Devotion

Devotion is the ability to selectively withhold the processing of some information by the mind. Devotion is the ability to know when to think and know when not to think. Because thought produces a world of a certain nature and it does not have everything. We often have to live in this world, that thought creates, and then to survive we need qualities that thought does not recognise and thought dismisses. Devotion is one such quality of experience.

But devotion has a different history. It emerged as a mode of entertainment. It emerged as a kind of role-playing that was initially introduced and nurtured by a thoughtful energy but then devotion got carried away. Initially the idea had been to act devoted so that the false impression of immersion could be created. Initially devotion could be towards anything and it did not mean anything to be devoted. But things changed. This change happened when the nectar of devotion was found - the seed of the sentiment that is now known as grace. Grace was totally outside the ambit of the role devotion was thought to be playing and totally outside the ambit of what was considered plausible. Grace led to the casting out of devotion and the development of devotion as the anti-thesis of thoughtfulness.

Devotion could have been the stand-in for irrational thought. It could have been accommodated in the world of questions and answers, but it was cast aside and given up on too soon. If that casting away had not happened so hastily, today we could get away with so much more. Our core wouldn't have been wedded to reality in its base form in such a critical way. We would have some room to wander, we would have had some leeway, some space and time to exercise the negative unexpressed potential of hours of forced behaviour. The worlds of thought and devotion might not have needed to be divorced, we could have moved towards a gentle balance rather than a harsh cut-off. But this did not happen, that tangent is only a missed opportunity for us. A game in which we are only staring at the prospect of loss and emptiness.

There was a time when the devoted sang songs so that the intense could find their way to the experience of solitude. Singing-along could very easily offer the proof of the pudding, but now these songs are old. These songs are considered to be cultural entities, they are thought to be music. People listen and sing these songs melodiously as if the scale of harmony and pitch is the only. Important thing. There is no time for the singers to pause and let the words they are singing sink in and touch their exposed flesh somehow.

So devotion has become associated with a sense of loss.