by Rev. Brandon Nagel

Last time, I wrote about reminding yourself of the wonder and presence of God in the world around you. And while that is an important and powerful practice to put into place, I think it is also important to understand the importance of living your spiritual journey from a heart centered approach. Personally, this was the biggest shift I had to make in my spiritual practice. I have always been a mind centered kind of guy. I want to understand things from an intellectual level and then maybe we can move on to the heart-centered approach.
Over the course of the past few years, what I have come to realize is that sticking only with that intellectual approach led to me have the most issues with seeing the perfect harmony of divine order in both my life and in my world. It became clear that my mind was receiving two different messages. There was the message I grew up with that there was an order and harmony to the universe and then there was the message that this thing or that thing was wrong. There was the chaos that would arise from some global situation or another. All those things gave me the opposite message.

For me it looked like beginning my mediation by consciously welcoming the presence of God to be an active force in my life this day.
And from there I would make the commitment to focus living from the qualities of God. Living that day with the strength, wisdom and love that I would need to encounter whatever was mine to do.
The reason I believe this worked for me is because that presence of God lives within our heart and when we call it forth, when we welcome it as an active force in our lives each day, when our prayer is to allow the presence of God to do its work through us; then we are truly living from our heart. And living our spiritual lives from our hearts is the true key to living a successful spiritual life.
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