Bhakti: Love and Devotion

Krsna teaches: Love and Prayers will carry you forward.

Seeking something Greater, has led me to the other side of the earth, but that something has not become visible to me. Maybe I am not meant to peer behind the curtain. Perhaps, it will take more than this lifetime to know.

Would it be easier to slip back into the old life? There is comfort in following an ingrained habit, but it doesn’t move me beyond the status quo. How do I find a way forward?

A sannyasi is one who renounces their worldly life and material possessions, lives an austere existence without desire or expectation. I am not that. So how shall I live this life? Guru says to find my purpose and do that. Okay, how does one proceed to be in the material world but not attached to it?

Bhakti yoga is the yoga of Love and Devotion to God. Is it possible to offer all my doings to God? Can I see God is my husband; God is my children and grandchildren; God is the stranger; God is the good and the bad of this world? Can I Love God in all that is? Can I Love God in me?

In this journey with my Guru his teachings slowly become my understandings. My individual soul (or whatever you may call it) is contained in this body. This body has its tendencies, wants and desires. The body responds to the environment, but the One inside is not made nor is it of this created world. The clearer my vision of this separation of my individual soul from the material body, the more stable and focused my thoughts become.

In my thirties, I read the book "Care of the Soul" by Thomas Moore; in it he wrote one of my favorite quotes, “The soul is partly in time and partly in eternity. We might remember the part that resides in eternity when we feel despair over the part that is in life.” I see myself kind of like that, living now in this life, yet a part of eternity.

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