The Infinite Mind

11 The Power of Devotion WHEN SOMETHING IS VERY close to your heart and your actions are performed with complete effort, the results can be astounding. Pause for a minute and ponder on certain aspects of devotion; can devotion be positive or negative? The result of any activity will depend greatly upon an important parameter, which is the intensity of your devotion towards the task in hand. How passionate are you towards the particular task? If the intensity of your devotion is low, there is a lesser chance of a positive result manifesting. Everyone has a sense of devotion, check where you have it. • People live in fear – The intensity of fear is deep, hence the devotion to fear is high. This manifests and expands in your life. It takes a lot of positivity to come out of this devotion to fear. • People are lazy – The intensity of laziness is such that such people don’t feel like doing anything. Their devotion to comfort zone is high. Here, dynamism is missing from the picture. Can devotion hurt? • A boy loves a girl and has a crush on her. His love is devoted to her, but somehow the equation becomes altered and he does not find himself with that girl. So here his devotion hurts him. • A few people after losing their job, focus on their loss, their intensity of devotion becomes almost a physical pain, so they continue living in the pain of losing the job. Yes, devotion does hurt sometimes. • A student, an IIT aspirant, studies with devotion, and succeeds in joining the top engineering college in the country. • A terrorist was captured. Once he was identified, he turned out to be the master mind behind many terror strikes in the country and abroad, and was wanted internationally too. Many countries had a bounty over his head. Many people had lost their lives because of him; many lost their brothers, sisters, husbands, sons, daughters. This kind of news is reported everyday in every news paper. When I was younger, I used to ask my mother, “Mom, these terrorists kill people. Then why does God give them success in their activities?” At that time I never got a satisfactory answer to this question, but now I have. The factor which happens to work here is the intensity of devotion. Terrorists prepare for their attacks with a high intensity of devotion towards the planning and its execution. This is one of the reasons that even though they work against humanity and takes the lives of people, God grants them success. What is the common trait between a terrorist and an IIT aspirant? The only common trait is the intensity of their devotion towards their goal. Suffice to say, devotion is neither positive nor negative. It is just the intensity or drive towards the action. That action could be positive or negative, but if combined with intense devotion, will always bear results. Friends, it is in your hands, to which action you want to give your attention, the intensity of your devotion in this life. The power of devotion is such that with increasing intensity, your thoughts manifest in real life. That feeling expands in your life, to all aspects of your life. So next time beware of the action towards which you are directing the intensity of your devotion. .