Beloved Teachers & Teachings
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Leela Therapy is a form of non-directive skilful mentorship, created by American spiritual teacher, author and master hypnotherapist Eli Jaxon-Bear. In terms of skilful means, it combines the Enneagram of Character Fixation with Neurolinguistics and advanced Ericksonian Hypnosis. At the basis of it, it is rooted in meeting ourselves and the world as True Friends - with a quiet mind and an open heart.
A life long search for freedom led Eli to India in 1990, where he met his final teacher, Sri H.W.L Poonja, lovingly known as Papaji. Confirming Eli’s realization, his teacher sent him back into the world to “let both the therapist and the client wake up”. Eli founded The Leela Foundation as well as The Leela School.
Through the Leela School, I met my loving, supportive and fiercely truthful mentors and teachers Jared Franks & Lisa Schumacher. I owe them hours of 1:1 investigation and self-inquiry, patience, witnessing, peeling off layers of conditioning, selfless love, unshakable support and ever deepening self-discovery. They are both tirelessly available for 1:1 support and satsang - you can find out more about their offerings and book a session through their websites.
Gangaji
It all started with Beloved Gangaji for me. She was born in Texas in 1942. Despite her worldly successes and spiritual practices, she continued experiencing a deep and persistent longing for fulfilment. This led her to India where she met Papaji in 1990. In this meeting, her personal story of suffering ended. He gave her the name Gangaji and sent her back to bring satsang to the West.
I discovered her randomly on Youtube in 2017. At the time, I had no idea what she was speaking of, what she meant by Silence or Truth. It didn’t matter - the words somehow pierced through layers of cynicism and doubt in my mind and the heart managed to hear them. I had no choice, but to go and meet her.
As I look back, I realise how many things have quietly and unnoticeably changed since. It seems that I didn’t really have a life before and it is finally starting now. In Love.
Papaji
At the age of 31, Papaji had his final awakening at the feet of Sri Ramana Maharshi. This ended his search for a Master who could show him God. Rather than giving him another vision of God, Ramana pointed him in the direction of his own self:
“I cannot show you God or enable you to see God because God is not an object that can be seen. God is the subject. He is the seer. Don’t concern yourself with objects that can be seen. Find out who the seer is.”
He was in his later years of life when he was discovered in Lucknow by westerners, including Gangaji, Eli and Mooji, who flocked to receive his powerful and simple self-inquiry and direct transmission of the truth.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
Sri Ramana Maharshi is widely acknowledged by all traditions as being one of the holiest men of modern times. In 1896, while he was still a sixteen-year-old schoolboy, suddenly gripped by intense fear of death, he inquired into the reality of the one who dies and discovered the eternal Self. After this sudden awakening, he retired in speechless absorption in a cave on the holy mountain Arunachala and remained silent for years. He was occasionally fed by sympathetic visitors and over time started gathering devotees. Over the years, they built an ashram for him and visitors came from all parts of the world. He lived in the Satsang hall, available at all times of the day and night for visitors to drink of his grace and ask spiritual questions. Though he sometimes recommended self-inquiry (inquiring into the source of “I”), these practices and his words were secondary. His transmission of the Self - not the individual self, but the Self as formless, blissful awareness - was silent and direct.