The Eli Effect Podcast #5

Eli Effect, synchronicities, psychodrama, healing work, mentors, rebirthing breathwork, Kabbalah, hero’s journey, surrender, soul purpose

Driven by an inner force known as the “Eli Effect,” Eli’s life unfolded like a strategic chessboard where synchronicities and unexpected connections continually guided his personal growth and healing. Through accepting various calls to action—from overcoming addiction with psychodrama therapy to studying shamanism, breathwork, and Kabbalah—he encountered key mentors and experiences that shaped his path. By surrendering to this greater guidance rather than resisting it, Eli discovered his true soul purpose and learned to continuously evolve into a role dedicated to helping others.

Initial Awakening and Healing Work

• Accidental attendance at an OnSite psychodrama workshop during his period of cocaine addiction served as a major catalyst for Eli’s personal transformation.
• Psychodrama therapy, based on Dr. Moreno’s principle that what is learned in action must be unlearned with new action, emphasizes breaking repetitive cycles.
• Clearing out internal “gunk” or doing deep healing work (“mud work”) is essential to increasing the odds of successfully realizing one’s soul purpose.

Mentors and Synchronous Connections

• Working with psychodrama supervisor Marlene Waldner led to meeting Vic and Sue Harwood, who were eventually brought to Indiana to host local workshops.
• Attending a 1997 holistic workshop introduced Eli to foundational practices in shamanism and Reiki.
• Participation in a two-week body lab led to a connection with Susan, a dance movement therapist who subsequently introduced Eli to body therapy, Rolfing, and Internal Family Systems therapy with Dick Schwartz.

Expansion into Breathwork and Esoteric Studies

• Training with Bob Fussell in California provided instruction in the Flower of Life Merkaba meditation as well as rebirthing breathwork to clear emotional baggage.
• Guidance from Drunvalo led Eli to explore Kabbalah, while connections with Ron and Lisa Holt involved experiences in Mexico focused on dolphin consciousness and extraterrestrial connections.
• Moving to Colorado after answering a call from a friend named Roxanne led to meeting Rainbow Eagle and subsequently studying Kabbalah with Joel, culminating in the co-creation of the pineal meditation.

Surrender and Embracing Soul Purpose

• Conceptually tied to Michael Singer’s The Surrender Experiment and the movie Yes Man, surrendering to unseen guidance allows unexpected destiny and opportunities to unfold.
• The journey detailed in the Eli Effect memoir illustrates how initial experiences continuously fractal out into new connections, learning, and personal growth.
• Discovering and living out a soul purpose offers a deep, internal fulfillment that traditional 3D reality experiences cannot match.

Hola! Welcome to podcast number five, talking about the Eli Effect book. How are you guys doing today? So, I’m finishing up chapter two today, talking about how the Eli Effect was in my life when I was younger, how it was developing and getting created. And today I want to talk about how life looks like a chessboard, like we’re getting moved on the chessboard, even though we think we’re making the moves. And we do make some moves, but it’s just all these serendipities or synchronicities show up. And this happens, that happens, and you’re going to see what I explained today. I’m still in awe of this, because I actually, in a later chapter, I have a chapter about my chessboard, the 34 life events from the age of 18 to my early 60s, where I was getting moved, but I didn’t see it all at the time, unfortunately. But today I can look back and say, holy cow, that’s amazing. So, one thing I want to start with, and I ended last podcast talking about my cocaine addiction. But one thing that came out of this, you know, there’s always a backside and a front side. You have to work on the backside. You have to do your healing work, and then you get to see the front side of things. So, back in the day when I was using, I would, Friday was like, celebration, I’m off, I got the weekend to party and get high and all that. So, there was a workshop that Friday that, it was local, I was going to go to, and I figured I’d get out early, I could start partying early. Well, this is how it works. The workshop was put on by a company called OnSite. They did psychodrama therapy. So, I go to this workshop, and I’m watching this video, this psychodrama, and I’m bawling like a baby. Because it was about a woman who was a social worker struggling with an alcohol addiction, where here I’m sitting there with a cocaine addiction. You know, sort of ignoring it. And it just really woke something up in me. It’s like, damn, I’m similar to her. You know, she’s female, I’m a male. But it was funny how I got drawn to that class, that seminar, thinking I was going to get off early. And no, no, no. That thing inside that, you know, was tricking me, got me to go. So, the Eli effect, or whatever you want to call yours, uses synchronicities to move us on her chessboard. If we’re open, if we can say yes, and we’ll talk about that in a second. The other thing that will help increase the odds is doing your healing work. I call it the mud work. If you’re not willing to get down in the mud and clear it all out, the odds of you of pulling this off, of living out your Eli effect, whatever it is for you, are going to be reduced significantly. Because we’re so programmed, we’ve got so much gunk inside. And Dr. Marino was the creator of Psychodrama, which I did for seven years with my healing work and then became a Psychodrama therapist. But what he says is, what’s learned in action must also be unlearned with new action. You have to develop new patterns, new behaviors, and work through it. Because if you don’t, you keep doing the Groundhog Day. You keep doing what you’ve always done. So, on this journey of mine, all these other teachers, mentors show up. So, when I did the on-site, I actually went to South Dakota to spend their eight days in their treatment. And that’s kind of when I got sober because a lot of stuff I became aware, but I needed that healing work. Well, when I came back, I was looking around the Chicago area for a Psychodrama therapist. Well, there was a lady in Illinois named Marlene Waldner, and her and her husband, Bill, were doing these workshops. So, I went and did a few with them. Marlene eventually became my supervisor as a Psychodrama therapist. We had a really deep connection. But at her workshops, I met another couple, the Harwoods. They’re from Oregon. And we hit it off, Vic and Sue, we hit it off. So, we started flying them in here to Indiana to do workshops, which gave me a chance to do a lot of it for free because, you know, it was at my office. We had that going. This is how it works. The mentors appear to support our journeys. Now, we don’t always know why this, like Vic and Sue and Marlene and Bill Waldner. I didn’t know, you know, when I went to that seminar so I could leave early, maybe get high, I had no idea what was coming out of the trees, what was going to fall out on top of me. So, your mentors are going to appear to support your journey. You’ve got to stay open to that. The other synchronicity, a cool one, was in 1997, a friend of mine named John got me to go to a holistic workshop in Indianapolis. Talked about it. Well, that’s three hours away from where I live. So, I said, yeah, I can pull that off. It’s really a cool workshop. But there, I tried two things I had never even really learned about. One was shamanism, doing a journey, and the other one was Reiki. So, I tried that there. There was a lot of other cool holistic things, but those two really stuck with me. So, by going to that workshop with John, answering the call, saying yes, that opened me to two other things that really moved me along. And because of my affiliation with Marlene Waldner, who was talking about a body lab up in Wisconsin, it was a two-week body lab where you do healing body work and breath work and cool things like that. So, of course, being the yes man that I like to be sometimes on my good days, I went, I signed up, I went. And shortly, when I got there, I met this young woman named Susan. And she was really fun, energetic in that. And she was a dance movement therapist. So, we became friends for several years. But my connection with Susan brought three new people into my life. One was a guy named Jerry who taught me body therapy, bioenergetics. Another was a gentleman from Minnesota who was doing roughing, which is like massages on steroids. It’s really deep getting into the muscles in that. And then the other thing eventually was internal family systems therapy with Dick Schwartz. Because Susan was in Chicago and she told me about this amazing weekend workshop, internal family systems therapy, which is basically you work with sub-personalities. So, by connecting to Marlene, took me to Susan, got me to these guys. And going back to my friend John, who was in a lot of holistic healing work, he told me about a guy in California named Bob Fussell that was talking and teaching Flower of Life, which is a form of meditation by Drunvalo, and rebirthing. So, I flew to California to do a three-day workshop with Bob. And learned about Flower of Life and the things that came from that, but also got intrigued by rebirthing, which is breath work. Deep breath work, you’re hyperventilating. So, I went back to California eventually to learn that, did a couple sessions, and got trained in that. The thing I like about rebirthing is it’s a really easy way, although it’s hard work, to clear the mud, the gunk that’s stuck in your emotional bodies, your mental bodies, just through breathing. But Bob also turned me on to the Flower of Life, where I learned how to do the Merkava meditation. And then I did a couple of workshops with Drunvalo, the creator of Flower of Life. And Drunvalo is the guy that told me, “Tom, you want to study and learn Kabbalah.” You know, this was back in the, you know, late 90s, somewhere in there. And I probably had to look up Kabbalah, what is that? And then from that, I met another couple, Ron and Lisa Holt, and they were teaching Flower of Life and other things. And so, because of our connection, we ended up doing a two week thing in Mexico, connecting with dolphin consciousness, which was really fun. And then learn how to connect with extraterrestrials. So, you’re seeing how these connections go. And then in 2004, my friend Roxanne, who I had met in Colorado earlier at a shamanic workshop, made the call. “Hey, you want to come and live in Colorado? One of the log cabins is for rent.” So, after sitting with that, doing a couple of journeys to see if that was right, I did answer the call. And that’s what Joseph Campbell talks about in his hero’s journey. You’ve got to be willing to answer the call. Well, headed to Colorado, knowing one person. And within two weeks, Rainbow Eagle was there. He was one of our Native American teachers. He was a twin too, so he and I had a special connection. I went over to see him and he and his wife, but they were sitting there with a man named Joel. And so I introduced myself, you know, walked out of the meeting because I was embarrassed. I, you know, just walked in. Well, after the meeting, Rainbow Eagle came over and said, “Tom, you want to study with this guy?” I said, “Well, why is that?” He said, “Because he knew that I was interested in Judaism.” And that, what Drunval had said, he said, “This guy spent years studying this stuff in Israel.” So I think you want to learn with him. Well, lo and behold, I got ahold of Joe and I studied with him the time I was in Colorado. Joe really opened me up to the Kabbalah, which is the deeper part of Judaism, explaining how the reality works in that. But Joel and I also became really good friends besides he was my teacher. And then he and I got together back in 2006. I flew to Colorado to visit him and I was teaching him some things and some of his students, the breath work in that. And he and I put together the pineal meditation, which is a very powerful meditation using DMT and things like that. So you see Rainbow and then Joel. And then going back to an old friend of mine, Kendra, who’s been in my life for 20 years now. She spent some time in 2022 studying, going to workshops with Dr. Joe Dispenza. And she got ahold of me and said, “Hey, this is somebody I think you’re going to be interested in learning from.” And she eventually did a third workshop and was a guest speaker using Joe’s meditations to heal things in our body. So all of these things I just shared with you and bear with me. I apologize if that was a lot or, you know, I’m bouncing around. But as I look at my chessboard, how it went from here to here to here, all these connections, you know, here I meet Roxanne and I think 1999 and five years later, she’s calling to go to Colorado. I met Kendra, you know, back 2006 or something. And here it is 2022 and she’s turning me on to Joe Dispenza. It’s just how life works. The trick to this whole thing, folks, and this is the hard part. Michael Singer wrote a book called The Surrender Experiment. I highly recommend it. It’s his story about how he surrendered to everything. It’s kind of like the Jim Carrey movie. Just, you know, he had to answer the call, answer the call. It’s called Yes Man. So Jim Carrey took it to the 10th degree about saying yes to everything. Michael Singer resisted nothing. And his goal and mission in life was to buy five acres of land in Florida, which he did in his early twenties. And he was going to meditate and do yoga for the rest of his life. That was his mission. And today, Michael Singer is a little older than me. He owns a multi-billion dollar insurance billing business, which he never imagined would happen. But because of his surrendering life, he was a, that was a, that just came in there. That was part of his destiny. Well, that’s kind of like what the Eli effect is for me and for you. You surrender to something you can’t see, touch, know, or smell that inner voice, that inner force, whatever it is. Cause some of the things I did, I’ve done, you know, I’m looking, I’m saying, are you crazy or what? But as I look back now that I’m older, I’m so glad I did that because of all these amazing things that I’ve learned, the things I can do to help people, things I learned to help myself. And that’s why the Eli effect book talks about discovering your soul purpose and being able to live it out. Okay. Now it’s my story. It’s my memoir, but it’s your story too. I just wanted to write about it to show you what you’re capable of. Cause I’m a, I’m a knucklehead from Cal city growing up in Illinois. I had no idea I’d be sitting here at 75 doing podcasts and talking about a book I wrote, but that’s how it works. It just fractals out, fractals out, fractals out. The end is rooted in the beginning, which we’ll get into in the next podcast, how this all fractals out. You don’t know what’s in there until the right situation comes up and then the flower blooms and you’re going to have many flowers in your life blooming. So this leads to this leads to this leads to this. And it’s still going on. You know, now I’m looking into some other new things. I’m not going to bore you with now to be able to help people with certain kinds of meditations and that I’m always learning and growing and that’s what we’re here to do. But when you know what your purpose is, you’ve got an extra energy inside because that’s what gets me up in the morning. You know, this 3d reality gets boring after a while. You know, you can only win so many scratch offs, go on so many vacations or, you know, do this or do that. Your soul purpose fills you up with something that this 3d reality can’t. All right. God bless you guys. And I’ll be in touch soon for chapter 3 on how the end is always rooted in the beginning. God bless you.