Andrew: Peace and love everyone. Welcome. My name is Andrew Hewson. I’m a spiritual teacher. I’m here with my friend, David “Davidya” Buckland. David and I have been having conversations for over a year now, on different subjects surrounding the unfoldment of enlightenment, what he refers to as stages of enlightenment, and what I refer to as contextual modalities.
David is an author. He has a book, Our Natural Potential. He has, I think, another book on the way, if not two, and then two, okay. And he also has a blog, davidya.ca, where he writes about similar themes that we explore here together. So I’m back with David, and we’re going to be talking today about devotion. So thank you for being here with me, David.
David: Well, thank you, Andrew.
A: Would you like to start us up?
D: Okay. I think one of the first things it’s important to talk about is to define what we mean by devotion. For a lot of people, when we use the word devotion, they think in terms of faith and belief, or more probably belief and perhaps blind faith, and sort of the religious connotations from modern thinking, whereas devotion is really about the heart, and it can’t really be expressed until the heart is open, and that’s something that tends to happen after the initial awakening.
So it’s an interesting thing. So we’ve kind of, without that initial awakening, the full expression of the heart isn’t really there yet, and so you know, this doesn’t say that we can’t be devoted before awakening. Some people are inclined in that direction; they have a natural inclination to devotion.
But belief is a function of the mind, and this isn’t what we’re talking about, isn’t about the mind, it’s about the heart, and it’s about those higher feeling values. And it’s essentially what we’re pointing to is about surrender, letting go, allowing, being okay with what is. That’s on the level, that’s more on the level of the devotion that I believe, will we speak to. Whereas, you know, sometimes they talk in terms of, like, prayer, for example, they’ll talk about petitionary prayer, where you’re basically asking for something. That’s more coming on the level of belief and the mind. And then there’s, often, and then there’s more Thy will be done, the prayer of surrender, of allowing.
And so it’s really, yeah, it’s about coming down into the heart, or up into the heart, really, rather than trying to create a relationship with the Divine through the mind. The mind kind of catches up with that afterwards and then it can give it language and so on like that, but it’s not really the vehicle for it. Would you have anything to add to that?
A: Sure, yeah. I can say several things surrounding those points that are just kind of different perspectives on that. And of course, we are very much in alignment with the recognition that devotion has nothing to do with belief, you know, it doesn’t have anything to do with just hearing about some God out there and feeling like that is something nice and then deciding that we’re going to be a certain way.
Devotion isn’t really a decision in the way that I speak about it. It’s not something that we do. Yeah.
D: Yes.
A: Something that is born through us, you might say. It’s something that that is oftentimes likened unto a seed that is lying dormant in the heart and is activated through grace and once this seed is activated, it begins to sprout and it grows and it’s often spoken about as a creeper, something that sort of creeps and covers and really begins to just express itself as a way of life being with itself, as a way of the Self being with itself and being with its own Divinity.
So when Maharishi came to the West or the message of TM came to the West, and of course just during that time period there was also several other traditions, some of which were bhakti traditions that were also becoming popularized in the west. One of them was a lineage Vaishnava lineage, Gaudiya Vaishnavism in particular and, often known as Hari Krishnas as well so they, you know, there tends to be kind of a sectarian understanding of devotion in certain circles where, you know, devotion is this and it belongs to us. And that can take place in various religious contexts. Yeah. Yeah. So in that there can, there can be a self limitation and an assumption where, you know, the, the identified ego structure kind of takes the concept of devotion and adds it to its sense of me, you know, and its story into its narrative.
And so what I feel like Maharishi was saying is that basically that’s not it, you know, and you really need to know yourself, you need to realize yourself before you can know the fullness of what devotion is. But I would also say that that was in a certain time period, and it was in reference to a certain group of experiencing, and that now we’re in a different, we’re in a different period. Yeah. And devotion is something that, as you mentioned as well, many of us do have an inclination towards, and that inclination can begin to express itself prior to the initial shift. And I’ve seen this not only in my own experience, but I’m witnessing it every day, generally, you know, around the teaching, which this is more of a a devotional teaching or it is a devotional teaching.
D: Yes.
A: It’s coming through here. So in that, there is an understanding that the heart can open and that this seed of devotion can sprout even when there hasn’t been the awakening, even when there hasn’t been the realization of our reality, but it doesn’t have anything to do with doing it. It doesn’t have anything to do with believing it. It’s something that can’t be helped. It can’t be stopped.
D: Yeah. if I can make an observation here. Most people, because of the nature of the way our culture in the West is around emotions, tend to develop quite a thick crust around the heart. Yeah, very defended, energetic crust. And so in order for devotion to express itself, we have to kind of break that heart open, break that crust out and open the heart.
Yeah, in the way to describe it energetically in the process is there’s a, you know, the Kundalini awakening process and the Kundalini comes up to the heart and there’s an initial awakening of the heart on that level and then there’s the Kundalini continues up and until you have the crown and awakening. And the central idea is that Shakti is awakened, rises to join Shiva in consciousness in the crown. They come together and then they descend together. And so when the, when in the descent, when the two together come down to the heart, there’s kind of like a higher octave value of the heart chakra, hridaya, that opens up. And that allows a much more universal, a much fuller value of love than sort of a personal love level that you might experience prior to that. So that’s the sense of the mechanics, whatever, behind the idea that post-awakening there’s that possibility of support.
The idea being that once you have that stable inner platform, then you have a safe and comfortable platform for the heart to open from. But certainly there’s lots of variations. Some people are able to settle into a much deeper value of surrender even prior to awakening and have that beautiful flowering of devotion earlier than some others of us.
A: Yeah, it does, you know, it’s physiology specific and it also relates to what we’ve spoken about in prior conversations surrounding like pre-existent development, you know, in sattva and atman. So when we have that understanding, we’re also able to recognize that devotion can be supportive of the initial shift, and it’s not contingent upon that. And I think it’s a very important understanding to have, because otherwise it kind of places those that haven’t had the initial shift outside of the realm of the possibility for true devotion. And that’s just not, you know, that’s not my experience, but I do understand the intelligence of what you’re describing. And I also feel like it’s important to acknowledge that even in religious settings there are many sincere devotees, there are many sincere aspirants and they really are tasting some degree of love for the divine, whether it’s through what seems to be a personal relationship with Jesus Christ or through what seems to be devotion to the Buddha’s teaching or a particular teacher or devotion to Krishna, devotion to the Divine Mother, although there are, you know, this is also fraught with all kinds of ritualistic sort of going through the motions and shoulds and shouldn’ts and, you know, kind of…
D: And confusing the symbols with the actual…
A: Yes, yes, exactly. Not recognizing that the form is just, you know, there to reflect something more fundamental and it still seems to be within the realm of separation. There’s no doubt about that, but even within that context I have seen very, very sincere cases of the flowering of love. And what that really represents is from a broader context in the soul’s apparent evolution or the evolution of the conscious experiencing within the Self, is that there is some trajectory in place, there is some flow, some movement, and these things that you’re talking about surrounding the various limitations of interpretation are gonna have to be worked out. You know, they’re gonna be run up against and may appear to stall the full flowering of the process, but there is no doubt that the possibility for devotion, even in egoic dominance. Yeah.
D: Yeah, and it’s also useful to understand in this process that it’s essentially part of everybody’s path. And it’ll vary in degree. There are, you know, in India they talk in terms of people who are on a jnani or path of the intellect process, more through a process of understanding. It’s their natural mode. There are people who are more karma yogis that are in the field of action and doing, and in that sense it’s a doing out of service. But again we’re talking about a process of surrender. So we learn by being out there in the world and doing stuff and then we let go of the personal control through that process. And with the jnani more about the analysis and seeing through in the mind level. And then there’s the bhakti, the devotional path.
But we all have some of each. And there’s kind of a, you know, I used to kind of have this idea that, oh, you were on this path or you were on this path and there was no, you know, no crossing between them. But I realized that, that, no, it’s actually, they’re all in there. It’s just, we have a, we tend to have a personal emphasis, but there’s always a mixture and also at certain points in the journey, they’ll become amplified.
For example, I mentioned, you know, the descent after awakening. And there’s that stage that Maharishi calls the God consciousness stage where the higher heart that I described opens up, and so there’s a natural devotional period in there. And where that devotion is directed also varies. Some will become devoted, you know, the classic thing is to become devoted to God, and will classically, it’ll be some form of God, like for example, maybe Jesus or Mary Magdalene or Shiva or Divine Mother or Vishnu or just about anything essentially, whatever form that we can relate to.
And again, in this case, the form is not the, you know, Idol Worship. It’s a representation to us that we can relate to as a vehicle for flowing devotion. In order for devotion to flow, there has to be an object to flow through. We don’t have to experience that object as separate from us, but it still needs to be an object. There still needs to be something to flow to, and so it’s kind of like a vehicle of devotion. And in that sense, it’s quite valid. And that’s the point of these rituals and so on like that that you mentioned, but when they become divorced from that, then they’re just rituals, they’re just kind of song and dance, so to speak. They’re not really taking you into it.
And so there’s kind of like this combination of things, there’s these aspects of our journey and our own emphasis, and then there’s the periods of time, you know, with the way Maharishi used to frame it is that the initial, most of us are more karma yogis for the initial shift. We’re kind of touching in through our practice as we’re touching into Source and then integrating that through activity, through action and learning to be in the world in a way that supports that inner growth. And then in the God Consciousness phase, it’s more of a devotional process. And then with the Unity Phase, it’s more the Intellect. Now, the distinction of where the Intellect shifts from looking out and dividing to looking in and recognizing the Oneness, and so it becomes a process of joining. That is the Self, and that is also the Self, and that is also the Self, and that is also Divine, and that is also Divine.
Now, the one variation in there, there’s a lot of people in the West who are shifting from Cosmic Consciousness or Self-Realization into Unity fairly directly, because there’s less of that support, less of the heart has been healed, and so there is less of a devotional phase at that point. Then it tends to come later at some point.
And it may, you know, there’s variations there to. Some people have a more like a devotion to a form and that kind of sense is what is described as the personal process. We have a personal relationship with the divine as a way of flowing that love and that’s prominent in that kind of the God consciousness phase more. But there are those who are, particularly if they’re a stronger jnani or you know on the intellect path, they may have a more impersonal relationship with the divine. So there’s still a flow of love but the divine is more that impersonal being, or the value of Shiva as infinite consciousness. Although it’s not a devotion to consciousness per se, it’s devotion to certain qualities. Ultimately, it’s all divine, and so it’s just whatever qualities of the divine that we most relate to, we can most easily surrender to, essentially, that devotion flows.
Anyway, so I’ve been speaking for a while.
A: Yeah, so there’s, you know, a teaching or an expression is always context-specific, and it’s really beautiful to witness how in our current time, you know, there’s a movement for a greater degree of revealment. We’re moving out of a darker age, a darker period where there was more concealment, things were more clouded and crusted over by all of this unresolved material. So when we’re talking about devotion, we’re always going to be talking about resolution, we’re always going to be talking about healing, we’re always going to be talking about the conversion of that material which was clouding, which was covering, which was filtering the experience in such a way that it really disabled the fluidity and the fullness of devotion to make itself known.
So what I’m witnessing now as I speak about cases of sincere devotion beginning pre-initial shift and that being accompanied by feminine aspect, field recognition and recognition of the Self through the appearances of form and motion, even pre-initial shift, this is something that’s relatively new in terms of our current sort of history and what we’ve spoken about.
And this is relating to the collective enlivenment of the field. So as there’s more purification, as there’s more surfacing and resolution, then the truth of what devotion is becomes more of a possibility for more, you know, points of experiencing in a broader way, in a much more smoother way, but it does correlate with and depend upon this willingness to heal. So it’s a very important aspect of devotion.
D: Yeah, the feminine side, the sattva side of the equation is so important. Yeah, one thing might be useful to touch on here too is this tends to be a process for most people. There has to be some value of trust in the process and in the nature of life in order for that kind of surrender needed to get into the deeper stuff. I mean, certainly there’s lots of superficial unresolved experiences and emotions and stuff like that, that can come up and be processed in a matter of course through our spiritual practices and daily life, but some of the deeper resistance, that takes a deeper level of trust and surrender.
And so there tends to be this process of , we hear teachings, for example, to recontextualize our life so that we understand events of life differently. Like instead of seeing the world as some random chaos that that, you know, victimizes us on a regular basis, we start to see the order and intent, and we start to recognize the simple laws like karma. There’s an action and there’s a reaction, there’s a consequence. Sometimes they’re separated, but sometimes they come a little closer together and it’s more obvious. We can see the connection between, “I did something stupid and then that was the consequence.” And so there’s a bit of a learning of the process and understanding of how to be in life and then a growing trust.
And that gives us a platform for surrender and for opening the heart. And then we begin to see the hand of God, so to speak. We begin to see the way the divine works in the world, and particularly if refined perception is unfolding, we start to see some of the mechanics of the world around us, and we see some of these things more directly. And so this gradual process of going deeper and deeper, and going beyond sort of synchronicities and coincidences into a much deeper understanding of what’s taking place around us.
And there’s this idea of nature support as well, where we start to, when we act more and more in sync with the world around us, then our actions, desires and actions are supported and we get results much more quickly and easily. We’re not struggling with life all the time. And when a struggle comes up, it’s usually a flag that there’s some karma coming up and there’s something to be seen and so on. And we just learn to be with life much more smoothly. And then as that deepens even further and we purify and heal more, then even deeper values open up and we start to go into those more subtle levels. And that may be seen or it may be felt or it may be heard.
There’s various ways we might relate to that refinement of perception, but we tend to settle into deeper and deeper values, and we start to be able to touch into clear intuition, and flavors of bliss can come up, a little bubbling bliss, and you know, soma, we’ve talked about that, which greatly enhances the refinement process. And at a certain point, we come to begin to to experience qualities of the Divine more directly.
And that, of course, greatly increases the trust and the faith in the process. Then faith has a value here. We’re not putting our faith in some concept; we’re putting our faith in our direct experience. And there’s various ways we can talk about that.
But essentially there’s that process of refinement and awakening, the awakening heart, and then we can develop a relationship with the Divine in some way, impersonal or personal, depending on our style and orientation. And figuring out what that is in advance, like you can get a Jyotish or Vedic astrology reading that will tell you what your personal God is supposed to be, but whether that’s actually valid or not, I mean, in practice, this is something that’s going to happen when it happens, and it’s just going to show up. You’re going to just have an affinity. It’s like when you meet someone new that you just happen to have affinity with. It’s kind of like that, but on a higher level.
And, you know, Maharishi used to talk about it as the highest ideal, or our highest conception, because really Divinity is so vast and so complete and so total that we don’t have the physiology really to take that in. And so if we’re going to relate to the divine, we kind of take a piece, not a piece, a quality of Divinity and a form of Divinity that we most relate to, and then we can create a relationship. But it’s not also… it tends to be a single form, but we can also have relationships with other forms or other qualities of Divinity as well, certainly. We’re not limited to that, but there’s going to be a particular style that we most relate to.
A: Yes.
D: And then deeper along, there’s the deeper process of merging with the Divine in form, the expressed qualities of the Divine, and transcending that into Brahman, and then discovering pure Divinity beyond that. And so there’s a return, like a… there can be – it depends on the process – but there can be a break from our relationship with Divinity and then coming back into it again from a higher level. So there’s a whole series of stages, and how that’s going to unfold for you individually is going to vary widely, but there’s just the point, essentially, is that there’s this process of unfolding where we’re going to come to the Divine in a step-by-step way, and it’ll be punctuated by certain key things like the first experience and so on.
And on the level of experience too, just a cautionary note, we’re more likely to first run into, as perception refines, we’re more likely to first run into astral sorts of beings, and these can be a number of different kinds of things, humans between lives and so on like that, and it’s just basically the rules are very similar to the rules you would run into meeting someone on the street, you know, about talking to strangers and and not automatically trusting just because they look fancy or they seem important or something that we don’t automatically give them all our trust.
This is where feeling value is really important. It’s not about appearances and so on, but the feeling value. And so sometimes people come to the Divine, more typically people will come to the Divine after they’ve first begun experiencing other kinds of beings. And the challenge there, of course, is the other kinds of beings. Divine has, you know, like angels and so forth, actual light beings. They have a relationship with the Divine, and their purpose is clear for them, and so they don’t mess around with our life that way. They’re only there to be supportive. But less subtle beings, you know, broadly astral sorts of things, beings that reside in the mind and the emotional kind of levels, energy and mental levels, those kind of beings are mixed. There’s certainly beings of value in there, but there’s also going to be beings that basically have disengaged from their evolutionary process and got bored, and they’re trying to manipulate and play games, just like you find with people sometimes. There’s those ones. You just have to be a little careful.
There are challenges in that process, so you want to be able to move past that part and get into the deeper stuff so that you can culture trust and experience-based faith rather than getting entangled in the messy stuff and not be culturing trust and getting to a place where you can be devoted. You really don’t want to get into a codependent relationship with some random subtle being. I’ve seen it.
A: Yeah, I know, it’s not uncommon.
D: Yeah, and those kinds of things too, one of the things to understand there is that they live on energy, the way we live on food. They live on the energy of that level and they’ll tend to favor, just like we like, and we might have a sweet tooth or we might have a, we really enjoy savory, they’ll be the same kind of way, and they’ll favor a certain kind of energy.
And so they may try to manipulate us into culturing fear or anger or something like that, as you know, or whatever, because they like that energy. But that’s really not very evolutionary for us. So yeah, anyways, not to get into any big horror story, just you want to move past that stuff.
A: That’s all very very important.
D: And yeah and that’s why it’s so important that we’re stepping outside of our normal day-to-day experience through our spiritual practices. Through transcendence, Samadhi, Turiya, there’s various names for it, but transcending our the emotions and mind and touching into source or culturing those deeper values and going beyond that and then we can get a sense and then if we’re doing the healing and stuff like that, then our emotional arena will clean out and then we’ll be emotionally aware and the feeling value of the beings that we’re in contact with will give them away, basically if there’s something a little bit off with, even though they look fancy, if there’s something a little off with them, we use the feeling value, then we know that this isn’t a being to give our attention to.
And yeah, I got into that a little bit myself, early on when that stuff first started unfolding. So yeah, with that stuff, it’s just best to wait until it goes a little deeper and then the heart will be more healed, the perception will be more refined, the emotions will be more alert, fine feelings more present, and so, yeah, the whole thing works a whole lot better when the ground is more prepared for those arenas.
And again, this is what I mentioned earlier about there’s a lot of people who are skipping the God-consciousness phase after awakening, simply because that isn’t there yet.
And it’s also worth noting again in here that that value of sattva or clarity and the value of atman or consciousness are cumulative through past lives, from prior lives. So when we’re born in this life, we pick up where we left off, essentially. Now, I’ve observed that there appears to be this process where when we come into the life that there’s some ancestral stuff or our own karma to work through before that kicks in and so it’s quite common for people to discover spirituality, for example, in their late teens or or even later in their life and, or take it more seriously later in their life. And that’s just the process that there’s some things to work through first.
Yeah, or my own process. I can note that there was a period of time where it came online, became very into it, and then life drew me away from it for a while, and I needed to focus on the day-to-day life for a while, and then the spirituality came back into prominence again later when it was time. So we go through those kind of cycles. There’s no one right way or one path through this process. It’s just we can work through it.
A: Beautiful. Yeah, on that note about incarnations, there’s also certain incarnations that are here solely out of service. So it’s sort of a call and response kind of a situation. And they have, because they were not bound to the samsaric cycle, they’ve taken on, in order to take a body, a certain portion of collective residue or collective karma. And so that tends to show up in a pretty contrasting way, you know, during the incarnation. And there’s variation there, of course. But that’s also another possibility because there’s multiple soul groups and there are, you know, different options and different things unfolding on earth.
And I just want to go back to the concept of faith just for a minute because I think it’s important. There’s an understanding in the Buddhist traditions called the awakening of faith and I find it to be a very helpful understanding and something that can enable us to kind of step into to what the essence of faith is, you know, outside of its more limited concealed representations. And when they speak about the awakening of faith, they’re talking about this, this awakening of trust and intuitive inner knowing, yeah, and faith based on that knowing in the path, in what’s being presented, you know, whether that’s the four noble truths and the Eightfold Path, or it can take place in different traditions. In the Buddhist context, it is referential to various entry points within the Buddhist systems. But they see that as being essential for really expressing in a certain way on the path.
So if we have, let’s say someone’s introduced to meditation, we can be presented with these you know, evidence of its usefulness and so on and so forth. But we really still have to have some degree of faith that it is worth it, in order to step in to the meditation process, particularly to, you know, meditate twice a day and, you know, not just for one month and those kinds of things. And so I was introduced to this understanding, which I find also very helpful that faith is already a part of the human experience. We, when we get in our car, we go out to drive, we have the faith that you know, the car is going to get us to where, where we’re going, you know, we have the faith that we’re not going to get, you know, sideswiped at an intersection.
And much of our experience is lived on faith, but it’s lived on faith that’s put into things that really aren’t as trustworthy as they seem to be. Yes. So we tend to trust the fragile instability of form and the appearances of objectified subjectivity.
D: And our stories, our stories, we about ourselves and about the people around us, we can have these narratives.
A: Yes. So we have faith in these superficial values of experience. Yes. And, and many wouldn’t call it faith. Some would call it science or reality, understanding what’s really going on, or whatever the case may be, proven statistics, all these different notions. But it is really a sort of faith.
So in the context of traditions, what we see put forward is the possibility for a faith which kind of tends to seem contradictory to the normal daily faith of the human experience. And there are more concealed versions of that. Of course, that can just become a part of the more concealed faith and then it just adds to the narrative, adds to the story. There’s reckless expressions of that, that are based in unresolved material and immaturity in the the conscious experiencing. But there’s also authentic expressions of faith.
There’s also an authentic alignment with a certain understanding, which is intuitively known to be of the nature of truth in the heart. And that’s how we’re sitting here talking right now is because that faith at some point was awakened. We were able to take a step into that which we resonated with as being aligned with truth, as being aligned with the possibility of enlightenment, you know. And so we don’t want to, you know, throw the baby out with the bath water and discard it entirely.
But it is important to recognize, and this is what I feel like you were saying, is that there are so many layers of concealed faith, concealed devotion, that the truth of what that word is pointing to seems to have been lost, you know, in these in these falsified ideas and these limited interpretations of it. Yes. Here we’re living in an age where we’re called to kind of realize the truth of what faith is the truth of what devotion is. Yeah. And that’s moving to be born through us. And it is taking place. Yes.
But this is always going to correlate with resolution, it’s always going to correlate with healing. So this kind of goes back to your point about practices. And in this teaching, I suggest something that I call the four pillars. And basically, it’s where there’s an introspective lifestyle that’s being lived. That includes the attentive allowing of unresolved energy, unresolved, you know, emotional reflections that are going to begin to surface through the basic intention of the willingness to heal, of the willingness to realize the truth.
And so when we’re living in this way, and we do have these methodologies that support honest evaluation of experience and attentive allowing of unresolved material, then we begin to see the crusts and the calcifications that have developed around faith and devotion and the clarity of this light that is experiencing itself, begin to break away and begin to actually even be converted into that which serves the enlivenment of the truth of what devotion actually is.
D: Yeah, it’s funny, I think back on a lot of these words, I had quite a negative view on even to use the word “God”, I kind of choked on the word, you know, because the associations I had with, you know, my family went to church when I was young and Sunday school and all that, so I was kind of taught in this kind of style of understanding, not as guilt-ridden as some Catholic scenarios, but then I went through a rejection of that because there were so many issues with it, and quite obviously, when I stopped to actually look at it, and so there was rejection of all the ideas that were around that, like faith and devotion and so on.
And so it’s an interesting experience to come around to it again, because those, the resistance that had developed around those ideas also had to be shed too. And you know, I tend to use the word divine now more than God, to some degree, partly because there’s slightly less resistance to that word for other people.
But yeah, there’s still button words for a lot of people, and I can fully understand. But yet, when you come to the actuality of it, when you’re able to shed that resistance and come to the actuality of it, there’s nothing in the world of form that can come close to the Divine.
Because it’s so much more than… I mean, if you think about it just from our perspective of our creation, our creation contains many, many, many universes. And if you think of, you know, we have one universe that’s full of life, on not just physical life, but on all these various subtle levels. And then there’s many universes, and then our creation is only one of many creations. And you know, the scale of the Divine is just, you know, mind-boggling, beyond conception. And yet, the Divine is everywhere.
But one of the most direct ways to access Divinity is through the heart. I remember many years ago, I became aware that there’s this kind of thread that comes down through, it connects up through this whole process of creation down into the universe, and comes down to the top of the head, and down through the chakras. and, sort of the standard understanding.
But then later on, I became aware there was also another thread that came directly into the heart, kind of like at a T, and that heart, that thread connected directly to the Divine. Didn’t go through all the other stuff, all those layers up above, all the way back to the Source.
And so it kind of, and that’s where, what in the West we would call the soul resides, while we’re alive in this body. It’s kind of the, it runs from the heart. And it’s a, it’s such a central part of the process.
And you know, there’s a lot of emphasis in spiritual circles on consciousness. And, but that’s just like, that’s the platform for experience to be had and for knowing to unfold. But even consciousness itself is just an expression of the Divine. The Divine is so much more.
And so it’s this kind of emotional healing, and so it’s so valuable for quality of life. I mean, you shift from, you know, mild depression and, you know, the moodiness of the day and all this kind of stuff going on, into kind of like those things still go on, but they’re kind of like ripples on the top of the ocean.
And you sit in this ocean of peace and love and happiness and satisfaction and sort of those things become far more prominent and, consistent isn’t the right word, but they’re essentially qualities of consciousness itself and so you know, and they’re in turn qualities of divinity, and so they’re just there all the time, whereas, you know, anger is just like a reaction to some surface thing. You know, you see someone do something inappropriate and it’s natural to feel anger, but if you’re healed in that, where you experience a wave of anger and then it completes and passes, whereas if there’s like, oh, anger is bad, I shouldn’t be feeling anger, I’m above that or you know whatever, some resistance then it kind of comes up and then it gets caught up in the shoulds and musts and the resistance and the grasping and all those kind of dynamics of suffering, essentially and what ends up happening is it doesn’t complete and then it sits there. We have this kind of shadow of anger that’s sitting there, with all this other stuff we’ve got and just adds another layer to muddy the waters and culture suffering.
And so on the flip side of that, it’s interesting, I’m working on a translation of the Yoga Sutra right now, and well, I finished the translation, I’m working on the commentary and so on, and it talks in there, and it’s interesting, it comments that even if you don’t, I mean, most people don’t realize they’re suffering essentially. Their experience they consider normal, to have all these cruddy emotions that don’t seem to complete and hang around and that kind of stuff and that’s considered normal but from the perspective of Yoga, that’s suffering because our natural potential is to not live that way, is to be free of our afflictions and the weight of all this emotional baggage and so on.
I mean, it takes time, but if we adopt some good techniques for healing, for transcending, so on, then over time, we heal that backlog and we become clearer and more peaceful and more settled and more joyous and just this gradual opening up and progressive quality of life improvements until we can come to a place where…
And it’s funny, there’s the old saying, Joseph Campbell used to say, “Follow the bliss.” And if you wanna know what the right thing to do is, where’s the happiness? Follow the bliss.
And similarly, the term “life is bliss.” but it’s interesting that’s an actual literal thing. yes. That the vibration of life, of creation becoming, is bliss experienced on that level if we’re able to experience that on that level, then it’s happiness, it’s just right here and it’s there all the time because everything around us is being recreated in every moment. Yes. And that process is bliss. Yes. And it’s, you know, that’s our, it’s our birthright.
A: Yes. Beautiful. Yeah. There’s just one thing about that statement, follow the bliss. Sometimes it can, it can be used or a similar understanding can be used to avoid facing the, what seems to be the difficult or challenging layers of residue.
D: where we can chase pleasure rather than bliss.
A: Exactly.
D: Oh, I like ice cream. I’ll just eat ice cream because that’s follow the bliss. But that’s actually not quite bliss.
A: That’s not.
(laughing)
Well, it is technically, but not.
D: Well, it’s a, yeah. But then again, that gets into, you know, clearing out emotional baggage so you can actually experience what bliss is.
A: Yes, exactly. So the teaching that comes through here is a transmutated path, which basically recognizes that the primary distinction between the masculine and feminine aspects of the Self, which is the changeless, silent, pure awareness, and the full, vibrant, conscious aliveness, is a infinite pulsation. It’s a timeless pulsation, and that pulsation, through its own self-experiencing flow, appears to conceal itself in an illusion of separation.
And in that concealment, there appears to be a resistance to the flow of experiencing, through the illusion of control. And in that resistance, there’s a layering of residue. There’s a layering of unresolved condensation, which is essentially the pulsation of bliss. But it’s been layered in the illusion of separation, in the illusion of fragmentation. And so that condensation moves to come up into the surface, into the field of attention so that it can be converted or transmuted back into the vibrant fullness of this field of life that is our Self.
And the way that this relates to devotion is that it clears away that which appears to be obscuring the potential for the flow of devotion, but it’s also devotion which enables the conscious experiencing to surrender in and to release the resistance around those layers of residue that are considered to be challenging, that are considered to be difficult, that have been condemned and pushed away and made wrong.
What we see taking place in the non-duality kind of marketplace on one side of things is that there’s a essentially a rejection of God through non-duality, which shows up as kind of the no-me non-duality or the no-self non-duality. And this is directly related to unresolved condensation that’s surrounding guilt and stickiness that is tied into the concept of God and the sense of separation from God and religious authoritarianism and things that have been misused and abused. And so there’s this, in a certain sense, attempt to get out of that taking place within the conscious experiencing through non-duality. But oftentimes this doesn’t include recognizing the residue and allowing for the residue to be healed and transmuted. So then…
D: Yeah it’s interesting just to mention that in there, the non-duality essentially comes out of the Advaita teaching of Adi Shankara. And it’s quite interesting when you actually looked at his life. He was a young sage and produced commentaries and so forth very rapidly, and had famous debates and so on. And he founded the, at the time he was around, the householder path had become dominant, and he re-established a renunciate path and set up the four seats of the Shankaracharyas,the four seats of learning in India. But now we’ve come to the opposite extreme where we’ve kind of, well, not now, but what came to pass was that we came to overemphasize the renunciate and the householder path that most of us are on was seen as inferior.
And so that’s part of, that’s kind of in there a lot, with the modern non-dualists, but that’s an emphasis on the dry, no me, you know, emotions or all you know, desires, all that stuff is, there’s a tendency to reject all that and to lean towards a renunciate style of, but some of that is just spiritual bypassing, essentially using spiritual concepts and techniques to avoid your life. yes Lots of examples of that. I’ve fallen into it a little bit myself here and there. It’s very easy, very seductive to just avoid and you don’t have to deal with it.
But there’s a famous story told about him when he’s walking along the side of a river and his foot gets stuck and he can’t pull it out. And he sees this woman walking over a bridge nearby and he calls out to her to help and she replies, “Oh, it’s an illusion,” essentially. And then he realizes it’s Divine Mother in form, and he ends up writing this beautiful devotional poem, and his later teaching becomes much more devotional.
So it’s like the modern non-dualists have been emphasizing the earlier, more analytical, drier kind of approach that was there earlier, although I don’t think it was really that, it’s just kind of they’ve overemphasized that, but his later devotional stuff is ignored.
And that’s where the richness is, you know, the fullness is.
A: Yes, so that’s a part of the collective clearing that’s moving to take place.
And it’s just a temporary phase, I would say, at least in its degree of popularity. And we’re speaking in generalities, there’s different levels of authenticity and revealment. You know, there’s like the Neo non-duality and then there’s more classical and those kinds of things. And then-
D: And there’s a stepping stone too, ’cause it has gotten a lot of people onto a path. It is, in that sense.
A: Everything has the potential to be utilized by grace, and the call of Divinity back to itself. And there’s also another movement that kind of emphasizes looking at trauma and making sure that humanity is included and not getting lost in the sort of negation of the world.
And really oftentimes is sort of what appears to be a correction of what is deemed to be the mistake of the modern non-duality interpretation. But I find that even in this field, there’s a lot of limitation because the feminine is being associated with things that it really doesn’t have anything to do with. And it is becoming about certain ways of expressing or speaking or being. And the limited identification gets a hold of concepts and uses it to add to whatever, to being spiritual and those kinds of things. And so these are just kind of two extremes that are present in the spiritual marketplace at large.
But what we’re really looking at is field realization in both aspects and then the marriage, the union of both of these aspects into a single unity, into a single field of flowing fullness, and then opening into source recognition.
D: And it’s all about the mind in there, because it’s like when the mind is in there, it’s looking for concepts, and it’s listening to the two of us talk about devotion, and it’s making a concept about what devotion is, but it’s really all about the heart and as you said earlier on it’s a non-doing, it’s a surrender, it’s an allowing, it’s not something we do, it’s something we we allow, we let go of the personal control and the mind is so entangled with personal control, so it’s really this process of the heart, not the concepts. The concepts are not going to… well they might give you a framework but that’s all it is. It’s like a map, it’s not the road. And confusing the map with the road is going to cause you trouble.
A: Exactly and it’s an expression of grace and it’s it’s not something that we gain or earn or are better or worse at, devotion is a flow of grace, a flow of divinity back within its own field of light that loops back into itself, as you were describing that little string. It’s a drawing of divinity back into the truth of itself.
D: Yes and I can give examples that you know, here for example, I write articles and post them with my blog as an act of service. Yes. Because I know when I was, you know, early in my path, that kind of support wasn’t available, and so I make it available as best I can. And that’s as a devotional service.
I have a devotion to knowledge, understanding, and so I explore that a lot, and that’s kind of of how it expresses. And then there’s also the more pure, isn’t right the word, but the heart expression of devotion. And that’s been growing in all kinds of different ways. And yeah, so it’s an interesting process. I mean, you’re more, I mean, overtly isn’t the right word, but you have a more overt devotional process in that you’re teaching a devotional approach. Whereas my practice is less overtly devotional, but yet even that’s evolved.
Like these days I’m practising a technique that is essentially invoking qualities of Divinity. That’s taught only for people who are awake, because they’re able to actually practice the technique because it requires being able to settle at a very subtle level. So it’s kind of a mechanical, not, mechanical is the wrong word maybe, but it’s there and it’s kind of growing in different kinds of ways. That technique is also practices in a group so, to amplify, when the awake come together and we amplify that. So it just kind of, it takes many forms, is kind of my point.
A: Yes, exactly. And I think commitment is an important word also for us to mention as an expression of devotion. And you just beautifully pointed to it in reference to your commitment or your devotion to knowledge and one of the ways that I often frame it is the devotion to truth, yeah. And the devotion to integrity, the devotion to reality, and the willingness to give, to give to reality, to give everything to that which is real, that which is true.
And that’s such a powerful potency. I mean, it just, it’s irresistible for Divinity. Divinity just can’t resist itself flowing towards itself like that.
D: Yes.
A: Giving itself to itself.
D: It’s funny when, the initial shift is a moment of surrender, a fraction of a second, just this moment of letting go, and then the Self can see itself and the ego is surrendered, at least to some value. There’s usually a bit of a back and forth, because it tends to want to try and reassert itself and there’s habits that support that and so on. But I remember not long after that my teacher commented on perpetual surrender and I was kind of horrified because the idea that you know I managed to you know surrender for a fraction of a second and here and there there’ll be other ones but the idea of being in surrender all the time, I mean, that was so far from what my experience was. So, you know, it horrified me at the time, how was I ever going to get to there. But it’s just a process. It just happens as things deepen and trust fills out.
A: Through surrender, that’s how you get there.
D: Yeah, so it’s sort of like, you know, it’s like, now it’s sort of like, oh, life wants me to do this, so that’s interesting. And okay, and I have a friend, you know, sometimes we’ll go for a drive or something and they’ll be like, “Oh, we’re driving this way now.” And just the signal comes, “Oh, now we’re going to go over here” and something needs to be seen, or whatever, just some little thing, you know, somebody to run into or, yeah, it’s hard to say what, the attention is just needed in some place a little bit. Yeah, yeah.
So you just kind of go with the flow of life and you know I make a plan and that, but it’s just like, it’s just an outline, some main points, and allow it to unfold the way it does.
A: Beautiful. Yeah, there’s something I was gonna say. I can’t remember. I did want to just talk a little bit, oh okay, I now now I remember, about devotion in reference to the teacher. You know, there’s a friend of mine who likes to say devotion can’t be taught, but it can be caught. So when you mentioned, you know, teaching devotion, it’s more a matter of infection through reflection. Yes.
D: And that’s like, so often with awakening, it’s like, it’s an awake person that ends up catalyzing the shift. They don’t cause the shift, but because there’s an awakeness there, the Self can recognize the Self more clearly. So quite often people will wake up from a person’s catalyst. And the same with the heart. If we don’t have any experience of what it is to have an open heart, there’s no reference point, but then we experience somebody who has that, it can be quite a revelation.
A: Yes, exactly, and it’s always the intelligence and the power of Divinity that’s using the form, the nervous system, to reflect within its own light that potentiality that’s always present within the field so that it actualizes, so that it recognizes itself. And you know, in this teaching that comes through here, that runs parallel with the speaking directly to the Self, you know, as itself, but also that enlivenment of that flow of love that is present.
And one thing that I’ve noticed is that there can be this tendency to have a lot of misconception about authentic devotion when it comes to the teacher-student relationship. Because there have been cases of misuse and abuse over the years, particularly, let’s say in the past 40 years, many in the West have come into the light of, you know, not being authentically aligned in a teacher student relationship, many teachers coming from the West, I mean, from the East into the West, and there being, you know, various levels of unresolved material, you know, we’re following and filtering the expression and the experiencing oftentimes, they really hadn’t tasted a full unfoldment, I would say most of time, there was…
D: There can be an authentic awakening and you know, some value is there, it’s just that the process isn’t complete, well i mean i don’t think anybody’s complete.
A: Yes i know what you’re saying. There’s not this understanding of resolution yeah, it’s not based on this kind of continuation and so there’s this self-limitation that you know…
D: and then you’re put in a position of power over in some way and it brings up unresolved material around identity and control and, you know, codependency and all this other messy stuff.
A: Yes, and this also correlates with the students’ unresolved material. Yeah. They are, you know, they have their own projections and they have their own residue, their own quote-unquote, it’s all kind of collective experiencing, but you know what I mean, yes, on a point value, and then that factors into, so that meets up, you know, it meets up in that relationship and then that’s where there’s there seems to be some stickiness and what I’ve seen is that there can be this understanding that we need to kind of throw just get rid of that in the West as if as if that’s even possible.
D: The whole teaching model you mean.
A: yeah, as if that’s even possible because actually the authenticity of a teacher-student relationship which is based in sincere reflection of Divinity within its own light and is founded in true devotion, has a subtle structure and has its own laws of nature. So you’re not going to, we’re not going to get rid of it and just throw it away. And that by no means is a solution to the expression of unresolved residue that we’ve seen unfold. So as a collective and in the West in particular, we have a responsibility, you know, to recognize where the issue is and to address the issue and I don’t feel that it’s in service to set up safety features that, you know, are really limiting the fullness of the revealed truth of what something is expressing itself.
D: Yeah, and there’s also that issue we touched on before about graven image kind of thing, where they’re seeing the teacher as the perfect person in some way, and there can be this natural desire to have an object of devotion, but then they start to become devoted to the form and the person and that creates issues for the teacher, and if the teacher has issues themselves, it brings those out too. I know some teachers who refuse to call themselves teachers, simply to avoid those kind of dynamics to some degree.
And yet they certainly don’t discourage natural expressions of devotion, but just the sort of the neediness, and the dependency, and the sort of trying to fill some gap kind of a thing, and externally oriented, that the teacher as a separate individual. I mean I still have, even with some awake people, I get surprised sometimes because there’s this attitude that I’m special in some way and you know, whereas my own experience is that that no, it’s not me that’s, I’m just, the more I’m not there, the better it is.
A: beautiful it’s the absence of the yeah of the me that’s itself yeah reflects as the fullness of divinity.
D: yeah it’s confusing what is awake and what’s, where the potency is. yes It’s not in the person.
A: So in this, the authentic possibility and the more revealed truth of what the teacher-student relationship has the potential to be is one where the Self is clearly reflecting back to itself and reflecting back its own pure Divinity in alignment with the recognition of purification as an inseparable aspect of any kind of comprehensive unfoldment and resolution.
So that the truth and the authenticity of devotion actually has a chance to flower. And that can be a very, very powerful, very powerful thing. So all I’m saying is that it’s not really in alignment to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
D: Yes.
A: and to miss the mark, to miss the point of what the truth of something is. It’s always, when it is aligned with reality, it’s always going to serve the recognition of reality within itself, and the recognition that the teacher is not an other, but that doesn’t take away from the value of what the reflection represents.
For example, you and I both are aware of subtle support from certain lineages and great sages and teachers, which are not seen to be others, but there still is a value of sweet relation there. And that relation is very sacred. It’s very precious and it’s very integrous.
There’s an understanding in the Bhakti traditions called taking shelter that I find to be quite beautiful and helpful when it’s understood properly. And it’s essentially to take shelter of a lineage or to take shelter of a teacher, to take shelter of truth, to take shelter of Divinity, is to place our, everything that we feel, our experiences, everything that we feel, you know, our life is, into that which has reflected back the truth of our potential more clearly.
And in that, there’s a taking shelter of that truth which then enlivens the recognition, enlivens the recognition that what it is that seemed to be taken shelter of is not another, that it’s actually the Self that is taking shelter of itself. Yeah.
D: Yeah. It’s sort of like the idea of you reach out and they reach back and grab your hand and support you through the process. And it doesn’t require a lot, but there are key points in the journey where it can be very valuable and and I’ve had, you know, different expressions of the Divine show up at different points on my journey, and to, you know, basically point things out or to guide the direction of my attention or whatever.
I’ve also had the experience, not common happily, but I’ve had the experience of them stepping in when I wandered into a less savory place and didn’t know how to deal with it and they stepped right in instantly and so that you know, that helped certainly helped my own trust in the process when I really recognized that they had my back so to speak.
A: Yes that’s exactly what taking shelter is so when you’re in that when we’re under that shelter, it’s really the shelter of the divine but it flows in like a tier system, like a tier support system. Yeah. Yeah. So the power of Divinity flows in and then supports itself in that way.
D: Yes. And for me, the initial thing was to learn techniques to help in that background thing in the future. And how to deal with darkness, essentially, but at a certain point I discovered that just simply flowing love.
A: Yes.
D: And, it’s like it dissolves anything in its path and it’s effulgent and so essentially it brings light to darkness, and dissolves darkness too. So yeah.
A: Yes.
D: It’s like a universal solvent.
(laughing)
A: Yeah, it is power. Yeah, pure power.
D: Yes.
A: Yeah. There’s also another point that I wanted to make, you know, it’s interesting ’cause I grew up in the South and was around a lot of different, you know, kind of church settings and very religious expressions and, you know, always some valuable principles in there.
And I definitely encountered some authentic cases of devotion and love. And I really am grateful for the appearance of that experience, you know, passing through various, you know, seeming difficulties and, you know, always being kind of brought back into some kind of possible spiritual solution because it was really what seemed to be the only possible solution for someone like Andrew.
And I also had the experience of living at a Vaishnava ashram for about seven, eight months after I had already had the pure Divinity shift. So I was post nothingness. And so I was in a very, very kind of impersonal space. And I moved into this ashram, it was a very personal ashram, Krishna devotees. And it was a profound experience because although there was already this immense devotion, and it had expressed towards different forms, namely Jesus Christ, Krishna, and Lord Buddha, The introduction to this particular bhakti path, which was not an accident, nor was it just an introduction, but a revisiting, sort of reflected back some different possibilities within the experiencing.
And what I cognized and realized is that these points of conscious experiencing as a part of a broader lila, that they’re not even aware of, are not actually on the path to awakening. They’re not looking for shifts in identity. They’re purely cultivating devotion. So it’s actually a play within the divine mind, if you will. And these points of experiencing are cultivating these devotional mellows, devotional moods.
And their intention is to go to a different planet, and they will go to that planet eventually, if they’re sincere and they are aligned. But it’s important to note that, because there is a certain group, soul group, that’s what’s going on. And that’s what their motivation is and that’s what their intention is. They don’t have any desire for liberation. The divine is playing with itself, if you will, in this loving of itself in a particular way.
So we’ve kind of covered several different things and touched on these different possibilities that seem to be contradictory. One seems to be within the realm of non-duality, and the other appears to be more referential to point value identification or egoic concealment.
And what I found is that it’s not either/or. There’s an argument that’s been going on for 500 years or longer than that, around personalism and impersonalism in India and these kinds of things. The teaching that comes through here is called non-dual devotion. Yes. And there’s actually the possibility, which is what you’ve been describing essentially, yeah, of there being what appears to be a personal devotion, but it’s an impersonal personality. So the…
D: Like those two, we talked earlier about there’s the Shiva and the Shakti and there’s the masculine and feminine, there’s the personal and impersonal, but when you get to the top they come together into one.
A: They come together, exactly, beautiful. And so that’s where there’s a non-dualistic flow of devotion and there’s still the possibility of tasting these devotional mellows, which is very uncommon anywhere on the planet right now, but it will become more common and it is becoming more common, I’m seeing it. So, and there’s different possibilities for that, many of which are post-Pure Divinity shift, initial Pure Divinity shift.
And it has to do with a certain flavor of love, a certain flow of love, where devotion is kind of enlivening itself in a particular tasting of itself, tasting of itself this way, tasting of itself this way. And the understanding of Lila or divine play is profoundly important or helpful in this kind of understanding because it doesn’t have anything to do with anything other than that. It’s for its own sake. It’s tasting that for the sake of tasting it.
So savoring the sweetness of a flavor of love, savoring the sweetness of a flavor of divine love. In these flows of love, the Divine can relate to itself in different ways. And there’s an understanding in the Indian subcontinent of bhavas and rasas, which relates to, I think it’s Natya Shastra, which has to do with aesthetic rapture, aesthetic expression, Vedic expression of aesthetic arts.
So there’s a whole science and it’s profound, the details and all, you know, mostly in Sanskrit with some translations in English and some more sectarians, you know, tradition specific and some pradaya specific things and all of that, which is wonderful and beautiful, but it can also be realized, where there’s no sense of otherness at all.
And there’s, and tasted post supreme nothingness, where there are these different flavors of Divinity relating to itself. And oftentimes these show up as like loving as as a father. Divinity loving itself as a father, loving itself as a mother. You see on this planetary system, we’re in a unique situation because there seems to be a distinct representation of the male and the female. Yeah. And that’s not present on all planetary systems. But here its presence allows for a unique expression of devotion. Yeah. And it’s all according to the context and the time period.
So, you know, some of the traditions in India tend to have more of a feminine flow of devotion or understanding of devotion that’s pointed towards a form of the feminine. And then some are, you know, in alignment with Krishna bhakti or you know devotion to Shiva. Some traditions include both Shiva and Shakti and they’re looking at the union of that. So there’s all these different possibilities and it’s important to note, I feel, because they’re going to become more common and I’m seeing them become more common. These different mellows of devotion are coming online and these different ways of tasting devotional love, the love of Divinity tasting itself through what appears to be a separationless relational presentation.
So, and this means that Divinity could kind of love itself like a brother, feel itself that it’s like a brother or a dear friend, or love itself like a sister, yeah, or a dear friend, a confidant, yeah. There’s the possibility of loving as a lover, which oftentimes have has been only strictly all point values are females and Divinity is a male, you only love it as a lover that way, but actually that’s not the case. That was a part of a concealed age and there’s also the possibility of Divinity loving itself in a feminine form as a lover as well, which is known as kanta bhava or muhurya. It’s a form of devotional sweetness. But none of this is a referential to separation.
Yeah. It’s a play of separationless fluidity. Yeah. As a sweetness of Divinity, tasting itself and loving itself. So I could, you know, that’s a very rich subject, but I just wanted to mention it, in case anybody is tasting these kinds of…
D: That’s an interesting way to frame it, yeah. I hadn’t framed it that way before. Yeah, but it’s interesting, you touch on a point too about the object of devotion. We poked at that a little bit earlier, but it can take many, many forms.
A: Yes.
D: It’s just what we relate to. Ramana famously expressed devotion to a mountain.
A: Yes.
D: And you know because there are objects that become so imbibed with presence that they’re like a teacher in themselves. yes you know sometimes people will go to the place where a deceased spiritual teacher lived because the place became imbibed with their presence, that kind of thing.
A: there are certain stones that have been enlivened and lingams, different structures that have, represent a certain energy field, resonance within the Self. yes
D: and then there’s one’s mate as a object of devotion. yes And you mentioned different kinds of love, brotherly love and love of children and so on, devotion to the Guru, devotion to forms of God, you know, the standard ones. Yeah, there’s quite a, you know, and so as I mentioned earlier, it’s not something you can necessarily predict in advance.
A: No, it’s not something that’s set, it’s fluid. I mean, you can, I’ve had periods where, you know, every flower that I walked by, it was like, what are you going to do? It’s not a particular, and it’s not set to anything. One possibility that I find to be particularly relevant for our current time period and collective is the devotion to the feminine as expressed as woman from the male, yeah. And then of course that is also, you know, reflected back and potentially reciprocated in a very authentic and integrous way, yeah.
So there’s a lot of residue, you know, around the male-female seeming division and the illusion of separation and all of the limitation that has seemed to have taken place in that context. And through our, through the grace of Divinity expressing itself as the recognition of our reality, as this silent, vibrant field all around. And the resolution of the material that has been coloring our perception and clouding the cognition of what is timelessly here, then a deep level of healing can begin to take place, you know, within the flow of human life between the male and the female and between the male and the male and our ability to love each other without feeling like that’s weird or something strange.
This is an devotional relationship and I feel like for humanity, this is something that is in the cards, you know if things continue to unfold in a certain way, yes it’s a very sweet and pure possibility.
D: yes i’m looking forward to that.
A: yes, me too. Well, already having the privilege of tasting it so it’s very nice.
D: Yes, I’ve had tastes and such, but sustained relationships, it’s still challenging to stay fully open, and especially in what we’ve been in this current period with the pandemic and so forth, there’s been these waves moving through the collective of purification, issues of fear and grief and various things coming up in these waves and waves and waves, it’s processing and sometimes it, you know, you naturally pull back a little bit from that and you want to break. yes
But then you know, then step back and because you can help when the heart is open to some value, then you’re able to contribute to that healing.
A: yes and that’s what is reflecting as the flow of devotional relationship, it’s not an either or situation. It’s not that there isn’t surfacing taking place, or there isn’t purification. It’s that while there is surfacing, while there’s purification, the devotion becomes dominant, the heart becomes dominant. And so it’s in the context of that.
Yes, that’s what we want. We want unresolved material to be reflected up to the surface. I mean, we may not feel like we do. Something doesn’t want it, but you know, I mean, the heart does want that because it knows that it’s through that coming up, being seen, being held, being allowed, being opened into, repetitiously, that the authenticity of what we’re talking about here today really comes online.
D: Yeah, that’s a good point. The mind might not want it, but the heart does.
A: Well, especially when we have spiritual concepts about what the realized state should look like and we should be enjoying our…
D: Yeah, what emotions are good or bad or whatever.
A: Yeah, yeah.
D: I had a lot of concepts about anger early on. I remember it’s like, “Oh, no, no.” And this is back in my meditation days before I woke up and it’s like, “Oh, no, no.” There was a book, I guess, about the 80s or something like that called The Angry Book, and basically you know looking at the way we’re repressing anger and that, and a friend of mine suggested it and I was like, oh no I’m beyond that, but then I looked at the book I realized, yeah well, maybe not so much.
A: Yeah, yeah, I mean it’s, that’s a great gift is to just to realize that – everything that we’ve been, that we sort of innocently and unconsciously had condemned as being unspiritual isn’t going to just disappear because we, you know say oh that’s not spiritual. oh, as a matter of fact, it actually keeps it here, that’s one of the interesting things is that it’s actually through consciously allowing those things which we had deemed to be so, you know, no that couldn’t have anything, it’s not a matter of it being spiritual or unspiritual. It’s a matter of recognizing that there’s nothing but spirit and that whatever arises within the field of spiritual reality, which is our conscious awareness, yeah, takes on a certain energetic validity and that validity in order for it to be resolved has to be attentively allowed without the resistance to it and without the rejection of it.
Yes. Yeah. And that’s why safety features and attempts to modify things on the surface and to be a certain way or to be better to be more whatever, actually end up backfiring, you know, like rather than serving innocently. It’s of our nature to try to find solutions to what we deemed to be problems, but we oftentimes don’t even look at what the root of the problem is.
D: Right, it’s the mind trying to find the solution and fix the problem to make it go away, where that’s a non-acceptance. It’s actually a problem in a lot of relationships that the mind is in there trying to fix something in the relationship and we’re not actually present to the relationship itself, and to the feelings. So how can you share feelings easily if the person you’re sharing them with is trying to fix you, in response to your sharing.
A: yes exactly that’s like you know, the mind could take the concept of devotional relationship and then say oh that’s wonderful, now we’ll have a devotional relationship but the devotional relationship is automatic and spontaneous just through the resolution of that which is obscuring its natural flow yes, you don’t do it, you don’t have to bring it into being. And that’s the thing with terms like compassion and love. They get brought into the spiritual marketplace and the mind, the limited identification, takes them on as things that we’re going to do. You know, we’re going to be more like this and be more like that.
But it doesn’t address what’s actually obscuring the compassion that’s already here. We can’t do compassion, we can’t do love. They do us. So it’s learning, apparent learning process, right? We’re always learning. And that’s just, that’s another, you know, gift of devotion is the teachability, you know, the willingness to constantly just receive that.
D: Yeah, and it’s a beautiful shift from that place where we’re in the mind and trying to maintain our self concepts and so on like that, into this place where we’re just allowing and whatever’s arising, and you know, life to be as it is. Yeah. And it’s such a difference.
A: It is.
D: And devotion is a beautiful way to shift that process, from the head to the heart, however you wanna describe that.
A: Yeah, wonderful. All right, we’re gonna have to stop talking about devotion now.
(both laughing)
So we always give all glory to pure Divinity.
D: All glory.