When the challenges come up, that’s when you need the tools. So, spiritual work then, out of love and compassion for yourself, and out of love for God, devotion to God, you develop these strengths, these capacities, this discernment. And, eventually, it’s like a knife, you can cut through anything. You can lose anything and everything, disconnect: parents, grandparents, country, lovers, wives, children, dogs, cats, houses, titles, anything! Whoosh! In an instant, it’s gone. So, that laser-like one-pointedness of mind and the willingness to cut through anything, no matter what it is, is what’s going to be needed at a later date. So, we perfect it every day. We perfect that capacity. So, that’s a form of love. All of spiritual work is a form of love. We surrender it all as a form of devotion. “Out of my love for Thee, O Lord, I let go my attachment to so-and-so. I surrender it to Thee.” The willingness to let go of anything and everything to God. In the end, you’re asked to let go all of it, even physicality. Yeah, even physicality.
And of course, the ultimate one, which we will talk about at the end of the lectures, is the willingness to give up what you think is the source of life itself. You’re asked to give up life for God. And you see that the ego is coming to its end, but you don’t know it’s just the ego; you think it’s you. And your willingness to surrender life itself as you understand it, to God, is going to require all the strength that you’ve learned. So, devotion, then, is a one-pointed, um, willingness, and it becomes tested all the time. The expression of love as devotion, then, becomes the core of many forms of devotion, whether Christianity or Zen Meditation….
…People say, “How do I know I’m going to be enlightened someday or something?” Well, I tell them, “If you weren’t destined to be enlightened, you wouldn’t be in this lecture.” Nobody who’s not destined to be enlightened would even be here. Who would be at a class on how to drive a speedboat? Only people who are going to get a speedboat; I mean, nobody else is going to be there. By definition, the people who are interested in enlightenment are the people who are going to become enlightened. I mean, that’s how you get there, isn’t it?
Karma and Devotion: The Sacred Path to God Through the Heart: Ch. 1, pgs. 22-23
