Where I Stand Regarding Yogi Bhajan

I practice Christ-centered Kundalini Yoga. So let me speak first about Jesus Christ. 

Jesus Christ was a controversial character. He did strange things. He put his fingers in people's ears and they could hear. He put spit and dirt in people's eyes and it restored their sight.

He went into the temple and threw over the tables of the merchants who sold there. He yelled at them and told them all to get out. 

He called the chief religious leaders of his day "vipers." This was about the greatest insult one could level at them. Many loved and followed him and many wanted to kill him. He was not here to make friends with everyone. He came and did the will of the One who sent him. That is why he had such great power and was so loved by his Father.

Now that he's dead people are all kinds of confused about who He was and also what his relationships were with women. Some people think he was sexless. Some even say he had multiple "consorts" or sexual partners. 

The substantial evidence that He was married to Mary Magdeline is totally buried from plain sight in the Christian cannon. Also the evidence of his treatment of women as equals or even greater than men is completely buried to the mainstream Christian world.

He never wrote any documents himself, but lots of people recorded his words. They all wrote their own versions of what he did based on what they thought was important. And many of the best records were kept hidden from the majority of people until recently.

When He taught publically, many people didn't understand the deeper layers of His teachings. Some of the teaching seemed to contradict themselves. Many of His teachings people called blasphemy. 

I was telling a friend that if Jesus were alive today people would probably be bringing some legal action or investigation against him, and she reminded me that they already did. Oh. Right. They did. And crucified him. 

Of course, this was all foretold. Most people, both then and now, totally missed who and what he was. 

Behold, I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I am the same that came unto mine own, and mine own received me not. I am the light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. (D&C 6:21)

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I am not unfamiliar with slander and accusations against our religious founder Joseph Smith. All kinds of lies are still being told about him, and especially about his relationships with women. Even within the church, the church history department still perpetuates some of this misinformation. Why? I believe things are messy whenever humans get involved. After his death ideas were manufactured or misconstrued by people for their personal gain or to sanction their own actions. When a guy is dead it's easy to make up stuff and it's hard to put together all of what he was setting out to do when you only have parts of it. Personal accounts and journals are not facts. Everyone wanted to be close to the prophet or insist they had some special relationship with him. And if not that, then they wanted to share some slight or offense that he had given to them. 

Restoring a whole lot of truth to a world that has never seen anything like it in eons is a BIG job. It's really tough to break people out of the foolish traditions of millenia. 

But he's not the only one in history who has been accused of these things. I think of Martin Luther King. Ghandi. Yogananda. Abraham Lincoln. They all had lots of enemies and the haters words were all similar.

Except for Jesus Christ, they were all men, and men are imperfect. And many men are corrupt. So it would be easy to believe that this is just another case of a corrupt man. 

If you only know Yogi Bhajan from his recorded videos then you have only seen him as a teacher. The style of teacher that came from a culture in India where students worked for months to prove themselves trustworthy of the opportunity to learn these powerful teachings and to have their ego crushed. That was the job of a teacher. To crush the ego. A person does not become a master if she is ruled by her ego. In this country though, our egos are more gigantic than ever and we don't like to have them chiseled. We say we want it, but we don't. 

So he was teaching from his own known cultural style, and he was building the airplane in the air. No one had ever done what he had done. If we judge his teaching style by our kid glove American 2020 standard--well that's like judging your grandparents for being stoic or for working themselves to death. They thought that's what they had to do to have good kids/a good life.

I never knew Yogi Bhajan personally, and for that I think I was blessed to have a different kind of relationship with him. I used to hear stories about him and I had very mixed feelings. He sounded loving and funny in the personal stories I heard, but his giant picture up at my teacher training scared me. I think that deep down many Americans still have some racist beliefs about Indian men. It took me time to get through this. I prayed to know who Yogi Bhajan was and if it mattered that I had any relationship with him. Because honestly, it seemed like a lot of people worshipped him. I got a very clear message that he was similar to Joseph Smith. He had come to restore a technology. 

I could understood that and appreciated it. I don't worship Joseph Smith, I worship Christ. But I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and the scriptures, doctrine and other teachings that he restored were pure, true and from God. What others after him added to it I have to be very prayerful about. But basically, I have a testimony of Joseph Smith and I am grateful for his courage and his role (ongoing) in this restoration of truth to the earth. And that is how I feel about Yogi Bhajan. I don't worship him. And for the record, Yogi Bhajan never wanted to be worshiped. He wanted to share the teachings. 

As I got deeper on my KY path I understood how it supported and expanded my understanding of Christ's teachings and also helped me be more Christ-like (this was most amazing of all because I had been trying for a long time). I have now got a pretty solid relationship with Yogi Bhajan (in spirit). 

I feel sad that very few people really got who Yogi Bhajan was and what he was trying to do. He served tirelessly to bring us the technology that he knew would be so necessary at this moment-- when it would feel like the bottom has fallen out of the world. That time is now, when the wheat and the chaff are being separated. All of this he predicted. None of it would surprise him. He ate calamity for breakfast and betrayal for lunch and he is being marred in death. But it doesn't matter to him, and in fact he is probably not too sad about it. Because Yogi Bhajan is not the tree. He is not the roots nor the trunk of the tree. He is not the branches. He brought the seed over here and he planted it and nourished it until it was strong.  If you'd like to revisit the vineyard metaphor in Isaiah, there is some good fruit in there for study. 

I have to say that I have been very disappointed in what I have seen in the 3H0/ KRI community since my involvement with it 14 ish years ago. There is a lot of corruption, and a lot of wishy-washy people. (No wonder YB was frustrated with them at times, but they were the best he had to work with, and he loved them anyway.) 

And in truth, there was a lot of Yogi Bhajan worship. The larger than life pictures of him everywhere. I couldn't put my finger on it. But I was just reading in Isaiah Decoded by Avraham Giliadi and he reminds us that Isaiah, (that ancient prophet who prophesied about things in his day and foresaw that there would be a repeat of these things in our day) warned about idolatry, and not just the works of men's hands, but also "images." Here's a quote:

    

An obsession with images led to a life lived in unreality, which made people vulnerable to enemy intrigues and prevented them from realizing their divine potential. Images were enticing as a form of idolatry because they captured the imagination, so that people "worshiped the creature rather than the creator." (Romans 1:25)

Basically we are totally living in a culture obsessed with images: celebrities, big-wigs, pro athletes, and you can think of a million more. The Yogi Bhajan worship was just another form of this. It has kept the 3H0 community in a weird place unable to move forward. They made him into a God substitute, distracting themselves from the One who sent him and from living the teachings! In this regard I think Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh guru was wise to end the gurus and turn everyone's attention to "the word." 

One other thing I am disappointed in that I see in the 3H0 community (and everywhere in the world) is that there is a greater and greater desire to please everyone and not offend anyone. This is the exact opposite of what Yogi Bhajan stood for and what all great teachers stand for. The real Aquarian teacher--rare--isn't afraid to speak truth, knowing it will not please everyone and some will hate it. While I am all for loving everyone--I am not going to pretend that evil is good and good is evil just to be friends with everyone. 

As a therapist who works with a lot of people with trauma, I understand how there is a need to be heard, empathized with, believed. And I also know that memory is tricky and the mind creates a LOT of distortion. While the #Me-Too movement may have given women more power and speaking up has helped many heal their throat chakras, I don't see that it has healed our hearts. I am survivor of trauma at the hands of men, and I know that it clouded my vision for years. I shaped my whole life around the false beliefs created therefrome and they shaped many of my experiences. 

I also know that being a victim sometimes made me special.  Victim mentality is a form a pride (it's the sneaky flip side). It is also a way of controlling others --there is also such a thing as a victim perpetrator. I know how it is to be on the other side of this too with people who, after abusing me or shafting me, played the victim and then tried to blame me and thus make me into their perpetrator--which is an act of perpetration. Complicated stuff, right? It gets even more complicated when we let the mind run things. This is why we so badly need the technology Yogi Bhajan left us. And why we need the Atonement of Jesus Christ. To dump the garbage and heal our hearts. 

I just read this quote a few days ago and I love it: 

"I believe it is your birthright to be healthy, happy, holy. Whoever takes away your birthright is your enemy. Whosoever gives you your birthright is your friend." - Yogi Bhajan (Beads of Truth, Winter 1980, p. 6)

By this standard, Yogi Bhajan is my friend.

So if you are wondering who I am for. I am for Jesus Christ and the ONE who sent him. 

And I am for the ONE who sent Joseph Smith, Yogi Bhajan, Abe Lincoln, MLK, Ghandi, Mary Magdeline, Eve, Aseneth, Guru Nanak, and so many others. 

I'm for the ONE TRUE GOD.