sevaka v0.30: Devotion and Work

I wrote previously that I wanted to cultivate devotion as pure meditation was not providing me with the Brava that I wanted. Further, just sitting in meditation all the time was leading me to get a bit antsy. Meditation creates focus, but if Bhagavan isn’t in focus, then the carnal pleasures become the objects of focus. So I decided that I want to focus more time on devotion as part of my day that takes on various forms not just meditation. What I came to realize is a few things:

1. Meditation time should be considered Devotion time. Whether I am on the meditation cushion or not I need to develop a love of Bhagavan. By focusing only on meditation I am limiting myself to potentially other forms of Bhakti. Further, 10-20 minutes of deep meditation is much better than 30 minutes of spacy meditation. I am focusing more on quality as opposed to length.
2. This devotion time I can use for other things. I need to get into the shastras more deeply and this time spent throughout the day is time I can use for this focus. Further, I can use it as a time for prayer, sastra reading, meditation, and hatha yoga study, and reading of some classics.

In order to simplify my life even more I have divided my day into two buckets: Devotion and Work. Yes, I include time for exercise, family and cleaning. But for the most part the day is simply broken into 2 hour work chunks and 30 minute devotion chunks. This radically simplifies what I need to think about at any given time. This also gives me ample time throughout the day for devotion and thinking about Bhagavan to center myself.

I still hope to meditate about 30 minutes a day, but it also gives me 2.5 hours to dedicate to studying other things.

Lastly, the Devotion time should be focused on improving one of the 8 Limbs. This is a significantly important point. By improving the 8 Limbs I am focusing on progressing spiritually not just arbitrarily reading things.