Seeking Desideratum: January 2010

I am still here. I've just been extremely busy as of late. But have been aching to write (specifically about a wonderful speech I read paralleling Alice and Wonderland to reality...stay tuned). Unfortunately, I don't have the time or mental frame of mind to write very much at the moment, but I just wanted to share a couple of videos that I've enjoyed over the past few days.

A friend recently introduced me to Alan Watts, and here are a couple snippets from his lectures, so wonderfully animated by the creators of South Park. Enjoy.

Prickles and Goo and Music and Life

Recently, my mother has been a lot better than she was before. I almost can't believe that she is better behaved than Marcus's mother has been, considering mine has mental issues. She sat down with me yesterday, and read me the entire chapter of Mormon 9, a chapter that she was "guided to" by the Lord in the Temple this past week.

Of course as she read, I listened. Surely the emotions that so clearly became manifest in her facial expression and demeanor were sincere. But I wasn't being affected by the scripture as much as my mother was. She said that the Lord wanted her to share those scriptures with me, but really, I think they were for her, and are a way for her to make sense of me.

While she read to me, I looked at the mud near the concrete patio where we were sitting. I started looking at the water and mud and realized how I was made of the same stuff in that dirt. I was just put together differently. As she talked about archaic phrases such as becoming pure through "the blood of the lamb," I contemplated or rather tried not to contemplate but just exist in the most basic sense. It felt rather enlightening.

Although, it was nothing like the experience I had a few days ago. My husband and I have talked about how when we were children, and maybe we were just weird children, we would think about nothing. As a kid, I used to think about "non-existence" and get a rush from it. Usually, I would think about the earth and then my house and then my family and then me, and then in my mind I would erase me, then my family then my house, then the earth until there was nothing. It used to give me a weird but interesting feeling so I would try to do it often as a child. I haven't been able to do it since I was very young... until this week.

I was sitting in the car, and it just happened. I thought about non-existence. Which is a horrible way to describe it, but that's the best way for me to put it into terms. I thought of the earth and the galaxy and the immense magnitude of everything, and then in the same instant, I was able to make it all disappear. I had that long forgotten rush I used to experience frequently as a kid. But it only lasted a couple of seconds, as a thought of success at attaining the feeling entered my head, and that was enough to pop the fragile bubble of nothingness.

So my mother has a scripture she wants to share with me. That's fine. If that's what makes her understand her world, so be it. As for me, on the other hand, I have a different way of experiencing reality. It is a different way than hers, and she needs to accept that.

Although, I got to thinking. Since I was able to experience a transcendent understanding of things while my mom read to me outside, is it possible to be a Mormon and a pantheist?

What really makes a Mormon anyways? If I have the belief that "god" cannot be defined as a man but as reality itself, could I still be a "good Mormon"? Does that small difference in semantics really dictate whether or not a person is LDS? What if I choose to interpret that man is created in god's "image" in the sense that man is made of the same "stuff" as god. That god (the universe) and man are really one and the same and in that way they are related.

And if that's the case, if I really can be Mormon and have this view of deity at the same time, if I were to share these thoughts in Sunday school would I be accused of apostasy? And if not, does it then all come down to me keeping the WoW and paying tithing to be a temple recommend holding Mormon?

In Mormon 9 it reads that "God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing." In my view, my concept of "god" is more eternal and unchanging than what I understand to be the Mormon one, which even admits that god is constantly changing his laws with "modern revelation." Mormonism also teaches that god follows the laws of nature and the universe; in that case, wouldn't that ultimately make the "laws of nature" more powerful than the Mormon God? In my view, the laws of physics and the laws of nature (even the little we know about them) are more eternal and timeless than the god we read about in the scriptures.

The Mormon God and Thoughts on Nothingness