Day Three (Yesterday)

Yesterday I hit not one, but two hour-and-a-half classes. The first one was an Anusara-inspired flow at the studio right down the block. I guess I've been steering away from Anusara classes because I find them a little bit cultey, and although I won't be becoming a devotee any time soon, I did love the class. Afterward I felt well-rested, well-stretched, and kind of radiant. It was cool. Maybe because of the first class, I was really paying attention to how I felt in the second class, which was at my old studio. During the meditation, I felt like I wanted to jump out of my skin. But then, during the class, I conquered a major obstacle for me: the splits. I came farther into Hanumanasana than I've ever even gotten close to before- I just had a bolster holding my hip about two inches off the floor. For me, who spent most of middle school not even being able to touch my toes, this is huge. Me: 1, Fear: 0.

Thinking about the fear thing has been making me think about all the things that go with fear, like hate and judgment. I had a few friends who identify as Christian post some things on Facebook that I felt projected intense hatred and belittlement toward people who practice Islam, in the wake of Bin Laden being killed. Last night after I got home (from my almost-total Hanumanasana! Score!!) I felt emotionally dragged back to high school, where this kind of debate was commonplace in the mostly-Christian group I was a part of. I always felt ignored, slighted, or put down for my beliefs and views, even when they weren't that different. One of my best friends in high school told me that when I practiced yoga, I was worshiping Satan. I was told by various Christian sects that I wasn't baptized early enough (I was seven), I was baptized too early for it to "count," I wasn't really baptized at all since I hadn't had a full-immersion baptism, that I couldn't take communion (by Catholics), that I wasn't really Christian because I was too close to Catholic (by Baptists), that I wasn't spending enough time in church, that I was spending too much time in the wrong kind of church. These messages were really confusing for a kid, and I hope they have made me very conscious of the judgment that I pass on the beliefs of others.

But I didn't do a good job last night. The post that triggered me so much started with a lamentation that six million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust, only to be replaced with twenty million Muslim people in Spain, who had presumably brought with them poverty and sloth and idleness. Then there was a list of Jewish people who had won the Nobel prize, and a much shorter list of Islamic people who had won the same prize. This was supposed to be shocking because there is a much larger Muslim population in the world than Jewish population. Then there was a quiz, where the answer to a lot of violent "who done it" were Muslim men.

There are obvious numbers to refute these facts, and I'm not going to post them here because I've been thinking about them all day and I think that my thinking about it any more is not going to do anybody any good. Suffice to say, something similar to this could easily be posted about any major religious group, and a part of me wanted to produce an almost identical post targeting Christianity, just to prove a point. We are all individuals within a belief system, and we can't hold others within that system culpable for the actions of a few, no more than we could hold an entire race or gender culpable for the actions of a few. I'm not saying that I agree with everything in the Muslim faith. I definitely don't. But I don't really hold 100% to any major world religion, and I have similar issues with them all. Many of them, including Islam and Christianity, appear to condone violent acts if you read the texts that way.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I, within and concerning myself only, want to feel compassion for both people practicing Islam, and people practicing Christianity. I don't want to get into a place where I feel so trapped and exasperated and am trying desperately to make an argument that I know won't be heard, and I definitely don't want to be judgmental or appear violent myself because I'm trying to prove a point. I don't want to be a giant oxymoron, yelling and stabbing at people in the name of peace. All I can really control is myself, anyway, and I feel like that's all I should want to control.

But I don't have all the answers. And I know I won't- so I think maybe for right now instead of pretending that I do have answers, I should just listen to what's going on around me and think about it as peacefully as I can. Maybe all this yoga can help with that.