For many years I’ve observed a strong crossover between devotional practitioners and spirit workers. In the grand Venn diagram of my personal informal observational study, there is considerable shared territory. It’s not absolute or even predominate; it’s maybe 50/50. That is – about half of devotional practitioners are likely to have some sort of spirit work calling going on and about half of spirit workers are likely to have a strong devotional streak to what they do. (However, I do believe that one is not necessarily likely to predict the other and I’ve not really noticed any firm or reliable trends that predict either. Devotional inclinations develop along the lines of personality usually and spirit work, well, that’s for the Gods to decide, isn’t it?)

My spirit work is strongly expressed through emotional connection and the language of relationship; my life as a devotionalist is indelibly shaped by the fact of my existence as a spirit worker. I imagine that this situation is familiar to many of my readers. Despite the analytic seduction of this particular correlation I have rarely found any firm connective tissue that would tie the two together in a manner that would be meaningful to anyone else.

However, I recently uncovered a little tidbit that might tie these two worlds together a little more strongly – at least in some cases. I do maintain that the path of the spirit worker and the path of the devotionalist are different enough that we need not explain one in terms of the other; similarly, a person should never feel pressured or under the assumption that one path indicates the emergence of the other. (While I do have opinions about how closely they are related in a spiritual and karmic sense, those are simply opinions and thus are always changing and not terribly reliable.) All those disclaimers said, here’s a little sample of what I discovered.

I found that in certain cases of extreme devotional fervor, in intense moods of separation and love in particular, the physical bodies of devotees are said to have changed somehow. Some of these changes are mythical in their extremity (like the shrinking of limbs) but those highly visible changes are built up to with more subtle changes over a long period of time. These smaller changes are both the response to the extreme emotions of the devotees and evidence of these feelings. Perhaps most tellingly, there is a precedent for increased physical sensitivity in the devotees.

Heightened sensitivity is nothing new to many of the long-term devotional practitioners I know. Sensitivity to environmental stressors seem to be the most frequently experienced. Light, noise, the press of people, and even various psychic and spiritual forces are causes of overstimulation, discomfort, distress, and general discontent and anxiety for a number of people I know. Some of this is personality but some of it….well.

Spirit workers are quite familiar with the understanding that the path changes them merely as a natural outcome of engagement. It is inevitable. Some of these changes are referred to as mods or modifications, spiritual (or not-so-spiritual) adjustments that make us better able to execute the particular tasks we’re called for. Though mods are (or used to be) spoken of as deliberate alterations that the Powers initiate, modification happens on its own. We grow a new spiritual (or not-so-spiritual) body in response to the demands of the path and our engagement with it. I’ve personally developed a handful of food sensitivities that I feel are pretty closely related to the Work. A friend speculated that the weird, undiagnosed physical ailments I live with are one manifestation of the frustrated shaman’s path I’m part of. Maybe, maybe not. There are precious few spiritual clinicians out there that can diagnose these things. But anyway.

Finding an acknowledgement that devotional practice carries the potential for profound and subtle transformations was actually quite significant for me. Yes, there seems to be little reason to expect an intense spiritual path to *not* change a person and indeed, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence within our contemporary pagan and polytheistic communities to support this. Even in more magical currents, including traditional witchcraft, sabbatic trads, and Western mystery stuff, you find the acknowledgement that people are changed in some way by having emotional ties with Powers. (These are usually discussed in terms of magical powers obtained through the company of a spirit, but change is change.) But see, I study devotional practice. I specifically study devotional practice in the context of bhakti and modern paganism. In many ways bhakti is my guidebook. I rely on this tradition of generations of devotional experts to provide a certain guidance through what I’m experiencing here and now. I don’t mistake what I’m doing for bhakti, but bhakti helps me make sense of what’s happening in my life. So when the tradition that has taught me says, “Hey, your longing and love for the Divine really does change your shit”, it’s significant to me.

This is a pretty new little discovery and I’ll need to do some more digging before I can really share more details on it. For now I’ll offer this to my fellow Heartroad-ers: Yes, your love and longing is real to this world and others. Yes, your physical existence is shaped by the company you keep. Yes, these transformations are sacred and they are the scripture that your life is writing. And yes, the frightening and monstrous and disturbing transformations we endure are all the more beautiful and profound because they are proof that we participate in a love that is stronger than life as we understand it.

Someday I’ll write about how I’ve become my own proof of the Gods. Someday I’ll talk more about my weird gold eyes.

Wow, I really hadn’t expected such a response to my little post about mystic love. I’ll finish it up at with the rest of my current thoughts at some point but right now I’m mentally drained from the exertion of the weekend. (The local presentation of my PCon session went well and I got some good feedback; this will make the real thing even better.) To thank everyone for their signal boosting and interaction with my tiny blog I’d like to share the YouTube movie on Meera’s life that I’m currently watching. Unlike the other two that I like, this one is in Tamil and is considerably older (1945). It’s fun for lots of reasons. The girl playing young Mirabai is appropriately cute, as is the older actress. Adult Meera has lots of disinterested expressions for her mortal  husband and bears his attentions with humorous impatience. We also get several Tamil devotional bhajans instead of the Gujarati bhajans that are typical of Mirabai movies so that’s cool; I lovelovelove the traditional ones but it’s fun to explore additional songs, too. Andal is also mentioned in passing, yay! To see the English captions, just turn on the CC option.

Something that always impacts me about Meera’s story is that as a queen, she had absolutely everything. Up to the point of her renunciation she never had a moment of want. She even got a temple built to her Beloved (at least she does in many of the movies about her life, including this one). Regardless of all this plenty, she still suffered. Even in the most ideal of circumstances, her search for Krishna was challenged at every turn. No one has it easy on this path; this is simply because the mystic’s path is not an easy one. It is so easy to feel downright oppressed at the difficulties facing our individual searches. I strongly believe that these feelings of frustration shouldn’t be taken as an indication that the search for the Beloved is fruitless or impossible or that we’re just not meant to find Them. This is just the nature of the path and it has to be accepted as such. I’m sorry it hurts. I’m sorry for myself and for you and for Meera and for all of us who suffer from this very precise form of loneliness and hurt. But this path also leads me closer to my Beloved and so I have to bless it.

Anyway, enjoy.

http://youtu.be/7HtID2cORmY

PS: I’m sorry that I don’t have any info about the distribution or current copyright holder of this film. IMDB doesn’t have any helpful info on this count either. There are some channels on YT that seem to be authorized by specific distros (Shemaroo is a big one and their channel includes a Meera movie) that you can explore further.

Last night I had a long talk with some friends about some of the more prominent aspects of my private spiritual life. This conversation had been waiting to happen for a while but my private spiritual life isn’t something that I can just dump on unsuspecting acquaintances; you gotta work up to that level of disclosure. Even though I’ve known for a while that these people were safe to talk to about these things, the time had never been right for the conversation until now.

We talked about a lot of things but about the mystic’s path in particular. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and never was quite able to put it into words until now. Objectively I recognize that there is much of the mystic about me but it’s not really the path that I identify with. I am, perhaps, too aware of my functional capacities, my nature as a spirit worker, to relate most strongly to my search for the variant faces of my Beloved. (“But,” the heart whispers, “might you not be approaching this search through the vehicle of the Work?” Hush, I whisper back, or you’ll spoil the ending.)

Mystics are relentlessly driven to see the face of the Beloved. Sometimes this face is singular and sometimes this face is manifold. Sometimes there is a highly specific name and sometimes there is not. Further, to one degree or another, mystics seem to be able to hold the tension between specificity and the expansive sacred All. Holding this tension is sometimes sweet, sometimes incomparably bitter. Recognizing that all personalized divinity suffers from restrictive particulars can be frustrating because the mystic has a strong desire to have that personalized connection. Many are able to find a personalized connection to that sacred All and others find the sacred All in a personalized connection. Others (like myself) are pushed to fall in love again and again with apparently disparate expressions of the Beloved and Hir machinations but many others have struggled and still are struggling to resolve that tension. It is challenging to be aware of an immense, pervasive, inescapable foundation of sacred nature-awareness while also needing, really needing, that highly personal connection.

The challenges on this path are numerous. Frequently mystics are not in a cultural or religious context that allows them the freedom to express themselves or pursue their search without obstacle. Indeed, the negotiation of obstacles is a primary characteristic of this path. Mirabai in many ways is my favorite mystic and the one whose story I find most helpful and instructive. Her entire life was a series of obstacles in the way of getting what she wanted and of simply enjoying what she had. This is pretty typical, actually. Mystics’ stories are not generally happy ones, even though their private lives are distinguished by intense, life-changing ecstasies. There simply aren’t that many happy or satisfied mystics and saints. (Although wait – those God-realized saints of some traditions absolutely do have that profound bliss but most mystics seem not to fall into that category. Thus I will have to set that small category aside; the mystic is characterized by the search, the God-realized saints by the finding and abiding.)

Another significant set of challenges arise because the mystic has a fundamentally different set of priorities than everyone else. Negotiating and renegotiating these priorities with the circumstances imposed by the world, by the social context, and simply by the human condition an ongoing problem for mystics. Even those who successfully separate themselves from the priorities imposed by others (usually simply by just fucking off into the forest for decades at a time) face the deep consequences of that separation. It is quite rare to find a set of circumstances that allow for the material, psychological, emotional, and spiritual support of someone whose priorities are fixed on deep emotional connection with the divine. It does happen, but most mystics have to juggle their priorities without a full spectrum of meaningful support.

There’s more I’ll write on this subject but I’m going to catch another few hours of sleep first.