JOHN MCINTOSH
Devotion is intense heart centered attention. If it is on a circumstance or a thing, the influence is confined, and time bound coming eventually to an end. If it is placed on the ‘eternal’ in some way such through Compassion, Joy, Peace or Love, it will ‘expand’ one’s experience so that devotion and the ‘subject’ of devotion become ONE. This is a form of Self Inquiry that employs a kind of ‘declaration’. It says: “I AM this” … ‘this’ being infinite, imperishable and boundless. While it does not ask: “Who am I?” directly as most Self Inquiry does, it states that you are a facet [yet ONE] in the diamond of Truth … such as Love.
This statement however is unspoken, rather it is a dedication ‘to’ the Love and will usually manifest through a lifetime of ‘service’ to the world of that expression of Truth. Anandamayi Ma and Mother Teressa were examples of devotion oriented Self Inquiry. The Self Realized state is thereby expressed through devotional ‘attention’.
In this way the false self gradually disappears ‘in’ the service [through a lack of ‘attention’ given to it, and the SELF is revealed. Always, no matter what form one uses … the body-mind-identity that you used to call ‘me’, must dissolve completely for the Freedom You Really Are to be Realized.
-image by Solveig Larsen
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