Eli Jaxon-Bear on Your True Self

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on

this episode is Eli Jackson Bear. Eli founded and currently teach us through the Lela Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to world peace and freedom through universal self realization. Eli is the author of many books, including the one we discuss here and Outlaw Makes It Home. The Awakening of a Spiritual Revolutionary. Hi Eli, welcome to the show. Oh thank you, thank you so much for having me on.

It's a pleasure to have you on. We're going to talk about your latest book and Outlaw Makes at Home the Awakening of a Spiritual Revolutionary in more detail in a moment. But let's start like we always do, with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like

greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well. I would say, ultimately, when it comes down to is a discovery of who's feeding. Once you know who you are that's feeding, you'll know what

it is you want to feeding. So generally we subconsciously identify with both with the characters, both the good wolf and the bad wolf, and when you go to war with ourselves. But in the end, when you find out who you really are, it's no contest that were you feed, there's no choice. It just becomes the obvious continuation of yourself. So as long as we see the good wolf from the bad wolf as both separate from ourselves, and identified

the both of them as ourselves, we have conflict. But when we discover who we are, and we disassociate from both wolves, find the truth in ourselves, then we see our true nature, which is compassionate and love, conscious understanding, and then there's no question of feeding or not feed. Then you simply are as you are. But as we begin, there is like a war for our soul. It's a ward of the impulses of the animal versus the impulses

of the divide, you can say. And so in that world for our soul, there are certain tests, certain markers along the way when you say what do you live for, what do you die for? What are you willing to sell out for? What are you willing to stay truth? And those tests defind us to find our character and give us the capacity to be the good wolf, to

be the compassionate, loving kind being what we are. And to the degree that we sell out to our egotistical animal nature of selfishness, greed and me and mine, that degree, we lose our capacity to stay true to ourselves because we're still ourselves. Price that's wonderful. Tell me a little bit about when you say true self. I know that part of the answer is it can't be defined in the words that we're going to use. So understanding that, let's do your best, okay. So to know your true self,

you have to look away from your false self. And you could say turn away from the bad wolf, so to turn away from what you believe you are already. So you can't find your true self as long as you believe you know who you are. And we all all are born into an identity. We have told our name. It gets repeated to us and so well remember it and imprinted. We're told this is our body, and these are our parents, and this is our environment, and we get conditioned and trained to say this is who I am.

So you ask anybody in the world, who are you there? Oh, I'm eli? Why does that mean well, that means that I'm this man with this age and this family and these parents, and that's when we we believe we are. That's what we call myself when I say true self is to find what's behind the scenes, what's deeper than the name, what's deeper than the body, what's before your thoughts, what's before me and mine here for a moment, you just drop me in mine. What's left is your true soul.

One of the things that you talk about in your videos and your books that I've read is this real commitment it to finding your true self, and that that commitment has to come above everything else, that you have to be willing to give up everything to find your true self. And I'm asking this question from a very personal angle, right. So, I have had several what you would consider sort of classic awakening moments where the unity of consciousness and all that is presented to me and

I see it and it's clear and um. They last for a period time, then they fade and I find myself saying, oh, yes, I really want to go back to that, that's what's most important. And I had that direction, but then I get distracted and I go a different direction, and then the the urge comes back, follow it, and I find this this back and forth dance. And so what I'm curious about is what do we do in

these moments. It's where that's not the most important thing, where despite realizing on some level maybe that I don't like the word should, but should be the most important thing, or that's where the deepest lasting happiness, but where that desire, that that urge goes a little bit more underground. And again I'm asking that from a personal sense, because I seem to do this little bit of back and forth.

Most people do. And so the issue then is to find out for yourself what it is making more important and to tell the truth about that, because everyone says, oh, I want freedom, might want enlightenments, I want to love, and then they go off and get lost to them day to day. So to give yourself fully you have to be willing to tell the truth about the places where you're not an example for yourself. Is this really

more important? And if it is, give yourself to that, and if it isn't, stop into olden And then you get to the point where you see it's so obvious and clear, and then you have a clear choice. I don't want to indulge in anymore. I want to be myss up. And then there has to be a great tolerance for whatever arises without taking it personally, because the tendency will be too when the next moment where you lose focus arises to say, oh, I'm not good enough, or I didn't do it, or I should go back.

But what if the spaciousness allows for that as well? If you are silence, Silence has no problem with noise. But as soon as noise appears, if you use that to justify oh, I've gone off and I should be doing something else, that's just more mind stuff. And so this leads me into one of the things that I really wanted to discuss with you. And in order to frame it up, we I'm gonna need to tell a little bit about your your backstory. And again your book and Outlaw Makes a Home is a is an absolutely

fascinating read. You've let quite uh, quite an interesting life.

But what I'm really interested in is it at one point you began to incorporate an LP, neuro linguistic programming, the indiogram, and hypnosis into a unique form of therapy that you were delivering, and then after that you had sort of um, you met your your final teacher, Popagy, and you had a true lasting awakening, and you've rolled that into it also, And so what it brings up for me is this question of when does it make sense to work with the ego to deal with trauma

and wounding and emotional deflation and and all that stuff, And when does it make sense to simply say, oh, I'm that none of that's true. I'm going to look right here to the great truth. How does all that play out in your mind when you work with people or when you're training therapists in your school. Well, first you have to know what someone wants. When you find out what you really want, that's the beginning. Most people don't know what they want. Most people have a set

of condition wants and beliefs. I should be this way, I should have that, I should be different, whatever it is. People have a whole variety of condition, wants and desires. When you get it all boiled down to what you really want, then the real work begins. Then. If trauma arises, you deal with trauma. If trauma doesn't arise, you don't deal with trauma. It's really dealing with what's presented and what's presented will be determined by what it is that

you want that frames the discussion. And then yes, sometimes it's appropriate to do with trauma and sometimes it's not. And it's really not a rule, it's really what is presenting because you have to realize what you're talking about is you call it a journey. So when there is a journey, start you said start in different places, It doesn't. It always starts with me. And where does it end? It ends with I? So how far a journey is it from me? Two eye? None? That's it. That's the truth.

And then if you stay true to that, you'll be tested. All of your your secondary needs and wants and desires will come up to tempt you to say, oh what about this? So what about that? And if you then, instead of following that, you stay true, you'll deepen. If you do follow that, you learn, oh, this is what I'm putting in front of it. Is this more important? Do I want to follow this? And then you learn from that. So either way, it's all on earning experience.

And you guys talk about these three levels of therapeutic intervention, and the first you describe as symptom cure and habit control as the first level. Is it necessary to I'm just gonna use this word, because no better one comes to mind. Master each level in order to go to the next level. Not at all, Not at all. We teach those three levels because you will get a whole

variety of people showing up who want help. And some people just want to help because they want to stop smoking, or they want to change some part of the behavior, so you can deal with them at that level. Others show up and they're wounded emotionally, psychically wounded, and so you're looking at that level. Others show up and they have already seen through that, or they're already penetrate to something deeper and more fundamental. So there's no need to

ever give yourself any steps along the way. But if steps appear, you take them. But you just go straight home. And then if you go home, you go from me to eye and you are as you are, and if something arises, you deal with it. If trauma comes out beautiful, to deal with it, it doesn't matter. It still doesn't stop you from being yourself. You don't recommend spiritual practices meditation necessarily everything is useful. I meditate I love meditating. I spent I was in a Zen monastery. I mean

I loved it. I was. I spent years with my Chinese teacher doing Dallas yoga. I love it. It's all useful for training the mind and body, but it's not useful for waking up, because if you look at the ones who woke up, you look at the Buddha. I didn't have a practice. You look at anything in enlightened Zen masters, they didn't have a practice. The practice is always trying to teach someone else to do what you've done. Differently, Buddha sits under a tree and says, I'm not getting

up until I get it. Whatever it takes, come and get me. I am sitting here until I get it. It's that willingness, the immovable willingness is all that's required. Then people after him say, oh, I'll sit for twenty minutes a day, then i'll get a light, or I'll sit for an hour. I'll go on a seschine for a week. The Buddha didn't say I'm gonna sit for an hour. I'm gonna sit for a week. He said I'm sitting until I get it. That's what's required. But

the rest is very useful. I love sitting, I love meditating, I love yoga. So it's not that I would, you know, say anything negative about him except that don't use it to wake up h If we look at the Buddha's life, he had a long history of following any spiritual practice he could find and going to great links. And so maybe all those were just useful for him realizing what

didn't work. Yeah, I guess the challenge here, and I'll lump you into this category fairlier, unfairly right, sort of a direct path, right, like you want to wake up? Wake up? Right? Yes. One of my books is called Sudden Awakening. Yes, yes, I read a read a fair portion of it. I think that the challenge for a lot of people is and I get I get the fundamental challenge of, oh, I'm going to do something to find myself. I'm going to take a step towards myself.

How do you take a step towards yourself? You're already yourself, there's nowhere to go. So I get that, and I guess this is just sort of an ongoing debate that happens between a gradual awakening and a sudden awakening. And and it's gradual until it's sudden. I guess it's the mind that's trying to accomplish. It's looking for some steps, tell me what to do exactly, and that's the ego. Yeah, so as long as you know it's the ego that's searching for a thing to do, the only answer is

don't do anything. So right now, you stop all you're doing. The ego doesn't have a job. You can rest, and your mind stops, and everything opens, and there's a clarity and stillness. It's always been here, just been covered by the noise of the chatter of the internal dialogue. So that settles down right now and everything stops. Truth of yourself really a little effortlessly, silently without words. I'm trying to tap into that while also running a podcast that

relies on dialogue. So in that moment, yep, there's a moment of startlence. It's illness and truth, and then the mind goes back in. Oh, I've got a job to do. Yeah, I've got to keep the podcast going. I've got to keep talking. Okay, So it's possible that we can continue speaking without that happening. That actually, you don't need to be in control that there's your heart is already intelligent

and alive, and it speaks when it needs to. And sometimes, even though it's heresy in the online world, silence can be trend. People feel it and they taste it, and everyone loves it so beautiful. That was one of the biggest moments for me. I've been to several retreats with Audi Ashanti, and when he sort of pointed out that like silence is always there was a total like bam moment for me when I went, I'll be damn it, sure is, even with all the noise that's going on.

I don't have to make silence. I don't have to somehow create it or shut everything down for it to be there. That is a pretty profound moment. Yes, that's transmission. Yeah. Yeah, who is your wife? Yeah, I'm so lucky married to a goddess. Yeah you are. So. Let's talk about the indiogram for a minute, because you sort of turn the indigram on its head. Essentially, you say that we use the indiogram two tell us who we are and then

use that to sort of drive our egoic personalities. And you say that the indiogram can be used exactly the opposite as a way of showing how we're obscuring our true self. I think is that? Is that an accurate statement? Yes, Let's say the indiagram describes the dad wolf. Let's talk a little bit more about that. Elaborate on that, because in the Indiagram study I've done, it shows here's like, take your type a nine. Here's a non who's thriving.

Here's a nine who's doing poortly. And so I would you know, in my traditional understanding, it would say, what, here's a here's a nine who's to use the analogy to show feeding their good wolf. Here's a nine who's feeding their bad wolf. But I think you're you're driving at something deeper, I am, because all of that is based on a misunderstanding of the Instagram. It's called with the way you learned the intagram of personality. As long

as it's nigram of personality, it's egoing. So you can have a good nine or a bad nine, a functional nine or dysfunctional nine, a spiritual nine or a sleepwalking nine, but it's still a nine. And as long as you have an identity as a nine, that's a number. It's a robot. You're identifying yourself as a robot. Whether you call it a functional robot or a dysfunctional robot, it's

still a robot. It's robot number nine. It's mechanical, habitual, predictable, and it as its repressions and it's rassions, and it has its projections, and it has its lifestyle, and it's an animal robot. It's it's our conditioning. It's conditioning plus genetics, conditioning plus genetics. So, because you're genetically predisposed to your fixation, and so as long as you identify yourself as a nine or any number, you're identifying yourself as an ego.

The possibility is to see that, in fact, it's not the innogram of personality, it's the innagram of character fixation. And when you identify the character fixation as a number nine, you can start to see is this who I really am? Is this really true? And you start to question yourself. You start self inquiry to discover is this real? Is this making me happy and fulfilled as functional as I am as a nine? Does that bring me complete fulfillment? Does it bring me freedom? Does it bring me true love?

If it does, no problem, stay fulfilled nine? If it doesn't be willing to see deeper than the fixation. When you go deeper than the character fixation, you get to true character. That's where you get to the good wolf. The good wolf is the true character underlying the basis of personality and the animal manifestation. So your true self is the good wolf. Your bad wolf self is the fixation. As long as you have identified yourself as the bad wolf. You try to be good and you try to better.

You try to be more compassionate, more loving, more carrying, more understanding, But it's always from the background of being the bad wolf, because you believe you're in the line. You believe you're inn eight, you believe you're at four, and you're trying to be a better one of those. And as good as you get at it, it's never enough. That's the point. If it were no problem, I'm totally a functional kind of guy. If it works, no problem. If it doesn't work, find out, check it out, go deeper.

Then you see, well, is it enough to be a functional line? Is it enough to be a spiritual set? Is that really satisfying as a really fulfilling If it isn't, then you start to see, well, maybe that's the act. Maybe that's the animal act and I'm acting as if I'm the animal trainer, but actually you're acting as an animal in the act. As the act. The possibility is to wake up from the whole act. They got from the show. Then the show continues. It's not like it stops.

But you're not identified with it. Need not take me personally. You show up as a character in the play without having a stake in, without having proved that you're good enough, prove that you're lovable, prove that you're smart enough, prove that you're good enough, prove that you're more functional. Doesn't all that is like finished? Then you have free form. You can actually show up in the play and be creative, spontaneous, being alive. Before you talk to me about how recognizing

our character fixation? So as a nine, what is the character fixation of a nine? Sleepwalking on? It's the best way that's going to nine is if you think of our cousins that wells gorillas are They basically sit around and eat all day. They're very social, they hang out, they don't get into fights, and even when there is a challenge to the harem another mail comes along, they don't fight to the death. They don't kill each other,

plays and postures. They pump themselves up, they grunt, they runner each other and charge a couple of times until it becomes quite obvious who the bigger one is and the other one leaves. It's basically a very social, peaceful society because rage has been so deeply avoided that they're

not going to kill each other. So the nine fixation avoids rage, and it's feeling angry all the time and submim so the nine, in order to be friendly and kind and good and helpful, will say yes and mean no. Every time anybody asks you anything and you say yes, there's always a no behind and then noos no, don't tell me what to do, leave me alone. I just want to sit on my couch and what drink a beer has whatever it is being by myself, be in

control and angry with someone else is in control. I'm angry when I have to do what I don't want to do, but I can't let anybody know that because I want to be a loving, nice guy. And so you sleepwalk on top of that, make believe that that's not there. And to make believe it's not there, you have to go numb to yourself. And to go numb to yourself, you have to be ignorant of what's already there. That's ignoring the truth. That's the first ignorance that we

all fall into as you into this intigram. Nine is the core of it all, and we all are these big gorillas angry. I mean, you believe we're not wanting to be a run and yet being social saying yes when we mean though, And then the only other fixations really just come out of that first COREN one. So the first step is to start to tell the truth of yourself when you say yes and you mean no,

that's really going on. We have had nine saying you know, I never realized I am pissed and everything all the time. It's there's a shocking revelation. So then when you start to notice it, you start to own it. Then you start to be able to have the integrity to say yes when you mean it and see no when you mean Then this brings up this enormous possibility of rage and rage. Don't want to feel rage. I could kill somebody.

You don't want to kill everybody. You're a good guy, you're non violent, But there's this animal rage that has to be met, and if it's not met, it's ignored. And if it's ignored, you're living in ignorance. When it's you actually are meeting the passion of your animal nature, which is what fires up he lives this life. You become more alive, you become more present, you become more capable of being in the moment because you're not having to say yes when you mean no, you're not having

to ignore. And that's the that's the start of life. That sounds like, become in a more functional nine though, saying no and I mean no, becoming a functional human being, right right? Functional human beings good? We like that. Well, that's what I find interesting about your work is the potentially working at multiple layers. Yes, but it's not a functional nine because the nine fixation in its nature avoids rage.

That's the bottom of it. Nine fixation. The idealization is I am comfortable to say yes when you mean yes, and no and you mean no. It's not comfortable. M hm. So it's actually going against the fixation. It's not being a functional line, it's being a dysfunctional line of being a functional human being. And so in your view, the insiogram always points us to I don't know if you'd use this word or not, but it came to mind our fatal flaw. Sure well, Gerd Jeff calls it the

chief feature, the chief feature. Yes. So the first person to teach the innogram in the West is Gurgias, who was a mystic philosopher from Armenia right seating Russia before the revolution there. And he said everybody has a chief feature. And he said, there's the Russians he was working with that they ever knew their chief feature, they would die of shock. They are so deluded into who they think themselves to be compared to their actual where they are in the world. So there's a The flaw is this

first ignorance. It's the first form in the sleep in ignoring the truth. You often talk about that all of our experience, and you pull this in lots of different places, but you talk about how all of our experience has a mental, emotional, and a physical component, and then the ego encapsulates all three of those. Could you talk a little bit about that, you know, it's interesting that first starts with Aristotle. Aristotle said that we humans have three

spirits or three souls, three body minds. He said, first, there's a vegetative so we each have a vegetative body. And Aristotle says, the vegetative is the foundation and necessary, and out of that comes what you call the animal spirit, and out of that that comes the human spirit. By the animal spirit, we're talking about emotions. We all have the animal emotions. All animals have rage, and all animals can feel hurt, all animals feel sad. We have an

emotional animal body. And then what he called the human he said, was the rational thinking. And so human rational thinking is beyond emotions. It needs the animal body, just as the animal body needs the vegetative body. And when you think of our vegetative intelligence, just consider it for yourself. Imagine we had this stack of chemicals that we call a body, that we were carrying around with us, that we had to keep at an exact temperature all the time,

no matter everywhere. We could take the sack of chemicals up into a mountain or under the ocean, or flying or into the snow or into tropical jungle, and if it goes off by just a few degrees, it dies. Too hot, too cold, it dies. That's our level of our vegetative intelligence that keeps us functional a lot remarkable that we could never do right to count our heartbeats or think about our breathing or wor worry about our what our blood pressure or body temperature impossible, or digestion

extra intelligence that we have vegetative. Then we have this animal intelligence, which is the emotional body, very very strong. And then we have this mental intelligence, which is the rational thinking mind. And all of that gets encapsulated into me. So this idea of me says, it's my body and these are my feelings, these are my thought us, this is my life, and these are my parents, and this is my partner of my future. And this idea of me and mine becomes this bubble, and we then project

our universe around the walls of this bubble. And the way you know you're projecting is it's all about me. No matter where you are or what's going on, it's always about me. We are always the center of the universe. So there's me centric view of reality that it's my world and my work and my life and my creativity and my art and my problems and my money. Is all the projection and ego and projection of me and mine, and it's a bubble. And the amazing thing is the

first person to pop this bubble was Pithagoras. Pythagoras is the root of the intagram. Pythagoras is where the intagram comes from. And Pithagoras is the first one who called the universe the cosmos. Cosmos is a Greek word and it means both harmony and interconnectedness. And by calling the universe of cosmos, he suddenly took it from being me centric, a person centric or earth centric, to being universally centric, to being universe centric. That was brilliant. That's years ago

that Methagoras has this inside. And then he sees that all of it is based on mathematics and harmonics, and the indiogram was his model for how you integrate mathematics and harmonics to describe the motion of materialization in the universe. And then I can never say his name, Geared death Gar Jeff was the one who did the modern version

of what we know is the instagram. Well, he's the first one who presented it in the West, and the best if you were interested, you read In Search of the Miraculous, which is a book by one of his students of Spence in that Russian mathematician who took copious notes and puts the whole system in place. But what I've discovered is everything that good Jeff is teaching there he got from Pithagaras from the mystery schools, is still

carried the Pithagorian teaching. But really the modern incarnation comes from Oscar Chauso. Oscar Chasso was a Chilean started his mystery school in Chile in the Rica Chile called the Rica Institute. And he's the first one who teaches the innigram of personality, which is what you learned. And so Oscar taught it to Claudio Norajo, who was a Chilean psychotherapist living in Berkeley, and Claude I learned from Claudio

and Claudio students Katay Speak and others. So Claudio took it to Berkeley where it became fleshed out with the psychological wealth and insight, and then it was caught as the intigram personality. Ellen Palmer and I both had our first Intagram books, going to the same publisher. They took hers, not mine. Her was born practical, rooms more spiritual, and that's how it's good. So it spreads from Hillen Palmer really her indigram personality, who got it from Claudio, who

got it from Chile, from Oscar Cholso very interesting. And have you your book on the indiogram Um was written some time ago? But was it rereleased recently? Well, and I wrote it first and at that point came out first in Germany. But then I did a new version and now we're I've just updated the recent one from Fixation to Freedom and added this part about Pythagoras, which I've just recently discovered. I mean, searching for this now for thirty years and they finally found the link. Well,

we are at the end of our time. For the main part of the interview, you and I are going to do a brief post show conversation afterwards, where I'm going to ask you to tell a couple of the stories from the book and Outlaw makes It Home, which are just fascinating. You're sort of like a cultural history of of the US and and the spiritual movement to me. I mean, there's just so many touchstones in there that we all see that you were right in the middle of.

So I'm looking forward to that. Listeners, if you're interested in the post show. You can get those by becoming a supporter of the show One you Feed, dot Net Slash Support. Eli, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today. I've really enjoyed talking with you. It's been fun. Alright, Thank you so much for having me up. Okay, bye, all right. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head

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