THIS

“Ours then seems to be the toughest test of all, for the evils are more subtle, more clever. It all seems less menacing and it is harder to detect. While every test of righteousness represents a struggle, this particular test seems like no test at all, no struggle and so could be the most deceiving of all tests.
“Do you know what peace and prosperity can do to a people—It can put them to sleep.

and the devil is trying to put them to sleep. The adversary knows that he probably won’t be too successful in getting them to commit many great and malignant sins of commission. So he puts them into a deep sleep, like Gulliver, while he strands them with little sins of omission. And what good is a sleepy, neutralized, lukewarm giant as a leader?"

How an actress reminds me of repentance

It was the wording she used that triggered my mental association, so I think the comparison was intended to explain things better. She was overweight and needed to do something about it. She had surgery so that she could persue the career that she wanted, and was able to do so claiming the surgery was a savior. It makes me glad that no one cares about what I look like, a thing I was upset that no one seemed to notice.

I am grouping her transformation into obesity with an anecdote about a tiny sapling, who was easy to manipulate but virtually ignored until it grew into a formidable twisted foe. Many things are like this, manageable at one point, but if allowed can grow beyond oir singular ability to mend, and in some cases an option to return is singular and there is only one way or hope. Our eternal lives depend on such a surgery or savior.

But, of all things, I heard, I liked best how she explained that although it made loosing weight possible, it would still require effort on her part. This is true with Jesus Christ as well. Down south I often heard about the grace of Christ being able to wash away sins, and then the soul was blameless. I often thought, but if the person that did those things is not changed as well, regardless if things were no more they would be again. This is true with physical bodies, too.

I think alot about a woman I saw videos of years ago who had become hugely obese and although she lost soooo much weight she still had inches of sagged skin on her body, and required a surgery to correct it. At the time I thought, yeah, it will be more pleasing to look upon for a time, but that skin was needed to be elastic enough to accomodate changes in physique. What if she gained that weight again? But, in her case, she had changed her being into one who would not allow that to happen again.

Anyhow, more that just the offended need the apology...the end.

Surivial as punishment

It is not an unheard of to the point of seeming odd to allow the guilty to live as a punishment greater than death.

I combine this with what Hamlet said about life causing so much pain because we avoid a believed greater pain and it is an unknown thing... well, maybe I have seen too many movies, but it seems a greater punishment for someone to punish themselves than to just gain whatever justice they might gain through death... ofcourse, this justice presupposes a diety imposing justice, or is justice (the equal sign) a thing that naturally happens...

Forgetfulness

I suppose forgetting is part of living. Parents need to forget things about their teen years or else they might be sympathetic or cave in and loose all respect and legitimacy.

The Holy Grail

In the Indiana Jones movie, the hero chooses the grail by saying it would not be so beautiful or even finely crafted. I was thinking about bodies as being like that. Ok, admittedly I am trying to find a way to explain why it would be desirable to not be as lovely. And I thought, "well, if something was truly desirable everyone would clammor for it, right? So, it would be better to be hidden."

As a teenager, I used to always tell myself there was a great reason that I appeared so humdrum. It is better to not even be noticable, and so I am neither beautiful nor hideous. Cause, my first inclination was that if I was a good person that would reflect in my being, regardless to how I was percieved I would simply radiate an undeniable beauty, but my exact thought was "you are not beautiful at all, everyone agrees. Likely, it us because you have sinned somehow. Only perfection is beautiful." Then I heard a hymn that basically said that Jesus Christ who was perfection personified had not beauty that mankind would desire, and my mind clinged to that. (From LDS Hymn "Reverently and Meekly Now")

It seems like a slap in the face

I was considering that perhaps God and Hell was all created as are the admonitions and direction guven regarding such were all made up to keep man in some bounderies to produced a sort of utiliarian utopia, where everyone seeks the best for his neighbors. But, why? It seems that man could adapt to an equally strange paradigm  as we often do whenever a new president is elected who suggests a new focus or premise to achieve our country's goals.

But, entertaining such a thought requires acknowledging a different reality than the one I have grown accustomed to, and with it the origin of any ummm paradigm with a creator, and an such creator other than the one who prefers to be called our father, is a slap in the face, if He does exist.

So, I reaffirm my choice to believe what has been thoughtfully mapped out for my benefit, and I recognize that any other belief that could even be possible has not been explained fully through what I already know and have in Mormonism. Any other idealogy that might exist would need someone to discover it and that would make me wonder why for as long as history seems to reach there has been a creation and a Hell and if there is none, why would such an idea have been made up in the first place?

Parents want their children to succeed this us a truth I can accept fully. For pretty much ever parents have taught their children how to live to achieve happiness and rejecting that is rejecting the truth and leaves you with nothing. Any attempt to explain what is becomes a slap in the face.

Merging theory

I think everyone chooses the glasses through which they will see the world. It is not that what is is ever different or that a brain is different, but the means of "testing the water" is different. I thought of this because I was considering the people I actually chose to obsess over. And how I see everything in terms of that person, for good or bad...

Next, I thought about how we cannot remember anything from a preexistence to the point that we might question how we know it ever was. Next, I chose to, and it is a thing we all chose, the vessel by which we would sink or sail through life. It just has to have significance. We all want to believe, especially whenever we fail, that it is just a process of becoming and we assume that we must have been much greater. I do that when I rember myself prehospitalization. Because, I cannot do a thing I only pit my memory against what is and I normally remember myself the victor. I, for example, remember myself as incredibly beautiful, strong, able to do almost anything, but truthfully, that I fail has not ever changed. Likewise, I probably was a failure in choosing a body, and that is playing itself out although I deny it with some great theory to explain away anything unpleasant.

My theory is that our perspective at the time we chose our bodies was such that we knew what we would need, and probably we saw mortality as such a tiny, almost insignificant amount of time that even if our choice might not make us happy at that point, it was only temporary. And others would share our thoughts, and yet others would want to chose a body that would be admired when they lived on the earth.

Mormons also believe that the same body we have in mortality we will have forever and that we wanted one because, get this, someone else had one, mom. We wanted to have a body, too. Excuse me, I am likening bodies to fidget spinners and laughing.

Um, was my theory even explained well enough to consider it later? I hope so.

What is it?

cause and effect, is the first thing to come to mind when I try to list the smilarities of logic and intuition, because I was explaining to my kids that they ought to seek wisdom and not just being smart. I tried to explain the difference between the two, It was not difficult because I uderstood clearly the difference myself. I thought of how great my dissapointmets were because lack of a thing I called integrity but now think it is love, which elluded me because I never undestood what love was anyway, I just used it to blanket the things I could not understand, a thing I often thought to myself was "God is Love". i could not quite understand what I was really talking about and how it was revealed to anyone or even why it mattered and every train of thought ended in sex which I understood exactly to not be love, but an appendage of it, like coughing is to having a cold.

I have mentioned it may times, but the best explination of how sex was related to love was explained in the TV series "Bones" when Seely Booth explain it as when two are so completely in love that they want so badly to occupy the same person. sex is an attempt.

My mother wrote an email to me long ago where she explained that love is sort off the basis for our entire existance, very deep. That is my mom for ya. She taught so much by example, she has more integrity than most living souls. She also taught that there is both a literal and symbolic meaning to all things. My best friend and I used to joke that there was not anything worth saying unless it could be intended in more than one way. ha ha it seems like we were saying things ought to be easily misunderstood as well as understood or why bother.

so why love seems both unecessary and all encompassing is to pick apart the dual nature of man`s existance Love is both logical and intuitive, and to only explain it one was i to not be wrongand still not right. I will explain that one with a proverb or stoy about 3 blind men who were going to document what an elephant honestly was to those who wanted to know. the first felt his foot and leg and described what he knew by experience, the second found an ear and described what an elephant seemed to be from his experience. then, the last grabbed ahold of the trunk and had aa completely different impression of what a snake-like creature this elephant thing was. This is how it is nearly impossible to understand what love is although every one is right, they seem incompatible like, ok, which one is right?

The son of man has come to save that which is lost.

Samaria?

So, Samaria, according to wikipedia was a watch mountain purchased by king Omri. Further:

although some scholars speculate that Omri was from the tribe of Issachar, this is not yet confirmed by any scientific or historical evidence.

However; I found this in Isaiah and had another confusion before I tried to settle it with Google. I recall being repirmanded for seeking answers by asking Google instead of God when I claim to believe that God can and will answer all questions.

And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son.

To me, this was not a translation error, proper names is proper names and it otherwise was not doctrinal and so would not be misunderstood as literal instead of figurative. But, Lehi lived in Jerusalem and he is of Ephraim, I thought, and all my life I had supposed that Samarians were descendants of Ismael... my thoughts were I believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. I also believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. So, I ought to trust the words from the Book of Mormon foremost until I understand the big confusing mess that I am getting myself into. I do get that Judah and Ephraim fought alot, most siblings do even the Book of Mormon shows that. I just thought Judah's fued with Samaria was an Ismael vs. Isaac thing. Not Judah and Ephraim, but it could be. Guess God knows, and if I want to I need to pray.

Poem to accompany my last post

I am unsure if thus will work, but I tried to past an image here.

One reason we reject things

I was watching a documentary presenting opposing viewpoints and originally, I thought the reason I am even tempted to believe alternate truths is because they are reasonable, but, as I listened to both side presented, it was harder to accept the things I already know are true because of the form of rhetoric.  Although, I can explain this.

When you know things ways that are refferred to as by your heart, like falling in love, no matter how reasonable or unreasonable an argument is the heart has decided and is unchangeable. Any attempt to persuade one who cites "love" will never work, in fact it is said that love is blind. That bears alot of thought.

I had read a very interesting blog post (before it was called such, I think) about someone resisting a  little change of representational colors for a season. It was,explained in terms of brain elasticity that can be changed at an earlier point, more easily, but as one ages simple traditions become less easy to alter. The post was misread  (I mention because it was so funny) because of a title. The title was something about a Blue Christmas, which instantly brought to mind the Elvis song and subsequently the associations with such a nueral pathway.  I was curious to know what was wanting someone to be sad at such a happy holliday. It was about changing from a traditional color scheme of green and red to blue ( which seemed to be a trend ).  At that time, ironically, my mind was suceptible to or elastic enough to consider things, but I did not even consider the greater truth being explored here that fighting a conventional tradition or belief is a difficult thing to do,  and one reason why is because of biology. I recall my parents complaining about how just when they got familiar with things they were changed, their frustration was real, but I thought it humourous at the time.

Ok, ok reigning in my original point, I did have one...an example I have is a time I was discussing things or a very personal nature with a teacher as we were drivingbto a theater convention in southern mississippi. She got upset with me and asked if I could please refrain from crying about things or getting so emotional about it.  That is what I just experienced, and I have read it before. It feels entirely different than how it is percieved. The culprit is a serious desire to share or help others, but because of tone nothing said is shared because of it's offensive or self righteous nature.

There was a girl in college, who disliked me alot, and labled me as something she wanted to avoid, not because of anytjing I said or did, but because of assumptions about "people like me".

I heard in conference again, someone speak about how undeniable it iscwhen we are "touched" by the "spirit". It changes us in a way and makes our spiritual elasticity firm up and molds us into that idea so it is truth. Two things come to mind.

1) the scripture about raising a child up a way and he will not depart from it

and

2) I already forgot 2.

But, it has often been said that we should not argue our point, and really when people get so vehement about a thing nothing is known, but that they are very zealous. I recall someone once usinging the whole, "I believe in God therefore... if you don't you are a misunderstanding heathen" I did not read another word and formed a conclusion that that person must be a zealot. Likewise, when I told my lawyer that I was moving to Utah, he said, "I would not do that if I were you." I was confused and do I asked why. He explained that the whole state was fully of pushy Mormons. Really, this is the same labling as I got by association in college, because some, the extremely verbal minority are what are known it is believed that all Mormons are that way, like it is a part of their dogma or something. But, then all of the realitt and beauty, even extending to the wonderful things they do are swallowed up and pretty much ignored.

In the presentation of both theories of the origin of the Earth, I hope they end up siding with my view point, like I recently heard someone say that it is fun to watch science come to "know" things we already believed. Ok, quick sidetrack... my favorite story of this is how when the temple in Salt Lake City was built a huge shaft was built prior to elevators even being invented, and eventually they were invented and designed, but God communicated to the leaders of hos church what would be, this is what a prophet does and it can be very frustrating, I imagine, to know things that no one knows yet. I will end with a thing Joseph Smith said, "I knew and I knew that God knew it."

That is a bit like falling in love, we get very emotional and unable to see anything else.

Insomnia

I wanted to sleep tonight, but it looks like that will not be happening. I am too frustrated to calm my mind enough that I might sleep. And whenever it feels like maybe I will, a child sneaks under my covers and starts telling me all sorts of things that I could not and will not miss.

I found what I wanted to make for Joseph and Mary Anne for their classes for Christmas, I need to think some more about what sort of vehicle I am going to get, I need one, it is an imperative, especially since I will be working at the school each day. But, I will absolutely need a car for when it snows. My plan was to get one with tax money and drive to Mississippi to spend the summer with my older children, and help them a bit, and bring Joe and Mary cause they miss them and I could get a job to save up money for Christmas presents, cause mom could watch the kids, but I got a job, so I will not need to get a summer job. Now, I need to figure out how to get to Mississippi. Whever I give up on that I think of the story of Nephi and how he just kept trying and trying until he did what he needed to. I obviously, do not have enough faith. Shayna Clark told me not to give up on it, I COULD still go. And then what immediately my thoughts jump to is a thing Pres. Marsden said last night, "Stop thinking it is always about you and your way or no way." So, the car is probably out, but there is more than one way to get to Mississippi, and Nick doesn't want me to take the other kids anyway... ideas forming, minutes passing...

Dreams - undetected problems

Ok, so I have previously mentioned coming to the conclusion that my spiritual or intuitive side is much stronger than my mental or logocal side, this became more obvious to me as I watched a video about controling or methods to minimize temper tantrums in small children.

My children are older and I survived that stage, I was stil interested, and considered if a thing was true then it was worth kniwing, plus, I am almist certain the tantrums do not cease it is the law of conservation of tantrums, they are merely less obvious and are transformed, sort of how we still worship idols, huh? Alright, I jumped back on that train of thought as it passed, it was all figurative, as dreams usually are.

"Is it you?"

"What did you mean when you asked 'Is it you?'"? She explains that her manager told her that one day a man would come into her life and..."well, is that a man you shoild be afraid of?"

That was on my mind from "Somewhere in Time"I will proceed to sort it out as it will make sense in terms of percieved problems.

A childrens book was not about issues that we struggle against, but was about Dragons. Do you see the metaphor? In this story the "dragon" is ignored because it does not exist, right? The dragon grows and grows causing all sorts of problems  (reminds me of the short story I wrote about a dinosaur egg that was recovered and it hatched titled "Last Year". It was about a dinosaur but was actually about resolutions getting out of hand. I was only 12 years old).  I love how this man's mind works, in talking, he mentioned dreams and how they are a means of communication between what we call our sub concious (the part of us that does the thinking when we don't think) and concious mind. Often the dreams present a "dragon" or obstable that it sees but has not seen a solution yet and is sort of asking for a colaboration. Until I heard that, I had chalked up my one dream as most peculiar, though I did not think of it much because it simply made no sense. We should not read much into dreams, right?

In my dream, it was confusing because I thought I wanted a thing, but in a fictional, anything goes and no one really knows anyway, place I did not do the thing. It reminds me of that movie when Christopher Reeves asks if he should be feared. This was my subconcious pointing out a potential problem and wanting a solution, but my concious mind. First off denies any such problem as way too farfetched and impossible anyhow, and the very moment I allowed such a possibility (not likely, mind you) I thought so what? There is nothing scary about this? Until last night when I watched the video I realized "Oh, duh. Yeah, that would be a problem. I ought to figure that one out." My thoughts are like a little child and they are very slow to realize and figure things out. My subconcious figure this this would be problematic years ago when it was still small and manageable. Ofcourse, I think of the movie "Inception" I just have not applied it yet.

My thoughts have moved on to a new topic entirely, I better just wrap this up..

Unsolved for your good

We are all natural problem solvers. It shines through as we deal with the demands of parenthood, but I had picked up from various sources that it is a sort of Spiritual DNA. Which pleases,me alot because I really really really love to solve problems. So much so that I have been accused of making problems in order to solve them. Every career choice I ever made was one that creates order out of disorder or basically, solves problems. Many people know me as the computer lady. One friend teases me that I tried to repair my pc with chopsticks, so it appeared.

It is true that everyone is fascinated by things we cannot know. Unsolved mysteries is another name for them. I thought I had a love of thought, hence philosophy but, as I searched to know why, thinking all the while it was empathy to understand those who would not be understood. Cause, I have said that I know things to be true that are akin to people claiming to be abducted by aliens,  or being haunted, basically unsolvable.

So, I thought, hmm... what if I did solve it? Then if it could be solved I would want to share it cause it is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to know or do.  If I actually love to solve problems it would make the absolte happiness in nearly understanding but in only hoping and nothing more. It is much like unrequoted love.

My latest big discovery was that if you know something you will be better off in eternity, whereas those who die unknowing will remain so after death, contrary to what has been suggested by so many others that somethings will only be known by death. So, maybe one can know, but should not share it with others so that they may have an opportunity to live by faith, which is very rewarding, sort of like falling in love impossibly.

It may be

May it be sounded better, but Enya already used that, and this is not aural anyway.

I am on a search to know what matters the most, and it really looks like obtaining salvation matters most. Accordingly, I was suprised that Enos' story had been so plainly written and ot has not become a blueprint. I mean, really? Is it not a story of how to achieve the thing that matters most?

We earn lots of money so that we can afford to go to school for years so that we can make more money to raise children who will do the same thing and we learn valuable lessons along the way, and then die. Many poets claim it is the journey not the cycle that matters most, after all it ends in death, or is that the end? All of our education taught us it was the end, and beyond death is only hope, and it is foolish to not ulitize what we have, um but look how we utilize the time we have.

If salvation matters most it only took Enos a few days opposed to a lifetime. As I considered it, if it does matter most, a sure thing has been written on how to achieve it, and yet, we do not hear of people taking a salvation sabatical but, instead we even encourage indebtedness to go to college for years to become  "educated". I do not mean to sound like Martin Luther, but if Salvation matters most, and Christians are not hypocrites, a huge reform needs to be made.

Recently, I have been greatly influenced by the suggestion that reform must start with each individual.

Mormonism teaches that young men and women ought to go serve the Lord for a couple of years, it seems like a law,of Moses thing, a great and wonderful thing, but merely a type and shadow of the thing it represents. Putting God first and believing all need his love and influence is a powerful thing, at such a crucial age, it is a great way to change oneself and become the sort of person who collectively would make the world a better place, but unfortunately, so many return, like those who knew and crucified Christ after keeping the law of Moses for thier entire lives but never grasping why.

I have heard many speculate about how it is even possible the disciples of Christ(his inner circle) did not understand his mission and recognize him when he did exactly what he said he would. It is looking at the mark, even focusing on it, but being blind to what really is. I wonder if most of us go through motions, but fail to recognize.

I require more time to let my feeling settle into thoughts, but at this point I only hope that Salvation matters most. How awesome it would be, though hard, I conceed.

Really?

I started with the word alone again trying to figure out why it was so horrible to be alone. It was why God was not completed with just Adam, because it was not good for a man to be alone and then Adam would not sin, but when his wife explained that he would be alone then he did. That was it, I had to know more about why it mattered so much, but when I looked it up I ended up reading about how it is not the laws that are going to "save"us, they are merely training wheels so to speak. Entirely unexpected, but worth revisiting mentally.