Riley and Christopher and guest, Travis Patten, go all the way back to Classical Antiquity to explore contemplation from the incubation practices of Pre-Socratic philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles—something like today’s sensory deprivation tanks—to the influence of the Late Antique philosopher Plotinus on the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Plotinus’s invitation is to “withdraw into yourself and look” to see that “we are not separated from spirit, we are in it” since “to set oneself above intellect,” rather, “ is immediately to fall outside it.”

Christopher and Riley explore the spiritual exercises of cosmic consciousness and cosmopolitanism as practiced by the Roman Epicureans and Stoics, and the early Christians. These spiritual exercises were taught by Roman philosophers Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca. They were also taught by Jesus of Nazareth, who was Seneca's contemporary, as recorded in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas as well as in canonical Scripture. Cosmic consciousness and cosmopolitanism are a way past cherubim and the flaming sword back into the paradisiacal garden of Eden where we can experience the peace of the presence and love of God in unity with Him in the eternal now free from duality and enmity.

Riley and Christopher answer one of the most frequently asked questions they get from listeners of this podcast in this episode: What is contemplation? While a definition of "contemplation" is easy enough to come by, the range of contemplative practices is vast, and the depth of experience they provide is unfathomable. Riley and Christopher give an extensive, if not exhaustive, list of contemplative practices, including more and less familiar ones, from among those they have practiced, and those they have observed. Along the way, they share powerful personal experiences of the divine from their own contemplative practices, as well as the palpable peace they have found through them--a deep abiding…

Christopher and Riley have guest Morgan Aldous back on the podcast this week to explore correspondences between the alchemist’s ascent of the Mountain of the Adepts through seven stages of alchemical transformation and our own ascension of the eight rungs of the ladder of the beatitudes to personal transformation as taught by Christ in His Sermon on the Mount. The correspondences they find between the widespread idea of the eight beatitudes as rungs on a ladder, ultimately leading us upward to the presence of God and the peace found therein, point the way to personal transformation and peace, and peaceful community with our fellow man in a Zion society.

Riley, Christopher, and guest Morgan Aldous take you back to the true inner meaning of alchemy. That's right, alchemy! If you are among those who think alchemy is just misguided proto-chemistry, you're in for a big surprise! As Morgan put it, "While we tend to see alchemy as a primitive, mistaken form of chemistry that was redeemed by the Scientific Revolution, in reality, alchemy lost its sacred meaning and became mundane science." While it's true the Scientific Revolution took the exoteric (i.e., the outer) practices of the alchemists denuded from their esoteric (i.e, their inner) meaning and brought us many mundane conveniences we all take for granted today and seemingly…

Christopher and Riley talk about the esoteric (inner) and exoteric (outer) experience of religion and finding a balance between the two. On the one hand, there’s holding so tightly to the letter of the word of God that’s the iron rod that we can’t let go long enough to take a step forward in the darkness in faith to walk the path the iron rod is meant to lead us down to the presence of God. On the other hand, there’s failing to hold to the rod at all and getting lost in the mists of darkness that are the temptations of the devil. How does the church support us…

Shiloh, Riley, and Christopher Hurtado all open up space for a conversation about the healing power of mourning. A part of the baptismal covenant is to "mourn with those who mourn" (Mosiah 18:9), but do we really comprehend the incredibly healing power that mourning has on our fellow man? What does "mourning" here even mean? In the Beatitudes, after we empty ourselves and are poor in spirit, we experience a mourning from letting go of those false identities and ego. This personal step allows us the ability of being able to mourn with others. Mourning with the other, at least in part, is an experience of being with and seeing…

Riley and Shiloh open up a space to talk about the subject of prayer. We have all been taught the standard posture of praying with our eyes closed, head bowed, arms folded, and kneeling, all while using the proper formula by addressing Heavenly Father by name, expressing gratitude, asking for what we need, and closing in the name of Jesus Christ -- all while using the proper "honorific" pronouns. But is this the only way to pray? Are there other postures and forms of praying that also connect us to God? Are we already praying in other equally valid forms without even realizing it? What would other forms of prayer…

Shiloh and Riley open up on a topic that they have both been thinking and sitting with for a while: worthiness. The scriptures talk about "worthiness" quite a bit, but how do we reconcile a truth that we are "always already being worthy" with the scriptural concept of "unworthiness"? Is "worthiness" a description of our being? Is it a description of what we do? If we can be inherently unworthy of beings, then why would Jesus Christ atone for an unworthy being? Can it be that we have infinite and absolute worth and that "worthiness" is something else entirely? There are so many layers and levels of this discussion that…

Riley and Shiloh open up a conversation about what Thomas Merton calls the True Self and the False Self. The LDS Bible Dictionary defines repentance as "a change of mind, i.e., a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world." Merton observed that so much depends on our idea of God, and what we initially believe about and how we view God says more about our own projection and less about how God really is. This is the same message that we get in the Doctrine and Covenants where Jesus Christ says that "every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his god" (D&C…