How can we keep a healthy mind in times of crisis? In this interview, Eli and Gangaji offer an invitation into a lesser-known path, one that teaches that surrendering to the raw reality, to the pain, can actually bring us great love and compassion.

In this episode, I allow you to witness and listen to the questions I ask along my way, and the answers I admit to being true. I share a vulnerable moment of my life in which I get up on stage in the role of the student, and speak to Eli and Gangaji, standing as the teachers.

I ask a naive question, although it’s one that comes up for a lot of people: “How can I regularly be faced with the B.S. and the pain happening in the world, and still come from a place of ‘The world is perfect’ ?”. I invite you to listen to their answer. It involves total surrender to the naked, raw reality of our experience of life, and how deeper wisdom and compassion can result from it.

About the speakers

Eli Jaxon-Bear and Gangaji are spiritual teachers and founders of the Leela Foundation. Eli Jaxon-Bear has been trained in many spiritual traditions, from a Zen monastery in Japan to a Sufi circle in Marrakesh, he also ran a clinical hypnosis and neurolinguistics certification program at the Esalen Institute in California in the 80s. His search ended when he was drawn to India in 1990 where he met his final teacher, known as Papaji, a direct disciple of the renowned Indian Sage Ramana Maharshi. Eventually, he was sent back into the world by Papaji to share his unique psychological insights into the nature of egoic suffering in support of self-realization. Gangaji, his partner, traveled to India to meet Papaji in 1990. In her autobiography “Just Like You” she wrote, “The extraordinary event in this life was that I met Papaji. Until then I looked everywhere for the transcendental or the extraordinary, but after meeting Papaji I began to find the extraordinary in every moment.” Papaji gave her the name Gangaji, and asked her to share what she had directly realized with others.

How can we keep a healthy mind in times of crisis? In this interview, Eli and Gangaji offer an invitation into a lesser-known path, one that teaches that surrendering to the raw reality, to the pain, can actually bring us great love and compassion.

In this episode, I allow you to witness and listen to the questions I ask along my way, and the answers I admit to being true. I share a vulnerable moment of my life in which I get up on stage in the role of the student, and speak to Eli and Gangaji, standing as the teachers.

I ask a naive question, although it’s one that comes up for a lot of people: “How can I regularly be faced with the B.S. and the pain happening in the world, and still come from a place of ‘The world is perfect’ ?”. I invite you to listen to their answer. It involves total surrender to the naked, raw reality of our experience of life, and how deeper wisdom and compassion can result from it.

About the speakers

Eli Jaxon-Bear and Gangaji are spiritual teachers and founders of the Leela Foundation. Eli Jaxon-Bear has been trained in many spiritual traditions, from a Zen monastery in Japan to a Sufi circle in Marrakesh, he also ran a clinical hypnosis and neurolinguistics certification program at the Esalen Institute in California in the 80s. His search ended when he was drawn to India in 1990 where he met his final teacher, known as Papaji, a direct disciple of the renowned Indian Sage Ramana Maharshi. Eventually, he was sent back into the world by Papaji to share his unique psychological insights into the nature of egoic suffering in support of self-realization. Gangaji, his partner, traveled to India to meet Papaji in 1990. In her autobiography “Just Like You” she wrote, “The extraordinary event in this life was that I met Papaji. Until then I looked everywhere for the transcendental or the extraordinary, but after meeting Papaji I began to find the extraordinary in every moment.” Papaji gave her the name Gangaji, and asked her to share what she had directly realized with others.