About Us
Welcome! You can shift your attention from the activities of your mind to the presence of being, which is LOVE.
Adrienn & Harald are teachers supporting people in their waking up from suffering. They bring their own realisation of the silent mind with an open heart and a variety of skillful means they received from her teachers Gangaji and Eli Jaxon-Bear.
Adrienn & Harald offer private sessions and groups to all who want to be free on whatever level they need that. The approach is down-to-earth honoring the everyday challenges too.
Adrienn and Harald met in Germany, in the town of Baden-Baden in 2011 at the feet of their teachers. Many people from all over Europe came together to see Gangaji and Eli, an enlightened couple and spiritual teachers. Both of them were disciples of H.W.L. Poonja later to be known as Papaji who was a student of Ramana Maharshi, the Sage from the holy mountain of Arunachala.
Being in the presence of Gangaji and Eli was a special and magical place to be. It was a place to rest and to go deep into the truth of oneself, while the trance of everyday life and its troubles could be seen through.
When Adrienn and Harald met, both of them were facing rough times on the personal level in their families. Still, they had the clarity about what had to be done. When they started meeting regularly every day via Skype their connection deepened and they realized the precious gift of finding a true friend in one another. They met each other with an open heart and a silent mind without following the other one into their personal story. Long periods of silence were part of their gatherings which were pure satsangs just like by their teachers Gangaji and Eli. The deep loving support coming from these meetings on skype gave a direction to their relationship and they started visiting each other in person once a month. Two years later Harald brought Adrienn to Austria where they started living together with Harald´s two teenage kids. Adrienn had to learn German, then she found a job at the University and in the meantime, she stepped into the role of a stepmother while suffering from homesickness. The difficulties on the personal level where huge but to focus on their aim to live a life in service of what they have realized let them bear all of the challenges. After their wedding in 2015 in a small countryside village in Hungary, they started meeting people to share their experience.
Our story in photos
About Adrienn
About Harald
The story of this life is a story like any other lives. However, at one point I realized I completely failed on all levels. At that moment I decided to lose it all. But this intention to lose everything became a new story of itself. Seeing this, everything dissolved in an instant. We meet in the silence of the heart.
Lineage
Adrienn & Harald pass on the wisdom of these beautiful teachers:
Gangaji
Born in Texas in 1942, Gangaji grew up in Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Mississippi in 1964, she married and had a daughter. In 1972, she moved to San Francisco where she began exploring deeper levels of her being. She took Bodhisattva vows, practiced Zen and Vipassana meditation, helped run a Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center, and had a career as an acupuncturist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Despite her successes, Gangaji continued to experience a deep and persistent longing for fulfillment. She pursued many paths to change her life including relationship, motherhood, political activism, career, and spiritual practice, but even the greatest of her successes ultimately came up short. In the wake of her disillusionment, she made a final prayer for true help.
In 1990 the answer to her prayer came unexpectedly, taking her to India and to the meeting that would change everything.
There, on the banks of the river Ganga, she met Sri H.W.L. Poonja, also known as Papaji, who opened the floodgates of her self-recognition. In this meeting, Gangaji’s personal story of suffering ended and the promise of a true life began to flower and unfold. Today, Gangaji travels the world speaking to seekers from all walks of life.
A teacher and author, she shares her direct experience of the essential message she received from Papaji and offers it to all who want to discover a true and lasting fulfillment. Through her life and words, she powerfully articulates how it is really possible to discover the truth of who you are and be true to that discovery.
Eli
A life long search for freedom took Eli Jaxon-Bear around the world and into many spiritual traditions from a Zen monastery in Japan to a Sufi circle in Marrakesh, among others. His search ended when he was drawn to India (1990) where he met his final teacher, Sri H.W.L Poonja, lovingly known as Papaji; a direct disciple of the renowned Indian Sage Ramana Maharshi.
Confirming Eli’s realization, his teacher sent him back into the world to share his unique psychological insights into the nature of egoic suffering in support of self-realization.
Eli infuses his teaching with his teacher’s living transmission of silence and peace. He presents a unique map of egoic identification as a vehicle for ruthless self-inquiry and final realization of true freedom. His life is dedicated to passing on the transmission of his teacher.
“If you are sensitive enough and perhaps deep enough it may lead to an existential angst, a sense that there’s something missing, that even though you have been so successful in whatever it is that you have done, you are not happy nor fulfilled. Doing is never enough, because doing never leads to Being. It just simply doesn’t work that way.” Eli
Papaji
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Sri Harilal W. Poonja, or Papaji, as he is affectionately known, was born in the Western Punjab in 1910. His mother was the sister of Swami Rama Tirta, a well known sage and poet. Poonjaji was eight years old when he first experienced the unstoppable bliss of his own infinite nature. As a young man Poonja served in the Indian army. After resigning his commission he began a spiritual quest in search of God, which took him all over India. Everywhere he went he was disappointed, finding only “businessmen disguised as sadhus.”
“Always remember: The thieves of Peace are thieves in an empty house because only imagination suffers. You are peace, that which remains untouched.”
– Papaji
Finally, when he was in his early 30s, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi appeared in a vision and directed him to go to Tiruvannamalai. There, in the presence of Bhagavan, his Master, he ended his search.
After the partition of India, Papaji settled his family in Lucknow. It was there, towards the end of his life, that he began to be discovered by Western devotees. When Gangaji met Papaji in 1990, he was 80 years old. He welcomed her as he welcomed all who came to his door, with eyes that were flashing with truth. Papaji died in 1997.
Ramana
Sri Ramana Maharshi
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi was one of the 20th Century’s most celebrated saints. Born in India in 1879, he spontaneously awakened to his eternal nature at the age of 16. Confronted by his father’s recent death, and overcome with fear for his own, he felt compelled to experience death directly. In his full and profound inquiry into death, he discovered himself to be that life which cannot die.
“What is got afresh will also be lost. What is not permanent is not worth striving for. You are the Self. You are already That!”
– Ramana Maharshi
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