Many people try to look like the stereotypical yogi. But is your appearance relevant or important on the yogic path?
There is no ‘ideal spiritual persona’; there’s no use trying to make yourself look so-called spiritual. All that effort should go into building your character.
You might attempt to alter your appearance, relocate to a new country, or surround yourself with different people, making a big effort to reshape your entire external environment. However, if this is the case, when those same individuals face stress, they often respond and succumb to their same limiting beliefs, desires, and emotional triggers. This happens because their underlying character remains unchanged.
Yoga isn’t about changing the externals, it’s about changing our character so that we’re in a more even state of mind, and less reactive and less subject to our self-inflicted suffering. It’s about discovering ourselves on a deeper level, beyond the limits of externals.
Here’s a segment exploring this matter further: