Forum

Hello,

If you would like to post comments, ask questions, or start a discussion, please submit them via email to eric@wisdomscenes.com. They will be manually posted to this page for the time being. Your email will be kept completely confidential only the name you enter in the email will appear with the post.

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Walking Devotional Meditation — Invitation

Every week in the Bay Area California, there is a walking meditation meetup at a local park.  If you are in the area, please drop-in, no charge, no rsvp needed.

This is something I host to give back for the blessings God has given me, especially the blessing to feel His joy and peace whenever I choose to commune with Him in love.

Joyful blessings,
Eric Munro

p.s.  Information and location at:

http://www.meetup.com/Walking-Meditation-Bay-Area/

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To: walking@howtolovegod.org
Subject: Question on your book…

Hi Eric,

I downloaded your book ‘How To Love God’, from your website.  Thanks for making this available to everybody. I very much enjoyed reading it and am continuously on a quest to deepen my own devotion for God, which I have found to be a deeply frustrating experience at times.  But it seems like everybody struggles to find their own way of doing this.  One question that keeps popping up for me is trying generate a feeling of love in your heart at will.

 You mention thinking of a loved one to try & generate this, but most of the time, not all though, I find this really quite difficult, because lets face it, pretty much all human relationships are conditional.

At times its very hard to generate this.  How have you dealt with this?  Or have you even found this to be a problem?

Anyway, I thought I’d reach out & thanks again for this little book.

Simon

From: walking@howtoloveGod.org
Subject: RE: Question on your book…

Hello Simon,

You raise important questions that deserve a considered reply.

It will take me a day or two to respond, as it does take me awhile to write.

Also I like to spend time thinking about questions like this while taking devotional walks.

Blessings,

Eric

To: walking@howtolovegod.org
Subject: RE: Question on your book…

Hi Eric,

Many thanks for you reply and for taking the time to give me a

measured response.  I look forward to hearing any ideas you may have.

Thanks again,

Simon

From: walking@howtoloveGod.org

Subject: RE: Question on your book…

Hello again Simon,

Well there are probably an infinite number of words that could be written on this subject, hopefully these limited few will be helpful.

You mentioned “at times it’s very hard to generate this, … but not all though.”  So at times you probably have been able to generate love in your heart or at least felt love for God in your heart.

A very simple recommendation is when you are caught in frustration to simply relax, breathe deeply, and just say thank you to God for the times in the past when you have felt love for Him. Practice humble gratitude. We all have a long path ahead to fully reunite with God in His infinite love and joy.

Use the energy of frustration to practice longing, yearning, and even demanding God’s presence.  While it may be hard to feel joyous love for God in our hearts at times, it usually is possible to feel longing for God in our hearts. Longing is an aspect of love. God celebrates when we long for Him, for then He knows we are on our way back to Him.

Another practice is during the day, whenever you feel uplifted, joyous, or loving for no particular reason at all, appreciate it, be grateful for it, silently thank God, and silently celebrate with God this feeling.

For generating love in the heart, I have relied mostly on chakra energization with deep breathing.  Before my “devotional awakening” I had practiced (and still do) eastern meditation techniques that involve energizing the chakras. Love breathing can be described as combining a simple Christian contemplation method with a simple heart chakra energization method.

Here’s a practice that may help. Try just focusing on the physical feeling in the heart center, not the beating heart, but the point in the middle of the chest. Breathe in deeply, as your rib cage expands, focus on the feeling in the heart or rib cage center. This feeling has been described as heart energy, life force, prana, qi, … and love.  You don’t really need to intellectualize or over-analyze it. Focusing on the physical feeling works spiritually.

To enhance the heart feeling, sit up straight while doing the deep breathing and push the chest out. At the point of full inhalation, focus solely on the feeling in heart region. Next put your hands on top of each other over your heart chakra, keep deep breathing. At the point of full inhalation, quickly push your hands into your chest just for a moment. Relax the hands on the exhale, but keep them up, touching your chest.  If you do this for even a few breaths (deep breathing, chest out, hands pushing heart) you should be able to feel a lot of energy in the heart chakra.

That’s really all there is to generating love in your heart at will.  Now on the exhale if you just silently chant “God” and focus that heart feeling on longing for God … well that is loving God.

So energize the heart on the inhale, focus the heart feeling on God on the exhale.

Also sometimes focusing on loving a Saint or Master can be easier than focusing on God. Currently I’m reading about Saint Teresa of Avila. She talks about how she would picture herself with Christ when he was carrying the cross and she would wipe the sweat off his brow … such a sweet, internal way to offer love to God. Another saint, whose name I’ve forgotten, practiced loving the Christ child. He had a baby Christ doll in his room that he used to direct his love towards.

So many ways to practice loving God.

You mentioned your “continual quest” and “deeply frustrating”, these are causes to rejoice!

If the longing is sustained, it does become easier and the periods of joy slowly start to overtake the periods of frustration.

Many blessings,

Eric

p.s.  Currently I am in the process of expanding the www.howtoLoveGod.org website, to make it a more general resource that includes a discussion forum. I plan to post your question with the response when possible. I won’t use your name or email address so it will be anonymous (or maybe just use your first name?). Other readers could probably benefit from it. If for any reason you don’t want me to do this, please email me.   Joy.


To: walking@howtolovegod.org
Subject: RE: Question on your book…

Dear Eric,

Thank you so much for your very in depth email.  All these ideas & visualizations sound really great.

I will certainly try to put them into practice and see how I go.  You’ve broken down the idea of ‘loving God’ into something much more simplistic for me.  As you said, you can very easily over-analyze it and that’s what I have been doing.

Thank you very much for help.

Many blessings to you,

Simon

P.S.  That’s sounds great.  Sure, you can use my first name.

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