The thing we tell of can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it.Sufi Master Bayazid BistamiI'm often continually beset by such an intense bhakti that it threatens to drive me insane or cause a great of deal unhappiness. The bhakti is combined with dispassion: there's really very limited interest in anything which the world has to offer, I'm completely devoid of outward going worldly desire. Recently it typically culminates in a burst of awakening, in which duality dissolves for a time, and there's sublime happiness and love. But between those times, the bhakti really is a completely rabid insanity.
Finally however, understanding has started to dawn, and found some ways to manage it. I thought I'd create this topic as this must be something many people will encounter here. Would be interested to hear other people's thoughts and suggestions.
The understanding that has arisen:
"Longing in its purity is divine, longing when it longs for nothing is divine. The moment an object of the longing arises, it becomes mundane. Longing is a pure fire that purifies [...] but the moment it becomes attached to any object whatsoever [...] money, meditation, God, nirvana, it doesn't matter... any object and the longing is no more pure"Osho- The essential paradox of the spiritual search is that you already are what you are seeking, as referred to in the first quote by Master Byazid Bistami. We are living in non-dual reality in which there is but one substance, one being, and therefore longing for an object only serves to obscure the non-dual Truth.
- Yet, due to obstructions, and avidya, one appears not to know or experience reality as non-dual, one seems entirely detached from the inherent freedom of their own being. This avidya (ignorance/misunderstanding) is the root of all desire. In the illusory state of deprivation from our inherent freedom and happiness, we conceive of manifold objects to temporarily alleviate our suffering.
- The seeker, conceiving of a state of enlightenment or freedom or God-unity or whatever, and then developing and intense longing, finds himself in a quandary because how can one desire one's own Self?
- Yet on the other hand, if one has no longing/bhakti, he/she will simply remain lost, suffering, in the mire of unsatisfying worldly desires.
- How then to understand, and use, longing?
- As Osho says, when longing becomes a longing for an object, its turned from longing to seeking, from pure non-dual spiritual fuel, to a dualistic desire which may just re-enforce the prison of egoic consciousness, duality and the sense of division between the longer, and the longed for.
The experience here can look like this:An intense energy of longing/bhakti arises.
The mind conceives of an object (typically a subtle object, such as spiritual state or realization) that can satisfy this longing, and immediately starts to go out towards it. The longing has now become tainted - turned into a desire, into seeking.
In this state, one may be motivated to perform practices like Self-Inquiry, Meditation and so on.
However, as long as all of these practices are tainted by dualistic desire, they often aren't very helpful, they just perpetuate the illusion of duality. They've become a neurotic type of spiritual seeking. Here, this longing for something unattainable just becomes suffering.
The solution:Well, after that rather long-winded overview of this mind's take on the issue, the solutions are easy and simple. When bhakti arises, it really helps me to just become aware that the mind's tendency will be to go into a state of seeking some sort of object. Then I suspend all spiritual activity which the mind might be sneakily attempting to employ as a means to an end - for getting its imagined object.
Then, with this awareness, I do the exact reverse, which is to come deeply, deeply into the feeling of the longing itself. Sit, breathe, and really experience and feel the texture and qualities of this longing. To know there is absolutely no object which will satisfy it. There's nothing that can be done about such a longing, one must just completely allow it.
Faced in such a way, I find the longing causes very powerful and rapid purification. However, there are times when the longing is almost unbearable. The two ways I like to manage it in this case are:
1. Listening to devotional songs. This keeps the feeling of longing in the heart (instead of letting it go up into the mind, and then out into seeking objects), and keeps one rooted in the present with the feeling of longing.
2. The other thing that helps for me is to turn the longing into a prayer for the highest happiness for all sentient beings, and I think of everyone I know that I love or like, then all the people that I don't know but don't love or like, and then my whole city, country then world. Again, this takes the longing out from being a kind of selfish, neurotic seeking, and transmuting it into more of a global love.
If anyone else, who is sometimes driven insane by bhakti, and has suggestions for how they manage it, please do share, I'd be pleased to hear it, trying to develop a system for managing it so it.
Best wishes,
Josh
