Invite devotion into the sacred core of your being, your innermost sanctum where truth reigns and all emotional evasion and avoidance ends.
Doing so is like initiating nuclear fusion joining heart to Self, tapping into the core power of the universe to feed life and relationships.
It's almost unimaginable how much energy devotion can enable within your life, whether it's caring for a child with disabilities, creating a new business, standing as an activist that heals the world, or creating an intimate relationship fueled by faithfulness and fiery desire.
Devotion empowers and energizes us to do great things, transcend limits, and leave the world fuller with more love, openness, and acceptance.
Devotion is a response to being seen and known
The world is full of problems and has been since the dawn of recorded history.
Just when it looked like COVID was becoming manageable, War in Ukraine erupted, upsetting our entire world order again and dispelling any illusions of normalcy resuming. Life is change, and the direction many aspects of humanity are shifting toward is frightening. The planet is sick with warmth as oceans and atmosphere heat up.
Profound suffering is upon us right now and we can’t look away.
All this can feel overwhelming and unfair.
This leads us to ask, how can we find our way during extreme events and uncertain futures? Our nervous system reels from trying to perceive the magnitude of how much is needing our collective attention right now to prevent global disaster.
Devotion is the path that resolves dilemmas and enables the heart to illuminate the way forward with confidence and purpose. Devotion is a response to being opened, known, and interpenetrated by consciousness or beauty.
To be on the receiving end of devotion is to have someone see you so deeply that it’s impossible for you to hide anything from them — nor would you ever need to. In a totally tacit sense, they know you as deeply as you know them. You feel completely seen as you are. Not your ideal of who you should be, but who you actually are at your most naked and vulnerable— good and bad. Everything witnessed. Totally seen down to your core as love.
Some people have been wowed and opened so deeply they have no doubts. They are the ones who really stick out from the mediocrity and overall madness that we are moving through in our modern-day world.
The bodily desire for this kind of love is the potential saving grace of our species. Without it, we are disconnected from what matters the most, and we only witness it from the outside, as it flows past our screens with each deadpan scroll or swipe.
Those who are devoted are not devoted because they need something.
Shock and awe reverberates through them as gratitude. There is no choice, only surrender to what is already present, now fully seen. The source of gratitude bubbles up out of the heart in free response to the love finally received. Those who are devoted see the frailties and humanness of a person, and they also see the infinite depth of love behind all the facades that are failing to hide the truth.
Devotion isn’t something we typically see a lot of in this world
It’s difficult to realize devotion in relationships these days. In any kind of relationship, personal, professional, or spiritual, there is a sense of uneasiness related to the very idea of devotion.
We are hardened, and fearful. We feel we are unable to make that deep, internal connection with another to trust and let go. Now, many factors contribute to our collective disconnect from devotion, but I want to highlight just a few that I believe to be the most prominent.
Worthiness
Few humans are worthy of being trusted and followed with such an extreme level of depth that it can be called devotion.
To be devoted to someone involves a lot of trust; we want that person to be worthy, perhaps even worthy of being seen as sort of a living representative of God. This is difficult to do because we are all fallible. Even realized beings.
We have unachievable standards for what worthiness is. We can see this in how we easily build up celebrities and then just as quickly tear them down. This whole concept of worthiness is a sham game attempting to stand upon from the shifting sands of social standing and false posturing.
Another element contributing to our ascribed unworthiness in relationships is our historical baggage. Most of us have had experiences where our trust was betrayed. We know now that there’s no Prince Charming. Our illusions of perfection and our romantic ideals have been shattered. This makes it difficult to be vulnerable. Difficult to admit our uncertainty. Difficult to see how the risks of opening could ever be justified by the results.
Egocentrism
Another reason why devotion doesn’t appear in many relationships anymore is egocentrism.
It’s impossible to do this work of devotion from the ego. You can’t will yourself, you can’t force yourself, and you can't surmount all the obstacles you encounter if you view yourself as a separate individual in a mechanistic universe. That makes the game one of you against the universe, and if you get even a glimpse at the scale difference between the two, your odds of winning won’t feel in your favor.
We have to be connected to something deeper than our egoic selves, or we’ll never get to anything approaching devotion. Devotion is an undoing of that separation. Devotion is completely letting go of any dream of ever “winning.”
The Devoted do not fear being separate from what is loved, because it is a deep part of them.
Devotion demands you see truly what you are. If you aren’t certain of that, what can you be certain of?
Mundane
The mundane is desensitization to what’s occurring around us. It’s a retraction into our inner judgments of what we think is significant, of what we think about ourselves is insufficient and not good enough. Through this inner collapse, we become numb to our own lives.
Following empty routines without an awareness of why we’re doing anything or why our hearts feel so separate and distanced from us takes a profound toll.
The mundane is taking over, and it’s hard to break out of being a zombie by ourselves.
Surrender
Surrender is the opposite of distrust. It involves falling into the unknown, not controlling the variables, uncertain whether anything will change or what the outcome will be. Surrender requires us to trust a bigger thing. It’s letting go of our capacity, even our desire to change our situation. It’s a free fall into what is already the case, but we have been unwilling to truly see.
This is not a mental exercise; surrender can viscerally feel like you’re dying. From the egoic point of view, surrender is death. We can see this in our world leaders right now – it’s a constant battle of egos, with some of those in power making decisions purely for their own gain. The stakes are very high right now as Putin openly ponders using nuclear weapons to subjugate another free country. But there is a way forward.
There is a time now for the rediscovery of devotion.
We’ve become trapped in our small, narcissistic worlds. It can be devastating to feel disconnected from life and others, and we miss that it is our action of separation which is causing this. There’s a bitterness that can befall people due to their undisciplined minds. Thoughts, critical views, and judgments end up coming home to roost. We can’t view the world as “my side” vs. “their side”, or right vs. wrong, without those same views being used in judgment of self.
Thus, this becomes an almost-inescapable loop.
Devotion is the pathway forward out of this.
If practiced openly and fully, it can cut away the foundation of those standing on lies and falsity. It’s a way to return to the authentic path of living in relationship with all that supports and sustains our life on this small blue planet.
Fear drives distrust
The love that we intuit is possible cannot be silenced. People wouldn’t be frustrated and hurt if we didn’t intuitively know what was possible in a human life. Our own body and heart feel this, or we wouldn’t believe something was missing.
Yet, why we cannot access that love is because we are afraid and alone. We’re not seeing and allowing the love that is already present. Our inner judgments and self-focus fill our minds with doubt and uncertainty, which are the antithesis of devotion. We cannot be devoted while only looking within at our own needs and desires instead of being aware of all that is supporting and directing our lives.
In today’s world, many have become disheartened and fearful. This is most tragic because of the way of safety, abundance, and love are always available if only we can access them. To do this, we need someone to trust. And this is hard if we can’t even trust ourselves.
How can we get a taste of this atomic power of devotion?
Begin by acknowledging the love that you have received.
You wouldn’t be alive if you weren’t loved. You are supported by the actions of thousands who grow your food, build your houses, keep the airlines flying, teach our children, and otherwise support you in your income and your livelihood.
If you deny this web of continuity that sustains all of our lives by not feeling your personal connection to the whole planet, then you only sustain your separation and illusion of being an individual. No one got to where they are as an adult without the assistance of others. No one.
Begin by seeing the web of life that absolutely supports you;
true devotion begins with this acknowledgment.
Devotion corrects the effects of tragedy and suffering
Devotion grows from seeing the action of love extended without an expectation of quid pro quo. It thrives when the heart is engaged with your motivation for love itself.
Right now, we’re one species, teetering on the brink of nuclear war solely due to the delusions of tribalism and false belief in the superiority of some over others. To see the problem clearly, you don’t have to look further than what’s happened in Ukraine, Syria, or many other parts of the world.
However, the tragedy of human life and suffering that is brought about by these delusions are most effectively corrected through devotion. It awakens the heart. It’s the path forward, and it’s one of the most powerful ways to shift your inner situation so that you can start tapping into the love that’s already present to fuel you — right now.
You can enter into a yogic practice of devotion by bringing your awareness toward someone who genuinely inspires you. Inspiring examples move us emotionally and light the fire of passion and possibility within us.
Devotion begins with the connection of awe and emotion you feel when your awareness is centered on the feelings this person spontaneously evokes in you.
Feel the fire of attraction to this being in your heart. Breathe it in. Absorb it with a deep inhalation, and release and exhale from an embodied feeling of being dissolved into and by what you love.
Between inspiration and expiration, surrender into the open space of devotion deepens. This practice amplifies your bodily awareness of emotions and sensations. Viscerally know you are not alone. Feel how you are connected to situations and memories that move you in the space of your heart and body.
When you see the positive action of love by someone, practice meeting it with your heart. Turn towards the possibility that life could be so much greater if there were more of that. Allow your awareness to be like a bellows fanning the spark of love into a raging fire consuming all in its path. This is the kind of fire Jesus spoke about bringing to the earth. “I came to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already set ablaze!”
Ablaze not with the missiles and bombs of armageddon, but the fire of love within each human who lives their true birthright as children of the One.
Knowing this source connection, unshakably centered in the heart, is the seat of devotion.
That which is praised grows
Any person who is witnessed doing something and then receives genuine praise, gratitude, and affection for their action, feels that praise seared into their nervous system. They continue that action, that habit, or that way of life, and it grows into something larger than them, something that helps others and becomes a symbol for the love burning within.
Pay that forward in your own life. Praise others, and praise yourself for any genuine goodness manifested into the world. In doing this, you construct your relationships into full-circle spiritual interactions. Within an intimate relationship, this is even more so the case. In fact, this is one of the great secrets to a happy, thriving, long-term relationship: igniting the fire of devotion.
Devotion becomes an ouroboros, a powerful spiral of connection to divine source which consumes you. The more you receive, the more you become what you love and adore, and the more powerful and rooted in source you become, until being completely consumed and at one with the Beloved. This turning of all awareness, all faculties, to the Beloved, is the action of devotion. It’s the fusion of self to source; you become spontaneously radiant like a star igniting in blue-white nuclear fusion.
If you’d like to see, witness, or deepen devotion in your relationships, or if this evokes something in you that you want to identify and understand, then feel free to reach out. I’ll give you a free introductory session, and we’ll work with whatever you want to explore: https://sunyata.info/contact
For men and women who want to experience the depth of love that their hearts and bodies yearn for, check out the https://sunyata.info/awakening-into-intimacy retreat. My amazing wife Karlene will be teaching with me, along with special co-teacher Nina Lombardo. Come experience what Devotion IS. This practice intensive begins on September 26, 2022. Enrollment is now open, and spaces are filling quickly. Apply now.