Clown Artist Philosopher

Crazy for Jesus

In 1993 I left my secular upbringing and went in search of Truth and God. I shopped around a lot for about a year before concluding I had to make some sense of Jesus and the Bible. This wasn’t an easy for me. But I could find people to explain it to me so easily and they were all so eager to do so. Shortly after I had my first psychotic episode.
A few years later I was at my sister’s wedding, sitting next to my devoutly Christian uncle. I mentioned I wanted Jesus in my life but was feeling a little lost.
“A voice crying in the wilderness.”
A few weeks later I received my first modern bible and found a spiritual mentor in my aunt. I was a struggling student in Melbourne at this time and come exams I had my second psychotic episode.
I didn’t understand what was happening to me at this time, it was just frightening and confusing. I ended up in Darwin trying to run an installations business I was neither capable of or wanted to do. I haunted the churches, having basic Christianity explained to me again and again. At first I heard things like “Jesus is our only hope and he’s dead”, what hope was there in that? When it came time to partake in the host, a peace of bread and a shooter of juice, it was too real for me. It really felt I was eating flesh and drinking blood. It seemed to me Darwin Baptist Church was a front for a sex cult. Pure madness, I was sure God could save me, but for all I tried, I could not understand God.
I found my self drinking, every day, despite not wanting to. So I went to AA, in my psychotic state this was very frightening, but I managed to get a ride to a meeting. The sharing was too much for me and I had to get a lift home early. On the ride home I learned my first lesion in the steps.
“One of the steps is you have to accept God as you understand him.”
“But I can’t understand God.” I cried.
“That’s what you have to accept.”
And I understood.
Shortly after woods I had my third psychotic episode. This time I got into hospital and it was great. I only got to stay for two weeks, I remember shouting at the top of my lungs,
“I’m a clown, not a worker, I don’t have to do that stuff any more!”
And they kicked me out.
I spent the next five years in confusion, a clown in every respect. I felt I wasn’t good enough for church or AA. I had some spectacular adventures, some good memories and some complete nightmares. But I did it all with Jesus protecting me. I have survived things most people don’t get to tell about.
I kept in contact with my aunt and she patiently explained the good news to me. I talked with street preaches, I talked about Jesus with people who didn’t want to know and some times made them understand what I was on about. 
For a while I was running a fire dancing club. It slowly fell through as these things do. So I decided to run a special night, a full moon low tide fire dance. The only example I could find was on an Easter Saturday. This was a very New Age crowd and I explained that this was the day Jesus spent dead. He died on the Friday, he rose on the Sunday and Saturday he spent dead. So we gave that fire dance to Jesus and sang praises in his name.
I did all this drunk, confused and for the most part lonely. But then God sent me something to take pride in, I was starting to get good at the clown. So I got my self to AA and started doing the steps. I’d been putting it off for a long time, because I knew it would lead to madness and it did. I had asked Jesus in to my life ten years earlier. But it wasn’t until I started to do the steps that I began to hear what God was trying to tell me. The steps were good for three psych ward visits. During this time I got baptised, ducked in cold salty water by a Baptist pasta and my uncle Pat, in front of those Christians I love the most.
Shortly after I was given my challenge, I had to forgive my parents, not easy to hand that one over.  I had long hair and I was hung over, I came out looking like a drowned rat. After this my Mom started to come to church with me and talk about my faith and what it could do for me.
“I’m a mess” I try to explain “God help me and God help us, and he is.”
The problem with being crazy is it has a stigma attached, not unlike a criminal. But a criminal can decide to give up crime and that’s where the church can help. But a crazy guy can’t decide to give up madness. In biblical times an apostle or a disyfull or Jesus him self would come to me, say a prayer and I would be miraculously and permanently cured. These days’ miracles don’t happen so fast, but they do happen. I will never really recover from the madness of my life, but through Jesus I can learn to manage it better.
The blessed have it good and I don’t fit in, but they help me any way. And I have a place put aside for me by God and I pray to Jesus I will meet you there. And God has a place for me on earth, playing in the circus, building boats and studying philosophy. I am among the blessed, in my own crazy way.

Coming to Church

OK, I have searched for the Truth and concluded it was to be found in Jesus and the Bible, I have asked Jesus into my life, I’ve sought out Christian mentors and studied the Bible, I’ve been baptised. So what else do good Christians do? They go to church, but the church is full of good people and I’m a mess. Do they really want some mess like me around? They insist they are sinners, when I know they are not. 

One of my Christian mentors tells me the reason I am struggling so much in my faith is because I haven’t been spending enough time with Christians. So to church I go, as often as I can, this is where I get in contact with the body of Christ. Bible study is much easier, there are not so many people to deal with, lots of thinking and a little prayer. But how will they deal with it if I say or do something crazy, as happens from time to time.   

Legion

Legion was possessed by an evil spirit, he lived in the tombs, he screamed out at the daemons that possessed him and would cut him self with stones. This one was a real mess. Jesus crossed a lake to the shore of the tombs where Legion lived. Legion was terrified when he saw Jesus, he recognised Jesus for who he was right away and thought Jesus had come to torture him.
They talk and Jesus finds the man is possessed by many demons. The deamons beg for mercy. So Jesus casts them out and into a herd of pigs, the pigs promptly go and drown them selves in the lake. The pig farmers aren’t too happy about this and ask Jesus to leave.
As he leaves he says to him,
“Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.”
This guy was real sick, we don’t see much of this sort of thing today in a country like Australia. Today we have “miracle” drugs, but the pharmaceutical companies insist that the drugs will only work properly with counselling. Modern psychology try’s to take a purely scientific approach, this somewhat limits the scope of psychological investigation. I get psychotic episodes, that’s aliens from mars are zapping my brain type of thing. You can imagine how it goes with a scientist when you talk about prayer.
“I pray I find it helps.”
“Do you get answers?”
“Sometimes”
“How do the answers come in.”?
“It’s hard to explain, take up prayer and you might know what I mean.”
“Do you hear the answers as voices?”
“Look I’m sure it’s not crazy to pray and get answers!”
The bible tells us madness is a spiritual disease and not one of the victims choosing. Mental Health maintains it’s just a chemical imbalance in the brain, it happens some times, take these pill and go away. What about the counselling? 
Don’t get me wrong the modern drugs are of great benefit, without medication to slow down my brain function I may very well be like Legion. But there is a philosophical and spiritual aspect to psychology that science can’t touch. This is where the church can come in, the development of faith can help manage a psychological condition.
We know little of the people of the village, accept they had a herd of pigs. So if they were Jews, they weren’t particularly pious. They were frightened when they saw Legion in his right frame of mind. How would they have dealt with it when he comes into the temple on the Sabbath to give praise to God? Legion was not only mad he was strong, he could break chains. You can imagine the commotion it would have caused, even if he just sat at the back of the room and listened.
Christians are into clean simple living, neat tidy dress and good honest work. Few crazy people can manage this standard. Madness affects behaviour and this creates a moral dilemma both to the church and the believer with a psychiatric condition. 
“If he was a believer would he behave like that?” 
“Do I really want to inflict my madness on these good people?”
I remember discussing this with my aunt,
“Can someone like me really be a Christian?”
She holds her hand out to me “Take my hand.”
I do and she holds with both hands.
“Like I’m holding your hands, Jesus holds you, now let go.”
I do and she still has a grip on me.
“He wont let go so stop fighting and let him take you in.”
Ultimately I need to spend time with Christians, that is where salvation is to be found, in the body of the believers. But I need to be care full, take it slow, get to know people and let them get to know me. That way I won’t pull any surprises.
My faith is real and looking back to when I first asked Jesus into my life, things have got better. I was well off the path when I asked Jesus to show me the way, lost along way out in the wilderness. Now I stagger wounded toward the light and it gets brighter the longer I walk. I know Jesus will give me a sane and manageable life. As my faith develops my life becomes easier to live with.

Prayer

Regardless of your faith, if you have one you will want to pray. If you don’t have faith, start to pray and get one. If you are a Christian you are going to want to pray to Jesus. Prayer is simple, it’s like talking to your self accept you are talking to something far grater. You can pray for anything you want,
“Oh Lord won’t you buy me a colour TV.” Janis Joplin
You can pray for such things and often they will arrive, but not as soon as you hope and don’t count on it. Can you imagine all the requests God receives for material possessions and he only has so many of them to hand around. But there is something God has an infinite supply of and that’s wisdom. 
“If any of you lack wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” James 1:5
Wisdom leads to a saner more manageable life. Look at the sanity in the church, the almost saint like qualities of those that were born to it and never left. The stories of the lost who found salvation in Christ. Consider the alcoholic, who drinks and behaves badly and fails to see he has a problem. Eventually someone convinces him to go to AA, he wakes up to him self and starts to pray. This is a kind of madness and the alcoholic finds sanity in prayer to a higher power. 
“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.” Sep 11 AA
For some psychological conditions, it is a short term thing, a break down to recover from. Other cases it’s a life long condition which can only be managed more wisely. Either way through prayer the wisdom can be attained to live as God intends for you to do.

Meditation

This is one of the recommended treatments for any psychiatric condition, but do Christians meditate? These days meditation is associated with eastern religions. As the New Age seems to have stolen the artists the eastern religions seem to have stolen meditation. Meditation is a western word and it is something Christians used to do. It is said that prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening. I would define meditation as a focused state on God. I can find my self in a meditive state while gardening, star gazing or juggling. But if I really want to take my meditation seriously I focus on the word. I sit comfortably with my bible and search for a few lines of scripture that seem to say something special to me that day. Having found the words I am looking for, I contemplate them deeply, repeating them when my mind starts to wonder.
“I lift my hands up to your commands, which I love, and meditate on your decrees.” Psalm 119:48
But it is not enough to contemplate Gods Word in the Bible. You have to work the word of God in your life. This requires some introspective practice. The process of introspection gives us an understanding of our selves and it is in finding the nature of our sinful thoughts and deeds then handing it over to God that we train our soul to master our minds and bodies. 
The eastern religions refer to our capacity to observe our selves as the Third Eye. Biologically this located at the penal gland between the frontal lobes of the brain. This is a part of your endocrine system and is responsible for regulating your sense of time it is especially active while sleeping.
A Buddhist Monk once gave me a simple meditation technique to heighten our introspective nature. It is easy and only requires ten minutes a day twice a day. Simply sit comfortably with your Bible and relax. Concentrate on your breathing taking long slow breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. Count the seconds between first starting to inhale and finishing exhalation. Hand this day to God, ask him to come into this day and guide you through the pits and snares ahead of you. You may want to open your Bible to a suitable bit of scripture and use this to focus the whole of your thoughts on God. Look at the day just passed, what did you do well, what could you have done better. Offer your sins to the saviour then clear your mind again, perhaps with some scripture. Look at the day ahead of you, what will you be doing, who will you meet, what problems you might encounter and how will you deal with it. Again clear your mind and give praise to God, then go and take on a sinful world. At the end of the day again sit comfortably and repeat the exercise. Again, clear your mind, give the day to God, look at the day behind you, clear your mind and had over your sins, look at the day ahead of you tomorrow, clear your thought and give praise to God. Ten minuets twice a day for a closer contact with the will of God and the power to carry that out.
“Meditate within your heart, on your bed and be still.” Psalms 4:4

What is madness?

It’s just a chemical imbalance in the brain, or so Mental Health maintain. Brain cells have branches like trees that extend from both ends of the cell. These branches end in neurons that attach to neurons in neighbouring nerve cells the space between the neurons is called a synapse. Neurotransmitters send signals between the neurons. Some of these neurotransmitters include: dopamine; if you don’t get enough of this you will lack inspiration and struggle to get motivated or solve problems. I get too much so my thoughts rush, I get crazy ideas and lose sleep. There are medications that block the dopamine receptors. Serotonin; this is feel good stuff. In flight or fight the neurons reabsorb this neurotransmitter from the synapse. There are medications that stop this from happening. Gabba; this is peaceful easy feeling stuff, good for study. It is released by meditation and tea has thenine that is a precursor to gabba. Noradrenaline; is produced by the adrenal glands and passes through the blood brain barrier. It switches on the parasympathetic pathway; a pathway of neurotransmitters that puts the brain on alert. The liver also plays a big role in how we think as does the thyroid and pancreas. A significant portion of our nervous system is in the guts. This is the enteric nervous system also known as the second brain. So what we eat has a huge effect on our thinking.
Modern technology can’t test for these chemicals. The process of diagnosis consists of asking how the patient feels then choosing from a list of recognized psychiatric conditions. They’re guessing and when asked what the cause of the chemical imbalance is; they simply answer, “We don’t know it just happens some times.” When pushed they will go further with; “That’s something you have to work out for your self.” The Mental Health patient needs to take an active role in recovering from or managing their condition.

The Steps

That’s where the steps come in. Most of the people with a psychiatric condition have a problem with substance abuse. The first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous was published in 1939, when AA membership was around one hundred. The “Big Book” has become a solid foundation for the development of faith and many have turned to the church after starting the program. Some AA members develop the kind of reverence for the Big Book as Christians do for the Bible. Personally I prefer my Life Recovery Bible that explains the steps in terms of scripture. The steps are a process of honest self evaluation under the guidance of a wise and loving god. 
It’s a knotty problem, did the drink cause the madness or did the madness cause the drinking. Ultimately it makes little difference, the alcoholic has a problem with substance abuse and the steps apply. The average AA member simply drank too much and probably behaved badly when he did. Others, such as my self, have a greater underlying illness. I am a crazy guy that drinks to deal with the madness. Anxiety, delusional thinking and unemployment made my life unmanageable and I learned to drink to deal with it. My drinking wasn’t an abnormal reaction to alcohol. It is a totally normal reaction to alcohol under very abnormal sercumstances. The use of drink or drugs to help cope with uncomfortable thoughts or feelings is known as self medication. 
The AA member with a psychiatric condition is likely to find it a far greater battle to achieve long term sobriety. The average AA group has acceptance for psychiatric conditions, but little understanding. But there are other self help groups. Grow sprang out of AA in 1957, it suggests a twelve step program for mental health. And there are countless other smaller groups through out the country.

The Word and Self Help Groups

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” Step 3 AA
Many Christians who are not a part of the fellowship find it frustrating that AA is not a Christian organisation. This was originally because of an atheist among the founding members of the fellowship. He just could not stomach the constant talk about God, but found he could not find long term sobriety until he was willing to accept a power grater than him self. This gives the program much of its strength, the steps span across the world’s religions. There are Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, New Age and sectairains that find faith can alleviate their alcoholism.
For the Christian AA member this presents a dilemma, how does one express faith in Jesus in such an environment? Getting up and telling a room full of people that they will go to Hell if they don’t believe the same as you would not be appreciated. And owing to perceived intolerance of the church, even mentioning the name Jesus may create a hostile reaction. But you can share on how church attendance and Bible study has helped you to develop faith.
Mental heath support groups on the other hand tend to take a more relaxed attitude to God. These groups rarely have much in the way of structure and primarily consist of people with similar issues gathering to talk about their day to day life. It is much easier to make a testimony to faith in Jesus in this environment. But still some care needs to be taken, some of the concepts expressed in the Bible may cause a psychiatric patient extreme anxiety and confusion. Best to keep it simple, express your commitment to Christ, but don’t push the hard line.
I aim for a sane and manageable life.
“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” Philippians 3:12
Faith can heal, the Bible is clear on this. The Christian way is a better way, that is clear to me. But I am along way from being a good Christian.
“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” Philippians 3:14
I realised I was a Christian and had to make some sense of Jesus and the Bible. I sought through prayer and meditation to gain a closer contact with God. I aim to be better than I was thropugh Christ Jesus, but I am along way from perfect.
“We are not saints. The point is we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.” AA
For the Christian, life is a jurny that leads to Heaven. But this is something that has to be sought for. Heaven is not on Earth, not even in the churches. Heaven is a goal for the next life, sought with a life of faith.
Heaven offers perfection, all your ailments, neurosis, addictions and unholy desires will be taken from you and you will reflect the saving grace of Christ. Mean while back on planet Earth we battle to be more like Jesus. For the Christian with a psychiatric condition this battle can at time seem utterly overwhelming. You may even find you are feeling as though you are already in hell and beyond hope.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:1-4
Some old wisdom said that if you met a crazy homeless guy you should treat him well as he may be an angel in training. An amusing thought for someone battling with madness. James tells us to “consider it pure joy” to battle for true faith. Those who have to fight harder to be like Christ are made stronger by their battle to be saved.
“Some of the first will be the last,
And some of the last will be the first”
There will be rank in Heaven. One of my Christian friends told me;
“If I make it, I will be the least in Heaven, but there is no way I will stop striving to that goal, so you will have to put up with me, because I strive; “to win the prize for which God has called me” 
Some of those who have a bigger battle with the devil, become stronger for it. Having defeated a few daemons looks good on the resume when it is time to take your place among the angles.

Angles, Devils and Demons

In Bristol, in compromising circumstances, I asked Jesus into my life. Nothing seemed to happen, though I pleaded with him with all my heart to come into my life and make some sense of it. He sent me a team of angles and the devil sent some of his own as well. I remember asking them;
“How do I know the devils from the angles?”
“Devils don’t make things better.” Came the reply.
There is a Christian myth about Lucifer who was Gods most beautiful creation. He let his beauty go to his head and tried to take over Gods job. So God cast him into Hell and many of his angles followed. That is why we are in a battle between Heaven and Hell as opposing forces vie for our souls. This is a solid belief among Christians, but this story is not to be found in the Bible. A little before my sixteenth birthday a daemon entered my life, my father started drinking. 
Devils make deals to entice you into Hell while Daemons just come and drag you in. I was dragged in by a zealous belief in a false faith. My father believes in money, the class system and the simple truth. Above all else my father believes in the divinity of his own knowledge. The Truth was very important to my dad so in 1993 I went out in search of this Truth. I studied philosophy and found my father’s faith in a worldly truth wasn’t up to much. In philosophy there are two kinds of truth. Truth as an adjective and Truth as a noun. Truth as an adjective is a description of the relationship between a belief and a fact, eg; you may believe grass is green, if grass does have the quality green then your belief is true. Truth as a noun would be the greenness of grass and this is something we only have a shadow of.
“You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free.”
The truth that comes with the knowledge of Christ is not like the worldly truth of my father’s preaching. The spiritual Truth that comes with faith in Jesus gives one power over the Devil. When I first asked Jesus into my life the Devil had a firm grip on me and I was rapidly going to Hell.
Dante, a Christian writer of the renaissance period, proposed the words “Abandon Hope all yea who enter here” are written above the doors to Hell, this is the Devils lie. No matter how far into Hell it seems you have gone there is still hope to be found in this life through redemption by the blood of Christ. 
God’s angles have been working in my life since I first asked them to do so. I have had many false beliefs and deluded views to over come, but through knowledge of God and his will for me I have been able to put them aside.

The Work Ethic

Few claiming to be Christians would say that material wealth would save. But many still fall into thinking work will save. Lazarus was a beggar in ancient Israel. He would spend each day sitting out on the road in a wealthy district of the city, giving praises to God, and living off what he could collect in his bowl. There was a wealthy man who would walk past him every day and never gave a crumb of bread. The wealthy man held Lazarus in great contempt, he had no time for beggars. Come there time Lazrus, being a man of God, went to Heaven. The wealthy man believing in his station went to Hell.
One of my Christian mentors tells me his great theory on how to fix the unemployment problem.
“Breaking rocks.”
“How do you mean?”
“People on the dole should be made to break big rock into lots of little stones.”
“How would that fix anything?”
“It would give them a work ethic.”
I laugh to my self at the thought of turning up to a job interview with breaking rocks on the resume, who needs a rock breaker these days?
We live in changing times, in my grand parents time there was a depression, then a war and then recovering from the war, this generation tends to be very frugal. In my parents generation there was a lot of work to be done. Mass manufacturing required large numbers of people to operate the machinery. Many people worked in jobs they didn’t like for fear of ending up on welfare. Come my generation they were paying us to go to school. I didn’t get a go at this because my father thought good honest hard work was more important than a good education, so the work ethic doesn’t sit well too with me.
We live in a time of leisure, we can work when we want to and take time out as we need it. The secret to finding success in work these days is to find something you are good and work out how to get paid for it. If you are fit and agile and not too bright and you want to go out into the country for a while you might want to take up fruit picking. If you are like me you run away with the circus. If you’re smart and ambitious and you want to live in the city you may want to take up business and follow all the trends in food, clothing and toys. Or if you are like me you may want to juggle on street corners for what ever you can get in your hat. Or maybe you want a regular nine to five that will pay you enough for a good simple life with enough left over to put away a nest egg for when you retire. Maybe you want to drop out, that is an option these days, live on welfare and concentrate on gardening and interesting ways to cook rice. I once put the concept of this option to my sister who responded with “Well what if every one did it?” Well it would be a complete disaster, but not many want this option. The drive to contribute in return for rewards is a natural desire most of us have. The drop out option is not an easy way out, it’s hard work to effectively manage your life on such a tight budget. I for one like a few more of life’s luxuries, a sense of identity and plenty to do with my time.
We live in a material world, but it is not the material things that we will be taking to haven. The things we work for in this life will either be useless or be provided for in bountiful supply in Heaven. Work will not save you, it is only in knowing God’s will for us that we shall know salvation. And in knowing God’s will, we shall find our place in the world. It may be your place to work in a good honest job, or it might be your place to simply think about things a lot and reflect on the world around you, or maybe play sports, or perhaps be a multi billionaire riding the big waves of the investment environment, it might be your place to be a beggar. Any way this life might work out for you, your place in the next life is defined by what you believed, not how you earned your living.

Enter The New Age

I see the New Age as at its best an interesting intellectual exercise, little more than a trend in literature. The Bible is the most solid foundation to true faith in the western world. I believe that in time the artists will return to the churches and the churches will wake up to the fact that having people working on the ascetics of life makes for a better world. 
But what will the artists bring with them from the New Age, Yoga, TiChi, crystals and herbal remedies. What harm is there in exercise that strengthens the body and brings on a mediative state? What harm is there in pretty coloured rocks and sedative tea to go to sleep at night? Don’t get me wrong, there are some very dangerous ideas in the New Age. But knowledge of the virtues of other faiths can strengthen Christian practice. “Love your neighbour as you love your self.” Jesus commands us and goes further with “Love thy enemy.” It is in getting to know the enemy, that is the unbelievers and those of other faiths, that we may see that they are not our enemy but simply our neighbour. In making them understand this is the chance of spreading the good news.
Christian practice has changed a lot over the years. The first church as described in Acts would be thought of as a dangerous cult by most modern standards. Four hundred years later the head of the church was placed in Italy and just some of the Christian letters going around were selected to form the New Testament. A thousand two hundred years later Martin Luther nails a letter to a Cathedral in Berlin and radically alters the practice of Christian faith. That was the renaissance, now we are in the industrial revolution. How will the church deal with a globalised world and multi faith nations?
Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, there is no other instance of God coming to Earth as a human in modern religion. For the Romans it happened often, there were frequent examples of the son or daughter of some god or another traveling the land preaching and healing. This is why Pompous Pilot was so baffled at the Pharisees getting so upset about Jesus turning up. Some demigod performing miracles; why is this a big deal? But in modern times Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. 
Only Jesus saves, no other modern religion is offering this. Buddha will enlighten you but it may take a few life times. No one knows what Zen is offering because they just sit there looking smug. Hinduism isn’t an option, but if it were all it offers is an eternity of miserable reincarnations. Taoism will make you fit and healthy but speculates little on what comes next. The Koran is just gives a whole bunch of rules to live by and if you stick to them all you might get a nice garden to hang out in for all eternity. The Jews are still waiting for the saviour. The Pagans will teach you how to build your very own heaven just for you, “so who are you going to hang out with?” Then thier face drops, then they get angry, as pagans are want to do. All the New Age offers is speculation. No one else is offering the Grace of God. This is what we have to take with us into the multi faith world. 
So what do they have to offer us? 
Yoga is a spiritual concept of the Hindus that is every bit as complex as our concept of Grace. But it can be summed up as being practice. What we see as Yoga is an exercise program. It is in no way more related to Hinduism than curry. And you don’t have to worry about all the zany new age stuff because you’re not a Hindu. Or if you are come to church and weal explain Grace to you, trust me it beats the hell out of Karma any day.
Yoga isn’t for wimps, it’s not about sitting still and contemplating your navel as many would think. It is a series of stretches that make you strong and limber and gives you a really good head spin. Some times when I give my day to God I like to do a salute to the sun and I think I have a body more like Christ for it.
TiChi is a more genital wimpy exercise like a very slow care full dance. It sprang up out of Taoism along with most of Asians martial arts. This is a good exercise for the elderly, over weight or those wanting to slow down for the day. For the young and fit TiQuanDo is more the go, you never know when you might have to defend your self. Don’t worry about all the funny talk, it’s just an ancient eastern explanation of how your body works.
Western philosophy divides things up into their component parts and strict defines them. Eastern philosophy, including the Jewish, has a more holistic approach. We do church here, exercise there, eating there, medicine there. They are separate things that don’t have much effect on each other. But the Eastern philosophers deal with it all in one so there is a spiritual aspect to eating, going to the doctor, exercising, there is even a spiritual angle on going to the toilet. The Christian need not be concerned that a Hindu or a Buddhist makes a spiritual connection to their workout. Enjoy the benefits of yoga, martial arts and meditation and give thanks to The Lord.
Crystals are cheep harmless and pretty, incense smells nice and aids in prayer and meditation, candles have been a symbol of Christian practice since the time of Christ. There is something in the New Age shop for the good Christian, good for gifts.
Massage is something that seems to have been taken over by the New Age as well, learn to rub each other’s back and neck, why not that would be a nice thing to do and it comes recommended in Leviticus. The Massage mob tend to stick to talking about bones and mussels in the same way a first year biology student would, the oil smells nice too.
Health food shops carry a vast array of herbal remedies. Pills, potions, herbal teas and fancy drinks. This isn’t meant to replace modern medicine, we have come along way since the only antibiotics we had were ginger, garlic and honey. The aim of this stuff is more preventative, the sooner you start taking it the better. There is science in this stuff, it’s not just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. They test these health products to make sure they are harmless and do something like what it says on the label. A naturopath is something worth investing in if you can afford one. These people can advise you on diet and the use of health products. It takes four years of full time study to qualify and it’s backed by science. The New Age has a lot to offer the Christian who needs to overcome madness. But it needs to be carefully filtered.   

So am I crazy for Jesus or what?
I have asked Jesus into my life, studied the Bible, sought Christian fellowship, found a closer contact with God and his will for me through prayer and meditation, and I have spread the good news to people who would not usually have time for Christ. OK some of my ideas are kinda wacky, but I am an intelligent creative person and I have had to take an intelligent creative attitude to my faith. Or maybe it’s my thoughts are scrambled by twenty two years of having too much dopamine and noradrenaline running through my brain.
My life has been getting steadily better since I first went out in search of Truth and God. And my method of attaining knowledge of God has enabled me to struggle out of the madness of my misguided youth and into the glory of the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope my story might inspire those with similar issues to the salvation I have found.

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