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Holy Collisions

Holy Collisions

Last updated on: January 6, 2016 at 10:37 pm by Anita Brown

Holy Collisions 2016-01-06T22:37:50-06:00 Anita Brown

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Are you aware of the peaceful revolution underway– a new Pentecost is taking place in our yoga studios!

But others mocking said, ‘They are filled with new wine!”

Acts 2:13

Ordinary humans, not just renunciates, are recognizing an alcohol buzz is a distant second to the natural high that comes with sparking internal connectivity– the ‘new wine’ is a benefit of connection to our breath! The desire for old ways merely disintegrates as the ‘breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4).

Talk of mystical experiences in G*d are everywhere. Several years back when I first read Chris Grosso’s experience of oneness while running, I was mesmerized!!

We dont need to rely on our same old methods to find a fake peace, an alternative to authentic union. We have disovered our yoga, chanting, and Centering Prayer practices deliver the goods– G*d himself alive in us, as us. ‘I consider myself as having died and now I’m enjoying a new existence which is simply Jesus using my body.’ Galatians 2:20, Distilled Bible. Verses like this closely correlate to the yogic wisdom gleaned from the Sutras written by a man named Patanjali about 400 years BC!

I can easily forget I wasn’t always this comfortable being a Christ-loving yoga student. I had just one woman who embodied a beautiful example and told me about Father Bede Griffiths journey and recommended I read Russil Paul’s Jesus in the Lotus. Soon I was in yoga teaching training and found I was the only one in our class being called to marry the two worlds– and a HOLY COLLISION was birthed in me.

This idea continues to expand as I meet others who tell me they’ve been told for years in church that yoga is satan’s work and I look for other examples in our world of fear driving us apart.

I’m pretty certain our Yang face of G*d is in desperate search of his partner, the Yin Madonna. This Goddess energy in males and females alike –dwells in the passionate, compassionate, earth, matter darkness, heat, contraction, descending, vulnerable places…the ones we often minimize or shove down. The energy some fundamentalists would call our flesh or carnal nature.

Even within the Great I AM there exists an imbalance —

‘I’ representing the masculine, manifesting energy in the world while the ‘AM’ is the returning HOME to be nurtured energy. We should actually all be chanting AM to help out the universe every chance we get!

This deep calm of equanimity everything longs for is called sandhya, the wedding of sun and moon, the yin holding just a bit of yang and vice versa.

Lisa P Streitfield in Icon of Liberation says of today’s women,

Her “energy’ freely flowing….her mind clear and detached, the woman of the new millennium has abundance to create change in the world. The past injustices committed against her sex are conscious though no longer a preoccupation: her mind is in the future; her heart is in the present. The radiant inner child has been released and can now accompany her into public as a symbol of the free and spontaneous expression that once was denied to women. The scenario of the centered female bringing her spirit … into the public arena is central to the creation of a new culture. At last, the daughter Persephone has been liberated from the underground…where she was forced to flee during the patriarchy and now is free to participate in the Great Round–death, destruction and rebirth – in partnership with the Resurrected Groom!♥

Within us lives an entire functioning, reconciled relationship– a trinity of mind, body + spirit as perfect union .

As our dark and light inner worlds continue their Holy Collision, this must be manifested in outer reality. Soon we shall see

more yogis returning to church ( last year I met a newly graduated seminarian who is a former yoga studio owner)
more secularists seeking Buddhist meditation,
more Muslims offering information sessions about their faith and
New Agers considering there actually might be darkness in the world (she says tongue in cheek)

Humans resting in G*d’s presence in stillness + silence may find perfect LOVE has met us time and again right where we are, not demanding anything be different. And yet, transformation and surrender to rising awareness will bring about healing within Divine Timing.

For me personally Centering prayer has revealed we are all the Magi– ‘others’ bringing our gifts to God + the world. The wise men’s journey to Bethlehem was the first inter-faith act we see in the sacred texts.

The sooner we see we are all OTHER (just like Jesus was), the sooner our ideas of other will disintegrate and we will be left with the truth of our unity, our common humanity.

‘A new heaven is a transformed state of consciousness and a new earth is the manifestation in the physical realm.’♦ Consciousness raising requires a HOLY COLLISION of Grace v. Shame- (pretend you can click to tweet) collision, noun: an encounter between particles resulting in exchange or transformation of energy. This is GOD’S promise of reconciling all things for our good!!

We might begin meeting ‘other’ on our journey to our Inner Bethlehem, by identifying which body part has always been our least favored. It’s easier to begin by identifying the enemy within our own being, honestly facing the voice of judgment toward ourselves.

Because the soul is part of G*d’s ever expanding universe we find in 2 corinth 5:17 ‘If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!’ In our yoga practice we are constantly beginning again, coming back to a fresh perspective on a pose we might repeat a thousand times. Our mind, body, spirit connection mirroring the trinity.

The greatest HOLY COLLISION of course was when Jesus revealed what fully human + fully divine looks, feels, and speaks like. All of our communion-taking is our belief that we too can trust all our opposites — the lines between secular and sacred blurring more each day as we can hear divine revelation in pop music and poetry.

We householders have an easier time with spiritual growth becasuse as I see it, being in relationship under one roof is the greatest ego transformer. Notice I didnt say eliminator. So many in my yoga world perform daily exercies in breath and yoga practice in order to intentionally eliminate the ego. As I identify with the Jesus archetype, there is a piece of my psyche that is afraid of a martyr’s death. So for me, I much prefer the alchemical transformtion of egoic ways.

At my 50th birthday party we had a kirtan band perform chant at our local studio. One of the songs in essence was chanting to the destroyer God to help minimize the ego. I, up to that point had been chanting my heart out, feeling the divine love within and without. But during this particular song, I felt the air sucked out of the space and I absolutely could not form the words– it felt offensive to my spirit and I trusted that.

Yoga, union, yoking has given me the experience of Jesus alive in my body– this has both broadened and deepened my faith. It no longer resembles the faith of my 20’s or 30’s. I believe our former self should look at us now as a heretic every 5 -10 years (Just like Jesus!!).

It’s the year of JUBILEE according to Pope Francis and I am certain all the HOLY COLLISIONS I’m witnessing are helping bring about perfect love for anyone who desires more of G*D. What are some examples you are seeing in your corner of the world?

Thinking back, I realize I didn’t always have this gift of wisdom (she says tongue back in cheek), but something deep within me recognized Grosso’s epiphany as truth. I’ve learned so much from my various teachers over the years but what seems to have stuck, is what’s been ENFLESHED OR EMBODIED. A word enlivened to share with the world becoming flesh in us as we have a new, deeper understanding that has become a part of who we are translates to how we see ourselves and in turn to how the world sees us.

♥Shortened for brevity

♦Eckhart Tolle

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