Bhakti yoga, or devotional yoga, is the most natural path for those who are dominantly seeking emotional fulfillment and well being.
The “bhakta” usually practices meditation by visualizing, thinking and feeling that the Lord is sitting or standing before him. The bhakta pours out his heart’s love, adoration, and shares his deepest thoughts and concerns with the Lord until a continual flow of awareness moves between devotee and his or her beloved Lord.
This continuous flow of love and life force brings about a superconscious state of awareness which is generally called a mood, or bhava.
Generally, in this form of meditation — bhakti meditation — there is awareness of relationship, or twoness. The devotee is aware of the Lord and of his own being, and of the relationship between the Lord and the devotee. Sometimes, however, the devotee loses self-consciousness and is aware only of the Lord. Also, at times the bhakta experiences that the Lord’s spirit, or consciousness, moves into the devotee, infilling and indwelling him.
Both in the mood of twoness and in the experience of oneness you are transformed: your character is improved. And, periods of higher consciousness come more frequently. With even greater development, the aspirant who does bhakti meditation lives in a sense of permanent relationship with his divine Beloved!
This permanent relationship is not a static thing. It develops into one exciting dimension of love after another. These relationships are ever-new and ever-refreshing and continue to delight the bhakti yogi throughout life.
The bhakta, also, because of the ease of the mood relationship, is given special ability to experience the deep samadhis and other high states of awareness which other yogis focus upon.
Chanting (Kirtan) is a part of the path of Devotional Yoga.
When we see the beauty of our own being we are seeing the beauty of the Being that is the One of which we are all a part. And when we turn towards that One, love is the natural reaction of the heart.
God or Guru is an endless ocean of love truth and presence. First we may hear the distant roar of the crashing waves of the ocean and we’re drawn to that sound. As we get closer, we can smell the ocean air and taste the sweet moisture. When we reach the beach and see the ocean for the first time, we’re transfixed by the vastness and Beauty. We run and we dive in and enjoy the freedom that comes from this ecstasy. Finally we merge with that ocean of love and somehow find ourselves back on the shore, returning to ourselves so that we can share the experience with others.
Those that have returned have given us these Names of God. These Names are the sound of the surf of that Ocean of Love. They hold the power to help us find our way back to that ocean. We don’t have to create anything; we don’t have to manufacture any emotions or feelings. We can’t make it happen. It already is. All we have to do is Remember. Everyone has their own path to this beach, to the Ocean, but we all wind up in the same place. There is only one…One.
The following is an excerpt from ‘Pilgrim of the Heart’ audio series by Krishna Das:
“The words of these chants are called the divine names and they come from a place that’s deeper than our hearts and our thoughts, deeper than the mind. And so as we sing them they turn us towards ourselves, into ourselves. They bring us in, and as we offer ourselves into the experience, the experience changes us. These chants have no meaning other than the experience that we have by doing them. They come from the Hindu tradition, but it’s not about being a Hindu, or believing anything in advance. It’s just about doing it, and experiencing. Nothing to join, you just sit down and sing.”
Satsang is where people gather together to remember, to turn within and find their own inner path to the One. When we gather together to sing like this we are helping each other find our own paths. We all must travel this path by ourselves because each of us is our own path. All these paths wander on in their own way, but in truth we are all travelling together and until the last of us arrives we will all keep travelling. So let’s sing!
‘And when he sees me in all and sees all in me,
Then I never leave him and he never leaves me.
And he, who in this oneness of love
Loves me in whatever he sees,
Wherever this man may live,
In truth, he lives in me…’
Bhagavad Gita, VI:30,31