144–145: The Kingdom of God is Within You—Believing It, Trusting It, Accessing It

This was great. I’ve listened to out in its entirety twice, but the fir st episode from about 20-31 minutes where Phil talks at length about the natural man I’ve listened to about four times. I’ve never considered it that way. Pursuing the inner path brought to mind the scripture where Jesus says that we are to clean the inner vessel first and then the outer. Focusing on the exterior for me has never changed bad habits on the long run for me personally. Also in a very literal sense something can’t lose its worth if it’s to be redeemable. Thinking about a coupon for a free coke, if it’s to be redeemable at the store then it needs to be worth every penny of that coke. You simply can’t lose your divinity if you’re to be redeemable by Christ. It’s just the natural man you are cementing yourself to through sin.

Thank you for a wonderful podcast. I am often troubled by all the “doing” in our church and I really don’t feel like it is taking me anywhere. A few years ago my mindset was “if I do more, have more callings, give talks, make myself known in our ward, then my Heavenly Father would be pleased with me. The only result was emptiness. I reflected a lot in my Catholic upbringing how easily it was to just stop by at any church in downtown Cordoba Argentina (dressed however I wanted), sit down, reflect, pray, meditate and be surrounded by silence and peace for a time. I miss that.

Thank you so much for creating this podcast. I’ve been a member of LDS all my life over in Sweden. Me and my brother have been listening to this podcast and discussing it a lot. It is an amazing approach to finding your way to God. I would say that this podcast does a great job in summing up the first and most important commandment “to love god as oneself” then after that one is ready to “love your neighbour”.

I’ve strongly experienced spiritual relief during long and intent prayers a couple of times, i understand it to be the goal of Yoga and the true meaning of coming to christ and the real message in our church etc.

I would like to add a thought that has been bothering me for a while. And hopefully i can make my point come across in English and fast.

Because when I understood that the meaning of life was to come to christ, the meaning of worldly things became unimportant, even the sacrament and the baptism became unimportant, its not the batism or the sacrament or the word of wisdom or the sabbath day etc that saves but it is your own mind getting to know christ that saves, that is life eternal to know him, and condemnation is to know him but not remain there. All commandments are tools to make his children find that path but when the tools get used as goals they become corrupt. Any how when i was disconnected from the world through prayer/yoga/meditation what should i do with the church or life or this earth if it is unimportant?

The thing that is coming back to me is that spirituality needs to have a opposition in order to exist, it needs to be realised in the flesh in order to be complete. Spirituality has an opposition in the flesh, and its not an opposition of heaven and hell, life or sin, but an opposition of spirit wich is flesh. So when we met christ in spirit we can bring that completeness to the flesh and when fullness of truth is exercised in the world a complete joy is experienced.

So the world don’t become unimportant. The world just comes to an end as we knew it, to be resurrected again in a new form, its like spiritually baptising all that you know, you lay it down to die by detaching from it and then take i up again in a more beautiful manner this happens if you trust the lord and sacrifice all.

I sometimes think of this principal as an instrument since Im an old funky drummer. The more i played my drums the more spiritual it became, every time i practised new insights came to me and after a while drumming was not about the drumkit, it was about expressing my inner-self and my soul/spirit/knowledge was transmitted through the instrument. Drumming was about talking and conversing with your fellow musicians through your instrument and respectfully play the song that were performed. When these spiritual sides of the music was understood the physical side of the drumming could still not be neglected. I still had to use the different drums to express myself my knowledge was bound to the instrument/tool. But together with the spiritual side the music became complete. So without the physical part the music would disappear and the knowledge about the true meaning of the music would not be revealed.

This is the same with all physical things when the true meaning of christ becomes revealed to oneself the world might for a while seem corrupt and awful but when approached again with a new mind it becomes beautiful. The physical world is where the spiritual world gets complete, so therefor I no longer neglect physical things but I try to see christ in all things i do and when i find my kingdom within again and again my kingdom without gets used in a more complete fashion and hopefully one day these two elements will be reunited and i will become complete.

Hopefully this thought will be for anyones interest.

One of the last (or perhaps it was ‘the last’) times I was in the temple, I was sitting in the celestial room in contemplative prayer whereupon I was approached by a temple matron who bent over and whispered into my ear, “Brother, we have been instructed that patrons are not to linger for any undue length of time in the celestial room. You need to move on now.” I was there for what?…..ten or so minutes…..really, that’s about all, and that was considered “undue” and I was “lingering”. I think that was the last time I ever had any desires to go back to the temple. From that point on there was a marketed decline with any LDS involvement — it just wasn’t a supportive locus or in any way conducive to enhance or have any experiences with regard to my longing for communing with the ‘spirit’ or ‘spiritual’ (for the lack of a better term). Needless to say, after that experience I soon ceased to support the church financially (after multiple decades of ‘faithful’ and ‘full’ support), because for one thing, I never went anymore. However, I have had the thought that I could be ‘some kind of LDS member’ if the temple was more accessible, and without all of the inane (to me and my wife, anyway) Masonic, esoteric ‘whoobee doobees’ (I’m trying to be respectful, but that’s what my wife and I refer to them as being amongst ourselves). I have often thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could go to a place like the LDS temple, go to a lockerroom within, replace my street shoes with ‘temple slippers’, slip a large, loose, white (or some pastel color) robe over my street clothes, and sit in a lovely room with other like-minded persons to view a short twenty minute or so ***uplifting***, ‘spiritually’ themed video presentation (that would change say, every month) and then be allowed to sit and meditate/pray in community. If that ever were to happen, then I could see myself paying to support that. In essence, it would be something of value — something worth paying for without having to ascribe to the notion of ‘doing work for the dead’ in ad nauseam, futile, mind-numbing ‘sessions’ for ‘Mr Jones, who is dead’ born in 1638 in Hoshposh Pensyltucky, which frankly I think is ridiculous and untenable (at least at this juncture of our lives in the world as it is at present, or at the very least for personally ‘unknown or unaffiliated to us’ persons).

Just my thoughts.

I would love to be able to rely on the temple for spiritual meditation. Unfortunately, for those sensitive to the belief that, in God’s eyes, men are ranked above women, the temple is a difficult place to be. Don’t know if this counts, but I find running a great form of meditation. Great podcast. Excellent message.