Should You Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils?

Whenever you face a hard decision, a great way to find out if it's right or wrong is to carry it out to it's most extreme example. So let's do just that, which one of these would you vote for? 

                      

          Adolf Hitler                                                 Joseph Stalin

Stalin was responsible for 20 million deaths. Hitler was responsible for only paltry 11 million. So I guess you cast your vote for Hitler eh? You gotta go for the lesser of evils, right? Does that sound appealing?  

This choice might make you ask "why are these the only choices?"

Well, there are other choices, but here's the reality, Hilter is polling at 47% in the Iowa straw poll, and Stalin is the clear front runner for the GOP nomination. There are a couple third party candidates and other people going for the Republican nomination who haven't murdered anybody, but let's face it, they really don't have a chance of winning. 

THAT'S why these are really the only two choices; they're the only ones with a chance of winning. Right?

Is this why you have no choice? Because you feel responsible for the outcome? I remember arguing with my Grandma when I was a kid because she had voted for Ross Perot. I knew how the vote had been split and cost George Bush the election to Clinton. You always have to look at the final outcome of the election and vote accordingly. We didn't love George Bush, especially after he raised taxes, but better him than Clinton, right?

But are you responsible for how other people vote? What are you responsible for? What can you control? So there's no confusion, I'll tell you: No, you aren't accountable for other people's decisions, you are responsible for only your actions, and you can only control what you choose to do. If your choice is between Satan and Jesus and every single person is going to vote for Satan, does it matter if you vote for Jesus? If everyone else is sinning, does it matter if you repent?

The answer to that, is yes. It's important because it matters to you. 
What justification do you ever have for choosing evil? Can God make an allowance for that? Is it sometimes the only way to vote for evil? Do we live in a universe where it you have to choose evil? Is it necessary to choose evil to be righteous? [Again, the answer is no, there are no contradictions in the universe.]

"Well, Kenneth, you're being a bit dramatic now, we're talking politics, not morality." Why do you then refer to the choices as "lesser of evils?" Ok, let me explain why morality has everything to do with politics. Is it moral to force someone else to do what you want? Even if it's for a good cause, even if it's for their own good? Where do you get the authority to suspend their free agency? Does God ever take away free agency?

If you answered yes to any of those, then you are in direct opposition to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you don't believe in the gospel, it is not important because the gospel [coincidentally...] corresponds to the facts of reality. So, judging by only empirical facts which we can prove exist, you are also in opposition to the demands of man's survival and life.

Our current government claims the right to initiate force against its citizens. So who you vote for matters very much. Will you vote for a tyrant who will continue to deny you your agency, or for someone who will respect and uphold your rights? I wouldn't care at all what you chose except for the problem that the decisions of the rest of you continue to affect my freedoms by you upholding and supporting evil, yes, evil men and policies.

If you think I'm wrong, then it is up to you to use facts and logic to show me why. Please comment. 

Consider the Odds

Satan stated his mission and purpose very clearly; he would continue his war against agency, with blood and horror.

How would he accomplish this? With tyrants who destroy and false priests who oppress. In other words, religiously and politically.

Politically, he would use wicked men who seek for power and gain. What is a tyrants power? Control over men. Without masses to oppress, tyranny is no fun. Through the use of military power, Satan's little helpers  murder and enslave for the sake of more power and gain.

Religiously, he would teach false doctrines. Ironically, it was Korihor the anti-christ described exactly how, "And thus ye lead away this people after the foolish traditions of your fathers, and according to your own desires; and ye keep them down, even as it were in bondage, that ye may glut yourselves with the labors of their hands, that they durst not look up with boldness, and that they durst not enjoy their rights and privileges.Yea, they durst not make use of that which is their own lest they should offend their priests, who do yoke them according to their desires, and have brought them to believe, by their traditions and their dreams and their whims and their visions and their pretended mysteries, that they should, if they did not do according to their words, offend some unknown being, who they say is God—a being who never has been seen or known, who never was nor ever will be."

And what method of operation will Satan use in these realms? He takes the truth and mingles it with the philosophies of men. Satan rules by deception.

How deep does the deception go? To the bone and sinew. If he can make you unconsciously accept a false premise, then he doesn't have to work hard at all on anything that follows. If your foundation is flawed, then every decision you base off of it will be flawed also. And so, with everyone duped, church members included, all he must do now is distract us from questioning our basic assumptions. And that is no problem with the 24 hour news cycle of brain dead pundits arguing back and forth.

Now, having been born into this world where the self-proclaimed prince, by all qualitative and quantitative standards is winning, what do you think the chance are you escaped untouched? Do you really think you could have spent your entire life growing up in a swamp and never once gotten dirty? It is the height of idiotic hubris to think you're an exception. You are screwed up and deceived in ways you cannot fathom. Righteous or not, in some way, excuse the expression , you are Satan's bitch.

But Kenneth, that can't be true! In American politics we have a two party system, one right, one wrong. One good, one evil. Clearly I have picked the correct side.

How cute of you.

Can you think of any other two party systems in history? Let's start with the Book of Mormon; a record of two nations that fell to utter destruction. Of course we have no need of a story like that in the best country on earth! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Let's look at the Nephites and Lamanites. Which side was righteous? The Nephites of course, oh wait, what's that Mormon? Did you say something?

"And notwithstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum. For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue— And after they had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel manner, torturing their bodies even unto death; and after they have done this, they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts..."

Wait...ohhh... Murdering, torturer, cannibal rapists huh? Well that's not that bad I guess.

What about the Jaredites? When millions of people fought to the death down to the last man, which side was righteous, Coriantumr or Shiz? Let's see, well, I bet we could find out if we found out which side Ether joined. Oh wait, nevermind, he hid in a cave and didn't fight.
"It is by the wicked that the wicked are punished”.

So now, who is right, conservative or liberal? Should we vote for Romney or Obama?

When you're already on Satan's road it DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU GO RIGHT OR LEFT!

Dear Future Kenneth,

I write to you today from... THE PAST!!! Yes, future boy, from across the space-time continuum I write to you to let you know that I am living quite happily as a blacksmith in 1885. Also, you learned things today that you must NOT forget. This will be a refresher, a pump primer, and a how-to manual should you ever forget again.

It seems that the knowledge of how to really LIVE in a way that brings you joy and prosperity is something withheld from you by your typical means of apprehension. These lessons are to be learned by faith, on your own, so that you may struggle and fight and win the glorious victory for yourself. And I suspect also so as to give personal experience which will endue you with credibility and gravitas that you may testify with boldness and power to the benefit and instruction of others.

So how to live the good life? 1.) By moving forward in faith, acting in a manner that pursues your values. Chad gave you a vital nugget of truth last month when you thought you were trapped in a pit you could not get out of for lack of willpower. He taught you that taking the first step makes every following step possible. If you set a small and simple goal and then achieve it, you will gain willpower, grace to do more. Action creates its own self generating momentum. Do one thing, and you will then have power to do two things.

Consider the gym. You cannot curl 150 pounds. No. You cannot. But you can curl 120 pounds. So do that, and soon you will be able to curl 125 and so on. So you see, you can curl 150 pounds, just take time out of the equation. Success is inevitable It starts to click doesn't it? Suddenly that odd story about mustard trees and birds lodging in it makes a bit more sense.

But you lacked a vital bit of knowledge on the day you learned this and so you haven't been happy since. Chad taught you how to grow things in your garden. But he didn't mention that you can't grow things in salted soil. And why should he? He probably thought you already understood that basic prerequisite. Almost everybody does, it is a natural thing to assume.

So what is the salt? 2.) What kills any ounce of willpower and hope? (Hope being belief that good things, goals, and achievement are possible to you). Fear and doubt, your two shadows. Yes, it is surprising that after 29 years, this is still a problem. But you see right there, that is violating law three.

3.) That which you focus on expands. It is worthless to devote even a second to self-critical thoughts. Why? Don't you deserve it? Don't you need to feel like crap to motivate yourself? All questions aside, just answer this one: has that ever worked? Then stop it. Any concentration or focus on anything other than achieving your goals is concentration that is NOT focused on your goals. It doesn't matter what you are distracted with if you're distracted.

Just like you can't escape the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah if you're headed towards them, you can't be creative and excited to work on the book if you're constantly thinking of Minecraft. Want to desire to learn french? Watch a french video. Want to get desire to write? Read what's already there. Want to get desire to play Minecraft? Think about Minecraft. Do you see how simple this is? That which you focus on or expose yourself to is the wind that will catch your sail and propel you. This is why true doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behaviors. It shapes you desires and goals.


“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”     -Alexander Graham Bell

You could feel that things weren't working and you feared that they never would and so again, you retreated to entertainment. You looked for distraction from this terrible thought, anything to take your mind off this terrible anxiety and dread. And as always, it brought you no relief. You cannot enjoy recreating if it is not a pair in the balanced reconciliation of opposites. Opposition in all things or there can be no happiness. Without work, play turns to ash in the belly of your starving soul.

Your every thought must be put toward productive means, not soul sapping despair. And not diverted to the anxious denial of distraction. It is damning. It is a brick wall, a stumbling block. Your fears and doubts are specters. They are figments of your overwrought and misused imagination. THERE IS NO SPOON. The only thing which holds you back is you. Looking at an obstacle means you aren't looking at your goal. You create the obstacle simply by thinking one might exist, in fact, you are unlimited. What can hinder you? What can you not climb over. No power in the 'verse can stop you. Except you. Only your choice to ponder on failure and uncertainty. Don't be scared by your responsibility, rejoice and embrace it, you control your destiny.


“God expects you to have enough faith and determination and enough trust in Him to keep moving, keep living, keep rejoicing. In fact, He expects you not simply to face the future (that sounds pretty grim and stoic); He expects you to embrace and shape the future--to love it and rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities.
God is anxiously waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as He always has. But He can't if you don't pray, and He can't if you don't dream. In short, He can't if you don't believe.”
-Jeffrey R. Holland


It is all so simple. You are not broken or deficient. You do not lack ability which normal people have. You simply choose to make a thousand tiny wrong decisions at every juncture. Only a day into this new vision, yet I see clearly that this is true. Path is open before you, thought by thought. One right decision after another, and your soul revives, your blood starts to flow, your breath returns. Fire is kindled from the embers. And Helios calls for you. Glory beckons you to take your place and grip the reins.

There is something more we would have you know: you can do this. You CAN do this, and you can achieve your dreams. So dream.

Your One Choice

It was again reiterated to me that we can only exist in one state. And if it's not love, it's loves opposite. I'm not saying full blown genocidal hatred, but even if you are only slightly over the line into annoyance, dislike, and slight loathing,  you are still on hate's side. And it sucks.

I was driving to work today completely frustrated with how hard it is to love myself in my imperfection and let the warmth and peace of the Spirit flow through me for even a second. And then I remembered something, I didn't struggle too much with living in that happy peace back in February. I remember it specifically because for about two weeks, I DID love myself and it opened the door to pure bliss. It is a state of constant joy. I felt like my bones were on fire, my body tingled, and my guts seemed to have been replaced with warm, fuzzy blankets. It was wonderful!

But then I stopped. And I knew I was making the decision to stop. I stupidly allowed cynicism and captiousness to enter in to me. You see, I had a swell idea for a funny rant-post over on my angry blog. It wasn't directed at any person, but apparently, that doesn't matter. As I cogitated on all the giggle inducing things I could put in this new post, the peace began to wane, planning and creating my post gave me brain-jollies though, so it didn't seem like such a bad trade off. And when I finished writing and creating, I was proud of my humorousness  and felt happiness in this small accomplishment. But all my tingly-fuzzy-electric-joy had drained out, replaced by cynicism. It didn't matter that the post was glib and used heavy hyperbole, I focused on negative, and since the eye can only concentrate on one thing at once, I was filled with darkness, it displaced the escaping light.

You aren't a compartmentalized person in this respect. You can't ride two horses with one butt. You have one perceptual filter. If you view others in love and forgiveness, you will also view yourself that way. If you look outwardly with negativity and fault finding, you will look inwardly with the same. You are filled by whatever your eye is single to. It is as simple as that. My life is, at the moment, a sad example of that truth. Glorying in  smugness and looking incisively may be fun, but it is not without it's consequences. The choice is between love and loathing; of self and all others. In this case, there truly is no other way.

Your Religious Litmus Test

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; returning evil with evil is standard operating procedure for humanity. We act like animals or children, or rather, we react. Acting would imply forethought and decision. When attacked we lash out reflexively.

In the book Dune, the reverend mother had Paul's hand in a nerve induction box where he thought his hand was burning, feeling agony as flesh fell off his bones, all the while the reverend mother held a poison gom jabbar needle against his neck. If he withdrew his hand, he would die.

"The old woman said: 'You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind...”

And what was the purpose of this test?

To see if he was a human.

To prove that he was more than the sum of his base instincts. He endured the pain and lived. What makes us different from all of our reactionary, animalistic brothers and sisters on earth? Do we pass the test? Or do we meet their hatred with enmity, rudeness with bitterness, offences with grudges, annoyance with dislike, callousness with hard feelings, haughtiness with contempt? "For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?"

That is the the test. That is what is to separate us from the rest; that which makes us different from the homogeneous whole. Otherwise, we are no different from degenerate humanity ruled by their lower selves. Otherwise, we aren't worth our salt.

In a world where all is darkness, we have to be different, we have to be the light of the world and show them that there is another way. Why turn the other cheek? Because it is the most radical, iconoclastic thing a person could do. It isn't expected. It shocks the mind into disequilibrium. It makes people ask The Questions that open them to learning truth. Love is the most powerful force in the universe, it is the Power of God.

But what of justice? What of being wronged unfairly? Are we not to have satisfaction? That depends on what scale you'd like to live by. Justice is the lower law. If you desire to be justified by this lesser law, you are free to do so, and you are free to receive its lesser rewards. When slapped, you need not be slapped again.When sued at the law and you lose your coat, you may keep your cloak. When compelled to walk a mile, you need not go another. But you are not living up to the Master's charge.

If we, as disciples of the Prince of Peace don't choose the higher law; to project love like the burning sun, then we're playing for the other team.

Amorphous, Ambiguous Evening Doldrums

The phrase floating around my head this last week has been "the guilt of existence." I've got this existential funk thing going on in the evenings. Part of it is something I learned from my Mom; a version of the unfortunate Relief Society Syndrome where instead of feeling like I have to be perfect like Sister Jones, I feel the need to be productive. Don't get me wrong, I waste a crap-load of time recreating. I only suffer from a mild form of it.

Yet still, it creeps up and strangles me on a regular basis. I feel the weight of needing to do something of value, produce something, create something, work on the book, go to the gym, study for grad school, read an educational book, etc.

Today was the same, a sadness crept over me as I left work. Except it wasn't from the driving need to be productive. It was a sadness I couldn't put my finger on. I went to the gym even though I didn't want to. What else was I going to do? Go home and eat? So I mechanically hefted around bits of metal and felt my aging body groan. Luckily, in this mindless repetition, a dialogue ensued.

Why are you sad?


I dunno.

If you could choose anything right now, what could you do that would make you happy?


Nothing really. All of the activities I'm thinking of that I usually like to do wouldn't really fix the problem.

Why is that?


Because they'd just be a distraction from the problem... Oh, so I guess there's a problem. What is the problem?

( I see a rock in the middle of a stream with the water parting around it.) Yeah, there's something disrupting my flow. What is the rock? (I see "responsibility" written on it.) Oh yeah. That makes sense. Except none of the responsibilities I have are depressing! This is totally irrational. I LIKE getting up early and being productive. And getting up a half hour earlier tomorrow morning is not going to kill me. It will be worth it to go to the temple. So what if that means I have to be in bed at ten? Why is that depressing?

It isn't! Man, this is stupid. ( I began to envision trying to smash the rock down under the water and realized that that is exactly where it should be. Responsibility provides the bed, the foundation that supports the joy flowing over the top. Our happiness is a product of acting according to our values, and responsibilities are tied into my values.

And so from there, just like storm clouds passing out from under the sun, the depression passed too. I smiled, and felt it. I still don't really get it. But it was enough to break through. Part of my new peace was simply the knowledge that the dialogue could and did happened at all.

I came home to an unexciting evening where I ate dinner and typed this. Now its time to get ready for bed. And I am content. What changed? Only my perceptions.

I think if we aren't happy, its caused by one of two things generally. Either we aren't acting in a manner that conforms with and pursues our values, or we believe something that isn't true. In my case, it was letting in the false belief that going to bed at ten and getting up at six is depressing. Okay... Where'd that come from?

Tracing its origin is hard and confusing, but I think it goes back to a time when I felt like I needed to cram all the recreating in at night that I could because soon it would be bedtime, and then the dreaded next day would start with school and work and all the whips and scorns of existence. Except the next day isn't dreadful anymore. But the belief is still hanging around, the neural circuitry is still intact, trying to make me sad. Now I have to consciously be aware of it and purposefully eliminate it. And when the bleakness creeps up with the setting of the sun, I have to remember that it isn't real.


"Knowing there's a trap is the first step in evading it." -Dune. No more of these stupid ambushes. I'm not taking any of my feelings for granted natural states anymore.

Sacrilicious

Today in Sunday school, the teacher asked if anyone knew what this was a picture of. My answer: Jesus meets Aquaman. I think I'm hilarious.

How to Be Happy

People are naturally judgmental jerks. It's the default and status quo of mortality. But if you live by the sword, you die by the sword; if you view other people through the harsh lens of criticism, you will also view yourself the same way. In other words, you won't be happy. I am in the middle of a life lesson where I'm discovering that it really is that simple. As simple as a light switch.

It's true that we live in a universe of black and white. Light and dark are the opposite fundamentals in our existence, and we cannot be happy if we do not learn to discern the difference. But there is a great difference between judging between good and evil, and being judgmental of people.

In this binary universe, people are conflicted bundles of gray; mixtures of light from the principles we are living, and darkness from those we aren't. But while we are gray in aggregate, the state of being that I'm talking about, happy or judgmental is simply on or off. You are either living in joy, or judgment. There is no in-between here.

I know this observation clashes with your perceptions, so hear me out.

First of all, the extent of the true, unfettered joy of existing and of the gospel, (the kind that made Ammon faint) is something very very few people even know exist. I'm 29 and I'm just barely being able to enjoy slivers of it for minutes or seconds at a time. Its an ebullient, peaceful sort of pure joy that makes you vibrate with energy. And I had never felt this once in my life until I began to identify, acknowledge and work through my emotional problems so I could begin to love myself.


There was an entire reality of being that I was completely unaware of,

and that despite being an upstanding, temple attending, generally righteous and striving sort of guy. Two years ago, I would have scoffed in derision at this idea. After all, if you keep the commandments, you get the blessings, right? (Well, yes, but who knew accepting happiness was so hard?)  But despite my hubris, the first law of wisdom is, "you don't know what you don't know." And I didn't. And maybe you don't either.

You've experienced joy before, but how much? Have you hit the upper threshold? Are you enjoying the maximum amount of all the happiness possible in mortality? (You'd be really stupid if you said no. How would you know for sure?) Isn't it exciting to know that you have not yet hit the pinnacle of joy? That you do not yet comprehend just how much higher the happy can go?

Second, our sporadic and shallow dips into joy are extremely brief. We are like AC current, oscillating back and forth so rapidly between extremes, that we accomplish nothing and average out to a joyless mediocrity.

And third, I think that our perceptions are off. Namely, the day to day mental and emotional state we live in is not as positive as we may think. If other people are anything like me, then the state is one of a lazy negativity; reactive pride that is exemplified by:

• talking about people behind their backs 
• being critical of others failings, weaknesses, and decisions
• using terms like idiot and moron 
• having road rage
• and annoyance with, and dislike of people

It's a condition that seems almost neutral because it doesn't require much work or active or intense hatred, because it's just the habit we're in. Walking around in this paradigm doesn't make us completely miserable, but it doesn't allow us to be very happy either.

If that isn't enough to convince you, then perhaps my pronouncement of personal experience will be. This last week I was living in joy. As soon as I started to get annoyed with drivers and call people idiots, the joy vanished. And no amount of going through the motions was able to bring it back. I let myself slip back into enmity, into the pride that President Benson warned us about in his seminal address.

When I began to judge others harshly, I unavoidably began to judge myself harshly as well. As sure as the sun will rise is scientific fact, I believe that we cannot hold a double standard. We see the world with only one set of eyes, and no matter how hard we try, we cannot mix oil and water. Charity is grace and compassion, it is unrestrained love and acceptance. Enmity is hostility, opposition, hatred and loathing. How can you hold these opposites inside yourself at the same time? You either have charity, or you don't. The absence of charity means that enmity fills its place by default. There can be no vacuum or void there. You have one or the other

You may say "I try to love others." Let the prophet Yoda translate that for you: You are failing. You do, or you do not. "Trying" is failure. "Trying" means grasping at an abstract concept that you don't feel because you're still holding on to sarcasm, cynicism, condemnation, and contempt.

If we would like to experience more intense peace and joy, we can, but it is pegged to our willingness to love... period. To love everything, ourselves, God, and others; it is the same thing. You cannot separate charity and have just one target for it. Charity is yes or no; universal or nonexistent. Thus it is.

We have to be willing to change the way we view reality. The way we view and judge ourselves needs to be done with tremendous compassion and love. This is the key to unlock motivation, achievement, glory, and all the blessings of heaven.

To Thine Own Self Be True

I've had a lot of profundity this last month. The best kind, the self-revelatory kind. For years I've been a very mediocre salesman; drawn to the freedom and the ability to earn based solely on my efforts. The problem, maybe not so obvious, was that I wasn't drawn to sales, but rather the results of sales. My heart was never really in it. Providing good customer service certainly was, I was neurotic almost about that. But never the actual sales. I never worked very hard and so never got much out of it. Least of all the satisfaction I yearned for that only comes from hard work. That said, and this takes some effort,

My name is Kenneth, and I'm not a salesman.

It's been a hard paradigm shift. That's not who I am, not what I'm passionate about, not what motivates me, and not what makes me happy. It was a whole lot of banging my head on the wall in the attempt to build character. I thought that it was just a matter of trying harder. Riiiight, and if a fish just tried hard enough, it could breath air. No, its not about trying harder in the wrong areas, its more important to concentrate on your strengths; to do what you're good at and enjoy.

I was miserable because it was such a herculean effort to force myself to make a couple hours worth of calls a day, a week even. So in this state of constant failure and dereliction of duty, I beat myself up, sought distractions from the demands of reality, and self-medicated myself into a woeful state beer-gutedness. (A state which is now demanding hard atonement on the elliptical altar.)  I wasted a lot of time, produced nothing, and have nothing to show for it but a sizable belly and self-loathing. Way to go champ!

I had to learn to apply an old lesson I knew to a new circumstance: Willpower without motivation is drudgery. Trying to pull yourself up by your boot straps and use sheer power of will to do something your heart is not in will bring only misery.

And your level of joy, or misery, is the measure of the validity of your choices.

Men are that they might have joy. Its the natural state you're supposed to be living in, every moment, right now. I wasn't happy, so why did I do it? Well for one, I'm just plain not that smart. I thought the higher value was slogging through the trenches of despair with a stiff upper lip. I wanted to develop strength of will and enjoy the benefits of working on commission. But that was nowhere as important as being true to myself.

What does it mean to be true to yourself? It means acting according to your self-interest; making the best possible choice given all the options. It does not mean being reckless or hedonistic, because that would not be in your best interest. It means being your better self, without trying to change who you are. It means finding your groove, your -ness, and then rocking it. It means having your own summer of George everyday. It means valuing your self first, being selfish, in the good way. It doesn't mean conforming to some idea of who you think you should be, or who someone else thinks you should be. It means being truthful about how you feel; saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

But all of this is not so easy as following our whims. If we only did that, we wouldn't experience much. I've often lamented that I don't have one driving passion in life, but maybe that's only because I haven't found it yet. People are often so reluctant to try new things. I  recommend someone watch Firefly or Community, or read Dune or Ender's Game, and they drag their feet. But when they finally try it, they're like, OH MY GOSH, THIS IS AWESOME! And we both think, why didn't I/they try this before? What if that new thing you haven't tried yet is the next chocolate? What if you haven't even found your favorite thing yet? There's all of this awesome and joy just waiting right under your nose, but you're ignorant because you haven't tried it yet. You dolt.

The truth is, we don't really know who we are, we're strangers to ourselves, and learning who you are is a process that takes active work over decades. (I think a person who knows themselves fully is called a god.) Learning who you are means taking risks, trying new things, putting yourself in different situations, and doing things you're afraid to try. Never stepping out of your comfort zone means your joy in life has maxed out. And when its topped out at 5%, ignorance isn't really bliss. It's just sad. You're not living up to your own potential and that makes you not so smart. But that's just human nature. We stay in bad or less than ideal situations because we're comfortable there. It may not be good for us, but at least its familiar. And as bad as it is, we foolishly think the big scary unknown outside our personal bubble must be worse.

So as it now stands, I'm trying to step up. I'm giving fear the finger and I'm being true to the small portion of myself I'm familiar with. I haven't met all of Kenneth yet, but I'm excited get to know me, because I think there's a pretty good chance I'm awesome.

Stress

What is stress? Let's say it's a physiological response caused by the perception of a threat. What does stress do to you?

• increases blood pressure
• diverts blood away from organs to the heart, lungs, and muscles
• muscles tighten
• breathing increases

It's the primitive fight or flight response designed to save our lives from imminent death. But in case you haven't noticed, you really don't face death as often as you get stressed. Now days we get stressed out by work, traffic, and relationships.

So what good is stress in these circumstances? It isn't. Stress makes you stupid, literally. It affects your cognitive performance and memory. How is that going to be useful in any way? It could lead to some very satisfying boss punching, but again, not helpful in the longterm.

So what can stress do for you? Here are some awesome benefits:

• depressed immune system!
• increased risk of heart attack!
• belly aches!
• acid reflux!
• hives!
• depression!
• frenzied anxiety!
• sleeping problems!
• obesity!
• irritability!

Why wait? I hope its obvious that stress is a state contrary to the nature of happiness. It has nothing to do with peace and contentment. 

The real question is, can you learn to control it? Or are you at the mercy of circumstance, chance, and external events?

If you answer no, then I regret to inform you that you are not a human, nor a child of God, nor capable of even reading this. If you say you are hostage to circumstances, then that implies one of two things, either you are different from every other human on earth, or God Himself is a hostage to external events, one who is acted upon, and not the supreme act-er of eternity. So which is it? Do you have free agency or don't you?

You're on scary ground right now, because if you admit that you have control over what you think and feel, then you're also admitting that you are responsible for your choices, and for your own happiness. It may mean admitting that you are the reason you have been miserable. You don't have the safety blanket of blame anymore! Yikes! 

If you have been choosing to be miserable for days or decades, then you might feel pretty stupid. But it's all okay, because you've learned the lesson now, and now your life can truly begin. You passed the first hurdle, congrats. No need to beat yourself up. We all do stupid things and evade reality at times. I've generally spent 29 years doing it. 

How can you control stress? Well, there is something called the primary and secondary appraisal. Your primary appraisal is when you are faced with an event. You consciously weigh the situation and decide, is this a threat, a challenge? Then your secondary appraisal is, what am I going to do about it?

Consider an example. Rent is due, and you only have enough money to cover rent or pay your tithing. What is your primary appraisal going to be? Is this a threat? If yes, then this is going to stress you out. You'll fret and go into panic mode, making  yourself sick with worry and hopelessness. Your secondary appraisal will then be to probably pay your rent, and try to make up the ever widening gap next month.

If you know that God is not a liar, then your primary appraisal will decide this isn't a problem. There will be no reason to feel any panic or worry. Your secondary appraisal will be to pay your tithing and then stand still and wait with the utmost assurity that you'll be fine. You may exercise unlimited faith, because you know the Good Shepherd delivers His flock. You get to enjoy the transcendent peace of hope, the fruit of adherence to true principles. 

I remember as a kid sitting at the dinner table in AGONY because I had to eat something I didn't like. I spent hours of my childhood kicking against the pricks of reality. My primary appraisal was that eating those terrible vegetables would kill me. And the stress of the dilemma probably came close to killing me. It would have been so easy to just hold my breath and eat the food and then go play. But I CHOSE not to. I chose very unfun conniptions instead, completely unnecessary pain and suffering because my primary and secondary appraisals were wrong. 

I'm not so different as an adult, but instead of brussel sprouts and casserole, now its self-doubt and fear. Both completely irrational and joy killing. 

Yes, the demands placed upon us are not always fun, and then will require focus and dedication, but we can choose to respond with alacrity or anxiety. Independent of circumstances, the choice of happiness, as always, is ours.

More on Bad Fashion Choices

I try to be aware of reader fatigue with my topics. So I feel a need to defend myself with this post being one of many in the same vein. The topics I write about are of universal interest to every human interested in the abundant life. They are applicable across the board, and if everyone would learn and internalize the lessons I preach, we'd be living in Zion right now and nobody would have a complex about anything.

It is common for little children to assume that they were responsible for their parent's divorce. They reason that the parents broke up because they weren't a good child. They take the blame and feel terrible for something they had nothing to do with. Kids do similar things in all areas of life. They find themselves in a situation which is way over their heads and react poorly to it, making false interpretations and taking ill-advised courses of action.

The bigger children we call adults are no different. Most of life's situations are over their heads though they don't realize it. The first example happened when Satan showed up with some delicious fruit for Eve. She had a strong start, "wait a minute, you claim to be my brother but you're trying to get me to go against what Father said?" Sound reasoning, but then Satan cleverly pulls his ol' truth-out-of-context trick. The deceiver knows that truth cannot exist out of context so he replies, "bup-bup-bup-bup, no, Eve look, I haven't mentioned Father, I'm not talking about Him. Forget that and just look at this, concentrate only on this one truth."

He held the truth in isolation. Yes the fruit will give you knowledge and make you wise, it is the way Father gained His knowledge, and to progress you are going to have to go down this road. In the tunnel vision of the moment, Eve responded to the truth of Lucifer's words and ate the fruit. And boom! just like that, stretch marks and cellulite.

She took the truth out of context: removed it from her hierarchy of values. We all have a hierarchy. We know killing is wrong unless it is superseded by  the need to defend yourself. Thou shalt not kill is trumped by a higher law. Eve forgot the higher law of, "but God said not to, period." Her principles were jumbled and upside down.

So immediately the childlike Adam and Eve were thrown into the deep end. They didn't know what to do and reacted poorly. Satan, being the punk he is, was immediately there like the mischievous older brother lying to his younger siblings to scare them. Like Bill Cosby convincing his little brother he was adopted, "The police are your mother and father."

Satan immediately gets them all worried about something that didn't matter too much for kicks and giggles. He introduces one of his greatest tools within the first few seconds of mortality; toxic shame. "You are naked! Father will NOT be happy when He sees that, you'd better hide." And Adam and Eve believed him, being completely out of their depth, not being mature enough to recognize the lie they were falling for, they made dorky leaf skirts. I think this sort of prank is probably the equivalent of sending a girl to Auto Zone to buy blinker fluid.

Luckily Father soon shows up and fixes the problem, giving them something that would truly cover them.

Yet we all keep falling for Satan's stupid and destructive stupid prank. We wear our own fig leaf skirts today trying to convince everyone else that we're with it, we're covered. Bluster and bombast in place of peace and confidence.

If there is any suffering in mortality, toxic shame is surely the tumor that causes it all. It is the genesis of the ego, it is cancerous pride, and as such is the root of all the bitter fruit this world has to offer, divorce, hatred, war, grudges, racism, rudeness, and anger.

Put Bitter for Sweet

Boiling down Satan's tool of deception yields one result: semantics. Isaiah warned us about how the wicked would misuse words, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."

Through semantic manipulation Satan creates confusion and shackles our ability to think. Because a word is a symbol for something real, whether it be a concrete or an abstract. And if you have two people trying to talk about something for which they have different definitions, you might as well both be speaking different languages, because in effect, you are. 


Remember 1984 by Orwell? The government tightly controlled the language Newspeak. They did this because they knew that if you can remove a word, then people are left without a symbol to express a concept, e.g. freedom, rights, immoral, etc. Without the tool of language to give you the ability to work conceptually, a mind is likely incapable of higher abstract thinking. 


Well, since Satan can't take words out of the dictionary like Big Brother, he has to simply muddle our definitions, and he does a bang-up job I can tell you. As one example of the bastardization of language, look at the word "altruism." When you hear it, the first thing you think about is probably helping others. But the implications of the word usually involve you as an unwilling sacrificial lamb for the purpose of helping others. It no longer means helping of your own free will and out of your heart, but rather as a duty which is expected of you and which you are compelled to do. 

90% of my time in political debates is usually devoted to trying to get people to define their terms and understand the way I am defining mine. Most folks don't think about how they are being interpreted and believe that words only mean one thing that everyone knows. This lead to a whole lot of apples and oranges conversations where you argue for an hour and never realize you're talking about different things. I once wasted an hour arguing a point with someone, who it turned out agreed with me the whole time. They just thought I meant something different. 


No intelligent conversation can exist if you aren't on the same page. It often takes well thought out questions to probe their intent to see if they understand what you are saying, and what they're saying for that matter. Often, they will be unaware of what exactly they mean themselves. You have to do double the work, first you have to explain your definitions. Second, you have to draw theirs out of them, put them in context and then point out the flaws in their premises. You've got your work cut out for you. 


I am weary of arguing and getting to no conclusion. Debate has taught us to be contrary for its own sake, to use rhetoric and demagoguery  instead of truth to advance our positions. Truth has long since ceased to matter in debate. Politicians and commentators are in it to stroke their egos and get power and gain. If we are ever going to find solutions that work, and stop this nightmare of a government, we have to set aside the stimulating for the substantiative. Mutual understanding must be the bedrock of all our conversations. So before you talk to anyone about anything of any importance, please, for the sake of my head remaining in an unexploded state, define your dang terms. 

Kenneth Translates Stupid Into English

You know what the difference is between a bunch of shrieking howler monkeys fighting over a banana and the United States Congress is? The monkey's are fighting over an actual banana. Congressmen fight over money that we don't actually have. The United States has been in debt for over 70 YEARS STRAIGHT! Can you imagine a household being run that way? Every month we sign up for another credit card so we can transfer the balance over. Allow me to translate government newspeak into household terms for you.


Short-sighted and shallow idiocy abounded on NPR this morning. Here are some highlights.

"Yes, there are bridges to nowhere and many other examples of abuse, but Johnson says not all earmarks are bad. 'If you look historically at the Port of Miami, most ports in America, all of our ports were built through earmarks. It's how the U.S. Army Corps is budgeted and funded. It's like, all of a sudden, earmark is a dirty word,' Johnson says." -Bill Johnson, director of Miami's port.

Comparison: Consumer debt is okay because it let us get our BMW, jacuzzi, and 52" plasma TV. 
Principle functioning in abstract: Having stuff you need is good.
Application: Earmarks are good because they give you stuff.
Unintended Consequence: There will be hell to pay when the piper gets here. Each day we defer our repayment, the problem gets worse. 

"A good place to see your earmarked federal dollars at work is in the Everglades. Contractors ... are [building a] bridge that will allow water to flow freely through this section of the Everglades.

It's a $400 million project, largely funded through congressional earmarks. According to Kirk Fordham, head of the nonprofit Everglades Foundation, it's money well spent.

"On the Everglades, we know you get a 4-to-1 return on the investment, and we know it's going to create 26,000 construction jobs in the short term and as many as 420-some thousand jobs over several decades," Fordham says.

Comparison: It's okay to go into debt to pay your kids allowances. 
Principle functioning in abstract: Providing employment is good.
Application: Earmarks mean jobs.
Unintended consequence: Killing the golden goose. Giving someone with arterial bleeding a shot of adrenaline to momentarily make their heart beat stronger-hastening their death.


Heard of phonemarking? It's a process in the United States of America by which Congressional lawmakers directly contact a federal department or agency which is a recipient of federal appropriations to secure money for their favorite causes outside of the congressional appropriations process.

"And with phone marking, there's almost no paper trail. So its very difficult to prove any kind of insider deal making. One reason we know about it at all is because agency heads have complained about the number of requests they get when earmarking has been cut down.

That makes a good argument says Vermont Democrat Peter Welch for keeping earmarks. 'It's not as though, quote banning the earmarks necessarily means that you'll cure what are the legitimate complaints about earmarking, and in fact you may just drive them underground." 

Comparison: If I take away my wife's checkbook, she'll just steal money out of my wallet to buy her fur coats.

Principle functioning in Abstract: Choose the lesser of two evils.

Application: This form of corruption is better than others. 

Unintended consequence: Choosing evil means corruption continues; the root of the problem is not being addressed. 

"For his part, Mr. anti-earmark himself, Republican congressman Flake is skeptical that anything will totally end corruption in Washington, but banning earmarks is worth it. 'I don't know how you ever stamp that all out. But at least it puts it on the margins, and that is progress.' Even if it does mean more of earmarking's evil twin, phonemarking."

Comparison: I don't think my abusive husband will ever stop beating me.
Principle functioning in abstract: I don't know what else to do.
Application: Might as well stick it out.
False dichotomy: If we don't use earmarks, the only other option is phonemarks.
Unintended consequence: Nothing ever gets done because the focus is on the symptom and not the disease. 


Abused women stay in abusive relationships for a couple of reasons. But the underlying motive behind their decision to stay is that they cannot conceive of anything better. Congressman Flake gets a hearty "well duh" from me when he says he doesn't think corruption can ever be stamped out. Long ago we passed a sign that said "No Outlet." It DOES NOT MATTER WHERE WE TURN NOW. We are already on the wrong track. There literally are NO solutions to this problem other than turning around and getting out of the dead end. We can argue and try different options until the sun burns out, but it won't matter what we do, nothing will fix the problem. No amount of band-aids will fix the cancer.


Until you get rid of the dog, you won't be rid of the dog poo. See how those things are related? The root is bad, the fruit is bad. We will have debt and corruption and earmarks until the day we put a bullet through old Yellers head. The government claims power to appropriate our earnings by force. That is corrupt so how can you ever expect the politicians not to be corrupt? Are you stupid? Come on.

Of Choice and Consequences

Way back before I was even an itty bitty zygote, Bruce R. McConkie gave a talk entitled The Seven Deadly Heresies. He spoke of specific falsehoods that crept into the thinking of some folks in the church. He said he did not think they were too prevalent in the church. I'd like to address a misconception that I think is quite common among the saints. (IMHO)

I am coming to realize that God is not an interventionist.

But He does intervene. In some ways He is so intimately involved in our lives; "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." I know that He has a hand in guiding us, He places "currents of divine influence in [our] [lives] that will lead [us] along the individual plan He would have [us] fulfill here on earth."1 He reaches out to us with "tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after [us]and drawing [us] back to the fold."2  He is so kind and merciful. Like Nephi, I can say I have been visited many times, He has whispered peace, softened my heart, and wrapped me in His arms of love. Never have I had any experience more miraculous than these. He is perfectly aware of us and aches when we ache. He laughs with us, and sometimes, good naturedly, at us.


Yet despite all this, there is a veil. We signed up for this life and it's trials, hardships, and rules. We are the mad scientists of morality, left alone in the laboratory with dangerous and explosive chemicals. We are allowed to do whatever we want in this lab. Sometimes we blow ourselves up and others get hurt too. We don't choose the consequences, but we do get to make the decision, good or bad, harmful or not.


I don't think God would do anything so important as sending His children to earthly boarding school without an immense, nay, perfect amount of planning. Yet all of His engineering was done so as to respect our free will and leave our agency intact. In other words, our actions can supersede His plans for us. 


What I'm trying to say is that we give God too much credit for what happens to us. We are bound by the laws of causality and there is rarely a reason for Him to step in and turn cause and effect on it's head. Without consequences, no one would ever learn anything, which is precisely the reason we needed to come to this mortal realm in the first place, I presume. As Sayyadina says, if God bent back every branch and pointed out every stone on our path, we'd never learn.We are here to make our beds, then lie in them.


In many instances, the bed was made for us before we got here. We are born into a certain set of circumstances which usually don't change; our ethnicity, our parents and their parenting style, our opportunities, our socioeconomic status, or our genetic code with all its lurking gremlins, waiting to ambush us with disease and death. And that's pretty much that. We chose to come here to endure pain and trial. We came to be tested with our eyes wide open. And I think that because our agency is absolutely sacred, we chose the trials we'd face. I imagine that before we came to earth, we had a sit down with Father, and with His wisdom and our desires for growth, the two of us carefully mapped out a mortal course where we would find the experiences that would help us to grow the most, and learn the specific lessons which we both agreed were most important for us to know. 


So when bad things happen, I think it is incorrect to ask why God did this to us. Chances are, He didn't, we did. We should remember that it is either the bad luck of living in a world full of imperfect people affecting us with their bad decisions e.g. drunk drivers, gossipers, and Justin Bieber, or it is us coming face to face with the lessons we chose to learn in premortality. 


Seems rather sadistic doesn't it, that we chose these trials? What we lack now, we had then; vision. We knew where we wanted to go and we knew the trial by fire it would take to get there, and with our eyes open, we chose the hard path of glory. You made the decision when you saw things clearly enough to know you would not fail. 


So pat yourself on the back, you've got this.





1. Richard G. Scott http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=1648
2. Orson F. Whitney http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon227.htm

By Popular Demand: My Talk from Church

In the spirit of Festivus, I’m going to begin with the airing of grievances. I have a short laundry list of do’s and don’ts, which I feel are worth mentioning. My 95 theses if you will.

Testimony meeting is for testimonies, not travel logs, not thankamonies, not emotional promiscuity. It is also not open mic night at the comedy club to try out your new material.

When you close a talk, you close in the name of Jesus Christ, using His Messianic title. But you don’t say “in the name of thy son.” Not unless you’re praying, because you are speaking to us in a talk, and thy means “your,” and we are not somehow the collective Father of... You see the confusion. Thy is your, thee and thou are you in their accusative and nominative cases respectively.

When you are called to give a talk, sitting on the stand is NOT the time to begin to prepare it. No one can wing a talk. It is not possible, you’re wasting 100 peoples time.

Its Kirtland, not Kirkland, that’s Costco’s brand.

If you haven’t noticed, the zippers on your scriptures make noise. Closing them in the middle of someone’s testimony or lesson, is rude. Please stop.

If you open the door, please close it softly.

The monthly magazine the church puts out is the Ensign. Not ensin. We don’t stop at stop-sins.

And its apostatize, with a t, apostasize sounds like some sort of satanic aerobics program.

I ask for 100% of the focus of your mind and heart. I’ve spent hours over the course of weeks preparing my remarks. I’m not going to stand up here and waste your time with fried froth and spiritual Twinkies. And if you aren’t concentrating, then you are denying the Holy Ghost the opportunity to change your heart and fill you with desire to be better.

I would like to testify of the mercy and kindness of our Heavenly Father. It think one of the worst problems in the church today is unbelief. Not unbelief of the gospel, but unbelief that we can enjoy it. We believe the atonement works, but not for us. We believe that somehow Heavenly Fathers greatest blessing don’t apply to us. We damn ourselves, and deny Him the opportunity to bless us when we believe that because He must respect our wishes.

“For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift.” D&C 88:33

Our view of a capricious, reactionary God who vengefully punishes us for sins and mistakes is a gross distortion of the truth. If we think our bad actions in the past brings some sort of karmic retribution from God, then we are denying repentance and the atonement of Christ. It is a sad example of how  we distort truth as we try to view it through our cloudy and dark personal perceptions, projecting our motivations, thoughts, and feelings onto God.

On the contrary, the scriptures tell us “I the Lord, am merciful and gracious unto those who fear me, and delight to honor those who serve me in righteousness and truth unto the end.”D&C 76:5 “Therefore, be ye as wise as serpents and yet without sin: and I will order all things for your good, as fast as ye are able to receive them.” D&C 111:11. As fast as we are able! Heavenly Father is eager to bless us and to reveal Himself to us, but He can’t when we don’t believe. The only thing affecting the speed of the blessings we enjoy is us.  

(“Willingness to bless us” See also: D&C 112:10, 136:29,32,41, 41:1, 59:15-16,23, 103:31, 11:13, 1John 14-15, Rom 8:32, Alma 33:8, Alma 33:16. “Willingness to reveal Himself” D&C 110:7,8, 133:10, Alma 33:16, D&C 11:6.)

One of my favorite books is Dune. In this book is the concept of “the golden path.” The main character is a sort of messianic figure who, through the use of substance called spice, is able to see through time. He can see all the future possibilities, and all the infinite branches and paths which can spring from one decision. He sees that humanity is going to be threatened, and if it is to survive, there is only one path that must be followed. Any deviation will result in destruction. The golden path is the best way, and the one that ensures survival. In our lives, we have a golden path, but it doesn’t matter where we are starting from. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done, what possibilities we’ve closed off by our choices, wherever we are, we may still choose that personal golden path. There are good and better paths, and there are best paths as well, seeking the best prayerfully will lead to our highest satisfaction and joy.

Competing for the place of Kenneth’s favorite quote of all time comes from Elder Holland,

“God expects you to have enough faith and determination to, enough trust in Him, to keep moving, keep living, keep rejoicing. In fact, He expects you not simply to face the future (that sounds pretty grim and stoic.)  He expects you to embrace it and shape it. To love it and rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities. God isanxiously waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as He always has. But He can’t if you don’t pray, and He can’t if you don’t dream, in short, He can’t if you don’t believe.”(Sept. 12^th 2004 CES broadcast.)

What can stand in our way with such an amazing promise? Father is more kind and loving than we can comprehend with 100% of our minds.

Scriptures

Living in mortality can be easy, but only if you are studying your scriptures. When talk about reading the scriptures, what we are talking about is an intellectual, spiritual, emotional process. To remind me of this, in the front of my scriptures I wrote, don’t read these words, feel them. It reminds me to let them in, to let them change me, to let them have an impact. Because cold intellect doesn’t matter; it’s like an unlit campfire. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost. Not those who read, those who hunger and thirst. Those words define desire. Our whole soul, all faculties are engaged. And then the scriptures function as a step up transformer for the spirit, which is what the whole process is about anyways.

 So are you feeling the meanings behind the words? Remember, words are only symbols. They are referents of real things. If all you do is read the words in the scriptures with your eyes or hear them with your ears, you will have missed the entire point. We have to read with our hearts, with our spirits, to recognize the symbols and really feel the meaning of the words. We have to engage all the faculties of our soul. What are faculties, your body has faculties, you can throw a baseball, you can sing, you can jump and climb, you can write. You have these faculties. We need to become familiar with what they are and how they work if we are ever to enjoy a fullness of the Holy Ghost. Alexander Graham Bell said,

 "Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."

Like a blind person reading Braille, you have to go over those words and feel them; let the symbols trigger the realities they stand for in your mind’s eye. That’s when you’re doing it right. That is when you receive the mysteries of the kingdom, like a well of living water springing up into everlasting life. That is how you walk away from your scripture study feeling like you got something out of it. It is this focused pondering that invites revelation. This is what strengthens your soul. This is standing in holy places. In holy places we are safe from temptation. The one holy place we need more than anything must be within ourselves.

Temptation

“Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.Can a man take fire into his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?”

 That is a great visual. You can’t smuggle lit torches under your shirt without some painful and smelly consequences. But the scripture says bosom. How is that word used in the scriptures? Paradise is referred to as Abraham’s bosom; Jesus Christ is in the bosom of the Father. We are told that the spirit will make our bosom’s burn in certain circumstances. Zion of Enoch will be received into the Lord’s bosom. This from Isaiah, “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them into his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.” That is one of those scriptures, that hearing with your heart will fill you withprofound peace and comfort.

For some reason we’ve all trained ourselves to stop paying attention whenever anyone reads anything. Maybe we anticipate being bored to death by someone reading 18 verses straight. Whatever the case please try to overcome this natural tendency for your eyes to glaze over and I promise I won’t bore you.

So back to bosom, it comes from the O.E. bosm "breast; womb; a ship's hold," If it comes from a certain Proto Indo-European base then the primary notion would be "enclosure formed by the breast and the arms"). And the narrowed and more modern meaning that makes us giggle didn’t show up 1959.

So there is this sense of being internal. When Christ says the Father and I are one, it makes sense, He is in the bosom of His Father. They are perfectly unified. We, as lambs can be carried in the bosom of the Savior, encircled about in the arms of His love.

Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? This has to be the best no-duh rhetorical question ever. In this sacred and holy space where the Spirit dwells with us, this very inner part of us, who we are, can be the host of destructive fire. Who cares about our clothes, this would burn our flesh. Temptation is a fire. And it feels like a fire, when we see something enticing. What a great word. From the old French "to stir up (fire), to excite, incite. It stirs up our emotions, our passions, our lusts. It’s like giving the natural man steroids. If you feed him, he will very quickly get too strong to conquer. You have to lock the natural man in a closet and starve him down to a desiccated corpse. Unfortunately you can’t kill him though. Just add water and he pops back to full strength. I’m sure we’ve all been there, like king David, righteous and holy and then we let in one little temptation, we flirt with the idea, we don’t immediately cast it out, and the battle is lost again.

That is why the majority of our fight against sin must be one of avoidance. You can’t fight Chuck Norris and win. Not dying is the only way you can win. So you run away at the first sign he’s close, when the birds stop chirping, when the earth seems to tremble, and when you sense the presence of a magnificent beard, you are outta there.  

How does Christ tell us to avoid temptation? Through watchfulness unto prayer. Each day of our lives in mortality is like a walk through a grizzly bear preserve. There is a chance that we won’t run in to a bear. But most likely we will, and then we’re bear chow. It would be scary enough to walk around grizzly country, but what we’re facing is much worse than bears, its Satan’s special forces. He has snipers and ninja assassins working for him. They are hiding in every bush, waiting to strike, they are setting land mines, claymores, and Burmese tiger traps.  They do not sleep, eat, or retreat.  Without wearing the armor of God, we are dead on arrival.

The entire fight is preemptive. We are told to watch and pray always, that we might not enter into temptation. Well, watch for what? For the first sign of temptation. And be praying you may escape it. Recovering alcoholics don’t drive down streets with bars on them. Why? Because they know that’s a fight they are going to lose. Please recall King Theodin of Rohan from The Lord of the Rings. He had that creepy nasty advisor Grimma Wormtongue who would whisper in his ear and guide his actions. Theodin was under the power of the evil wizard Saruman and Grimma was working for him. This is a wonderful analogy for us because we’ve each got our very own Grimma wormtongue playing shoulder devil whispering in our ear. Except he’s not external, he is within us, the natural man, we are our own worst enemy.

We aren’t strong enough to fight temptation head on, because deep down we wantto sin. The only thing we are strong enough to do is run. That is why we watch and pray. The natural man’s got home court advantage, and has scored before I even realize I’m playing in the game. The point of mortality in this respect is to bridle and control every base desire until we can replace them with holiness and not have to fight them all the time. It is all about changing our desires, to get to that point that Alma talked about where the very thought of sin is abhorrent to you. It’s easy to be good when sin is about as appetizing as dog poo.

The Heart

It’s time to put on your thinking hats and your lab coats cause we’re now going to come at this like scientists. I’m going through the scriptures right now compiling verses which teach a doctrine. Pay attention and see if you can assemble the principle.

For I, the Lord, have decreed in my heart…

 There is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it. 

Verily I say unto you, there have been some few things in thine heart and with thee with which I, the Lord, was not well pleased

Behold, thou hast a gift, or thou shalt have a gift if thou wilt desire of me in faith, with an honest heart

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works.

Did you hear the theme? Your heart is the center and creator of your life and destiny.

The scriptures say Satan seeks to rage in our hearts. Rage from the same root as rabies, rage in our hearts, in our very core where the Spirit dwells, where Satan seeks to reign, where every epic battle of morality is fought. The heart is the seat of your desires, the place from which you make every choice that shapes youreternity. This is a place that deserves more security than fort Knox. The heart is the center, the creator of your life; it is the seed of destiny.

So let’s go back to that last scripture, how does it relate to the heart? Let me read it again.

And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works.

Why? Why will you always abound in good works if faith hope and charity are in your heart? Because apple tree’s make apples. And having godly attributes at the root of you make for godly actions.

Pride

So if you aren’t filled with love, if people annoy you, if you get road rage, if you hold a grudge, refuse to forgive, if you fight with people, if there are those you just can’t stand, if you want to strangle your boss, if you want to punch a politician in the face, if you gossip… Then the problem is in your heart. Then you are not in the paradigm of charity, you are in the paradigm of pride. These are two opposite states. They are (vocabulary word for the day) antithetical.

The reason we have a hard time loving people is because we have an incomplete knowledge. There are a few things which help me immensely in ridding of enmity from my life. One of my favorite lines in verse is from Lord I Would Follow Thee. “In the quiet heart is hidden, sorrow that the eye can’t see.” Everyone you meet is fighting the hardest battle of eternity as they pass through mortality. President Lund said,

“The heart is a tender place. It is sensitive to many influences, both positive and negative. It can be hurt by others. It can be deadened by sin. It can be softened by love. Early in our lives, we learn to guard our hearts. It is like we erect a fence around our hearts with a gate in it. No one can enter that gate unless we allow him or her to.In some cases the fence we erect around our hearts could be likened to a small picket fence with a Welcome sign on the gate. Other hearts have been so hurt or so deadened by sin that they have an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire around them. The gate is padlocked and has a large No Trespassing sign on it.”

 Deep down, everyone of us deep down is still a tender child, longing to be held by our mother. The only reason that anyone would ever be spiteful or mean, the only reason they would ever say something hurtful to you, gossip about you, inconvenience you on purpose, yell at you, or do something hateful, is because they ache inside. Because they are suffering from a lack of love. They don’t love themselves and so they are absolutely miserable. That is why they act out. 

Knowing this, how can we not have compassion for them? When someone is acting haughty and prideful, it is to cover up their feelings of inadequacy and weakness. They are using their ego to hide their shame. They seek to feel good about themselves by comparing themselves to others, not knowing that comparison is the cancer to happiness. As soon as you see someone better than you in your estimation, it hurts your self esteem. And the bolstering you think you get from believing that you’re better than someone else is a fraud. It isn’t built on anything real. Remember that the great and spacious building was the representation of the pride and ego coverings of the world, and it had NO foundation. Can anything be more precarious or ready to fall to utter ruin? 

You see, deep down in our subconscious, we feel it, we know we have nothing to stand on, and it makes us neurotic. It is the reason this world is so crazy, everyone is desperately trying to hang on to a sense of well being. And it makes us act nuts. It is the cause of the Prozac generation.  The Lord described this frenzied state of mind in Deuteronomy,

“Thou shalt  find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind. And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were evening and at evening thou shalt say, Would God it were morning for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear.”

And the people who seem to have it the most together are usually the ones with their fears buried deepest. Have you noticed it’s always the tough guys who cry first when they talk about their moms?

These false ego coverings are in Satan’s best interests, President Benson says that enmity, or this pride, is the power by which Satan seeks to reign over us. Notice as soon as Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Satan shows up, ‘oh look, you guys are naked, how embarrassing, see, at the bottom of everything you are flawed and unworthy of love. You better go make yourself some aprons out of those fig leaves so no one sees how broken you are.’

Now how long do you suppose clothing made from green leaves is going to last? Yeah as long as you don’t move or sit down, they’ll be just fine. They are just as flimsy as the ego, as bluster and pride. So what does Christ do? He makes them coats of skins; I like to think that the skins were from an animal sacrificed in the similitude of Christ, symbolic of the atonement. The word Kawphar in Hebrew is the word which “atonement” comes from, it means to cover. Christ gave us something that would truly cover our nakedness. 

When we know that we are justified, and sanctified from the foundation of the earth, when we know that we are loved infinitely, we then know that we are valuable, worthy of love, worthy of our own love. We will then see that love is all that matters. We’ll look at all of our brothers and sisters, even the annoying ones, with compassion and love. We cannot live in joy unless we understand that we must be filled with love. And we won’t be fully happy until we stamp every bit of peace killing enmity.

Choosing to get angry and to have those nasty dark rainy cloud emotions inside of us IS a choice, and what is the result of holding on to them? It doesn’t bring happiness; it brings misery, so you’re kind of stupid if you choose to keep them. As it has been said, holding a grudge is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. There was never a more perfect analogy; it is poison to light, joy, and the Holy Spirit. And that state of darkness makes you unfit for the kingdom of God. 

You are allowing yourself to be held hostage to external forces. You are giving up your agency because you are being purely reactionary. Acted upon. You are letting others decide if you’ll be exalted. You’re allowing others to decide if you’re going to be happy. That’s really dumb. We must love ourselves first in order that we may love others. Life is not a struggle grit your teeth, and beat yourself up for 60 years until you can begrudgingly start to finally tolerate the SOB’s around you. That’s not how charity works. The struggle is to retain grace and to fully accept Christ. And that means accepting His love for you. It means forgiving yourself as fully as He forgives you. When you do this, charity is just the way you are, you see yourself and others clearly and it isn’t a struggle, it isn’t hard.

Goals

“In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall escape my sight.

Let those who worship evil's might,

Beware my power... Green Lantern's light!”

That is the Green Lantern oath. Every member of the green lantern corps has a green power ring and with it, they are able to do nearly anything, fly, create protective shields, shoot plasma, and even travel through time, basically anything that the wearer can imagine. But it is limited by the one thing it runs on, the willpower of the wearer. There are thousands of books written on will power and how to take charge of your life. They inspire me for a few days, and then leave me feeling guilty and worthless because I fall back into laziness. I would be the worst green lantern ever. Will power has its place in our lives, but I don’t think it was ever intended to be our engine. I have never had enough will to do much of anything. Setting goals is like banging my head against an invisible wall. They never get done. I write them down, I tell people about them, I put them in a place where I can see them. And I always fail. I don’t believe in goals, at least not in the traditional sense.

Consider for a moment, cars, specifically, let’s say the Ford GT 40. It has a powerful V-8 engine and can do over 200 MPH. But to get this monster going, you have to use the starter motor.  They’re a little thing, about the size of a football. When you turn the ignition, the battery gets the starter to engage the fly wheel and that cranks the engine. The starter has the power to make that V8 turn over. It is vital, but if you decided not to use the engine and tried to run the car off of just the starter, you might get half a mile before your battery was dead, and it would be a jerky half mile. It just isn’t strong enough to move an entire car.

Will power has its place but I don’t think it is designed to run your life. Whenever we try to use it for that, we end up stuck with a dead battery. Back to comic books.

The green power ring can do some amazing things, but it can be supplemented. There aren’t just green lanterns, there are also blue ones, allow me to quote from Wikipedia,

“Blue power rings are fueled by hope; they give their users the most power, but they must be near an active Green power ring to tap into their full potential. Otherwise, the blue rings are only capable of default abilities (flight and a protective aura). This is because hope is nothing without the willpower to enact it. Blue rings must be fueled by true hope in order to operate at their user's command.”

I have tried to pull myself up by my boot straps, grit my teeth, and get things done. But without the heart being a part of will, you are in a miserable self-made hell. And this how you burn out. So why not use the engine instead? You’re usually going to end up doing what you want to do anyway, why not try to harness and change your desires then? We’re going to go on a little side track now, but we’ll come back to goals and how to change our desires.

Hope

Kenneth’s number one rule of life (which I stole from Merrill Bailey who spoke here a couple of weeks ago) is Live in Joy. Lehi says that we are that we might have joy, Joseph Smith said that happiness is the object and design of our existence. It is the value that we should all be seeking, and there is one universal way for every human to get it, and it’s through obedience to the commandments. So in other words, if we want that joy, we must be acting in faith. To have faith, we need 3 things according to Brother Joseph. First, the belief that God exists. Second, a correct knowledge of his perfection, attributes and character, because if we didn’t know He was perfectly loving and merciful, just and fair, we couldn’t put our absolute trust in Him. 

So knowing these things, the last thing we need is action according to the principles and commandments He’s given, cause when you believe, you want to do. You see that it is in your best self interest to follow the commandments. Exaltation is the highest joy possible and the path to it is obedience. Now because we know God isn’t a liar, we can 100% trust that if we keep the commandment, we get the blessing. As certain as the sun rises and sets, as certain as Kenneth would sell his soul for a piece of chocolate cake, we can have hope that we will get the blessing.

This is one of my soap box topics, but I’ll repeat it until I’m sure every one of you have memorized it. Hope does not mean to wish. The way it is used in the scriptures is not the way we use it today when we say I hope the Packers win the super bowl. And not understanding the proper definition confused me and stalled my progress in the gospel for years.

Hope is joyful expectation of fulfillment; it is desire and confidence in the ends of your beliefs and actions. There is no uncertainty in hope as it is used in the scriptures. When we act in faith, we may with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, (Because we are conforming ourselves with the laws of the universe) and that surety maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God. 

When we find something that we believe will make us happy, we seek after it. And our joy and progression are only limited by our choice. This brings us to Kenneth’s stolen rule for life number two; You get exactly what you want. I don’t mean Lamborghinis magically appear in your drive way if you want them bad enough, what I mean is you are free according to the flesh; and call things are given which are expedient unto you. And you are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil. Your free agency is inviolate.

God CANNOT take away your agency lest He cease to be God. It is a law of the universe. You are in charge of you, and you can have eternal life in the Celestial kingdom if you want, the only way you won’t be exalted is if you choose not to be. God respects you enough to let you damn yourself. He has to by law. So you are going to get what you want. When you choose not to keep certain commandments, that is just fine as long as you’re cool with the results of those actions, Heavenly Father can’t stop the consequences. There’s only way to circumvent the laws of reality that govern cause and effect and that is through the atonement, and you already know there’s only one way to access that. 

Life is a “choose your own adventure” book, starring you. As the hymn says, God will force no man to heaven. So whatever you want out of life, you’re gonna get by your actions, or inactions. If you want the terrestrial kingdom, that’s fine, I think you’re stupid to settle for a gummy bear when you could have an entire ice cream Sunday instead. But Heavenly Father wants you to be as happy as you will allow yourself to be. Notice I said as happy as you allow yourself to be.

Blessings are never force fed. You can sit at the Lord’s banquet table and not eat a scrap. A lot of us go on such a hunger strike in this very room on a weekly basis. This is why Jacob says to the pure in heart, “feast upon his love.” Don’t just go to the feast, eat. Being obedient and pure in heart is no guarantee of joy. You have to cash your pay check. You have to use your agency to make the decision to receive the love and enjoy the happiness.  Jacob says to lift up your head, stop moping around in your belly button. You have to “receive” the pleasing word of God into your hearts, not just hear it, you must let it have place in your psyche. Allow it to have its effects on you, choose it and not render it inert by inattention and disregard. 

And how is this done? Of course through our active thought and decision to do so. Jacob says we may feast on His love, IF your minds are firm forever. A mind must be constantly reminded to be firm. Lax is the default position. Unthinking instinct is the routine. Remember to remember. We are told by Alma that our souls have faculties, and they must be aroused. I think that is the same reason that when the angel came to King Benjamin, he said wake up. And Benjamin woke up, then again the angel said again, wake up.

Alright now back to goals, and using willpower to start the hope engine. I especially delight in truth concerning the human condition, and one of the most profound quotes I’ve ever heard comes from President Packer

"True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior."

In other words, if you are stuck in a rut, if you are like me and find yourself wanting to want to be better, then the best way is to immerse yourself in doctrine. Recall President Bednar’s parable of the pickle. If you sporadically dip a cucumber into brine, it won’t change. If we want our natures to be changed, we must immerse ourselves in the brine of the spirit. Then our attitudes and desires will be changed, then being righteous will be easy, that goal of temple attendance will be no problem because we want to go. It’s not about being miserable and hating life as you drag yourself around out of duty. We are to live in joy. Going to the temple will not make you burn out if your heart is in the right place.

 I’ve been trying to go once a week since I got back from my mission. Epic fail. There was a time when I did burn out, and I didn’t go for 8 months or so. If keeping living the gospel is stressing you out, then you aren’t doing it right. Life is not hard. Christ said his burden is easy and his yoke is light. Sin is hard. You may say, well I’m keeping the commandments and I’m still miserable. Well, that goes back to your agency. One of the things we get to choose, is how we feel. Viktor Frankel said,

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Please keep this in mind, in that space where we must make a decision, if we are functioning on incomplete and imperfect knowledge, we will find misery. If Satan can mix just a little error with our truth, then we will be a few degrees off course and miss the mark. If you aren’t happy, then I would suggest with all my heart you pray for Heavenly Father to send you a mentor to teach you the lesson you’re missing. I’d be miles behind without the mentors I’ve had in my life.

So if you want to do something better, or have desire for it, immerse yourself in the doctrine. When I am struggling with my diet (and there is never a moment I’m not) all I have to do is pull out muscle and fitness magazine and read an article. Like magic, I am filled with desire to act according to the truths I’ve been reminded of. Immersing yourself in the reality of true doctrines serves to remind you that your goals aren’t just annoying actions to be checked off a to-do list, but instead a source of joy and satisfaction in-and-of-themselves including the benefit of the actual goal!

It is my testimony that the gospel is joy, and in the name of Jesus Christ the Savior, I testify with Brigham Young, that in regards to the spiritual blessings, peace and comfort of the Holy Ghost, we "live far beneath our privileges." Those gifts and blessings which eye hath not seen and ear not heard, are available in some part to us now, to “any saint willing to separate themselves from the world and to receive millennial blessings in their lives. And any person who today abides the laws that will be kept during the Millennium will receive, here and now, the spirit and blessings of the Millennium in his life.” (The Millennial Messiah, 682)