My teacher: Eli Jaxon Bear

                           1996-Now















 

At the young age of 18, I left Ireland to travel the world. I was guided by grace to Lucknow, India where I met Sri. Hwl Poonja, commonly known as Papaji. Papaji stopped my mind and showed me the truth of Infinite Consciousness.

I spent several months immersed in Silence in Papaji's presence. I would attend his satsang gatherings
daily and eat lunch with him at his house whenever he invited us over. 

After 8 months I ran out of money, my visa expired and I was forced to return to Ireland.  The day that I was leaving, I asked Papaji for his blessing and guidance and expressed my dismay about having to leave him.

He laughed out loud and and asked me "who is going where exactly? I am your own Self, where can I go ?" I laughed aloud too and got what he was saying. This realization to this day has never left me.

That was my last teaching from Papaji. After I left India, I was to never see him in form again despite my feverent efforts to return as quickly as I could. Papaji passed away soon after I left. Thousands of his students, including me, felt his passing. His Shakti was very big.

I traveled to California from Ireland to earn some money so that I could get back to India quickly. One day a friend of mine was going out to Stinson beach to sit with one of Papaji's students named Eli who was giving Satsang. She invited me along. I was in the process of getting ready to leave America and return to India but she convinced me to come meet him first.

I was really surprised when I walked in the door and found out that the man giving Sat sang was Eli "Jaxon" Bear, Papaji's student. Papaji had mentioned his name once to me, calling him, "a young boy named jaxon" when I asked him if he had any students teaching in the West that he recommended me seeing. He did not mention Eli's first name to me in India. I was blown away by the serendipidy of it.

Eli welcomed me as a son and a gift from his teacher Papaji. He looked like Papaji's twin and was very similar to Papaji. I instantly felt a strong connection to him on some level, it felt Karmic. I decided to stay for a while as my plans to go and be with Papaji had been shattered by his death.  15 years later I am still here :) 

Eli has played the role of a loving father figure and spiritual teacher for me for years. I am so grateful for this. On a teaching level I needed Eli's insight and guidance to further deepen Papaji's teaching as he was an older student of Papaji and clearly was more awake than I was. 

His first gift to me was his teaching of the Enneagram as a support for awakening. His second gift was the therapeutic tools of NLP and hypnosis as a support for unresolved childhood issues. His third gift was Tai Chi, a physical practice to ground me more fully into a life of self discipline.

After seeing how passionately I had taken to Tai Chi, Eli formally introduced me to his Taoist Master Y.C. Chiang and his old Kung fu brother, one of Master Chiang's most senior students, Fu Tung Cheng. I began studying Tai Chi at Master Chiangs Wen Wu school and was very fortunate to have learned the form from him right before he retired. Once he retired, I went to study with Fu Tung at the Berkeley Buddhist Monestary and continued to train at the Wen Wu school learning Northern Shaolin. At that time Eli had me lead Tai Chi at all of his retreats in the US and I would meet with him weekly and practice on a regular basis in order to support his health at the time.

I have been with Eli as my primary Master and teacher for over 12 years while apprenticing under my Gong Fu teacher Master Fu Tung Cheng. At the monastery Fu Tung tested my commitment to the practice for months before letting me in to study with him. He ignored me for the first several weeks often telling me to sit and watch. He then challenged me with the infamous "chin to toe" stretch in 100 days. Most people I know would have left and not come back after that.

I was the only one of Fu Tungs students to reach the infamous "chin to toe stretch" in less than 100 days. I spent over 5 years immersed in the internal martial art practices at the Buddhist monastery.

My martial art background started in Ireland where I was a featherweight boxer for a community boxing club from the young age of 11 till 15. I also studied Wado Rye style Karate in my teens aswell as Irish Gaelic Football and haver always been very physically oriented towards sports and exercise. This all prepared me well for my gongfu training in the US.

My Gong fu training was very serious and of a traditional nature. Fu Tung began teaching at 6:00 a.m. and expected you to be there and warmed up by the time he got there. I had an hour commute to the monastery, so I was up at 4:00 a.m to get to the monastery at 5:00. During this period I purposely started working with an old Irish friend in San Francisco who owned a moving company so that I could augment my training and work on external power development. Part of this training involved lifting and running with heavy pieces of furniture and book boxes up and down several flights of stairs for hours a day in the hills of San Francisco, after morning and evening sessions at the monastery.

After Eli got wind of my level of devotion to my gong fu practice he suggested I erase the imaginary line I had drawn between my practice and my life. It was then I came out of my monastic Taoist existence and returned to my life fully.

 I began competing in push hands at the competition level and tai chi form demonstrations at the U.C. Berkeley annual internal martial arts tournament in order to test my skills. I won two gold medals for push hands and a silver for form demonstration at the 2005, 2006 & 2007 UC Berkeley tournaments.
 While in the Bay area I also founded the Inner freedom program bringing tai chi into incarcerated youth at Juvenile Halls all over the Bay area. 

Currently I live in Ashland Oregon with my wife Anna. I have been asked by my teachers to share these practices formally with others.