We all bandy about the words "love" and "freedom" as if they were actualized in fact in our lives. If you take a look around you, you will find yourself in a world torn by suffering, suffering from greed and desire, suffering of the burning anger that says we should promote ourselves and the whats we want. Suffering from exploitation by bigger egos and ego collectives which maintain their tyranny over us. We are not free and love can be a very rare commodity. What we call love is usually our feelings of lust for each other that never really matures into a compassionate understanding of the other and hence we tear each other down and tear up our relationships.
Bhakti is real love. Not just for you and those you say are family and friends but a more generalized compassion and caring for the suffering of others no matter who they are. Bhakti actualizes practically as this kind of love. The love that we have for everything is bhakti. It is true that we need to earn a living but bhakti will still give without any hope of recompense. Bhakti gives without concern for what one will receive, bhakti does not care always that "I" have concerns, bhakti may be more worried about satisfying "your" concern. Bhakti does not obsess about oneself, it is that the bhaktin (the doer of the act of bhakti) will rise above his need to satisfy your need, if possible. If it is the case that your need is more of an ego need the bhaktin will perhaps apply a remedy and demand the recompense the bhaktin is due, but it is not a motivation of greed. It is a simple response to ego exploitation of the bhaktin. To be free in the sense of having a human body living on this earth is more of a matter of being able to meet the need of the situation rather than squabbling over pesos. It is being able to correctly identify a situation for what it is and responding appropriately despite what the ego feels.
Bhakti does not just automatically come by listening to a few scriptural readings and asking for forgiveness or listening to somebody preach. Bhakti is developed and redeveloped over the course of ones lifetime. Bhakti is not a stasis but a dynamic balance one has with the world and the world and oneself may have differing needs that must be satisfied. So the development of bhakti is the development of insightful giving and taking. It is meeting the vicissitudes of life over and over and over again. We start out by doing and maybe we give charity or things or do for others with the hope of reward. The world rewards one as it does and often if we are helping someone more helpless than ourself there is very little to be gained but good will. But that good will is priceless. On a different level it shines in our hearts and gives us a little more reason to act, a little more reasons to believe in ourself and that we are doing the right thing. So little acts of bhakta (I hope that bhakta is self explanatory) give us the courage to act more out of bhakti than out of our ego. We have just gotten a little freer and self confident and insightful as to the practice of Bhakti and also the problems we face in our own personality flaws.
Being oneself is not a personality flaw. If one is genuine as to how one feels ones' self we can feel it. Whatever one does there is always a witness in ones own mind that tells us how we feel about ourself when we do things. Sometimes for right actions it is wrong because what we do is our own ego pimping its need. But under the good feeling we may have had out of ripping someone off with the expressions of our own needs there is a witness that tells us exactly what we did and it may not feel as good about the act. Learn to listen for your own inner voice informing you of what you just did. There are times that one may feel one has made a mistake too, and is pressing one's need over the needs of the rest. It may well be that it is not a mistake and that it was an act one needed to do to prepare for the future. We are not always in control. We are very often channeled into this or that choice by circumstances and no choice is what one would want. Life is the expression of bhakti and this is always life's expression of love for you. I will quote John Lilly "Universal love is ruthless, it loves you whether you love it or not." Best wishes my friends. Try it.
