Finding Purpose Through Karma Yoga: A Journey from Marine Biology to the Heart

love it.

It's so beautiful.

Thank you so much for those contributions, for real.

I'm sure it's going to resonate with a lot of people listening to us.

Spanda, orienting the conversation a little on the karma yoga, selfless service.

I know that was one of the topics that you wanted to talk about also.

How...

Did your experience as a marine biologist and in the conservation teach you about selfless service without you even knowing that it was a thing or it was a part of karma yoga? But what was that experience that you were having and that you understood afterwards?

Well, I feel it's deeply connected with a purpose.

I work since I had 13 years old because I choose to because I wanted to be autonomous but I was working for money and when I graduated from university I had that deep longing of no now it's not about money anymore now it's about attach myself to something that is bigger than me something that driven me and I found that driven force in the conservation that's why I also started to work with it And yes, there are many challenges in this field now.

It's a field that is not so valued by society.

There is not many funds.

There is not many people supporting.

So you have to work for three people.

You have to work without so much financial stability.

The places that you live are not the most comfortable in the world.

so within all these challenges and within this sense of purpose there was a lot of this sense of selfless service and many people would many of my friends and people that I would know they would say you're crazy why are you doing this why Why are you working in such a place? Why are you working as a volunteer without receiving the money that we are earning with our work? Why are you subjecting yourself to this and i always respond because it's what my car my heart is asking me to do is that sense of deep purpose and this is the full of my life is this enthusiasm because before i was working and i enjoy and i have fun but that sense of deep enthusiasm wasn't there if the situation was not ideal i would leave that work i was changing from work to work very fast but when i got there and when i had that sense of enthusiasm any challenge that would be presented i would face it with enthusiasm i would face with a lot of joy a lot of curiosity how can i navigate through this no um and also that sense of not being attached with the outcomes because the project was so huge there were so many things to be done and if i got attached to everything that we need to do with so little resources i would be anxious the whole day so that helped me to brought me in presence and to do every task with a lot of presence to kind of compartmentalize Make compartments of time and just focusing on that.

If I was patrolling the beach, I would just focus on patrolling the beach and do everything I could to do the best I could doing that.

If I was building a nest for a turtle, I would do that with all my presence.

so that bring me a lot that sense of being here and now and that was what i read in Eckhart Tolle book and that was the practice of that to be present there and when i had that sense of enthusiasm inside of me i had infinite energy and i say this because i would sleep for example in costa rica i was coordinating the project with another person with a woman and we would sleep like between three and five hours per night because at night we would patrol the beach to to find turtles making nests and in that beach people they were opportunists so they were not hunting for eggs but if they saw there was a nest there and they were passing by that they would take the eggs because the eggs are very valuable they sell as a for this year for japan so people see as a good opportunity of making income no So we would patrol the beach for four hours every night in different shifts.

And during the day I was coordinating the project, I was taking care of the volunteers of the project, I was doing activities, taking care of the garden.

So I was almost no sleeping, but the energy was infinite.

I never had such amount of energy in my life.

until it was coming from something beyond my ego now I can see because the ego has a limited amount of energy but when we are connected with the source we have infinity amount of energy and that was the proof for me and I fully understood that when I arrived in Hridayah and I learned about consciousness about all this source of energy and how I could also tap into it meditating, but in there I was tapping into it in my daily life.

That was integrated, it was fully embodied in me because there was that sense of deep, deep enthusiasm about what I was doing there.