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Welcome to Mormon Stories. I'm Andrew Ainsworth. Our guest today on Mormon Stories is going to be Phil Maclamore. Phil is a long time convert to the LDS Church. He served as a CES instructor for many years and also served as an LDS chaplain in the Air Force.

Phil has had some very challenging experiences in life that caused him to reach out to Eastern spiritual traditions in search of relief.

And not only did he find the relief there, but unexpectedly what he found completely transformed his spirituality.

This is what I hope to be the first in a series of podcasts here on Mormon Stories where we interview Mormons who have incorporated Eastern spiritual traditions into their personal spiritual practice.

In this case, the Eastern spiritual tradition that Phil settled on was the Hindu yogic tradition and so he's going to be telling us about that.

He's also going to be telling us about meditation and give us some how-tos and the purposes for meditation for those of you who are interested.

And lastly, in the third and fourth segments of the podcast, he's going to be reviewing with us two of his excellent articles that he had published in Sunstone Magazine, one of which is called Mormon Montras and the other called the Yoga of Christ.

And both of those excellent articles provide Phil's insights from Eastern spiritual practice on Western Christianity and Mormonism in particular.

So I'm very excited to have Phil here today. Phil Macklemore, welcome to Mormon Stories.

I'd like to get started jumping in where we always do with our guests, which is just to have you give us a bit of your background.

What do you tell us about where you were born and raised and your religious upbringing, any sort of foundational developments or events or experiences in your spiritual life?

Why don't you take us up to about the point where you're 19 years old around there?

Well, I was raised Catholic. I actually went to Catholic schools, attended an all-boy private Catholic school.

I always assumed Catholicism was true. I can remember we had Mormons that lived across the street. This was back in the early 60s.

And where was this exactly? Where'd you grow up?

I started in Tampa, Florida, but by the time I got into high school, we were in Sacramento, California.

And of course, in those days, Mormons got up early. The father's got up early for priesthood meeting.

Came back, picked up the family for Sunday school. And the Sunday school came back home. They went back later for a sacrament meeting.

And of course, Relief Society and Primary was during the week. And I just watched this Mormon family coming and going to church multiple times during the week.

And I remember on a Sunday morning looking at the comics after we come home from Mass. And I said to my mother, boy, you know, this spirituality stuff is strange.

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