Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
May 25 - December 12, 2016
I bring forth my word unto the children of men yea, even upon all the nations of the earth.…. For I command all men, both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them.” (2 Nephi 29:7, 11)
“We are in process of receiving all that God has spoken by the mouths of all his holy prophets since the world began. Only a small portion has come to us so far; we do not, as yet, begin to know what the ancients knew.”
He that will not harden his heart, to him is given the greater portion of the word, until it is given unto him to know the mysteries of God until he know them in full. (Alma 12:9)
Extensive research shows that human beings, from any period or culture, go through similar fundamental stages in their general and spiritual development.
we don't embrace others’ doctrines, creeds, rituals, or deities—but only the gems that the Spirit indicates, or whose “precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost” (2 Nephi 28:31).
truths that resonate with our own doctrine, our own spiritual sense, and experience. This body of insights has sometimes been called “the perennial philosophy.”4 Despite vocabulary differences, we recognize the truth of what they are teaching.
The central claim of the perennial philosophy is that men and women can grow and develop (or evolve) all the way up the hierarchy…to realize a “supreme identity” with Godhead—the perfectissimum toward which all growth and evolution yearns.
“Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind.”8 Understanding the workings of the mind and learning to use it differently can lead to great relief.
training the mind in gentle meditations and in the practice of mindfulness.
Westerners can learn from cultures who for millennia have worked with easing and enlightening the mind.
Our job is not to fear ideas from other quarters but to “search diligently in the Light of Christ…[to] lay hold upon every good thing…[to] be a child of Christ” (Moroni 7:19)—
“Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight.
theologians, who do not know what mysticism is. They associate it with ecstatic trances, with the solitary life of the hermit, with purely negative conceptions of God, with keeping one’s mind perfectly blank for hours on end, with vague reasoning, with pantheism, with a distaste for action and concrete, physical life, forgetting that all these things are the freaks or aberrations of mystical religion and have nothing to do with its essence.
true believers want direct experience, not just theory.
“I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts:… And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest” (Hebrews 8:10–11).
great and marvelous are the…mysteries of his kingdom…which he commanded us we should not write…and are not lawful for man to utter: neither is man capable to make them known, for they are only to be seen and understood by the power of the Holy Spirit, which God bestows on those who love him, and purify themselves before him; to whom he grants this privilege of seeing and knowing for themselves; that through the power and manifestation of the Spirit, while in the flesh, they may be able to bear his presence in the world of glory. (D&C 76:114–118)
simple, devotional, mind-training exercises, including meditations, have deepened their prayers and blessed them in their personal experience in Christ. The psalmist sings: “My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord” (Psalm 104:35).
century. By mysticism, Rahner explains, he does not mean some esoteric phenomenon but “a genuine experience of God emerging from the very heart of our existence.” He goes on to comment that the source of spiritual conviction comes not from theology but from the personal experience of God.
CHAPTER 4 THE GOD SEED
For whom he did foreknow, he also did [foreordain] to be conformed to the image of his Son. (Romans 8:29)
result, we project the reality of our own divinity far into an uncertain, even improbable, future. We can’t realize it, in the sense that we don’t know how to make it our reality.
yearn for higher development and deeper oneness with the Lord; and we may feel a summons: “The good shepherd doth call after you” (Alma 5:60).
There was something compelling about her but at the same time totally non-coercive—unlike any earthly attraction that I am familiar with. But the most indelible impression was the look on her face. She was perfectly serene. She was utterly radiant. There was infinite peace in her countenance and manner. Her deep joy in the situation was total. There was a sense of absolute security and complete fulfillment.
“we are always further creating ourselves.”6 We are self-creating beings, capable of continual, conscious self-correction and re-creation as we grow and learn, as we allow the divine to emerge more fully. The core self can emerge, no longer hidden by the mortal overlay.
When we allow it to expand, it produces feelings of freedom; if we ignore or repress it, our emotional troubles and confusions seem to multiply. We may not even know what it is we are feeling as it stirs—perhaps a hunger, perhaps a restlessness over worn-out behaviors, or over a world-view that no longer satisfies. We may try all sorts of non-productive things to satisfy this disquiet. But if we realize that the hunger is at its deepest origin spiritual and if we allow the intelligence of the seed to take us
“What shall I do that I may be born of God, having this wicked spirit rooted out of my breast and receive his Spirit, that I may be filled with joy?” (Alma 22:15–17).
presence of Christ Himself within one’s being.
the presence of Christ and our own divinity are in a way not separable. Let us consider Alma’s instructions for cultivating this internal experience: If ye will nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof…behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life. And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience…behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet…white…pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger
...more
“Come with full purpose of heart,” the prophet says, “and cleave unto God as he cleaveth unto you” (Jacob 6:5).
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20) As sure as sunrise in the morning this change comes to those who cultivate the goodness of the God Seed.
Elizabeth Gilbert adds another witness to the idea of the propelling force inside; “Zen Buddhists…say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into a tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well—the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness
...more
II DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 5 DYNAMICS OF DEVELOPMENT: GOD IN THE MAKING
That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day. (D&C 50:24)
The plan is that we develop until we come “unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
progression of stages outlines development from the egocentricity of the child (everything is about “I,” “me,” and “mine”), continues through the ethnocentricity (“our group is better than theirs”), to what might be called a global-centric, even cosmic-centric, stage, which is characterized by high levels of compassion and spiritual sensitivity for all living beings.
each ascending stage of development can allow us to experience life more abundantly, freer of the afflictions of the spiritual immaturity of the ego, increasingly able to see ourselves and others more clearly, to feel more deeply, and to become more aware of joy in life. Not surprisingly, there is a high correlation between happiness and higher spiritual development. And it helps to see, lest we become impatient, that we are at every stage always beings in process.
“when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” and “be purified even as he is pure” (Moroni 7:48).
purification process, whereby the lens through which we view the world is gradually cleansed of ego-perceptions. The mind, in the process of developing sanctification, moves increasingly toward singleness to God and a comprehension of all things (as in D&C 88:67–68).
Mosiah 4:20, “He has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy… that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy”; or the descriptions of the people in 4 Nephi:16: “Surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God”; or Helaman 3:35: the people had fasted and prayed oft, were stronger in their humility, and firmer in the faith of Christ, “Unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts.”
Grace] is given with a generosity that would explode our hearts into every corner of the universe if we were to fully realize it all at once.”
as we move from stage to stage, more of these unseen spiritual realities become apparent to us. And then as our consciousness approaches God’s, we begin to sense how we are instruments of God’s life acting within us and even “living” us, as an eternal Presence in our being.
“things as they really are” (Jacob 4:13),
Moses cast his eyes and beheld the earth, yea, even all of it: and there was not a particle of it which he did not behold discerning it by the Spirit of God. And he beheld also the inhabitants thereof, and there was not a soul which he beheld not; and he discerned them by the Spirit of God. (Moses 1:27–28)
Robert Kegan, reports, “When we began our work, the accepted picture of mental development was akin to the picture of physical development—your growth was thought fundamentally to end by your twenties.”8 But after a generation of research, a revolution in understanding the growth potential of adults overtook the world of developmental psychology. Kegan describes a little of it: When we began reporting the results of our research in the 1980s, suggesting that some (though not all) adults seemed to undergo qualitative advances in their mental complexity akin to earlier, well-documented quantum
...more
“Even ‘grown-ups’ can continue to evolve more complex mental systems, analogous to the transformations from childhood to adolescence, enabling a more penetrating, more responsible, less egocentric grasp of reality.”
“The good news is that whatever our early history, it is never too late to stimulate the growth of the neural fibers that enable mindsight [the skill of rewiring the human mind toward greater health and wellbeing] to flourish.”12 We should not underestimate the powerful forces of healing both within and without the human being.
As life becomes more and more fulfilling, it also becomes less and less “all about me.”
developing from one level to another necessarily includes mini-deaths and births, the dying of old perceptions and beliefs as we move toward an increase in the Lord’s image (see Alma 5:7-14).
each of us can grow in complexity of capability, with the possibility of a purer and purer love, with its accompanying clarity and joy.
