“I am not the body. I am not the mind. Immortal self am I” is a famous chant written by the late Sri Swami Sivananda and is perhaps the greatest simplification of Yoga ever written. For the ultimate goal of Yoga is to no longer identify as the personality, but rather, as the silent witness within each of us.
And what is this silent witness? In the most simple terms, it is our soul.
I have heard people describe Yoga as an evil religion. But those people don’t know what yoga is. And with no shortage of fake yoga cults in the world, a majority of people practicing yoga don’t know what yoga is either. First off, Yoga is not a religion. I am a Christian and my guru in Yoga has always been Jesus Christ. Yoga is a practice that teaches us how to be fully present in our bodies. Centered in reality. Which is the proper way to live. And this makes Yoga the opposite of evil.
The english word live in reverse is evil. Which is interesting because evil is not only to disrupt someone else’s life, evil is to ignore your own reality and lose yourself in illusion. It is the opposite of living. As a Christian I must stay forever vigilant. And just as I exercise to maintain a strong body, I practice yoga to restrain the ego mind and stay vigilant. This is also called prayer. The Yoga Sutras is basically a how to manual on prayer.
Pure Yoga is simple and has little to do with a yoga mat. Yoga is remembering who we really are. “I am not the body. I am not the mind. Immortal self am I”. Each one of us has a mental component that naturally wants to take control of us. This mental component is known as the ego and it is constantly trying to persuade us to identify as it. And all it wants to do is be the center of attention and experience physical pleasure. According to the ancient yoga sutras, yoga is the restraint of the mind stuff. That’s really all it is. The mind stuff is the constant chatter within our mind. Our ego personality. And it’s what ultimately keeps us separated from God.
I lived and worked at a yoga ashram for over three years and while I was there I witnessed hundreds of people come and go. All seeking balance and health in their body, mind, and emotions. All receiving the same simple teachings about ego identity. All but one.
It was the winter of 2016/17 when a young man who claimed to be a transgender woman arrived at the ashram and was immediately treated more like a trophy than a guest. And even several of the Swamis, who wear robes and are supposed to be teachers of yoga, hurried to placate the young man and reaffirm his delusions in an obvious attempt to somehow appear virtuous. Because, despite it being complete nonsense, our ego mind is conditioned to believe that this sort of delusion is righteous.
If it were just students showing off their trendy obedience to state sponsored LGBT propaganda, then it wouldn’t be so surprising. It happens in yoga studios everywhere. It was seeing the haughty robe wearing Swamis doing it that made it all the more disgusting. I thought they should know better. But this was before the vaccine mandates that exposed everyone’s utter hypocrisy. Including ashrams across the country that compliantly began requiring proof of vaccination. I think it’s fair to say that all religions have become subverted in the upside-down age of Kali Yuga. Or as many of us have come to call it, Clown World.
Lucky for us the only true way to God is through a personal relationship. But first we must learn to quiet our mind. We must learn to pray. The chattering personality in our head is not who we are. And we must learn to make it shut up.
One of the most basic practices of yoga is to cease identifying as the body and the mind. And perhaps the most important question a person could ever answer from practicing yoga is, Who am I? And the only way to really get there is to realize that our personality is an illusion. A very fleeting illusion. Our ego strives to convince us to identify as this personality. And overcoming this ego desire is the number one purpose of yoga. But not for the transgenders. Because to deny their illusions would be considered mean and bigoted by state loyalists and the brainwashed. We must refuse this propaganda. And we must strive towards the truth.
The forces behind the transgender movement are pure evil. They are exploiting some of the most confused people among us and using them as political tools. Seducing children into sexual castration and delusion. But to go along with it is just as evil. And the most sobering aspect of it all is how many of us have gone along with it. Including those who wear robes and are considered to be spiritual teachers.
Each of us have been born with a human body, and aside from hermaphrodites, each one of our bodies is either male or female. And this does not restrict us into thinking or behaving a certain way, because gender exists in every dimension of our reality. And each one of us have both feminine and masculine qualities. Just because a woman’s personality may lean more towards masculinity, if she has a vagina then she is a woman. And vice versa. This is reality. And if we truly want to be righteous, then we will be brave enough to tell the truth.
By Greg Reese
As a Christian, and an avid yoga practitioner, thank you, and namaste!
You deserve all the beautiful comments below. I feel the same positive thoughts on your work. Agree. The churches etc are compromised, brainwashed. Having so many medical bills so during this inflation and need a car and treatments other than Big Pharma, I'm so sorry I can't do a paid subscription. You are filled with superb and spiritual information. First thing coming to mind is Beelzebug, Vasl worship, a transgender god. Thank you for your work And kindness