Spiritual path can have many means. Some may subscribe to
some, some do not. Some may even find certain paths and not necessary and
waste. However certain things are necessary to carry out the spiritual process,
specially if you need to find depth in it.
The thing we are talking about here is devotion. Devotion means surrender of self to the one you are
devoted to. It means then we perform the act not based on self-centeredness but
we act for the devotion itself or to the devoted. Another factor that comes out
startling is no-doer mechanism. When
your devotion gets strengthened, you may find you are not the doer of the
actions and your ishta devta is the doer of all.
It may look easy that ‘hey its easy, I can do it’, but
that’s not so. Shastras in india say bhakti is the easiest path. I conform to
that. But I add one more thing. It is also the toughest. The reason is simple; dropping
the ego is the toughest test in spirituality. Discovering god can only be
possible of the stain of the ego is removed from the self. If you can drop ego
completely then the path is very simple for you then.
Now you might wonder that what if I can’t drop the ego and
need time and practice to weaken it. Yes the path of meditation does just that.
It makes you realize the non-solidness of the go and ego as a burden that you
automatically want to drop. You find that it is an imaginary thing that you
were clinging on to for no rhyme or reason and making yourself suffer under its
constants pulls and pushes of desires.
When this understanding deepens in you the attachment to ego
automatically starts loosening. You find yourself light and relaxed. You do not
get sucked into the warp of thinking and fulfilling your desires and ego. In
other words you become the lightness of
being.
Now you may ask what if I don’t believe in this devotion
crap and I just want to meditate and not care about devotion to anything be it
lord shiva, Krishna, Buddha, goddess shakti or even the self itself. You do not
want to devote to anything. Fine. I too was of the same category a while back.
I found the difference when I started respecting devotion itself.
I can give my example only. Without devotion I felt(later)
that there was a very selfish element present in my spiritual sadhana. Whatever
I did, I did it for myself. I found that there was no higher purpose for me
other than fulfilling my desire of reaching higher stages in my practice.
Only then I read about devotion and then after
self-analyzing I found about this deficiency. I am a very logical kind of guy.
I was very skeptical of the path of bhakti thinking that my path was superior
and that what I am doing is the best, that there is nothing to have bhakti or
devotion of some sort. But I was very wrong.
There have been vast changes since I put effort to bringing
devotion to my practice. Now you might say that devotion can’t be forced onto
anyone. True not forced, but if one wants to develop devotion, that is
possible. You have to daily work for it. You can have some spiritual rituals or
pooja at your home for they contextualize your sadhana and give it a frame. The
danger here is that if you might be caught in the outer rituals only and not
for which it was intended.
Rituals are meant to purify your mind regularly, and
specially before the sadhana, whatever it may be. It is the basis of building
concentration. By allowing yourself to immerse in the rituals in a very focused
way, you devote all your attention in the current moment only where you serve
your ishta devta. Thus it gives you a good object for sustaining attention.
That purification helps you get going in the main sadhana. That is why mental
ritual habit is the best. Of course you can have external rituals as well
unless and until it serves the purpose of purifying your mind and building one
pointed concentration for that period of time.
I have found today that as the scientific and logical mind
is taking shape and strengthening every day, people are being less and less
devotional and becoming more and more logical. Logic serves the purpose, but
only to a limit. The other aspects of the mind are not taken to use and thus
remain undeveloped. This underdevelopment we pass to our offsprings. Thus over
generations it becomes our nature to use them less and less and rely on logic
and rationale only to miss the vast opportunities that may come in our way and
explore the potentialities of the mind.
The aspect of intuition and intelligence apart from
intellect must be developed. For that, logic is one cog along with other cogs
that make you mind move accurate fast and efficient. Have Devotion to your
work, have strong feelings for it. But beware if it goes in the wrong
direction. Direction goes wrong when it you drift from where you imagined you
would be in the first place. Desires come up that are powerful and you won’t even
know when you disengaged and how far you went in the wrong direction. So just
be attentive and vigilant for your devotion as well.
Last words before departing. In my experience I have found
that I lack true and complete devotion. That is the reason why my practice did
not catapulted into a speedy progress. i did many things right and devotion
aspect is where it did go wrong. Sorry, not wrong, but it didn’t even existed.
I have since then found that missing link and have starting working on it. You
should too. So, a suggestion to all of you. Develop devotion to anything you
respect and revere , nurture it like it is your child and you will reap the
rewards you can’t even imagine.
