Devotion

July 16, 2022 4 By Lance Kelly

When in a state of pure receptivity to life, a man or woman is inducted into the devotional presence of mind. Each life form instinctively gives praise to the creator; for example, the song of the bird at dawn or the roar of the lion at sunset. But only in human beings can this sacred act of acknowledgment to the invisible power of creation be made conscious.  Only one source of truth can be loved with such devotion. This is the divinity of the spiritual being behind the sensory appearance of the form.

When someone turns inward and is inspired to discover the truth of themselves, an inner dialogue is typically established. In great reverence, there is an outpouring of gratitude for having found something to love that can never be taken by the world. All that can be said are words such as ‘I love you’ or ‘Thank you for being here in this body’. This is a phase of the spiritual process whereby the aspect of the self normally attached to the unconscious thinking process is now focused on a more timeless aspect of the psyche. This level of inner space is infused with a potent light of spiritual energy in which there are fewer life forms and an absence of the corruption in matter.

Someone may not know exactly what it is that they are moved to unite with, other than an overwhelming need to love it more as devotion to the unknown. What is happening is that the divine connection between the sensory level of awareness and the purity of spirit deep within the psyche has activated a spiritual light, not unlike a laser beam that penetrates a smoke-filled room. On this wave of inspirational energy, the individual responds to the call of the spirit. Gradually the personal will is voluntarily surrendered to the searing impersonal Will within the void. The transmission of reality can now be received with a deepening knowledge of the purpose and privilege of being granted the opportunity to serve love and truth with one’s life. This is the basis of self-knowledge – the most reliable source of truth in existence.

Self-knowledge is not retained in the memory but is discovered afresh every moment, and not dependent on the past to affirm what it knows in the present. When the mind is still and receptive to the moment, the intellect perceives something within the purified space of the psyche which, to the mind, appears as nothing. Within this absence of anything tangible that could possibly be quantified or proven in objective terms is the knowledge and inspiration of the highest truths that man has struggled with his mind to understand.

To be devotional in the spiritual sense differs from being a devotee in traditional religious practices. This is because the devotional presence of mind is an aspect of the original state of being. What is original does not need embellishing with time-laden rituals and ceremonies. The perception of purified space negates the need of any sensory images that would otherwise arise in the intellect through the worship of formal deities, such as statues of the Buddha or imaginative impressions of Jesus Christ. True devotion differs from supplicatory prayer in that the devotional state gives back to life the virtue of the living experience in a way that serves humanity as a whole. What is realised is that no one in particular is more special than another, although each being radiates a unique spiritual light that contributes to the eternal glow that is the becoming of Mankind.