Love, Emotion, Devotion
What is devotion? Whence it came? Is it love? Is it something else entirely?Of all the things we offer in our worship of the Divine - the voice and our intent are most precious because they carry the most intimate aspect love and devotion.
But what is love? What is devotion? Are they the same? A major limitation for humans is that meanings of our words limit our mind and vice versa. We
have samskaras around the meanings that act as blinders that do not let us actually see or know the entity or concept behind the word. There is no way to communicate an experience or concept in entirety with words.
Most often love is an emotion - powerful and beautiful but it is not the same as devotion or devotional love. Emotions come and go, subject to time, place, experience and people. They seem to be attached to something in our worldly experience - memory, person, place, objects, expectations etc. They seem to come from us, born somewhere in mind, heart of us. They are no doubt powerful – and can carry us to great heights or falls. But they are limited.
Devotional love is born of something else – not shakeable or changeable with respect to circumstance or person – precisely because it is not rooted in anything in this material changing world . It is entirely personal but also expanding to everyone. “Love is not love which alters when alteration it finds … “ But what worldly love does not alter. Even a mother’s love of a child changes over time with respect to character and quality but devotional love is constant steady and growing. It is an expression from us but it is also a gift because whence it came, grew is beyond human effort. It is beautiful force that fills and transforms the human heart into the indescribable and indestructible Heart.
