Is nostalgia (or melancholy) simply misplaced bhakti?
EVERYTHING is misplaced bhakti.
Corollary: Taking sexual energy upwards isn’t sublimation of sexuality; taking it downward (i.e. lust) is sublimation of divinity. This is provable. We all know that sex is rarely quite all we’d hoped for (is Hugh Hefner a happy man?). The bliss of God realization (even just a touch of it) is very very not disappointing, and it never gets old ever. It is obviously the Real Thing we’d previously been looking for (in all the wrong places…).
It’s a very valid (though not at all AYP) practice, btw, to keep taking every yearning, every craving, every emotion, every action, toward God (or whatever you want to call it…“God” is a loaded word, I know!) by making it bhakti.
If someone cuts you off while driving and your heart pounds, make it bhakti. If you stub your toe, make it bhakti. Here’s a good one for guys (maybe women, too, I can’t speak to that): if you see a beautiful woman whose presence gets you all hot and bothered, you will be amazed at how easy and natural it is to transform/channel/elevate that feeling into bhakti. In time, you’ll see that it was God in the beauty that was turning you on to begin with. Sounds nutty, I know, but it’s true. And if you can reach that point of understanding, that’s a good place to really start stripping off delusion…a lot of other things become clear…