Being a Mormon is Very Cool...

As is well understood, “The worth of souls is great in the sight of the lord.” We are created in his image, infused with divinity, we are sons and daughters of God, the love he has for each of us individually is incomprehensible. Knowing that we are in the likeness of God, with absolute divinity, being literally the son or daughter of Heavenly Father, Christ’s atonement was not a simple inheritance to any who might believe, but was essential in the grand design to ensure that we, created in God’s image, filled with a divine spirit, and the progeny of Heavenly parents, are able to return once more, knowledgeable, stronger and wiser, to exist eternally in a reality of immeasurable possibility. 

This is my best description but in truth represents the least of Christ’s love which, demonstrated though the atonement, I simply don’t understand. It is understandable that those in life who are extraordinary and have great significance to us, we love openly, deeply and we are assured of their divine essence. Why, then, is it such a frustratingly complicated project to feel this kind of love for one’s self and to understand a mere portion of the worth that the Lord sees as great in his sight? 

Insecurity has been a lifelong battle. I was a confident young man but inside I perpetually questioned and doubted myself. My sexuality complicated my insecurity tremendously at a young age, so much that the insecurity became a mass of tangled confusion coupled with a future I knew lie in store but realized with dread what it all meant and could not face. My mental condition has at points caused me to believe I am everything from the personification of energy, Jesus Christ for a time, Adolph Hitler even, but the real struggle and the terror of my episodes was the perpetual belief that I was indeed The Beast and every wrong of the universe was my responsibility. I have reasoned with myself in numbers untold but with every answer my mind would find a loop hole and reach a completely illogical psychotic concept and thus my delusion carried on. 

It was in the temple contemplating, my mind was drawn to an incidental reality of the Veil. It is nothing terribly important, simply matter of fact but I was ready for it and it was a gift from the Lord. This incidental knowledge was indeed a needle in a haystack but the time was right and the knowledge was given... it cannot be questioned... it is absolute... For the first time in my life, I have the possibility to build on a foundation of realization of self worth. Not only was that possibility made manifest by God but what I have gained through the knowledge I possess and my testimony of the Gospel has transformed me utterly and completely. 

During a long period of inactivity, a dread I feared most of Mormonism was not the usual prescription for what I must give up, but the fear of the sense of self, the identity, the uniqueness, and my fundamental pleasures in life that would suddenly be robbed and I would have to be another Peter Priesthood. There is no Peter Priesthood. He does not exist, he is a myth. 

Through the course of last year and my penetrative study into fundamentals of existence and reality according the LDS faith, the answers to my questions came through inspiration and I wrote many thoughts in a journal. A most profound realization is that reality itself is simply the Gospel of Jesus Christ manifest by the joyous Plan of Salvation. I learned what eternity meant, I realized that it was not endless time, the thought of which exhausts me, but a state absent of time and with total possibility. I realized that two of my most sacred values, beauty and truth, are no more equivocally expressed in life than in the Gospel. 

As self-conscious as I am with the way I dress, with increased confidence I became very free with my personal expression. Certain resentments that I harbored drawing my mind towards chaos ceased to matter as I had an abundance of love in my life, more than I have known. There was a ward who loved and cared for me and shared with me in every way they could and a bishop who is very much like a drill sergeant putting me through Melchizedek priesthood boot camp and helping me and assuring that it happen… this bishop loved and believed in me like no other. My familial relationships are the joys and loves of my life. My mind has undergone dramatic changes. Although I experience all of the features of schizoaffective I have known for 18 years, I am able to squeeze through them objectively understanding them as symptoms and still stand on firm ground where once the slightest trigger would incite psychosis in a manic and eventually a depressive state. And the most marvelous aspect of my learning and my reconversion to the gospel is that I am the truest manifestation of Ehren than I have ever known.  My mind is sharper therefore my writing is far greater and improves with every article I produce. This is my life's passion and I owe completely my ability and success to the Lord. I am more liberated to be and do and express those things that make me me. 

To conclude, the reality of what was a fear of an ultimate homogeneity that would result from full conversion and activity and temple worthiness is the opposite of what I have experienced. Why didn’t someone let me in on this secret, that it is so cool to be a Mormon? How can one not be a Mormon? My self worth is profound. My testimony like all testimonies is unique to me based on my own perspective and experience with the gospel, I am able to know truth as much as I put the effort into realizing it, experience true beauty in all things, and the fear that I would loose my individuality has been replaced by a more dynamic, successful, happy, unique, acceptingly eccentric, loving and very happy individual who is enjoyably distinctive. Our spirits are all unique as are our lives. This phenomenon represents the power in the Gospel of Jesus Christ to effectuate real and absolute change and a God who desires for his children not uniform homogeneity and one mind but for each of us to shine in our special ways with our special talents sharing our own special testimonies and developing our special abilities each with a very special purpose. Yes, being a Mormon is very cool.

Alone to Alone

I don’t know why or what is the purpose of life’s more difficult challenges, I just know there is reason and there is a purpose. Whether we learn this over the course of this lifetime or we realize it in the next is incidental, the only thing that matters is to stay faithful and endure. I don’t like to be defined by my trials but there is such a ubiquitous effect caused by being born into an LDS family with deep seeded LDS heritage and that being a faith you believe absolutely and love dearly only to realize you are attracted to the same sex. 

The most pronounced effect may be the sudden isolation and detachment that is felt from what you know is right and something inside of you that you know is not right. The mind reacts quickly and the blame, guilt and shame of self loathing is quick and sudden and the isolation real. Even more ubiquitous effects are caused by scizoaffective disorder, a combination of full blown bipolarism and schizophrenia. 

Everything you were, understood, believed, the ground you stood on, the reality you knew is swiftly taken away and in its place is a constant state of psychosis that is the mix of so many things, ugly things. The isolation felt from this effect is frighteningly real. You are suddenly alone in the universe, you are worthless, damned, unfit, better to not have been born, a curse, a scourge. 

The ability to breech the divide between what is happening internally with the external world, effective communication and understanding… this is an impossibility as one does not have a conception of the illness, just the path of delusion one is compelled to follow. This is beyond loneliness, this is being alone. With a disconnect from that which I loved caused by self-loathing and the disconnect of a psychotic mind, one is a cork adrift on a dark and tempest tossed sea. 

I live alone now, I am settled, established, secure and very happy but I am no longer alone as I once was. The transition from being alone to being alone but the kind of alone that I can appreciate, the kind of alone where I can listen to strange classical music nobody likes, keep odd hours, eat a unique and strange diet, watch obscure films, have odd habits, keep an odd schedule and take care of my needs as only I know how after 18 years, all of this is conducive and necessary to my peace…this alone I now embrace. 

This also includes love of self and love of others and involves an awareness and acceptance that others love me. How was this transition from darkness into light, so rapid and so sure, possible? It has everything to do with faith. My sense of the reality of the gospel is absolute. What I learned in this transition is truth so unequivocal it can never be denied. The Gospel gave me my sense of self back and I am a secure person as I have never known myself to be. I have self-respect and past wrongs are let go and I look to a future of absolute freedom from same sex attraction liberated of that thing inside of me that is not right and free of the self-loathing conceptions of myself. 

The Gospel allows me to be a man vastly better than I was before, what I knew is now my own and absolute, what I believe is akin to knowledge, and the ground I stand on is sure like a rock with the Gospel of Jesus Christ being the reality in my life. The definitive act of my transition from alone to alone happened at the Oakland Temple on December 27th of last year. It was a whirl but I finally “got it.” As my sister walked towards me in white, together with every member of my immediate family, the awareness in the form of knowledge came to me perfectly, “This is my sister, not just for today but for all eternity,” and as I held her tears flowed freely from my eyes as they had never flowed before. That was the moment I stopped being alone and became alone.

My Testimony...

For a blog that is essentially aiming to critique the worldly condition of existentialism that it finds to be deleterious to be replaced by what is fundamentally the same philosophical base with a different perspective, based on the LDS faith, one must be precise and exacting to give any kind of weight to the challenger fighting the undefeated. And this blog is no place for the bearing of one’s personal testimony, right? Even if this is true, I will take the risk of shaking ground and now pause and take a moment to bear my own personal testimony as I believe the author of “Mormon Existentialism” should. 

As I currently experience an incredible abundance in my life, a profuse well-spring of perpetual blessings, a love from all and more significantly love for all, I find a peace and happiness in life and a life I could not have thought possible. This is all because I chose to turn my will over to my Heavenly Father and humble myself. In doing so his will for me to be the best that I can be using my talents and gifts with the utmost efficiency and towards the utmost good has led to a state of absolute and constant gratitude. As I dared myself to turn away from “the world” and turn to Him, little by little and in amounts that I would find growing exponentially coupled with blessings that grow at the same rate, I learned truth. 

These were truths I could not respond to matter of factly and cast aside, this was truth I know with an assurity once encountered and once recognized it became fixed and secure. The crises of “worldly conditional states of being” became no match for the Gospel according to and lived according to Jesus Christ. Following his example, exercising the power of the atonement to release the pain of the past, I was becoming a new person. The insecurity that began in youth that still plagued me was supplanted by the courage to stand and to know, for the first time in my life, who I truly am coupled with the bravery to endure with resolve rejoicingly, and I was born anew. 

With this new sense of self, past weaknesses that had seemed insurmountable now seemed superfluous. I was able to choose and I chose God, I chose family, and I chose eternity, and with the shield of truth there is no temptation from that place in which I no longer reside, that place that I have let go of, that place I have given up for good, that place called “the world.” My life is now one of freedom, of love, of abundance, to be able to give as well as to receive and to feel an assurity of purpose of my mortality and all of existence with an absolute knowledge that makes faith a power not to be reckoned with. I am free from the bonds of “the world,” I accept the burden of mortality but rejoice in the blessings of eternal worth that are showered upon those who choose to turn away from the delusion that is “the world.” 

These blessings might not appear lucrative or lack the potential for power according to “the world” but for those who know Christ and have a relationship with the God of the Universe, these blessings are of immeasurably greater valuable than money or power- the most fickle and fleeting lures of the delusion. These blessings offer charity to be the kind of person to give and giving is receiving to be manifest in ways far greater than those devoted who will attain and obtain can imagine; the blessing of chastity has a power that teaches respect and encourages the reality of Christ’s love, not a delusional one; the blessing of humility turns the will to the Lord who will direct life so that unique and very special gifts bestowed upon all who chose to come to this earth may be used to their most proficient capacity and utilized for the greatest good essentially making the devoted the greatest they can hope to be, and among many other blessings is the blessing of integrity; to exercise truth is to be an honorable person, whose word is valued and is able to be depended on for that.  

One with integrity fulfills obligations and duty and is aware of how to act and what is spoken knowing all are sons and daughters of God and created of the divine and should live as such and not abuse the self or another by dishonesty and falseness of any kind. Such interrupts the Spirit and confuses truth and further adds to the darkness and web of the delusion. Mine is essentially a simple testimony grounded on simple truths that have been learned from the Gospel of Christ and through a profound understanding of the Plan of Salvation that is exercised in my life. 

The abundance of blessings and the joy I experience today is my witness and proves of the reality of the power of this Plan. The blessings are the result of living according to truth. The more this is put into action, the more blessings one receives and further truth will be learned together with a clear sense of reality of the truthfulness of the Gospel. 

This cycle of searching for truth, acting on it, receiving blessings, to be assured with a sense of reality, continues unabated the more one seeks to understand and live accordingly. This blossoming, armed with the spirit, elevated by blessings of eternal joy, with steadfastness and endurance are sure ways to transcend "the world" and live an exalted existence. 

The farther I leave “the world” behind, the closer I come to the God of the Universe, who beckons me and offers me everything, if I but choose to turn to him. And I do. And I don’t walk but I run.

Relationships are Not Relative

To mention the philosophical theory of relativity is to cover old ground in relationship to the very real, which is the common ground we all share, not anything worldly or delusional, with God as the nexus. Relativity is to question all of that and to split it up, as was the atom, into distinctive private realities and unique existences that disallows absolutes. Realism in its twentieth century understanding warranted the believe in the literal subdivision of reality through acts of physics of space and time giving ground to the relative character of Existentialism that focus on the individual and assigns meaning and truth only to the individual and not an institution. But we shall not cover that territory again. We shall speak of relativity in its pre twentieth century specific ideology. 

The word used traditionally before assigned certain twenty first century contexts has different meanings and purposes. The world relativity has as its root the word relate which is also the root for relation, relationship and relational, these words being entirely free of any twentieth century Existentialist paradigm context. The word “relate” is to strike a chord, to breech and to mingle through cognitive meaning and difference. In the simplest terms it means to connect. As two individuals relate there becomes a relation, a relation based upon assigned meaning and difference adhered to through agency. From this relation of meaning and difference can begin a relationship. This relationship, essentially founded on commonly assigned meaning and difference grounded in the power of free agency to choose like meaning and difference, this relationship has so chosen to be, giving rise to the relational character of truth that is the substance for the great institutions of this world. 

Those religions that have been successful including the Latter-Day Saint religion are grounded upon this by relational truths adhered to through established relationships that are chosen on the ability to relate through the agency of meaning and difference. This is not what the Existentialist might consider the blind thinking of the “other” or the “chatter” of “the they,” no, this is a cohesive collective of truth arrived at through the mutual freedom to relate. 

Other successful institutions are the family, whose more apparent roots create the strongest physical blood relationship but whose shared truths create an essence of each family and a closeness created through relating. The product is built as each member, relational to each other to truth, creates a strong sense of character for the family built upon physical roots and established truths. (More on the Family in future post). Other institutions apply to the reality of this paradigm such as many scholastic institutions, lines of heritage, patronage, tradition, and solid foundations among nations based on integrity. This is the context of the word “relate” when applied to Mormon Existentialism that builds community and truth. 

When applied to worldly Existentialism it creates a fragmented relativism based upon a worldly delusional reality that does not believe in the kind of individualism as did the Humanist of the Greeks- Man being the measure of all things- but the kind of individualism that is separate, alone, angst ridden, with truth that cannot be measured, displaced and without commonality, so afraid is it of the possibilities and reality of the “other.”