Friday, August 8, 2014

Eternity Is Being Constructed Now

"And I wonder why would I wait 'till I die to come alive...I'm [getting] ready now..." Listen:  "Afterlife" by Switchfoot

Each of the systems in our body are equipped with what I call Effect Sensors.The eyes have photoreceptors. The ears have sound receptors. The nose has olfactory receptors. The type of Energy each system receives is specific to that system. The eyes receive Energy in the form of light. The ears receive it in the form of sound. The nose receives it in the form of smells. Each system also contains a taskforce of Energy Converters. These convert the specific form of Energy to electrical signals that communicate something to the brain.  The brain then interprets these signals and converts them into meaning.  And meaning is spiritual.

When these two Processes of receiving and converting Energy are in Balance, that body system is Balanced and Healthy.

I love to compare the physical to the spiritual.  I believe everything that is physical also exists spiritually in a similar order.  So the spirit has systems similar to the body.  We have Spiritual eyes, ears, noses, and so forth.
Our Spiritual Effect Sensors also receive Energy but in the form of meaning, truth, and light.  Our spiritual eyes have the capacity to see the light of truth (D&C 93:36). 

Listen:  "I Am The Light" by Maxine Soakai (feat. David Osmond)
Our spiritual ears receive personal revelation, inspiration, or a good idea that seems to come out of nowhere.

The smells that the physical nose senses are actually airborne molecular matter.   So picture someone is cooking something downstairs.  You don’t know what it is but its scent makes its way upstairs and into your nostrils.  You haven’t touched it, seen it, or tasted its immediate physical matter.  Yet because the matter expands into the air in the form of microscopic molecules past its physical borders, we are able to have a small “taste” of what it is that is cooking downstairs.  Our Spiritual nose discerns things before we actually see or touch them.  This is the power of Discernment.
 
Our Spiritual Energy Converters represent how we interpret meaning.  Meaning, truth, and light exist independently.  We just describe what we see.  When our eyes, ears, and noses see, read, hear, or detect things our Spiritual Energy Converters determine what is Truth and what is False similar to how our physical eyes phototransduct light from darkness.  They do this to identify general truth as well as how it specifically applies to us and our individual story.


 It is during this conversion Process that our individuality appears.  How each of us evaluates the world around us is unique.  What are we looking for?  What are we paying attention to?  What do we spend our time focusing on?  Through this evaluation Process, we demonstrate who we are.

We receive clues before actual discernment takes place.  When the physical systems of the body send the converted electrical signals to the brain, the brain matches or Summarizes these signals with what has been previously experienced.  When we receive clues about someone or something that we are seeking to gain a greater knowledge of, our mind matches these up with what is previously known.  When we add all of these clues up we can discern who someone is who we have not yet physically seen or touched.


If all the systems of our body and spirit are receiving and converting Energy in Balance then we exist at our Optimum Level.  And that’s where we experience Sustainable Joy as well as Health.

Listne:  "I Nee You Now (How Many Times) by Plumb
What usually trips us up is that we start relying too much on physical Energy and don’t even realize how much our spirits need spiritual Energy.  If we don't take the time and focus to really digest meaning, truth, and light both generally and SPECIFICALLY as it applies to our personal story we will feel starved and no amount of physical Energy will ever be enough.  But usually, in order to resolve that conflict, we increase the consumption of physical Energy and it's like we gulp down our food without ever really tasting it, savoring it, enjoying it, and being grateful for it.

When we over-consume physical Energy in any of our body systems, that system becomes numb not only to the physical Energy but also the spiritual.  If we don’t know what’s going on and are truly tenacious then we will up the dose of physical Energy.  That just creates a more severe numbness, a state that is even harder to get out of.  In the scriptures some of the words used to describe Numbness are Past Feeling and Hardened Heart.  Check it out:

Ephesians 4:19
1 Nephi 17:43
Moroni 9:20
Alma 12:13-14
Mark 6:52
left:  Healthy Effect Sensors.  right: Numbed Effect Sensors 
If we want to increase our ability to experience Energy, indulging in too much physical Energy is not going to work.  It will only leave us numb, forever desiring yet never able to obtain.  That's hell (John 4:13; Isaiah 29:8).


Listen:  "Stronger" by Nashville Tribute Band
There is a pathway inherent to the Desire to increase our ability to experience Energy.  This pathway doesn’t end in numbness but in the Sustainability of exactly what we want to feel.  This pathway is the Strengthening Process.  If we desire to increase the intensity of the physical Effects we experience then we need to challenge our bodies at regular intervals and within our own personal Threshold. 

Listen:  "He Said" by Group 1 Crew (feat. Chris August)
If we go beyond our Threshold we promote injury and illness and we have to stop and recuperate.  If we do this enough times, we will lose hope and motivation to continue because it doesn't seem like we’re getting anywhere.  

If we don’t take advantage of the Strengthening Process to our capacity, we promote atrophy in our body.  That means we get weaker which subsequently promotes injury and illness even with our day to day tasks.

Finding that personal Threshold is key to our success.  And that’s where the spiritual Effect Sensors come into play.  They can help us detect where that is for us.  We don’t have to progress to injury before we know we’ve gone too far.  If we have already numbed our Effect Sensors then our first goal is to eliminate the excess Energy we have been continuously partaking of.  The scriptures refer to this process as Repentance. 

So answer these questions:

Are you satisfied with the level of Energy you feel on a daily basis?

Do you have to consume Pseudo Effects to get you through the day?

If you eliminate all Pseudo Effects (excess physical Energy), how would you feel? (Note that this is how we’re going to feel after we die or when our Effect Sensors get numb enough.  At that point we can no longer be sustained by Pseudo Effects so we might as well start weaning ourselves off them now and work to develop our Effect Sensors to the level we need to be happy.)  Listen:  "Wasted" by Carrie Underwood


Do you understand that you only need to work within your own personal Threshold to start, not to the woman’s on TV or to the next door neighbor’s?

Check out the following:

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