As children of the Most High, let us be citizens of the Cosmos

“Yes, say, what is truth?” our hymn asks. “‘Tis the brightest prize to which mortals or Gods can aspire. Go search in the depths where it glittering lies, or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies: ‘Tis an aim for the noblest desire.” But – are we perhaps afraid of it?

The Prophet Joseph will set our theme: “One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth – let it come from where it may.” Our Prophet was a true renaissance man, and the Lord led him through many interesting byways, such that he got far beyond what most of us could accommodate. He was not afraid of finding truth wherever it might appear.

You remember those drawings in children’s books where you’re challenged to find several hidden images? They were scattered in the nooks and crannies of the drawing. Holding it upside down or sideways you could finally find all the hidden pictures. Truth is much the same way. At any point in our development, our awareness is only partial – so many present truths are hidden from us.

It seems to be the Lord’s objective to wake up our awareness and expand it, until it is perfect and whole as His is. That involves waking up our awareness as well as obtaining wide experience in spiritual as well as secular matters.

So we find that the Lord has sown truth in many places, as He Himself says,


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)

It appears that we, as the True Church, do not have a corner on truth; rather, what the Lord has given us are the means of searching out, discerning, and embracing truth, “come from where it may.”

As a Church, we find much in the world that serves our purposes. For example, the Church has adopted and modified the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program to help people with addictions. And the basis of our effective employment seminars originally came from outside the Church (the Curtis Course.) We could multiply these examples. We are always on the lookout for the solution that the Lord has developed somewhere else to help us solve our problems and reach our spiritual goals.

“But,” we may fearfully exclaim, “the Gospel is enough! Everything we need is explicitly contained therein.” Not quite true. In a sense, parts of the Gospel lie “out there” where the Lord has scattered them, the whole of Truth being embedded throughout all reality. The gems can be gathered in on an individual basis.

My experience is that, if we are open, the Lord will lead us along and use many different ways and sources to help us find the particular truths we need and, at the same time, open truths of the Gospel that we thought we already understood.

Within nearly any system we may find some useful truths – these represent the tender mercies of the Lord to all His children. He sheds varying degrees of light on all of our brothers and sisters. Of course we do not adopt everything we find out there – we don’t embrace others’ doctrines, creeds, rituals, deities, extended sitting practices – but only the gems that the Spirit indicates. The Lord has given us a wonderful system in which we can examine each thing that interests us to see if it lights up in the Spirit.

One problem that interests me is the degree of stress and depression that some of our members experience. One of the reasons we have this problem is that we live in a culture that is speedy and noisy. Electronics are shaping our life, and we do not understand the effects of these conditions on our mind; we can’t sustain our attention like generations before us could, thus eroding our ability to allow transformative truths to distill into our being and do their work there.

Perhaps the abbreviated Ensign articles over recent months reflect the editors’ need to address that change in our culture. These changes have their spiritual implications – they take a spiritual toll on us.

Recognizing that many of our emotional and spiritual problems begin in the mind, various traditions have spent millennia exploring the nature of the human mind.Since our western culture has not studied the mind in this way, we could benefit from some of what they have learned.

For example, a widely recognized researcher in psychology and meditation at Harvard Medical School, Dan Brown, tells an experience he had with a group of psychologists who had come to interview the Dalai Lama. One of the Westerners asked how Buddhists deal with negative self-talk. There ensued a discussion between the Eastern translator and His Holiness, and the psychologists began to wonder what was going wrong. Finally they learned that these Easterners did not understand the idea of negative self-talk. The Eastern translator replied to the psychologist, “Why would you ever let your mind get like that?”

We in our culture take negative thinking as a given, but it is the consequence of an undisciplined, untrained mind. Negative self-talk is seen as a “western disease” – and it is indeed a problem because we’ve not learned to become watchers of our thoughts instead of identifying with everything that passes through our mind. These are subtle matters that can slip under our Gospel radar, and sometimes we do not see how the principles address our ills.

Many clinics are springing up to help people learn the benefits of training the mind in gentle meditations and mindfulness. These methods are helping people reprogram their minds to overcome depression and other emotional ills. Dr. Brown comments that we, as Westerners, don’t take it as a priority to train our minds in order to have all the resources of our mind fully present. Thus, as our awareness may not be awakened, and we deal with trouble paying attention, with staying focused, with minds that are very reactive and thus produce suffering – all these conditions of our mind have implications for our emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

So 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) – that our minds may be continually expanded with light and our joy and peace enlarged. (And if that costs us a little brain sweat, that’s okay too.) Many a supposedly non-Mormon idea has cast light on my own understanding of a Gospel principle, because Truth is all one. As Joseph would say, if an idea is true, it belongs to Mormonism.

I resonate with something Eckhart Tolle writes, as he speaks about religions whose spiritual essence can become obscured by being overlaid with extraneous matter, pointing out that this can happen to members of any religion: “To a large extent, therefore, their deeper meaning is no longer recognized and their transformative power lost … Let me show you how to go more deeply into what you already have.”2

That is my direction as a writer, drawing on poetry, psychology, meditation – all parts of human experience where the Lord has shed light – to help us go more deeply into what we already have. If something is true, it’s ours. Eckhart Tolle’s teachings, for example, have shown me how to go more deeply as he teaches how to become more present and thereby gain greater communion with things of the Spirit.

A word about mysticism. Perhaps we are afraid of that word, especially as it has been used sometimes with a negative connotation. Let me point out that our Gospel has important mystical elements in it. Consider this definition of “mysticism” from Wikipedia: “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. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or awareness.” Then consider these scriptures:

Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him. (Moroni 10:32).


And now Father, I pray unto thee for them, and also for all those who shall believe on their words, that they may believe in me, that I may be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we may be one (3 Nephi 19:23).


But 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).

All these describe mystical experience. In our Church we advocate practices that will help us to commune with, be present with, and be perfected in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the ultimate goal of our religion. Many have found that simple, spiritual, mind-training exercises, including meditations, have blessed them in their experience in Christ. The psalmist sings: “My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord” (Psalm 104:35).

Let us see that we are so much more than we know in the context of the infinite Gospel. There is so much to us and to the Gospel that has not yet been explored. The Lord is prepared to “reveal things that never have been revealed” (Alma 26:22).

Let us then be fearless citizens of a vast Cosmos, and acknowledge, as Hamlet says to Horatio, that, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” And so it is with us. I invite you to continue exploring with me, searching diligently in the Light of Christ, to see where the Lord will lead us.

Notes.-

Hymns #272.

Words of Joseph Smith, 229.

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, 10.

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Catherine Thomas would like to alert readers to a 2-day workshop on Meditation for Mormons to be held on June 18-19 in Salt Lake City under the direction of John Kesler, a Salt Lake attorney, a former bishop, and an active and committed Latter-day Saint. John draws on wide experience with meditation, from which he has created gentle practices specifically to help Mormons on their spiritual path. Catherine Thomas will be speaking in connection with the workshop on the evening of June 18 on: “In the Image of the Son: The Path of Human Spiritual Development.” For more details the reader can contact John Kesler at: j_******@wo**********.com.