Becoming Identical vs. Becoming Unified

Please read Ryan's orriginal blog, which others of you can read here, because then I think this will make more sense... I figured I should write my thoughts here, instead of in the comment under his blog.

Ok. I bet you already knew this, Ryan, but I had the thought, so I wrote it down. :)

Just by presenting this question, about individualism vs. unity, I believe you are being an individual. Simply by offering this question out to us (the readers), you are being an individual, thinking and expressing your thoughts. And by posing the question, you inspire others to think about and consider answers. Without your 'individualism' in this instance, methinks we wouldn't have this common ground to work our thoughts off of to better understand one another. Without 'individualism', there would be no reason to try to understand one another, no reason for developing 'people skills', no reason for these simple basic life skills, that are obviously needed to cope in life.

Without individualism, there would be no need for understanding different perspectives which we can obviously tell, that there is a need for. If God wanted us to have no differing of perspectives, in order to be 'unified', He would have needed to take away every thing that gives us any differing characteristics. We would need to be the same in skin color, gender, size, and be identical in every way (which I think is the real issue here, the confusion between becoming identical and becoming unified). In order to be 'unified', he would need to allow us no human contact due to the differing of perspectives, simply by our different visual perceptions. Yet this is not the case.

Individualism provides us an opportunity for understanding, and therefore of unity. If our thoughts are understood by each other, then we can grow and develop towards being edified, and therefore, unified. It is through being edified that we find truths, and correct principles, which are anchors in life that once understood, begin to unify us.

We have our individuality, our own personalities, our own flares, but still we can have a common understanding which brings us out of the slums of mockery, slandering, and other attitudes which further us from each other. This common understanding is greater than we are. It's not just understanding one perspective out of the thousands, but God's greater perspective which sheds light on how everything works, and why people are the way they are, and how to interact and live by correct principles. But this does not mean it steals our tastes, goals, tendencies, talents, passions, love or individuality to become unified through understanding.

I suggest that it is this 'individualism' which spawns the ability to attain 'unity'. I believe that it is due to, and because of our individuality that we are able to be unified.

Womanhood Rant

I made sure to get up early. To dress well and make myself presentable. Even though I was super tired. I then drove the two whole blocks to the building. Yes. I drove the whole two blocks. In a car. But it’s cold out there, I reason to myself, and it’s winter and I’ll be late if I walk. Of course this is the same rationalization I use every Sunday. And one would think I’d plan ahead, and just get up earlier so that I could dress warmly, and walk the two whole blocks, but by the time I think of it, it’s time to go get in the car so I can get there on time.

So I’m sitting there. First class, and they start talking about ‘Womanhood’. I nearly rolled my eyes, picked up my stuff and drove the whole two blocks back home. But I only rolled my eyes.

When they start talking about ‘Womanhood’ my mind shifts into full gear, and I begin analyzing everything they say, trying to pick out that something, anything at all that I must have missed so entirely last time. Because last time… and the time before that, and the time before that… and the time before that… I was just as confused as the first time.

‘Womanhood’ is one of those topics that I don’t know what to do with. I get annoyed and depressed with the topic because when they talk about women, they either make them out to be better than men because we can have babies (gasp!), or they say “It’s all right, you’re special too… we just can’t think of a reason how exactly, so just trust us ok?”

They tell us “Men have the priesthood, and are the head of the house. They have the priesthood and the authority so that they can serve you, and provide for your needs, and everything is about you, you, you, and the priesthood was given to men so that they could better appreciate you, and learn to serve you… blah blah blah…” Or they say “Men have the priesthood, which is an amazing power directly from God, and men lead the church, and lead the home… but don’t worry, you don’t need to feel like you’re useless, you can have babies and men can‘t! So… ha!”

Great. I sarcastically sigh. They never really equalize it. They try so hard. They keep saying “Don’t worry, men and women are equal!” But they never give any support for this argument. It’s so easy to say.

I know that I see this through a filter that I’ve come to accept over the years, but that’s because I have seen no evidence to support that statement “Don’t worry, men and women are equal!”
We have no life, we’re pregnant for ten months, during which time our mobility and activities are limited, and then after we have a kid, we clean and care for the kid, while the guy goes off and does fun and important-type stuff…

There are lots of mothers out there who become pregnant with a child for ten months, and that is hard enough, and then she has to breast feed the kid every three hours or something every day, no matter if it’s night time, 3am or not, and don’t forget that she has to change the diapers and all that wonderfulness. They’ve got these babies inside them for ten months, and then once they give birth, the baby is stuck on the outside for another year or so ‘til they learn to walk, and then these women go and have another one!

‘Womanhood’ isn’t just about giving birth and raising kids. I’ve heard many talks and lessons about how great women are, and it’s always tagged in there somewhere, that everything we do is all tailored to the idea of giving birth and raising kids. Well, I beg to differ. I want to hear just one talk, one lesson about how individuals are great. How women are individuals and men are too, and that that is the reason God made us, so we could live and be people of agency to make good choices and come up with good ideas. This is what I feel is missing from all of those talks and lessons and speeches on ‘womanhood’. They say it’s first and foremost about raising children. But I say it’s first and foremost about the potential for being amazing people. It’s not about being living, breathing, reproduction machines. I have joys and talents and desires and ideas and ambitions. I am a person, disassociated from the idea of having children.

I am a person first, who gets up early in the morning on Sunday, gets dressed and makes herself presentable even though she’s tired. I am a person first, who has strengths and flaws and decides drive to a church building every Sunday that’s only two blocks away. Yes, I’m flawed, but I’m an individual first, and then second there is this amazing, sacred duty encompassed by the word: “Womanhood”.

Belief Prison

I was sitting outside, beside our foggy glass picnic table, basking in what was probably the last of the summer sun when some sort of tiny flying bug flew randomly over to where I was and underneath the table. After zigzagging around a bit as though it were searching for something important it had lost in at the beach, it suddenly (like bugs do) zipped upward, obviously expecting to keep the upward momentum. It hit the glass again and again and again, trying to fly up. It bounced a rough full circle around the underside of the table, eventually stopping to clean itself.

I’ve seen this natural phenomenon over and over where the stupid bug doesn’t understand that simply flying over and up would have much more effective results. Sometimes it needs to fly down, over and up, which yes, is a bit too complicated for an insect, but if only they could wrap their infinitesimally small minds around it, there wouldn’t be so many dead wasps and other insects trapped in windows, bug traps and empty upside-down peanut butter containers.

Many people (if not all) in some aspect or another are like that little bug. The glass is like the beliefs we hold about the universe. If we believe something is so, so it is. We say to ourselves that it is so, and it is so. It is our own beliefs that may set us free or imprison us. The insect didn’t understand the glass, and most of us don’t understand the invisible obstacles and walls that hold us from accomplishing the amazing. We can’t see clearly through the glass, because our beliefs of the world are skewed. As always, we see the world the way we believe it is, because of past experiences, and ‘that is just how it is.’

We can’t tell exactly what is on the other side, yet we faithfully continue pummeling with all our weight against the glass surface, sure that there is something of worth on the other side worth wrecking ourselves over. Maybe it’s all the pummeling and brain damage the little bugs receive that make it impossible for them to connect the dots that going around or under would save their lives.

For us, it is hard to keep trying after failing again and again. We can choose to give up and curl into a ball to die like most insects do, or fight for a way out of our self-imposed belief prison. And yes, if we keep fighting while holding the same beliefs then we will have the same experience, and probably receive brain damage.

We all have those grudges, insistencies or stubborn tendencies to live certain ways. We insist on slamming up against the obstacles we could so easily get around, if only we could wrap our minds around the simple changing of beliefs. It would save us most frustration and give us time in the long run.

Sometimes, we can hazily see what’s out there but we run away from it, believing the sight to be false, and we don’t want to trust in the false, right? So we curl up and die. Just joking, we don’t die, but metaphorically speaking, we kill off faith, hope and the belief of something better. The part of us that says “try, live, and learn.” So we give up. And that is the worst thing to do in this life. That coming from one who’s given up too many times.

If only we could see, that moving over a little bit, adjusting our belief, allowing room for the unknown, we would fly out from beneath the glass, and become free.


"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." - St. Augustine

The Universe: Explained

I am about to explain the universe... So listen closely children...

I have here my thoughts on everything. It may have one piece missing (maybe....), but I think this is it, the explanation of the universe. At least as I see it. My perspective. Me.

:D

There are three substances that make up the entire universe: energy, intelligence, and truth.

I did not include matter, and matter is all around us. So obviously there is more to the list, right? Well, frankly, no. We are taught in science class that everything physical around us is made up of particles. And it has been discovered that somewhere deep within the particles (when we reach in far enough with the microscope) we have quarks, which are made of energy. This discovery implies that everything solid, and everything we see, is made of quarks and essentially energy.

Energy also encompasses thought. Thoughts are in fact energy which can affect the world around us. It’s as though our thoughts go through a transformation instantaneously after we have made them, and they become energy. A great example of this phenomena is something many if not all of us encounter, which is this: when one of us puts a lot of thought into a project or spends all day learning at a seminar or at school, more often than not, we feel fatigued, as though we have used a lot of energy. Which is true. It uses energy to think, not just to stay awake.

But if there were only energy in the universe, humans, animals and plants wouldn't exist because it would be like a whole bunch of cars without drivers. There has to be some kind of intelligence that drives the energy/matter, in order for anything at all to happen. And let me tell you, anything would happen if we left the universe to fend for itself with only energy/matter and intelligence. So what else are we missing?



Laws. Without law, order and consequences, there would be absolute chaos in the universe, so there would need to be laws, which I’m going to simplify as truth. Truth is that when we jump, we fall down; when we do good, we feel good; touching hot stoves, will get us burned. Truth/law exists already, we don’t need to provoke it or conjure it to see it. It just is. Truth unexplainably just is, in the same way that we just are. It’s there, we’re here, and we are left struggling to understand the beginnings.



And let me just quickly mention the second level of truth. The first level is the experiences that we can identify logically (ie: jumping, and falling back to the ground, if we get hurt, it takes time to heal). The second level of truth is greater than the first and is recognized by God. It is on this second level of truth that the first can bend. God grants us miracles of total immediate healing, removing guilty consciences, and bringing loved ones back from beyond the veil, all of which defy the first law of truth that we have come to basically understand in this world. Healing takes time often left with scars, our guilt is a natural consequence of doing something against our better judgment, and death is total; according to the first level of truth. There is a greater truth that God lives that can bend the smaller laws to allow things to happen according to his will, when we believe strongly in something.

So, to briefly re-cap:

Energy is matter:

Intelligence drives matter,












and Truth keeps Intelligence and Energy in line.











These three pieces that make up the universe are so sure and stable, no matter how much lying, covering or ignorance there is concerning them, they will still be there at the end of it all, when our bodies join the dust, and the dust turns to crystal. In fact, these three pieces will be the reason why our bodies turn to dust, why our spirits won’t, and the reason the dust turns to crystal at the end of it all. They are unfaltering basics of the universe that govern the path of the whole universe.

Did I lose anyone?

Conciousness

According to science, there is no proof that I am conscious. Nor you. I think that is crazy, but I understand where they are coming from. All I can really deduce, and all I can really trust is that I, myself am conscious because I, myself am aware of myself. But as for everyone else around me, they may be robots, or a simulation of my brain, something I've made up altogether. An odd and ugly thought. It's one of those things one ought to have faith in. Let me explain why we ought to have faith that those around us are conscious.
No matter what way you look at it, by evolutionary standards or creationist standards, life would be impossible if this were all a simulation of my brain. They say that life evolved rather slowly, and from single celled organisms, and were that true, how then did this simulation of the brain come to be? It would mean that everything around me was fake, only brain waves, and signals to the brain. According to their own theory, life doesn't evolve like that. It’s ‘survival of the fittest’, not ‘let’s see how complicated we can make this’.

Doesn't it seem a bit far fetched? Even if your brain can wrap around it, and some how prove that it’s not impossible, it’s still not worth believing in because it would mean that I'm alone and worthless, and so is EVERYTHING else. And that would pretty much make me into a little ball of wetness that curls up into a corner and die. If everything were worthless and all in my head then there would be no point in living.

The question of consciousness is raised, and I believe it's harmful, to question everyone else's conscious existence, for what are we left in this world NOT to question? Where is there anything to trust? I want to be happy in the same way that I want to be warm after being cold, and if I'm constantly worrying that everything including the ground under my feet can't be trusted because we can't prove that it exists, then what would my life be? I would metaphorically be cold all the time. No warmth. I'm sure I would freeze to death. I choose to believe that we are conscious and aware, so that I at least feel warm. I choose to have faith that I and those I love exist.