Yoga teaches that all beings have within an innate goodness which desires to be acknowledged and expressed. Yoga thus teaches how to liberate and express it. On the other hand it is a criminal act to imprison, torture, repression, inhibit, or attempt o murder this innate goodness, innate Buddha, Christ-nature, or simply put, Siva. Modern materialistic society is in great denial about this; looking for fulfillment "elsewhere".
There are two classic extreme ways of waking up; i.e., the easy and the hard way. The easy way is to allow one's innate goodness free expression. Acknowledging it inside, it is nourished and allowed to surface and express itself naturally and spontaneously.
The other more difficult way occurs because of ego opposition, where the thought that one is separate, different, and better than others restricts or inhibits the universal innate light of the Buddha from expressing itself as boundless compassion, sympathetic joy, loving kindness, and total equanimity.
There exist more stories about how to overcome egoic resistance and its resultant bad karma, than to more directly and simply allow or the innate goodness to shine forward. The life of Milarepa is a good example. Because he had been a black magician and killed many people out of hatred, vengeance, grief, pride, and delusion he had to purify much bad karma in order to realize his true nature. Similarly Naropa was a proud scholar whose mental thought patterns were very rigid and fixated. He needed to let go of his fixated identity and frozen thought patterns before progressing. Hence both students had to undergo extreme practices in order to free their minds from the clutches of egoity and past negative karma.
Those with tenacious ego, fixated deluded thought patterns, and/or strong negative past karmic habits and residues pose great resistances. Hence practices designed to purify past karma, klesha, corrupt and mistaken views, and egoic false identifications often are prescribed.
These "lost souls" are to be commended for their desire to wake up and become free by also entering the yogic path. They should not be demeaned or looked down upon. Eventually they will wake up and naturally desire to help others as well. In the beginning it is useful though to prevent them from causing any more negative karma. For them the more simple, but profound teachings which are given to the karmically pure, are best held back until stabilization and purification is achieved.
Often these people will struggle with ideas of original sin, past dualistic and egoic beliefs, prejudices, beliefs in punishment and vengeance as justice, suffering, and other such beliefs which correspond to doubt, mental anguish, confusion, dark nights of the soul, painful ego deaths, memories of past traumatic events, nightmares, reliving of their past harm to others, and other unpleasant experiences to their associations with an egoic "world", until letting those contrivances go.
All of these (samsaric) sufferings are entirely self caused mental burdens, due to past negative conditioning, but until they are realized as mere projections and expectations of the mind, they will appear as "normal", no matter how unnatural. Such ignorance being self caused, they can be self liberated if we allow for it.
So again the opposite of bondage and difficulty is the uncomplication of the mind—the natural profound expression of intrinsic enlightenment or primordial light and love where the primordial purity of our real nature shins through unobstructedly. This is what yoga meditation accomplishes when it is not analytical, yet perfectly awake. That is, when we give the discursive mental thought processes its much deserved rest by letting go of judgments, analysis, ideation, beliefs of right/wrong, predilection, expectation, or thought construct processes of any kind and simply rest in a relaxed and awake state. Then the obstructed/limited mind starts to open naturally and effortlessly into its true self luminous nature. It opens from inside out and outside in as a profound mutuality is allowed to occur -- as a coemergence, spontaneously arises. Every moment then presents an opportunity for this synergistic synchronicity to occur.
This non-dual awakening can naturally occur, when given the space, not only in so called physical natural space with so called physical objects (phenomena), but also in open space with so called mental objects of thought, but also ultimately in timeless space with objectless objects of the mind focused on timeless unconditioned space itself.
The hardest non-work in this context then, is letting go, ungrasping, and full surrender to nothing short of timeless wonder: the unknown which discloses-- the portal to true gnosis.
Just let it alone -- let it go!
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