04.28.08
Posted in Podcasts, Sunday Satsangs at 8:11 pm by David Bruce Hughes
This is our first live Satsang webcast from our wilderness ashram in Las Margaritas village on Lake Catemaco.
We had a blast doing this, especially at the end when we brought out the Lion and He started playing the keyboard… well you just have to watch it through to catch the moment. Sorry about the skips in the second half; we had a bad tape with lots of data errors. We’re getting a whole new case of tapes this week so it won’t happen again. Enjoy!
love,
Baba
Sunday Satsang 28 April 2008:
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04.23.08
Posted in Community News at 5:38 pm by David Bruce Hughes
First of all I have to apologize for neglecting to send out a newsletter last month. We were traveling and setting up the new Lake Catemaco retreat center for our Master Course Wilderness Retreat. The big news is that our retreat center is all set up and ready to receive visitors! I also have plenty of other announcements; we have been very active and have lots of new stuff to share. We just got satellite Internet and are back online daily to answer your questions about spiritual life on our forums.
Catemaco Lake Camp and Retreat Center Now Receiving Guests!
Florian and I left Mexico City the first week of March to find a suitable site for our retreat center. Well, Krsna guided us directly to a wonderful paradisical place: Lake Catemaco in Veracruz. Within a short time we were able to secure locations for both a retreat camp and a temple house. The last few weeks we have been busy setting everything up and preparing to receive visitors. The whole story, with lots of new pictures, is in the daily Journal I kept during the last two months.
We are now ready to receive guests. You can stay at our Lake Camp or if you prefer, at nearby ecotourist cabins. Either way you will benefit from the pure environment, clean water and good energy of this remote unpolluted village. Plus you will get to associate with dedicated devotees who are following the powerful process of the ancient Esoteric Teaching of the Vedas. You will learn spiritual practices that will uplift your consciousness, and study the Vedic philosophy of the Absolute Truth with real experts.
This is not an ordinary vacation site or tourist trap. There are no bars, restaurants or other nonsense here. We are far from the nearest town, at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by miles of wilderness, in a small traditional community that has practiced organic agriculture for generations. The local people are simple, happy and pious, and we are not here for sense enjoyment but to worship God in a pure environment. If you would like to visit, the best preparation is to get involved in our online community, register and study the courses on our site, and participate in the Forum discussions. For reservations and more info, please contact Babaji directly by replying to this email.
Major Site Update
I have made a major update to the main Esoteric Teaching website, including a big new article describing the Lake Catemaco retreat center with tons of new pictures, and also a repost of the article about my 2001-2002 solo chanting retreat in Hawaii. I also added verbatim transcriptions of the new 2008 San Diego Seminar, Ayurveda: Healing the Soul and Esoteric Teaching Introductory Seminar videos. I think these transcriptions add a lot of value to the videos, and extend my thanks and appreciation to the devotees who kindly helped out with the work. More transcriptions of the Bhagavad-gita and other video series are on the way, so stay tuned.
Donation Thanks
I want to express my gratitude and appreciation to all the devotees who made significant contributions to our Catemaco Retreat Center project: first of all Uddhava Prabhu, without whose kind and generous support this entire Esoteric Teaching school would be merely a glint in my eye; Florian, who took the risk of quitting school and coming all the way from Germany to ride into the jungle with me on El Burro and help me set up the new center; Conor, whose generous donation, good humor and sense of adventure have made our journey much more pleasant; Neville, whose generous donation made it possible to set up our satellite Internet connection much sooner than would have been possible otherwise; Carl and several others who made generous financial contributions; and finally all the well-wishers who have encouraged us at every step of the way. I cannot thank you enough with mere words; so please come and visit so that I can personally throw you in the lake!
Stats
Stats over the last six weeks have been flat or declining as we have been offline for so long. Hopefully now that we have satellite Internet and can be online every day, this will change. We will continue our low-key promotion on forums dealing with spiritual topics. Our YouTube channel continues to do well, with over 230,000 views and 503 video subscribers. We have about 200 students registered on our course site, and 530 subscribers to this newsletter.
AskBaba
As always, we welcome your questions and community participation on our public Forum. We also have a new web application called AskBaba, containing the most frequently asked questions and answers from our Forum, as well as the ability to search the complete books of Srila Prabhupada. Check it out!
Esoteric Teaching Seminars Online
Don’t forget to visit us at Esoteric Teaching Seminars, your online spiritual education resource. It’s a living esoteric school that you can access right from your computer. Take advantage of this great resource and join us online for some very enlivening spiritual discussions. Oh and don’t forget, we are always available to answer your spiritual questions!
All the best in spiritual life, - Baba
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- David Bruce Hughes,
- Master Teacher
- om namo bhagavate vasudevaya
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