{"id":728,"date":"2008-08-25T13:44:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-25T02:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/?p=728"},"modified":"2008-08-25T13:44:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-25T02:44:00","slug":"ask-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/2008\/08\/25\/ask-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask the Question"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Shri<\/a>

Shri Mataji, founder of Sahaja Yoga<\/p><\/div>\n

One night I found myself in a very difficult situation, and in desperation and as a last resort I appealed to God, in whom I didn\u2019t believe, saying, \u201cIf there is such a thing as God, you\u2019ve got to help me\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I had been brought up in a Christian family and had to go to church most Sundays but I\u2019d never felt it helped me or gave me any peace.\u00a0I felt worse for going, actually, as the idea of original sin and all the rules meant I could never feel good about myself.\u00a0Because of my negative experiences with the church, which was Protestant, I found it difficult to believe in Jesus Christ and God. So I considered myself an atheist, I suppose, although I was idealistic and had high moral values.<\/p>\n

I still had an interest in spirituality, however, and thought that there must be some metaphysical answer to the ills of the world and I was searching for the key that would unlock the door to the mysteries of life.\u00a0I felt that there was some force (which I thought of as the life force) which looked after all the animals and plants on the earth without them doing anything.\u00a0I thought that as I was, surely, just as important as the plants and animals then that force was, hopefully, looking after me too.\u00a0I felt that if I could be more in tune with that force, without thinking, just like the plants and animals, then I could be healed as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I started looking for a Buddhist meditation group.\u00a0Buddhists don\u2019t talk about God, I thought, but they seem to be people of integrity and very much at peace in meditation.\u00a0But it wasn\u2019t to be.\u00a0All the groups I rang didn\u2019t answer their phones.\u00a0Eventually I decided to go to Sahaja Yoga, which I had heard about from a friend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As it happened, Shri Mataji, the founder of Sahaja Yoga, was coming to\u00a0my city\u00a0the following week.\u00a0 Her lecture was extremely interesting and covered a wide range of topics including God and Jesus Christ.\u00a0I thought, \u201cOh, no!\u201d\u00a0 I was surprised, however, to find that rather than urging us to go to church and become Christians, Shri Mataji openly stated that many Christians were not as loving and forgiving as they should be and that their intolerance and hypocrisy had turned many people away from Christianity because they were not following the teachings of Christ as they should.\u00a0That had been my experience!\u00a0When Shri Mataji spoke about God I thought, \u201cI\u2019m not interested in having anything to do with God or religion\u201d.\u00a0But\u00a0I was so impressed with Shri Mataji and she spoke about all sorts of other interesting aspects of spirituality as well. I decided I would put aside her references to God and try Sahaja Yoga.<\/p>\n

I have never regretted my decision.\u00a0Sahaja Yoga has been the most wonderful experience of my life.\u00a0Over time I have learnt that the original teachings of Jesus Christ are quite different\u00a0from the teachings of the Church which has twisted and distorted many things over time.\u00a0I have also discovered the mystical aspects of Christianity, some of which were recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls and\u00a0kept secret by the Vatican for many years.\u00a0I do not have to follow the dictates of priests or ministers who interpret spirituality for me, tell me what to do and have power over me.\u00a0I find real comfort and peace from meditating and from a personal connectedness that I never felt in the church.\u00a0And, yes, I have learnt from my experiences that God does exist, and has taken many forms over the millennia, not just the form of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

So if you, like me, have had bad experiences or have become disenchanted with the Church and feel nervous about the mention of God, don\u2019t worry about it.\u00a0Just put it aside and try Sahaja Yoga.\u00a0True spirituality involves much more than the narrow view of God and religion that has been promulgated by\u00a0Christian churches.<\/p>\n

And if you like, you too can ask the question, \u201cDoes God exist?\u201d\u00a0or \u201cIs there such a thing as God?\u201d and see how the answer unfolds in your life.<\/p>\n

Kay Alford<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One night I found myself in a very difficult situation, and in desperation and as a last resort I appealed to God, in whom I didn\u2019t believe, saying, \u201cIf there is such a thing as God, you\u2019ve got to help me\u201d.\u00a0 I had been brought up in a Christian family and had to go to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43,12,16],"tags":[173,175,257,307,329,652,394,433,448,654,499],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-43","category-personal-experiences","category-shri-mataji","tag-christianity","tag-church","tag-god","tag-jesus-christ","tag-life-force","tag-meditation","tag-peace","tag-religion","tag-sahaja-yoga","tag-shri-mataji","tag-spirituality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4h1Q1-bK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}