I wanted to talk to you today about the Aramaic version of the Lord's Prayer.
I've been using it many times,
And in a couple of my last live talks on Insight Timer,
People have requested that I share it again.
I have the deepest respect for the Lord's Prayer,
And I do realize that people have been using the version that we now have come to accept as the Lord's Prayer for hundreds of years,
Hundreds and hundreds of years.
However,
That wasn't the Aramaic version.
That was translated many times over into the Greek and from the Greek over,
And it was created by many people who had their own ideas of what they wanted it to say.
So I always go back to the Aramaic version,
And that has even been translated a few times.
I'm sharing a translated version of the Aramaic Lord's Prayer that I really relate to,
That I find very inspiring,
And also it may take and break down some barriers that some people may have about the other versions that they've heard.
I'm going to go through it,
First in English so you can get an idea of what it means,
And I'll go down line by line so you can be in tune with the actual version that was asked by Jesus in Aramaic of,
Lord,
How do you pray?
And he said,
Father,
Mother of the cosmos.
Now,
I did research on this.
In the Aramaic version,
There was not,
It was not Father.
There wasn't a distinction of a male or female,
It was Father,
Mother.
It was Father,
Mother of the cosmos.
Now doesn't that just in itself say so much?
So Father,
Mother of the cosmos,
Shimmering light of all.
Now that is a beautiful way to think of God,
The shimmering light of all,
The Father,
Mother of the cosmos.
So it goes Father,
Mother of the cosmos,
Shimmering light of all,
Focus your light within us.
And again,
I have always loved light,
And we know in the Bible that was one of the very first things that was let there be light,
Right?
Why would it be right in the beginning?
Let there be light,
That is the shimmering light of all.
And in this prayer,
In the Aramaic version,
You're asking God to focus your light within us,
Bringing that light that we are to be focused from God right within us,
Then we are attuned and one with that light.
So the next line is,
As we breathe your holy breath,
Now so we know how important breath is,
We always do our breath when we go into our meditation and the awareness.
But here we are breathing the holy breath.
So let's go back and start again,
Father,
Mother of the cosmos,
Shimmering light of all,
Focus your light within us as we breathe your holy breath.
Enter the sanctuary of our hearts,
Uniting us,
The sacred rays.
Enter the sanctuary of our hearts,
The sanctuary in our hearts,
We are the church of God.
And it was even said thus in the Bible,
When Paul,
Before the churches were made in Corinthians,
He greeted the people of Corinthia saying,
Hail,
You are the church of God,
Because we are the church,
Our whole body is a temple.
So then we're entering the sanctuary there,
That place within our hearts,
And we are uniting within us the sacred rays of your power and beauty.
So we are uniting with that beauty and that power of the light,
The one light from the universal light of the cosmos.
The next line is let your heart's desire unite heaven and earth through our sacred union.
Now I've always felt that my goal in life was to work on uniting heaven and earth.
And I've also felt that that was the mission that Christ had,
Was to bring heaven to earth,
Which he did.
And here he's saying we,
When we unite in our hearts,
Can bring God's heart's desire to unite heaven and earth through us,
Through our sacred union.
Now in that sacred union,
What is that?
It's talking about the mystical union,
The cosmic consciousness,
The oneness,
The enlightenment of all with the one source of all light within the universe.
What an amazing statement.
Let your heart's desire unite heaven and earth through our sacred union.
It goes on to say,
Help us fulfill what lies within the circle of our lives today.
Help us to fulfill what lies within the circle of our lives today.
How often do we have a goal and sometimes we get lost or distracted and we don't find that we stick to what we want to accomplish,
But if we ask for that one source of all to help us fulfill our goal that lies within the circle of our lives today.
And I love this next line,
Forgive our secret fears as we freely choose to forgive the secret fears of others.
So this is no,
They're not talking about sin at all here,
This is our secret fears.
We all have shadows,
We all have things that are not covered by love because we have them in secret,
Hidden in the darkness,
That fear.
Here we're asking for forgive us,
To forgive the secret fears and then if we can understand how to forgive ourself and our own fear,
We can freely choose to forgive the secret fears of others.
Goes on to say,
Let us not enter forgetfulness,
Tempted by false appearances.
Doesn't say lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
It says,
Let us not enter forgetfulness.
Now forgetfulness,
What is forgetfulness?
I was talking to a Rinpoche about mindfulness and he said,
Well in Tibet,
Mindfulness is just remembering,
It's not the mind,
It's remembering who you are.
So let us not enter forgetfulness,
Tempted by false appearances.
Now when we're covered in that illusion or that maya,
It's easy to forget.
When we're in the middle of an argument or if we're having our buttons pushed,
How easy is it to forget?
So we do not want to forget.
We don't want to be tempted by the illusion of false appearances.
And it goes on to say,
For from your astonishing fire comes the eternal song.
How beautiful is that?
From the astonishing fire comes the eternal song.
This is so deep because they have found that there are vibrations and energy frequencies that are made of light that actually do have the music of the spheres,
The eternal song that exists throughout this universe,
Which sanctifies all renewed eternally.
Renewed eternally,
That means eternally,
That means forever in our lives and throughout all creation.
Then we seal these words in our hearts,
Committed and trust and faith.
Now this is an inspiring,
Very inspiring and acceptable,
I think,
To many people who could not accept the word sin and debts and some of the other words that were put in later because that's not in the Aramaic version.
Also it's not just the male,
Our father.
It's a beautiful song,
Our father who art in heaven.
This is father,
Mother of the cosmos,
Okay?
That takes it to a whole new level.
There's so many beautiful things,
So many beautiful things that exist.
But you have to remember the original Bible was written as poetry.
And poetry can be interpreted in so many different ways,
Right?
It was written by so many different people with so many different interpretations that I love going back to the Aramaic beautiful interpretation.
This was done by Mark Hammer.
I've been saying it for years.
I say it every day of my life.
Now I also say it in Aramaic because the power of the vowels in Aramaic also have a strength.
So I'm going to repeat this in Aramaic so you can hear it in Aramaic now as well.
Shimmering light of all,
Focus your light within us.
As we breathe your holy breath,
Enter the sanctuary of our hearts,
Uniting within us the sacred rays of your power and beauty.
Let your heart's desire unite heaven and earth through our sacred union.
Help us to fulfill what lies within the circle of our lives today.
Forgive our secret fears as we freely choose to forgive the secret fears of others.
Let us not enter forgetfulness tempted by false appearances.
For from your astonishing fire comes the eternal song which sanctifies all,
Renewed eternally in our lives and throughout creation.
We seal these words in our hearts,
Committed in trust and faith.
And I thank you for being open to receiving the energy of the Aramaic version of the Lord's Prayer.
God bless you.
