Editor’s Note: Today we begin the serialization of this book by scripture scholar and former BYU professor M. Catherine Thomas. When I read this book (and then re-read it for the pure joy of it), I wanted to share it with everyone I knew, for its delicious and illuminating ideas were like a gift, stirring my ancient spirit. Meridian is so pleased to share this serialization on this and upcoming Fridays. Is anything more enticing than exploring the depths of possibility in the spiritual life? Thomas’s book resonates and points the way to greater light in our lives. Maurine Proctor
Introduction
Have faith that there is more than you know; repent of all your present shallowness and silliness; wash off everything of this world in the waters of baptism, and be reborn … to a course of action requiring perpetual, progressive repentance … until you are full of grace and truth, which is nowhere in the foreseeable future. … Then “ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” and get the guidance you need (Acts 2:37–38).
–Hugh Nibley 1
He who gives that law is perfect, and reduces it to the capacity of finite beings in order that they may understand it and then receive more: thus the infinite being gives line upon line, reveals principle after principle, as the mind of the finite being expands, and when he has learned all his life he will then begin to see, that he has not yet entered upon thethreshold of eternal things.
–Brigham Young 2
There are three grand secrets lying in this chapter (2 Peter 1) which no man can dig out, unless by the light of revelation … which unlocks the whole chapter—as the things that are written are only hints of things which existed in the prophet’s mind.
–Joseph Smith 3
This book is written in an exploratory spirit for fellow seekers who sense that there is always more to a gospel concept than meets the eye. My intent is to travel with you for a while along your way and to encourage you in your exploration of gospel themes. It will be perhaps as much our stirring around together in fertile ideas as the fruits of these explorations that will inspire us.
We have to keep exploring because in our church experience the rich concepts and principles can pale as we necessarily reduce the infinite concepts to our finite language and then take the finite form for the whole. As a result, what was once compelling becomes more familiar, commonplace, even cliché ridden. However, considering the epigraphs above, we can have faith that there is more than we know to the gospel, lying beyond all our possible “shallowness and silliness,” yes, even “mysteries and peaceable things—that which bringeth joy, that which bringeth life eternal” (D&C 42:61). We can be reassured that the finite mind can expand and begin to cross a threshold in its searches after the glory and wonder of the Unseen World, which glory language symbols can never fully reveal. We can know that the words of scripture do not define, but only point to the tips of truths that beckon us into the treasure house.
Language is two edged—it reveals and conceals. For all its usefulness in putting thought into communicable form, we have experienced that gospel language can with much use and reuse tend toward thinness. Even at best it can never fully express a concept, especially one that originates in Unseen Realms. Words are pointers only, always shadows only, of the thing they represent. They can through familiarity actually reduce our awareness of that which lies beyond our senses. But if we approach the sacred concepts with reverence and acknowledge that the fullness of the gospel won’t ever be captured in words or in a book, we can begin to explore other avenues for gaining knowledge. The words can stimulate inquiry to which the Holy Ghost can then respond with an expanding vision that transcends language. And without the Holy Ghost in the pursuit and sharing of gospel truth, we have nothing—hollow concepts only.
The antidote to the problems of language, then, is personal spiritual experience, because without that, spiritual teachings remain theories and hearsay, lending themselves to distortion and misunderstanding. That is, whatever we think we know likely has some degree of distortion in it until we actually “gaze into Heaven,” whatever form that experience may take.
The prophet Joseph Smith made a similar and compelling observation:
Reading the experience of others, or the revelation given to them, can never give us a comprehensive view of our condition and true relation to God. Knowledge of these things can only be obtained by experience through the ordinances of God set forth for that purpose. Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject. … I assure the Saints that truth, in reference to these matters, can and may be known through the revelations of God in the way of His ordinances, and in answer to prayer.4
And he said, “God hath not revealed anything to Joseph, but what He will make known unto the Twelve, and even the least Saint may know all things as fast as he is able to bear them.”5 And yet the human tendency is to relegate religion to the realm of untested theory and to do the very thing that precludes spiritual experience; that is, to make the gospel experience less labor intensive, to routinize it, to reduce it to formulas, all in order to make the living of and the presentation of principles seemingly more manageable; but in the process, these sacred and infinite concepts can be sapped of their revelatory life. Our only hope for a life in Christ is to keep searching diligently in the Light of Christ, integrating more and more of it, so as to be able to bear yet more.
But a book can help.
A book can help, because what I have learned and relearned is that the mind needs to be engaged spiritually in order to stay with spiritual development. The eternal spirit has an appetite for spiritual things. To flourish, it has to be fed with catalytic ideas which stimulate the faith that one can indeed continually interact with the miraculous. Because, when awareness of the miraculous fades with its sense of the immediacy of gospel powers, we languish in the ordinary world with its ordinary thoughts. The mind must be fixed on God and nourished from the hidden springs.
The inexperienced boy Joseph learned early on that he had to fix his mind on God if he was going to survive spiritually. As he knelt in the dirt over the stone box, his mind entertaining mixed motives for the use of its sacred contents, he cried out with frustration at not being able to take out the objects.
Moroni, already on the scene, rebuked him and taught him the principle that the mind of man is easily turned if it is not held by the power of God through prayer.
Oliver Cowdery writes part of the angel’s words on this occasion, and Joseph’s mother gives the angel’s additional teaching:
Forget not to pray, that thy mind may become strong, that when he [Satan] shall manifest unto thee, thou mayest have power to escape the evil, and obtain these precious things.
Now I will show you the distance between light and darkness, and the operation of a good spirit and an evil one. An evil spirit will try to crowd your mind with every evil and wicked thing to keep every good thought and feeling out of your mind, but you must keep your mind always staid upon God, that no evil may come into your heart.7
And so the mind must not only be fed but filled with the things of God in order to withstand the crowding tactics of the Adversary, not to mention the general spiritual entropy of earth life. The mind is the frontier and the tool, and fixing the mind in spiritual awareness and practice is the key to continuing spiritual experience.
As to his spiritual awareness, Man lives in the midst of forces he does not perceive because he suffers from what has been called “paradigm blindness”; that is, he does not perceive things that exist outside his currently accepted set of beliefs and experience. But the scriptures teach that he is designed to go through a paradigm shift, a perception change—that is, to expand his mental and spiritual context, to get outside the confining mental structure that telestial language, thinking, and experience have created, and to receive new knowledge and new experiences and greater consciousness.
It is a paradigm shift we’re asking for when we pray for the Mighty Change, which brings with it a new set of perceptions. Abraham expressed the desire for a paradigm shift when he sought greater happiness, peace, rest, blessings, righteousness, and knowledge (see Abraham 1:2)—he wanted things he had not experienced before. And Moses in the Lord’s presence came to a knowledge that he had not before perceived or suspected:
“Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1:10). And in the case of Adam and Eve, we may wonder whether they and their posterity, confined in their telestial paradigm, only perceived that they were separated from Heaven. Because when the ancient knowledge and powers began to be restored to them, their eyes were opened, and they learned about keys of access to God and the possibility of a transcendent joy in this life (see Moses 5:10–11).
Of course one always carries his spiritual eyes with him, but they are not necessarily activated if he has not believed the Lord’s revealed paradigm. Unbelief acts as a veil, and the Lord speaks of the mind darkened by unbelief (e.g., D&C 84:54). But giving oneself wholly to the revelations in the assurance that each of them represents things-as-they-really-are will produce that condition where believing becomes seeing. We learn that many spiritual realities remain hidden from Man’s awareness until it is activated through belief and faith.
We will consider several awarenesses in this book: of ourselves, of each other, of the Enemy, and of Divine Forces and Beings. We will explore awareness of Natural and Spiritual, since so many blessings are predicated on making that distinction; for, as the Lord promises, “The veil shall be rent and you shall see me and know that I am—not with the carnal neither natural mind, but with the spiritual” (D&C 67:10).
I have included wisdom and experience from some non-Church sources. When it comes to searching for greater light and knowledge, we realize that Truth exists in our atmosphere like radio signals and that a spiritually sensitive person, or for that matter, anyone searching diligently in the Light of Christ, will begin to pick up on those signals. The Church, even as the true Church, does not claim a monopoly on Truth; indeed, “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things” (Article of Faith 13). The prophet Joseph advocated gathering in truth wherever it might be found: “One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism ist to receive truth—let it come from where it may.”8 The Lord 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)
Since we do not have scriptures in our canon from “all the nations of the earth,” we learn here that the Lord has spoken His word to many men and women who, though they have not been authorized to call them scripture, nevertheless felt the mandate to write down what they learned from the Heavenly Spirit, whether in prose or poetry. And though perhaps incomplete by the fuller light of the Restoration, many of these works provide insights which illuminate the things of the spirit.
Looking deeply into these “best books,” we can enlarge our understanding of the restored gospel: “Teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom” (D&C 88:118). “Study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people” (D&C 90:15), and “all this for the salvation of Zion” (D&C 93:53). The Lord has distributed Truth in many places across time and space.
At the same time, we take seriously the Lord’s words: “Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man … or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost” (2 Nephi 28:31). So we follow the admonition of Paul in proving all things and holding fast to the good (see 1 Thessalonians 5:21). But Latter-day Saints don’t need to be afraid of Truth they may find in unexpected places. The practice of looking into Truth wherever it may be found can enrich a study of gospel themes and serve the Spiritual Seeker well.
The model for Man here is that there are more resources in him than he has discovered or developed and that he really does not fully know himself. The Holy Ghost is sent to reveal Man to himself and urge him to “neglect not the gift that is in thee” (1 Timothy 4:14) and to exercise his divine gifts (as in D&C 6:11, “Thou shalt exercise thy gift, that thou mayest find out mysteries, that thou mayest bring many to the knowledge of the truth”). These gifts often lie latent in Man, awaiting only their stirring up.
The most important part of our model here is that Man by his creation is supremely good. Brigham Young describes Man’s essential nature as light-loving but also teaches that not only must he have divine help in order to discern and restrain the dark forces as he develops, he must also obtain the Lord’s grace, that divine enabling power, to liberate the goodness in him:
The spirit which inhabits these tabernacles naturally loves truth, it naturally loves light and intelligence, it naturally loves virtue, God and godliness; but [the spirit] being so closely united with the flesh their sympathies are blended, and their union being necessary to the possession of a fullness of joy to both, the spirit is indeed subject to be influenced by the sin that is in the mortal body, and to be overcome by it and by the power of the devil, unless it is constantly enlightened by that spirit which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world, and by the power of the Holy Ghost which is imparted through the Gospel.
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So Man cannot move forward without God’s participating with him. We are indeed powerless without Christ, being made by and through and of Him (see D&C 88:41). The revelation that we are made “of him” is arresting. He is an intimate part of us, and we of Him (as in D&C 88:49–50). We learn also that in this sphere we are incapable even of doing good without Him, and that any good we manage to do is through yielding to the power and gifts of God (see Moroni 10:25). Our Father is the great liberator and developer of the power and divinity in Man.
And so it seems that the Lord says to each of us, “My Spirit is in you, urging you to move to your full potential. Now if you’ll start working with your resources through governing your mind and body, through unlocking the love in your soul, I’ll open things up for you and give you more light, so that in time, you will know and do everything I know and do. You don’t have to depend on me to initiate and augment the powers; the power is already in you. Yes, there is already a good deal of Me in you that you’ve not yet scratched the surface of.” That leads us to wonder where the division is between where I end and He begins. Maybe there is no division, nor throughout eternity was there meant to be. We cannot seem fully to penetrate our intimate relationship to Him and His to us. Perhaps the most important thing to know is that each of us is enmeshed in Him, and He in each of us.
In any event, Dear Reader, as Hamlet says to Horatio, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, and humility becomes us as we go about seeking to draw back the curtains.
I wrote a good chunk of this book sitting at my laptop on the fifth floor of an apartment building on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, just as my husband and I were beginning our fourth mission together. After our arrival, there were a couple of weeks of unavoidable delays in our getting to work, so we used the time to get settled, to explore the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and to spend time on what seemed to us important personal projects, like this book.
I had begun the book in Provo but initially decided that I wouldn’t have time to finish it before we left for Spain. Our visas for Spain had been approved for May 11. But when they actually arrived, they had been stamped for June 11. At first we were tempted to be frustrated and annoyed, but very quickly it was apparent that there was a reason. Within minutes of receiving word of the delay, I sat down at my computer and began to write in earnest. It was amazingly quiet in our home since we’d been released from everything, and everyone thought we must be gone by now. The phone hardly rang. I wrote from early to late, day after day—the quiet, uninterrupted time seemed a miracle. Before I left Provo, I had gotten eight chapters to my wonderful publisher and signed a contract for publication.
In Tenerife, as I mentioned before, there was yet another delay pending the arrival in Spain of our new mission president, and it became apparent that we might have as many as two weeks without an assignment. Though we were eager to function as missionaries, we had learned to look at events as orchestrated, so I knew what the delay was for. I got up early and wrote late, the process of writing always going slower than I wanted it to. There were long stretches when I was absolutely stalled and couldn’t move forward, even though I could feel time’s winged chariot and knew that soon our lives would change dramatically.
I have noticed that time is always God’s. And in all phases of my life I have learned that the Spirit makes itself known in interesting and subtle ways. Here is one that happened a couple of days ago: in our new apartment we were not able to get internet for several days, but my laptop kept trying to connect to a very weak signal that must have belonged to someone in or near the apartment building. My computer kept sending me a little sign that said, “You are not connected,” or “Connection could not be established.” For a while I treated it like a sort of pesky mosquito and kept swatting the little “x” in the corner of the pop-up.
Then, during a stretch of time in which I felt stymied, just sitting at my computer, I realized how much I felt like my laptop, trying to connect to an elusive signal. The pop-up was a visual representation of what was going on in my spirit as I was trying to write. There would be moments when I would feel truly connected and then moments when I couldn’t find the “signal.” As many spiritual analogies operate in life, I came to accept the pop-up as a present-moment message from the eternal world; I stopped to tune and retune, trying to capture the delicate signal. There I was, writing about the power of the Lord and feeling this subtle energy, this Light in my mind that seemed to know where to go next, however imperfectly I may have interpreted it.
My experiences teach me that the Light in our Wilderness is literal and that it manifests itself as it continually seeks access to our awareness. This book is about that Light.
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1. Approaching Zion, vol 9. of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, ed. Don
Norton (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989), 283.
2. Times and Seasons 6:954.
3. TPJS, 304
4. Ibid., 324–25.
5. Ibid., 149.
6. From an interview of the prophet Joseph Smith by Oliver Cowdery,
Times and Seasons 2:13, May 1, 1843, Letter viii.
7. Scot Proctor, History of the Prophet Joseph Smith by His Mother,
Revised and Enhanced (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1996), 109.
8. WJS, 229.
9. JD 11:237–38.
