Receptive Devotion

         Love has many faces, many expressions, and is deeply mysterious.  About 30 years ago, I came across the phrase receptive devotion in a book by one of the earliest women writers on the Feminine.  I had never heard the phrase before, yet I felt a sense of recognition and a quickening in my heart.  At that time I associated the word ‘receptive’ with the essence of the Feminine, and I knew myself to be devotional ever since childhood.  This phrase started an inquiry that has never stopped and continues to be a master teacher/teaching.  To be receptive is by no means passive.  To be receptive is paradoxical in that it is to be actively awake, alert, and able to receive the moment as it is and respond to what is called for. 

Sometimes being receptive is about asking as well as receiving, and I have found it requires of me a willingness to be open, available, attentive, and at least willing to be willing to meet what is and respond.  I think of my poodle, Rumi, and other dogs who seem to naturally embody receptive devotion in relation to their primary person or family.  If you have a dog, or have had dogs, you know what I mean.  They can be so utterly present, devotional, and fully focused as they wait without waiting to respond to your next move or command.  I feel a sense of the Tao in receptive devotion: “The Tao never does anything, yet through it, all things are done.”  Consider your own experiences with this.
Receptive devotion became an ongoing inquiry etched into my heart as a mantra and something to which I aspired.  Over the years it has become a place of rest and refuge in my own heart, a way of being in my life and in the world with what is, as it is.  For me, devotion is an expression of love, attention, prayer, and commitment.  I experience it as a fire in my heart and a passionate, embodied loving that expresses both as giving and receiving.  While we often think of devotion as an act of giving, what is more devotional than fully receiving another person?  With devotion, the distinction between giving and receiving disappears.  We receive so much in the giving, and we give so much in the receiving.  The flame of devotion to the Mystery was ignited in my heart when I was six, and I have been shown by many wonderful souls that each of us has this flame of devotion within us and is expressed in our lives in countless ways.  To be able to give it expression is both a joy to receive and a gift to give.    

          I invite you to give yourself the valentine of inquiring into the following questions:  What is your experience of being receptive?  What is your experience of devotion?  To whom and what are you devoted?  What is receptive devotion for you and how do you experience it?  These are not questions for the mind.  In my experience, receptive devotion is more like a koan offering an inquiry that the mind cannot really engage because the deep knowledge of it is ineffable and speaks through the heart.  We can only deeply know it through our own direct experience of it.  If you inquire, if you ask to experience receptive devotion, ask to be shown, ask to become aware of any obstacles within you to experiencing it, you will already have stepped into the sanctuary of receptive devotion.  It is a beautiful and precious place to abide in awakeness to the present moment, to the Mystery.  

         Many, if not most of us, have been deeply conditioned to believe that it is “better to give than to receive,” or that it may be ‘selfish’ to receive.  Our capacity to receive is often not well-functioning, limited by many internal stories and much resistance to receiving gracefully.  Receptive devotion continues to teach me that it is about receiving life, receiving the holy and the horrible, receiving the kindnesses of others, receiving what I don’t like or want to receive, and receiving the Grace that is ever-present, sometimes with fangs and claws, but present never-the-less in every moment.  There is a deep connection between receptive devotion and Grace.  If I am not utterly devoted to being receptive to everything in a given moment, especially the difficult things that I don’t like or want, I cannot be receptive to experience the Grace that is immanent in every moment, no matter how it appears. 

          Everything in our lives can be affected by resting in an attitude of receptive devotion which sometimes requires us to ask.  Asking is difficult for many of us, as the strong prohibition against asking is the in the fine print about giving being a higher calling than receiving.  When I engage a deep inquiry from a place of receptive devotion, whether for one or nine days, or several months, I ask for alignment with Divine Love, Truth and Divine Will.  I ask to be shown the obstacles and the obscurations within me that are related to what I am asking for.  I state my willingness to ask and to gracefully receive what is given, and I ask for help to receive what I don’t like or want as it is.  I have found there is always Grace in this part of the process, even when it feels hopeless.

       Inquiry is a conversation with the Mystery.  It is about asking, inquiring, inviting a response of some kind, maybe a prayer or petition, not knowing anything, having no expectations or images, and being willing to receive what is given.  A month ago, from a place of heartbreak, burning love, and fear, I asked for a miracle of healing for someone I love very much.  Witnessing a pernicious disease, debilitation, and its attendant pain in a beloved’s life has been heart-wrenching and extremely difficult, as their life as they knew it is falling apart.  My own sense of helplessness felt unbearable. 

       Within 24 hours of asking for this miracle, I understood that it was not the right miracle to be asking for.   I felt the mis-alignment in my body that went with my desire to get rid of the disease and all of the attendant suffering, including my own.  This clarification led me to see that the real miracle here would be to ask to receive the illness and all that comes with it, as it is, from the place of receptive devotion rather than fear.  There is no war to wage, nothing to get rid of.  Putting energy into wanting it to be different than it is was taking up too much of my heart and it only added stress into the field. 

        This felt so right, seemed impossible, so I prayed to be in receptive devotion. Within a couple of days of asking for this miracle, I went through a welcomed earthquake explosion of my heart breaking,  opening in the flood of a tsunami of hot tears, a spewing volcano of fiery rage, shrieking and keening and howling for what is, for this disease and all that it brings with it.  I allowed everything to come forth, and it was the perfect way to the place in my heart which is quiet, still, and where I now can rest in receptive devotion in relation to this disease.  I experienced again what I have experienced a zillion times, and yet it was completely fresh: the heart, the Great Heart, receives everything—the holy and the horrible.

        It took just a few days for this huge shift to happen, and for me to recognize, yet again, the Grace that is always present in what is as it is—even, and especially, when we cannot see it or believe it can be there.  I continue to be in awe as I keep discovering this on a daily basis, as if it is new news each day.  I still don’t like that this disease is happening, I don’t have to, but I am not at war with it anymore.  I simply agree that it is what it is, and it is here in our lives as Teacher and Teaching, doing what it’s doing, and I cannot possibly know what that is, or what anything is.  The task at hand is to do whatever needs to be done, day to day, on every level here.  

        The shift to be able to meet it from my heart has allowed more love to flow through me and through the field to and among those involved.   This feels like a true miracle that serves everyone, especially the one who is host to this illness and those that love him.   I began communicating with the disease organisms, working with the energetic, and on the outer level, new treatments have been initiated and they are helping where the previous treatment protocol did not.  There is more spaciousness and capacity to listen and hear the deeper teachings as well as the practical instructions.  Receptive devotion always brings a re-alignment with love and truth and opens awareness of multi-dimensional possibilities.  

        Receptive devotion is a gesture of arms and hands extended to welcome, to receive, and to ask.  It is a room with a view in the heart, where one can see beyond the known horizon to see Grace everywhere in everything. Please let me know how it goes if you engage this sweetheart inquiry.