play it wouldn’t exist.

Rick: Good. So is this all a dream?

Eli: Yeah, thanks for reminding me about those other questions. Is this all a dream? Yes and no. Ultimately yes from the Absolute perspective, this is all a dream. It’s all an appearance. It’s a dream of God. It’s happening within Divine Mind. But also, no, it’s real. This universe is happening. It’s real. It follows some observable laws of physics. Maybe we don’t understand all of them yet, especially on the quantum realm, but there’s an order to things and so it’s real in that sense, and especially for those who haven’t woken up from the dream it’s very real for them. So for those who haven’t woken up from the dream, you want to honor that it’s real, so both.

Rick: Then this final question is why should I participate in it?

Eli: Why should I participate? Well you don’t have to. Well I don’t know I don’t think… actually I change that…

Rick: You’re here, you’re participating whether you like it or not.

Eli: Exactly. You’re participating no matter what. Even your non-participation is a form of participation. But why should you do it? Well, that’s up to you.

Rick: I’d say because there’s tremendous potential, opportunity in it for great growth in the evolution of your soul, and make hay while the sun shines, again, to use that phrase.

Eli: Yeah, absolutely.

Rick: There’s tremendous potential for spiritual evolution in this day and age.

Eli: And I’d like to add to that also by saying, you’re here and you’re here for a reason. If you weren’t supposed to participate or you didn’t want to participate on some level, you wouldn’t be here. So you’re here, which means that on some level you are wanting to participate. So I would say get in touch with that level of your being and see what that level wants to do and how it wants to participate.

Rick: Good.

Eli: And ultimately, you serve. You want to realize your full potential, you want to help others realize their full potential. That’s my reason for participating.

Rick: Yeah, and you can flip his question a little bit. You could infer from his question that he’s saying, “What’s in it for me?” but you could flip it to say, “What can I do for others?”

Eli: Sure, I like that.

Rick: You know, given here I am, how can I help?

Eli: Yeah.

Rick: And then you really get some meaning out of it.

Eli: Absolutely. Neale Donald Walsch, who’s the author of Conversations With God, another book I really love, says that there is no “why.” The “why” question is kind of a useless question and most of the “why” questions never get answered anyways. The important question is “what,” as in, “What am I going to do with what I have in this moment?”

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: Awaken and you will see the beauty of existence and then you’ll want to participate.

Rick: There was a spiritual teacher in India who said, “To get a human life is very rare. There are so many different forms of life you can go through before getting the opportunity to be human.” He said, “If you attain a human life but fail to reach God, then you have sold a diamond for the price of spinach.”

Eli: Hmm that’s profound.

Rick: Kind of reminiscent of Meher Baba too who very much talks about all the stages of life that you go through before you get to be a human.

Eli: Yeah, I agree. Thank you for those questions. Those were great.

Concluding Remarks

Rick: Yeah. Thank you, Ed and the others, and thank you Eli, it’s been great talking to you. You’re a very easy guy to interview. You just roll along.

Eli: Oh, thank you! Thank you. Yes, that’s my style. I just flow. Even when I was in the band in New York, they used to call me “Flow.” That was my nickname. Just always been flowing… There are a couple of things I’d like to say if we’re going to wrap up.

Rick: Sure.

Eli: Let me see, I just want to say thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share my testimony. I know there’s some different views on whether it’s appropriate to share spiritual experiences or not and I understand why. Sometimes the ego can get involved and if we share then we get big-headed, or people idealize us, or we idealize ourselves and devalue others, or we get attached to certain experiences and we expect them to stay or we try to get them back, and so there’s some danger to sharing, but I’m more of the opinion, especially as a therapist, that sharing is useful. I understand the value of talk therapy and the healing aspects that it can bring. I’m of the opinion that it’s really important to share and so I wanted to do that today. It felt important to share my story because hopefully it can give hope to people and inspiration and it’s one more testimony that awakening is real, that the end of suffering is a real possibility for someone. And hopefully by hearing my story you can also realize that nothing is standing in the way of Self-realization except for ourselves – our own egos, our own attachments, our own limitations, our own self-created identifications and resistance and divisions, and the mental overlay that we place on reality, the narratives or the stories that we overlay onto existence. So hopefully by hearing my story you can see that medications were not an obstacle, psychological problems were not an obstacle, physical illness was not an obstacle, it all seemed like an obstacle at one point but ultimately it wasn’t. And even meditation technique wasn’t an obstacle. If one meditation technique doesn’t work for you, try another. Try not to be too attached, stay open to what the intuitive wisdom has to tell you from within, and persevere. Like Rick said, that’s the common denominator for most people I think who have awakened. So don’t give up. It’s the most important thing that you can do. It’s the end of suffering. It means peace and joy and love in every moment and greater service to the world. So keep doing your work. It’s worth every effort. And I’ll end with a quote from Lahiri Mahasaya who said, “Banat banat ban jai,” which means “Striving, striving, one day victory.”

Rick: That’s kind of a goofy question. Some guy asked, “Could the band have been called Flow and Eli?”

Eli: Sure, why not?

Rick: Why not? Yeah, and what you were just saying about no obstacles and stuff reminds me of a Gita verse. It says no effort is lost and no obstacle exists, even a little of this dharma removes great fear.

Eli: 100 percent. I know that verse.

Rick: Yeah. I didn’t mean to have the last word after your brilliant little wrap up there.

Eli: Oh no, it’s all good.

Rick: Good. All righty, so thanks so much and we’ll be in touch and maybe when Phil and I have our monthly conversations we can make it a threesome, you can join in too.

Eli: Sure.

Rick: That’d be fun.

Eli: Yeah, and I’d love for you guys to come out and visit as well.

Rick: I’d love to do that sometime.

Eli: You’re always welcome. So thank you so much, Rick and Irene, and thank you to everyone watching. I hope that was enjoyable and useful in some way.

Rick: Great, and thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. My next interview will be with someone named Lisa Carrillo, and I’ve listened to a little bit of her first book so far, and I’m really enjoying what she has to say. It’s about basically getting out of the way, as you’ve been saying, and all the blessings that are bestowed upon you when you kind of let go and let God, as the bumper sticker says.

Eli: Yes, the Grace is always there. It’s just waiting for us to be open to it.

Rick: Great, alright everybody, thanks.

Eli: Take care everyone.