Devotion as the practice of noticing
The Pinball Effect
I’ve been thinking about devotion lately, and the meaning it’s holding. For some, it tastes like incense and obligation. For others, it feels like drowning in something that was never theirs to begin with. The word arrives pre-sauced, marinated in everyone else’s recipes of what it’s supposed to mean.
It can appear as though all situations in our life are charged with a force that has a triggering power over our mental-emotional state of being. This then causes a pinball effect, us being the ball, bouncing wildly off of everything touched.
And in this bouncing, devotion can feel impossible. How do we devote ourselves to anything when we’re ricocheting?
When we take a closer look at our situations and trigger points it can be discovered that it is us- not the situation- that is the cause and effect of that which we are experiencing.
This is where devotion begins: in the willingness to look closely at the pinball machine itself.
The Algorithm
Each and every time our pinball contacts a surface (situation), before we even realize it, our mind has put forth a reaction to the situation. This mechanism of mind has partly been put in place so we might conserve energy.
Like an algorithm, a continuously patterned reaction, predicting which reactions will serve best at any given moment so that we may efficiently go about tasking.
The malfunction in this programming is that the automatic reactions that unconsciously arise to situations encountered, are old programs. They are learned behaviours collected mostly in the first decade of life, which go on replicating into maturity like the Fibonacci sequence.
These reactions are not always optimal and they often create further complications and drama in our lives.
And here’s where devotion gets interesting. Because devotion is not about perfecting these reactions or transcending the pinball machine entirely. Devotion is the practice of returning, again and again, to witness the machine in action. To stay curious about the algorithm even when it’s creating chaos.
To choose what nourishes the roots of our inner landscape, even when the branches aren’t blossoming, even when the fruit isn’t visible, even when no one is watching or measuring or approving.
The Neutrality Question
Circumstances are digested through our vintage filters of archived perceptions. Why do some situations activate a high charge, and others don’t? What if everything that is occurring around us every day, is actually neutral? Is it the situation that is radiating the intensity that we feel, or is the intensity entirely generated as a byproduct of how we interpreted it?
What if devotion is not devotion to getting it right, but devotion to seeing clearly? Devotion to the practice of noticing our vintage filters before they hijack the steering wheel. Devotion to the pause between stimulus and response, that sacred gap where choice lives.
Situations will always activate what is already inside of us that is not neutral, magnifying our pinball machine so we can begin to comprehend how we are wired and how our internal landscape was formed.
The Returning
Maybe situations will continue to activate what is already inside of us. That is unavoidable, but what is optional is whether we meet those activations consciously or let them run on old instructions.
Not to eliminate the pinball effect completely, but to understand it so deeply that we stay malleable enough to let old programs update, while choosing our responses rather than getting lost in the bouncing.
The pinball machine does not need to be dismantled, it needs to be observed closely. Close enough to the point where the patterns, the algorithm become predictable, and eventually interruptable.
Because change happens in that familiarity. In seeing the same response arise enough times that we stop blaming the machine and recognize our hand on the steering wheel.
Not all at once, but through the small choices we make everyday, through choosing the impact we give the situation, through returning to the landscape within, even when- especially when- it’s uncomfortable.
So even though the bouncing doesn’t stop, it no longer holds the power to decide for us anymore.
Loving you always!
Meghan