It's how they get you to clean the

toilets at the ashram.

Don't let new agers, even in the name of yoga, tell you what "karma yoga" is, they will having you spinning your wheels in this creation for 100k lifetimes, being a people pleaser while neglecting your own issues and spiritual work.

I'm the biggest bleeding heart in the world and eventually even I have figured this out.

Considering that in the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna is backing the warrior prince Arjuna into a corner demanding that he kill his corrupt family members instead of trying to love and serve them into cooperation, I think that the Gita is certainly the real standard on karma yoga.

In regard to the application of Patanjali yoga and greatly considering what Lord Krishna stated in the Gita and Mahabharata, it seems to me that yoga is an exclusive practice focusing on the liberation of the individual soul.

Krishna tells Arjuna that all material nature is going to remain the same despite Arjuna fulfilling his own personal dharama and liberating to the abode of Krishna.

IMPORTANT: Karma yoga has been propagated mainstream as selfless community service when actually karma yoga is meant to aid the aspirant in his/her own goals.

Ultimately the yogi/yogini has to be ok with leaving this world as he/she found it and not expect to change nature overall but to only change his/her own existential situation.

Years into early adulthood and years into thinking I could save the world, I found myself still receiving low wages, no benefits, in debt, divorced twice and a single mom with no eligibility for assistance because I 'made too much money', even though I was just above the poverty line.

While my own issues and my own real needs were neglected.

It began to dawn on me that I AM my own responsibility and my own greatest project. Studying Gita made me realize that on a yoga path where serious attempts at liberation are planned, MUCH of our social interest has to be meticulously regulated if not sacrificed.

This creation has a mind of its own and so must I if I am to have any chance of transcending it.

Karma yoga is the application of yogic regulation of social obligations and activities, those you are responsible for and those you are NOT.

Karma Yoga is karma yoga. 

Selfless service is selfless service. 

Keep things sorted. 

Helps make sense of these spiritual doctrines.