| There
is great benefit to one-pointedness, single-mindedness. In this
conditional world, there are so many divisions, so many distractions,
that most human beings remain pretty scattered throughout their
life.
When one has
some kind of awareness of a greater purpose, the intellect usually
looks outside to find where that purpose can fit. Religions have
frequently been on the receiving end of that sort of dedication.
Some people may dedicate their life to the ministry, the nunnery,
to service of some sort.
Dedication
to something is very important. Hopefully that something is beneficial
to humanity, but most often it is selfish. One could be totally
devoted to a career, which helps them accelerate up the ladder of
success, but it is very self-centered.
When you feel
that calling to dedication, it comes with the need t
o surrender
the outside, to let go of expectations, conditional goals, and to
embrace something that you perceive is "greater than,"
"bigger than." For most people that becomes “God,”
or a spiritual discipline, but that is a lesser thing to be dedicated
to, because it is outside, it is made up from the past, from beliefs
and concepts.
When you get
a glimmer of the natural state, it is something worthwhile to dedicate
yourself to, and it calls for total dedication. The natural state
cannot be half-way. Individuals who have the preliminary awakening
to that possibility have a choice to make: either to use their will
to move in that direction, or try to extract some material benefit
from it. They may go off on a teaching career, or write a book “about”
it.
But total dedication
to the natural state absolutely changes your entire life, your motivation,
your goals, your past, your expectations, and a naturalness to your
life arises. From the outside, it may look as though you are complacent,
not driven by stress or conditioning or “shoulds” or
“shouldn’ts.” There is no law, there is no way.
In that kind
of dedication, something really happens at a cellular level. That
dedication signals to the whole body that there is purpose, that
there is something of value to be embraced. The more you become
dedicated to that, the more you see changes in your life and around
you.
You could be
dedicated to a rock, worship the rock, and you would experience
a certain miraculousness because of that dedication. There is always
some benefit from dedication because of the one-pointedness of the
mind; that focus does something. Dedication does something in the
brain that will align you with higher frequencies, a greater vibration.
But if you are dedicated to something that has no ceiling, no end,
something which is ongoing, expansive, all-inclusive, connected,
then that is like tying yourself to a comet. You are going to go
wherever the comet goes. So ideally, you can become inspired to
dedicate yourself to something of that caliber.
When you make
that choice to dedicate yourself to The
Consciousness, to service, things begin to happen in your life.
The more intense, the more fervent you are in that dedication, the
more things happen. You may not like some of the things that happen,
because often they involve an abandonment of aspects of your life
that you thought were important, or necessary, or wanted. But included
in those disappearing aspects are the attachments, the “I
don’t wants,” the resistances, so there is a fundamental
change at the core of your existence.
When you see
that possibility, when you have the realization that there is something
greater than you, greater than the personality, bigger than your
personal arena, larger than the perception of the individual that
you are, that there is something more to you than that, and you
dedicate yourself to that more-ness, something begins to happen.
Dedication is an act of the intellect, the mind, and the higher
the realization to which you dedicate yourself, the more beneficial
effects it has on the whole of Life.
Life
leaves no one out. Life doesn’t write you off for any reason.
And so the benevolence of Life is always presenting opportunities
to see a bigger picture, to find a greater connection, to be more.
Life begins to change at a cellular level when, instead of trying
to fit that greater connection into a familiar practice or a traditional
discipline, you dedicate yourself to it without expectation. You
then are moved toward certain possibilities, certain livelihoods,
that enhance and further that connection. The more you see of that,
the more dedicated you become to it, because you see it is real;
it is something beneficial, of service.
The highest
kind of dedication is service oriented. It is totally selfless,
because you can’t be selfish and be dedicated at the same
time. The “I” gets in the way of dedication; it constantly
tries to manipulate and control the situation. In dedication, the
“I” is diminished, True Nature asserts itself, and you
are moved to act selflessly. top
of page Do you have a question? Ask Ishvara. |