The THERMODYNAMICS & ETERNODYNAMICS of DESIRE – CONTINUED


HEATING UP – COOLING DOWN

Convection creates flow of blessings for those with strong conviction, not about the institutions of this world, but strong conviction in eternodynamic principles. This is done through interplay of hot and cold principles in the house of spirit as well as in this temporal realm. In the post, Lukewarm=Good for Nothing, Justin touches on the symbolic and scientific significance of hot and cold water. He points out that:

Hot water” would have been the kind of underground spring waters heated by geothermal radiation, and were used for medicinal purposes.  Because geothermal-heated water can hold more dissolved solids, “hot water” was prized for its high mineral content and the temperature was therapeutic for soaking aches and pains.

So how exactly are hot springs formed? As rain falls on mountain peaks, it percolates into the porous sedimentary rocks. As it descends through the rock, it picks up a variety of materials, everything from radium to sulphur. Also, as it moves further beneath the surface, it heats up from the primal heat of the Earth. Eventually it encounters a large crack or thrust fault. As water descends behind it, it forces the now heated water to ascend along the fault-line to surface as a hot or warm spring.

Now it is important to understand the connection between hot springs and offspring. The connection between geothermal and eternal principles is seen in the physical phenomenon of heat and its spiritual antecedent, desire. As mentioned earlier, offspring in any stage are eternally in need of guidance from the Father. It is true that the off-spring of the Father (spermatozoa) will reach a point where, filled with the fire of desire, they begin to move of their own volition. This is a good thing. It means they are becoming aware of the agency or free will which is in them. But without conscious guidance from the Father, that energy which might build up and spring-off will never succeed in creating a new life or making us a new creature in Christ.

Just as rain falls from the symbolic heaven above our heads onto mountain tops and percolates through layer upon layer deep into the subterranean levels then creeps back up, so it goes with the procreative powers in man. The Jewish Sages taught that, “a drop exudes from the brain and develops into semen.” (Kehillas Yaakov by Erech Holada) Modern critics may say that although the pituitary gland, located at the base of the brain, does emit a hormone which signals and regulates the production of semen, still, that hormone does not actually become semen itself.

In my opinion, this is merely a case of semantics. Scriptural vernacular may not always be as exact as science would prefer it to be, but science can be very ignorant of the workings of the spirit. Information obtained through the Spirit can never be expressed fully with the limitations of human language, but scientific facts can be expressed with some degree of exactness. This is only because while science is severely limited to speaking only of one thing in one particular context, the words of spiritual revelation are eternal. Thus they speak of endlessly vast concepts wrapped in endless layers of meaning unable to be extracted accept by reading while open to the same Spirit in which the revelation was originally transmitted, received and recorded.

One such additional layer of meaning in regards to the Jewish Sages’ commentary on sperm production having a beginning in the brain, would be the fact that, during early stages of embryonic ontogenesis, the cells that become the substrate for testicular tissue begin their journey in the mostly undifferentiated embryonic mass from a location that later differentiates into brain tissue. These brain-region cells migrate through the embryonic mass, much like salmon make their way through a river, until they finally localize in what will develop into testicular tissue.

Ontogenesis

Ontogenesis

And this is only one begending of an ongoing begetting process of the Creator, the downward fall in a cycle observable from rainclouds and rivers, mountaintops and hot springs to brains and testes, adults and fetuses. Speaking of the upward part of that same cycle, Indian scholar, M. N. Dvivedi, says:

“It is a well-known physiological law that the semen has great connection with the intellect, and we might add the spirituality of man….in the many commentaries on yoga the purpose and process are veiled in quasi-scientific mythology. The ‘power’ is said to creep silently like a serpent from the lowest chakram to the highest: that is, from the testes to the brain.”

This evaporation and condensation is a map of the cyclic journey of Christ, the anointed, “He that ascended up on high, as also He descended below all things, in that he

comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth,” as stated in D&C 88:6. If Christ is in and through all things, it stands to reason that, in and through the prostate secretions, He would protect and nourish the sperm. Similarly to the warm waters of natural springs, the fluid from the prostate is endowed with a rich supply of minerals and chemicals like calcium, zinc, citric acid and albumin and these give the semen its milky appearance. Pre-ejaculate, also called Jism, prepares the way for the Chrism of prostate fluid and prostate specific antigens as Jesus set the stage for the second coming of Christ. The consecrated oil used on occasion by LDS men for the anointing of the sick and afflicted is another form of chrism through which the Light of Christ may manifest. It is often carried on the person in chrismatories aptly attached to key chains in a man’s pocket or worn about the belt.

But surely only one labeled as an “apostate” could see Christ in his prostate. This author also sees Christ in the Only Begotten who, out of many millions of sperm cells, is the One who fertilizes the egg. Geneticists also see the Light of Christ in the spermatozoa, although they might not recognize what they are looking at as Christ’s presence. Under the microscope they observe halos around the head of the sperm cells.

Sperm Halos

Sperm Halos

Healthy spermatozoa show larger halo around the sperm head while DNA fragmented spermatozoa have smaller halo or no halo around them.

A latter-day gentile with his competitive way of viewing life is likely to perceive the mass production of sperm cells in male humans as an evolutionary imperative due to sperm competition. Perhaps modern man, whether gentile or of the scattered House of Israel is so scattered in his own soul that his “little guys” are competing, even amongst themselves. The war in Heaven rages on as long as sibling considers sibling a rival against whom they must come with a viral and contentious attack of viciously jealous little expulsory Egyptian charioteers. In the end, all competitors will all be washed away and drowned in the depths.

Competition/contention is of the Devil. This type of mentality and behavior is common among insects, spiders, and reptilians, but the spiritually evolved man who fully plays a part in the gathering of the tribes on a spiritual, physiological, and literal level as per article #10 in the 13 Articles of the LDS Faith, will adopt a more Zion-like attitude of oneness with his brethren. Then unto him will be made known the greater mysteries of God – for example that unfathomably profound mystery of partible paternity, a mystery at least partially grasped by many Amazonian societies such as the Araweté, Mehinaku, Tapirapé, Xoceleng, and Wari’. There is much more to making a baby than meets the eye – especially the lustful eye of flesh.

In outer nature hot springs represent the inner nature principle of desire directed by will through love. The middle ground between these spiritual and physical processes is the union of man and woman according to God’s will and pleasure. Both processes support an abundance of life even long before they reach the “surface”. Anaerobic bacteria living deep beneath the Earth’s crust account for the “rotten egg” smell at many hotsprings. Our desires, be they more carnal or more spiritual, are also fostering life on a microscopic level, whether we know it or not. Once the springs or desires surface, they create a mini ecosystem with a micro-climate which is significantly warmer than surrounding areas. The warm water allows an abundance of bacteria and algae, amphibians and reptiles, plants and even tropical fish to flourish in what would otherwise be a cold and harsh mountainous environment. Nothing can nurture our outer nature like the proper cultivation of internal desire through the joyful joining of man and woman. Scientific experiments carried out by Cleve Baxter, Marcel Vogel and others in modern times have only confirmed what was anciently demonstrated by Krishna and his consort Radha in a bower or grove which did suddenly spring up around them whilst they made love as related in the Gita Govinda. When the Elohim tell Adam and Eve to “multiply and replenish the earth,” and to “dress this garden, take good care of it, be happy and have joy therein,” they are not so much speaking of separate tasks but of one eternal commandment whereby the gods link man, woman and “all manner of fruits, flowers, and vegetation” in an energetically balanced Eden.

An Illustration from the Gita Govinda- Krishna and Radha in a Bower or Grove which suddenly springs up around them as they make love.

An Illustration from the Gita Govinda- Krishna and Radha in a Bower or Grove which suddenly springs up around them as they make love.

It is interesting to note that the governments of this world seem to have a keen interest in snatching up land with hot springs. Once a consecrated land for the free enjoyment of all God’s children, Canada’s first national park was coveted and confiscated for its geothermal qualities as was the very first national park in the world, Yellowstone. The much sought after yellow stonesulfur, or we could say soul-fire – features in many governmental land-grabs, and it is also present in what people have interpreted as hell. Hot water that comes in contact with sulfur and then experiences a rather rapid ascent with no time or space for oxidation will result in that pungent rotten egg odor common at many natural spring sites. While we may find this unpleasant, most would call soaking in the soothing waters of a hot spring a healthy and not a hellish experience.

How do we define Hell? Is it not a place of damnation? Damned water must be quick to find an outlet and continue its flow or become stagnant. This is why when God makes good on his promise to spew the lukewarm out of his mouth; it is not a rejection but a rescue from their stagnant state. Like the mighty geyser in Yellowstone Park, Old Faithful, God is converting the ‘not so faithful’ into a powerful force for good; whether by plunging to the depths, or rising to the heights. Movement is the key. The Almighty is, just that, almighty. He rules the rollercoaster of highs and lows, brings our souls intact through heavens and hells, and baptizes them by water and by fire.

BEING IN HOT WATER – GETTING COLD FEET

Being in “hot water” with God is nothing to fear. When flame and flood coincide it is, after all, the prelude to rebirth. Between Jesus and his crazy cousin John, we get the idea that we are to be baptized by water and by fire. Many debate whether this is one and the same baptism or can only be accomplished separately. The answer, as usual, is simply and boldly – both. That which appears to be done separately is in truth stemming from a place where it is all simultaneously combined; only our stubbornly rebellious mind’s fail to see this. Thermodynamically, mixing of such dissimilar conditions seems impossible but nothing is impossible in the eternodynamics of God’s master plan. Even a close examination of physical reality can reveal the inner workings of things to any observer who simply chooses to be aware of and open to the Holy Spirit. But what must we do in order to feel, have and maintain that Holy Spirit? We can not remain idle with a case of “cold feet” rather we must let the cold spur us to motion. In the Father’s fool-proof plan,

it is only a man’s fear of living in sin that is counted against him as in-sin-cerity. Sincere desire transforms weaknesses into strengths, but trying to avoid the appearance of evil on our exterior or resisting what we think of as evil, only sends us running from our own shadows like groundhogs that prolong their winter of suffering. If we would embrace the shadow as the nourishing substance of our cocoon we would find ourselves that much quicker breaking into the bright springtime of Zion and a thousand years of peace.

There is only one way to learn, and there is only one thing to learn – that there is only one thing, not this thing and that thing. Too much heat will consume us and too much cold will render us frozen, both forms of damnation. But interestingly we will find that the two combine for cool and collected everlasting burnings in which our spirit-bodies along with their resurrected counterparts are perfectly suited to dwell and thrive. (see King Follet Discourse) It is possible to train our physical bodies so that they may join our spirits as one in paradise. This was part of the idea behind the Native American sweat lodges where men would sweat out toxins and then immerse themselves in cold streams immediately afterwards. We must engage our desire/passion constantly with a combination of love and will, hot and cold. We are expected to always keep it moving through a subtle but firm series of covenantal course corrections. Classic lyrics from the artist formerly known as Prince give us a vivid description of how imbalance can cause the Dove of the Holy Spirit to be grieved.

Dream if you can a courtyard
An ocean of violets in bloom
Animals strike curious poses
They feel the heat
The heat between me and you

How can you just leave me standing?
Alone in a world that’s so cold? (So cold)
Maybe I’m just too demanding
Maybe I’m just like my father too bold
Maybe you’re just like my mother
She’s never satisfied (She’s never satisfied)
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince – When Doves Cry

Alma provides us with some steadfast pointers for harnessing the Holy Spirit.

Use boldness, but not overbearance; and also see that ye bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love; see that ye refrain from idleness.  – Alma 38:12

Speaking of bridling and not idling the passions, in Walter Charleton’s Natural History of the Passions (1674) we read:

“Nothing can divorce me from the common opinion which holds that she [the rational or divine soul as distinguished from the corporeal soul] is created immediately by God, and infused into the body of human embryon, as soon as that is organized, formed and prepared to receive her….These motions or acts being thus traduced from the superior to the inferior soul and thence derived first to the brain and imagination, then to the heart, produce therein and so in the blood, the various motions that constitute such passions as we observe in ourselves, when we are most ardently urged to acts of devotion and piety, toward the supreme Being. Whence it is doubtless that Divine Love, detestation of sin, repentance, hope of salvation, fear of increasing Divine Justice and most if not all other acts or passions of devotion are commonly ascribed to the heart.” (p.78)

Charleton’s unwavering belief regarding the perfect placement of God’s will into the minds and hearts of men (in that particular order) is corroborated and further expounded by section 8 verse 2 of D&C, wherein the Lord says:

“Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart.”

Again and again in the Book of Mormon we find this same correlation between desires, mind and the heart. Not only this, but we are also told that, beyond this initial outpouring of the Lord’s spirit at the moment of conception, it is possible to be periodically renewed and experience a mighty change of heart. In the Book of Mormon we are shown how the relationship between the heart and mind of God and of man are extended, through desire, into the realm of personal and collective experience with reality. Throughout the record, things so small and so simple as righteous desires of the heart are even fundamentally fused to grand occurrences like angelic visitations.

“And it came to pass that when Ammon arose he also administered unto them, and also did all the servants of Lamoni; and they did all declare unto the people the selfsame thing—that their hearts had been changed; that they had no more desire to do evil.

And behold, many did declare unto the people that they had seen angels and had conversed with them; and thus they had told them things of God, and of his righteousness.”

Alma 19:33-34

Mormon temple ritual is rife with Kabalistic principles dressed in Christian fashion. It instructs initiates in a way that is so plain it seems simultaneously cryptic. Many of the ceremonies deal with angelic visitations and are not meant to be confusing but rather to open our understanding of this topic. True understanding of the physical can grant us understanding of the spiritual and visa versa. The state of a person’s soul determines what they can access and what they are able to perceive. An individual’s awareness can either expand or limit their ability to connect with particular energies.

The human intellect likes to rely on “mechanisms” to extend perceptual limits, check impulsive imaginations, and reveal nature’s causal structure within the myriad of “forms.” There was even a slight obsession with ‘tools’ and ‘instruments’ on the part of Joseph Smith and others during the founding years of the Church. Magic tools like the Urim and Thummin and seer stones have been downplayed and in some cases almost completely covered up or overlooked till recent times. Oliver Cowdery was apparently in possession of a rod which he used for purposes of divination. It is referenced in original versions of the Doctrine and Covenants and was even said to be used in attempting translation and for receiving revelation. For all the Church’s following along with societal norms toward trends which harness the powers of belief to serve the ends of civilization but not so much the purposes of the Lord, it did not stop them from utilizing a growing number of replacement technologies to the point where the LDS Church is lauded as one of the most tech-savvy churches today.

Satan’s subtle shift has damn near stripped natural objects of all their mysterious god-given properties. Bedazzled by the devil-opment of unnatural devices, the masses have fallen out of love with their Creator, and as Hegel predicted, the intellect has succeeded in cognizing “what is intuited as a mere thing, reducing the sacred grove to mere timber.” But what is sadder still is that the natural rod or shepherd’s staff of the Governing Meridian starting at a person’s upper lip and running over the head and down the spinal cord has been hugely ignored or dismissed, not accepted as the priceless tool that God intended it to be for not only Moses or Aaron, but all of God’s people.

Governing Vessel or Meridian - The Shepherd's Crook or Staff

Governing Vessel or Meridian – The Shepherd’s Crook or Staff

We shouldn’t attribute the Original Power Source to hand-held devices any more so than to the hands which hold them. But if we understand them as symbols they can then become for us, vessels of the Lord, extensions of something far greater. For this reason the Mormon Temple Endowment dialogue focuses the mind on angelic visitations and conversing with Higher Powers while the nonverbal aspects of the ritual focus the participants on physical body awareness. The storyline and the words of the officiators carry the body of saints through the session, but the movement and flow of the thing truly turns on the axis of voluntary involvement on the part of the flesh.

BY WATER AND BY FIRE ARE HEAVEN AND EARTH BROUGHT INTO HARMONY

Charleton said that the Ruach Qodesh/Holy Spirit is “infused into the body of human embryon, as soon as that is organized, formed and prepared to receive her.” The Good News of the Gospel proclaims that the Condescension of God is not just a one-time process. Why would we want to regulate the eternal works of God to a beginning, middle, and end? Returning to the personal revelations of Walter Charleton which he doposited in Natural History of the Passions, we read:

“When in the Genital matter, swarms of active, and spiritous, chiefly sulphurous particles, predisposed to animation, have met with a less number of saline particles in a convenient focus, being as it were kindled, sometimes by another soul (as in all viviparous animals), viz., of the generant, sometimes by their own rapid motion they conceive life, or break forth into a kind of flame, which thenceforth continues to burn so long as it is constantly fed with sulphureous fewel from within, and nitrous from without….The corporeal soul, while as a flame burning within her organical body she on every side difuseth heat and light, is herself, subject to serious tremblings, noddings, eclipses, inequalities and disorderly commotions, as all flame is observed to be”

The prophet Joseph had been on a personal quest to try and reign in those inconsistencies associated with the Holy Flame of the Gods in the shaky hands of mortal man ever since that pivotal moment when the words of James 1:6 powerfully entered his heart.

Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.”

Kabbalah provides a clean and systematic context for grasping this delicate balance between the fiery aspects of faith and the no less emotional but more compassionate or conforming watery properties of a complete faith. In Kabbalah, Aleph (א) represents Air – the breath of life – and it plays a role in tenderly and majestically leading both of these other two sides of faith. But if God’s powerful windpipes so much as whisper they will provoke powerful reactions. When the Air of Spirit meets with a body dominated by the Spiritual Waters there will be some choppy seas for the individual pilot of that soul. No need to fear, since the disciple is always welcome to awake the sleeping Jesus on-board and calm the waves. Kabbalah teaches that all the archetypes are in the vital body, the superior part of the physical body. However the Higher Powers often lie dormant in the hull of one’s ship.

The founder of Mormonism was inspired of God to conceptualize, for a target audience of latter-day gentiles, this kabbalistic concept of Creator endowing His creation, His children, with the same powers He possesses.  The Man Adam in the Telestial World receives all the mysteries, all the archetypes of the Word of God in potentiality. After the Fall, Adam desires to reconnect, so he constructs and altar and with arms raised utters the phrase “Pay Lay Ale” (Hebrew פה לאל – Mouth to God). In Kabbalah, A-D-A-M (Aleph- Daleth-Aleph-Mem) receives the desired divine assistance through the letter Daleth (ד) in the middle of his name. This is done via the central column of the Tree of Life diagram and is echoed in form by the mouth on the head of the speaker situated between right and left arms which reach high and then pull down in imitation of Adam at the altar of an LDS Temple.

Full System-Kabbalah-Chakra-Sacramentscopy

Full System-Kabbalah-Chakra-Sacramentscopy

That central column is marked on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life by the letter Shin (ש) which represents the Spirit of God like a fire burning. In his shincere supplication, Adam also takes in heavenly influence through the right column marked by Aleph (א), the Spirit of God like a rushing wind, and through the left column marked with Mem (מ), signifying the Spirit of God like many mighty waters. These three are called the three mother letters: Aleph, Shin, and Mem, which are related with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost or Air, Fire, and Water. The condescension of God pro-seeds from formless to ever denser forms, finally settling in Malkuth (The Kingdom of God encompassing Earth). In the Christian tradition we see the same principles at work kick-starting the apostles’ ministry on the day of Pentecost with the sound of a rushing wind, the appearance of cloven tongues of fire, and all of this followed by baptismal waters for the believers.

The principles in Kabbalah have been in no way monopolized by Jewish mysticism. Nor are they unique to Mormonism. God speaks to all men in their own tongue. The Lamanite tradition, though every bit as subject to perversion over the centuries as any other tradition, preserved a deep understanding of the principles we are examining here. Water and Fire were known to them as Atl and Tlachinolli. Atl-Tlachinolli could be translated as ‘burning water’. But when written or spoken together these words took on a whole new metaphorical meaning according to a phenomenon within many Mesoamerican languages known as difrasismo. Atl-Tlachinolli

Atl-Tlachinolli - by Water and by Fire

Atl-Tlachinolli – by Water and by Fire

meant ‘Sacred War’ which when comprehended from a mystical standpoint means the struggle for harmony within and amongst God’s children. It signified the blood and eventually came to be used by the Aztec elites to conquer neighboring tribes and control the masses through perpetual warfare.

This knowledge did not come merely by way of Nephite dissenters, the priests of Amulon and others who were, during particular periods, placed as teachers among certain segments of the Lamanite population. The word ‘Atl’ itself indicates a much more ancient origin for this wisdom purveyed by a civilization brought by the hand of God away from Atlantis in boats at the time of the Great Cataclysm. Laman and Lemuel were not in the habit of inquiring to know the mind of the Lord and so they did not receive or value what knowledge was had among their original people. Despising their brother Nephi for what seemed to them a “know-it-all” mentality, and unwilling to even ask the Lord to make such things known to them personally, they joined and mixed their seed with pre-existing cultures who they found living here when they arrived in the promised land.

These people were dark-skinned (hence the perceived curse as documented by prejudiced Nephite scribes), and the center of their previously established and rapidly spreading culture was located where their forefathers had landed – on the thick neck of land known today as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. That thick neck of land is mirrored by the narrow neck of land in the area where the Nephites were inspired to finally settle. Both of these now fallen empires clashed in the Mississippi River Valley.

As is the case around the globe, sacred eternal truths still stare at us through the stone ruins of fallen societies and testify to the deadly consequences suffered by past nations who rebelliously sought to stir up a spiritual evil far deeper than civil war, by severing the naturally reflecting forms of the physical and spiritual regions of God’s Kingdom. Artifacts examined in the Spirit (as the Golden Plates were and the Book of Mormon may be) will reveal that, when we speak of “fallen” empires we must realize that the “falling apart” which occurred was only the result of a rift between Spiriphysico Principles of Unified Opposition in all things – things like Light and Truth, Fire and Water, Hot and Cold. These truths were known by the founders of the Lehi-Nephi colony as well as the Olmec and Mexica groups later classified by the compilers of the Book of Mormon as simply, “The Lamanites.”

I look at my environment

And wonder where the fire went

What happened to everything we used to be?

I hear so many cry for help

Searching outside of themselves

Now I know that his strength is within me

And deep in my heart

The answer, it was in me

And I made up my

To define my own destiny

Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

TEMPERATURE AND ENTROPY – ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

As the earth and her people raise their spiritual vibration to a feverish pitch, the enemies of Zion struggle to maintain a stranglehold on Christ’s followers. They are taking measures to combat what they label “global warming” or “climate change” and demand that we do the same. But the prophets among us understand that these things are part of Earth’s glorious destiny. A sound understanding of eternodynamics allows us to see that destiny, like destination is already and always present. The true followers of Christ and the global elite class which ridicules them from within their great and spacious buildings – both groups know that this is the place.

The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and our beautiful and faithful planet is destined to rise in glory. It is a matter of eternity. Postponing the fulfillment of prophesy for people positioned and trained to never roam beyond the plantation of the third dimension is the most that the wicked can manage. If they can keep us stuck in the vicious cycle set in motion by the fore-bitten fruit, they can prevent us from re-discovering our divine nature. But that is only for the time-being. An eternal being enjoys a much different relationship with reality, free from the vicious karmic cycle.

That cycle is one based entirely on the con-cept of time. In the day that Adam and Eve eat of the fruit they will surely die. Was God proved a liar, or at best extremely exaggerative in His warning to our first parents just because they did not drop dead within 24 hours of partaking from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? No, it was just a matter of time. This is why I say that states of perfection are naturally occurring as a matter of eternity, while dis-ease, death and the devil are all a matter of time.

 Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternalDante Alighieri.

Temperature is a word that comes from similar roots as words like tempo or temporal. In many languages the word for weather and time are the same. This illustrates the connection that exists between thermodynamics and eternodynamics by pointing out a relationship between temperature and the phenomenon of time. It has been said that there is no such thing as dark, only a lack of light. Technology has not given us flashdarks which can cast a shadow shaft into a lighted area the way a flashlight casts a beam of light into darkness. It is therefore assumed that only light is real as it alone can disperse darkness and not the other way around. It has been said that to speak of cold as an energy is not correct, that it should be seen in terms of extremely low levels of heat. But since it is measured in terms of negative degrees the connection between heat and cold can be confusing.

The same is true of the false dichotomy between good and evil. However, no one working within the false dichotomy of religion and science will dare admit this. We feel more comfortable with constants, but whether scientific or theological, the only thing that seems consistent is the periodic challenges to our thinking which require us to change our so called ‘constants’. Could it be that spirit is that constant which we seek? We will never have it if we insist on splitting everything in two, labeling one side superior or at least more real than the other. Joseph Smith described spirit as matter that is merely more refined. That would make matter spirit, just less refined.

Commenting on the nature of heat, observing its effect on something like boiling water, Sir Francis Bacon wrote in The New Organon (1620):

“Heat is a motion; expansive, restrained, and acting in its strife upon the smaller particles of bodies. But the expansion is thus modified; while it expands all ways, it has at the same time an inclination upward. And the struggle in the particles is modified also; it is not sluggish, but hurried and with violence.”

Elsewhere he wrote:

“As in nature, things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm.” – Of Great Place (1561-1626) – Francis Bacon

One is reminded of the heated debate known as the War in Heaven. Lucifer is the ambitious one, desiring to exalt himself above the other stars of the heaven and even above the throne of The Most High. Lucifer is also the violent one while God the Father and Jesus Christ are more calm and collected. Both Jesus and Lucifer and their respective teams – Christ and Satan – could be accurately described as beings of spirit, beings of light even, and if spirit and light then certainly heat was a part of their beings as well.

Can heat be harmful as well as helpful? Of course it can, then why not cold? Where is this locus of evil so that we may draw it out and separate it forever more from the forces of good? According to the Judeo-Christian narrative, that is precisely what we are attempting to do during this War in Heaven by casting Lucifer and the angels that followed him out. But if war is violence and violence is bad then how can Heaven be a place of perfection or completion?  The Mormon variation of the narrative provides some essential details but also raises more questions about the nature of Earth-life and earth as an element for constructing physical bodies for enjoying what is called the second estate.

But before reaching this earthly estate there is light and heat and presumably air, for light as form or flame burns at its outside in contact with air, and there is no combustion within the flame which is not mixed with air. And prior to making land-fall our physical forms must take a maiden voyage through water. Sounds like a good method for cooling down hot heads which have recently been engaged in a gaseous conflict of whirling hot air. But throughout all these stages of the soul’s transformation there is heat.

Heat can be a catalyst and an aid in evolution, or it can be a mechanism for tight luciferian control. The super-organism of a honeybee hive maintains an average temperature of around 32-35°C (90-95°F), a few degrees lower than that of a human being. Until recently “heater bees”, bees whose specialized behavior serves to regulate hive temperature, were thought to be fanning and spreading heat generated from young pupae incubating in cells near the hive’s center.

But a few years ago scientists discovered that the heater bees were responsible for generating the heat themselves by decoupling their wings so that the muscles that are normally used to move the wings run at full power, enabling their bodies to reach temperatures much higher than other bees in the hive. These heater bees not only manage to not cook themselves while regulating the overall temperature of the hive but by varying the temperature of developing pupae within a particular section of cells, they are able to actually determine what kind of role those pupae will later fulfill in the hive. The adult heater bees are like university professors in Masonic caps and gowns literally administering “degrees” to the future generations and thereby overseeing the division of labor. Those kept at 35°C turn into the intelligent forager bees that leave the nest in search of nectar and pollen. Those kept at 34°C emerge as “house keeper” bees, conducting chores such as feeding the larvae and cleaning the nest.

To heat is to eat. With the linguistic curiosity of h-prothesis, where speakers of Irish or Jamaican dialects of English tend to add an ‘h’ sound to words beginning with a vowel – “eat” would be pronounced identically to “heat”. The word Ramadan describes an Islamic time of fasting from sunrise till sunset and it comes from the Arabic root ramida or ar-ramad, which means scorching heat or dryness. The Hebrew noun  (lehem), meaning bread, features at the end of the town of New Testament fame – Bethlehem (House of Bread). But lehem has a much broader sense of food in general and is used in the Bible to describe sources of sustenance ranging from the mysterious manna to honey.

This is the same word that is used in a more figurative sense in a phrase like “the bread of wickedness” (Proverbs 4:17), or when Jesus refers to himself as the “Bread of Life” (John 6:35). It is even used to denote the target of a conquest (Numbers 14:9), and this makes perfect sense when we realize that it comes from the verb  (laham) – to eat, to devour, to use as food. As a verb root  (laham) can mean to do battle, to fight. This is why we see it pop up in the noun  (milhama) – battle, war – used to describe YHWH as a man of war. Continuing the correlation between feasting and battle, Psalm 23:5 says: You prepare a banquet for me while my enemies watch. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.

Sir Francis Bacon seemed to be on to something when he associated heat with violence. And bacon from the slaughterhouse to the frying pan aside, even a raw vegan diet breaks lehem (food) down via the action of laham (eating). Speaking of “breaking down”, the semitic triliteral root,  (LHM – laham) literally breaks down to  (the preposition that usually translates into the English words – to, at), and  (heat), which is the name given to one of Noah’s supposedly cursed sons. So, ‘To Heat’ is literally ‘To Eat’.

We can use heat either wisely or foolishly, for nurturing or for destruction. You can have cold air, icy water and frozen tundra, but you can not have a frigid fire. When a human life-form chooses to repeatedly misuse the eternal flame of love/life, it will die the spiritual death. Its spirit body looses the privilege of Prometheus’ Fire and its physical body is eventually left completely cold.

The physical body is composed of cells which are counted less guilty as they were only children not properly loved by the spirit steward who was placed as their parent. Thus these cells decompose at a slower rate, gradually relinquishing their portion of spirit as they are mercifully returned to Mother Earth or are quickly caught up in purifying flames after the Master Intelligence has revoked the tainted soul’s right to his or her Second Estate. This process is accepted as natural and indeed it is a natural consequence of every Icarus who, detesting the blessing of the flesh, flies foolishly and haughtily at the hot Sun only to scorch his brash wings and fall.

The Sanskrit word – निर्वाण nirvana, literally means “extinction, blowing out“. What does one do upon reaching Nirvana (The Highest Degree within the Celestial Kingdom)? Well, according to Buddha himself, when one has ascended the ladder of enlightenment to the highest Nirvana, he does so only to look back down on mankind below and, upon beholding their suffering, immediately descend again to help his brethren. This may sound crazy, this up and down, but it is more than likely just our selfishness through which we view it that is crazy.

Maybe Mormons do not necessarily understand this concept but Mormon scripture states that Jesus ascended up on high, and also descended below all things. All things are created from energy and energy moves in waves which form both peaks and troughs. When one finds oneself at a peak, the thrill continues on the big dip of the roller-coaster called life. If one should find one’s self stalling and wallowing on the low end, eating with swine from the trough then it is time to come home, like the prodigal son. It is time to turn up the temperature and rise up the thermometer like Mercury with healing in His wings.

Entropy means turning inward (En Trope). It’s just what happens when expending and expanding energy feels restricted, says, “enough is enough”, then decides to turn itself around and take a huge inhalation for the benefit of all. Just as the exhalation of the Gods put the breath of life into man in his beginning, the inhalation of the Gods can really knock the wind out of man. When they inhale we exhale. Remember, Nirvana literally means “blowing out”. If we are not in harmony with God that exhalation could be our last breath unto extinction, hence the imperative notion of becoming one with the Father as Jesus emphasized. If we are all “hot air” the consequences of our “puffed uphaughtiness may be much more literal than we care to admit.

Scripture tells us in fairly descriptive terms that the Holy Spirit withdraws when offended. When a man is offended he typically starts a fight with the offender. But when the Holy Spirit is offended it does not engage, but rather steps back, takes a deep breath, and disengages from the beautiful strife of life. To strive does not merely mean to aspire but also to lock into a struggle. Worldly aspiration and out of sync respiration lead to expiration on our parts if we think we can prevail without a real wrestle with the Lord as Jacob did. Mormon canon repeatedly reminds us that the Spirit of the Lord will not always “strive with man” (2Nephi 26:11, Gen 6:3, Moses 8:17, D&C 1:33, Ether 2:15) Anyone who has witnessed a dying or dead corpse knows that when the Holy Spirit feels that it’s warm breath is being wasted on a cold heart it leaves the entire body to that coldness, taking its primordial heat home to the hearth in the bosom or heart of God.

Life is meant to be a house warming party that goes on and on for many days. Genesis 6:3 and Moses 8:17 say that house/body warming party can go on for up to 120 days, so why are we ending the party so early these days? Who has set these house rules and ordinances over our heads which supposedly obligate us to chase the Spirit out of the Temple by a certain hour? Who says the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight? Have our Holy Temples of the Lord been perverted into B.Y.U. dorms and housing? An enemy hath done this. Alien forces may scare us into asthmatic attacks which threaten our peace to destroy. But we can look to the touching climatic scenes of M. Knight Shyamalan’s masterpiece, Signs, and see a Father who holds the Son in His arms while telling Him:

“Don’t be afraid. We’ll slow this down together. Feel my chest. Feel it moving in and out. Breathe like me. Breathe like me. Come on. Stay with me. I know it hurts. Be strong baby. It’ll pass. It’ll pass. The fear is feeding him. Don’t be afraid of what’s happening. Believe it’s going to pass. Believe it. Just wait. Don’t be afraid. The air is coming. Believe. We don’t have to be afraid. It’s about to pass. Here it comes. Don’t be afraid. Here comes the air. Don’t be afraid. Feel my chest. Breathe with me. Together. The air is going in our lungs. Together. We’re the same. We’re the same.”

Individuals, tribes, nations, and empires are all equally susceptible to entropy. But the self-same air currents that threaten to sweep us off the face of the earth (Ether 2) if we refuse to repent will save us from ourselves with a breath of fresh air if we accept it with new lungs.

Just because the law of entropy may be applied to an object does not mean that object should be discarded as unworthy of our desire. Just because the law of entropy can be applied to an object does not mean that it must be applied, at least not in the way that our feeble grasp of thermodynamics and even more limited understanding of eternodynamics dictates. The point of existence is always to not get stuck but to remain free – free to enjoy EVERYTHING. There is no existence without enjoyment; there is no en-joy-ment without en-join-ment, and there can be no enjoinment without desire.

We should certainly avoid getting hung up on the flesh and other forms which are subject to entropy. And we should certainly let our desire be towards formless attributes of God such as love, joy and peace. But if those formless attributes are real and can be said to exist, even though they can not be fully explained or experienced empirically, if these are indeed the essence of God, then we should pause and think – how is it that we know or sense this? Is it not because the formless itself has eternally burning desire towards the form, far beyond that which we developing life-forms can muster?

We love, because he first loved us. – 1 John 4:19

INTRODUCTION TO THE THERMODYNAMICS & ETERNODYNAMICS OF DESIRE


MASTER TEACHERS vs. MASTER TEASERS

The question of desire is an interesting one. We have, in what is commonly presented as Christianity and Buddhism, two religions representing opposite ends of the spectrum, at least on the surface. The former tends in practice to focus on the directing of desire, while the latter aims more towards an elimination of desire.  But we can not gain a true under-standing from examining the surface of a thing. We see the plant that springs forth but we have no understanding unless we dig, delve to the roots. Even sticking to the words of the founders of these movements can only get us so far, because scriptures are at best the stalk of the plant or trunk of the tree. Usually they come to us via second-hand, third-hand, hundredth-hand sources. In both traditions we find master teachers. What distinguishes a master teacher from others who are called teachers? It is that the master teacher recognizes his or herself to be a student. All master teachers are students of the source. They remain always aware of their relationship to the divine source. They are not ashamed to be seen as “Teacher’s Pet”. These master teacher/students make it clear that all may enjoy the same relationship, but regardless of whether or not other students embrace this truth, the master teacher constantly and consciously cultivates a natural and intense desire towards God. Those who experience a thing directly are in fact the only students who learn anything. Those who never visit but only glean knowledge of the kingdom remotely, through reading what students-turned-teachers have written about it, will only think they know something.

So we are repeatedly invited by the master teachers to visit and know for ourselves the realms of which they have become representatives. There are at least 7 heavens about which humanity has collectively speculated and to which some individuals have been. The Buddhic realm is only one of the degrees of glory. It is like a white room a place to rest entirely from all, and I do mean all, the cares of this world. It is indeed high up on the ladder and a wonderful, even essential place to visit. But all of the heavens described by ascended masters are more like vacation S-P-O-T-S not permanent S-T-O-P-S. When any one of the Many Mansions in Our Father’s House is mistaken for a permanent stop, it becomes a prison and starts to bring about damnation.

Often there is a flaccid admittance of the need to keep moving, but it is only used as a carrot on a stick. In religion we hear a lot of talk about doing good deeds and earning our way into heaven. In politics the same rhetoric can be heard expressed in terms of forward thinking and progressive action. But when you step back and look at it, we are just subjecting ourselves to busywork. Rulers rarely see the need to labor in the same way they require their subjects to. Still, regardless of position in the pyramid, zombies everywhere feel the need to “look alive”. But the paid performers that we are, it is all an act with us. The reality of our situation is a rapid onset of rigor mortis from all the religious and intellectual rigor of our modern-day deathstyles. Whether sitting statically on our thrones or tirelessly laboring away on our treadmills, none of us are actually going anywhere.

In his book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, marketing genius Seth Godin (whose last name is a subliminal reference to the God-in-man) says:

“The largest enemy of change and leadership isn’t a “no.” It’s a “not yet.” “Not yet” is the safest, easiest way to forestall change. “Not yet” gives the status quo a chance to regroup and put off the inevitable for a little while longer. Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.”

Branding life eternal as a goal to chase rather than the momentum of the moment that it really is, only postpones the return of Christ. And master teachers from Christ Jesus to Christ Krishna have taught that the teachers of religion fearfully keep Zion at bay through their dogma which is more teasing than teaching. If anyone doubts that Christ Jesus knew what He was talking about when He echoed Christ Isaiah and proclaimed woe to the teachers of the law, let him consider the walking contradiction that is organized religion.

In the last General Conference of the LDS Church, Dieter F. Uchtdorf said:

“Sometimes in life we become so focused on the finish line that we fail to find joy in the journey… Doesn’t it seem foolish to spoil sweet and joyful experiences because we are constantly anticipating the moment when they will end?”

It is a valid question – does anyone stop to smell the roses these days? But here is an equally valid question – if a group of people are truly on the path of happiness, why would they have to be told or reminded to be happy while on that path? One immediate benefit from taking sufficient time to smell the roses on the path of life is development of the spiritual olfactory. A strong sense of spirit smell does wonders for the Christian who is serious about developing that all-important gift of discernment spoken of in Christian scripture. When you nose, you knows. You can not only smell the roses, but also the bullsh*t. On the proverbial path of life there is a fine line between travel and travail. Sure, there is something eternal about sadness and pain just as there is about happiness and pleasure, but the key to these experiences is you and the key to you is awareness. This awareness is in-finite and that means it is the eternal spirit which is wont to reside in(the)finite.

We can become so fixed upon some distant destination that our sense of destiny turns to frustration and damnation, keeping us from fully ingesting, enjoying and learning the vital lessons of the here and now. When a belief system points always to, not merely “the future” but an elusive “afterlife” as the appropriate time and place for experiencing a fullness of joy, it is propagating a doctrine of damnation. False ideas of afterlife can be a fatal lie. If your religious tradition claims to offer eternal happiness, eternal marriage or any other aspect of eternal life but fails to produce results here and now, then there is nothing eternal about it. It will eventually fall and many along with it. Heaven is not obtainable in the afterlife because upon reaching that promised point on the horizon, what was sold to us as eternal marriage is revealed to be an eternal mirage. Alma 34:34 says: “That same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.” We can only ever affect change from in the moment. That is good news for eternal souls, but perceived as bad news by troublesome spirits who flee from us when we realize eternal life is happening today.

When “that day” comes it is suddenly transformed into “this day”. As soon as “one(1)day” becomes “to(2)day” as it inevitably does, leaders and followers alike are confounded and insulted. So a person or people who are always relegating the fulfillment of prophecy to some future date rather than letting it be true for them in their sphere of influence already, are always taken unawares, as by a thief in the night. They will find themselves unable to abide the day since they are wholly unaccustomed to experiencing eternity now and much less serenity now. Apocalypse Now is described in scripture as the “Great & Terrible Day”. Not many derive wisdom from this title which indicates that the usually unconsidered choice to unify these two polar opposites (Great and Terrible) is the key to the kingdom. Most prefer to have the choices made for them by a set of time honored traditions parading as eternal law. They vainly imagine that they may completely escape the sorrow while others perish. But remember, it was the “more righteous part” of the Nephites and Lamanites who were left “lamenting and howling” in the darkness for three consecutive days. The vain live and die by religious rules which advertise guarantees but only ever amount to a guarantease. But that’s what happens when you put your faith in the master teasers indstead of master teachers.

ETERNODYNAMICS

So we can see that the master teasers are too afraid and too conceited to make progress themselves or even allow others to do so. And I think we can all sense the importance of learning to operate from the present with faith enough to move. Forget about moving mountains at this point, we just need faith enough to get ourselves moving. We can only find Christ in the present moment; hence it is important not to “look beyond the mark.” But if standing our ground in the here and now is crucial to an unwavering demonstration of faith, then how does this vital movement come about out of seeming stillness?

Just as the present must be our base of operations, being in fact the only real time, location serves as a pivotal crux for simple spatial transportation and advanced teleportation. We never actually reach the future we instead pull it to us by incorporating ideas into the present. ‘Then’ always becomes ‘Now’ sooner or later. And ‘There’ can just as easily become ‘Here’, as we have demonstrated to ourselves various times in our lives by getting into a vehicle and, while essentially sitting in one place, driving our bodies from point A to point B. The writers of the timeless 80’s classic movie, Back to the Future, were giving an example of eternodynamic self-propulsion. When Marty dictates a note for the past version of his dad to read to the past version of his mom, the note contains a rather poetic description of how desire can propel us forward in faith along our chosen path. It says: “My destiny has brought me to you,” but the overly scientific Martin McFly Sr. reads it as: “My density has popped me to you.” Either expression is correct, we are simply speaking of the same phenomenon of motion in terms of spiritual and physical manifestation.

There is no place we can go without us being there. As they say, “Wherever you go, there you are.” It sounds silly, but it is in fact the most eloquent explanation of omnipresence. We laugh only because we doubt and doubt is inimical to faith. With the passage of time, and as a result of the perceived loss of childhood which Gertrude Stein experienced in Oakland California, she said of that place, “There is no there there.” This also sounds funny to our ears, but the same could be said of anywhere but ‘here’. In many ways we are all seeking the “there, there” of the comforter, to reconnect to beloved parents who we thought were lost to us since the Fall. This desire can either swelter in feelings of abandonment or it can activate swellings within the chest cavity (Alma 32:28) which end up unlocking to us the secrets of repentance, reconnection, time travel and ultimately resurrection. Stein’s writings were sometimes referred to as “stream of consciousness”. Since we and everything around us is created from a constant “stream of consciousness,” this term is helpful in making sense of what we might call eternodynamics.

Here + Now is a scientific formula that has been studied by Albert Einstein and many other famous scientists. Their experiments show us that Time + Space are connected and for their “discoveries,” they are looked upon as geniuses. But it should never be assumed that what is “discovered” in this time was never known in times past. Holy Scripture surely testifies to the forgetfulness of mankind. In other timespaces, such as pre-columbian meso-america, an innate understanding of this concept imbued the language with a reflection of the faithful relationship between time and space. Many words that we would classify as prepositions, adjectives or adverbs were united by one word which served to express both a spatial and temporal sense. So, for example, phrases that translate as “in front of” or “in the beginning” would be expressed by the same short phrase and often condensed into one simple word – similar to the English word, ‘before’. But whereas in times before, ‘before’ was regularly used to imply locality, these days we frequently hear the word when rushing to complete our business “before the deadline”. No one says, “Stand before me,” unless of course you are “The Law,” in which case you carefully use your language to address startled and confused citizens, commanding them to “appear before the court.” And in our backwards state, no one has the courage or common sense to realize that:

1) Nothing appears in this physical realm before it is conceived of on the emotional and mental planes.

2) Standing before a thing locates the causal power with you, not the thing, since ‘before’ stands at the beginning of time and dictates the end result.

The pre-fixed order of the universe can be seen at work in English prefixes ‘ante’ and ‘anti’. Even though they carry seemingly separate meanings, both trace their roots back to one common source – a Greek word meaning ‘before’ or ‘against’. Absolutely everyone is “anti-government” in some particular way or another. Republicans are against government doing certain things and Democrats are against it doing others. Neither party realizes that pushing against something only furthers it along. Each “opposing” side provides the potential energy the other needs in order to go kinetic. This is what makes the whole game of politricks so frenetic. So-called anarchists who struggle against the entire system, ignorantly perpetuate it with their own energy. To perturb something is to stimulate it, awaken it and give it the energy to grow. Only those who proclaim themselves ante-government pose a serious deterrent to the madness.

If we think about what we are doing and saying, we will note how fragmented our view of time and space has become. Looking to linguistics again, we will notice that older versions of English tended to demonstrate this principle more so than how it is spoken today. Reading ‘Biblical’/‘Shakespearean’ text we hear the phrase “at hand” being used to speak of temporal and/or spatial relationships. But even then, we do not consider the idea as a simultaneous expression of two intertwined aspects of one reality. In speaking of “non-tangible matters” we still use it in this way. But for some reason we feel the need to make a slight moderation/modernization and say ‘On hand’ when talking about “material things”. Deep in our subconscious we do recognize the eternal and unbreakable attachment that links time to space but for some reason we cannot seem to consciously acknowledge that; whether matter of the heart or physical matter, it is all matter and it all matters.

There is a quote that is attributed to graphic artist Katherine Gerardi which explains the dynamics between time and space very simply and very well.

“At first, I learned that the key word was, ‘Now’. And after embracing that, I feel that the key word is ‘Flow’, since if ‘Now’ is the only true place, then flow is the only true action – to be present and in harmony with Change.”

Flow is the perfect word to illustrate the movement which we seek. Time is flowing through us and infinite awareness funneled into our bodies creates operational spaces in accordance with our will power. Or, as Jay Kay, lead singer of Jamiroquai shrewdly sings out on the title track of one of the band’s chart-topping albums – “I know what we’re doin’ is travelin’ without movin’.

So, what does desire have to do with all this? Well, the only thing that can overcome damnation is movement and the only thing that can spur true movement and ensure its continuation in this realm is desire. Desire is sometimes dissected into two principles of love and will in order to better understand the mechanics at work. We could use either ‘love’ or ‘will’ interchangeably to accurately describe the concept of ‘desire’ because at any given time and place both love and will are working together and manifesting as desire. Desire, then would sometimes seem to be synonymous with form, and other times with intangible qualities. The reason for this versatility is because, like the Son is a perfect blend of the Mother and the Father, pure desire is such a natural result of the combination of love and will, that it may move simultaneously in the direction of form and formlessness, thereby solidifying the bond between stern Father Time, who seems to wait for no man, and firm but malleable Mother Space who expands and contracts allowing passage to any and all brave souls. But remember that the Son of God was already present as a guiding magnetic force in the First Place. To employ the Back to the Future analogy once again; young Marty Jr. exists as the reason for Marty Sr. and Lorraine coming together prior to his physical birth.

Eternodynamics DiagramWORKING WITH DESIRE

Now, just because desire forms a permanent connection between love and will does not mean that it is never subject to imbalance in its embodiment of these two principles. Alma’s monologue cautions:

“I ought not to harrow up in my desires the firm decree of a just God, for I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life; yea, I know that he allotteth unto men, yea, decreeth unto them decrees which are unalterable, according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation or unto destruction.” (Alma 29:4)

Alma is talking metaphysics in these verses. He knows that feelings of discontentment with the here and now only freeze up our capabilities to perform great things. So he shifts from a wishful mindset to glorying in “that which the Lord hath commanded” him. He does not let his desire dwell too long on the future. Nor does he find fault with his desire as it switches course, passing right over the present and swinging in the direction of the past before finally regaining balance in the center. His desire sways from excessive expectation – “Oh that I were and angel!” (verse 1) to respectful remembrance – “I also remember the captivity of my fathers” (verse 11). But it eventually settles like a pendulum in the middle. Is it Alma’s will that harnesses his desire or his love that calms his desire in this instance? Or is it a case of his desire straddling the two extremes, bringing them together and planting his feet firmly? However we choose to explain it, there can be no doubt that his feisty yet focalized desire now gives Alma a sense of empowerment. He ends the chapter with a strong positive affirmation – “And may God grant that it may be done according to my words, even as I have spoken. Amen.” Yes, from traveling preacher to trumpet blowing angel, Alma the Younger was and is a true master metaphysician.

Alma obtained the desire of his heart and you and I may do the same. But most do not care enough to develop a conscious relationship with their Heavenly Parents so that the desires within them can take form. It requires patience and submissiveness. Alma the Elder was patient and did not try to force his son to repent of his wicked ways. Alma the Younger after seeing the angel was humbled and concentrated on the mission God set before him. All of this time and faith paid off, and now, Alma the Angel bursts forth – fully formed and ready for action!

When we find ourselves in dark or even restricting corners do we despair or do we trust the Holy Mother? We are only in her womb. We needn’t see it as a tomb. Kicking and pushing against the dark walls will not do anything but cause our desire to grow. The increase of desire alone is of no help to us, for a premature birth could mean a premature demise. We should be taking this vital time in the dark confines of the womb to allow this cocoon of love to nourish and strengthen our will for the day of our deliverance which is nigh. We don’t have to be mathematicians or know anything about square matrixes of numbers whose combined products can be interpreted as an absolute value representing an area, volume or limit that boxes us into a matrix within the matrix to comprehend that there is a fine line between determent and determinant.

This is where desire gets tricky – where it can get sticky – like semen building up and occasionally spilling out but only from an automatic, lazy and even rebellious overflow. Off-spring in any stage are eternally in need of guidance from the Father. It is true that the off-spring of the Father will reach a point where, filled with desire, they begin to move of their own volition. This is a good thing. It means they are ready. But without conscious guidance from the Father, that energy which builds up and springs-off will come to naught in wet ‘pipe dreams’ or even worse, grow languid and feeble. It is not necessarily a sin in the eyes of the Creator to masturbate, but failure to master fate through masterfully bated breath of life results in a less than immaculate ejaculate and can create problems. There is no such thing as a problem child since even a child who is problematic presents an opportunity for the Father to be glorified in perfection. As creators in training, it is not masturbation but misturbation that is a misuse of our desire. Desire that is misdirected or neglected never succeeds in creating a new life for us. If forced or underappreciated, desire will de-Sire bastard brain-children, aborted dreams or soulless apparitions which haunt their maker till they are at last reabsorbed by we who must bear responsibility for their fragmented phantasmal forms.

PROPER TOOLS FOR HANDLING DESIRE

When working with the highly volatile substance of desire it helps to use the right tools. Tools in the mundane mammon of Idumea are prized for their current value which fluctuates with the ups and downs of the market. But as a clever commercial campaign for a well known financial institution reminds us, we need to “Chase what matters.” From the perspective of eternodynamics there are things in both the spiritual and physical realms which are also cherished for their current value. But here the word ‘current’ refers not only to an up-to-date point in a time-line, but also and more especially to a thing’s ability to conduct current – as in flow of eternal energies. Such things as arms and legs, for example hold great current value for mankind and have for millennia now. This is why they charge us an arm and a leg to keep upgraded with the latest trick-nology – “tricked out” as those versed in modern slang might say. Indeed, but “tricked out” of what? – our birthright of free inner-g.  It’s really just a “new lamps for old” scam. When we come to understand the immense potential of our own limbs and appendages; even braided locks of hair as antennae, we begin to see how silly our psychological attachment to man-made gadgets and gizmos is. Truly it is Virtual Insanity that we are living in. As the lyrics of another Jamiroquai song testify, we “always seem to be governed by this love we have for useless twisting of our new technology.” The bible says we “worship the work of [our] own hands, that which [our] own fingers have made.” (Isaiah 2:8)

For many years scientists were puzzled by the fact that more heat could be generated from the Sun's corona than from His surface, until finally they realized that the Son braids his locks and it is this braiding that combines for flares of spectacular Sampson-like strength and energy.

For many years scientists were puzzled by the fact that more heat could be generated from the Sun’s corona than from His surface, until finally they realized that the Son braids his locks and it is this braiding that combines for flares of spectacular Sampson-like strength and energy.

I-pods and I-phones are the I-Dols of our day. There is a trance-humanist agenda that is subtly but swiftly sweeping over the sleeping masses. “Accept no imitations,” we are told by the sons of Cain, travailing salesmen who employ double-speak as they sell us imitations. Trick-nology will never equal the majesty and grace of the human body. But if ‘I’ can be convinced that these gadgets and gizmos are-me, then I inadvertently give rise to an army of I-Robots designed to replace the human race. That is the grave danger of our precious I-Dolls. This is what we can expect if we forsake the Great I-Am which is a part of all of us, accepting instead these individually wrapped futures. The only way to avoid such a dark fate is to unwrap ourselves from the Individual Pods they have placed us in and connect with one another via true spiritual inner-g. Some people think that their undue trust in technology does not qualify as putting their trust in the arm of flesh, which is expressly forbidden in scripture. When Jeremiah and Nephi say “cursed is he who maketh flesh his arm” they are not condemning the use of the arm as a channel for divine energies. It is he who neglects this practice and resorts to so-called technological enhancement and brute force on whom the curse falls. It is not that your arm of flesh is not special; on the contrary you must begin to realize just how special it is as a vessel for the life-stream of the spirit so you can commune daily with the divine inner-g that The Creator offers to all liberally.

In today’s world there is much F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real) and this can make it extremely tempting to focus on man-made forms for protection of ourselves and our loved ones. The enemy would much rather have us focused on political petitions which cleverly steer our “right to bear arms” away from bearing the Spirit of God like a burning fire through our God-given arms towards a frivolous and futile franticness about “firearms”, which are only a lesser power devised by man for use of force upon the earth in periods where faith in God has dwindled to a frightening degree. Men of God need to be more about the former (Power which stood before the foundations of the world let alone this great nation) than the latter (Latter-Day So-called Liberty movements). The Japanese word, “kara-te” literally means “empty hand, bare hand.” As we shift our attention from militias of men to the lessons of the Lord we will gain the confidence of the martial artist and find ourselves not merely in body but also in soul, holy and whollymarshaled and disciplined for war” as per D&C 87:4.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

In light of the tendency we mortals have to focus on the physical laws by which we are bound, it is useful for us to take up a study of those laws, but only insomuch as we remain clear on the truth that, such physical facts are only reflections and refractions of spiritual principles. Just as the Ten Commandments were only fractioned bits of the whole and higher law that originally came down from the mountain top, only to be dashed to pieces because the people would not abide it; so is the divine law of love broken down into lesser laws, which when amassed by men, whether to a total of ten or forty-two, could never equal the emergent majesty of the universal code of life – pure, whole love. Thermodynamics is just a physical manifestation of eternodynamics. In the same way that thermodynamics concerns itself with measuring and predicting macroscopic energy displays from microscopic movements within systems, eternodynamics looks at the spiritual part of the process which pre-seeds even the quantity known as internal energy postulated in the first law of thermodynamics. In fact, the first law of thermodynamics is itself reliant upon what Ralph H. Fowler and co-author Edward A. Guggenheim coined as a “zeroeth law of thermodynamics” – stating that a kind of egalitarian Euclidian relationship between systems must exist.

If A and C are each in thermal equilibrium with B, A is also in equilibrium with C.

So, for example, as long as the members of the Godhead are understood to be three distinct thermodynamic systems, then reflexivity and symmetry are perfectly maintained among the group due to a common link of heat/desire which preserves a state unchanged through time. Eternodynamics, then, could be called the study of pre-existence, upon which all the physical sciences depend – starting with thermodynamics. They are two ends of one begending, as explained by the Lord in D&C 29:30-33.

30 But remember that all my judgments are not given unto men; (God is telling us that there is more than meets the eye and even more than can be detected by microscopes) and as the words have gone forth out of my mouth even so shall they be fulfilled, that the first shall be last, and that the last shall be first in all things whatsoever I have created by the word of my power, which is the power of my Spirit.

31 For by the power of my Spirit created I them; yea, all things both spiritual and temporal

32 First spiritual, secondly temporal, which is the beginning of my work; and again, first temporal, and secondly spiritual, which is the last of my work— (The science of thermodynamics follows a similar pattern from unseen to seen processes and also distinguishes transfers between closed systems as ‘work’)

33 Speaking unto you that you may naturally understand; but unto myself my works have no end, neither beginning; but it is given unto you that ye may understand, because ye have asked it of me and are agreed (Being “agreed” as it says here could also be expressed similarly to being in “equilibrium” as stated in the zeroeth law of thermodynamics).

So when we come across terms like hot or cold describing temperature of temporal things according to the second law of thermodynamics in our books of science, we would do well to remember that we are still speaking of the same eternal things we hear described with similar terms in religious records.

15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth

Revelation 3:15-16

Justin has given an excellent breakdown of these verses in his post Lukewarm=Good for Nothing.  He explains that both hot and cold serve valuable purposes in the eyes of the Lord. God is not saying that he wants an either or situation, but that His desires are that men and women everywhere learn to make their desires manifest in both hot and cold demonstrations, thereby becoming versatile servants in our common cause – Life Eternal – rather than jealous slaves in a common curse – Spiritual and Physical Death. Justin is careful to reference this scripture as coming from the Revelation or Apocalypse of Saint John. This calls to attention a subconscious correlation between the often quoted, seldom understood standard set forth here in Chapter 3 verses 15 through 16, and the same truth in the same chapter and verses but in the Gospel of John.

15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3:15-16

For a firmer grasp on the commonality between these two expressions from writings under the name of John it might be helpful to take in the bookend verses for a little more context. Verse 14 in the third chapter of the Apocalypse of John addresses the subsequent verses to “the angel of the church of the Laodiceans” and references a higher spiritual authority for the claims of knowledge which follow. For more information on this higher spiritual authority listed simply as “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God,” one may consult An Anarchical View of the Keys pt. 1, posted here, or dig deeper into ancient Egyptian gospels. But for expediency in our learning of thermodynamics as an extension of higher law from a spiritual plane of existence, it need only be duly noted that any temporal realities John is recounting are inextricably connected with the highest authority of Heaven. The connection is made possible through angelic beings possessing varying degrees of will-desire-love power, who ascend and descend along the ladder of Jacob’s dream. These angels of light are alternately seen as angles of light on the physical plane. Jacob’s Ladder has its physiological materialization in our DNA which coils like the serpent. This is why we find appropriate correspondence between verses 14 in chapter 3 of both the Apocalypse and the Gospel of John; where Jesus relates to Nicodemus the connection between the lifting up of Moses’ “serpent in the wilderness,” and the “Son of man”.

After establishing the connection between things temporal and things spiritual in the preceding verses, we can skip to the encapsulating information encrypted in verse 17 of each scripture set respectively.

Apocalypse of John:

17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:

Gospel of John:
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

Both warn against the failure to understand the linkage between divine beings and their imperfect counterparts. These verses speak to the grave misunderstanding on the part of the world with regards to God’s divine mission as Jesus in the flesh. Seeing things with only the carnal eyes we are led to think that worldly riches buy us security and that the Son of man buys our souls from the Devil. But it is man alone, or his idea of man, alone and without a constant attachment to his maker, which creates the illusion of separateness. Your own spirit did not come to condemn your body any more than Jesus came to condemn the world. Both, Jesus and your inner Christ came to express love and bless with Eternal Life. Oscillation between the supposed extremes of hot and cold, up and down, left and right, as proposed by the Lord, can have the effect of a realized unity in the minds of His servants.

Even the First Epistle of John contains additional comparisons within verses 14-17 of its third chapter. And here we are given further insight into how the eternodynamics of will-desire-love power plays out in the sustenance of that which we call physical life. Just like in the other passages, these words start off with a declaration of knowledge obtained from the highest possible authority.

14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death (Amenta).

Verse 14 clearly illustrates that to love is to live. It also defines death in a way that we do not typically think of it. We say that death is only in effect once the spirit is utterly separated from the body, but we fail to recognize the spiritual, emotional and mental death or separation of body from spirit, earth from heaven, which we inflict almost everyday, every moment for years leading up to a disastrous result. A result which, seeking to excuse ourselves in sin, we say is inevitable. Is it, or could it be as mankind was once taught by Adam, Eve, Seth, Enoch and others in ancient times? Could it be that Joseph Smith Jr.’s mind was inspired with a restored version of ancient temple rites to communicate, if nothing else, one important message to we who sit in darkness? We are the dead and we will dwell in various levels of Amenta till we admit our self-hate which places a mental and physical block between us and Elohim and infects every aspect of our death cult-sure society. Remember the zeroeth law of thermodynamics posits that if A and C are each in thermal equilibrium with B, A is also in equilibrium with C. In other words, if you love God and your neighbor loves God then you must also love one another. If such is not the case, then you are scientifically proven to be out of thermal equilibrium with God.

15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
16 Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

The trickle-down effect of the widely misunderstood condescension of God is here presented in terms of either love accepted and passed on or love rejected and passed up, also known as hate. Love is life, pure and simple, but at dangerously low levels we have not the courage to call it what it is. Our lifestyles are deathstyles. We are numbered among those who “love and make a lie,” (Rev. 22:15) meaning we devote the life-force with which God blesses us to a monstrous falsehood that requires endless and pointless labor to sustain even as it drains the people and the earth of all that is good.

Verse 17 of the third chapter of the First Epistle of John fits right in with verse 17 in the corresponding chapters of the Gospel as well as the Apocalypse of John. It is another blast in the face of the market mentality which keeps people from seeing, loving, knowing their brother and also from seeing, loving, knowing the Elder Brother of humanity and the Father who has sent Him.

17 But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

The Love of God shed forth in the hearts of man and through all creation is what makes us alive. Love is the mysterious Heavenly Mother, about whom those living in these last days wonder and the same Mother about whom those dying in these latter-days have forgotten.  She is the Mother of All Living. In the seen world she is our Mother/Matter. She surrounds us with her supportive embrace and is with us from womb to tomb. At the unseen levels of existence, or those not visible to the naked eye, She is the Electron, which is feminine and has a negative charge—not in the sense of being bad, or evil—but in the sense that it is a subatomic particle that is highly receptive to the kinetic energy with which it is inseminated by a Proton. Protons are subatomic particles with a positive, masculine charge, representative of the Heavenly Father. They project energy, especially during intercourse with Electrons to conceive the Neutron that binds them together. The Neutron is of course simultaneously symbolic of and symbolized by the Son of God. Sharing and in fact constituting a symbiotic relationship between the Holy Mother and Father, a Neutron is that desire which we spoke of as playing the central role in eternodynamics. In this way, eternodynamics and thermodynamics are one and the same thing, viewed from two different coexistent planes in the Plan.

When electrons have sexual intercourse with protons then it is more than possible for hard, dense, matter to transubstantiate into energy, which is simply matter in a highly aroused state. The natural catalyst behind the passionate fusing and acceleration of protons and electrons is love. Of course there are man-made technologies, such as the large hadron collider in Switzerland, that can artificially replicate this fusing process, but it’s just not the same as the real thing. This is because the natural law of cause and effect dictates that different causes bring forth different effects, even if the process of transformation proceeding from these different causes seem, at first glance, to be mirror reflections of one another.

In Moroni’s scathing indictment of modern LDS culture (Mormon 8:38) he accuses us of selling ourselves for “that which will canker”. Canker is really just an alternate spelling of cancer. We may be able to defend and justify the current state of the Church as “not fully ripened in iniquity quite yet” but Cancer rates are less open to theoretical conjecture. Do we fail to see the connection between our beliefs and our blights?  The Lord has not asked us to stand around waiting and debating about and until the precise moment of death of the Church or the society around us. That is the job of a coroner, which is a royal office of the state that originally entailed protecting the property of the crown but by the 17th century had narrowed to the duty of determining the cause of death in cases not obviously natural. Institutional cancer is nothing new and biological cancer may be common at this time in history but neither is natural. Cancer cells proliferate throughout the body when the preconscious mind denies the reality of love. The cell governor overcompensates for this deficit within the soul by ordering cells to rapidly replicate—a process of multiplication that is motivated by love under natural circumstances. But because the reassuring influence of love is not present in this scenario, the cell governor is motivated by fear, which if left unaddressed, will ultimately lead to the forced decomposition of the human body. Passion without purpose is paralyzing, but a life lived without passion is fatal. Love and passion or desire—which is usually confused with hyper emotionalism—are the lost keys to an impeccable legacy.

The Will of God and Faith


Romans 9: 6-24 [English Standard Version]:

…it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.”

And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad — in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls — she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” As it is written [in Malachi], “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

What shall we say then?  Is there injustice on God’s part?  By no means!  For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?  Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory — even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

The two historical cases:

Looking at Paul’s logic — because God chose one of Abraham’s spouses over the others, it follows that claiming descent from Abraham was not sufficient to make one an heir to God’s promise:

And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.

Further because God chose one of Rebekah’s twins over the other, claiming descent from Isaac was not sufficient to make one an heir to God’s promise.

And Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.  And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the Lord.  And the Lord said unto her, two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

NOTE:  However, Rebekah was told that the older would serve the younger.  Given the Lord’s vernacular for presidency/leadership as voluntary servitude – perhaps this was a misunderstood revelation, and that misunderstanding led things to play out the way they did.  Just a thought.

The extrapolated case:

From these two historical cases, Paul theroizes that it is then likewise true that claiming to be “of Israel” cannot demonstrate that a person is right with God [or justified].

The implication made by using Abraham and Isaac as examples, is that being a justified believer is still a function of God’s choice [like choosing Sarah’s son over Hagar’s, and choosing one of Rebekah’s sons over the other].   He either made you for glory or for wrath and you are in no place to dispute His choice for you.

This is the Calvinistic doctrine of “irresistible grace” — wherein they conclude that it is not possible for humans to have any role in justification — because how could we do anything more than God could do Himself?

What about faith?

However, Paul consistently stresses “faith” as the means of access to God and to a justified state with Him:

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.  Is he the God of the Jews only?  is he not also of the Gentiles?  Yes, of the Gentiles also:  Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.

and

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

and

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

and

But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.  Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.

and

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:  Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Faith = Word of God + Belief + the Spirit:

So, if humans have access to God by virtue of faith — then it must still be God’s irresistible choice as to who “gets faith” and who does not — right?  To answer this question, it requires one to look at Alma’s preaching on the subject of faith that is found in Alma 32:

Now, we will compare the word unto a seed.

Equating the word of God with a seed is also done in Luke 8: 11;  1 Peter  1: 23; Romans 10: 17; and Galatians 3: 2-9.  The farmer analogy is quite accurate.  The right-brain-hearts of humans are soil, which can be at varying degrees of receptiveness for the seeds, which are the various doctrines of God, the devil, and of men.  The faith that will justify a person with respect to God comes as the ever-good seed is allowed to germinate and grow in the right-brain-heart.

Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart,

This “place” is given in the right-brain-heart.  It involves the concept of yielding [Mosiah 3:19] or being lowly, humble, and teachable.  Broken soil [or a softened right-brain-heart] is a result of a person humbling him/herself — thereby having a broken heart or contrite spirit.  This is equivalent to being “poor in heart” — which Alma observed that the Zoramites were:

of whom were poor in heart, because of their poverty as to the things of the world.

In their case, worldly poverty had brought them to this “lowliness of heart” state:

And now, as I said unto you, that because ye were compelled to be humble ye were blessed, do ye not suppose that they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word?

Yea, he that truly humbleth himself, and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed — yea, much more blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their exceeding poverty.

So, Alma describes two options for softening the right-brain-heart:  a person may wait for certain circumstances to bring about a state of humility [or soft ground], which will make him/her open and receptive to the word — or a person may exercise self-motivation by virtue of the power of the word alone [motivated by the promises of the Lord], and give place for that seed on his/her own.

Also, if a person’s circumstances do not cause him/her to be humble and they cannot seem to humble themselves before the Lord, then the Lord provides another tool for a man or woman to obtain the required humility:  fasting and prayer.

Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer 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, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God.

This is how the ancients did it, because this is how it is done.

Continuing one with Alma’s preaching in chapter 32:

behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed,

The seed Alma spoke of was:

the Son of God, that he will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins; and that he shall rise again from the dead, which shall bring to pass the resurrection, that all men shall stand before him, to be judged at the last and judgment day, according to their works.

This is the ever-good seed.  Any seed that is planted and persuades a person to believe in and plant this ever-good seed, is also a good seed.  While any seed that is planted and persuades a person not to believe in and plant the ever-good seed, is not a good seed.  None of this has anything to do with religion or churches.  All seeds are judged to be good or evil by how they measure up to the ever-good seed and whether they point people towards, or away from, it:

For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.

But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him.

Continuing on in Alma 32:

if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord,

Unbelief is equated by Alma with resistance.  Resistance requires effort or work.  It means to oppose with force. The opposite of resisting would be to bow, give in, submit, succumb, surrender, or yield.  All of these words imply a lack of effort or ceasing to work.

As belief is an entirely passive act, any effort whatsoever on a person’s part will stand as an obstacle or impediment to the formula for obtaining faith.  It is like someone pushing you and simply allowing yourself to be pushed — or being in a river that is pushing you downriver and allowing yourself to be carried along.  No effort.  This is belief.

The moment there is resistance [in the slightest degree] to that push, even to just change the direction of travel one inch, it will decrease belief — ultimately turning it into its opposite [disbelief or doubt], which is a state of resistance to the Spirit of the Lord.

behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves — It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.

This is a formula — akin to a scientific equation or cooking recipe.  Following the steps with the outlined ingredients will always produce the same result.  If a person varies one step or another — or rationalizes that a certain step is not required — or puts in some of their own effort into the formula — anything different causes “user error” and faith will not result.

The desire to believe:

But what can a person a person do if he/she is having problems with the formula?  There are certain signs following them that believe.  The purpose of these signs is to give the professed believer [and also the church] a means to discern justified believers in Christ [saints, who possess faith] from non-justified believers in Christ [Christians, who do not possess faith] — this is the fruit by which you may know them.  If one finds that he/she is not able to:

In my name they shall do many wonderful works; In my name they shall cast out devils; In my name they shall heal the sick; In my name they shall open the eyes of the blind, and unstop the ears of the deaf; And the tongue of the dumb shall speak; And if any man shall administer poison unto them it shall not hurt them; And the poison of a serpent shall not have power to harm them.

or

And these signs shall follow them that believe — in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover; And whosoever shall believe in my name, doubting nothing, unto him will I confirm all my words, even unto the ends of the earth.

Then Alma advises that:

But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words

What will “awake and arouse your faculties”?  This was mentioned earlier in describing how to soften the soil:

  • One could be compelled by circumstances to have a desire to believe.
  • One could be motivated by virtue of the promises of the Lord in His word to desire to believe.
  • One could fast and pray until a desire to believe stirs in his/her right-brain-heart.

Again, “let this desire work in you” is the same as being in that river of water that is pushing you downriver, and instead of resisting, just allowing yourself to be carried along.

God’s will is your faith:

God works according to the faith of the children of men — meaning according to the formula outlined above.  Thus, the doctrine of God saving people by virtue of His will and choice is true.  However, that He works according to our faith means that His “choice” cannot be outside the bounds of an agent’s faith.

There is no such thing as something operating solely according to the will of God without the context of our faith.  Things operate solely according to the faith of agents — and this is God’s will.  This is why, for example, when Alma and Amulek were beholding the destruction of the saints by fire — and Amulek says to Alma:

How can we witness this awful scene?  Therefore let us stretch forth our hands, and exercise the power of God which is in us [which power comes by faith], and save them from the flames.

we read that Alma replies:

The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand.

Because Alma and Amulek had the faith to stop the destruction — the Spirit needed to tell them that they should not use their gift because there was a wiser purpose in letting the saints die.  Should it be the case that God’s will can be done without regard for an agent’s faith — then there would have been no purpose in the Spirit telling Alma anything.  Alma would have just stretched forth his hand and watched as the flames kept on burning [Much like what many LDS experience with priesthood healings, etc.].

The principle is that God must act where there is faith, so the Spirit had to tell Alma not extend his hand [not to exercise his faith] so that the destruction would not stop.

Also, there are two examples from Paul.  In 1 Corinthians 14, he gives a command that members of the church who possess the gift of tongues refrain from using their gift in church meetings whenever a member with the gift of interpretation of tongues is not present:

…let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church;

No such instruction would be needed unless the gifts are available to be used at will by those who have faith.  If the gifts worked according to God’s will and choice alone, then the Spirit would simply not manifest tongues in cases when an interpreter was absent — and no one would need instruction from Paul.

Also, in Acts 21, we see Paul in a similar circumstance as Alma and Amulek.  Paul is told twice, through the gift of prophecy, not to go to Jerusalem.  In the wording of the Alma 14 story we could say:  “The Spirit constraineth Paul that he must not go forth unto Jerusalem.

And finding disciples, we tarried [at Tyre] seven days: who said to Paul through the Spirit, that he should not go up to Jerusalem.

and

And as we tarried [at Ptolemais] many days, there came down from Judæa a certain prophet, named Agabus.  And when he was come unto us, he took Paul’s girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.  And when we heard these things, both we, and they of that place, besought him not to go up to Jerusalem.

Yet, while Alma and Amulek chose to submit their faith to what the Spirit had told them — Paul chooses otherwise.  Exercising his faith — Paul feels it better to die at Jerusalem for the name of Jesus Christ.  When the people saw that Paul could not be persuaded, they acknowledged that:

The will of the Lord be done.

And His will is done — in these examples and in the example of exercising faith unto salvation.  It is God’s will that people work according to their faith — and His will is done when faith is used.  With respect to salvation, God chooses every person that He has the power to choose — and He only has power where there is faith.  Thus He “chooses” all those who have faith.

Next Article by Justin:

Previous Article by Justin:  The Tribal Church

See also:  The Faith of God Series, FPR post on LDS Cessationism, T&S post on LDS Cessationism, and W&T post on Alma 32

The faith of God, part two


Continued from part one.

Before one can talk about the faith of God, faith itself must be defined.

Small English Lesson – Faith is a Noun

Modern dictionaries do not give the scriptural definition of faith, as they record modern and ancient usage of terms, which may or may not correspond to the scriptures, however, they are, at least, helpful in determining whether faith is a noun, a verb, an adverb, etc. If you consult a good dictionary, you’ll find that faith is used as a noun most times, unless it is used in its archaic, transitive verb form. The archaic, transitive verb form is not used, to my knowledge, in the scriptures. An example of the archaic use would be the sentence, “I faith all that you say to me.” As a transitive verb, the construction in a sentence would be “to faith [something].” We no longer use this awkward construction in modern speech, and, as I said, in the scriptures it is always used as a noun. So, let’s begin this discussion by considering faith as a noun.

Scriptural Definition of Faith

The definition of faith can be assembled by some of the prophetic teachings found in the scriptures. As faith is a concept revealed from heaven, it is of no concern what we, the dictionary authors or anyone else give as the definition of faith, the important thing is to get the correct, heavenly-given definition, which comes from the scriptures.

Paul taught that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). He also taught that faith comes by hearing the word of God preached. (See Rom. 10: 14-17.) Alma taught that “faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things” and also that if we have faith, we “hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” (See Alma 32: 21.) He also explained that exercising the smallest bit of faith (“a particle of faith”) is nothing more than desiring to believe. (See Alma 32: 27.) Moroni, in my opinion, gave the clearest definition of faith when he said, “faith is things which are hoped for, and not seen” (Ether 12: 6).

I’ll come back to these scriptures later…

Faith as hope (noun) or to hope (verb)

I find that when discussing faith with LDS, the general definition given by them is “a hope of things not seen which are true.” I imagine they are extrapolating this definition from Alma 32: 21. They may also be getting it from the LDS Bible Dictionary, which states in the opening sentence on its entry on faith, “faith is to hope for things which are not seen, but which are true.” This grammatically incorrect sentence defines faith (a noun) as a verb (“to hope”). (The only way to cause the opening Bible Dictionary sentence to make grammatical sense is to understand that the author meant to put the words “to have” in front of faith, so that it reads “to have [verb] faith [noun] is to hope [verb] for things [noun]…” The second sentence of the entry does this very thing when it states, “To have [verb] faith [noun] is to have [verb] confidence [noun]…” The second sentence is grammatically correct, everything on one side of the “is” equalling everything else on the other side of the “is.” This could and should have been done with the opening sentence.) Even if we assume that the Bible Dictionary author was referring to the archaic, verb form of faith and not the noun form, the use of the word in the sentence is in the intransitive form, instead of the correct transitive form. So, whether used as a noun or a verb, the sentence is grammatically incorrect and makes no sense whatsoever. To illustrate, put any noun in the place of faith, for example, “Car [noun] is to hope [verb] for things…” It doesn’t make sense. But if you say, “To drive [verb] is to hope [verb] for things…” that makes more sense because you are stating a verb is a verb, not a noun is a verb. Had the author used faith correctly as an archaic, transitive verb, it should have read, “To faith [something] is to hope for things…” Okay, enough with invalidating this messy Bible Dictionary sentence.

(I pick on the Bible Dictionary’s grammar not to make a grammatical statement, which really isn’t all that important, as English is not a static language and its rules of grammar do and will continue to change. I pick on it because the entry’s author contributes to the strange custom that people have of calling faith “an action word.” Action words are verbs, of course, hence the tendency to incorrectly define faith, which is scripturally a noun, as a verb, such as to hope. The Bible Dictionary’s opening sentence contributes to this confusion and also to the modern trend of corruption of the English language. For example, the phrase “I couldn’t care less about that,” which grammatically means “that is the least of all the things I care about” has been corrupted into “I could care less about that,” which grammatically means “that is not the least of all the things I care about.” People still retain the meaning of the original phrase, but now, due to the laziness of speaking the necessary “n’t,” it means the opposite of its grammatical meaning. This is language corruption.)

Alma 32: 21 does not state that faith is a hope, only that if we have faith, we “hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” The faith-equals-hope definition arrived at by many LDS is an extrapolation from this scripture. Alma does not say, “to have faith is to hope for things which are not seen, which are true,” but instead he says, “if ye have faith, ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” The two statements are saying entirely different things. In the first, Alma would be categorically stating that faith is hope, which of course he isn’t saying. In the second, Alma is stating that hope (or hoping) accompanies faith (or the possession of faith). This is a big difference that is lost to many people. It is like saying, “If you have this, you do that.” Or, “if you have chicken pox, you scratch your skin.” Having chicken pox and scratching skin are not the same things, but scratching skin accompanies having chicken pox. They go hand in hand, but are not the same thing. (I wish there were more English language majors among our people, instead of business and law majors, as these mistakes would not be made as often as they are.)Despite the lack of English majors in the church, I still find it strange that the LDS have the widespread tendency to think of faith as hope, given that our scriptures emphasize that there are three grand principles (faith, hope and charity) and the scriptures do not confuse faith as hope or hope as faith.

Hope defined

I suppose before I move on, I ought to define hope. I’ll use the dictionary definition, as it is scripturally accurate in this instance. To hope is “to desire with expectation of obtainment.”

Faith is power to obtain or to create or to do [whatever]

A person can hope all they want and yet never obtain. They can desire lots of things and expect to obtain or receive them all and still their desires may remain unfulfilled. Faith, though, is different. When a person possesses faith, he possesses power to obtain something or to create something or to do something. He has power to obtain whatever it is that he hopes for, or whatever it is that he “desires with expectation of obtainment.” This is why hope always accompanies faith. Once faith is possessed, the individual can now expect to receive according to his desires. This is why Ether taught that “hope cometh of faith” (Ether 12: 4). Another example of this principle is found in Helaman’s words. After he and his soldiers poured out their hearts to God in prayer, the Lord gave them faith (assurances, peace to their souls, great faith) and then they were able to hope:

Helaman said, “Yea, and it came to pass that the Lord our God did visit us with assurances that he would deliver us; yea, insomuch that he did speak peace to our souls, and did grant unto us great faith, and did cause us that we should hope for our deliverance in him. ” (Alma 58: 11)

When faith is dormant

Alma on the dormancy of faith:

Yea, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe. Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it. (Alma 32: 17-18 )

And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true. (Alma 32: 21)

Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge. (Alma 32: 26)

Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge. (Alma 32: 29)

And now, behold, is your knowledge perfect? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith is dormant; and this because you know, for ye know that the word hath swelled your souls, and ye also know that it hath sprouted up, that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your mind doth begin to expand. (Alma 32: 34)

Alma explained that faith is not a perfect knowledge, but that faith can grow into a perfect knowledge. He also explained that once faith grows into perfect knowledge, faith becomes dormant. If knowledge is given from the get-go via sight (“show us a sign” Alma 32: 17), there is no cause to believe, or faith cannot be engendered. Therefore, if a thing is seen or if one has perfect knowledge of a thing, faith goes down to a zero value in that thing.

The knowledge and sight of God

This brings up an interesting dichotomy when faith is applied to God. God sees all things, both past, present and future. “But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord” (D&C 130: 7). He also is omniscient, or all-knowing, both of the past, present and future. “But the Lord knoweth all things from the beginning” (2 Nephi 9: 6). “O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it” (2 Nephi 9: 20).

So, based on these evidences, it would appear that faith cannot apply to God, or that God cannot exercise faith. It would seem that my ex co-worker, the monk, was correct in his assessment that God did not have faith, but accomplished (and accomplishes) all things according to his knowledge (and sight) of all things.

But there may be more than meets the eye here…

Next Faith of God article: The faith of God, part three

Previous Faith of God article: The faith of God, part one

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