Christian Yoga Magazine

St. John of the Cross was a Christian mystic and friar from sixteenth century Spain. As a mystic, he strived for union with God by the surrender of the soul to the inner workings of the Spirit. Such surrender allows for the soul to be tempered like metal in a furnace — the result being the death of the ego or false self. Unencumbered then by the world, the devil and the flesh, the soul is free to enjoy loving union with God.

When St. John wrote the above poem, Songs of the Soul, he was in prison for his attempts to reform the Carmelite order. While in prison, he was treated so poorly that he was near death by the time he managed to escape. Unbeknownst to his captors, however, he spent his time in his cell in communion with the Spirit of God. His jailor, recognizing his holiness, gave him the means to express himself on paper. The result is the above poem, an outpouring of unhindered love and yearning of the soul for God.

Later, John was asked to explain what the poem meant, since it could easily be misinterpreted as a poem about two lovers having a secret rendezvous in the night. The Dark Night of the Soul was then composed to explain, line by line, what the poem intended.

The Dark Night is a careful examination of what it is like to experience the death of the ego. Many people of the modern era have misinterpreted the work to be an encouragement for someone going through hard times. This renders the work to have too restricted a scope. St. John is attempting to explain how the Holy Spirit goes about perfecting the soul after it has accepted the gift of salvation through Christ Jesus. It is a painful annihilation of the individual will in favor of the will of God and the purging of every desire until the only thing the soul longs for is God. The book encompasses the darkest, most painful parts of the Christian journey towards maturity in Christ.

Given this backdrop, it is important to mention that he breaks the process into two “Dark Nights.” The first he calls the purgation of sense, where the soul is purified of its attachments to the pleasures of the world. In it, the soul feels separated from the Spirit whose consolations it has come to adore. God seems distant, and the pleasures of the world no longer appeal to it. The soul is taught how to follow God for God’s sake, instead of for “What God can do for me.” The first night cleanses the soul of the vices associated with attachments to sense, including pride, self-condemnation, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and laziness.

The second night, a much darker, more painful night, is the purgation of the spirit. Here, God gets to the root of the problem, the infiltration of sin and corruption deep within the soul. The second night seems unbearable and the soul feels abandoned by God: “Loving God so intensely that nothing else matters, she sees herself as so wretched that God could not possibly love her back” (Book II, Chap. 7).

St. John describes this second night like a purging fire:
“Let’s look at this loving knowledge and divine light like fire. Fire transforms wood into fire. When fire touches wood, the first thing it does is that it begins to dry the wood out. It drives away moisture, causing the wood to shed the tears it has held inside itself. Then the wood blackens, turning dark and ugly; it may even give off a bad odor. Little by little, the fire desiccates the wood, bringing out and driving away all those dark and unsavory accidents that are contrary to the nature of fire. Finally, heating up and enkindling the wood from the outside, the fire transforms the wood into itself, rendering the wood as beautiful as the fire is”(Book II, Chap. 10).

Dark Night of the Soul is a heavy work, not to be read lightly. For sure, the holiness St. John reached in his lifetime is a gift few receive. There is a tendency for the reader to wonder where on the path to Godly union they can be found; to try and find themselves in the book. Perhaps the best route for us all is to abandon ourselves into the care of the Spirit; to be at peace first with where we are and next with wherever he will take us. If union with God is our goal, we are on the right path.

“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Jesus Christ, Mat 16:25).

Songs of the Soul

On a dark night,

Inflamed by love-longing–

O exquisite risk!–

Undetected I slipped away.

My house, at last, grown still.

Secure in the darkness,

I climbed the secret ladder in disguise–

O exquisite risk!–

Concealed by the darkness.

My house, at last, grown still.

 

That sweet night: a secret.

Nobody saw me;

I did not see a thing.

No other light, no other guide

Than the one burning in my heart.

 

This light led the way

More clearly than the risen sun

To where he was waiting for me

–The one I knew so intimately–

In a place where no one could find us.

 

O night, that guided me!

O night, sweeter than sunrise!

O night, that joined lover with Beloved!

Lover transformed in Beloved!

 

Upon my blossoming breast,

Which I cultivated just for him,

He drifted into sleep,

And while I caressed him,

A cedar breeze touched the air.

 

Wind blew down from the tower,

Parting the locks of his hair.

With his gentle hand

He wounded my neck

And all my senses were suspended.

I lost myself. Forgot myself.

I lay my face against the Beloved’s face.

Everything fell away and I left myself behind,

Abandoning my cares

Among the lilies, forgotten.

John of the Cross, translated by Mirabai Starr

 

“Heaven will last,
Earth will endure.
How can they last so long?
They don’t exist for themselves
And so can go on and on.
So wise souls
Leaving self behind
Move forward,
And setting self aside
Stay centered.
Why let the self go?
To keep what the soul needs.”
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, #7, “Dim Brightness”

Reading Lao Tzu reminded me of my experience of the Spirit in meditation. While abiding in the Spirit, peace and stillness is always at hand. There, contentment is a natural state; pressures from the outside world dissolve. The now is all that matters, and it is easy to recognize that past and future are mere shadows and figments of the imagination. Lao Tzu expanded that inner world, and I could see the bigger picture. I recognized the ways of God beyond myself.

In Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu captures the flow of creation in the embrace of the Creator and puts it into words. Written somewhere between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, this sacred Chinese scripture is the basis for Taosim and highly influential in the Buddhist sphere. It is one of the most translated texts in the world, boasting over 250 translations. It is said to have been written by a scribe named Lao Tzu, or “Old Master.”

Through his poetry, Lao Tzu gives the reader a glimpse of God by exploring the way God moves and works in the world. God, called Tao (the Way), is nameless and indescribable, intangible yet the constant source of the tangible. This Tao flows and moves effortlessly, and by just being, causes all things to take place perfectly. The wise soul, or sage, never fights against this natural flow (Heb 3:15), but instead flows with it. These divine attributes are mirrored in Biblical passages:

• Indescribable: “Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!” (Rm 11:33).
• Intangible: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,” (Jn 4:24).
• The source of the tangible: “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him,” (Jn 1:1-3).
• Flows and moves effortlessly: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” (Jn 3:8). (Note: the same Greek word means both wind and spirit.)

But although the topic is weighty, the Tao Te Ching never comes across that way. It deals with the most profound and sometimes even contradictory thoughts, but it does so in a lighthearted manner. Although similar to James 1:19, I found myself laughing when I read the following:

23 Nothing and not

Nature doesn’t make long speeches.
A whirlwind doesn’t last all morning.
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day.
Who makes the wind and rain?
Heaven and earth do.
If heaven and earth don’t go on an on,
Certainly people don’t need to.

Or the simple line, “To live till you die is to live long enough” (33).

Lao Tzu is at home in humility (Pro 8:12-13), and speaks of it in an unfamiliar way – as a path to true leadership. In many of his poems he advises leaders to become like water: molding and moving around the obstacles in its path with softness; willing to go to the lowest places. When he speaks of the greatest kind of leader in poem 17, he says they, “are hardly known to their followers,” which reminds the reader of God himself, willing to remain unseen yet leading all of heaven and earth.

The emphasis in the text remains firmly in the yin, or the female, quiet, meek and nurturing characteristics of all things, and Lao Tzu views these attributes as foundational. This echoed the personification of Wisdom as a female in the Proverbs. The yang, yin’s natural opposite (male, loud, strong, active), is reduced to something to understand and make use of if it makes sense to do so, like it is a tool. War and violence, clearly yang in their nature, are repulsive to Lao Tzu.

The irony of the Tao Te Ching is its ability to remain simple and complex all at once. The language comes across as almost elementary, speaking of nature and simple objects, yet the contradictions it offers invite the reader to pause and give it deeper thought. This is much like paradoxical scriptures such Proverbs 26:4-5, or Matthew 12:30 with Mark 9:40. It is full of wonderful truths put in ways seldom encountered in the West, but it won’t spoon-feed the reader. It rather plants a seed and lets the wise soul watch it grow.

Amy Arias is an instructor for the Holy Yoga Foundation, a non-profit organization that sends out teachers the world over to teach Christian yoga in their communities. She also writes a blog at JesusIsMyGuru.com, a site about all things Jesus and yoga

Some people think Christian yoga makes about as much sense as Jewish chemistry… or Islamic mathematics. It’s a fundamental category error. Yoga, at least as practiced in the west, is a system of physical and mental exercises that has nothing to do with Christianity, these critics say. Go to church. And go to yoga class if you must. But certainly don’t mix the two up.

But I disagree. Christians who practice yoga – or the other Eastern spiritual body-mind disciplines of mindfulness, meditation, Tai Chi, and so on – bring with them the unique philosophical outlook and habits of mind that come with Christianity. While they explore what the Eastern practices have to offer them, they do so on their own terms, with their own perspectives. If, in the process of practicing these Eastern disciplines, they make modifications to accommodate their spiritual beliefs, so what? Isn’t that their right?

Now, I admit that I prefer to get my Eastern stuff straight. If I take a Tai Chi, Aikido or a yoga class, I’d rather take it from someone steeped in the traditions of these disciplines. I’d rather use the terminology of the traditional discipline, study what the discipline offers on its own terms. Later, I may decide which parts of what I learned don’t really harmonize very well with what I truly believe from my western (Christian) perspective, but I’m a big boy and can make those judgments myself.

That’s why I’m not really a fan of the Praise Moves or the “Wholly Fit” style of Christian Yoga – although I’m sure it helps very many people and I know its practitioners are sincere — in which all of the yoga postures are renamed from their “pagan” roots. Ditto meditation. If I go on a Zen meditation retreat, I want my Zen straight. Teach me what Zen has to offer… on its own terms and in its own way… and then I’ll decide for myself it I can harmonize Zen meditation with my Christian faith. I find little in minimalist Zen meditation to which any regular Christian could object… while at the same time I am careful not to say that Eastern meditation is the same as Christian contemplative prayer.

Now, that said, I will admit that Christians who have been practicing these Eastern disciplines for a long time do make their own adjustments – and that’s fine. There is a Christian Zen sitting group near me that has been around for ages (decades). These folks have developed their own synthesis. They are faithful Christians who think that traditional Zen meditation helps them, grounds them, perhaps prepares them for a more mature prayer life. But it’s pretty traditional Zen, all in all.

After a while, I think long-term practitioners do feel the need to evolve something new that explicitly integrates what they learn from Eastern practices with the unique spiritual outlook that is Christianity. And that’s why I think there is a real Christian Yoga vocation (yoga being used in a broad sense).

The unique Christian understanding of incarnation actually brings a depth and a pathos to yoga practice that enriches it.

Unlike traditional yoga and Indian philosophy generally, Christians don’t believe that human beings “cast off” their bodies like so many worn-out clothes at death – only to take on new ones in a reincarnated existence.

Rather, Christians have this strange, rather radical, certainly unusual belief that we are our bodies – and that God will miraculously preserve and render them immortal and luminescent in a resurrected state. Thus, the yoga emphasis on bodily care, awareness and health is thus completely harmonious with the Christian understanding of our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. This is what the founder of Christian yoga – Père J.-M. Déchanet – was getting at when he tried to adapt the spiritual psychology of William of Saint-Thierry to a fairly traditional hatha yoga practice.

Remember, Man, that you are dust… and unto dust you shall return. (Gen 3: 19)

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the penitential season of Lent, when Catholics and many other Christians as well go to church to receive ashes on their foreheads. Traditionally, when the priest or minister placed ashes on your forehead, he or she murmured the phrase, taken from Genesis: Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return. These are the words that God speaks to Adam and Eve in the Garden after the Fall.

These days, people prefer a more “positive” message, so many churches say something like, “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” or, if it’s a Jesuit church, something like, “Practice faith-justice!”

The point, of course, is to reflect on human mortality… on the inescapable reality of death.

One of the weirdest and most macabre sites in Rome is the famous “bone house,” Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, run for centuries by the Capuchin friars (an offshoot of the Franciscans). It never fails to creep people out… and it’s a great place to bring jaded teenagers who think they’ve seen it all. The entire place is decorated with the bones of long-dead (and not so long dead) friars. It’s difficult to even describe. All the walls, the chandeliers, everything is made out of human bones. If you want to know just how creepy the Catholic cult of relics can get, go visit the Capuchin bone house. But at the very end, you come to a skeleton of a friar, dressed in his monk robes, with this sign in three languages: “What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.”

Christian Yoga differs from traditional yoga in that it affirms both the reality of the physical body and the reality of death. Death is not an “illusion.” It is not merely a “gateway.” It is the cessation of physical life and the decay and decomposition of the body. To face that squarely… to look upon the dried up bones of the 4,000 Capuchin friars in the bone house and understand that death is real… is part of a mature spiritual life and one of the purposes of Ash Wednesday. To be a Christian who practices yoga is to cherish the body… to care for it, keep it healthy and use it to reach out to the Divine… and yet to know that, in its present state, it will not last. As St. Paul put it in his letter to the Thessalonians, “what we will be” after death “has not yet been revealed to us” but we know that we will be “like him,” like the resurrected Christ. We are not disembodied souls that “depart” the body at death, either to take on a new body or live in a spiritual heaven.

We are our bodies, and any life after death, we affirm, will be as embodied creatures — perhaps, like the resurrected Christ appearing to Doubting Thomas, bearing the scars and wounds we earned in our physical life. Whatever the place we go after death, it will be a physical place where human bodies can exist… perfected, resurrected bodies, perhaps, but bodies just the same. Thus, Christians who practice yoga re-affirm the beauty and joy and essential necessity of our physical bodies… while also knowing, as Christians, that these physical bodies will be transformed into something even more miraculous, even more luminous.

Under the high altar in St. Peter’s basilica in Rome is another altar… and underneath that altar is another altar… and underneath that altar is a giant box about fifteen feet square, made out of the precious stone porphyry, and inside of that box is an ancient brick wall that dates back to the first century A.D., and in the side on that ancient brick wall is a burial niche, and inside that niche was found, wrapped in purple cloth reserved on pain of death to the Roman emperors, the bones of an elderly man, in his 60s or 70s, that date back to the first century. On the brick wall were also found hundreds of graffiti with phrases such as petros eni, Peter is here, or the Chi Rho symbol altered so it looks like a key (as in “keys of the kingdom”).

St. Peter’s church is built on a hill, known as the Vatican, at the base of which was an ancient Roman circus. In the middle of the circus was an Egyptian obelisk, once twice as tall as it is now, that now stands in the center of St. Peter’s square. The circus was an oblong with a long middle area that ran down the center – very similar to the circus maximus that still exists today in Rome. In the center of the circus was the obelisk, and the chariot racers made their circuits of the center area much like Judas ben Hur does in the film of the same name. In the center area, Christians were routinely executed for “halftime entertainment” – the most colorful exercise of which was when they dipped the Christians in pitch and then lit them on fire. The road leading to the Vatican circus was a cemetery, lined with tombs.

The Romans had the bizarre habit of building their tombs along public roads so the monuments to their past glory could be admired by the citizens. When, as the ancient sources tell us, the Apostle Peter was crucified upside down in the center of the Vatican circus, probably around the year A.D. 64, the disciples took his body and buried it in the road cemetery right outside – marking the spot with special signs that only the Christian community would know. For hundreds of years, Christians came quietly and secretly to this grave to honor the leader of the Roman Christian community… until, in the early 300s, a decision was made by the Emperor Constantine to build a church over the site.

The problem was that the Vatican circus was at the base of a hill, so the engineering-minded Romans built an enormous retaining wall, dozens of feet high, and then filled in the space with soft dirt, covering the circus and the streets lined with tombs. On top of this level area, now known as St. Peter’s square, they built the first St. Peter’s basilica, which lasted for more than a thousand years… until, around the time of the Protestant Reformation, the popes commissioned great Italian artists, such as Michelangelo, to build a new basilica on the ruins of the crumbling old one. To finance construction, they sold indulgences… which led Martin Luther to launch the Reformation. The money was raised, the new church was slowly built, and people forgot about the ancient cemetery buried beneath the old basilica… until 1939. In that year, workmen digging below the church, to create a new crypt for the recently deceased Pope Pius XI, accidentally punched a hole in the floor of the crypts where they bury popes beneath St. Peter’s… and looked down and saw, dozens of feet below, a necropolis, or city of the dead, undisturbed for 1,800 years. Like Pompei south of the Vatican, this ancient necropolis was like going back in time. The first century streets go on for miles beneath St. Peter’s square. In was in this ancient necropolis that archaeologists discovered, in the 1950s, the bones of St. Peter, wrapped in a purple shroud and hidden in a burial niche inside a brick wall… inside an enormous marble and porphyry box… directly beneath the high altar in St. Peter’s basilica.

The papacy is the oldest continuous monarchy in history, dating back at least to the second century and, depending upon how you interpret the evidence, perhaps to Peter himself. Traditionally, popes – known as the servant of the servants of God – serve until death. There have been 266 popes… and today, for the first time in 598 years, a reigning pope has announced his resignation. In a few weeks, perhaps more, the see of Peter will be vacant (sede vacante), and the 118 cardinals eligible to vote will gather in the Sistine Chapel to begin the difficult task choosing a successor to guide the world’s 1 billion Catholics and other friends of the Catholic Church on into the confusing 21st century.

The mission of the pope is, and always has been, to be a guardian of the partheke, the “deposit” of Faith, handed on over the centuries… and to do so in a way that it can be communicated and understood anew.

The new pope will have his hands full. In the entertaining prescient 2011 Italian film by Nanni Moretti, Habemus Papam (“We Have a Pope”) about the election of a reluctant pope who ends up resigning, a nice touch was that we heard all of the cardinals praying: Please, Lord, not me… anyone but me!

I just heard , quite late, that James Arraj died of cancer three years ago. To say I was stunned is an understatement. I had sent an email to Jim, asking for permission to reprint one or two of his marvelous essays, and his widow, Tyra, told me of his death. Although I never met them, the Arraj family has been an inspiration to me and many other people over the years for so many different reasons.

Decades ago, James and Tyra made a remarkably courageous decision. James earned a Ph.D. in spiritual theology from the Gregorian University in Rome, but, as is true for many young academics, his job prospects weren’t great. He and his wife found themselves in San Diego, right after the birth of their daughter Elizabeth, and they didn’t like their options. Jim had found a job in the County welfare office but it looked like the two of them were going to be forced to take jobs they disliked… to afford living in houses they disliked… in an area they didn’t particularly like… and that would be it for the rest of their lives. As a result, they decided to take a different path.

They moved to an isolated forest in the woods of southern Oregon, built their own home, and raised their children in the forest. They actually videotaped the entire adventure — from flying over their isolated forest home to the building of their house. You can see the videos here.

All these dreams were to lead us to the forest where the land was beautiful and cheap, but far from paved roads and power lines, and a mile high in the snow zone of the Cascade Mountains. It was here our schooling began in earnest about simple living, and how complicated it was. The first thing we needed was a house, and quickly, for winter was coming. Making handcrafts and a bookcase or two hadn’t really prepared us for this. But we muddled through by reading books, drawing plans on the backs of envelopes, and overcoming our biggest obstacle, which was the notion that had been pounded into our heads all our lives – that you bought houses made by . You didn’t just jump up and build your own.

Once we got the house up – and it didn’t immediately fall down – from then on we would simply build whatever we needed or wanted. When the kids decided they wanted their own rooms, we told them to build them themselves, and they did.

With a roof over our heads the days took on a rhythm of their own, and grew into weeks and months and years. We would make bread. For a long time that was the kids’ job. We would do home school with the kids, and all of us would sit around the lunch table and discuss everything from tigers to tattoos. We would make tofu. Our electricity came from a solar panel which was connected to a battery, and then to an inverter that converted it from DC to AC. We would cut and split wood, and feed it to our wood stove made out of an old hot water tank.

Slowly our eyes began to open so we could really see the forest around us.

We never had a well, and we would haul drinking water from town in the summer, and collect rain and snow in our little ponds for the garden. Growing a garden was a tough job when you are almost a mile high and can have a frost any month of the year, and if you do manage to grow something, the chipmunks are waiting to pounce on it.

And each year there would be something new to build. Our favorite style was to dig some holes in the ground, cut and treat some poles, and then just go on from there. Not very complicated, but tiring at times. One year Elizabeth decided she wanted to have a place of her own, and she just went out and built it.

This decision gave them the gift of time – time to do the work they were called to do, which happened to be write books and make videos on Christian mysticism and its relationship to both Eastern spirituality and Jungian psychology. Rather than work as academics in a university setting, James and Tyra created their own way of life in the forest. They then created a remarkable website, InnerExplorations.com, which is one of the strangest and most fascinating combination of subjects you can imagine – high-level philosophical discussions of Thomistic metaphysics, video chronicles of what it’s like to move and live in a forest, simple living, Christian mysticism, Zen, and on and on. Needless to say, it was like a candy shop for someone like me. Christian mystic hippies living in the forest… can’t get more irresistible than that!

I first learned about the Arraj family because, like most homeschoolers, my wife and I were interested in simple living. We bought their books on simple living because, like many homeschoolers, we felt called to a radically different way of life. But then I discovered that we shared an interest in both classical Christian mysticism but also in eastern spirituality, such as Zen. I was hooked… and have spent hours and hours, over the years, poring through Jim’s articles on the similarities, and profound differences, between the spiritual paths of Asia and the western mystical tradition. Over the coming months, we hope to republish a few of Jim’s thoughtful essays on our website with the kind permission of Tyra.

I urge anyone interested in Christian Yoga to visit InnerExplorations. You’ll find many topics of interest and will be inspired by the Arraj family’s life in the forest.

Picture me 7 years ago, about 60 lbs. heavier than I am now, with a chubbier face, a growing gut, and an addiction to junk food.

I ate pizza, chips, cookies, fried meats and cheeses, French fries, and drank beer and sweet & fatty lattes. I was 32 and headed for diabetes and heart disease, and couldn’t figure out how to change.

And yet, a year later I had lost about 20-30 lbs. and ran a marathon. The pounds kept dropping away, year after year, and more importantly, I was eating healthier foods. I now love fresh fruits and veggies, raw nuts and seeds, beans and whole grains that haven’t been ground up, real unprocessed food.
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“The point, old friend – and this is very important – is to do your worldly duty, but do it without any attachment to it or desire for its fruits. Keep your mind always on the Divine (Atma, the Self). Make it as automatic as your breath or heartbeat. This is the way to reach the supreme goal, which is to merge into God.”
— Bhagavad Gita, Karma Yoga, 19 (Translator: Jack Hawley)

My interest in the Bhagavad Gita came from my admiration of Mohandas Gandhi. I had heard that it was an influential text in the development of his spiritual life, and from that moment on wanted a chance to read it. And it is no wonder it caught and captured Gandhi’s attention, for the Gita’s ancient wisdom is as relevant now as it was in the days it was written. Native to the peoples of the Indus Valley, it is claimed by some to be up to 5000 years old. It is part of a larger epic narrative called the Mahabharata, and contains about 700 verses. The Gita is difficult to translate because it contains so many terms that are easily understood within the context of Hindu culture, but are alien to the West. In fact, although the Gita itself is only traditionally 18 chapters in length, the common practice when translating it into English is to expound upon the text so much that volumes are added.

By pure chance (or God-incidence), I happened upon a translation by Jack Hawley. He wanted the West to have an experience of the Gita in a way that was accessible to them, without lengthening the text and losing its depth and feel. This was an incredible way to get my first taste of the compelling narrative, and it found its way instantly into my heart.

The Gita takes place in the middle of a battlefield, with both lines of soldiers facing each other, just moments before the fighting begins. Prince Arjuna, who represents the forces of good, is between the two lines in his chariot and looking over the foes drawn up against him. In those forces, he spots some of his own family members, former friends, and admired teachers. He begins to despair, thinking that he would rather die than kill all these people whom he loves so dearly. He slumps down in his chariot despondently, and looks to his chariot driver and dear old friend for advice.


What the prince does not know is that his driver happens to be Krishna, god incarnate. When Krishna sees that Arjuna has humbled himself to become his student, he begins to reveal the secrets of the universe, the meaning of life, and the ways of god himself. His monologue takes up the majority of the text.

A Christian reader is quickly amazed by the parallels found between Krishna’s description of the Hindu godhead, Brahman, and Christianity’s one true God. God (also called the Atma) is:
• The source and sustainer of all created things
• Eternal (goes on forever and has always been)
• Existence itself; pure consciousness (spirit)
• Unchanging, indestructible and immutable
• Everywhere
• Beyond time
• Unmanifested (invisible)
• Unknowable, as his ways and being are infinite
• Continually sacrificing to and serving all of creation selflessly
• Love itself

The end goal of humanity, namely unity with god, is also the same as the Christian one (called theosis). And how does one reach that goal? The path is beset with the same dangers as found in Christianity. As Christians, it is easy to fall into the error of trying to work our way to heaven. The Christian who truly understands the nature of grace knows that it is in surrender to God’s will and allowing God to work through you that you are brought closer to Christlikeness. The intentions of our hearts determine whether our works are burned up or produce fruit (1 Cor 3).
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I’ve spent more time than most working out the way in which my yoga practice intersects with and feeds my faith experience. Still, I find myself unexpectedly delighted each time I find a new point of convergence. Recently it struck me that the last stop in Christianity’s liturgy of hours — Compline, the final office of the monastic day established by Saint Benedict in the sixth century — is directly analogous to the savasana (corpse pose) with which we end our yoga practice. Both are contemplative closing ceremonies of sorts for cultivating spiritual peace within their own traditions.

They are markers which prompt us to stop and enter into a stillness in which we absorb the events of the day (or the results of our practice) without the analytical fervor that we, in our humanity, often bring to bear on such recollections. Both Compline and savasana have an osmotic quality about them that brings gentle closure with no effort on our part but surrender.

So as I sat by the fire after 2012 had turned into 2013 without any pomp and circumstance, it occurred to me that the waning hours of the year are very much like Compline and savasana. We look back on the year and say our nightly prayers like the monks at the end of the day. Then we lie down on a bed of energy created from all that has been in the last twelve months while opening ourselves to what is to come, like the yogis do in savasana.

Even more profound to me than the holy congruity between the two spiritual practices, is the fact that they are both rituals that happen without exception. They are not earned for good behavior, as in, “I’ll allow myself a period of savasana if I do an extra long shoulder stand.” Monks don’t say, I’ll indulge in a candlelit Compline if I do an phenomenal job on turnip-chopping during kitchen duty today.” They are graceful practices that arrive on schedule, unrelated to our performance, undeterred by the faltering and mundanity of our lives.

Perhaps some of you had the postcard New Years Eve. You know the one—sparkly hat, dressed to the hilt, a glass of champagne in hand and a passionate kiss from your sweetheart at the stroke of midnight. Mine looked nothing like that. But, guess what? It came anyway. The New Year didn’t wait around, lingering in the shadows till I donned my party dress and got my groove on. It came while I watched a dinosaur movie with my nine-year-old son and his buddy. Which was right after my teen-aged daughter announced that I was ruining her life by not letting her go out that night. And while my sweetheart was already sleeping. Alas, no midnight kiss.

But 2013 snuck in, tiptoeing and was waiting when I crept back to sit by the fire that should have long petered out. It came in the midst of my imperfect life that defies the flickering plastic images that try to tell me how to look and how to live.

There have been times in my life when I have shouted for the clock to hold up and wait until I was ready—until I had myself pulled together—ludicrously thinking I had the ability to control such things. Sitting by that New Year’s fire, listening to the rain, it hit me that while nothing about that night echoed the cultural ideal, it was, in its own odd way, perfection. I had a deep knowing that everything was exactly as it should be. And there was nothing I could do to make it better or worse. It was Compline, filled with relief and gratitude, and followed by a savasana-like sleep.

I had unwittingly embraced the imperfection. The choice, after all, is always ours in such moments—pine for what could have been or gaze with grateful eyes at what is before us. Here’s to knowing that whatever 2013 brings, God’s soft, Sophic light will be illuminating our path.

Monette Chilson is a yoga practitioner and writer who contributes to Yoga Journal, writes regularly for Om Times and pens a monthly column for the Texas Yoga Association newsletter. Her search for the sacred reveals itself in her writings on her blog and her first book, Sophia Rising: Awakening Your Sacred Wisdom Through Yoga. She blogs at http://www.SophiaRisingyoga.com

Before the Halloween candy was eaten, we were plunged into “the season.” You know the one I’m talking about—the blur of festivities that is Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas and New Years, all rolled into one. The pressure started November 1—or sooner if you let those premature retail Christmas trees that popped up at the end of the summer get to you. Kudos to rebel retailer Nordstrom, who closed Thanksgiving day and eschewed Christmas decorations until today. Odd that this common sense, one-holiday-at-a-time approach is a complete anomaly in today’s consumption-crazed society.

Even if you’ve managed to stay away from the stores today, I bet you’re feeling the pressure to buy even from your inbox. I know I am. It seems as if the whole world is on sale, and we are missing out if we don’t start snapping up the bargains.

There is no better time to use your yoga to maintain a sense of peace that really should define this season of gratitude, hope and rebirth. This task will require using your yoga on and off your mat. It is not enough to cultivate calm for that hour of asana practice. To embody the real spirit of the season, you’ll need to grab a yama or niyama or two from yoga’s philosophic underpinnings.

Here are some you might consider trying out this holiday season. See how they work for you. Do they help you distance yourself from the materialism that threatens to rob us of the sacred nature of this seasonal turning point marked by the Winter Solstice? Do they keep you more balanced? Just by looking within for these answers, you are practicing the niyama of svadhyaya or self-study.

Niyama of Santosha (contentment)… This time of year, especially, our culture shouts, “More, more, more!” while our hearts are yearning for a slower pace, whispering, “Enough…enough…enough.” We can use our asana, pranayama and our meditation to consciously cultivate an inner sense of contentment—a deep knowing that we already have enough and we already are enough. This can help us resist the desire to overdo and to overbuy.

Niyama of Tapas (austerity)… Austerity gets a bad rap in our modern, pampered world. We are, it turns out, a bit spoiled. Austerity, though, is not asking us to take a vow of poverty. This yama, which is particularly balancing to our Western consumer-oriented culture, simply asks us to look honestly at our needs and our wants. To learn the difference and proceed mindfully as we meet the needs and consider the wants of our heart and of those around us. There is often a better way to spread holiday joy than by buying a material gift. Those crayoned hand-made coupons for unlimited hugs and kisses that our kids make us are a perfect example of this!


Yama of Asteya (non-covetousness)… Too often we are motivated by our desire to have what others possess. We do this because we are operating under two common false assumptions. First, we believe that what people have makes them who they are. And second, we buy into the myth that what you see on the outside—the store-bought trappings of life—is actually reflective of who people are inside. Bringing our awareness to these fallacies can help us joyfully accept our own reality, with its many blessings, this season.

Keeping your yogic mindset in tact during the coming weeks is a sure way to enhance your holiday celebrations and to spread the love to those around you. It’s not easy, and we won’t do it perfectly, but that’s why we call it a yoga practice, right?

Monette Chilson is a yoga practitioner and writer who contributes to Yoga Journal, writes regularly for Om Times and pens a monthly column for the Texas Yoga Association newsletter. Her search for the sacred reveals itself in her writings on her blog and her first book, Sophia Rising: Awakening Your Sacred Wisdom Through Yoga. She blogs at http://www.SophiaRisingyoga.com