War & Peace Yoga

In order to understand the Tureya Ashram you will need to explore the idea that there are two types of yoga taught in the world. One form of yoga teaches a path for the warrior, one where spiritual growth is achieved through war-like actions. Fight the mind, destroy your desires, disregard your senses, forget the world of illusion; this is the war-like mentality of some forms of yoga. It is a path of self negation: turn your back to everything you know and then your spirituality will begin to emerge. No more family, no more possession, no more sensual experiences, no more! No more comfort, no more extended sleep, no more talking, no more! Than only you will find spirituality. This concept is expressed most fundamentally by the Jain yogis who intentionally disseminate from the physical body; why live when there is nothing else to live for in the physical world?

But this is just one form of yoga (and maybe expressed to the extreme). Another is about expansion and expression. Feel your body, listen to nature, experience your mind, move intimately into your relationships, taste all that life has to offer, but let everything open you and expand you, until you are immersed in everything and no you remains. This is the tantric approach to yoga. Feel, do, experience, move, flow, but open! Everything is divine, so let the divine enter into you through everything!

Both systems of yoga work, but one is for the war-like mind and the other is for the peace-centered heart. The mind wants to conquer, destroy, illuminate, and dominate. And when practiced devotedly you may find a point where no mind remains, and then you have entered yoga. But there is also the chance of more tension, suppression, and anger to arise because war is the underlying theme.

The peace-centered heart path of tantric yoga is different. It works to merge, integrate, express, love, and expand. It moves not through thoughts but through feelings and experience, and through the heart the mind dissolves and what remains in the voice of the heart: silence.

Both are available in this world today just as they were thousands of years ago, and both are paths that appeal to different people. For some war seems like the feasible option and so self-negation is what resonates with them. But for others the world and the life we are given are expressions of an inherent beauty and bliss not to be ignored or denied.

At the Tureya Ashram we approach spiritual through the path of reverence and appreciation for life and the earth. We want to live so that we can share, connect, experience, and celebrate. Why renounce the world when the world is our best teacher? And so we at the ashram do not teach our students to deny everything and take up arms in a spiritual warfare but instead we explore the full depth of our life here on earth, utilizing every moment, every being, and every experience as a chance for our inner awakening.