The Story Of How Yogi Aaron Founded Blue Osa
Video Transcript: The Story of Blue Osa
This morning I want to talk about a special teaching in yoga. The sanskrit word is Śraddhā, also knows as Shraddha. Shraddha is basically faith.
The basic teaching of Shraddha is that the bigger the faith, the bigger your life.
In other words, the more faith that you have, the more things will happen to you.
The more faith you have, the more likely things are to happen, the bigger your life can be.
It goes back to something I said yesterday that the size of who you are has nothing to do with what you can actually accomplish in life.
I’ve been coming to Costa Rica since 2004 and at around 2005 an idea started to percolate in my consciousness about creating an ashram. Yes, my idea f Blue Osa started out as an ashram.
One day, around 2007 I was leading my third retreat here in Costa Rica and we were driving down this road. The retreat center where we were heading is about 8 Km down this road.
Adam and I were driving by and there was this sing outside, a century 21 sign outside that said “for sale”. So we pulled up to the gate and these very angry dogs come running at us barking their heads off. Then this very angry French woman named Marie came up and basically told us to get lost.
Her exact words were “No! Going away!” We actually told Marie right then and there that if we bought the property her and the dogs had to come with the property. And they are still here. (laughs)
But I like telling the story because this whole process has been about coming back to faith so many times. There have been so many obstacles.
Often times we’ll support each other by reminding each other to have faith.
I think that the the bigger our faith is, the bigger this place can become.
Who knew five years ago that his angry french woman who told us to get lost would become our mother and cook at Blue Osa?
And who knew that these animals would become some of my best friends?
We never know how many times in life we close doors that are open for us, while really all we need to do is walk through those doors and say yes.
I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said “When are we going to say a big hearty yes to our great adventure?”
The great adventure is there for us, but we just need to have faith.
We can cultivate faith in your our yoga practice. Our yoga practice helps us come back to what’s most important, what’s in our hearts.
The Sanskrit words for what’s in our hearts is dharma. What’s your dharma, what is your life path?
I believe many times that when we feel really happy in life, when we are really doing well is because we are in touch with our Dharma.
Adam often jokes with me and says:” If you start doing yoga your life will change”
And it’s true, your life will begin to change because your dharma starts to become more revealed.
And as your dharma becomes more reveled and more clear your faith can become stronger because you have a deep sense of knowing that where you are going is where you are meant to be.
I invite you to start to pay attention and listen.
It’s not that you need to plan anything, answers will just come from a deep place of stillness. Answers do no come from trying to wrangle anything out of you.
I get most inspired from my calmest and quietest moments in my yoga practice, when my mind is completely still.
In those moments I realize that I begin to hear something much deeper, much more profound and sweeter.
Two days ago I talked about this idea of coming back to stillness. The yogis call this stillness Anahata, which means unstruck sound.
So when we meditate we start to hear the unstruck sound of Nara, Nara means nothingness.
So you can’t try to wrangle it out of yourself, you actually need to surrender that idea and put it into the fire. Let it just come when it comes.
