Excuse the funky use of quotation marks you'll see later in this post. I put the big, bold ones at the beginning and end of my comment to Spencer. At the end I posted more of my thoughts along with some links to more reading about the will.
" "We are so easily distracted today..." I think your statement aligns with something I've been studying and pondering a lot lately which is the idea of "mindfulness." One of our greatest challenges is to calm our thoughts and emotions and listen to our truest voice, that part of us that communes with God. Is it the Holy Spirit? Yes. Is it the voice of the Son? Yes. Is it the voice of the Father? Yes. Is it our own voice? Yes. Our "best self," as President Hinckley often put it, is our truest self, that part of us, most often called our "spirit" in the vocabulary of the church, that is all too often suppressed as we are caught away in the business of this world. Obviously we must busy ourselves with temporal matters or our professional lives and households would fall apart, but we must never forget why we are here and what our main objective is. Our goal, as we know, is to return to the Father, and that requires constant mindfulness, constant diligence. Every day, every hour, and, as we progress, every MOMENT we must observe ourselves until our idea of "self" is no longer associated with our body, our thoughts, or our emotions but rather with the WILL of the Savior which is the will of the Father. It's one thing to begin to comprehend this but it is entirely another thing to begin the WORK that this goal requires.
I think members of our church, and many others for that matter, think that if we enter in the way, all we have to do is attend services and do this or that, and then we die and we gain exaltation. The reality, however, is that we enter in the way by developing faith, repenting, and being baptized but the real work comes in enduring. Enduring includes keeping all of the covenants and commandments. We will not keep them perfectly, which is why we require the grace of the Savior, the only being that ever reascended to the Father, thus opening up the possibility of resurrecting, BUT we must do everything we can, through the exercise of our will (thelema) which, of course, everything hinges and why the battle in heaven was fought and is what we continue to fight with now, in order to return to the presence of the Father. It is through the will we open ourselves up to the Son and once we are worth of His presence, we move closer to preparing for the presence of the Father.
For everyone it comes differently and at different times, but once one realizes that the work of salvation and exaltation must be done and must be done NOW, one begins to look at everything differently, including the role of the Savior, the nature and meaning of His sacrifice and atonement, and the time we have NOW, in this life, in this very MOMENT which is continually before us. As you read this, that MOMENT just passed, but NOW you are in the NOW...we are constantly in the NOW. So what are you doing NOW? What am I doing NOW? Until we live in the NOW and exercise our WILL to be one with our Savior's, we will continue to live under the confines of our own ego and the evil spirits of pride, lust, etc. that constantly seek to reside within us.
Wow. I did not mean to write that much. I think I'll pose this on my "other" blog.
Great post, thanks for sparking some thought. It's all about our WILL!"
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More thoughts....
The more I study, pray and meditate, the more fascinated I become with the importance of WILL POWER. Our will is one thing that I believe God never gave us nor will He take away. Our will is the core of who we are as spiritual, eternal beings, or intelligences. God is THE Perfect Will. Although I don't understand yet, somehow His perfect will helped bring us about in terms of our own possibilities of spiritual evolution. In the LDS church we often use the term "agency" to describe the will because it's a little more, I don't want to say accurate, but it's more clear I think in terms of comprehension for the average person because the term "will" is a little more general. Anyway, WILL POWER, the POWER OF THE WILL, AGENCY, etc. this is a vital concept and one we must understand and think about constantly if we expect to progress.
Another thing I touch upon in the comment below which I'd like to briefly flesh out is the idea of "mindfulness." Self-observation is a paramount for the man who desires to enlarge his soul and progress. We are not our thoughts. We are not our emotions. We are not our actions. Now, this is not to say that our thoughts, emotions and actions don't make us who we are. Follow me here. What I mean to say is that beyond everything we think of as ourselves, we are something separate. Is it our spirit? Well, beyond our mind and our body, yes. But is there something beyond even our spiritual body?
The following are teachings from Joseph Smith regarding the nature of man:
Intelligence Exists Eternally
"Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven. . . .
Intelligence is eternal and exists upon a self-existent principle. It is a spirit from age to age and there is no creation about it. . . ." (HC 6:311.)
What I take from this is that beyond our spiritual bodies, or our spirits, we are intelligence. A spark of light that never started nor will ever end. Now, for those you who are not LDS or are unfamiliar with this concept, this is not something entirely unique to "Mormon doctrines" nor was Joseph Smith the first to teach this. This particular concept is ancient; indeed, this idea is older than ancient. I call it truth, but that's me!Here's an excerpt from "Teaching of Joseph Smith" by Truman Madsen.
"CREATION AND COSMOS. Joseph Smith's teachings have been characterized by the word "eternalism": "Every principle that proceeds from God is eternal" (TPJS, p. 181). The "pure principles of element" and of intelligence coexist eternally with God: "They may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed" (TPJS, p. 351). God created the universe out of chaos, "which is Element and in which dwells all the glory" (WJS, p. 351). "The elements are the tabernacle of God" (D&C 93:35). God is related to space and time, and did not create them from nothing. Change occurs through intelligence. The universe is governed by law. There were two creations: All things were made "spiritually" before they were made "naturally" (Moses 3:5). Through his Son, God is the Creator of multiple worlds. God is the Father of the human spirits that inhabit his creations. His creations have no end. (See Creation home page)"
So here's the cool part, but also the part that I am still trying to understand: God did not "create" us in the sense that there was nothing, and then bam! there we were. But, in some sacred way, God is the Father of Our Spirits. Through some miraculous and holy process, He endowed our eternal selves with something that made us His sons and daughters and set us in the way of eternal progression but with the express intent of always allowing us the right to choose for ourselves, which is our WILL...he didn't give us our WILL, nor would (could) He take it, because that's what allows us to become like Him IF we CHOOSE to. That's why Lucifer, the Son of the Mourning, fell and became the devil. He wanted to take away the will of God's other children, He wanted the glory for himself...his PRIDE, his EGO caused him, even one of the elect, one of the most advanced spirit children of our Father, to spiral down to "hell," to that place in which fear and all other negative emotions rule. He used his will to become Satan, the father of all lies.
We, on the other hand, chose to follow the plan of the Savior, the one we call Jesus Christ. The Holy One of Israel. The only begotten of the Father. THE Master. His plan was to give us the choice, to let us retain our agency, which is the only true way, and knowing we would use our will selfishly and allow fear, lust, pride, anger, etc. to enter into our hearts, would provide Himself as a sacrifice, a perfect sacrifice, to fulfill the natural law of justice that pervades the universe and thus ensure for us a way, if we choose, to reenter the presence of the Father BUT this time knowing good from evil (for initially, in His presence, we were like little children and didn't know the good from the evil nor had we ever had the chance to live in the world of dense matter with physical bodies) and thus to become like Him, beings of truth, light and love who tasted of the darkness but chose to cast it out completely and to become perfected.
Not all beings, however, choose this path. That is why we believe in "multiple levels" or heavens or dimensions or planes of existence. There are different glories for different beings. To become an exalted being, to become like our Father who, by the way, will always be our Father and our God (we don't believe in anyway that becoming like God makes us better than Him, etc.)...to become like Him requires that one cast away all imperfections and completely destroys the ego. The life and teachings of the Savior make it abundantly clear that He, Jesus, had aligned His will so completely with the Father that there was/is NO DIFFERENCE. They are ONE. And, if you recall, the Savior tells us that we must become perfect, even like unto Him and that we can become one with He and the Father.
I will add the scriptural references to this later, but I'm about to fall asleep, so I'll amend this later. If you made it this far, thanks! I hope that something I share here will be of assistance to you as you strive on the path. I have great compassion for all of my fellow beings and feel a strong sense of love and respect for my brethren of all faiths who strive to be true to themselves and to God.
The kingdom of Heaven is within!
Luke 17:
20 ¶ And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the akingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
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