Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

with our children. (For example, the Buddha and many other spiritual exemplars are reputed to have left their wives and children to pursue their personal goals of enlightenment.) In fact, a healthy and balanced amount of desire, attachment, and even ego, can be shown to be necessary, inseparable aspects of life with purpose and use. Eastern thought often defines these aspects of life essentially as the obstacles to enlightenment, but it may be wiser to learn to live intelligently with these inherent dimensions of ourselves rather than try to annihilate them. Every living organism, arguably even every physical element andatom, by definition, needs self-defining, self-protective characteristics. Both boundary and permeability are necessary in the universe. We need to understand unity and interconnection, and to value diversity.

Oneness and the Loss of Diversity
    One of the greatest tragedies of modern times is the accelerating loss of diversity, both in nature and culture. We seem to be homogenizing our planet into a oneness of asphalt, TV, and global franchises. This disturbing trend was driven home to me on a journey deep into the Brazilian Amazon with some forest dwellers and shamans.
    We had outfitted and taken a boat along a marvelous, snaking river. Two days into the dense jungle, we tied the boat at the river bank and hiked into the forest to see the animals among enormous, ancient trees and vines. It was extraordinarily hot and humid, and after a couple hours of trekking we were all very thirsty and hungry. Suddenly, a loud roar shook the ground. I expected a fleet of army helicopters to pass over but the source was huge, black clouds, which quickly passed overhead with exploding thunder and lightening. The cloud bank began to pour relentless torrents of rain and we were immediately drenched. We only had to cup hands to fill them and drink as if from a faucet.
    We ran through the woods, looking for shelter, and came upon a very small village of shabby wooden huts with thatched roofs. Beautiful, smiling children ran to greet us and welcome us into their home. They served us dried coconut and banana and we threw the scraps to their chickens. As I was standing in their living area, I heard some strange, garbled sounds coming out of the next room. I poked my head through the door and was astonished to see a small, old television set with our jungle friends seated around it, watching
Dallas
. I looked outside and saw a small power line and cable line strung through the primeval forest we came to honor. Our modern lifestyle is consuming our ecosphere and also our
ethnosphere
—the diversity of ethnic cultures and wisdom.The greatest terrorism of our time is the terrorism against our environment—the effects and loss are not only immediate, but will last for generations to come. It is not only a disgrace to lose this diversity, and the unique beauty of different cultures and different parts of the earth, but the earth cannot support a just and equitable distribution of resources at the levels at which we are living in North America.
    Diversity is the fabric of life. In the same way that matter and energy are part of one continuum, the One and the Many are a natural, mutually embedded polarity in the universe. In fact, they are necessary counterparts of each other. Diversity is as sacred as unity—the many as relevant, important, and sacred as the One or God. In fact, neither could exist without the other. This perspective can be positive and freeing. Both science and religious mysticism offer insights and pieces of the puzzle of existence. There are many gems and gifts from the past and the understanding and insights presented in this work would not be possible without our ancestors and traditions. While we honor their contributions and their place in the past, it is also the moment to step beyond them. Thousands of years of these ancient ways have brought us to this critical point in our history. Now is the time for something new, a new awakening, a new vision, a new liberation.

Spirituality Beyond Belief
    We need to look at our many long-held beliefs and dogmas to shed new light and to awaken a new perception, a new insight, and a new paradigm of spirituality that better bridges science, technology, and religion, and that stops the degradation of the earth and society. This is more important now than ever before because on many fronts our destructive powers have become global, threatening life as we know