What Yoga Is

I've had some thoughts about What Yoga Is. This is in part brought on by the recent the Easter season, in part from planning a trip to Utah - a main reason for the trip being I've long been fascinated by Mormonism- and, in part, from having taken some classes with my old teacher, Susan Wilson. She has become much more vocally mystical/spiritual/whatever you want to call it since I regularly took classes with her four or five years ago.

It's also just the kind of thing I think about. Meaning of Life, wot?

The question: is there a qualitative difference between practicing yoga as a tool for better navigating life or practicing yoga as a path to achieve transcendence? And if I'm only doing the former, does that mean that I'm somehow inadequate or not "yoginic" enough?

My problem is that if to practice yoga as path to achieve transcendence, before the Samadhi actually happens, you've had to come to a belief in the System that says yoga is a way to achieve transcendence.

So the belief in the System must precede the experience, and that's where I have a problem.

Maybe I'm too scientific. If there is evidence that can be verified by an independent observer, I believe it. If there is something that I can experience myself, I believe it.

Reproduceable experiments show that penicillin kills bacterium. I believe it. People tell me that homeopathic remedies, which contain the mere "memory" of a molecule in a solution, will heal. Sorry, don't believe it.

I have experienced that asana improves strength and flexibility, both on a physical and mental level. So I believe in yoga as a tool for better navigating life.

But the only "evidence" I have that yoga leads to transcendence is what other people say. That's hearsay, not evidence. And no matter how long I sit, I've never experienced a glimmer of that elusive "oceanic feeling" or bliss described in many spiritual traditions.

People apparently have the ability to accept beliefs for their own sake "I believe in the Bible because the Bible tells me to believe in the Bible." A person is shown a System, and somehow they come to accept it as Truth.

That's my fascination with the Mormons: in the mid-1800's, a guy who already had a reputation for conning people by dowsing for buried treasure came up with a wacky story about finding gold tablets that contained a whole alternative history of North America not to mention the Truth, and he got a bunch of people to belief him, and now millions of people around the world believe the story. It's one of the fastest growing religions in world. What could possibly make all those people believe in some shyster's imaginary story?

I've learned in asana that the first step is imagining. I can imagine moving a part of my body, sometimes a part I didn't even know existed, and then the movement eventually (sometimes) follows. Who knew my big toes could actually have a party together in tadasana, when for 46 years they pointed rigidly out at a 45-angle? So it's plausible to me that if Ginny Kapular tells me I can rotate my midsection around my esophagus, I can believe it (and even feel it) because I've experienced it.

That's a belief that there can be movement on the physical, bodily level. I get lost on the next step, the step of movement to a different plane. Because first I'd have to believe in the System.

And I seem to lack some sort of Belief Gene.

The short answer may be "wherever you are, there you are." So what if I don't believe in Buddha, or Jesus, or Vedanta, or Allah, or Bob? Yoga is good, it's all good, no one is more advanced than anyone else, everyone just Is.

I can believe that.

I think.