The Truth Shall Set You Free

Balancing The Worlds of Faith and Yoga: A new Kind of Yoga Consciousness

I have a tee shirt which I wear occasionally at yoga centers, in yoga classes, shopping! I created the tee shirt to remind myself of my own spiritual path, to be unabashed about saying who I am in the world. The tee shirt is fitted and sexy, which is also a part of who I am in the world. The letters are in under case, small and unobtrusive. And every time I choose to wear it, I feel slightly irreverent(something I love to be without losing reverence for the sacred), spunky and at the same time tremendously vulnerable. The phrase on the tee shirt is ‘Jesus is My Guru”. I believe that. I am not afraid to show it or say it. I have found, though , that because of this tee shirt and all that it represents, I have had to forge my own journey between two worlds to a third world, MY world.
I have always believed in Jesus ever since I was a tiny girl, sitting in a hospital room , just having been diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. My parents arranged for our parish priest to administer last rights, but they told me I was getting my first communion. When the wafer hit my mouth, I felt the transformation, the new hope. I would be okay. I had just eate
Jesus! I knew my bones had changed that day in 1967. It is 2007 and I am here to write about it.
One of the challenges growing up was finding a way to connect to other kids my age, when I already had lived a whole adult lifetime, acutely spiritual, awakened in so many ways without the grown up words to say what I knew to be true. I tried to translate what I could into the language of my fellow first graders but I was always on the fence between their world and the world I knew of heaven, God, my body as divine.
When I reached college , I began to attend a charismatic church. I loved the dancing, the gorgeous music, the instant miracles, the speaking in tongues, the Bible Studies(Catholics tended to spend more time on the rituals), the focus on resurrection rather than crucifixion. The church was cool and wild. And … I began to live out of a sense of guilt, a constant awareness of being judged. The congregation seemed to have a lot of opinions about me, about who I should or shouldn’t be. And worst of all the communion wafer wasn’t Jesus at all, just a piece of bread, a symbol , a reminder ,not magic at all! I was young, 19 or 20. I had finished yet another four year run of cancer and chemo. I was grateful to God to be alive and I wanted to party. I wanted a boyfriend.n©Marsha T Metzger 2007

I wanted a life outside religion. The church made a grand distinction between “the world” and “the body of Christ”. Us and them. I left the church, sure I would be struck down by God and get cancer again. It didn’t happen.
I moved out to LA, opened a clothing company , found a new church , huge so I could remain anonymous(I thought), but it was still us and them. I continued to balance on the edge of this dangerous precipice. Either I went full force into the church or full force into the world. Either way, I was apparently “F-ked”. My friends that were non-Christians(as in all my friends) were interesting, real, honest , fun, human, feeling. They had sex. Some were gay. I loved them all so much. One friend used to introduce me as “ a Christian but she’s totally cool She likes ZEP and stuff like that.” I sort of belonged in “the world” so surely I was going to be struck down by God if I didn’t preach the ‘good news of salvation’ to all my friends. And… I still secretly believed that I had eaten the literal body of Jesus all those years ago which was why I was still alive, going to church and partying on the side.
A few years later I moved to NYC, for my Ph.D in Medieval French(after one of the elders in my church had told me to be careful of the French because their country was based on anarchy!). I joined what I thought was a really cool church, with lots of singles who were artists, actors, writers, dancers, models. Just cool people believing in Jesus. I thought I needed to admire the “bright lights” of the church, the stellar leaders and bible study home group wives, the do-gooders. I suppose they were nice enough. I never felt more lonely in my whole life.
My doctor told me my kidneys were failing, due to all the chemo years before. Some of the churchy people began to mention that I seemed “ awfully angry”, “too negative” “complaining”. Well, yeah! I was thirty years old and about to go on dialysis. I was somehow supposed to focus on my “heavenly body” rather than worry so about my life here on earth. Problem…. I was a heavenly body on earth, still am, still living in a body. I left that church and went back to 84th and Park. St. Ignatius, where they called the communion wafer “the Body of Christ” and meant it.
In 1997 I moved to MA, leaving my doctorate behind, having no clue what to do with my life, other than survive this dialysis nightmare. One day I was walking down the hall in my building and was stopped in my tracks by what appeared to me to be a presence, a huge angel with a sword over his heart, telling me “ We want you to be a yoga teacher.” Okay! I Said, as if I could even move! The words were like resurrected bread melting in my mouth. Every cell in my body began to flutter with light and excitement. I felt a pull in my heart, thrill, relief. That week a yoga catalog “appeared” in my path. I signed up immediately, no money , no idea how to organize dialysis in the Berkshires. I just did it, no questions asked.
A few months later I was at the ashram, nervous I would be struck down by God for chanting OM or singing Mantras in Sanskrit. We explored the five sheaths, reinca
ation, bhakti yoga, divine feminine. I loved it. My body loved it. I seemed to be remembering what I had always known. I deciphered all this yoga philosophy. Jesus was still intact. After all, I had digested him long ago.
I tried to return to the traditional church, went to a Bible study or two. One woman questioned how I could possibly practice yoga as it was in direct conflict with my faith. Oh well! I just knew what I knew. Transubstantiation(when the bread becomes Jesus) was real. The divine literally is in every living Thing.
I hobbled back and forth between church and yoga, yoga and church for a couple more years, until yoga became my church, until Jesus became my yoga. A new community emerged , of n©Marsha T Metzger 2007nnbelievers like myself, people who had been through the traditional American Christian experience and had found God on their own. We were the ones who had the waking dreams, the visions, the messages from trees and animals and birds, even the stones. Every living thing . Some of us even believed the bread was not just a piece of bread, but had the very life force of the divine universe , the intention behind the communion as a living breathing awakened life gift for all of us.
The only way I know how to do my faith walk, to believe in Jesus and be a yogi and believe in divine feminine, to see God in every breath, every stone, every OM, is to stay true to my body and heart. A few years ago I was watching the 700 club(I would do that when I was really bored at dialysis, which was every time). A woman, the daughter of a very well know
American preacher , had written a book and was giving an interview. The interviewer was perfect, not a hair out of place, saying and doing the right thing with hardly a shift in emotional tone in her voice. The author spoke, full of deep love. I could see the interviewer become visibly uncomfortable, twitching in her seat, trying to keep her face together as the author spoke, answering a way too judgmental and prying question “ Some things are between me and Jesus and no one else”. I began to cry. Yes1 Yes! Yes! Amen Sister!!!!
I have been on the other side of things too, in the yoga world, wearing my tee shirt, thinking about how my experience is between me and Jesus alone. Some yogis have taken offense to my tee shirt and it’s catchy phrase. As if my outspokenness meant I was about to jam the Bible down their spiritual esophagus or try to save them, or think I was an us and they were a them. I have had yogis actually tell me the idea of combining yoga and Jesus made them nauseous and was a total turn off.( I founded a 200 hour Yoga School that fuses these two practices together). And yet, Buddha and yoga? Kabbalah and yoga? Not as much of a problem. There is something about the gritty underbelly of Jesus that stimulates certain people the wrong way. I understand, Look at all those years I tried to go to mainstream church! And yet. And yet… some of us still love Jesus and what He stood for.
I can’t really win at this one. Truly. What I have gleaned(?) from this experience is precisely that I am not meant to win. There is no winning. There is only US and US. And I do live in these two worlds and they are the same world for me. I am just being me, an integrated whole person, a yogi, and a believe
in Jesus.
I admire Buddha , Moses, Muhammed, all the swamis and avatars(especially Swami Kripalu who has come into my dreams with as much frequency as my angel friends). But Jesus. I think Jesus did something Big for humanity in my eyes. He literally made the bread his Body( I am sticking to that one) because every living thing is Prana, is an aspect of the Divine. Jesus was flesh, blood, breath and divine all in one. Perhaps we are too? And look what Jesus was willing to do to show us all. Now if that isn’t yoga, I don’t know what is.

Marsha Therese Metzger. M.ed, RYT 500, KYTA, is the creator of Eashoa Yoga™-Christ Inspired Yoga and Color Me Yoga™. She is also a lifelong dancer, writer and healer.
Her websites are www.yogaom.com, www.colormeyoga.com, www.christinspiredyoga.comnn©Marsha Therese Metzger 2007