Slump in Yoga Practice
When there is a slump in yoga practice, it happens primarily because of influences coming into the psyche of the student from non-yogis or from yogis who for one reason or the other are negatively competitive to the student.
Those who are negatively competitive are the most dangerous opponents of the yogi. For the reason that they are supposed to be kin-yogis, supportive friends but on occasioned sometimes frequently they do not want the student to progress, or they desire the student to progress at a slower rate than themselves and not to gain any prominence beyond their own.
The other opponents are people who know the yogi but who are not interested in yoga or who do not feel that yoga is in their best interest. From such persons energies pour into the nature of a yogi with a retardative force which causes the yogi to be lax in practice, either to miss practice or to be late for practice or to cut practice short, or to not focus properly during practice, or to think of matters which do not concern yoga during practice.
A yogi cannot buffer each and every negative influences which come from yogis and non-yogis. Some can be buffered. Some can be side-stepped. But many must be absorbed by the yogi even if he realized beforehand that they are deadly to his practice.
A president of a country cannot avert every threat to his body. There will be circumstances where he will know that there is a potential assassin, and still he will not be able to stop the action of that person which will end his life. This means that fate is supreme. And it is so even for yogis. Hence a yogi should hold no resentments towards anyone who causes the retardation of progress but should accept such persons and their actions as instruments of inscrutable fate.
A yogi should develop the insight to see the retardative energies and to see their sources but the insight should be complete enough so that the yogi has no resentments towards the persons from whom these energies originate. Recognizing the source of a retardative energy and acting crazy about it, being reactive, getting into a me-and-my-enemy kind of consciousness is not part of inSelf Yoga and only shows that the yogi is immature and not versed in this practice.
Those students who recognize that their insight is incomplete should take actions to develop the complete power so that they stop being reactive to these negative influences. The negative influences are okay. They are part of this colossal power of material nature. They have every right to be here in the gross and psychic material nature. If the yogi does not have that perception, he does not have the complete insight.
