I went through the temple this morning

I’m glad you were able to go – very glad.

Given how it could have turned out and the emotional turmoil leading up to it, I would say a neutral experience is a huge win.

I mean that. If you can experience it initially as a place of piece, that, to me, is a great thing.

As for the last thing (women going through men to get to God), let me offer just this:

There are no men in the initiatory. Women administer to women. In the endowment, women administer directly to women. At the veil, the man represents the Lord – not a mortal man.

In a very real way, a woman never “goes through a man to get to God” in the temple itself. A woman even introduces her at the veil, and she speaks directly with the Lord even then. Symbolically, Eve guides Eve through the ceremony, while Adam serves that role for Adam.

I know I’m saying that as a man, but it’s procedurally accurate. Other sexism issues aside (like the marriage covenant wording, which doesn’t apply in the temple), procedurally, women don’t go through men to get to God in the temple itself.

Congrats! :clap:

I’m glad it went as well as could be expected. I feel I can relate in some small way, when I first went back to the temple after my faith crisis it was neutral in many ways, yet I felt both a confidence and a peace that I never had before – and today I look back on elements of that visit as a deep personal spiritual experience.

I hope you can interpret at least some parts of your visit today in a similar positive light.

Fantastic! I’m glad you went.

I can say that when I went through, I felt almost exactly the same way… I was trying to sort out how the Book of Mormon kept talking about secret combinations with secret handshakes and codewords, and trying to figure out how it was relevant.

But as Ray said, if you felt peace, then you captured the essence.

Here is what David O. McKay said about it:

Do you remember when you first went through the House of the Lord? I do. And I went out disappointed. Just a young man, out of college, anticipating great things when I went to the Temple. I was disappointed and grieved, and I have met hundreds of young men and young women since who had that experience. I have now found out why. There are two things in every Temple: mechanics, to set forth certain ideals, and symbolism, what those mechanics symbolize. I saw only the mechanics when I first went through the Temple. I did not see the spiritual. I did not see the symbolism of spirituality…I was blind to the great lesson of purity behind the mechanics. I did not hear the message of the of the Lord…How many of us young men saw that? We thought we were big enough and with intelligence sufficient to criticize the mechanics of it and we were blind to the symbolism, the message of the spirit. And then that great ordinance, the endowment. The whole thing is simple in the mechanical part of it, but sublime and eternal in its significance.” From Gregory Prince and Wm. Robert Wright. David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005): 277

David O McKay may have been one of the most NOMish prophets in this dispensation — he had a sense on the reality of things. Knowing that he struggled deeply with the endowment is important to me to know that this very spiritual man also stumbled over what appears to be the man-made elements of the endowment.

As with all things in the church, we need to recognize that inspired words and actions (rituals and the like) are intended to convey something spiritual. Let’s say that the transmission of divine things comes like this:

god –> divine principle –> mind and heart of prophet –> spoken words –> written words and actions.

We then need to convert this in reverse:

written words and actions –> what we hear and understand –> mind and heart of the listener –> divine principle

With seven generations of translation, how do we expect that the divine principle that god intends to teach us is exactly correct? In my impression, we need to insert something here:

…. what we hear and understand –> mind and heart of the listener –> in tune with god –> divine principle.

With this in mind, if what we hear and understand has any divine content, then it should trigger a personal conversation between me and god to find the divine content and principle. The rest of the material is dross.

Once I went through the temple, after a couple of times, i started to find my own meaning in it. And that has made all the difference.