2024 in Review

Edited Video Transcript:

Eli, how are you doing today?

Good, thank you.

Since your initial interview in January of this year, you’ve been a pretty busy guy so it seemed like a year-end review was in order. Are you up for that now?

Yes definitely, it has been a very busy year. It’s been a wonderful year, my first year of officially teaching, and I would say it’s been successful.

Very good, very good. All right so starting with your writings, there have been some extensive multi-part blog posts that I think people would like to hear about. Starting with the topic of “The Self,” can you give an overview of that for us?

Yeah. What I was thinking when I was writing that was I wanted to give people a good sense of all the components of what we’re working with in terms of who we are and Self-realization. I like separating things in terms of the body, the heart, the mind, and the spirit. My goal for “The Self” post, my three-parter, was to break down each one, provide a definition of each one, what the purpose of each one is, why we have them, and then how they function when they’re in an unbalanced state versus when they’re in a balanced state, and then ultimately offer some ways to bring them into balance. By doing that, by defining each one, I wanted to make it clear that these are the four basic elements of our Being. But more than that I wanted to tie them all in together and explain how to bring them all into balance and more importantly how to bring them all into harmony together. I end basically, the article, with an understanding of how everything really is just Being, everything is awareness. All four parts of our Being are spirit but vibrating at different frequencies. When we have that realization, if we can focus on the awareness aspect of it, then we can harmonize all of them through our awareness faculty. That was the main point of the article and hopefully it was enjoyable. I like to keep things concise and described precisely so I’m hoping that that came across. I really like how that turned out.

When you’re talking about the Self, do you mean capital “S” or small “s” or both?

Capital “S” Self, yes, our true nature, our Being, as opposed to the ego, which is not our ultimately true Self. It’s a relatively true mental construct but it’s not ultimately our true nature. In that article, actually, I do provide a distinction between: when you’re viewing things from the ego this is how the world looks, and when you’re viewing things from the Self this is how the world looks, so that hopefully gives people something to compare with.

Great, okay, you did another three-part post on “Defense Mechanisms.” Can you share the salient points about that?

Sure, so the thing about psychological defense mechanisms is that these are universal human tendencies. When we experience something that’s painful or difficult – whether it’s an emotion, a feeling, or some sort of psychological idea or construct or concept – when we experience those things that are uncomfortable or painful, we have what’s called defense mechanisms to protect us from those painful things. In the article, my three-parter again, I explain how defense mechanisms are actually very useful. That’s why they exist, and they start out when we’re younger and that’s how they come into being, and I explain how they come into being and I provide an example, but as we get older they become damaging and they actually end up causing suffering when originally, they were helping to alleviate our suffering. I go into why they exist, how to identify whether something is a defense mechanism or not, because a lot of times people mistake actions or behaviors for defense mechanisms when they’re not, and so I wanted to give a lot of clarity on that and explain that if you’re serious about pursuing Self-realization, defense mechanisms are the walls that are blocking you from realization. They are the tools that the ego uses to keep itself intact. Defense mechanisms were a major aspect of my own healing and my own realization journey and that’s why I wanted to share that with you.

But they’re not always a negative thing, right? In the short term they can be useful.

Yes, in the short term they can be very useful. Let’s say you’re in the middle of working or something and you have a big project that’s due and you hear something horrible on the news or a family member calls you with some unfortunate information, you can’t really focus on that because you’ll probably collapse into tears. You want to be able to compartmentalize – that’s one defense mechanism – you want to be able to compartmentalize what it is you’re feeling so that you can focus on what it is you’re doing. And then when that situation is gone, you can focus on the emotional experience. So in that way defenses are very useful short term but long term they end up causing a lot of problems and creating a lot of suffering. I mean they are responsible for pretty much all the conflict and wars and suffering that we have in our world, so I think it’s incredibly important that people have awareness of these useful but also insidious psychological mechanisms that we utilize to defend and protect ourselves.

Okay, great. Another whopper of a post was “Defining Enlightenment,” a compilation of 75 awakened people’s definitions on the concept of “enlightenment.” Some of these were from legendary historical figures and some were modern-day teachers. Can you fill us in on that gigantic project?

Yes, as a teacher of Self-realization, I feel it is incumbent on me to describe and define what Self-realization is, so I decided to embark on this project to define Self-realization, and the most common word that I think people use for Self-realization is “enlightenment,” that seems to be the most widely popular term for Self-realization. Unfortunately, the term “enlightenment” has a lot of baggage and I understand why there are those who don’t like using the term. It comes with some sort of mystical quality, like it’s distant, it’s far away, it’s unattainable. In that way, “enlightenment” the term can be harmful and damaging for people who are serious about pursuing it. But I wanted to use that term because it’s also very descriptive, it illustrates a kind of illumination or lightening that happens. I don’t necessarily mind using it, and I think maybe in our modern day it’s been so overused, but we can start to reclaim the term and redefine it in a new way.

But it is such an enormous task to describe this “thing” because truly “enlightenment” cannot be defined. It’s about experience. You can only know it, you can only live it, you can’t really describe it or understand it on an intellectual level. When I was embarking on this project to define “enlightenment,” I thought instead of me describing and defining it in my own way, because there’s so many different definitions, there’s so many different aspects to this term, I wanted to compile a list of all these people that have influenced me that I’ve read in books, and spiritual teachers who I personally believe through my own intuitive sensing are awake and have the direct knowledge and experience of enlightenment, and I wanted to put their words side by side so that if you take it all in at once, you get a better sense of what it is. Again, you can’t ever really understand what enlightenment is unless you experience it, but I wanted to compile them all together, all these different definitions so that someone can get a better big picture view of what it is and they can fill in the blanks and see where maybe some definitions contradict each other, where there are different views, and where there are similar views. The intention was to define enlightenment but also to expand people’s understanding of what it really is.

I looked at your list and I agree with you that the people you chose were awakened, but what do you think? Why is there such a wide-ranging palette of descriptions? Why aren’t they more similar, you think? What are the contributing factors to such a disparate view?

Well I think, you see, when we realize our true nature, when we experience enlightenment, so to speak, we are all really getting to the same place, we’re all experiencing the same Self, we’re all having the same realization of consciousness, of our true nature, but that experience is being filtered through individual persons and personalities that have their own unique backgrounds, experiences, cultural influences, spiritual and religious paths, and so the experience of enlightenment – that Unity experience that we all have that’s similar – gets filtered in very different ways. Maybe filtered isn’t the right word, but it gets expressed in very different ways depending on someone’s background or personality. I wanted to hopefully show that, demonstrate that, through the various quotes and passages.

And do you think different traditions generate different types of experience or realization?

Yes, I do believe that. There are no hard and fast rules about how things work, but I think generally there are tendencies or outcomes depending on the spiritual path that you follow and the technologies or methods of awakening that you utilize. For example, if you come from a Buddhist path, my sense is that you most likely will awaken to the emptiness of life. If you are more on a devotional path or a heart-centered path, like Sufis for example, you might awaken to the fullness of life rather than the emptiness. If you follow the Yogic path, there might be more of an energetic experience because Yoga is very much involved in breath work and energy control and things like that, so maybe there will be special abilities or extra sensory powers that manifest as a result of the yoga path that you practice.

There are also basically three main centers through which we can awaken, corresponding to the three components of our Self: the mind, the heart, and the gut (body). And Adyashanti talks about this. Awakening through the mind grants realization of the Wisdom aspect of reality. Awakening through the heart grants realization of the Love aspect of reality. Awakening through the gut grants realization of the Fearlessness or Beingness aspect of reality.

Those are just a few examples but I think, again, we all reach the same place, we all reach the Source, but how we express it, I believe, is infinite. There can be unlimited ways. In an infinite universe there can be an unlimited amount of ways that we express our realization and embody it in the world.

Great. Your last major post was on “The Ego,” which is a very important topic since pretty much everyone is saddled with one of these things. You broke down your post into its origin and purpose, its stages of development, and limiting beliefs and liberating acts surrounding it, so can you share a bit about that?

Sure, just like how I said if I’m teaching about enlightenment, I’d have to define that and I did, so on the flip side the ego is basically the word I use to describe that thing that blocks us from realization. So if Self-realization is the goal, then the ego is the obstacle to the goal. And so I felt that it was important for me to define that as well. In my teaching sessions, when I do explain to students about the ego, a common question that I get is “Well, why does the ego exist in the first place and how does it come into being?” and so that felt important to explain. It’s not something that’s critical to know for realization, you don’t need to know why it exists or how it comes into being in order to realize the Self, but I find that for people who are curious, it can be helpful to have an understanding or some type of framework. That was kind of where I started from. First of all, I wanted to define what ego is and what it is that’s blocking us. I wanted to explain to people who are curious why and how it comes into being and why it perpetuates itself, and then I also wanted to explain ways in which we can overcome the ego. It’s kind of a big picture overview of the ego. I’ve used the term in many other writings so I wanted to give a deeper examination on the topic. Part one is really big picture.

Part two I felt was equally important, the stages of development of the ego across a human lifespan. I go into the different stages of life – childhood and adulthood and elderhood – and explain how the ego generally evolves through the course of our lifetime. I do that so that we can more easily pinpoint what it is that the ego is doing and so that we can notice it better.

But also, I wanted to make a clear delineation between other teachings. There are a lot of paths or spiritual writings that talk about annihilation of ego, and that is true in some sense when you’re talking about realization. From a certain perspective there is annihilation of ego that takes place, but from another perspective the ego isn’t annihilated, it’s reconfigured. Rather than being in the foreground of our consciousness, it kind of goes into the background of our consciousness. Another way to explain it is that the ego becomes a servant rather than our master. Or another way you could describe it is it becomes very thin and it becomes transparent, so rather than identifying with it anymore, the annihilation that happens is that we’ve annihilated our identification with it. There’s still a very thin interface, an ego, that gets used. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to navigate life after awakening. We’d be just a pile of mush, you know, we’d be pure consciousness. We wouldn’t be able to function. The ego is important because it helps us to interact with life and it’s still necessary after awakening, it’s just that it takes the form of a totally different experience. We see through the ego. Ramana Maharshi compares the pre-awakening ego to the full moon and the post-awakening ego to the moon when only a sliver is lit up during the day, making it hard to see. I wanted to make that point in part two as well that the ego is still important post-awakening. And pre-awakening, you want to make sure that you have a stable ego, that you’ve done your psychological work, and that it’s still valuable, it’s just that your relationship to it changes.

In part two, I also make this distinction between self-actualization and Self-realization. Self-realization is the goal of the soul, self-actualization is the goal of the ego, and both of those goals are valuable, and really, they both are important to achieving our full human capabilities, our full potential in human form. I felt that I wanted to clear up some potential misunderstandings there too.

And then part three was really how to break the identification with ego while still having some sort of mental construct to be able to navigate life with. I talk about the different layers of the ego as if the ego is an onion and you gotta peel away the different layers to get to the true Self. That the ego is a veil that’s obstructing our view or our experience of our true nature. I go into defense mechanisms being the first line of defense for the ego, then you’ve got the subconscious feelings – and I do a whole three-part post on “Emotions” as well if you’re interested, that was last year – and then false beliefs, or narratives, which are the structural framework propping up the ego. The only reason we have an ego, the core of the ego, is because we have these false beliefs, any belief system at all. We believe things about ourselves primarily but also about others and the world secondarily, and these are the things that are blocking our view of Reality. We can let go of those beliefs, and as Meher Baba says, we have to unlearn all the various things we’ve learned to get to Truth. I give a few examples of what those false beliefs are and, again, knowing this stuff isn’t going to bring realization unless it does, but I think it’s a helpful foundation intellectually so that we can begin to do our work and hopefully it keeps people focused on what the goal is and where our work is.

Great!

Yeah, another thing, I really liked how that one turned out too because I feel like it really captures my specialty, which is blending the spiritual and the psychological together. I think this post was able to demonstrate how the spiritual and how the psychological can come together in a unified and integrated way for the complete fulfillment and embodiment of our human potential.

Fantastic, well put. Regarding your writings this year, you also did an explanation of “Consciousness Unfolding,” which included a really cool animation that I’ve not seen anywhere else. Can you tell us about how you came up with that?

Yeah, that was really fun and it came about very spontaneously. I was in a session with a student one day and he was asking questions about the stages of realization and how Self-realization unfolds and how it manifests in a person’s life. I took a piece of printer paper and I started drawing a bunch of things because he was a visual learner and I started creating this diagram, and it was just kind of flowing out, I wasn’t really expecting anything to come out or knowing what was going to come out, and I made this very complicated diagram with layers and levels and it was really cool. He took that page home but I took a picture of it and I wanted to turn it into something that was a little cleaner and a little more refined, so I went on my computer and I made a diagram on PowerPoint, but as I was doing it I realized the only way to explain this, or one good way to explain this, would be if I have some animation to it, if there’s some movement, because if I’m talking about consciousness unfolding that means there’s a movement, there’s an evolution that’s happening, and I wanted to explain that in a way that can’t really be explained on a 2D piece of paper, so I decided to turn it into an animation and that’s just what came through. It was really fun and exciting and it’s kind of a big picture overview of how consciousness unfolds, but hopefully it hits the main points. The first step of consciousness is working through the ego and dissolving the ego, the next step is awakening, and then the next step is enlightenment, which goes on forever, so that was just one way that I could share what I’ve learned on the path.

Very good. These blog posts are not fluff pieces, they’re not just some little thing to say you’ve done a blog for the month. They are in-depth examinations of some real heavyweight metaphysical and psychological subjects. Can you speak to how you determine what you write about and how you decide which articles go to your Blog page and which ones are used on the Good Therapy San Diego website and their social media pages?

Sure, I have a massive Word document with all these potential topics that I could write about in the future for my Blog, and I hope and intend to get to all of them eventually. I try to do about once a month. One blog post a month is about all I can manage right now given my schedule. Each month I try to pick out something that I’m going to write about, but the funny thing is that when I sit down to write, oftentimes something totally different will come out that I had no idea was even there or I didn’t even think I was going to write about it until way later. It’s not even on my radar at all, and it just comes with such a strong energy that it has to get written, so that’s kind of how it’s been decided so far. Or sometimes I will just wake up one day and I’m like [snap] this is what’s going to be written next and I’ll just go for it. I still want to write about so many things, like intuition and karma and non-attachment and infinite paths to God and the unity of all religions and meditation and the inner critic and suffering and different therapeutic practices and modalities… just so many things that I have on the backburner. But again, I don’t know what is going to be written until it’s written so you’ll have to stay tuned.

Sounds like you’re following the Muse.

Yes very much.

And your articles can be found on your Blog page but also on your Good Therapy San Diego page?

Yes, the articles can be found on my Blog page on my website and also on Good Therapy San Diego, and the ones that I send to them to post tend to just have more of a psychological focus rather than a spiritual one. I mean everything that I write about has some spiritual component to it because everything is reality, you know, spirituality is really just the reality that we can’t see. But I tend to post the ones on Good Therapy San Diego that are more psychologically focused.

Makes sense. Switching gears now, you’ve been doing a lot more than writing this year. You’ve been teaching as well. The last time you were interviewed you were focused on teaching in one-on-one settings. Can you share about how that’s been going?

Yeah, oh it’s been so wonderful, I love my students so much, they’re just beautiful and unique people, and I really look forward to meeting with them and working with them. We just never know what’s going to happen in our sessions, but somehow it always feels very productive and useful and we’ve built a meaningful relationship of trust and comfort and understanding this year, and I’m just so grateful for them. They teach me so much. I’m learning so much from them, not only on my own path, but also on how to be a more effective explainer and describer of That which cannot be described. It’s been so lovely and all my students across the board are reporting some very significant shifts in their consciousness, reductions in their suffering, and increases in their happiness and fulfillment in their lives, so I couldn’t be happier for them. I’m grateful that that they’ve allowed me to walk alongside them on their journey.

Are these being done in person or virtually or both?

Both.

So if someone watching this is not local that wouldn’t prohibit them from it?

No, not at all. I have an office in Carlsbad where I work in person and then I can do virtual basically anywhere around the world so it’s open to everyone.

Then in October, you expanded your teaching services to include hosting monthly groups in your home. Can you tell us about what prompted this expansion, who the people attending these satsangs are, and what you’re focusing on during these meetings?

Sure. The people that are in the group are people that I’ve known for a long time, close friends, students, and anyone who’s heard about my work. They are all welcome to the group. It kind of started because I wanted to open up a forum where we could talk all together, but it was also other people in my life requesting a group, so it came together from both ends. Like you said we just got started but so far, it’s been really awesome. We gather together and just flow, you know, that’s my style. “We’re here to talk about Self-realization so what is it that’s going to be most helpful?” We share our own personal journeys and where we’re at, we talk about what is Self-realization, what is ego, and we can go into any topic that the group wants to do. I use the word “teacher” or “teaching” because that’s just one word I’ve chosen to describe what I do, but I don’t really consider myself a teacher. I don’t feel that I have anything that others don’t have. I believe that we all have the wisdom within, so what I like to do in the groups is keep it really open and flexible and collaborative so everybody has a voice in the group because I believe that everybody has their own unique wisdom about the path and they know better than I do about their own lives. So my group style tends to be collaborative rather than more of a teaching or lecturing type of thing, but if a lecture is something that you’re wanting, that’s something we can do too.

And how long do these group sessions last and how often are you having them?

They’re two hours once a month, but if there’s more demand we could have more than once a month or more than one group, but for now that’s what’s been manifesting.

Fantastic. On another note, you recently accepted an invitation from Rick and Irene Archer to be interviewed on their well-known and highly regarded Buddha at the Gas Pump podcast. Can you share a little bit about when your chat’s going to live stream, and your thoughts and feelings about doing your first interview that is going to be seen both nationally and internationally?

Yeah so this is going to be the first time I’m on a big stage talking to more than ten people at a time, which is really amazing. I’m looking forward to it. It’s live streaming on January 11^th at 1:00 PM pacific time, that’ll be 3:00 PM central time. Rick and Irene are so generous and Rick is so personal and easy to talk with, so I’m excited to see what we end up discussing and where it goes.

While this interview today is primarily meant for your Self-realization students or prospective students, I think people might appreciate hearing something about the recent happenings with your quote unquote “day job” at GTSD. Last summer you were promoted to the position of Office Manager for the Encinitas group and also promoted to the role of Clinical Partner. Please tell your viewers what these two positions currently entail and what they may lead to in your professional practice next year.

Okay, well I’m still at Good Therapy San Diego doing psychotherapy. I love it, it’s so fulfilling, and I enjoy seeing my clients and seeing them transform. What I do in therapy is very different than what I do with teaching. With teaching, we’re obviously focused very much on Self-realization and Liberation, whereas in therapy there are some components that can be included in that, and everyone’s on that journey whether they know it or not, but the primary focus in therapy is on my client’s specific individual needs and psychological issues and diagnoses that people have, and helping them reach their personal goals, so it’s very different work, although I do blend the two when it’s appropriate. In terms of my new positions – Encinitas Office Manager – it’s been really fun, I just take care of the general space that we all work in and I love being able to contribute to making that a really comfortable and clean place for my co-workers, the clinicians, and my clients and their clients. And Clinical Partner basically just means that I’m an extra set of hands in the company and I help onboard new co-workers, new therapists, and help them feel comfortable, and that sort of sets me up to potentially become a Supervisor next year, but you never know.

Great. And lastly, all the proceeds of your teaching services are donated to the Rancho Coastal Humane Society. Can you give everyone a donation update on, first of all, how much money you and your students have raised in this first year of teaching and then second, something about the really neat developments that have happened at Rancho Coastal in 2024?

Yeah, it’s been wonderful. They’re a great charity partner. They have a really high rating in terms of ethical responsibility as a charity, and they’re local so I really like taking care of local first before going global. We’ve raised roughly about $1,000 a quarter which brings us to roughly $4,000 in my first year, so these are some good numbers, and then two of those thousands were matched by an anonymous donor at RCHS, so the total goes up to $6,000! I’m really proud of what we’ve done for the animals so far. And I was fortunate to receive an invitation to their ribbon-cutting ceremony on the grounds in October. There was a private tour of all the new facilities that they’re building. They’ve got a beautiful state-of-the-art medical facility, kennels and shelters, food storage, training centers for K9 for police and for seeing eye dogs and for pet-assisted therapy, and things like that. They’re doing important things for the community and also nationally, and I actually got to see it with my own two eyes. I know where the money’s going and it’s got my vote.

And your students they do their work with you strictly on a donation basis, is that right?

Yes everything is donation-based. I actually lose money. I don’t make a penny from the teaching service, it’s just a labor of love, it comes from my heart, and I’m happy to do that.

Great, that’s all the questions I have. Anything else you want to share before we go?

I’d just like to say thanks for an incredible year and I wish you a Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year. Thank you for all the good work that you’re doing on yourself, for your community, and for the world.