Kima,
“yoga is practice”
It is, and yet even infinite practice without the proper inner spirit which is flowing through the discipline will not be of any help. Any method is simply neutral in itself, it can be used in a thousand and one different ways. If you are clinging to any method, if you have become a slave to your own discipline, then unless one moves beyond it, all of one’s practice is only going to be for the sake or re-enforcing one’s programming. And that is why there have been yogis who have been involved in the discipline for almost their whole lives, and yet they had remained as unconscious and asleep as ever, neither has it managed to bring one to a contentment with things as they are. In fact, their involvement with the yogic sciences has only managed to complicate what was already a complex situation. Our system is very complex, and if one is tampering with the system without the proper understanding, then it can be tremendously dangerous - to be involved in the spiritual sciences in such a situation may only prevent any kind of spiritual expansion from happening. There is a certain tantric maxim, “the very poison that kills becomes the elixir of life when used by the wise”. If this is true, then just the opposite is also the case - that even the elixir of life becomes poison when it is used by a fool. That is why I am in absolute agreement with what Gautama Buddha had said, that what is needed is not simply effort, but the right kind of effort.
