Devotion is the most simple and direct doorway to your deepest burning desire... but are you willing to pay the price of entry?
Devotion requires you to offer up anything and everything that keeps you feeling separate. Are you willing to sacrifice the clutches of the ego to walk through the door?
Devotion is not an action, it is an attitude. When you cultivate the emotional state of devotion, it becomes the driving force for every action you take. When carried by the current of devotion, your entire life (from the monumental decisions to the seemingly mundane) becomes flooded with love. The answer to every question is love. The WHY behind every choice, every movement is to draw closer to love.
Devotion comes first. Then, as a natural result, your life becomes an expression of that state. So how do you cultivate it? How do you "get" this attitude. Well, it doesn't happen all at once. The path of devotion is like digging a well. And then returning to that well every single day -- so that you stay constantly tethered to the source of water. To never forget where the water is... to never run dry.
So first you need to start digging, right? WHAT are you devoted to? How can you recognize that it really is WATER that nourishes you, if you haven't found it for yourself? If you've lived your entire life hoping you'll stumble across water by chance, or depending on others' water... you define love as a gamble... rather than recognize the infinite reservoir right beneath your feet.
Yeah we're talking about love here! True, perfect Love. We're talking about absolute connection. Perfect peace. True purpose. Total unity. Unshakable faith. True safety. True Family. True Home. They are all one and the same. That is your water.
What is your deepest burning desire? What do you want more than ANYTHING in the entire world? Take a moment right now to name it. And begin to trace your desire back, back, back... and recognize: every desire is a desire for love. Every desire longs to bring about a situation, person, environment, purpose, etc... that reveals more love and connection into your life.
I trace my desires to their source. And that source is what I am devoted to. I am devoted to the source of love, to the reservoir of love. I am devoted to the inconceivable intelligence and interconnectedness that weaves together the cosmos. You can call it love. You can call it God, Source, the Divine. These are all words pointing at that feeling, that essence. You know the experience. You've had tastes, glimpses, and immersions through romance, community, nature, art, music, mediation, psychedelics.
The motivation behind every single thing you do is to bring you deeper into connection with that - with the experience of Divinity. This is devotion. Get seriously honest with yourself. What do you want? More than ANYTHING. Feel the gravity of that desire. Feel how heartachingly powerful that desire is to connect deeper. THAT is the feeling of devotion.
Become sensitive and listen to what needs to be done for you to become more connected. And that is how the emotion of devotion fuels your every choice and action. Whether that is washing the dishes, changing jobs, touching a tree, writing a poem, sitting in meditation, serving your community, admiring the clouds. Literally down to every breath you take. Every thought that enters your mind. This isn't done through force. It's done through surrender. Your thoughts, actions, feelings, will become a natural byproduct of the fire of devotion that burns within you.
As you walk the path of devotion, you actually WANT to give up the things keeping you separate. Or even when the ego still has it's claws in you... you're willing to make the sacrifice. To let go anyways. Because you KNOW how much you long for love... you KNOW how desperately you need water. And so you're willing to do ANYTHING. Because you begin to recognize deeper and deeper that ANYTHING is worth the price of admission. The power of love conquers all.
Now listen, this "sacrificing" is rarely a drastic ascetic change or taking on a martyr complex. It's about getting sensitive to the tuning and aligning you need, to walk in the correct direction - the path to the sun.
What do you desire MORE THAN ANYTHING? Because devotion will take you there. Fix your gaze upon the sun. Ride the current that will carry you into the dreams written upon your heart.
"What you seek is seeking you."
When the great mystic Rumi wrote those words, he invited us to recognize something truly powerful.
The connection, the unveiling of the mystery, the God that we long for... longs for us EVEN more than we long for it. The web of creation is on her knees begging us to come home. To simply REMEMBER the connection that we are inextricably a part of.
How could you NOT be connected? It is only the limitations of our minds and the fractured beliefs that we entangle our thought patterns into that feed us a false story of separateness. Literally when have you ever not been touching the air? When has that air not been in your lungs. When has water not been in your blood? When has the ground ever not held you? The air is literally touching everything. The sun does not discriminate where its light falls. You are always interacting with the world. You are always immersed in an experience. How could you NOT be connected? The path of devotion is simply guiding your mind into deeper remembrance and recognition of what is already here... of what you already are.
And so you treat the world as you would your beloved. Because you need it all -- you can't live without it. Just like when you are deeply in love with another person, you simply cannot live without them. And so you are in absolute awe, wonder, and gratitude of every meal. every tree. every human being. every breath. I am devoted to recognizing them. To treat them with the honor they deserve. To the sun that without it, our earth would have no light, no life, the atmosphere would collapse, and the planet would freeze over. The universe is utterly inconceivable. Name a scientist who has "figured it all out"... I am devoted to the mystery of it all. I am devoted to the unfolding of creation. To the process of evolution. To the unified intelligence of nature that is the very fabric of all things. I recognize that ALL THINGS are nature. I am a part of the mystery. I am a part of creation's unfolding, of the evolutionary process. The intelligence that threads together the entire universe crafted my skin, my bones, breathes life into my lungs, floods my body with aliveness, is my very thoughts. It's all love.
Even the ugliness.. even the horror. I believe that life provides us with whatever experience we need to remember. One of my teachers once told me "this is what love looks like right now." And so even when things seem like absolute hell... I am still devoted. I remember and recognize that what I seek is seeking me. And life is intelligent. And my mind doesn't need to understand it or like it or say that it's good. I persevere, surrender, and move from devotion because this is part of the path.
This week's theme, Bhakti, is a reminder and an invitation to stoke the fires of your heart by cultivating an attitude of devotion. Engage in practices that place you in a current that reminds you of your WHY... what you truly desire. Dig your well. Find water. Lead in love. Walk in love. Keep your eyes and mind fixed upon the sun. Treat the world as your lover, as you recognize every experience as a face of the divine.
go forth in love ॐ
♡ Kat
p.s. Everything I write is a transmission of my own experience. I am just a finger pointing at the moon. Go to the moon yourself. Experience for yourself what is true.
Also, the art prints from each week are for sale!
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