Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

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    Spirituality, and our relationship to it, must change and grow. Spirituality is an evolving, immeasurable energy that is not fixed in definitions, descriptions, and pathways defined for all time thousandsof years ago, by cultures without science-based knowledge we now take for granted—biology, astronomy, psychology, archeology, geology, anthropology, quantum physics, evolution, and the many other remarkable discoveries of our times. Right here and now in this new millennium we have the possibility of standing on the shoulders of the past in order to see farther and deeper than humans have seen before. We can open the doorway into lives of exciting adventure, sharing this extraordinary moment in history.
    Spirituality and self-realization rest at the core and essence of yoga philosophy. Many people come to yoga primarily for fitness, physical health, and well-being, but even among this group there is often interest and appreciation for the holistic and deeper aspects of yoga. Any exploration into yoga would be incomplete without an inquiry and examination of its spiritual essence. While there is a lot of interest in spirituality among students of yoga, there is often a lack of clarity and understanding. Roughly two broad categories distinguish viewpoints on spirituality. As we have discussed in the area of meditation, one viewpoint is that there is an eternal, spiritual path that has been mapped, discovered, and revealed. This viewpoint assumes we must follow that path as defined by its practices, rituals, and beliefs. The other viewpoint defines spirit and spirituality in a more relativistic manner, seeing spirituality as living and evolving. The first perspective describes spirituality more in terms of specific beliefs, rituals, and defined behaviors, while the second perspective sees the approach to spirituality requiring flexible, living awareness and attunement in order to move and flow with spirit.
    Looking at music as an example may help us understand the evolutionary nature of spirituality. Music is not the same as it was when it was first developed. Early forms of music were very limited in range, pitch, and complexity, with simple rhythms and fewer possibilities of instrumentation. Over the centuries music has evolved into many genres and highly complex symphonies that communicate broad ranges offeeling, emotion, and meaning. Similarly, our understanding of spirituality needs to grow and evolve beyond the limits of tradition and ancient mappings.
    Spiritual practices are often seen as the essential core that defines and measures spirituality, but it may be wiser and more useful to hold spiritual practices in a similar way that we might hold medicines, and treat ritual, custom, and belief as things to learn the appropriate need and use for on an individual and relative basis. Certain medicines might be very useful to a particular person at particular times but unhelpful or adverse other times. Too often spiritual practices are promoted like snake oils—the cure for all our ills. We may have and need spiritual practice and we must also keep open the possibility of freedom in the way we hold and use them. A free context will keep us open to the awareness and revelations that can only come spontaneously and uninvited, in unstructured, timeless moments. A growing number of yogis see life, not as following a specified path, but rather as a journey into untold possibility. This unfolding understanding requires a constant vigilance of awareness and sensitivity that responds to the moment, guiding us on our way through life’s changing seas.
    Spirituality is not simply a mechanical process and not something finally obtained or acquired. Important elements contribute to spirituality, such as ethical behavior, right living, right livelihood, caring, and compassion, but the deepest essence lives beyond practices, beliefs, descriptions, and words. It is not advisable to explain or define spirituality with too much detail, and it cannot be captured, owned, or stored up. Ironically, the Sanskrit word for illusion—maya—also means to measure and to define. When we measure and overly structure spirit, we may lose it.
    While traveling in the Himalayas, I met many swamis and yogis who seemed caught up in what has come to be called
spiritual materialism
—the concept that spiritual merit can be stored up and accumulated. Some of the swamis seemed condescending to anyone who hadnot achieved as much as they had. I