Each one of us is here on earth to wake up to our true nature. This is the fulfillment of the human potential. To be established in the truth of yourself, you must be willing to see the lies and false identity that have been running your whole life. The Enneagram shows us the precise structure of the knot of ego. Awareness is the sword, and the Enneagram reveals the knot that needs to be cut. The Enneagram teaches us how the ego veils true essence. The purpose of learning one’s egoic structure is not to become a better ego, but to wake up to one’s true nature and stop all false identification.

The Enneagram reveals how we have falsely identified ourselves with the physical, emotional, and mental bodies. The core identification is the unexamined belief, “I am somebody.”Once this thought arises, the ego becomes crystallized in the mind, and consciousness experiences itself as limited.

The true self is a limitless expanse of conscious intelligence. The false self is who you subconsciously believe yourself to be, whether grand or low. This false self, which calls itself”me,”is based in ignorance, fear, and greed. These are the primary roots of all fixation.

As long as you are serving egoic selfishness in the name of security, comfort, pleasure, or other drives of fixation, you are betraying the pure loving intelligence that is your true self. As long as you are following particular thoughts in your mind instead of love — as long as you believe the voices in your head instead of the clarity of open consciousness — you are betraying yourself.

Our time together is dedicated to waking up from false identity and realizing your true nature.

Eli Jaxon-Bear’s eighteen-year spiritual search, which took him to various parts of the world, started in 1971, after a profound awakening while a federal fugitive from fighting the war in Vietnam. In 1978 he became the first president of the Tibetan Buddhist Dharma Center in Marin County in Northern California. In 1982 he was presented with a Zen Teaching Fan at ChoShoJi Zen Temple in Japan, and in 1987 he was initiated into a Sufi clan in Morocco.

He met his final teacher, Sri Poonjaji, in India in 1990, and has since dedicated his life to passing on his mentor’s spiritual message.

He currently meets people and teaches through the Leela Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to world peace and freedom through universal selfrealization. In keeping with the philosophy of the Leela Foundation, Eli’s new book, Sudden Awakening into Direct Realization, based on ancient teachings, years of contemplation, and a direct transmission of a silent mind, shows how spiritual awakening can be the springboard for stopping destruction in the world.

A teacher at the Esalen Institute for over twenty years and at the Omega Institute, the nation’s largest holistic learning center, he has taught in many different fields of consciousness evolution.

The author of The Enneagram of Liberation: From Fixation to Freedom, Eli has been writing about and teaching the Enneagram for over a decade. He is the editor of Wake Up and Roar, which is available in ten languages. His audiocassettes include Way of the Bodhisattva and Death as an Ally: Meeting at the Holocaust Museum. Eli’s television show, Meeting with Eli, airs on 30 different stations and is Marin County’s most popular community access show.

The Leela Foundation website is: www.leela.org