Ashram Celebration - 09.10.11

Excerpt:  “In our modern world we have lost the joy of living with nature.  We have become so alienated in these cities with their pollution and there artificiality and now even more so with the internet and the media we are several steps removed from the real of life...  So an Ashram is a chance to get back to our real values….  Soon enough people will come to realize that food doesn't grow in the supermarkets and they will be surprised to find that there is nothing on the shelves…  Only then we will remember that food comes from farms and from people getting their hands dirty in the soil and from milking cows and from living in harmony with nature and following the laws of nature… It is because we have arrogantly tried to deny those and control those - and even genetically modify the products of nature - that we are suffering the karmic blow-back of that arrogance….  So an ashram is a humble effort to come back to our roots….   You have to be very humble to get down on your knees and dig in the garden, and yet that is where the power comes from - and that is where life comes from…  So by being willing to be humble and to live humble lives we are becoming empowered again….  Yoga is a science of consciousness, but it is also the art, and the art requires skill to silence the false consciousness of the ego mind in order to receive the energy and the power of the True Self…  The Real Self is there, it is within you now it is always there, but we don’t have access to it because the ego mind clouds it over….  So an Ashram is a place to recover that peace - that deep peace which resolves all of the questions and confusions and depressions and anxieties that everyone is plagued with today…” Recorded on the evening of Saturday, September 10, 2011.”