I am interested in your prayerful reflections on the discipline known as Yoga. I know there are different levels but would Yoga as exercise be harmful to the soul? A priest in Donegal has made the news in Ireland by denouncing such esoteric practises. My instinct tells me he is right but I don't know enough to make a qualified judgement - hence my post. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/soci...ls-in-jeopardy-donegal-priest-warns-1.1860881
Some good info here: http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=17011 And here: http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=1339 And here: http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=30985 And here: http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=22376
Ever seen a demon? Want to? If in doubt don't go there. It's never worth opening that door. The Church has said no. Many learned holy people have said no. Excorcists have said no. Any meditation that does not directly call out to God is wrong. Any physical gesture that is a sign to another diety is wrong. Why are so many Catholics falling for this stuff?
And it's not as physically harmless as its practitioners and promoters would have the public believe either: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=yoga+injuries
I would like to have more information about acupuncture and its eventual danger. Can someone help me to find this ?
The Women of Grace website has info on this too, in fact they have investigated all sorts of new age and alternative medical practices, it's a great resource. http://www.womenofgrace.com/en-us/search/default.aspx?q=acupuncture
I believe one of the main reasons God gave us a Guardian Angel was to guard the doorway to the, 'Other Side'. If this angel was not in place all kinds of things would come through. In fact we would come to harmfa irly quick. The effect of occult , New Age and things like Yoga is to switch of our Guardian Angel. The harmful consequences are obvious. http://thoughtcatalog.com/christine...s-of-people-messing-around-with-ouija-boards/
It is important for anyone who has been involved in yoga, or any kind of occult or new age activity, to know that it is not enough to simply give up the practice - they need to confess it and quite possibly seek deliverance prayer as well. This is because by partaking in these activities we are giving the green light to demons to enter into our lives, and even our bodies, WHETHER WE INTEND TO OR NOT, or whether we are even AWARE that we are doing so or not. Once they have been given the green light, whether intentional or not, they are not going to give up easily; they will persist, persist, persist in gaining that person back.
As Jesus said, it is not what goes into a man that makes him unclean but what comes out. I believe that, like guns, alcohol, sex etc, these physical things and use of them are in themselves neutral. Its the hearts of men that choose to use them for murder, getting obnoxiously drunk, committing adultery. Obviously some people have a weakness so if you are aware of that then of course absolute "prohibition" may be the way God wants you to go. This man sounds to me like he is significantly ignorant of the arts he critiques (both Yoga and Tai Chi) and only sees in them the shadows he wishes to see. Myself, I am a longtime secretary for a well known and significant Tai Chi Club in my country. Tai Chi is a martial art cum health "exercise" based on health principles/philosophy very different from Western systems and practises. It works so well for the elderly (improving balance (fall prevention) , leg strength, reaction-time, mood and blood pressure) that we were contracted by the Government to provide classes for 500+ senior citizens in our area per year. Our Government does not fund organisations that peddle false religion (or any religion for that matter). Sure, some Chinese Tai Chi teachers are full-on Buddhists or Taoists or Confucianists and may use their Clubs as a vehicle to spread their own associated personal religious beliefs - not understanding that this is usually regarded as inappropriate in 1st world countries where most professionals make an effort to keep religious and civic activitioes separate. A few realise that some Europeans are drawn to this esoteric stuff and wax eloquent simply to gain more customers. It is usually European teachers who are the worst offenders in this regard. This is because they have often spent considerable amounts of time in Asian countries learning the Art and an Asian religion at the same time. Then when they come back to their home country they teach the art along with a mish-mash of esoteric sounding garbage that is more an Asian crossover obsession of their own making and not intrinsic to learning the Art at all. My Chinese Malaysian wife, who is a Tai Chi Master, shakes her head when she listens to the esoteric rubbish they weave into their "tai chi" teaching. Obviously Asian culture, just like Western culture, has a generic set of ancient philosophic principles that can be drawn on to assist in understanding traditional systems of learning/wisdom - whether that be Chinese medicine, "science", art, ethics or "religion". Yin and Yang is an obvious one. It has nothing intrinsically to do with Asian mysticism or religion. The philosophy of Aristotle (eg his principles of genus/species, of matter/form, substance/accidents) was in a similar way behind most of our Western systems of wisdom until the 1600s. Much of it has been dropped since Descartes and Newton, but it is still strongly behind a western religion called Catholicism. It is still used to explain the "Real Presence" as Tran-substantiation (the substance of bread is transformed to that of Jesus but the accidents of bread remain). Plato's philosophy was used by the Early Church to develop Christian mysticism and to help educated Greek classes accept/understand Christianity (eg In the beginning was the Logos). But who would say a professor who teaches the philosophy of Aristotle or Plato is for that reason proselytising his students into Catholicism. He may, but it is not intrinsically linked. Likewise Tai Chi teachers may (or may not) use words like "chi" and "yin-yang" etc. That alone does not mean they are teaching Buddhist, Taoist etc esoteric religious practices. When I interviewed my wife's Chinese "GrandMaster" for a MA magazine artical (he is a world leading teacher from the village where Tai Chi was "invented" many 100s of years ago) I asked him if he meditated or practised any of the sorts of esoteric things that extremely conservative Christians (usually Baptists) accuse Tai Chi of. He had no idea what I was asking of him even though my wife translated the questions three different ways for him to understand. There is simply no connection between the two in the village where Tai Chi evolved (Chenjiagou, Henan Province, China). So if this priest can be poorly informed and opinionated about Tai Chi I would suspect his views on Yoga are similarly unbalanced. Of course if the attraction of Yoga for you is precisely what you (perhaps mistakenly) see as its religious esoteric aspects ... then maybe Yoga isn't for you as you could be influenced regardless.
My own precise difficulty with Yoga is in the use of Chakra's. these are the dangerous doorways which I warned off. This is certainly an esoteric practise with occultic implications.. http://www.yogajournal.com/basics/898
What I mean is if you open these doorways...Chakras you have no idea what is going to come through that doorway. What it is, whether it is malign or good and whether or not when it enters you can switch it off...somehow. It is a bit like the old story of the man with a monkey on his back. At first he supposes he controls the monkey but then to his horror finds that the monkey controls him.
and http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-very-special-issue-of-medical-acupuncture/ Thanks a lot ! I am going to have a look at that. Ok I found what I was looking for: http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=10547 Thanks again !
"As Jesus said, it is not what goes into a man that makes him unclean but what comes out. I believe that, like guns, alcohol, sex etc, these physical things and use of them are in themselves neutral." Blue Horizon quote... Dear BH, I have to tell you that you speak very sensible and with authority. I am fascinated by your responses, even though most of the time I totally disagree with you. Not sure where you are from or what formed your faith, but if I listen to you any longer I'm afraid I'll totally lose my morals! Please when quoting Jesus, take into context of WHAT He was speaking and to whom. He was speaking to Jews that were afraid of certain foods and not washing correctly according to their laws. He was not, and the Church does NOT teach that all things are neutral and do not affect your conscience and spirit. Our environment and physical actions and words and how we treat our body and other's bodies does affect our conscience and spirit. Using alcohol as a food, like wine or ale with a meal in itself is not bad at all. Yes if one is an alchoholic they need to avoid it. But throwing sex in there like it is a recreation of sorts is totally against Church teaching. Sex is not a recreation like playing volleyball or general exercise. You sound very new age to me....all things seem ok in moderation to you and won't hurt you as long as you don't mean to hurt anyone or have good self control. You sound just like a boyfriend I once had who was trying to convince me to try cocaine. I do hope that you can come to terms between the world and your spiritual life, but please be mindful of others here who may be guided by your words and lead them away from God. A good rule of thumb: Does this activity bring you closer to God?? If in doubt, don't do it.
Yes, not to be over dramatic but why take chances with your immortal soul? Imagine not only having demons inside you but knowing you yourself opened the door to let them in. I am always careful to lock both doors at home when I go out, if we take good care to lock our houses and cars what care should we take to keep the doors of ours souls secure?
You've summarised the Thomistic moral philosophy behind my comments fairly well Carmel333 - pure Aquinas, definitely not New Age. The gist of it is in the Catechism as well. The main Thomistic principles are: - sin is always a freely chosen action that offends right reason - Catholicism traditionally defines virtue as a valley of moderation between two mountains of "excess" (either too much or too little). I don't say this is the only way of understanding sin/grace but it is classicly traditional Catholic and certainly not New Age. The only thing I didn't say was "sex is recreational" - that is a somewhat unreasonable interpretation of what I said. It hardly needs to be said that if sex is bad it is only so because of circumstance and nothing intrinsic to sex and sexuality itself. Adultery, contraception, sodomy and fornication are clearly unreasonable circumstance for the usual good reasons. But you are right insofar as I believe sex is a good to be de-justified - rather than an evil that has to be justified. If that is New Age then yes I agree with this particular New Age teaching as, I believe, does our Church. Catholics with Jansenist tendancies prob would not. (My Moral Theology professor in the 1980s somewhat unfairly held that Irish Catholics still tend to suffer a little from this widespread misunderstanding of Catholic sexuality prevalent in the 1800s and 1900s). Hence there is nothing reprehensible about "recreational sex" if the goods of sex are respected (that means marriage in a fallen world) and the sex is "virtuous" (ie in accord with reason and hence in moderation). If you didn't already know you may be surprised to learn that, in traditional theology, marriage is not automatically assumed as necessary for justifying sex if Adam and Eve had not fallen. I was, it is a matter of some debate apparantly. It is also interesting to learn that non monogamous sex (polygyny=many wives) is not quite intrinsically evil (directly against Natural Law) either. This appears to be the traditional way of explaining how God formerly dispensed from monogamy without offending his own Justice. All a little esoteric I know. But it does show that what we assume is "the Catholic view" is often only a "reader's Digest condensed version" of a deeper and more nuanced Catholic Tradition that sometimes produces unexpected outcomes in unusual cases. I agree fully with Pope Francis that we should be a cup half-full people not a cup half-empty people obsessed with the evils of contraception, abortion and gays. Pure Aquinas. Anyways, we are way off topic.
