All my life I’ve been puzzled and seeking for answers to religious studies. I grew up in a Taoism and Buddhism family, a Catholic school and a multi-cultural country, which left me with so many questions about God. If every religion has only one God, so whose God was the one and only God who created us. To make things worse, it seemed like people are using religion to smear humanity. Leaders and followers of religion have been exposed in crimes. It’s really hard to lose faith in religion in our time.
Contrary to many’s belief, Yoga is not a religion. It believes that the divine is in YOU. You are and will be your enlightenment. And when you’ve reached your enlightenment, you will be released from your suffering. Have you ever been through a rough patch in life and after you came out of it, you’ve etched the lesson in your life. That is something similar to an example of enlightenment. It’s something that you have to experience for yourself to understand what everybody else have told you.
I remembered that I was enlightened once whilst doing One-Legged Pigeon. I could barely concentrate on whatever the instructor was saying at the background because One-Legged Pigeon was a “killing me softly” pose. “Breathe into the pose”, the instructor said. Since I had to breathe anyway, I took a deep inhale and exhale. What seemed to be a huge and unimaginably tight muscle, seemed to melt away with the my exhalation. And I thought “This is IT!” A difficult asana is like the stress that you and I have to face ever so often. If you are willing to let go and breathe into it, it melts away.”
Yoga is THE JOURNEY, not the destination, for it will never come an end, it’s a continuous pursuit.
-Joanna
