HINENI Podcast | Episode 1 | A Holy Invitation to Your Undivided Presence
Welcome to the very beginning...
What does it mean to become fully human?
In this inaugural episode of HINENI, we explore one of the Bible's most powerful responses to that question: the Hebrew word hineni—"Here I am."
Rather than understanding hineni as simply a statement of physical presence, we consider it as a posture of attentive awareness: a way of inhabiting our lives with openness, attentiveness, and wholehearted presence before God, ourselves, and one another.
Drawing from the stories of the Prophet Isaiah and Maryam Magdalene, we explore how this ancient practice of undivided presence echoes across Jewish apocalyptic wisdom, early Gnostic Christian traditions, and the contemplative path. The episode concludes with a guided practice using the sound of the Turkish ney, inviting listeners to experience hineni not merely as an idea, but as an embodied way of being.
Whether this is your first encounter with Embodied Gnōsis or simply another step along your own path, welcome.
Hineni. Here I am.
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Transcript
HINENI
A podcast from House of Divine Radiance
Season 1 Episode 1
A Holy Invitation to Your Undivided Presence
1. Welcome
Welcome. I’m Delighted you’ve joined me for this inaugural episode of HINENI.
This podcast marks the end of a long creative sabbatical. Long-time friends might know my work through Temple of Divine Radiance—an experimental online space exploring the teaching and practice of Goddess wisdom from the Hebrew Bible.
It’s been in my heart for many years to open a house—which, perhaps surprisingly, is one of the oldest words across the Ancient Near East for a temple. A house is also a place of rest and respite, a place of welcome, and a place that receives us exactly as we are, with whatever questions, sorrows, or joys we carry.
It’s my joy now to be refining Temple of Divine Radiance into House of Divine Radiance—a container I hope will carry this work through the rest of my incarnation in this lifetime—and beyond.
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2. Hineni
One of the things I wrestled with over the past nine months of sabbatical was a simple question:
What is this path, really?
What did studying, practicing, and embodying the often-hidden or overlooked Goddess wisdom of the Hebrew Bible actually teach me, in simple terms?
To answer that question, I had to go back almost ten years, to the beginning of my own journey, and re-encounter the figure who first called me onto this priestess path:
Maryam Magdalene.
I have always seen her not so much as a Christian saint, a feminist icon, or a goddess emanation, but as a Jewish woman who loved a Jewish teacher of gnōsis—inner wisdom—and who became the most accomplished adept of his teachings, both in the way of love and in the practice of mystical ascent.
One day, as I sat at my altar deep in contemplation, I felt a message come through from her. This is an experience I have had often in my life. It’s part of my own practice of gnōsis. And whether these are truly messages from her, wisdom from my Higher Self, or simply subconscious insights rising to the surface, the result has always been transformative.
It had been years—literally years—since anything like that had happened.
But this past April, a clear instruction came through. I was to radically simplify all the complicated declarations, mantras, soul vows, and other practices I had accumulated over the years, and return to the source of them all.
A simple Hebrew word I knew well from one of the first recorded ascent mystics of the Hebrew Bible: the prophet Isaiah.
That word is HINENI.
The moment I understood the message—which wasn't audible, and wasn't even formed into words, but arrived as a simple knowing in my body—I realized I had been handed the master key to my own next unfolding, and perhaps to the future of House of Divine Radiance as well.
Hineni means,
"Here I am."
Undone by a vision of the divine throne room, Isaiah hears the Holy One ask,
"Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And he answers with a simple cry:
"Hineni... send me."
Hineni is a statement of radical, undivided presence. More than that, it is a kind of surrender to reality that bows before a greater Wisdom than its own. This one simple word ushers us into the Eternal Now, which is really the only moment that ever exists.
It invites us simply to be here.
Not in the past. Not in the future. Not in regret. Not in doubt. Not in over-functioning. Not in trying to control people or situations. Not even in wondering what we'll eat for lunch.
In the moment Maryam Magdalene redirected my attention to this one-word mantra, I knew she had answered my question.
Everything that had come before in my path and work was dissolving into one simple invitation. One command. One mission, that I believe can become the foundation of an extraordinary life.
Hineni.
Here I am.
I have made a sacred covenant with Ultimate Reality that I will fully show up for all that is within me, and for all that is asked of me. Right now. In the Eternal Now.
Strangely enough—and this is something I've only begun discovering over the past few months—our joyful participation in the Eternal Now, exactly as it is, may be one of the master keys to the experience Yeshua prayed for:
"On Earth... as it is in Heaven."
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3. Undivided Presence
These days, it seems like everyone is looking for spiritual power. Whether a person seeks it through the orthodox religious practices of studying sacred text, repenting, doing good, and participating in the life of a spiritual community—or through more arcane means such as shamanic practice, mystery schools, or the study of magic—it seems there are a million ways to define, and find, spiritual power.
I was among this group for many years. I was raised evangelical Christian and later converted to a Progressive Jewish denomination. In between, I explored all kinds of spiritualities, wandering into communities where people said spiritual power came through knowledge. Or mystical experience. Or healing. Or miracles.
Now? On the other side of that journey, I think spiritual power is much simpler—and much more profound—than any of these. My own gnōsis of spiritual power came to me through the Hebrew Bible, and the received wisdom of both Jewish and Christian tradition. But the principle Maryam Magdalene pointed me toward—HINENI—can be found in every major world religion and creed.
I think the greatest spiritual power is undivided presence.
This is the magic, mystery, and medicine of HINENI.
Think about it. Every age has been full of distraction, but perhaps none has been filled with so many distractions so easily accessible from the time we're very small as our own age of screens and AI. If you're hungry, angry, bored, lonely, or searching, all you have to do is start swiping or scrolling. You'll find more information at your fingertips—no matter your age, location, educational level, or socio-economic status—than any previous generation had access to.
And yet... let me ask you:
On a scale of one to ten, how whole do you feel inside on a daily basis?
How harmonious are your personal and professional relationships?
How at peace do you feel with the work you do to earn your daily bread?
Perhaps even more revealing—how many times each day do you catch yourself at war with yourself over regrets or fears? Or contemplating the path you wish you were taking? Or wondering who—or what—you might lose if you became fully yourself?
I believe the ancients had it right when they observed that the divisions within us are the real source of the fragmentation, frustration, and alienation we experience in everyday life.
Yeshua put it this way in the Gospel of Thomas:
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
— Gospel of Thomas, Logion 70
So often, we hope our spiritual practices will bring us the peace we feel is missing in our lives, or show us how to resolve that inner dissonance.
Perhaps what's really needed is not more outer knowledge, but more embodied gnōsis—more truly actionable inner wisdom—that can guide us as we heal the divisions within ourselves.
Only then can we come to the Eternal Now moment saying with all our heart:
HINENI.
Here I am.
Not some of me. Not tatters. Not pieces. Not only the parts I want to be seen. Not the grief over the parts of myself I've abandoned. Not the fears. Not the worries. Not the neuroses. Not the over-functioning.
Just me.
The beautiful soul that will continue to exist long after the body and all its concerns are gone.
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4. Hineni — the cry of the Fully Human
Cultivating undivided presence sounds like a beautiful practice, and perhaps we can imagine that the results are amazing. But what does this really lead to? Who are we when we show up saying HINENI, attached to nothing but the reality of this moment?
For that, we have to go back to Maryam Magdalene—but not to her appearances in the gospels, or her speaking role at the resurrection tomb. Rather, we need to fast-forward a few centuries to Egypt, where Gnostic Christian groups were writing and reading texts that bore her name, and which contained teachings believed to have been preserved through her apostolic authority.
That little trip through time brings us to a powerful text called The Gospel of Mary. Though the text never explicitly identifies its Mary as Magdalene, details within it—especially when read alongside other Gnostic gospels from Egypt in this era—have led many scholars to conclude that the speaker is indeed Maryam Magdalene, rather than Maryam the Virgin, Yeshua’s mother, Maryam of Bethany, or any other Maryam among his followers.
(For those who might wonder, yes I am aware that the term "gnostic" is not ideal to describe the heterodox gospels which were not included in the Christian testament. However, as no scholarly consensus exists on a better term, I use it with this qualification.)
The surviving manuscript dates to the fourth or fifth century CE, but many scholars believe the text itself may date to the second century—the 100s, just a few generations after Yeshua’s death. In it, we have our most complete portrayal of Maryam Magdalene as an ascent mystic: one who describes the soul passing through the powers of the higher realms on its journey toward freedom. We might understand this destination as Malchut HaShamayim—the Kingdom of Heaven—although this exact name for the heavenly realm is not used in the text itself.
The ascent narrated here by Maryam shares striking similarities with mystical ascent narratives in the Hebrew Bible, and with the later Hekhalot and Merkabah literature of the early rabbinic era. Maryam’s description of the soul’s journey—or perhaps of Yeshua’s own journey after death, as some have suggested—is not met with enthusiasm by her fellow male disciples. They are full of fear, including the fear that they might be killed just as Yeshua was.
In the climactic moment of the narrative, Maryam moves from narrating her vision to encouraging her fellow disciples, culminating in this stunning phrase:
“Don’t weep and grieve or let your hearts be divided ... Rather we should praise the Teacher’s greatness because he’s prepared us and made us ⲣⲱⲙⲉ—Fully Human.”
That little word, rōme, is a Coptic term meaning “human being,” but one that can carry the sense here of the complete or Fully Human person. It is an idea we encounter in several other Gnostic gospels. In later episodes, we’ll explore more of where it appears—but I believe the roots of this idea reach back into Jewish apocalyptic texts of the last few centuries BCE, where certain groups anticipated the return of Enoch, an antediluvian sage who was taken into heaven without undergoing an ordinary human death.
In some of those texts, Enoch becomes associated with the figure called the Son of Man—a title connected with an expected heavenly savior figure, and one that Yeshua repeatedly uses in the gospels. Scholars of traditional Christianity have debated for centuries exactly what this mysterious title means. But a more literal rendering might be the Child of the Human—or even, for our purposes, the Child of the Fully Human. In some Gnostic texts, this movement toward spiritual wholeness is described as “becoming male,” because masculine language was sometimes used—for better or worse—to represent completeness or undivided being.
You see, among some early Christian groups whom we now call “Gnostic”—groups later suppressed and eventually persecuted out of existence—there was a teaching that the Holy One, God Himself, is the ultimate pattern or template of Humanity. And this Divine Human had a Child who could reveal to those on earth what it means to become complete, whole, and undivided.
In my reading of the Gospel of Mary, Maryam Magdalene is reminding her fellow disciples that they have indeed met Yeshua as the Child of the Human, a Teacher who showed them a comprehensive template for undivided living.
In the Gospels of Philip and Thomas—other Gnostic gospels also found in Egypt—there is a great deal of emphasis in Yeshua’s teachings on unifying opposites within oneself and within the world. This inner unification becomes part of the path toward bringing the Kingdom of Heaven into one’s life on earth.
Perhaps, then, we could say that the goal of cultivating Hineni—of showing up with our whole selves in every Eternal Now moment—is ultimately to become Fully Human: a person increasingly capable of meeting reality without rejection, resistance, or inner division.
Let’s bring this idea into modern life.
What would your daily reality be like if you no longer had to resist what you don’t want, or reject those whose ideas are different from yours? What would it be like if you didn’t feel torn between opposing belief systems? Or secretly wonder whether the price of becoming fully yourself would be losing the love and acceptance of those you cherish?
HINENI is—in my experience—the path toward becoming Fully Human: a whole and undivided being.
This is not accomplished overnight. Perhaps it isn’t accomplished even in a single lifetime. But day by day, each choice to return to the Eternal Now whenever we feel pulled away helps us heal the divisions within—and gradually experience that completeness, or fullness, for ourselves.
Isn’t that what we’re actually looking for?
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5. The embodied path into HINENI
At this point, you might be saying, “Okay, this all sounds good—but you said this was a podcast about embodied gnōsis. How do I weave this into my real, lived, messy, beautiful, day-to-day life?”
I’m glad you asked.
Because historical inquiry and creative synthesis are only two of the three parts of our approach to the path of HINENI. The third part is lived practice. And in my experience, it can be discouraging to begin by trying to be present every single moment of every day—especially if our lives have been full of distraction. As any spiritual practitioner knows, the minute you resolve to become more present, more distractions inevitably arise.
So what if we think in nanoseconds of HINENI? Or seconds Or at most, a minute or two? If we can retrain our bodies to come into the Eternal Now exactly as we are—even for short periods of time—then, over the course of our unfolding practice, we can begin to experience greater and greater presence as a way of life.
While many traditions emphasize meditation as a means of cultivating presence, I find that meditation can be difficult for many people. In the Western world, the idea of meditation has also become closely associated with yogic and Buddhist traditions. Neither tradition owns meditation—and neither ever has. In fact, all three Abrahamic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which form the inherited spiritual background of many people in the West—have powerful meditative practices of their own.
It’s just that the meditation often looks different. Rather than imagining meditation only as silent seated practice or walking meditation, we also find musical and vocal forms of meditation: liturgy, sacred text recitation, chant, and hymnody. Sound has a powerful way of focusing our attention. If you are fully present with the sound of this moment, you cannot be anywhere else.
If you would like to use your own voice to anchor yourself in the present moment, I encourage you to download the complimentary guide offered on the homepage of houseofdivineradiance.com. It’s called HINENI, and at the end, I invite you to learn and practice a vocal meditation on this powerful word. Over time, the meditation can become a kind of “vibrational cue” that helps your body return to the present whenever you feel divided, confused, or fragmented.
In this podcast, we’re going to use an auditory cue. I’ll play a series of notes on the Turkish ney, a cane reed flute often heard in Sufi music, including music associated with the Mevlevis—the order that grew from the teachings of Jalal al-Din Rumi. Cane flutes reach back into early Mesopotamia and also appear in the Hebrew Bible, and throughout the early Jewish and Christian worlds.
I invite you, if you aren’t already, to move somewhere free of distraction. Settle into a comfortable seated or reclining position, and allow your breath to deepen as much as feels natural, helping your nervous system begin to settle. Then listen to the next three minutes of flute sounds.
Let the sound wash over your being, gathering your whole attention into this eternal moment—and nowhere else. If it helps, you can chant HI-NE-NI silently as you listen, following the rise, crest, and fall of each breath.
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6. Ney
[Insert sound]
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7. Closing
Thank you for joining me for this inaugural edition of HINENI, a podcast from House of Divine Radiance.
As we close today, I invite you to carry two simple questions into your own embodied gnōsis:
"Where in your life do you feel most divided?"
"More than that... what would it mean—not to solve everything—but simply to say, HINENI?"
These two questions are ideal for contemplation or journaling. You might even sing about them, dance them to your favorite music, or let them roll through your being on a long walk in nature.
If the path of HINENI has taught me anything, it's this:
Whether your answer comes through a visitation from Maryam Magdalene, through your own inner thought-stream, through the well-timed words of a friend, or even a random road sign... know that the answer will come.
Your only responsibility is to cultivate enough attentive awareness to notice when it does.