I will give one general flaw in the way people tend to use yoga that is the basic misinterpretation which causes us all to belief in certain philosophies and search for what's already here through decades of contrived effort and conceptual frameworks. It's simply not necessary to go through such hardship and to prolonge your state of suffering or semi-happiness. We are already free as we speak. We just need to recognize it in order to experience it.
That primary flaw in which yoga is used is: "Time".
Yoga seems to emphasize purification and achievement. Both are subject to a belief in time. But let me say something first: it is not so much the yoga sutra's themselves that are misleading, well perhaps a bit at some points because it was written for a totally different era, but it is mostly the blind extremism with which people worship what's been said and take it too literal. They adopt more belief systems to keep themselves occupied. If you read the yoga sutra's carefully, you will notice how Patanjali describes a second path as well, which he calls: "... or this is realized through complete, immediate surrenderment to God."
Patanjali returns to state something like this every now and then in slightly different terms. But it is not emphasized as much as the road of effort and belief in time. Everybody seems to forget his second explanation, but it is crucial. At most, people turn that too into a ceremony, ritual, belief, tradition or some time-bound activity. But this misses the point of its immediate freedom.
Belief me that the road of effort and purifiction itself does not set anybody free, no road does, it is always the act of immediate surrenderment that sets one free. Every single yogi or yogini who walks the path of effort and achievement, is freed not by the practices, but by that one point in time in which he or she recognizes the freedom that is already here. This happens almost always through surrenderment to what is, not by trying to rearrange futile thought-forms that hold no meaning anyway. So even if you take the road of time-bound belief and purification, you will only be free when you surrender somewhere along that road.
So why take on such a journey? Or why not one could ask? Well everyday life itself already is a road of effort and achievement. It does not matter what it is one does, whether it is the pathof purification through yoga, or the path of achievement of a career or happy family-life. If we just bring along the light of awareness in every situation and discover how we can surrender ourselves in every single moment, even if at first it is just for small moments, to our true nature/awareness/god/ishvara, then we will know in our direct experience what is true and what is not. And I hereby state it is not at all difficult to surrender, to see our true nature for short moments in the beginning. With some specific guidelines, instructions, we can all start seeing it, regardless of what it is we do within our actions that are bound to our belief in time.
From the moment we first start to see how freedom is already present right here under our noses, underlying our belief systems as a simple, natural presence, our effort starts disappearing and the light of consciousness becomes evident equally in all forms. In other words: we are starting to experience more and more, in every sort of situation, the free nature that we are!
So what I say is not contradicting yoga, it is simply clarifying, demystifying the tradition and the cult built around it, for the sake of our experience of freedom right now. I love yoga for what it is, I think it is one of the most accurate of human sciences, but that does not mean we should be blind to what's already here. We should not be blindsided and closed off by our beliefs in spiritual or yogic concepts. Yoga is much more free and open than any scripture might inspire. Yoga is not created by our human efforts, thoughts, meditation etc. Yoga is already universally forever the case. How could it be any other way?
So the primary blindspot for many yogi's, the way I see it, is that they subject themselves to a belief in time, yet if you ask them about time, they will copy some master by intellectually saying: "Time does not exist." But still they subject themselves to belief systems of that we need to purify ourselves in order to be ready. But that's simply not the case, that's only a misleading belief which we can give up on right now and see the freedom that was there beyond that belief all the time already. Freedom is experienced immediately when one lets belief just be as it is, without believing in it or reacting to it. Try it! For a short moment you will see, that if you let be whatever is raging on inside you right now, there is a certain clarity, freedom, a field in which both good and bad exist. It might be subtle at first, but it is profound. We only need to get to know that clarifty and identify with that instead of our beliefs more and more. That's all it takes!
If you start to micromanage your life, judge every single thought as either pure or impure because you belief patanjali says you should, you are blinding yourself to the openness which includes and maintains both pure labels and impure labels alike, without differentiation, right now! There is no essential difference between a hostile thought and a still state of mind. Both are still an appearance, a state, a hologram, a mirage within the space of perfect knowing awareness. Both are equal in the sense that awareness permeates, constitutes, both of them equally. Every form is nothing but awareness.
So you will start to see that there is nothing that needs to be purified, for all is equally pure in the sense that it is nothing more than awareness itself. This is all realized within no-time if you consistently let all your belief systems and reactive patterns be/rest for a second or two. That's all. Just take a deep breath if you will and relax from you own beliefs and see the freedom that was present all along. Why is this possible within no-time? Because there is no time and because it is what you have always already been.
