What is Bhakti (Devotional) Yoga?

Even though I do many spiritual practices they all center and come back to Bhakti, to devotion to God and guru. Often in the west we think of yoga as the physical movement of the body, but yoga means yolk, or union.

There are many different types of yoga, and the one we are talking about today, Bhakti, is the path of the heart. It’s the path of Christ and the great Christian mystics. In this age it’s known as one of the quickest ways to attain to God.

That being said it is not easy, Siddhi Ma, a great devotee of my guru Neem Karoli Baba said the path of bhakti is like chewing nails, which reminds me of the book The Prophet by Khalil Gibran where he states that even as love crowns you it will crucify you, and even as it caresses your most tender branches in the sun it will also shake your roots in their clinging to the earth!

There are many ways in which one can practice on the Bhakti path. It is a path that can and will open your heart to unfathomable levels of love to a point where you will emanate it to all life that you come in contact with. Many bhaktas have guru’s they are devoted to, forms of God, such as Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Anandamayi Ma and so many others. In the west it’s not easily understood, surrender and devotion seem like weakness, but in truth through this bhakti you find the ultimate secrets of the universe and liberation of your soul.

For me and many bhakti’s the path involves singing kirtan and repeating the holy names of God (Ram, Yeshua, Krishna, Ma, etc.). It involves reading the stories and hearing the tales of the deeds and actions of Christ, the love transmitted by Maharaji and the way of the heart. I caution you that Bhakti cannot be understood by the analytical mind, those who know know, and those who don’t will not understand this path of love and will use their thought process (ego) to try to rationalize it, justify it or have it make sense. Nonetheless, I will try to explain!

True bhakti is complete surrender to God/Guru. Ramakrishna the great Indian saint says that the bhakti cries when they hear the names of God, and I can confirm this to be true. As my heart has opened more and more on this path, so many reminders of divinity throughout the day trigger ecstatic states of love within me. They used to be few and far between, but they come often and intensely. This path is readily accessible to anyone because all you have to do is show up, read, chant, pray, sing, listen to stories and connect with the energies of these great beings of love.

This is why I say most true Christians are Bhakti’s because they are devoted to Christ, they live for Christ, they pray to Christ, they read, listen to and hangout with others who discuss Christ and what he did. And with each discussion, with each song or praise, one comes closer to God. The reason it is referred to as chewing nails is because to truly open up to love, who you think you are (me, Alex) has to die in the process. You literally have to be destroyed as your soul opens up. Your conceptions, your attachments, that which you cling to has to go. All of it.

For me the bhakti path has involved opening to immense suffering on Earth and beyond in all forms. Because as the awareness expands or rests more in it’s own nature it starts to embrace everything. Everything means both what is considered holy and despicable, beautiful and completely tortuous. So when you look into the eyes of a true lover, or hear their laugh, do not think them naïve to suffering, but know that they fully embrace it, that they suffer along with Christ on the cross, that they do not turn themselves away from anything in the universe. That like the Shiva and Kali forces in Hinduism they have consumed and are consuming their own suffering and that of others.

As Bhakti’s we truly must go through the darkness, and as my heart has opened, I feel so much pain in the universe, on intensely personal levels, you begin to see the transient and fleeting nature of all things. How beings are continuously born, suffer and die, being propelled onward by their own karma. It Is this very suffering that purifies you. To have a level of vibration as high as Christ’s or Maharaji’s one has to become so pure, has to embrace into oneself all things, has to have realized the highest love and the deepest pains of existence, and only then can one truly be free and more easily help take others across the ocean of suffering. If you ask how to begin on such a path. You being aware of it now can and is your beginning, or your continuation.

The path comes from within the heart, and the age old adage “when the student is ready the master appears” remains true. The Buddha used to wake up during the late watches of the night, and with his spiritual eye look out over the Buddha fields and see what beings across time and space were reaching for Enlightenment so he could come to them. In India it is understood that when your karma is ripe, and your heart is ready, divine beings notice you and can’t help but come to help you on your way. If you don’t want it they patiently let you continue doing what you think will lead you to happiness.