Eyes of understanding

I want to remember and speak my {mind?} concerning this.

Alright, now is as good as any to write something here. I was listening to a video about Egypt, sort of eavesdropping inentionally when I heard an old man tell a thing he had been taught when he was young. It was that we say "I saw you in my dream last night" but, "seeing" anyone is proposterous in a dream cause our eyes are closed, but that is how we say things in English. In Egyptian there isn't even a way to say the equilvalent of death or dying. The concept in egyptian is translated as "westing" it is likened to the Sun when it sets. It will return again,  it is just sort of buried in the dirt and then goes to the other side until finally rising again in the East. Their culture was founded on a concept of immortality, so things are hard to even say in words created by a fatalistic culture.

I recall the word  Wadi being taught to me one day in Mississippi. It was the word used to explain what we would call a river bed devoid of water. Ah hah! I understood how more was being translated than just words, but a way of seeing things.

Then, yesterday, I was reading about how someone's eyes of understanding were opened and they saw more than they had previously.

When someone says, "I just want my voice to be heard." It means more along the lines of being understood, and although we understand that perfectly,  in other cultures the literal word for word translation would sound crazy to listen, but not hear.

Actually, all senses are electric impulses discerned by the brain, so we do not avtually need to use our eyes to see. What is percieved as sight in dreams is no less teliable than the information that originated in our eyeballs. Infact, I call such vision as being through eyes of our understanding.

Fascinating stuff

It had been so close to coming out in a question anytime a class discussed how the sins of a parent could be passed on to a child, this troubles me as a Mormon because" We believe that man must be punished for his own sins... " but, clearly, we all are inheriting more than our physical bodies from Adam and Eve.

Then, there was always the whole "Nature vs. Nurture" debate, which I solved within myself by allowing them to "agree to disagree" or inderstanding them both to play a part on development. And as a member of the LDS religious organizatiom, I accepted responsibility for the things I inherited, by birth. Huh?

Ok, yesterday, I was talking to a very wise woman who agreed that our conversations naturally carry alot of "back story" that makes external conversation difficult. So, here is a bit of backstory to aide in understanding my otherwise cryptic speech, a cipher maybe, ok...

We believe that we existed before we were ever born. In this existence, we were much as we are now, only we had spiritual bodies, and noticed that not everyone did, and so we wanted a body, too, but, more than that, we wanted to continue progressing. A plan was devised to help us reach this goal, and that lead to birth, redemption.

Altight, so now you are suredly on the same page, and realize what I mean by expressing a responsibility for the situations I inherited as a babe. Because, in order to accept a physical body, which takes a top priority, I agreed to the justice of inheriting more than genes.

I also believe in justice and this is the foundationsl assertion for so many things considered faith. In this case, it explains how it could in any way be fair to be born into situations that seem hopeless in comparison, or as in a Barbie movie two seeming indentical girls and one is born to debt and poverty while the other is a princess, this demonstrates that an apparent cruelty to an undeserving baby is actually an evidence that there must,be a God, and all spirits inherit more than just their body because they existed before their birth, so this fancy footwork explains how a person could appear to inherit the sins of their fathers, and how any blameless one could inherit any sin through birth, which is necessary to understand for any Christian.

This is one of the beautiful this Latter-day Saints believe, ", believe that through the atonement of Christ, all mankind can be saved.... "

I feel like the C.S.Lewis of Mormonism giving hard earned ( but easy) answers/conclusions to difficult questions, but I stop here and refer you to Mormon.Org if you have any further questions about transgenerational inhereitance and it's place in Mormonism. Suffice it to say, it does despite first impressions fit nicely if you are inclined to consider what look like initial contradictions.

Strange to be glad

I am glad, and it is strange, and sort of unearthly, but I am gappy to never be noticed. It is almost like it defies explination that I go unnoticed, but I am so glad for it, honestly. I saw a video about 10 years ago where two people left a building in an empty lot. They were twins. The first went unnoticed, the seccond had a desire to be flamboyant and as he exited the building a huge flock of sea gulls descended on him in his outlandish fruit hat. A conclusion of the video was this message: be careful in drawing attention, it does not always work out well for us.

Good songs

After reviewing many of my own songs written so long ago as to not be instantly recognizeable as to what I was thinking, I realized something.

Maybe I was a good song writer because I could not express myself. Because, I was not able to follow the thought I had, I applied what I said to what I was currently thinking and thought, brilliant! Although, at the time I "meant" no such thing, It feels like I wrote about what I got out of it. So, maybe good songs and poetry are the ones that capture a relationship's dynamics and yet remain vague enough to apply to anything the audience thinks up. Thus, each reader independantly thinks the words were  written precisely for their situation, and appeal can reach greater numbers.

Everything I write is like that, and I was working on fixing it.I was working on trying to say exactly what *I* was thinking. Instead of being "cryptic" I could be "concise". Usually, I just am writing as I think only my fingers cannot keep up so I have to see what I was saying and that generates a new thought, sort of a tangent from the original until the original is forgotten in written words and a new meaning takes shape in my songs, peobably entirely unlike what I started to write in the first place.

I remember in English class in high school (Elkhart Central) a teacher sort of disected a song as a piece of literature. It was by the walking dead I believe all I remember is that it made no sense at first, but that was the charm. It called out for instrumental help and we had to actually study it out, for surely the writer had something worth saying. This was quite influencial to me cause I thought, "hmm. This is what the kids like? Well, anyone can say things without making sense." As we delved into it one peer asked, " how we knew that was what it was about, maybe it just said something backwards. Another answered and said, "Yeah, It doesn't seem any different than those poems that you tell us means something, but how do we know? The teacher explained that was precisely her point. I thought it was that songs are nothing without music, but she taught us that poetry and lyrics have meanings and they are worth our time to figure out.

That was odd, is it me?

I was listening to a song that facilitated the best realization ever, but I did not like the song? What is music for?

Regardless, family life gives us the chance to really love. The more we love the more we understand God. Surely, I could do nothing, but he did it first. I learned that from Brigham Young, not face to face, mind you.

Sometimes people earn the right to suffer, it is what they want, so maybe it is not suffering at all, living as we expect might actually cause more of their kind of suffering.

No relevance to anything

I was thinking alot about a paper I wrote for a philosphy class, years ago,  and how strange it must have been for the teacher to consider what I crudely argued. It was supposed to be a research paper on Blaise Pascal's proof for the evidence of God. I, instead wrote my own proof, asking permission beforehand. My assertion was that there must be a God if we believe in justice. I also asserted that it was reasonable to believe such. I used a few supporting arguments which were easy and plain where justice was not evident in this life, so it must exist after mortality. Yeah, from there quite a journey of thought is pilgrimed before ending up comfortably accepting that because sonethings exist beyond what we percieve there was a God behind it all,  but I was young and fearless. I think I lacked so much of that disabling inhibition so I dared to say things  I never would except to my kids.

If they are determined...

“It is our great desire that members of the Church will live to be worthy of a temple recommend. Please don’t see the temple as some distant and perhaps unachievable goal. Working with their bishop, most members can achieve all righteous requirements in a relatively short period of time if they have a determination to qualify and fully repent of transgressions. This includes being willing to forgive ourselves and not focus on our imperfections or sins as disqualifying us from ever entering a sacred temple.

...

“Brothers and sisters, I pray that each of us will honor the Savior and make any necessary changes to see ourselves in His sacred temples. In doing so, we can accomplish His holy purposes and prepare ourselves and our families for all the blessings the Lord and His Church can bestow in this life and eternity.”

(Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “See Yourself in the Temple,” Ensign, May 2016, 98–99.)