Devotion III

Devotion in its highest sense refers to worship or oneness with God. There is devotion for devotion sake, where the devotee wants God alone. There is no selfish expectation. There is no fear. The devotee feels, believes, conceives and imagines that God is on ocean of all love in which the devotee resides..

Devotion is the thread or love that binds the heart of the devotee to God. It is a spontaneous outpouring of love to God. It is pure, unselfish, divine love. This type of love is sacred and unites the devotee with the Infinite.

How does this love develop?

First, faith arises, followed by attraction and lastly by adoration. Adoration leads to suppression of mundane desires. This results in single-mindedness and satisfaction that grows to supreme love for God. In the highest form of devotion, one sees God everywhere and feels His power manifest as the entire universe. He sees God as the supreme light, in whose borrowed light the sun, the moon and the stars shine. In this way he sees the transcendental nature of God. He realizes that the hindrance to devotion is egoism and desire and that the adversary of peace is lust, anger, and greed. Anger destroys peace and health.

How to cultivate devotion

It is a mistake to consider devotion as merely a feeling. It is actually a thorough discipline of the mind in a process of developing intuition in order to realize God. To obtain this intuition there are steps we can we can take. Some of them are as follows: Think of God at all times

Doing good to others

Wishing others well

Having compassion for all

Being cheerfulness and optimistic

Being charitable and above all,

Meditate on God.

Can we love a God that we have not seen?

To love God we first have to inquire about God. We do this through scriptures. We can also begin to know God through His manifold expressions and forms in the world

We need to inquire where does everything, including myself come from; what am I, what is my true nature and what is my relationship the whole. Our inquiring mind can lead us a long way in our pursuit to know God, but we must remember, that the mind is finite.

To go from the finite to the infinite, we need to transcend the mind. First we connect with our soul through devotion or meditation, if done correctly we will realize that our soul is a part of God, and ultimately experience oneness beyond time, space and causality.

“Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy — by one, or more, or all of these — and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details -- Shankara.

For many people the path of devotion is the one of the most suitable. It is essentially the path where one growth in devotion and forgets himself, that his, he loses his ego or sense of independent existence in his love for God.

In a practical way, one needs to remember God at all times even during activities in and realizing, that He is the source of all life and that we do not have an independent existence apart from God. We offer all our services to God in a process of total surrender. The law of being is to lose our individuality in God.

Devotion softens the heart, removes envy, hatred, lust, egoism, pride and arrogance. It infuses joy, divine ecstasy, bliss, peace and knowledge. All one’s worries, anxieties, fears mental torments and tribulations vanish. Knowledge and wisdom will dawn when we practice devotion. Devotion is a pleasant, smooth and direct path to God. So let us kindle Divine love in our hearts.