Are you devoted? To what or whom?

The other day I was speaking with a fellow spiritual traveler and she said something that has stayed with me. As many of us, she was raised in a traditional religion. Because of this, she said she is quite familiar with the concepts of prayer and service but seems to have some difficulty in relating to the idea of devotion.

At first I thought to myself, “Well, devotion is an easy concept, isn’t it?” The more I pondered, the more I realized that I don’t understand this as much as I thought I did. I spent some time musing about this and share the results with you.

On the spiritual path, what does it mean to be devoted? This is, after all, one of the paths mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita. According to the dictionary, devotion means “being dedicated, having an attachment to a cause or person and it can mean religious observance or worship, a form of prayer or worship for special use.”

Let’s look at this in a more mundane setting such as being devoted to our children, our spouse, or our career. When we’re devoted, don’t we find ourselves thinking about the object of our devotion, thinking of ways we can make the object of our devotion happier, how we can spend more time with him or her or it? If our object isn’t a person but a career or hobby, don’t we find ourselves, again, thinking about how we can interact with our career or hobby in a more successful way and more frequently? Yes, I think so.

Putting this back in the spiritual sphere then, wouldn’t having devotion mean that our path or God take up a lot of space in our heart and mind? Wouldn’t it mean we spend time thinking about our spiritual relationship, discovering ways to make our path more meaningful and part of our daily lives? Yes, this is devotion. This is being devoted or devotional.

It means making our spiritual practices front and center in our lives and not something we do once or twice a day. Perhaps it is best described by Brother Lawrence in his little book Practicing the Presence. He was a monk who worked in the kitchen and who said it meant as much to him to sweep the floor for and with God as it did to be sitting in the chapel praying and meditating. They were the same.

This is devotion!

Living in Grace and Ease

Krysta