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I was very curious when I was a little kid and loved figuring out how things worked. But my hypothesis were quite often wrong. For example, I distinctly remembered picturing the music in the car coming from a little tiny band underneath my feet, and thought that when you turned the volume knob up on the radio it told the person on the other end to speak louder. There was one instance in particular that I thought had some profound parallels to what I’m going through now. When I was about five or six years old, a friend gave me a battery-powered lantern for my birthday. It had a sleep feature in which it would automatically shut off after fifteen or twenty minutes. I was astounded by this and asked my mom how it worked. She told me there was a clock inside of it. Of course, I was curious and wanted to see this clock so I found a screwdriver and started taking it apart. When I opened it I was a little disappointed. I expected to see something resembling a digital watch counting down from twenty inside of this lantern. Instead there was a single green circuit board. My faith journey has felt a lot like this. We start disassembling our personal beliefs expecting that when we get to the core things will look a certain way, but often they turn out very different. How do we interpret this? In my childhood example, it would have been easy to feel like my mom lied to me; she said there was a clock inside and there wasn’t. But was she really lying? My mom probably knew that it was a simple assembly of electronic parts, but a clock was simply the closest thing in my personal experience she could compare it to. And she certainly couldn’t have explained it at the same level that an electrical engineer could, because she lacked that understanding herself, and even if she did have that knowledge it couldn’t be communicated to a six year old. One thing I am thinking about now, is how we can choose to look at these disillusioning moments in our lives. For example, if it turns out that all of the experiences we attribute to the Spirit turn out to be completely rooted in our biology, either through our emotions or our subconscious mind, what does this mean? It might not be a reason to lose faith at all. Instead it could just be one of those “Ahhh, so
that’show that works” moments. leavingthecave, this is very profound: Quote:One thing I am thinking about now, is how we can choose to look at these disillusioning moments in our lives. For example, if it turns out that all of the experiences we attribute to the Spirit turn out to be completely rooted in our biology, either through our emotions or our subconscious mind, what does this mean? It might not be a reason to lose faith at all. Instead it could just be one of those “Ahhh, so that’s how that works” moments.
Another way to look at it is:
Quote:If I don’t understand what I’m going through today, maybe I will tomorrow. In the mean time, I will do what God has asked me to do. (Or maybe I’ll do something else.)
Mike from Milton.
I’ve used the phrase “thinker tinkerer” before when discussing how my brain operates. My father and brothers are excellent mechanics – and one of my brothers loves working on computers. I have no desire to do any of that. I take things apart mentally and reconstruct them in my mind. That’s just who I am.
Quote:It might not be a reason to lose faith at all. Instead it could just be one of those “Ahhh, so that’s how that works” moments.
I struggle with this, because it begs the question, “What is real?” If spiritual promptings are really given by our brains, and there is no literal Holy Ghost, then how am I to say that there is a literal afterlife? If I’m having trouble finding good evidence to believe that the afterlife the Celestial Kingdom actually exist, then how does figuring out how things actually work not destroy faith?
The fruit of deconstruction is ultimately peace — that is what I’m finding. You need your peace-0-meter on at all times after you start deconstructing until you hit on those principles/ideas/views that bring you peace and comfort in your LDS experience. I have had a few of those and feel quite comfortable with who I am in Mormonism – no longer one of the ruling families in the Ward, perhaps viewed as a renegade, not to be trusted with leaderhip positions, and comfortable with living the LDS way of life my own way — with the hope and expectations that I can change and be more TBM at any moment if peace leads me in that direction…
The third statement in my signature line says it all….
leavingthecave25 wrote:… For example, if it turns out that all of the experiences we attribute to the Spirit turn out to be completely rooted in our biology, either through our emotions or our subconscious mind, what does this mean?
I love this – I love analyzing things… especially when I discover a new way of seeing something I’ve been familiar with for years.
My guess is that our spiritual experiences are rooted partly in our biology… & that our emotions & subconscious minds are players in that.
Yet, I also believe that the essence of our energy (our spirits) are eternal – nondestructable. Godfried Lebniz explained that monads are the essence of ALL life/energy. Monads are indestructable themselves, & are essesntially perception (aka subconscious). I think that somehow the essence of us is rooted in the essence of God, which is in all… & seems like God may be in all places through dark energy that permeates everything (including us)- invisible, but known by it’s influence (like faith).
All is based on attraction. The prime mover (God) could only be prime (no previous cause) via attraction. All energy is attracted to doing it’s thing… (of course as human beings, that “thing” tends to be much more complicated with possibilities). Maybe monads are those subatomic particles based in the 10th+ dimension that pop in & out of existence in dark energy… 10th dimension is infinite possibilities of infinite possible universes! Mind boggling!
What you mentioned about discovering the grid inside the timed lantern reminds me of how a doctor analyzing a person’s brain activity from the outside is very different than the perception that same person experiences from the inside.
Quote:It might not be a reason to lose faith at all. Instead it could just be one of those “Ahhh, so
that’show that works” moments.
I love it!:thumbup:
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