Community - Harsha

[Guest guest]

Thanks Grant for that eloquent analysis of what you

felt when asked to kneel and prostrate in a religious

group.

 

My own feeling is that true prostration to someone is

spontaneous and never premeditated. And a genuine

bowing certainly need not always be physical.

 

Kneeling to someone, a guru or the group leader, when

it is part of an institutionalized practice, to me

appears violent.

 

Since the first principle in all yogic traditions is

Ahimsa, anything that smacks of power and violence

betrays a lack of authenticity.

 

Hey, just one man's opinion.

 

The best bowing I have done is to my kids tying their

shoe laces.

 

Love to all,

Harsha

 

 

--- bardsley wrote:

> I remember about a dozen years or so going to a

> meeting about Adi Da (was considering signing up at

> that stage) and not being able to get beyond the

> adorational/devotional/worshipping thing (which took

> its form in lots of kneeling and postration for

> Daism, if I remember rightly). I think part of me

> was reacting to a sense of the cultic about these

> practices in that setting; a sense that power and

> debasement was involved, the seeking and the ceding

> of power, which I think is perhaps the violence

> you refer to Harsha. On the other hand a lot of my

> resistance to bowing down then was based purely on

> egoic resistance, a refusal to surrender, a type of

> pride.

>

> Now, I tend to think that

> kneeling/bowing/prostration (whether to or not, its

> significance) depends on who you're kneeling to and

> why they want you to kneel (or why you want to). If

> kneeling is the act of consciousness honouring

> itself, ie of me honouring mySelf through kneeling

> to mySelf in you, that's surely an enriching and

> ego-transcending practice; appropriate surrender.

> This seems to me to be what kneeling/prostration

> is/should be about in any religion/practice. If it's

> some kind of egoic SM thing, though, of course

> that's different. I would probably, like Jerry, do

> the kneeling thing if I thought it was going to

> yield an interesting meeting and was done for the

> reasons I mentioned above.

>

> How do people feel about kneeling in the churches of

> exoteric faiths they don't agree with/countenance?

>

> Grant.

>

 

 

 

 

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