"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

Tag: Yoga

Is it OK to do things that lead to an altered state of spiritual consciousness?

Some of you might know I am not, to say the very least, a fan of yoga. I feel the same way about hypnosis. Yoga is inextricably tied to Hinduism and altered states of spiritual consciousness. All Hindus are enjoined to practice yoga to achieve that very end. Hypnotism arrived to the scene much later than yoga and Hinduism, but is informed by it and it can be argued that the roots of hypnosis are in yoga and or yoga-like trance states (see here).  There is no place for yoga in Christianity and no place for Christianity in yoga. Here is an article on the subject from one of the Hindu sects titled There is no Christian Yoga. The author of the article displays monumental ignorance on the subject of Christianity by erecting a Christian straw man against which to argue, but gets that one thing right: yoga is not Christian even if some left-wing churches try to co-opt it. Yoga belongs to Hinduism (and maybe Buddhism and Jainism). Hypnosis with its states of altered consciousness, like yoga, is neither benign nor Christian.

Betty Blonde #323 – 10/12/2009
Betty Blonde #323
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Arizona oddness

Day 534 of 1000

Several times, when people find that I am from back east or from Oregon, they look at me and say something like, “I’m not like most other Arizonans, I’m much more liberal.”  Two observations.  First, the back east that I am from in North Carolina is not particularly liberal.  In fact, it is pretty conservative.  Of course, Oregon is very liberal up and down the Willamette Valley, but the people in the rest of the the state are pretty conservative.  Second, I kind of know how they feel.  When I lived in the Portland and Corvallis areas, I always felt the need to let people know that, just because I was there, I found the Oregon zeitgiest quite objectionable.

I have been doing a pretty good job of keeping my powder dry with respect to tinder box issues.  One of the VP’s here is a big yoga guy.  I am, to say the least, not a big fan of yoga.  There are a couple of guys with pretty extreme environmental stances,  Prescott is a fairly conservative town, but this little company seems to have kind of a new agey/liberal bent to it.  It is giving me lots of practice at not speaking up when stuff is not that important.  I am not perfect at it.  I think most everyone understands about where I sit on the religious/political spectrum, but I also think I have done a little better than sometimes in the past when people looked at me a little like a rabid dog.

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