To get to God, you must go through the heart...

Often in my practice people ask me how to become more spiritual. My answer is always: to find God you have to go through the heart. When you think of the heart and its qualities: love, compassion, kindness, don’t they all align with our understanding of God, regardless of what your belief of God is?

Each of us have our own unique belief about spirituality, God, Divine, Higher Intelligence, and 100 others names for that omnipresent energy. For me, God is a Divine Pure Love, an Absolute, the Highest Consciousness and Intelligence. So in my world view to become more spiritual is to become more conscious, to connect with the source of my creation, to have a greater understanding of this experience of life, and of my role in it. And most importantly to create those qualities of love, compassion and kindness within my own heart.

In many ancient cultures and spiritual traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, the heart is regarded as the seat of the soul and a key center of spiritual energy and a place of connection with the Divine. Heart was the most revered organ in all ancient civilizations.

What ancient civilizations believed we now know through the extensive research of HeartMath Institute.

Our heart is a highly complex information processing center that connects body, mind, emotions and spirit, with every beat it transmits complex patterns of neurological, biochemical, biophysical, and energetic information into the brain and through the body. These communications pathways affect the brain function, and most of the organs, play a vital role in mental, emotional experience and quality of our life.

HeartMath research suggests that our physical heart also communicates with our energetic heart- our higher self, a soul, or what physicist David Bohm described as “our implicate order and undivided wholeness.”

What ancient mystics called intuition is now highly researched "heart's intelligence"- the intuition we experience when the mind and emotions are brought into synchronistic alignment with the energetic heart. When we are heart-centred and in harmony, we are able to access that stream of higher consciousness. Through creating more heart coherence we not only improve our wellbeing and health, but also able to enhance our spiritual growth.

Below are my favorite ways to connect with the heart through HeartMath and nature based practices:

1. Practice Heart Coherence. Begin with Heart Focused Breathing (breathing slowly and deeply through your heart for few minutes), then cultivate an elevated feeling of love, compassion or kindness, sustain it for few minutes to bring your heart and brain into alignment by breathing that feeling into your heart.

2. Spend time immersed in nature uninterrupted, observe the flow and order of life. Notice your presence within this complex ecosystem. Remember you are a part of this creation too.

3. Commit to a meditation practice. Consistent meditation creates a bond between you, your heart, and God.

4. Serve, either by volunteering or serving your community in whatever makes sense to you. When we selflessly serve others, we tap into our connection with something greater than us.

5. Sustain the attitude of gratitude and appreciation for all life gifts you.

6. Cultivate heart qualities like love, kindness, compassion towards yourself, others and the world and practice them with all your heart!