Fight For Life: Schizo-affective Disorder

Even though you may have thought it, you have not begun to hear anything remotely like the last of it, and there will never be a magical day of ideal balance that once found adheres, and there can be no place of real security, oh no, ideal balances happen all of the time, nightmarish too, and they last 15 seconds or so.  The only ideal balance I have and what brought me out of a 20 battle with psychotic schizophrenia and bipolar depression, a disease called schizoaffective disorder, was my growth in the gospel, which included giving up that which was damaging to my state of mind, and galvanizing to the comfort and strength of my family, which has for the large measure, put my mind in a semi-state of remission of psychosis. 

The celestial room with my youngest sister Emily, who has always been the most valuable creature in my life and always will be; as I walked in and saw my parents I was still in a disheveled state with so much processing but as I turned around and saw Emily, it was the most right moment of my life and it was the happiest moment of truth I will ever experience as I held Emily in my arms and the tears flowed like a tap that will not close, the purest tears of my life, embracing her as I “got it” and all became clear and as each of my beloved siblings with their spouses walked in with my joy compounded each time knowing that this is forever.  This is when the nightmare of psychotic schizophrenia, a state that began with a major psychotic break in March of ’94 to forever alter my brain chemistry so great was this break and so intense was the experience and it was that very night of the break that I heard my first voice… but that is too personal.

Following this came friends, one by one abandoning me and my detachment from the world around me was complete.  I had completely broken from reason as my neurons no longer had the ability to pass freely between each other for reasonable thought, and what was to follow was 20 years of misfiring chemichals and a mind sunk into a psychotic depression never having one moment’s peace.  Yes, the psychosis was tortuous, the delusion loomed large in manners that blended homogenously one delusion fitting the other, the panic attacks were so horrendous that I tried to commit suicide twice and both times I was saved in a state of unconsciousness by my father.  It was a battle of trying this and that medicine and poor mental health treatment for those without hundreds of thousands to spare for the extra niceties.  It was a brutal reality and all of the while I fought and I fought and there was nothing I could do to get back to “the way things were” and after so many years I had to realize that to live and to enjoy life at all is to accept and manage and this progressive action took place after a confinement of a few days for “acute psychosis” being already 29 and still my mind could not grasp the reality that it was indeed mentally ill. 

This episode shook me up dreadfully and I began my 30s with this progressive initiative to learn and to accept.  I had to accept that I was a mentally ill growing man and that there were measures I could take to effectuate better heath and frame of mind as my life began a metamorphosis as I emerged from graduate school in art history to enter the world on my own that took form immediately.  It is a life of beauty and simplicity with wondrous meaningful personal collections in a bright and cheery spot in down town Salt Lake City and as a successful art critic for the two top art publishing magazines/papers, I am happily doing very well.

But this new life, this new reality, truly required that moment holding my sister as I “got it.”  From that point onward, my life became a perpetual showering of blessings to dull the manic depression I was experiencing and do experience heavily and to distract me from the beast, my God blessed me with an inspiration to explore my intense passion for philosophy applied with an LDS point of view, a philosophy so bitter only to find that its antithesis is the pure manifestation of Jesus Christ and the hope and joy he brings to those who will embrace him.

Since my endowments I have embraced him as my constant companion as I know he is ever present.  Having THAT peace and security in my life, something that my philosophical contemplation only further galvanizes my testimony like a magnet to iron, for the first time in my life, something had become really real.  The schizophrenia, as it is now, with the psychosis that is a perpetual management and the bipolar leaving not a moment that is secure for me; the mentally ill must for the sake of loosing comprehension, fill in the missing gaps of reason with that which makes no sense to others and is most often, the worst kind of mental life-reality that is in fact very real to the mentally ill.  Being severely ill I have many novels of psychotic miserably self-destructive patterns of delusion, which I will never write, because that is my past and as I turn 40 in just two months I have never been more excited about anything in my life as my present and my future.

The full story of how, ultimately beneficial, this progress has been should be written.  So much has manifest in me over 20 years that I do not know how to be inauthentic, I can only be true in thought, word and deed as each requires some corporeal reflex to balance out the misfired chemicals which perpetually cause a brain that perpetually malfunctions and thinks it is the worst there is all from a naturally perpetually regenerated gene pool.  Many sink into or embrace their psychotic identities, and these are the majority that will never know any happiness like I know.  It was by obeying without exception, the feeling of truth in my heart in the moment of the bitterest hallucination, panic attack, episodes of many shapes and sizes, at every dark turn when I could not foresee what lie ahead but took a leap of trust, that I followed the hand of the savor whom without, I would never have gotten out of the mental hospital and been able to live a life that is literally “unreal” to the vast majority.  It is very real to me and only now, as the product of countless decisions big and small, do I have a life tailor-made for me as I must still live this reality and binge and purge everyday for my mind to process and release and this it does on the spirituality of life’s progress.

I dedicate this post to my new best ally in things deeply and richly spiritual as he and I share, not a common experience, but common phenomena, as I have related a charmed youth and then the horror of those twenty years only to find peace through the Gospel of Jesus Christ… this is how his situation has developed as we were raised together, he served an honorable mission to come back stalwart and strong and ready for anything life could throw his way and it did… and life was hard on him and satan knew of his sensitivity and manipulated my friend as I have experienced the like.  He and I having both gone far away from the light of Christ, to come back makes the trial of our experience and the blessings of our dedication so very profound as neither he nor I will ever stray from the rock we stand on as we know to budge is to open oneself to tests that have already been established and our fortitude proven.

My friend and I hold the Gospel above all other things as we know with out it our lives, his life would have amounted to little and mine would have long ago ended.  But, we are the first to embrace our suffering as a journey of strength to build the kind of testimonies a house can stand firmly upon as a great precipice can withstand any tempest and those within will be nurtured and comforted.  Even though our trials both he and I will last all of our days, so will our conviction as we overcome them with testimonies uncommon and a passion for the Gospel unusual for men of our age.  But we have seen and know too much not to be excited and rejoice in this glorious Gospel as Christ has proven our Savior in absolute reality to both of us and we will not think twice to let him down but will be the men he sees us to be.

Conquering Same Sex Attraction

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a powerful thing and can be the motivator for those things that the world does not think can be done.  But with a firm testimony of the Savior and the Atonement and what exactly it means to be our Savior and a profound understanding of the atonement, every personal agony of this world can be overcome with effort and faith and perseverance. 

My life’s personal trial was for me a trial of effort and faith and perseverance that was realized initially 27 years ago and I can say today that my battle, my personal struggle with compulsive same-sex-attraction that has never brought me a moment of happiness but only utter and very real misery including a completely deflated sense of self and a detachment from the family I love so much and the Gospel of Christ whom I love so much, is one that I have quite literally conquered. 

The real change in my experience only happened as I accepted the reality of the Atonement as the path to transcendence and for the first time, regardless of what I heard from innumerable sources, I knew that this would not be an ongoing labor that must be pacified and maintained with constant attention and treatment, but something I would be utterly free from and there would be no trace of any aspect of this attraction as a part of my lifestyle, as it would be utterly conquered.  

I knew I could conquer it as the Spirit bore a strong witness within me, a feeling of great strength that this could be done, and today I experience just this, a life of a single man who thinks nothing or pays no attention to the same sex and is far more concerned not only in finding a spouse for the sake of it, but is excited in the newness that has come for the first time in my life being attracted to certain women.


The significance of the quality of my personal experience was detectable early in a very sensitive, introverted, contemplative, intelligent young boy.  Although sexually neutral, I had a profound fascination for the singular qualities of my male friends that was not sexual but ones that involved characteristics I lacked such as their agility at sports, their confidence, their ability to play the kind of physical games I was never good at, strength, boldness and fearlessness, and masculinity in general. 

As I had none of these, these qualities occupied my sensibilities; my emotional intellect, my contemplative nature, and my sensitive nature yearned to be like them and it stung that I was different.  My fascination was fixated on my male friends and these qualities.

Puberty is a time of life that we do not know understand the fullness of, but it is an incredibly powerful period and for one such as I, intensely emotional.  As my friends, who were comfortably masculine, became fixated on the opposite sex, by the time puberty hit, I, with my heart aching to be like my friends, my inner self so insecure, and my mind so fascinated by the qualities I lacked, I remained fixated on my friends during puberty and in this duration of puberty my sexual future was sealed.  Had I not this intellectual sensitivity and keen interest in my male friends without my sensibilities, I would not have been so focused and my mind would have been alerted to the girls in my life and my sexuality would be fixed in a like manner.

But what manifest did.  I became acutely aware of my developed feelings at 13.  One of life’s most heavily dire moments, especially for a young boy of 13, happened while on a vacation with my immediate family to Disneyworld in a van. I was alone at the back.  I have always been a comfortably alone person, I have never fit into any groups although my friends are many I have always been a detached person, but staring upwards at nothing but lost in thought, I have never felt so alone.  In fact I became petrified.  I realized that on one hand I knew my religion was true and I loved it and honored it and was faithful to it and was proud of the good Mormon that I was.  But, being intelligent and honest, I recognized the demon that was ready to plunge at me at any moment- very real feelings I was experiencing that I could not hide from that were becoming increasingly intense and scared me as nothing in my life had scared my yet.  

This is some serious conflict for a boy of 13 and at 13 I had an immense awareness of this conflict that lay before me and I had a witness of the life that I was to face and it was a crippling feeling of overwhelming impossible devastation to my utter ruin.  To me I had no future.  This would be the dialectic of my life.




My mental illness has what is called “early onset” at about 14 and this hit me like a brick and I changed drastically in appearance and mentality in just a few weeks with my mind expanding exponentially.  I did not serve a mission. I did not believe it was possible for me as I had compulsively acted on my feelings from this young age following my early onset and had little or no self-esteem.

Soon after, my activity with the Church wavered and then I became totally inactive. Then, to compound the tumult of my life, I had a complete psychotic break which would continue for 20 years and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder; full blown schizophrenia and bipolar and one of the most serious mental illnesses if not the most traumatic. 

Although I consider this to be the most arduous and demanding challenge of my life with the most ubiquitous effect, my sexuality has always hurt more and damaged me more as a human being causing an intensity and depth of emotion far more penetrative and far more real than any of those of schizoaffective disorder which are quickly mended, while the insecurity that comes when I compulsively acted on my same-sex behaviors caused a lasting insecurity that was deep and penetrative and truly debilitating unlike any disability.

During my early years of schizoaffective psychosis, I sought spirituality as a remedy for psychosis and I tried to curtail my compulsive desires.  I was not sexually active for long periods of time, years, but the feelings were stronger than ever. Such feelings are only more active with bipolarism as compulsive sexual drive and the emotional devastation this compulsion causes is a primary symptom of bipolarism.  


The dialectic presented me when I was 13 had been ever-present throughout my life and in my mind was a scale that I attempted to resolve for 13 years.  This scale would vacillate with one side weighing more heavily than the other, ever shifting, but I always knew in all truth, that they were irreconcilable.

After graduate school, moving out on my own, completely independent and having my own life for the first time, I made my resolve and was acutely aware of where I would ultimately find my peace, as innately I had always known. 

The world I stepped into without a safety net and little established security was unsound and unsure. This was brutally evident and manifest from all directions.  The world I found was a different one than the padded and cushioned one I was accustomed to and there was no body that had any real interest in me and I mattered very little in the vastness of what I experienced around me and I was faced with a world that is nothing of comfort but an arena for a fight and without a support group, I had no one, no fans cheering me on and it was brutal and bloody in its cold harshness.    

The scales immediatey dropped from my eyes and in 2005, the year I moved out, I was made acutely sure of what I wanted and what mattered to me and quickly and decisively made my decision and although it was still a progress involving strengths I did not know I had and faith I lacked the faith in myself to believe, I made the unequivocal decision to choose God and family and for the first time since I was a petrified boy of 13, 17 years prior, I knew then unequivocally the course my life would take and it was a feeling of great comfort and the beast was at bay.  

I knew for a certainty there was no future for same sex attraction in my life and I became active in the Church again. The progression from 2005 till December 27th of last year, 2011, and my worthy unity with all of my family in the Oakland temple was not a smooth or an easy one by any means, it was rough and rocky, but I was determined. Yes I would falter in several instances in minor ways but everyone who knew me and my spirituality knew what my desires were for my self and I never questioned my resolve and put a tremendous amount of work into overcoming what puberty had caused; this was no passive thing and I am today a worthy Melchizedek priesthood holder and hold a temple recommend honorably.




Since attending the temple and perpetual in depth study and growth I am a happy and successful man unlike I could never have hoped to be with more security that I could wish for.  Had I lingered in the mires of my compulsive debauchery that claimed my spirit for so much of my time here on earth I would never have experienced real peace in this life.  But God loves me very much and The Gospel of Jesus Christ manifest in his atonement allowed me to be free, to loosen the bonds that bound me to sin, to free me from compulsion to emerge whole and cleansed.  

The blessings since have been abundant and joyous. Most significantly the two desires that I chose, God and family, these relationships have been restored with beauty, renewed and made whole in the infinitesimal love that is God’s ultimate plan for each of his children that we may all share in as we are all enlisted in this magnanimous and glorious work and to feel His mighty power in our lives to make anything possible that we ask of Him.

Mormon Existentialism: A Historic Contextualization

As of late I have heard words from real people like you and me promote classic existentialism, promote angst, the absence of god, the purposelessness of life and its meaninglessness, and a world view, so common today, of nihilism.  So many isolate existentialism to a 20th century phenomenon that still effects human ideology even more powerfully today and this is accurate.  But in the same manner I have a different view. I see existentialism as old as the primitive peoples who sought ritualized veneration of the major life events such as birth, love, suffering and death, and this existential exploration over many, many centuries through art and history, has seen birth of Christ in countless images of the Renaissance, images such as Botticelli and van Eych, and in the Enlightenment Boucher, Watteau and Fragonard were all oriented to amorous affairs.  

Suffering is the great subject in life seen in every epoch from every country.  Europe in the days of the Barbarian Invasion was desperate for any kind of knowledge in a very dark age with only one place to find it and one place for it to be found… the Catholic Church.  Countless millions suffered in complete ignorance knowing nothing about the world beyond their free town of fiefdom and craved truth.  Suffering will find its rearing head ubiquitously to our day being a primary factor in all art so extensive it cannot be elucidated here, but this suffering was existential as those who did, learned and gained truths through a life fraught with suffering.  Death is also another common subject historically, this representation is largely the crucifixion of Christ, on the cross or with the Virgin in a pieta.  A ghastly graphic lifeless cadaver in the famous work of Mantegna and another iconic reference with skin greened and a skeletal body by Holbein Sr are other examples. 

How better to understand one’s own reality than to find peace in the death of Christ who was, like all will be, resurrected and ascended into heaven.  This theology bound all of Europe and Byzantium a millennia before the printing press.  This was the lands of mystics, witchcraft and superstition, and disease on a frightening scale.  This only sought many more to turn to the Church for answers, as much as could be gleaned, and no other resources for any kind of religious or secular learning existed anywhere outside of monasteries.  All of this mentioned and infinitely more that libraries are dedicated to, may be looked at as primitive and manipulative or it might be seen as some source of knowledge, a souse significance enough to instigate art including mosaics and crude painting and architecture as well as the single thread that kept the progression of Europe alive by this common factor and as people found answers in the Church, the church found supremacy in Europe.   

As existentialism was non existent in medieval Europe, even though there was no movement there still came the perpetual questions of subjects that people generally sought to find a comfort in what was a life of difficulty, the higher power, which was bigger, greater, mightier, all-power, the highest power, our Heavenly Father, offering understanding of something bigger than they were.  Those who built Stonehenge sought answers from the sky, the Greeks thought they could find the answer in man who was “The measure of all things,” the Renaissance thought that nature could provide the measure for all of the answers, the Enlightenment- reason and the faculties of mind devoted to art, philosophy, music, science, this was the path to truth, but man was to find no answers of his own making and nature, not as a measure but for a spiritual awakening for its own sake by Rousseau and then a revival of all that existed before the modern period of the Renaissance when things were simple and pure… artists that had been painting in the grand Rococo style suddenly painted peasants such as Fragonard, Bucher, Chardin, and then William Blake would reach the high point of truth of a humanity that almost found the answers it was looking for in the dialectic of good and evil powerfully expressed in Blake’s seminal poetic epic “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” 

But this closest mankind has ever been to a unified true reality could not last and the industrial revolution had to happen as did revolutions in France and the United States.  Modernity was a refinement of the industrial era as Napoleon III had grand schemes to modernize the great boulevards of Paris, which occurred in the form of Paris today, but there was nothing existential about this, only an ambitious emperor and the rapid passing of time in the great period of revolutions and civil wars as all men sought for the truth to one question…

Liberty?  The 19^th century saw both Germany and Italy become nations as this historical context is that which led to what is the pinnacle and at the same time what is the most threateningly ominous moment in time for the official movement of the early 20^th century that we will call Classical Existentialism.  It was the pinnacle due to the great works of men like Heidegger whose text “Being in Time” is one of the greatest volumes of philosophy extant and in a manner insightful and prophetic, Heidegger elucidates on the realities of being, called da sein, and the conditions of being within a society called “the they” while the self is troubled by perpetual angst, experiences the fullness of the uncanny being displaced from authentic reality.   Interestingly enough, time itself is an arbitrary condition cased by human consciousness as it is with everyone without choice in a temporal continuum of action, awareness, and stopping short.   Space is relative from one given point to any other given this being the foundation for phenomenon and the existence of the being of da sein.  

Existentialism has always existed and always will in many shades, and considering the shade of a philosopher grounded in delusions and ubiquitous influence subsequently, this is a pernicious thing indeed. Nietzsche, who cannot stand in the shadow of a philosopher at the level of Heidegger with Nietzsche writing prose, claimed a “proof" of denial of absolutes in existence and that morality cannot be proven individually or generally and this is the condition that he demonstrated convincingly to his people, whom, as can be well understood, found understanding for their day that explained their existence giving morality as myth used purposefully and not spiritually. 

“Christ was the only Christian,” Nietzsche said.  This one giant leap into the danger zone of a nihilistic personal reality and a nihilistic societal reality completely void of morality; of this he was certain of, to become the birth of popular nihilism, something that has only grown stronger in its insidious hold over popular culture and society in general.   “The death of God” was Nietzsche’s battle cry as if there was no morality there was no God and if there was no God there was no truth thus no meaning. This battle cry was second only to the “will to power” as what is the point for unity when nobody means anything to anybody except the self to the self so the “Superman” must live only for his own rise to power and personal attainment of property. Ultimately, this was the stuff that the purified state of the fascist was made of just as Marx influenced communism. 

Skipping Sartre, Camus, Foucault, Derrida; Nietzsche lived in the angst ridden pre-WWI German bubble.  The country had just been formed a few decades earlier and was desperate for power.  Nietzsche was a product of his time and nothing else, and had he been a 17th century philosopher the name Nietzsche would be unknown. But it came to be so and was very much a part of the exegesis of post-structuralism and deconstruction and the rape of meaning of humanity.  Today, our world being entirely interconnected in its multiculturalism, its global freedom of trade of knowledge, culture and goods, the unification through art, science, medicine, philosophy, theology, demographics of every kind… we are a world of plurality and that is a reality that cannot be denied as our reality of post-Modernism cannot be denied.  An existentialism such as Nietzsche is today a memory… a distant fragment of history that has no relevance and cannot have any hold on the though that it instigated on the absence of God, truth, meaning, and the rise of rationalism it gave form to as well as the propagation of deconstruction when reconstruction based on the human will to create meaning from randomness is equally valid.

The existentialism that passed through Nietzsche to Sartre to Derrida to Godard to Giacometti to Pasolini to Kubrick to Rauschenberg to Warhol to Baldessari to Obama is pure lazy mindedness and lack of insight and a useless capacity for vision or the ability to look past the physical and the polemics not knowing what it means to “transcend.”  Society must stop asking the same tired, trivial, mundane and very vogue questions.  Anybody who chooses to stop and consider and question the condition of today’s plurality will find one’s own brand of Existentialism based on personal life exegesis that is existence processed in the mind of conceptions.  Given the Modernist utopia, today there exists a utopia-like globalization and as such in the reality of plurality, one idea no longer can apply to all in today’s post-Modern world. 

All must face personal existential questions and for each person this inquisition will be different amounting to a unique shade of existential philosophy for each individual.  One must address one’s consciousness and decide to continue or to stop living in the shadow of a madman whose mind amounted to the most cumulatively evil of the 20th century as well as echoing louder in the 21st considering, he providing the fuel to fire fascism as well as secure the disturbance of angst, doubt, confusion and fear that his writings have instigated for the subsequent century on the popular level and rage loudly and angrily to this very day.  One must stop and listen to one person and that is one’s own self and find one’s own truth and what is authentically real.

People

In my life I live in a downtown area and walk as well as take a short bus ride to wherever I need to go.  While on the bus today and making a joke with the bus driver, a sudden realization dawned on me.  So much of my energies are concerned on writing about, reading about, and thinking about the human condition, where so little of my energies are devoted to writing about, reading about, or thinking about people.  It might seem a given than when making a life study of the human condition, the study of the person is necessarily complicit, but this is not the case.  I found myself realizing today that I need to pause for a moment and consider the reality of the person, speaking existentially, and then we will find the two subjects complimentary, but not complicit.  I do not know if I am capable of touching the capstone of this weighty subject, but I think one such as I, who has devoted his life to art, spirituality, philosophy, and to people, is as worthy a candidate as any, so here goes.

We are still speaking the language of the Mormon Existentialist so I will not wax secular and atheist, those things that I am not, but address the person as who each one is to the very fiber of each being, prior to earthy mortality.  This of course, is the inheritance of a body in the form of God the Father of whom each individual is a child of.  Each of us, like Christ, was born to an earthly parent, but in reality, is truly the son or daughter of God, and in that are a part of a very special and holy progeny.  In this regard, each person in this mortality has been called to a very exalted position to serve God.  We have the living manifestation of Christ as an example as to what that is in essence and how God’s children can begin a life connected to their heavenly parent, as Christ was connected to his.  We can know through Christ’s example, and with his sublime guidance, can walk the road of life, not alone, but with him, our Savior, and can know, as he did, well in advance of reaching the final stages of this life, just how this life is to be lived.  Accordingly one may fill ones place best in this holy progeny and find one’s place eternally as their own propagators of their own within the vastness of this holy progeny.

Unlike Adam and Eve, the human person was born with a human consciousness.  The essential qualifier of this human consciousness, is to know and feel when one is doing right and when one is doing wrong.  This makes the person very aware of the self.  The person can live a life and try to hide this consciousness and over the years succeed in this and essentially live in a false state of denial, or, the person may live, from the youngest years, in full recognition and awareness of this consciousness, and allow this consciousness to “be their guide.”  If one is to do this, this is to live authentically; this is essentially, to “be real.”  There is no human faculty of its condition greater and more acute than the consciousness and if one has covered it up with utter falseness one is themselves false but if one has been true to that consciousness and authentic, that person is in tune with their reality and “is real.”

To fully engage in the consciousness as commanded by he who imbued it with us, it can only be strengthened and secured with a greater sense of self and a greater understanding of the human and eternal conditions by prayer, by healthy living, by good works, by honesty and integrity in all things, a life of honor, a life of service, by living the gifts that he whom imbued us with them gave us, a life of worshipping the Savior by acknowledging all things that lead to him, by loving each of one’s fellow men on a level through the greatest gift of charity.  Through an awareness one can only go so far but with an awareness grounded and then built upon such commandments given to each person for their greatest good and happiness, will only lead to each person’s greatest good and happiness.

If one is to be the truly ideal human being as the father of all intended each to be, each in their very special and individual ways, with specific gifts and specific personal purposes as well as the ultimate Plan of Salvation, obeying the commandments of God is the only means to effectuate this.  Most will say, “We were born into life without a manual,” or “there is no set path to life,” this kind of talk is unenlightened.  For the commandments of God that we learn in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, although tarnished with a “can’t do this” reputation, is actually that very manual of life people are looking for and the path to happiness, fully realized success, and an entryway into the eternities that is magnificently prepared to be on a level where one might think to be able to hold one’s head up to the light of Christ and the Eminency of God.

Prayer will give each person personal revelation and a sure path to truth.  Healthy living by abstinence in some areas and promotion in others will aid in a healthy body able to produce more, and a healthy mind more secure to effectuate the being of that body.  Good works are the stuff that makes this life a beautiful one and often good works are the small things one does and not on a grand scale but by touching the life of another without realizing the joy one is instilling.  Without honesty, integrity and the steadfastness of honor, the world could not function and the human spirit could not dwell in this mortality.  As faulty as the world is, it is held together in function and as a stable place for God’s children to dwell, only because of honesty and the integrity of human kind and the vestiges of honor that remain in the hearts of mankind.  A life of service is one where those who have more give their resources and energies to those who have less and this only prepares each person to how the eternities will function.  To live a life in accordance with the gifts our Father gave us only enhances our true selves and is a sure way to happiness and success in life with the authentic being of humility.  Keeping a focus on the Savior keeps one focused in life and keeps all things true and in place.  It keeps us firmly, “grounded.”  And if we are focused on the Savior and realize that all things lead to him, as he is the source of all things, our sense and the power of charity in our hearts will grow and become a stronger reality within us.  With this, the greatest of all gifts, each person can look at the other, no respecters of persons on any level but each as the son or daughter of God and act and communicate accordingly.  It makes life only so much easier.

Thus the person is ready to keep moving forward, building their life in great works, establishing the authenticity in their relationships, and the first people in that list should be God and the self.  If each person makes it a real commitment to develop their relationship with themselves, they will become “more real” and others can see this and slowly this will grow as more and more see this and people become in tune with who they really are and “the natural man” will become not such a bad thing.  If as well, that authentic person is in tune with their Celestial Father, they will only be more ready for that day that can be tremblingly terrifying or cataclysmically catalytic for the eternities, because this WILL happen, and each person is free to choose.        

Why I Love "Existentialism!!!"

I love existentialism.  I love the freedom that we have as human beings to question.  If we did not question, we would not know, and we would be a weak and feeble species indeed.  But we do.  It is fundamental for humanity to question, and the first questions, we know, were about purpose in life.  When we look at cave paintings, we see many bison and antelope, but we see man wearing the heads of such animals.  Why? 

Apparently, Man, in this cave dwelling variety, attributed sacred powers to these beasts that were the source of food, warmth, and many other practical uses we are unsure of.  But the surety of the cave dwellers has always been a doubt, but a true existentialist will know that existentialism did not begin in the 20^th century, no, it began with the most prehistoric man, disconnected from any source of knowledge and truth, who went to great lengths to beautify, in a manner of mysticism, the walls of their caves in resolve to their yearning to know, to understand, as they are essentially linked to us, and we want to know, to be human is to want to know.

Plato used the allegory of the cave in his existentialism and painted the idea of three men chained in a cave.  There was a wall in front of them and behind, a fire.  Certain beings and objects would pass behind these men and in front of the fire casting a shadow onto the wall in front of the men.  According to Plato, these shadows on the wall were as close as we as human beings will get to true reality in mortality.  Authentic forms, such as virtue, exist in the cosmos, but we will never see these, only the shadows on the wall.  Incidentally, when the three men were set free, they were struck forcibly by what lay in front of them, dazzled and mystified.

It is the 21^st century and humanity is asking the same questions that the earliest prehistoric man asked, the quandary Plato presented, and all of the questions asked of reality from every reach of the globe for the past 2500 years.  From out of those questions there was for a time, an answer.  This was the Meridian of Time.  This was the time of Christ.  It was the answer as Christ was fulfilling his earthly mission for a brief 33 years and what he left in his wake was truth.  The God who manifests reality left for humanity truth. 

Humanity was not ready for it.  And most of humanity today will still not accept it to the core of their being.  If only they would listen and learn.  Humanity wants these answers that we have.  Their purpose is gnawing at them.  Their stigmas that there is no truth, and reality is relative, and the “death of God” rule the popular thinking of today’s vernacular.  When we ask, do you want to know the truth, but they learn that it comes from Mormons, the ears are shut and the mind is closed.  Only because they lack vision.

The “educated” and “literate” world thinks laughingly of the aged ideas of heaven as fluffy clouds and cupid angels.  They think of a bearded God sitting on a golden throne amassed in white.  They think of a devil spearing the innocent with his minions in lakes of fire in a subterranean world.  And they think of a Jesus who “saves” some way, some how.  And of course, to them, these are all absurdities and the whole thing is a fallacy of the past, and today, no educated thinker would dabble in such absurdity.

They do not realize that heaven is not above… it is everywhere… it is beyond the veil, it is beyond space and time, it is a place where spirits, something that the educated are all too quick to profess that “I am spiritual but don’t believe in religion,” where these spirits dwell in wondrous heavenly realities that have existed before time and ours awaits us.  They are not idle on clouds but engage happily and whole-heartedly in the Lord’s work. 

God, whom is to say, whom is to question his omnipotence, his omniscience, his omnipresence?  None of us on earth have any vantage point beyond the veil so whom is to question what God, our Heavenly Father, the embodiment of celestial love, can and cannot do?  Who is to say he cannot answer all prayers?  Who is to say he cannot bless all and take care of all of his children, after all, he is our father? 

And the Savior, we have his 33 years of mortality to learn from, we have prophesies and his visitation to the Americas, but we have something more.  From Christ, God of all Gods and manifestation of reality itself, without whom not a grain of sand would have ever floated upon any shore, not a leaf to stir in any wind, not a single heart to beat with love, it is from him, whom we understand the least yet is the embodiment of the sublime and is with me right now just as he is with you, so great is his mercy and love; he empowers us with the Spirit which speaks for him so we may know!

We may know truth!  We may find answers!  We might find resolve for any troubled mind or spirit!  We might find solutions!  We might find reason!  We may find personal purpose!  We may know just who we are as sons and daughters of God and how to live this life as is our own personal best and do our own personal best to one day be cradled in the arms of our Savior and feel a feeling of total reality… that… is worth living a life deliberately that requires asking questions.   

To My Philosophical Defense...

As an established educated professional who is current on international news, whom is acutely perceptive to the world around him and being aware to the dynamics of his personal reality in the same sense of being sensitive to the reality of others; I profess that my “renegade” philosophy of Mormon Existentialism is in fact not so “renegade.”  Although, the headlines read, the discourses infer, all refers to a lingering 20^th century based pre-WWI Heideggerian, Nietzsche-based philosophy, without doubt or question, I find my singular philosophy, grounded in academic analytics, in its application, follows the model of Jesus Christ’s Gospel to an exactitude, and in this application dispels worldly angst and epidemic anxieties of the nonexistence of truth, reality or purpose.  The devout and focused Mormon will find their paths to truth and transcend this state of artifice.  But this point has been sedimented countless times in this forum. 

The point for this post is not to compel the worldly by a spiritual testimony most will hardly accept as far away from reality as they are, or, on the contrary, will readily accept being so far away and recognizing lucidly the truths contained.  But for the lay philosopher who will not accept any analytical approach to Mormon Existentialism based on the very delineated, counter balanced and poised Christ’s Gospel; presented here are current demographics unavoidable in their context on a global and very pragmatic level.

In the day of Nietzsche where he stated to mankind the “death of God,” he was not addressing mankind.  He was addressing the very tense pre WWI recently and very tenuously unified states of new German Principalities.  Germany was desperate for power and what better call to power than Nietzsche’s call to all individual humanity without the moral base to connect them… the “Will to Power.”  Since then, the world has undergone drastic wars and revolutions, not only Korea and Vietnam but the social revolutions of the 1950’s and 160s, that would forever change America and have led to an unquestionably more unified situation than ever before… reaching farther and farther away from the ignorance of early tribes and dwellers who knew nothing of the other tribe but to fight.

Today, thanks to these revolutions and the ‘90’s that galvanized social norms for many; intolerance and a rejection of others based on difference is unacceptable.  We are currently farther along in the digital/virtual world where a young Chinese schoolgirl can be mentored in China by an English speaker from Detroit, Michigan.  The phenomena of interconnectivity is literally without limit and ripe with exciting possibility in the post-Modern state of human being.

To reach a further point, there no longer exists anything close to what compelled Nietzsche to write what he did, for Sartre to write as he did.  Writers are charged in their content by contexts and by their circumstances and noone today can comprehend pre-WWI Germany.  This is not praise for Nietzsche, for his oeuvre, but I can understand it better after grasping its historical and ideological context.  Heidegger… he was simply a visionary who wrote like a scientist and how he compiled his body of work, so abstract in content, connected as if by a thread but in actuality so monumentally fundamental to the realities of the day… this is a true revolutionary.  Indeed I might, labeled a “renegade” as I have been, may be someday be known as something of a revolutionary myself.  If that actuality comes to pass, the world will be in a better sphere. 

The post-Modern globalized state of interconnectivity that is separated by a gulf of reality that Nietzsche could never have foreseen, that Heidegger could not have understood in their world that looked for a superior race, permits that in this day of PLURALITY of race, culture, society, politics, economics, demographics, religion, truth, faith, ethnicity, resources, realities, not debasing ourselves to relativism once again, but in the full consciousness of realism, I recognize my own private reality just as you recognize yours. 

But in our post-Modern world, my recognizing my own private reality does not in the very slightest affect anything to do with anybody else’s reality and why should it, how could mankind have been so selfish and stupid?  This “they,” “the other,” “the absurd,” was, and worse still, is, a sad and very pathetic nihilistic viewpoint of one's fellow man.  Thinking that there was no morality was the basis for the worst of nihilism and this is just a lazy man’s excuse for an attitude of “eat, drink and be merry… and, “I don’t care.”  

We as Latter-Day Saints and Christians and all whom believe in good, should follow the teachings of Christ’s that say “Love thy brother as thy self.”  Literally, love all humankind, be good to those who spitefully use you.  It is a christ like attitude that is not so hard once the gift of charity is implanted in your heart and you come to a reality that all mankind are the same and we are not capable and not allowed, to judge another.  Only one is.  This is Jesus Christ, he who has walked with each of us down our long and rugged road that we could not have walked alone, he walked it with each of us, he walks yours right now with you, just as he walks mine with me, this is the beginning of the sublime truth of Him.

But in doing so, only HE has the power to accurately judge the mentally ill homeless minority wearing dirty clothes with raggedy hair and burn skin holding a Dixie cup as well as the man who is let off in from of HIS high rise glass tower from out of his chauffeured Bentley early in the morning to be greeted by the night watchman, through for the night, who accompanies this man, mightiest of all men, to the top level of his 4 level personal residence while in office, as he begins his day with a hands free shower and then he operates the conveyor belt to choose which of the Roman handmade suits suits his needs for the day along with the right Croatian tie, the English hand sewn shirt, the diamond cuff links, the Tuscan handcrafted shoes, the diamond cut watch handmade in Switzerland, socks handcrafted from hand spun from Japan, all that remains is his toiletries and he gives care less and less to, this with the passing days.  In fact, he is giving less and less care to anything these passing months, and years.

His four story pent-house club house he has tired of and prefers the comforts found from any of the women he happens to meet from the bar he locals that cater to men with Bentley key rings, diamond cufflinks, watches diamond cut and hand made from Switzerland, and whom leaves thousand dollar tips just for the few seconds of the eyes of the waitress that will linger with his when nobody else’s will.  

Nothing else really matters to him.  It could be any bar in any city in any country.  It has all ceased to matter.  There is only one thing that can still make his heart quiver and this is the attention in the eyes of a beautiful lady, but of course, for this, he has to pay a fortune for.  Attention bought from a pretty lady.  That is his sole remedy to cure him of his life’s misery. He spent all of his thrills years ago and all at a price where even with his empire, no one has any respect for him and openly treat him like an ATM of which their code has unlimited access and he doesn’t care.  At least he is still of some use.

The person at the sidewalk below, who gets $20 at the end of the day and uses it to buy a bottle to quiet the demons screaming in her head… you think God loves her any less than he loves him?  Do you think Christ loves her and appreciates her trials less than his?

He has walked and is walking both.  One is a man defeated who in form, represents all that the “world" has to offer and is more miserable than anyone else.  She, the bottom of the rung, she hasn’t thought about her carnal appetites in so long, she is too busy trying to stay alive and enjoy her agency while she has it.  There is one like him.  Countless millions around the globe are like her.  Who will Christ judge more harshly... we cannot say? But we can say who is the most miserable there is.  And it is he who has all that there is and would just as rather die but is far too cowardly for that, while she gives every energy to fight to live.

We all have our own reality, it is not relative, it is real.  Christ’s love is the state of pure reality and we will get there someday.  But I can be an existentialist and believe in my reality in 2013 just as much as Nietzsche was an existentialist and disbelieved his in 1900.  The difference between the two is that no matter the conditions of my existentialism, your existentialism, the existentialism of an Eskimo in Alaska, I embrace your real reality with you and just because Nietzsche doubted his own reality does not mean that if I doubted mine that I would have to doubt yours.  That is ugly, cold, solipsism and it is the ultimate weak-mindedness. 

I embrace my reality and I embrace yours and I embrace ours.  I embrace my truth and I embrace your truth and I embrace ours.  I embrace my absolutes and your absolutes and I embrace ours.  Because the world who says their are no absolutes, and this is the thinking, intellectual world, has said that “God is dead.” To even write the words is sickening and if ever there was a declaration made that was based on absolute truths, that is the statements that contradicts its own purpose and in doing so proves the existence of truth and thus supports the reality of each of us.

I said I would not delineate my Mormon Existentialist philosophy academically as this can only be broken down, but I will conclude by delineating it substantively.

There is a God, without him we would have no prior notion of God in coming to this earth, there would be no order, and this universe of harmony of such beauty we cannot be ready for it yet in our mortal pre-divine state, is of such a magnitude that we must progress, we must greater ourselves, be must better ourselves, we must obey the laws of Christ if we expect ourselves to have a place in this post-mortal realm… the man whose life means nothing to him and whose reality is incomprehensible in its worthlessness other than the size of its bank account… still… meaning nothing… will find a very shallow hole and find a rock to crawl under it… but the transient who is mentally ill, who has no control over her faculties, whose every day is a battle for survival, whose every day fallen asleep is a battle won, she, she is mighty and she has great kingdoms which she can rule over and the limits of her mind we cannot know but put to good health AND given their fullness and this is a divine creature unlike anything we are aware of.  Think of that when you see your next transient.

Today’s existentialism is not mine it is everybody's.  Mine is called Mormon Existentialism because that is my own creation but it is the Lord's.  If you wish to follow in that, be my guest, read my posts and be a Mormon Existentialist, it is truly amazing as it is today’s curative for all of the ugly anxieties and insecurities of an outmoded existentialism.  If your existentialism is rooted in nature, or people, or animals, or the stars, or gender, or art, or history, or humanity, or yourself, be it, but be it not the same old same old.  “God is not dead, Nietzsche is Dead!!!!!!!"