Power not to Practice Yoga

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date: Posted 5 years before Mar 18, 2017

MiBeloved 5 years ago

Sometimes a yogi becomes plagued with an energy which prevents practice. The person might be practicing and then suddenly become dejected and hesitant to practice, until at last practice stops completely. Then that person will avoid association with persons who practice meditation.

So why does this happen?

Well the reason is the same reason why anything else stops which is that a retardative force enters the person’s psyche and clamps down on the person’s existence. It transfers the person from a higher mental plane to a lower one, where the practice of yoga and the effort for self realization has no significance.

Many of us do not realize that we shift up and down mentally into higher or lower planes, and are influenced by the energy of those levels. This is because of thinking that we are in control of our mental faculties. This thinking causes us not to observe when we are shifted, because if you are in control of your mental faculties, then to you there is no question of being shifted here and there.

Once a person realizes that he or she is not a free agent and that he or she is controlled according to the mental level, it is easy to be objective and see the various forces which shift us mentally or emotionally or even physically.

So why is it that one person persists with practice, no matter what, while another person diverts from practice regularly and is not consistent?

The reason is simple that the person who cannot persist is overcome by a negative influence. In either case, that of the one who persists and the one who does not, the negative influences are there and are a reality. This negative influence is a sluggish force which causes the yogi to slow down in practice or to give up practice altogether. The persistent yogi has a strong instinct for practice and so even if the negative force is applied in his or her mind, that person still does the practice.

The meaning of it is that association from more advanced entities is required. No limited person can resist all negative forces without taking help from more advanced persons. Telling yourself that you are powerful and that you are in charge of your life, and that no one can tell you what to do, is very good for building up some self-confidence but it is not a real.

Here is a real circumstance of the application of the sluggish force, which kills a yogi’s practice. Last night I was in association with some persons in the astral world. Most of these persons are related to me physically. Some were friends from years back. In that association I had to relate to these individuals on their level of operation, which is a lower level than the one I am usually on. In any case, in this instance there was no way out, because of the pressures of fate.

By fate, we sometimes meet someone here or there, and then we are pressed into certain associations which may be counterproductive to self realization. Since these situations are pressed in by fate, one cannot escape them. In these situations, the best thing to do is to face up to the circumstance and perform as best as one can, with an intention to leave the association and return to the regular routine thereafter. That is what I did. There is one flaw in that approach however, and that is that in such associations, one might become infected with so much retarding energy, that one cannot pick oneself up afterwards and return to yoga practice.

Usually I do not pick up much retarding force, but last night I did exactly that. Since that happened I was inspired to write this entry to explain how to deal with negative energy.

When my alarm rang for rising to do exercises, I turned it off and went back into my bed. This is the first sign of the success of the retarding force. It produced an attitude of carelessness in regards to the commitment for early morning practice. Then I did not rise for another 2 hours. Once I rose, I was busy doing practice, but before I practiced, there was a force within the mind which was instructing the psyche to just forego practice for one day.

I noticed that force, and was about to consider it, when I said to myself. “We will practice. Forget that other retarding influence.”

It took about 10 minutes of practice and then I saw that force leave my psyche. It was shaped like a soup dumpling. It was of a light grey color. And it was in the lower belly area, and then it suddenly left the psyche through the front by the navel.

As soon as it left, all reluctance to practice left the psyche.

I was able to trace this energy afterwards to one person in the group of persons whom I associated with the night before in the astral world.

One has to have three obligations in yoga

1. to oneself.

2. to the practice of yoga.

3. to the yoga guru(s).

All three of these are required. One must have such a high value for oneself, that one honors the obligation to the self to elevate the self.

One must have so much respect for yoga practice and what it can give one, that one desires to always honor the practice by doing it on a daily basis.

One must have so much feeling of being accountable to the yoga guru(s), that one is terrified of having to face him or her, if one does not practice.

All three of these commitments are required. In Buddhism, there is commitment to the Buddha and the sanga which is the group of monks and there is also commitment to the way which what Buddha established as the process of enlightenment. Essentially these three commitments are there in every type of spiritual discipline.

It is you. It is the process of the discipline. And it is the teacher(s) who inspires you.

Negative association does not have to be deliberate to effect yoga practice negatively. It can be casual and unintentional. It is like a cold virus. If someone has it and sneezes by you, you might contract it even if that person had no intention of infecting you.

Thus there is no sense in taking it personally. Just understand that in any type of association with persons who are not aggressively practicing spiritual elevation, there will be a retarding energy which will put a damper on your practice. With that in mind you can then decide to forge your way regardless of whether depression energy influences you not to practice.

Bhagiratha 5 years ago

This speaks accurately in my personal practice, and I have mentioned it many times to Michael but this posting was well written and helps me to understand a little better what's happening when I suddenly break-away from my practice.

Its been a few weeks since I haven't done any practice and yesterday I felt a strong urge to do a session when I got home from work.

I did manage to get going and was in for about 30mins, when I started to have the feeling that I just needed to stop. Basically, I identified with the retardative energy, as described by Michael.

Later in the evening when I read this posting, I reflected back to the moment when I felt the negative energy, to see if I might trace out the source and at that instant, I recalled hearing my brother come out of his room, which is right next to mine. Initially when I got home, I assumed no one was home since I didn't see nor hear anyone. Little did I know that my brother was sleeping. He and my mom sometimes make fun and mock my breathing style when it’s heard from my room.

In any case, I suspect the moment I felt despondent from the practice was when my mind picked up on my brother's presence. It could be possible that I disturbed his rest.

Michael wrote:

"It took about 10 minutes of practice and then I saw that force leave my psyche. It was shaped like a soup dumpling. It was of a light grey color. And it was in the lower belly area, and then it suddenly left the psyche through the front by the navel."

Bhagiratha’s Comment:

I am assuming that to see the particular retardative force requires a yogi to have reached a certain level in his personal practice, and that it cannot be seen by a neophyte? I can observe when the energy I am under begins to change for the worst, but my mistake is that I allow the self to identify with it, and from then on all hell just breaks loose.

In reference to the psyche, I am confused. I thought that the location of the psyche was in or at the mental head-space area. You said that the force left the psyche through the front by the navel. Forgive me, if I don't phrase the question properly, but what is the "psyche" doing at the navel region? Is it the attention energy being used to focus on that area and the psyche follows? Does the force leave on its own accord or by the force of the pranic energy being infused into the system?

Thank you for listing and explaining the three obligations in yoga.

They are simple and at the same time, profound.

I maintain one desire, that even through the unending ups and downs I face in my personal practice, I must never give up nor allow the many retardative forces to completely kill my practice.

MiBeloved 5 years ago

Bhagiratha wrote:

MiBeloved’s Response:

Even though initially one cannot see the energy, one can feel it. One has to accept for now that the feeling can be visual in the advanced stage. We can take help from science to have confidence in that, because right now science can show us a picture of thought forms in our brain, when certain cells in the brain fire electric charges when certain thoughts are conducted. So in yoga one develops mystic visions which are similar to what our technology shows.

The part where one identifies with the thoughts is part of the whole kriya yoga practice to differentiate the various components in the head of the subtle body. If the whole head is just one thing and if you cannot differentiate the various parts of the mind, then by meditation you can develop clarity in that regard. That comes from practice over time.

Until you are able to separate out the various components of the mind, you will be subjected to identifying with whatever thoughts or images the mind constructs. There is only one way to overcome that and that is the method of regular practice.

==========================

Bhagiratha wrote:

MiBeloved’s Response:

The word psyche means all the psychological energy that a person has, all of it. There is psychological energy in the head and it is also in the toes. So the entire psychological collection of energies of one individual spirit is called the psyche.

We do place stress on the head but the head is not the only part of the psyche. For instance in the physical sense, the head is the most important part of the body, because if the brain malfunctions, then you are out of it, even if the rest of the body remains in good shape. So we place stress on the head but the human body is more than just a head.

Since the attention energy, as you rightly indicated is in the head, whatever we perceive in the body has to be done through that attention energy. If we are perceiving something in the head, then since the attention energy is there, it does not have to be focused far from its default position. If however something is in the navel area or in the foot for instance, then it has to travel a little to get to that location, or a message has to be sent via the nerves physically or through subtle nerves (nadis) to the brain or mind and that takes a little time, micro-seconds perhaps but it is still time.

The negative force will not leave of its own accord, because it enters to become a permanent resident and to take over the psyche, just as like when virus enters the body. When they do so they mean business. They come in to take over. They do not enter your body to play games. It is military conquest in your body, to kill cells which do not cooperate with them and to make stooges of other cells.

Similarly negative energies, subtle forces, which enter the psyche come in to force the psyche to do what those forces desire and to cause the psyche to develop for the benefit of such forces.

Hence if you can make the environment hostile or non-responsive to such negative forces they will leave the psyche of their own accord, or be destroyed in the psyche or remain in the psyche in a neutralized form, where they cannot hijack the mission of the psyche.

Replies (0)