Editor’s Note: A book to help you develop your spiritual nature. See the Introduction and Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, Part 1
What Is, Is Right
Seeing into the nature of things, we discover the possibility of a great happiness veiled behind the most unthinkable turn of events. Brigham Young offers some mind-altering ideas:
I am happy; I am full of joy, comfort, and peace; all within me is light, for I desire nothing but to do the will of my Father in heaven. I delight not in unrighteousness, but in righteousness and truth. I seek to promote the good and happiness of myself and those with whom I am associated. We have the privilege of securing to ourselves that eternal bliss that can never fade away. …
You need never expect to see sorrow, unless your own conduct, conversation, and acts bring it to your hearts. Do you not know that sorrow to you can exist only in your own hearts? Though men or women were in the mountains perishing— though they be in overwhelming depths of snow freezing to death, or be on a desolate island starving to death for want of food—though they perish by the sword or in any other way, yet, if the heart is cheerful, all is light and glory within; there is no sorrow within them. You never saw a true Saint in the world that had sorrow, neither can you find one. If persons are destitute of the fountain of living water, or the principles of eternal life, then they are sorrowful. If the words of life dwell within us, and we have the hope of eternal life and glory, and let that spark within us kindle to a flame, to the consuming of the least and last remains of selfishness, we never can walk in darkness and are strangers to doubt and fear.11
Perhaps to make his point, Brigham overstated to a degree in saying that no true Saint could have sorrow. The Savior Himself had sorrows, and many true Saints are called into situations where they feel pain, dismay, sorrow, confusion, and grief; and they are called to comfort each other as Love bids them do and as part of their baptismal covenant (see Mosiah 18:8–9).
But still, he has made a profound observation that can change our life. Brigham teaches at least five important ideas here:
1. He is able to enjoy a fulness of happiness because he has given up his own will—he has been swallowed up in the Lord’s will, and that has enabled him to find acceptance, even joy, in what the Lord puts on his path. We might understand from his words that it is often insistence on our own will that blocks our perception of joy.
2. The source of his joy rests in the intent of his heart to promote his own good and happiness, as well as that of his associates.
3. Sorrow can exist only in one’s heart, suggesting that sorrow is a function of thinking, not of circumstances. It is how we interpret what is happening to us that either liberates us or imprisons us. If we interpret what is happening as something that should not be happening, and we can’t change it, then we will suffer. If we can accept that-which-cannot-be-changed as a reflection of what God would have unfold, then we can have peace. We might assume, “Of course, God is too benevolent to want or allow suffering.” But have we misunderstood benevolence?
4. Possessing the fountain of living water, the principles, and the words of eternal life makes a cheerful heart possible even in the midst of the unthinkable, because it is in the nature of things that underneath it all, behind it all, there is a secret happiness. This is not just a clinging to positive ideas, but the transcending effect of the residence of the inner Spirit of happiness with its felt experience.
5. That is, the words of life kindle the flame of eternal life inside us as they consume the last remains of our selfishness (the greatest source of our suffering), allowing us to walk in the light—clean, trusting—and to have no doubt or fear.
On another occasion, Brigham commented on the price of freedom from the consternating darkness of the mortal probation, on the kind of mental and emotional adjustments we might make to enjoy the living Light in our soul. He spoke on the degree of submission we must achieve to things-as-they are, to What Is:
It is said that if we do right we shall overcome. I will tell you one mark you have got to come to in order to do right. If you can bring yourselves, in your affections, your feelings, your passions, your desires, and all that you have in your organization, to submit to the hand of the Lord, to his providences, and acknowledge his hand in all things, and always be willing that he should dictate, though it should take your houses, your property, your wives and children, your parents, your lives, or anything else you have upon the earth, then you will be exactly right; and until you come to that point, you cannot be entirely right. That is what we have to come to; we have to learn to submit ourselves to the Lord with all our hearts, with all our affections, wishes, desires, passions, and let him reign and rule over us and within us, the God of every motion; then he will lead us to victory and glory; otherwise he will not.12
This passage provides additional details about what we would have to do to feel free:
1. We would have to acknowledge the Lord’s hand in all things—to give up the idea that things happen randomly to us.
“And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments. … But learn that he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world,and eternal life in the world to come” (d&c 59:21, 23).
Job understood this principle of submission to What Is: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly” (Job 1:21–22).
2. We would have to submit to the Lord’s hand in His testing of our level of consecration. The Lord’s purpose seems to be from time to time to make it hard to stick with Him—so that, if we do stick, we gain something indispensable. Truman Madsen comments on the meaning of the call to sacrifice:
We are called upon to love God first and over all. The moment that pattern is followed he seeks in us the one thing that we do not really want to give up. Many of us will say that we do not have that kind of faith.
But I submit to you that you do not have that kind of faith until you pass that test [of giving up what you don’t want to and putting God first].
… It is the love of God that cries out for us to prove our love for Him. He cannot bless us until we have been proved, cannot even pull out of us the giant spirit in us unless we let him.13
3. We would see Him enmeshed in our own self as He is in the rest of His creation: “He is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things; and all things are by him, and of him, even God, forever and ever” (D&C 88:41). We would have to realize that He is in us and we are in Him—and that that is never not so, not even for a moment.
John Taylor points to this same possibility of happiness even in severe trials. He quotes the poet Alexander Pope in showing us how “whatever is, is right,” speaking with respect to the trials of the Church as a whole, but also of the individuals that comprise it:
In relation to anything that has or may transpire, I feel that we are in the hands of God, and all is right. … We ought to feel that we are in the Church and kingdom of God, and that God is at the helm, and that all is right and will continue to be. I feel as easy as an old shoe.
What if we should be driven to the mountains? Let us be driven. What if we have to burn our houses? Why, set fire to them with a good grace, and dance a jig round them while they are burning. What do I care about these things? We are in the hands of God, and all is right. … What is the position, then, that we ought to occupy—every man, woman, and child? Do our duty before God—honour him, and all is right. Concerning events yet to transpire, we must trust them in the hands of God, and feel that “whatever is, is right,” and that God will control all things for our best good and the interest of his Church and kingdom on the earth. If we live here and prosper, all right; if we leave here, all right; and if we have to pass through affliction, all right. By and by, when we come to gaze on the fitness of things that are now obscure to us, we shall find that God, although he has moved in a mysterious way to accomplish his purposes on the earth and his purposes relative to us as individuals and as families, all things are governed by that wisdom which flows from God, and all things are right and calculated to promote every person’s eternal welfare before God.14
We learn from President Taylor’s words that, whereas we may be culturally conditioned to react to trials in a particular way, we actually have another, truer option: We can trust the Lord and trust also that everything is governed by Him and that whatever happens is designed to promote our personal eternal welfare.
So it seems that the Lord works in series of light and dark, and in the great, divine Ecosystem everything has its place. But He may let us wander around in the troubling and fearful dark until we begin to catch on to what is going on, until the mind opens to a new interpretation of our circumstances, and then His light begins to penetrate our situation. Dark and Light, Dark and Light in this world of high impact tutorials—but He’s always there. He’s always doing something with us, and He always knows what He is doing.
In a sense, then, each thing that happens is a test of our consecration and willingness to submit, because it is possible that there is nothing, no circumstance, that doesn’t have God in it. “Make up your minds thoroughly, once for all,” says Brigham, “that if we have trials, the Lord has suffered them to be brought upon us, and he will give us grace to bear them.”15
A clarification: When we say, “whatever is, is right” we mean to say that “what is” signifies that which has happened and is now unchangeable. It simply is. If we do not like “what is” and have the power to change it, then that is what we may do according to the Truth in us. It is when we cannot change something that we have the choice of either resisting it—which seems to make things worse—or accepting it, which is the beginning of peace and understanding of how things really are in the Wilderness. The Serenity Prayer is relevant here: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”16
All Things
If we were to take this subject of “what is” to the next level of appropriate response, we might have to acknowledge that everything and everybody in our life is our teacher, placed there by the Providential Hand for our blessing. That realization would require us to be grateful for everything that happens. That awareness takes us to a deeper spiritual state.
In 1831 the Lord told the Saints as they prepared to settle the land of Zion, “Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things. Thou shalt offer a sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in righteousness, even that of a broken heart and a contrite spirit” (D&C 59:7–8). Surely it would take the deepest humility, the most broken heart and most contrite spirit to thank the Lord for the tribulations descending upon them. The next year the Lord, knowing that trials were about to overflow upon the Saints, instructed them in how to get through them—in perhaps an unexpected way:
Be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours. And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more. Wherefore, do the things which I have commanded you, saith your Redeemer. … (D&D 78:18–20).
In 1833, the persecution raging on, the Lord reassured the Saints:
Verily I say unto you my friends, fear not, let your hearts be comforted; yea, rejoice evermore, and in everything give thanks; waiting patiently on the Lord, for your prayers have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. … All things wherewith you have been afflicted shall work together for your good. … (D&C 98:1–3).
Instead of gratitude, we may each find that we have things on our personal lists of resistance that tempt us to curse, to grieve, or to retaliate: the driver who cuts us off on the highway, the man who is making us late, the sales clerk who could not care less, the mother who is unaccepting of what we do, the spouse who seems so unaware, the toxic sister-in-law.
These are everyday abrasions. But the list gets much tougher: the husband who abandons the family, the wife who has an affair, the child who rebels, the loss of a limb, brain damage, cancer in a grandchild, blindness, sexual abuse, assault, fatal mistakes, and so on.
Yet, what if each of these things and all things have a purpose? We realize that nothing ever happens just to us, but that every event affects others too. Who knows how a current trial may be a solution to something yet unseen? Everything in the mortal probation, no matter how bad or how good it seems, is a tangle of advantage and disadvantage. How often, for example, we are elated over an apparent windfall, only to find soon that it is turning sour in some way; or we fall into depression over a trial that with time produces an unexpected benefit.
But resistance, for some cosmic reason, just seems to make things worse. A wise man contrasts the effects of resistance with acceptance:
Resistance is an inner contraction, a hardening of the shell. …You are closed. Whatever action you take in a state of inner resistance (which we could also call negativity) will create more outer resistance, and the universe will not be on your side; life will not be helpful. If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in. When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with that whole and supported by creative intelligence. … [You experience] a state of inner openness. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen. If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surrender. You rest in God.17
Let us be clear that none of this is to condone evil intent in any degree, but as the Savior said, speaking not only of Himself, but with implications for all of us, “it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” (Matthew 18:7). But the relevant question becomes, since the offense was permitted to happen, what is the hidden meaning? Not all meanings will be apparent, but one meaning will always be relevant, and that is the opportunity to trust in the love and wisdom and intent of the Guiding Power to exalt His children. Elder Scott said, “He would have you suffer no consequence, no challenge, endure no burden that is superfluous to your good.”18 So the perception of the Natural Mind will be at odds with God unless it puts off the Natural Mind through Christ and “becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19).
This submission in gratitude and trust is our confession to the Lord that we do not understand all things. In thanks we withhold our puny judgment as we acquiesce to the infinite wisdom and love of Heaven. Healing energies seem to be released with this decision simply to give thanks in perfect trust. Some wise and comforting advice comes from a Frenchman, Jacques Lusseyran, blinded at seven years old and later a survivor of eighteen months in the Buchenwald Nazi prison camp. In a later chapter we will learn more about this man’s extraordinary spiritual perception, but for our purposes here, he writes from his spiritual experience about quietly accepting What Is:
One should not try to console either those who lost their eyes, or those who have suffered other losses—of money, health, or a loved one. It is necessary instead to show them what their loss brings them, to show them the gifts they receive in place of what they have lost. Because there are always gifts. God wills it so. Order is restored; nothing ever disappears completely.19
We wish to force our own conditions on life; this is our real weakness. We forget that God never creates new conditions for us without giving us the strength to meet them. … By all this, I learned at the same time that we should never give way to despair, no matter what brutal and negative events occur in our lives, [because] just as quickly the same sum of life is given back to us.”20
His experience was that God always compensates with gifts and never requires difficult conditions without strengthening us. He says that when he remembers that God is there to support him, even in his blindness, “I have exactly the sensation of someone taking my hand, or that a ray of light—it is exactly this way—comes toward me and touches me. If I know where the ray of light is, I no longer have any problems.”21
The secret to working a gratifying alchemy on trials is to give thanks for all circumstances—not just the obvious blessings, the good things, but the inconvenient events, the annoying, and even the very bad ones too. The reason is that heartfelt thanks opens us to the interior Light that always provides something in return for loss. A state of thankfulness becomes a purifying way-of-being that opens the soul to experiences of glory. It can soften grief. A Spirit-filled principle, it enables the soul to experience a universe richly endowed in the smallest details by the Great and Present Creator. A second-sight develops which permits us to see the Lord’s love radiating in Nature, at work both in those around us and in life’s daily details. As we express our thanks to Him and to each other, we create a peaceful, enlightened, and spiritual atmosphere. Our thanks replace the griping, the self-pity, the murmuring against events and people, the feelings of being overwhelmed, the wrenching fear, also the pride, the arrogance, the self-righteousness. We give each other nourishing strength in our quiet acceptance and faith. We see everything with a new awareness through which we feel embraced by the Lord and supported in the whisperings of His Spirit: “Wherefore, fear not even unto death; for in this world your joy is not full, but in me your joy is full. … And seek the face of the Lord always, that in patience ye may possess your souls, and ye shall have eternal life” (D&C101:36, 38).
Dear Reader, if you wish to feel the most penetrating power of the Spirit, try the experiment of giving thanks in the moment of disappointment, of tragedy, of the specter of ruin. When you are able to do it consistently, you will feel as though you have discovered and united with the mystery of life.
But it must be said that earth’s challenges can seem very, very hard. They can hurt so very much. Even when we know that God won’t give us more than we can bear, still, life can, in moments, seem unbearable. Elder Neal A. Maxwell comments:
Even in the context of acknowledging His omniscience, the chastening experiences of life are difficult enough for us to bear. We could not trust in the perfectness of God’s judgment if we did not first know that He foresaw and carefully calibrated our chastening and learning experiences accordingly.
22
Once the stunned reaction to a grievous event has waned, one can find in a deep inner recess in his soul a joy that still breathes, undiminished.
We have treated here the way in which whatever is, is right. Could we go so far as to say, whatever is, is God? That would lend such a new spirit to our daily life. We could live in humility, trust, and gratitude, serving What Is. Then everything we seek would just seem to come to us.
Yes, we will on occasion grieve, it being a cathartic, purifying thing. And we will comfort and strengthen each other. But here in the Wilderness, we remember that each has a right to suffer; each, a right to loss; each, a right to find the inner Paradise, all in order to be fitted to live with the Gods. Thus, at some point, after the worst of the grieving has past, we can begin to sing, and to thank, and to praise our God who does all things well upon the Great Waters. And then, like our First Parents after Divinity came to visit, our eyes begin to open to the Paradise within.
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11. jd 6:40–41.
12. jd 5:531–52.
13. “Power from Abrahamic Tests,” Meridian Magazine, www.meridianmagazine.
com/articles/030902abraham.html, 2005. Italics in original.
14. jd 6:113–14.
15. jd 7:268–69.
16. Generally attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr and adopted by Alcoholics
Anonymous; italics added.
17. Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (New
York: Penguin Books, 2005), 58.
18. Richard G. Scott, “Obtaining Help from the Lord,” Ensign, November
1991, 86.
19. Against the Pollution of the I: Selected Writings of Jacques Lusseyran
(Sandpoint, Idaho: Morning Light Press, 2002), 29.
20. Ibid., 82.
21. Ibid., 83.
22. All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience, 27
