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- [00:01]
Megan Farner
Welcome to Hidden Wisdom Hidden Wisdom exists to initiate truth seekers into the mysteries, gently guiding them toward a lived experience of the Divine that awakens and transforms faith without dismantling family or community. This work is about faith renovation and expansion, learning how to inhabit your spiritual foundation more fully, allowing for depth, relationship and wisdom to grow over time. I'm your host Megan Farner. Here we explore Christ centered esotericism, spiritual discernment, embodied wisdom and the path of initiation so your faith can mature, deepen
- [00:43]
and become more alive.
- [00:45]
If you're seeking more and wanting to grow with care and integrity, you are in the right place.
- [00:57]
Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of Hidden Wisdom. I am so excited for this third conversation with Phil McLemore. So grateful to hear that everyone has been loving him and his content just as much as I have been and I'm thrilled for this conversation. Likely this will be a two part conversation, so you'll enjoy part one this month and then we'll have part two coming out in April, so just be aware of that. A couple of just things to know before we get started. Of course we have our app launching later this month. We are set to launch on March 24, so be sure to join the waitlist if you haven't already. I'll be sending out more this month in terms of sneak peeks in the app and discounts deals things to look forward to all of that. Also, we are going to be starting our next group of Return to the Garden. So if you are a woman who is interested in learning how to embody your divine feminine self, to find that balance between masculine and feminine energy and to do it in a very Christ grounded way. If you're looking for community and connection with other women who are seeking the mysteries and learning how those apply in their lives, then this is a wonderful opportunity for you. You can go to my website meganfarner.com to learn all about the program again. That's going to be starting here on April 20th and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We do have just a lot of flexibility in terms of different options to help make this as accessible as possible. So, so excited for you to hopefully come and join the group. All right, with that being said, we'll turn this conversation over to Phil.
- [02:39]
Welcome to Hidden Wisdom. Hidden Wisdom exists to initiate truth seekers into the mysteries, gently guiding them toward a lived experience of the divine that awakens and transforms faith without dismantling family or community. This work is about faith renovation and expansion, learning how to inhabit your spiritual foundation more fully, allowing for depth, relationship and wisdom to grow over time. I'm your host, Megan Tharner. Here we explore Christ centered esotericism, spiritual discernment, embodied wisdom and the path of initiation so your faith can mature, deepen
- [03:21]
and become more alive.
- [03:23]
If you're seeking more and wanting to grow with care and integrity, you are in the right place.
- [03:37]
Hello everyone and welcome back to Phil. We are so grateful to have you. For a third conversation, I was telling Phil offline yesterday that I have just loved receiving so many of your comments and the people who have been benefiting so much from these conversations. So grateful to have you back again. This might be a two part conversation, so we have you guaranteed for at least another episode and I'm really excited about this conversation. Today we're going to be talking about the yoga of Christ. And this is based on an article that Phil wrote some time ago. And we've kind of dropped some hints, I think at some of the content in this discussion. In our previous episodes that we've done, you know, as we've talked about that yoga is not just calisthenics.
- [04:23]
Phil McLemore
Right.
- [04:23]
Megan Farner
It's not just body poses. It's not just, you know, some of the heat, the Hindu connotations maybe that people have with it. And so I'm really excited to dive in and to learn about this particular topic from you today. Thanks again for coming back.
- [04:39]
Phil McLemore
Well, Megan, I have to say this is the first time I saw your little video intro.
- [04:44]
Megan Farner
Oh yes, I love getting fancy.
- [04:46]
Phil McLemore
Yes. So well worded. I love that. Okay. Hey. Yeah. This article was written almost 20 years ago. I actually love it and I hope that doesn't sound arrogant in any way. This article poured out of me literally over a weekend, over a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And when I read it, it in some ways feels like it was written by somebody else. It obviously was written by me. But it's important because this article represented the resolution of a spiritual crisis that, that I was in. And, and you know, spiritual crisis for me was a good thing because ultimately the quest resulted in direct knowledge and experience of God, my own inner nature, and a clear understanding of the mission message and mediation of Jesus. So Even though it's 20 years old, I still quite enjoy it. As I explained last time, what started all this was a health crisis. I was in an accident. I had some unknown and undiagnosed injuries to my neck and thoracic spine which it took a year to manifest. All the symptoms which he. Which became chronic pain. Chronic pain, month after month turns into anxiety, that turns into depression and Then you're, you're in a state of miserable living. As I explained, I think last time, my typical beliefs and practices did not help me. As I got worse, I felt powerless, hopeless. And that lasted for about two years. I began a chronic pain and stress management program that was based on meditation and mindful yoga. And then within a few months, I began to experience symptom relief and miraculously and certainly not intended the opening of a whole new spiritual dimension. I shifted my practice to Deepak Chopra's system of yoga meditation and began to study yoga teachings and scriptures. And at the end of three years, I had experienced a substantive healing of body and mind and inner spiritual transformation that, frankly, I, you know, was obviously the purpose of the gospel. That, that is the purpose of the gospel, but which I hadn't experienced in 30 years of what I call professional Mormon. I call it professional because I worked for the church or represented the church full time, and my whole job was studying and living Mormonism. That created a crisis for me. And the crisis was I had had all of this inner development through yoga. So the question that haunted me for a year was, am I a Mormon Christian guy or am I a yogi guy? And so this article actually begins with an account of my patriarchal blessing. And interestingly, the patriarch that I saw this was in 1970 in California. The patriarch's name is Homer Smith. I really believe he was alive at the time of Joseph Smith because he was so old. He was well into his 90s. He could have been 190. He barely seemed mentally confident. His wife was super alert. She directed the whole thing. But he put his hands on my head and gave me a blessing. And at first that blessing made no sense to me. It didn't seem to fit my life. But it turned out to be amazingly predictive. It stated that I would be providing spiritual leadership to people and groups outside of the organizations of the church, and that to fulfill this mission I would need to have knowledge and divine insight into the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and all truth. So for me, there were there's three things to emphasize from that blessing. Number one, after my mission and receiving a master's degree, I began to work for the church educational system in the Southern states. And I intended to do this. I loved it so much. I intended to do it for an entire career. And as I was moved in my church education assignments, I served in the bishoprics in each ward I was in. So the idea that I would somehow be providing spiritual leadership to people in organizations outside the Church made no sense whatsoever. However, during 1983, there were a series of synchronistic events. And when those had all unfolded, we were suddenly in the United States Air Force. I'm a military chaplain and I'm preaching in Protestant Christian worship services. I'm conducting Christian and interfaith counseling. I'm doing Christian weddings, funerals, education programs, retreats for people of many different denominational backgrounds. So all of a sudden that, you know, that predicted course of my life suddenly unfolded and became true. I retired from the air Force after 21 years of serving as a chaplain. And then I worked for 12 years as a hospice chaplain for people of many faiths. And then later I became a meditative meditation teacher and traveled all over the country. And this obviously had nothing to do with the organizations of the church. So when everything shook out, probably 70% of my spiritual ministry, so to speak, has been outside of the organizations of the church. The second thing that came out of that blessing was he said it. And it was at first that it would be important for me to focus, to be focused on the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that was a good thing for me to focus on because I was a little confused about who the person of Jesus was. According to church teaching, we seem to have two doctrines about Jesus. Number one, we have the elder brother Jesus, who's more spiritually advanced, but who, like us, had to come to earth, be tempted to demonstrate obedience, to grow from grace to grace, and ultimately attain perfection. This was a Jesus, you know, I could follow. He had trod the path, he knew the difficulties. He could show me the way, so that made sense. But then we have this other Jesus that I call the Mormon doctrine Jesus. This is the Jesus who was ranked as a pre existent God without the perfecting experience of mortality, the Creator of this earth and other worlds, the Jehovah God of the Old Testament. And then when he came to earth, he's perfect in every way. And he demonstrates a huge array of supernatural powers. So the question is, whoa, how do I follow this person, right, who is so completely unlike me? A book that I always liked called Name Jesus was written in the early 2000s by a wonderful Bible scholar named Marcus Borg. But at the beginning of the book, he says, a figure who has superhuman powers is ultimately not one of us. Jesus's humanity disappears. If Jesus had superhuman power and knowledge, he cannot be a model for human behavior. So that was the dilemma in which I found myself. I enjoyed studying the principles of the Gospel of Jesus and the teachings of Jesus. I Just struggled with, who is this guy and how do I follow him? One of my best friends in life is one of the, has been and is one of the top, top LDS scholars in the church. He's written more books than any other Latter Day Saint in the history of the church. And I was teasing him one day we were at lunch and I said, hey, I've been doing this yoga stuff for so long, I. I have forgotten what our doctrine is about Jesus. Can you clarify that for me? And his response kind of surprised me. He said, well, it depends, said, depends on what he says, the context. I said, let me guess, that's honest. We have an elder brother Jesus that we can follow and that kind of makes sense. Yes. But in another context, we have a theological need for the Mormon doctrine, Jesus, who's this God before and God of the Old Testament and creator and supernatural powers. So he reluctantly agreed with me. In any case, through years of meditation, as deep prayer and of course, I mean that is intimate communion with and in God. And I find the need to use both of those prepositions to meditate with God and in God. I awaken to the realization that authentic Christianity is not primarily a religion about principles and doctrines, but it is a conscious, living, intimate relationship with the living Christ and the person of Jesus. Now, how can I follow him? I can follow him because my divine nature is the same as his divine nature. So that's why I can follow him.
- [15:16]
Megan Farner
That's a big paradigm shift if I can just latch onto that. But it's something that I have come to the same understanding. And I think that this is one of the aspects of Jesus's teachings that exists in Scripture, but we tend to skip right over it. Right. Um, if we were to go back and revisit the New Testament, we would hear Jesus saying, you are God's. You can do everything that I have done. In fact, you could do more than me. Because he knew that his time at least was limited. Right? And so this is a very important thing for us to understand. It completely changes the conversation of what spiritual development is. It completely changes what repentance is when all of a sudden we are approaching our personal lives and our development from the perspective that actually what Jesus demonstrated is what he was inviting me to also live and demonstrate because we both have a core that is divine.
- [16:31]
One quick invitation for you here in the middle of this episode. I work privately with a small number of each year through a long form mentorship called the Priestess Path. This is a year long container focused on spiritual integration. Discernment and embodied transformation. If this feels like a quiet yes to you, you can learn more and apply through my website. Meganfarner.com link is in the show notes.
- [17:07]
Phil McLemore
Yeah, no, that's awesome. It's a huge paradigm shift to understand repentance, not as catching yourself in sin, feeling bad, trying to find some way to make it better and commit to do better and try to act better. And that kind of spiritual path can go on for a lifetime and be quite frustrating. When repentance is understood literally, as it means in the Greek, it's a transformation or change of mind, heart, such that your heart, it's really your divine nature emerging, the nature of Christ emerging within you. And suddenly your desire to do things that are contrary to the nature and character of God evaporates and the ability to live according to the nature of God begins to unfold. That's repentance.
- [18:02]
Megan Farner
Yeah, I would say. I would say the process of repentance is less about as you talked about trying to perfect the natural man.
- [18:10]
Phil McLemore
Right.
- [18:11]
Megan Farner
And more about trying to remember and embody the truth of who you actually are, which is a divine being.
- [18:20]
Phil McLemore
Yeah, it's well stated. The third thing that came out of this blessing was his emphasis that I should seek all truth. And I love that because it gave me permission, right, to really go out of bounds and to study and learn from all spiritual traditions. And that fit my desire and personality as well also. So back to my crisis. You know, am I a Mormon guy or a Mormon Christian guy or a yogi guy? When I was serving as a hospice chaplain. Some months before this article was written, I was visiting with a dying man and he asked me to read scriptures. And he said, you choose. And I. I felt inspired. I read several things, but I felt mostly inspired to read Matthew 11, 28:30. And you're all familiar with this? Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. Now, just so you know, Aramaic scholars point out that that word come in Aramaic is. It's an invitational word. It's a word that implies coming to a person with a desire for deep intimacy. There's meaning in that word that we don't get in the English. So come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Well, I knew from my yoga studies that the Sanskrit word yud was the root word underlying both the words yoke and the word yoga. So, you know, in my mind I'm being silly in my mind, but I'm saying, gosh, I could translate that in to Jesus saying practice my yoga, meaning practice my union with it in God and you will find rest unto your souls. And in less than a second, I mean, it was just a flash. My understanding of the New Testament, the life of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus was completely transformed. And my yoga world and my Christian Jesus world, which seemed to be different and separate, suddenly merged and were one. They were in harmony and my crisis was resolved. And this article came out of that, came out of that resolution. I have to admit in over 50 years of counseling with Latter Day Saints, I have found very few that have reported their lives to me as an easy yoke or a light burden. Normally, you know, what we hear is struggling, being faithful, enduring, looking for future relief. And sadly, the Gospel is not generally described as light and easy. It is our, what I call the natural man ego identity or sense of self that experiences psychological, emotional and existential suffering. It's just the nature of, of the natural man. And the rest that Jesus mentions a couple of times, I understood is the fruit of the knowledge and the experience of God's true nature and presence as well as an emerging sense and understanding of our own divine nature in the image of God. So the rest of the, that Jesus is talking about really is the fruit of spiritual rebirth. It's a state that many Christian mystics refer to as Christ consciousness. I actually love that phrase. I was actually introduced to this term by the well known Indian guru Yogananda, who came to America in 1920 and taught his brand of yoga. An interesting thing about Yogananda, other than being a translator and commentator on yoga scriptures, he also wrote a 1600 page commentary on the Gospels. He, he believed that both yoga and Christianity had gone into apostasy and that he was restoring both original yoga and original Christianity. So I thought, whoa, I'm kind of familiar with this restoration language. In any case, the yoga tradition that I practice comes through Yogananda and my yoga teacher mentor was his last living direct disciple. And so you'll find in the article several quotes from Yogananda as a result of that what I call yoke, yoga experience. And in addition to this kind of understanding of, of what I'm calling authentic Christianity, I could see very clearly what teachings in Christianity and in the church at times were true and not true. It was just all very clear to me. Once you have some degree of understanding of the nature of God. True and false teachings just divide the light of that. The light of God's true nature and presence causes that division. And one of the most important realizations that emerge from that is that there are really only two plans of whatever you want to call it, salvation, redemption, and liberation. One category is what I call a deficiency model, and the other is a wholeness model. So in a deficiency model, it is taught that the core nature of man is carnal, sensual and devilish. That human beings are flawed and deficient. They can only be saved by the outside action of a perfect being and through some combination of grace and works. Now you can analyze different Christian denominations based on their particular blending of salvation by grace and or works. So Calvinism, for example, based in predestination is 100% grace, no works. Right? Man is so hopelessly, completely deficient in carnal, he can do absolutely nothing. That results in his approval before God and acceptance by God. And then this just starts to move during, you know, within Christian denominations. I mean, I'm just making up these percentages. But, you know, a 9010 grace worked combo, you know, would be accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. That's the one work you have to do. And then you're saved by grace, and you don't have to do anything else. That's one brand. There are many. You can work down to maybe 50, 50, where you accept Jesus, receive grace, and then it's expected that you live according to his, his teachings. And I would argue that on the far end of that, we kind of have Mormonism, which is about 1090. So typically, the way we teach the gospel, you do all that you can do, you do the best that you can do, and then right at the end, you're just a little bit short. And you know, this has been called the gospel of the gap. And so you get right to the end, you don't quite make it, but because you've been faithful, you've done all you can do, you get the little dash of grace that pushes you over. So this is kind of a range of different Christian gospels within the deficiency model. That makes sense. We don't have time for this. My wife is one of the few who oddly experiences Mormonism as a wholeness model, but she's, she's pretty unique. In any case, the summary is when, when a church's teaching emphasis is on sin, you're in a deficiency model. Okay? No matter what your greatest work ratio is, the only other model is a wholeness model. And this is the model of my yoga tradition, and it's my understanding and experience of Jesus and authentic Christianity. So one of the paragraphs that I wrote in the article says, we are whole, holy and divine in our essential being, but due to our identification with a mortal mind and body, and because we are buried under a plethora of temporary material and mental attachment, we have become ignorant of our eternal nature and divine qualities of spirit. In this model, wholeness model, a redeemer figure acts as a revealer of the true nature of God and man, as well as a liberator from the bondage of ignorance and worldly attachments. So when the emphasis in a teaching tradition is on awakening and rebirth, bang, you're in a wholeness model, if that makes sense. So in the article, I include this quote by Yogananda, who says, no amount of sin can change man's eternal soul nature of divinity. Sin is a crust of ignorance accrued during man's lost wanderings that hides the perfect soul. When by meditation, the soul is led back to God, the crust is washed away and the perfection is revealed. And listen, this is good news, right? It's good news that the image of God is within me. It's not real good news if I'm just carnal, sensual and devilish and I can't do a whole lot to, you know, or I'm expected to do everything to be redeemed.
- [29:37]
Megan Farner
That's a difficult message, that deficiency model. It just, it's steeped in so much shame even when you're approaching it in the best way possible, right? Even with Jesus as a redeemer and a. And a sacrifice for you, there's still so much even there. And I know so many people that are like, well, now I feel horrible that Jesus died for me. I don't want him to die for me, right? Like, there's still shame even in that. And shame is. I mean, you're barely breathing on a. On a frequency level if you're steeped in shame. This model of wholeness, I. I have come to see and very happy to be a part of hidden wisdom as a wholeness model, that you are divine and I. As you were. That quote was reminding me of the parable of the pearl, right? The pearl of great price. And the idea that the pearl, it falls into the mud, but it doesn't lose its worth. And the pearl is you. You and I are the pearls and, and our natural self is this outer coding. I love that word, this coding that is accrued because we have forgotten. And that was purposeful.
- [30:51]
Phil McLemore
Right.
- [30:51]
Megan Farner
There's a reason that we came here. We chose to forget for purposes of learning and growth. But we are not supposed to identify with the mud. We're supposed to identify with the fact that we are a pearl.
- [31:09]
If this hidden wisdom resonates, it's because this path is meant for you. The Hidden Wisdom app is our primary gathering space for truth seekers who want their faith to awaken, transform and expand within a steady and grounded container. Inside the app, you'll find pathway programs, libraries, community support, and daily invitations. Meditations designed to help spiritual transformation unfold gradually, layer by layer, so that your faith remains rooted even as it grows. You'll find the app linked in the show notes. This is where your journey continues.
- [31:55]
Phil McLemore
Yep. Awesome. I love the Parable of Fern. Great price. I love the interpretation of that pearl being my true nature, which is within. Right? And in the parable, everybody's running all around on the outside looking for it, and it's present. I've been reading a book lately called Lost Christianity. It's quite good. But the book is based on the thesis that the truth and the power of Christianity was lost and needs to be rediscovered. And I accept that premise. And it was lost because the gospel, the teachings of Jesus, the religion of Jesus, which was meant to connect us with divine nature, moved from a wholeness model to a deficiency model. I mean, that, in my opinion, is the essence of apostasy. Now, in this quote I just read from Yogananda, it's obvious that obviously he's referring to the parable of the Prodigal Son. And later I include a quote from him that says, even as Jesus, every man, and we need to get women in there, by the right method of deep meditation, can consciously learn to lift the soul from body consciousness into the presence of God. The prodigal soul taken back, back from its wanderings in matter to its ever blessed spiritual home in God. So his teaching was that we're all prodigals. We're all kind of lost in the pig pen. And sometime during our life, there's going to be this moment of, wait a minute, there's got to be something better than this pig pen. And I'm going for it. You know, I'm going to go back. It was. It was easy for me at this point to see that we have westernized Jesus's teachings and lost critical perspectives and insights. And soon after this, I'm suddenly seeing a deeper, more wholeness, divine nature, kind of an Eastern understanding of Jesus's parables. And it's important to Realize Jesus wasn't Western teacher. He grew up in an Eastern culture. He had an Eastern way of teaching, a wisdom way of teaching. So what I soon discovered was that parables that I really disliked and parables that we struggle with in Gospel doctrine classes because they don't seem fair, they don't seem just like the prodigal son, like the laborers in the vineyard, right. Suddenly become clear and wonderful from a wholeness model. Right. So in the. We don't have time today. But in the article, I interpret these parables from a wholeness model. And you can see that they really have a ring of authenticity when seen that, not seen that way and not from a deficiency model of more justice and sin and what's fair and so forth. Once I realized that Jesus had a yoke or a yoga, the obvious question was, what then is the yoga of Jesus? So I'm now contemplating this. And two major insights emerged from this contemplation. First, I've been studying intently the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras. These are kind of. Yoga has. Has scriptures that are beyond belief. Hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of pages, hundreds of texts. I mean, you. Nobody can consume them all in a lifetime. So over the centuries, the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras have kind of distilled out as the classic text of yoga. And I'll never forget the day at a meditation retreat when my yoga mentor said, now you realize that the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras are our standard works. He used that phrase, standard works. I thought, that's interesting. In any case, the Bhagavad Gita teaches four classic paths and practices of yoga or union with God. Yoga means the state of union with God and the path that leads to that. These aren't the only yogas. They're just the four classic ones. There maybe are 10 to 12 that are practiced around the world. Whichever one they are, each is a way of surrendering the ego. The ego, the natural man ego identity. So one can awaken to and in God and experience one's divine nature with God. All of the yogas are intended to do that. They're just different ways based on different personalities. So the Gita explains four yogas. The first is called Bhakti Yoga. This is the path of love and devotion. So this is usually practiced through chanting, singing, dancing. And through those practices, one immerses self in God's love. So it's practiced by yogis. It was practiced by Christian mystics. Is practiced by Sufi mystics. Maybe you've seen images of the Sufis with the big hats and the flowing black robes and they do a lot of dancing and so forth. But these are practices intended to help a person experience the flow of divine love, to be nourished by that, and to be able to surrender the ego nature in that experience of divine love. The second yoga that the Gita explains is called Karma Yoga. Karma means doing action. It's the yoga. I don't know, there's many ways to explain it, but it's the yoga of selfless service. It's the yoga of acting and living with present moment awareness. So Gandhi was a Karma yogi. He served and he acted, and his service and his actions were done in divine awareness, in present moment awareness, in a way to sanctify his activities and his actions. Mother Teresa could be seen as a Karma yogi. Frankly, this is my wife's primary yoga practice. I shouldn't admit this. I do enough meditation for both of us. I guess she doesn't really like sitting too often. She's an action gal. And so her service to others and to our animals and to sick creatures and animals that we take on is. Is a spiritual practice for her. The third yoga that is mentioned in the Gita is called Yanargana Yoga. It's the path of knowledge and discriminative wisdom. So it's a way to use the mind to comprehend and experience eternal truths beyond the mind. No simple task. And the Gita points out that out of all the yogas, this is the most difficult and that not many people are capable of doing this. The fourth yoga that's mentioned is called Raja Yoga or Royal Yoga. And this is the path of meditation. In my opinion, this is the yoga that the Gita lifts up as the one that's probably going to work best for most. Now, having said that, I don't know many yogis who just do one yoga. Most have a core meditation practice, but also practice the elements of the other three based again on their life circumstances, their personality. So I studied for several years with Deepak Chopra. He considers himself to be a wisdom yogi, a Yanya yogi, and he studies science and he studies quantum physics and he meets with top scientific minds, absolutely convinced that one day science is going to prove spiritual reality. But even though that's a primary focus for him, he meditates every day. He loves others, he loves God, he serves right. So most spiritual people I know have a blend of these. There are some that are centered very deeply in one or the other. What became obvious to me as I was thinking about Jesus and light of these yogas was that it was obvious that Jesus was a master of all of these. He was a master of all of these. He had a deep devotional side where he expressed his love for God and creation, for creatures and people. Obviously he was a karma yogi. His, his ministry of healing and service and reaching out to others, no question he was a wisdom yogi. And when you look at his interchanges with scribes and Pharisees and lawyers, you know, smart guys trying to trip him up, he was always four steps ahead and had him tied in knots at the end. And he clearly could use his mind to understand and express truths beyond the normal use of the mind. And, and certainly in my opinion, he was a raja yogi. He had a very deep contemplation, meditation, as deep prayer and communion with God practice. So, you know, a lot of people will challenge me. Well, I don't think Jesus meditated, you know, and if you look at the pattern of prayer that Jesus exercised, he's up early in the morning alone, right off by himself. Sometimes he's up all night in prayer, he's communing with and abiding in God. I mean, it's all the pattern of a raja yogi. And when you realize that the Aramaic word for prayer literally means to abide silently in a holy place until God is revealed, it's not hard to believe at all that Jesus had a core prayer practice that we would describe as a meditation practice of communing with and abiding in God's presence and nature. So it gave his ministry so much power and influence was that presence of the divine that came from communing. So first thing I realized was Jesus was a master of all these classic yogas. And then the second thing, as I was reflecting one morning on what is the yoga of Jesus, I was reflecting on my studies of my yoga standard works, the Gita and the yoga Sutras. And one morning a verse from each of those two texts came to my mind and I realized they were identical and that they both summarized the path to yoga, to union as God communion or meditation, and number two, the principle and practice of non attachment. And we're going to have to work with this concept a little bit. And so I thought, well, wow, if the core scriptures of yoga summarize, there's different ways to summarize the gospel, there's different ways to summarize the path of yoga. But these two texts summarized it as God communion and the practice of non Attachment I had to ask myself, was this also the pattern of Jesus? Well, I already knew based on what we talked about, that communion with God in nature, right? Behold the lilies of the field, right? He's in tune with nature. He's in tune with God's creation and God manifested creation and the admonition of Jesus for us to go, you know, to how do we pray? Matthew 6:6 Go into the inner closet, you know, deep within where you can awaken to the God who is in secret meaning what he's in hiding from the normal function and perceptions of the natural man ego to go in so you can realize the kingdom within. So I I knew and I knew it would be easy to demonstrate in in the article that part of the pattern of the teachings of Jesus was God communion. The question was whether or not Jesus taught this very difficult teaching and practice of non attachment. So I went back and reread the Gospels looking for any and all teachings of Jesus on the topic of non attachment. I studied it a lot in the Yoga scriptures. The question was did Jesus teach it? And I was stunned by what I discovered.
- [46:37]
Megan Farner
If this hidden wisdom resonates, it's because this path is meant for you. The Hidden Wisdom app is our primary gathering space for truth seekers who want their faith to awaken, transform and expand within a steady and grounded container. In the Inside the app, you'll find pathway programs, libraries, community support, and daily invitations designed to help spiritual transformation unfold gradually, layer by layer, so that your faith remains rooted even as it grows. You'll find the app linked in the show notes. This is where your journey continues. If you're ready to continue this work with guidance and shared language, I invite you into the Hidden Wisdom app, where faith is supported through renovation and expansion. If this episode resonated, please consider liking, sharing or subscribing, especially with someone you feel would be strengthened by this conversation. You can also send a donation to Hidden Wisdom via Megan Farner on Venmo. Link is in the description. These are some of the simplest ways to support this work and help it reach those who are quietly seeking. Until next time, Trust what is unfolding. There is hidden wisdom all around you.