The Importance of Devotion in Yoga

The yoga sutra is perhaps taking a simpler approach than we find in the Samkhya Kareka. Patanjali recommends that, in instead of allowing ourselves to focus on or contemplate the self, we should pursue focus and contemplation of God. Why though is it so hard for us to live like God? It's one thing to understand the teaching and another to be sincerely convinced by it,. Instead, he believes that our bondage to prakrati is perpetuated by powerful habits which must be gradually subdued.