The Announcement

This morning, thirty-three of us disembarked from a private yacht on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. Even writing that sentence feels a little improbable.

For a year and a half, I planned this retreat. And somewhere near the beginning of all that planning, when the idea of chartering an entire yacht was placed before me, I said yes with hardly enough hesitation to qualify as good sense.

Yes.

I would charter the yacht.

Yes, people would come.

Yes, somehow the numbers would work.

This is apparently how I continue to make some of the larger decisions of my life.

I say yes, and then I figure out how to build the bridge beneath my feet.

I talk often about faith over fear, and perhaps faith is easier to discuss when there isn’t a rather substantial financial commitment attached to it. It becomes something altogether different when there are contracts and deposits and thirty-something people depending upon you to know where everyone is supposed to sleep, eat, practice yoga, meditate, swim, explore and somehow arrive home again.

But I believed people would come.

And they did.

Thirty-three of us said yes.

For one extraordinary week we traveled the Dalmatian coast together, waking to the Adriatic outside our windows, practicing, meditating, swimming in water so blue it hardly seemed real, wandering through ancient stone towns, eating long dinners, laughing, reconnecting with old friends and making new ones.

People came from different places in life, carrying different histories, different worries, different joys.

And somehow all those separate roads converged on one boat in Croatia.

There is something sacred about that if you allow yourself to notice it.

We like to think we arrange these things ourselves. We make reservations. We buy airline tickets. We send deposits. We create itineraries. We make lists and then make lists about the lists.

But beneath all our careful arranging there seems to be another current moving.

You can feel it sometimes.

This week I felt it.

And now everyone has gone.

I am sitting alone in a bar in Split, Croatia.

Not because I planned some grand moment of solitude at the end of the retreat. It simply worked out that way. Everyone went in their separate directions and suddenly, after a week of being responsible for thirty-two other people, there was only me.

I sat down.

And then, unexpectedly, I became emotional.

Not sad.

Full.

There is a difference.

I have the peculiar feeling that I am standing on the precipice of something. I cannot see what is on the other side, but I can feel it coming.

Something is changing.

Something great is coming.

I have had this feeling before in my life, usually just before life rearranged the furniture without asking my permission.

Once, that feeling would have frightened me terribly.

It frightens me a little now.

But not enough to make me turn away.

Because perhaps that is one of the gifts of growing older: eventually you recognize that life has been carrying you through every doorway you were certain you could not walk through.

And lately I have had another feeling too.

I feel as though some of the suffering I have carried for a very long time is beginning to loosen its grip.

Not erased.

Not denied.

Just no longer required.

There are things we carry because we believe they are part of us. Old hurts, disappointments, betrayals, fears. We become so accustomed to their weight that we mistake them for our own bones.

And then one day something shifts.

You realize you can put them down.

Maybe healing isn’t always the dramatic thing we imagine it to be.

Maybe sometimes healing is simply discovering that you no longer need the story that once kept you alive.

This morning, somewhere between leaving the yacht and finding myself alone here in Split, I realized something else.

I am ready.

And so, sitting here in Croatia, I have decided it is finally time to formally announce something I have strangely hesitated to say aloud:

The Raja Center is opening.

Our new home for yoga, meditation, Reiki, learning, healing and community is becoming a reality.

And even as I write those words, I understand something I didn’t quite understand before this week.

I am not opening this Center simply because I want one.

I am opening it because somewhere along the way, a community formed.

More than twelve years ago, I opened my first center from a mixture of desperation and inspiration. I needed to create something. I needed a place to teach and grow and gather people together.

And somehow it flourished.

Years later, when I sold The Jiiva Center, I believed I had closed that chapter of my life.

Apparently the chapter had other ideas.

Because the community didn’t disappear.

You followed me.

You followed me into my home.

You came to teacher trainings.

You came to meditation trainings.

You came to Reiki certifications.

You came to retreats.

You came to classes in borrowed and rented spaces.

Again and again, you showed up.

And this past week, thirty-two people entrusted themselves to me and followed me all the way to Croatia.

That is not something I take lightly.

To be trusted with someone’s practice is an honor.

To be trusted with someone’s journey is an honor.

To be trusted with someone’s precious week away from ordinary life is an honor.

And to look around a yacht somewhere in the Adriatic and realize that thirty-two people said, Yes, I’ll go with you,

well.

That does something to a person.

It humbles you.

But it also asks something of you.

It asks you not to shrink from what you are meant to do next.

So perhaps this is my next yes.

The Raja Center is coming.

And it will be much more than a yoga studio.

I want it to be a home.

A place for the person who has practiced for twenty years and the person who has never stepped barefoot onto a yoga mat.

A place for the student who wants to go deeper.

A place for the teacher who wants to continue learning.

A place for meditation, Reiki, yoga, study, conversation, laughter and community.

A place for people who already know where they belong.

And perhaps especially for those who don’t.

A place where someone who feels lost might wander through the door and begin, slowly, to remember themselves.

Because maybe we don’t actually find ourselves.

Maybe we uncover ourselves.

Layer by layer.

Fear by fear.

Story by story.

Until something quiet and steady remains underneath it all.

The part of us that was never really lost.

This week on the Dalmatian coast reminded me of that.

Thirty-three people climbed aboard a yacht carrying thirty-three different lives. For one week we became a little floating community moving between islands beneath the Croatian sun.

And now the boat has emptied.

Everyone is going home.

Soon I will too.

But I don’t believe any of us are returning exactly as we arrived.

That is the secret of every real journey.

You think you are going somewhere.

And somewhere along the way, the journey begins working on you.

So to the thirty-two beautiful Yogis and Yoginis who took this chance with me:

Thank you.

Thank you for your trust.

Thank you for your laughter.

Thank you for your friendship.

Thank you for your courage.

Thank you for reminding me why I do this work.

And thank you for saying yes one more time.

This morning we stepped off our yacht onto the Dalmatian coast and went our separate ways.

And here I sit, alone in a little bar in Split, feeling strangely certain that something has just begun.

I don’t know exactly what is coming.

For once, I don’t need to.

I have spent enough of my life trying to see around corners.

Today I am willing to walk toward the corner without knowing what waits beyond it.

There is a new Center to open.

There is a community waiting for a home.

There is more to teach, more to learn, more to give.

And somewhere beneath all of it is that same quiet current I felt moving beneath our yacht all week, the one that does not ask whether we are ready, only whether we are willing.

I am.

The Raja Center is coming.

And something tells me this is only the beginning.

Hari Om Tat Sat

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