Did You Know Jesus Was a Bhakti?

An exploration of the importance of Bhakti Yoga in our journey to self love

The other day, I found myself sitting in a cafe, watching a mother with her young daughter. The little girl had dropped her ice cream cone, and instead of scolding her or rushing to clean up the mess, the mother just... held her. Let her cry it out. Stroked her hair with such tender attention that you'd think this minor catastrophe was the most important moment in the universe.

And maybe it was.

It got me thinking about love in a way I haven't before (check out my last post to learn more about that). Not the grandiose, life-changing kind of love we're always chasing after, but the quiet kind.

The kind that shows up in small gestures and tender moments when we think no one's keeping score. And now it keeps me up at night.

What if we've been looking at love all wrong? What if it's not something we need to chase or earn or perfect, but something that's already there, waiting to be noticed?

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Back to the Source

It was this thought that led me straight back to Swami Vivekananda's teachings on Bhakti Yoga, and I knew instantly what this week's exploration of self-love needed to focus on.

Not because I needed another way to think about love (though let's be honest, who doesn't?), but because something about his words on devotional love cracked open a door in my mind that I can't seem to close.

Looking at the essence of Bhakti Yoga—a path where love itself becomes both the practice and the destination—I keep coming back to one question: what if all this time we've been trying to learn how to love, when really we just need to remember how to receive it?

🌸🫰🏻 Make sure to stay until the end to get all the juicy goodness from this written workshop’s downloadable guides (at the end): a practice guide, a devotional checklist, and journal prompts to explore how you can develop a Bhakti-guided sense of self love. 🫰🏻🌸

Understanding Bhakti Yoga

In Vivekananda's teachings, Bhakti Yoga transcends any single religion—after all, he saw Jesus as one of the greatest Bhakti yogis who ever lived.

It's the path of pure devotional love, where every breath, thought, and action becomes a love letter to existence itself.

Think of it like this: a Bhakti yogi could be anyone from a mystic in deep meditation to a mother singing to her child, from Jesus spreading his message of universal love to an artist losing themselves in their craft.

This isn't about "religious" versus "secular" love.

It’s about understanding that love isn't something to find, it's the lens we're already looking through.