Despite an ever-increasing diversity when it comes to yoga brands, there are only four major paths in yoga, and they have the same end goal; enlightenment. The end goal can be likened to the top of a pyramid. Even though people may start climbing the pyramid from different sides, at the end they will reach the same goal and thus achieve unity.

— Gudjon Bergmann

Devotees of these two spiritual paths of experience—oneness and goodness—have been at odds for centuries. Proponents of the oneness path have insisted that the goal of spirituality is to reconnect with everlasting eternity. They yearn to taste the quintessence of their being, to transcend time and space, to be unified with the one. In the other camp, advocates of the goodness path have traditionally seen stark choices in the world. They believe we should choose love, compassion, beauty, truth, and altruism over hatred, fear, anger, judgment, and other opposites of goodness. To them, there are constructive forces in the world that are being challenged by destructive ones. Their goal has been to stand their ground and choose to be good above all else. Even with those apparent differences, both paths have found homes within each of the world’s religions. As noted earlier, Hinduism offers the oneness path of Yoga, Judaism offers Kabbalah, Islam offers Sufism, Christianity offers Mysticism, and so on. Whatever the arrangement, the two paths have historically found ways to co-exist.

— Gudjon Bergmann

Ever since the Enlightenment era in the 17th and 18th Centuries—which, among other things, gave birth to the U.S. Constitution and the de facto motto E Paribus UNAM (out of the many, one)—interfaith tolerance has been sown into the fabric of Western society. The rules of one religion are not made into law for all citizens because of a simple social agreement. For you to believe what you want, you must allow me to do the same, even if we disagree.

— Gudjon Bergmann

Everyone knows that a quick-fix usually doesn’t work, yet we have all been sold on the idea time and time again. Most of us would like to believe in miracle drugs and fast relief. The truth is that most of the quick fixes for stress focus on temporary relief from tension or pain. Temporary, as in, the problem will return with a vengeance. This doesn’t mean we should never take drugs to alleviate tension or pain, it just means that taking drugs is not a viable permanent solution; it’s just a temporary relief.

— Gudjon Bergmann

Experifaith is distinctly different from story faith. It does not provide answers to life’s big questions. Rather, it proposes a path of discovery through practice, where a person can come to his or her own conclusions. As such, it has more in common with the modern scientific method than story faith does, and, when practiced properly, experifaith is mostly verifiable within a community of practitioners.

— Gudjon Bergmann

Fear and anger, the two emotions that most people came to him to reduce—emotions that he’d worked so hard to overcome in his own life—where fuel for politicians. Maybe candidates and congressmen thought that sowing discord among countrymen, even family members, was an unfortunate type of collateral damage. Maybe they didn’t think about it at all.

— Gudjon Bergmann

For example, the call for equal rights has perverted into “let’s all be the same.” Male and female biological differences are discounted, because “male” and “female” are considered “outdated social constructs,” and while that is partially true, the social construct stance becomes clear reductionism when it totally discounts clear differences in male and female biology (i.e., androgyny is not the same as equality).

— Gudjon Bergmann

Forgiveness is probably the most important self-esteem building process anyone can undertake. Forgiveness is an internal response to the fact that we cannot, under any circumstances, change the past. The only things we can change are our thoughts about the past. Forgiveness happens when we stop wishing for a better past and understand that we are carrying hatred, anger and resentment within us.

— Gudjon Bergmann

For reasons unknown, the philosophical aspect of the yoga movement has had to make way for the yoga fit revolution; today’s image of a yogi is a slender and scantily clad young female doing postures on the cover of a bestselling magazine, whereas the older image was of an Indian man with long beard sitting in a cave wearing a loin cloth.

— Gudjon Bergmann

For years, I tried to help people with simple things, such as tension relief through breathing and relaxation, but all they wanted were the drugs. They wanted to numb themselves. They did not want to face their fears or feel better through their own efforts—and they certainly did not want to be illuminated.

— Gudjon Bergmann