More acutely, reducing devotion, will, and aspiration to impersonal movements has severed my living, personal relationship with the Divine; instead of feeling like a devotee, I feel like a cold spectator watching one. How do I balance the detachment of the witness consciousness with active, personal bhakti and dynamic rejection of lower nature? What should I do to regain my inner alignment, energy, and genuine connection with the Divine?
It is a kind of mind game that seems to have taken hold. Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, and all others used the word I and made their choices. Witnessing means shifting the I from its fields of nature with which it is identified, to the higher or deeper Self. It is best done by first focusing on the discovery of the psychic being. To learn to disengage from nature means that one is no more at the mercy of egoistic impulses and desires, etc. It means that one is at the mercy of the Divine, His instrument and channel. What you seem to be experiencing is a part of the mind itself separating from the rest of the nature. It is a subtle ego and it finds a convenient excuse not to surrender since the I is even there! Gyana yoga does sometimes take this extreme path, in which case the self may enter either into a Nihil like the Buddha or else into a magnified, aggrandised ego like some of the Asuras. If instead you took the approach of inwardly offering your thoughts and feelings to the Divine, refusing the pulls of thoughts and feelings and reminded yourself that you are The Mother’s child and want to be what She would want you to be, then all will be alright.
Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa
Affectionately,
Alok Da
