Even if you are a die-hard skeptic, waking up inevitably leads to the getting of devotion. Devotion is baked into Reality. Longing will get you there. Devotion and wisdom arise together, always. A podcast from Satsang with Shambhavi.
FIRST WORDS FROM THE PODCAST
When you begin to have direct experiences of the fundamental nature of the Self, of your own self, you begin to feel devotion. Period. There is no such thing as waking up without devotion because every time you deepen your base in your own nature, devotion becomes more and more your condition.
When you take a walk in nature and you are relaxed, when you are enjoying it, there is something that happens that’s, you know, in an ordinary mind kind of way related to devotion. You feel a sense of wonder. You feel a sense of tenderness toward the environment. You feel a feeling of gladness. And depending on what your mood is, how open you are, you might also feel a sense of awe, or a kind of dumbstruck quality. A feeling of wonder that you are a part of nature, that this is your world. All of these things that I just described, about taking a walk in nature when you are feeling relaxed is on a continuum with something like that cosmic devotion that is part of the fabric of reality.
There are so many things that go into devotion. Devotion is not slavish. In our culture, maybe sometimes people have this idea that there is something slavish about devotion. That is not true at all. Devotion is when you see what is really here, when you understand it to be your self. Then that whatever it is that we call devotion, it is always there along with that experience. Understanding of your own nature just comes with that feeling of wonder and tenderness. Tenderness is almost like the way you would look at flower and just go “aaaaw”. It’s like that.
Sometime people have experiences of devotion that are quite histrionic, especially in India or in the Bhakta traditions where they throw themselves at people’s feet and cry hysterically and beat their chests, and whatever they do. I am sure they are quite sincere, but I think that the more refined experience of devotion is very much in line with wonder, very close to that experience of wonder and also just this love of one’s own creation, love of the creation.
