Devotion...

What on earth is devotion, and why does it have a place in my life?

There's been a lot of talk of devotion, or bhakti, this week in conversations I've had with my friends here in Mysore. Most of whom are leaving today for their homes, but that's neither here nor there.

That's gotten me thinking a lot about devotion and what it means to me. Most seem to think it has something to do with god, and maybe it does but maybe it means more and or less to you, or to me.

I think it depends not he situation. For me, when I'm chanting I feel it the most, especially if it's a mantra invoking the divine. It's to me all about feeling with the body what is coming up. Feeling, not thinking about the things that come up, but looking at them and then back to feeling the sensations in the body. Often thinking of things that make me feel love and good, like my time at Kamakhya, or my time in temples, or times in my life where I've done deep study on the goddess and how it made me feel. Not only that, but so much more also.

If I'm chatting with you, about whatever we're talking about, then I'm often completely devoted to that conversation. That is devotion also, to me, to be fully present in the moment as we are creating it. Now, I'm not always like this, but often, more often, I am.

Also in the listening. Not just sitting there waiting for your turn to talk, but listening and hearing, feeling what that person is talking to you about, what they are saying to you, what they want you to hear. Not just what you're trying to get across.

I'm even like this with shows, if I'm watching something on Netflix I'm fully immersed in it. So, in some terms, devoted to it.

Food, I'm terribly devoted to eating and enjoying it fully. Even if I don't like it that much, I know what it's doing for me physically and am grateful for that, so I'm still devoted to it. Then I also know not to order it again next time hahaha!

In tantrik devi worship terms they might say this devotion comes easy to me because I recognize that the goddess is manifested in everything, and since I"m so devoted to the goddess I can find it easy to find that devotion towards all these things I've listed. Maybe this is so, most likely this is so and I'm okay with that because in this path I'm on seeing everything as a manifestation of Maa is the point.

There are many ways to find devotion in our lives but we have to figure out what we care about, what makes us feel things, cultivating feeling energy in ourselves, in others, around us, in the places we frequent and learning which energy serves us, which doesn't and again cultivating that awareness into a state of creation so we're being in and around the things and people that feed us and that we feed and less around those things that don't.

What makes you feel? Are you aware of what you feel and when? In your body, not just thinking in your mind?