My Life As a ‘None’ and Other Tales from the Ranks of the Unaffiliated and the Agnostic
Those who are not affiliated with any religion are now almost a quarter of the population
Susanna Schrobsdorff
Sept. 15, 2016
Like a lot of women of a certain age, I’ve taken up yoga. And because I don’t go halfway on my clichés, I’ve done immersion yoga weekends, learned the Sanskrit names for various ways of being upside down and at least once referred to “my practice.” Someday I’ll wake up at an ashram in India only to discover that half the people there are from Brooklyn or some other stressed-out part of the U.S.
So it’s no surprise that when I went on vacation earlier this month I ended up in a corner of upstate New York with lots of super-serious yoga classes, the kind with a little statue of a Hindu god in the front of the room. One day I went to a class on what the teacher said was the birthday of the Hindu god Ganesh. He’s the elephant deity that you see on T-shirts and socks and other things sold at Urban Outfitters.
The instructor told us about Ganesh’s history and how in India, he’s considered a remover of obstacles. Moments later we, a room full of well-meaning, spandex-wearing, mostly aging and somewhat tattooed women were chanting Ganesh mantras in Sanskrit. I’ve always been a little seduced by the ritualistic part of yoga. The om-ing and all that wishing happiness to others makes you feel virtuous as you roll up your mat. Even more embarrassing, I had half expected Ganesh to remove a few of my personal obstacles. After all, I did devote 10 minutes to chanting about his grace.
Since then, I’ve questioned my casual pursuit of spirituality. I’m agnostic about God, and there’s just a smallish space where faith might fit into my life. So I check the “spiritual but not religious” box. And, like a lot of people, I have become an acolyte of the church of self-improvement, choosing appealing bits of other faiths to better my lot. I’m just the kind of person that author and pastor Lillian Daniel has aptly mocked, writing, “You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating.”
http://time.com/4494751/my-life-as-a-none/
