Yoga and Christianity

Q: I’m sick of all the controversy about yoga and Christianity. What is the big deal? I don’t see people bitching about karate clashing with Christianity because it’s tied to a religion (I don’t know if it is - I’m just using that as an example).

A: No big deal—only fear and ignorance, which usually go hand in hand. I think there are some things out there that are genuinely not really good for us to partake in, and that is anything that does not come from love, does not try to ultimately make us better people, and has a lower vibration. But who decides what comes from love, makes us better, and has a high vibration? Only we can decide that for ourselves, because all of us are at different places in our lives. One person might be thrilled that they’re not doing drugs anymore, but they still smoke and drink. Another person might be horrified and say, “Oh, smoking and drinking are terrible for you,” not realizing that this other person has just stepped out of a really low place with the drugs. It’s easy for all of us to sit where we are and judge others. I know I do - it’s a human thing to do. But if we can gently get off our high horses and just look at the whole yoga/Christianity thing, where might that leave us?

In my personal experience, yoga has positively rocked my world on different levels, and I don’t know the first thing about Hinduism, or whatever religion it’s supposed to be intricately connected to. I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t care about Hinduism, but my faith and my spirituality and my ‘religion’ don’t have much to do with the organized, dogmatic side of things - it’s a totally personal, individual journey, between me and whomever or whatever you’d like to call our higher ups (if you believe in higher ups). Can we be empowered to make up our own minds in regards to yoga? Can we try it for ourselves and come to our own conclusions without calling our pastors or priests to ask them what the Truth is? How do they know what your Truth is? They don’t - they only have their own opinions, just like everyone else. Now you may respect someone else’s opinion, but they’re not you, so their viewpoint may not be your viewpoint and so may not be valid for you.

I personally challenge every single person who’s fighting this yoga in the classroom thing to try it, just try it. A while ago I heard about the whole Philip Pullman controversy regarding his Dark Material Series (Golden Compass). I listened to the “he’s trying to kill God” side, then decided to read it for myself so I could have an informed opinion. I read all three books, and I positively loved them! Pullman is a spiritual genius (I think). It’s got nothing to do with what those critics were saying (in my opinion), and on and on. Do you get it? If I’d just listened to the e-mails that were floating around, I’d be spouting someone else’s opinion, and it would be a fallacy, a lie, because it wasn’t actually what I had a direct experience with, but rather what I’d just heard from someone else.

So if you find yourself facing a spiritual dilemma about something, my first invitation is for you to dive right into the opposition and try to understand it from their side. Study Islam if you think it’s evil, study Judaism if you are a Christian and can’t figure out how anyone can’t understand someone not loving Jesus, study the Democratic theory if you’re a Republican and think they’re all wrong. Get educated, then make up your own mind - you’ll really feel grown up and empowered, I think. Not everything that you don’t understand is evil, you know. In the end it’s just something that you don’t understand.