Book of Jarom and the Plan of Salvation

My scripture study this morning was in the Book of Jarom. The following few verses really stuck out to me (emphasis mine): 

Jacob and his father, Enos. Image here.

2 And as these plates are small, and as these things are writtenfor the intent of the benefit of our brethren the Lamanites, wherefore, it must needs be that I write a little; but I shall not write the things of my prophesying, nor of my revelations. For what could I write more than my fathers have written? For have not they revealed the plan of salvation? I say unto you, Yea; and this sufficeth me. 

3 Behold, it is expedient that much should be done among this people, because of the hardness of their hearts, and the deafness of their ears, and the blindness of their minds, and the stiffness of their necks; nevertheless, God is exceedingly merciful unto them, and has not as yet swept them off from the face of the land. 

4 And there are many among us who have many revelations, for they are not all stiffnecked. And as many as are not stiffnecked and have faith, have communion with the Holy Spirit, which maketh manifest unto the children of men, according to their faith. 

5 And now, behold, two hundred years had passed away, and the people of Nephi had waxed strong in the land. They observed to keep the law of Moses and the sabbath day holy unto the Lord. And they profaned not; neither did they blaspheme. And the laws of the land were exceedingly strict.

Fighting Lamanites. Image here.

The Book of Jarom and I have a really nice history. Early on in my life I was very in favor of the so-called "War on Terror" (what does that even mean, anyway?), but after a very intense study of the Book of Jarom, I changed my tune. The whole book is only one chapter, so you can also do a very intense study of the book in not a lot of time. In the chapter, we learn about the Lamanites who "loved murder and would drink the blood of beasts," and how they "came many times against us [...] to battle." Sounds like modern-day terrorists to me.

Except the "kings" and "leaders" who "were mighty men in the faith of the Lord" did not go hunting the Lamanites out of existence, and did not take the war to them, and did not invade their lands. Instead, these mighty men in God's wisdom prepared for war by "fortify[ing] [their] cities," making "weapons of war," and "diligently exhorting with all long-suffering the people to diligence [...] persuading them to look forward unto the Messiah, and believe in him."

Verse 12: "And it came to pass that by so doing they kept them from being destroyed upon the face of the land; for they did prick their hearts with the word, continually stirring them up unto repentance."

Anyway, I read all of that and thought--gee whillickers! THAT is how to withstand modern day terrorism! Fortify your lands, prepare for war, and repent repent repent and keep the commandments. Bam.

But today, those first five verses really stood out to me. I feel like my life now--and probably many of your lives now--is characterized by a lot of revelation. I feel like almost every day I'm learning something new and amazing about something, whether it is a revelation about the nature of the universe, or about the human body, or about my specific life, or about the lives of my clients. I spend a lot of time now enjoying direct tutelage from the Spirit, and I love it.

So I really super love what Jarom teaches in verse 2. There he is, a man of revelation, having received lots of revelations, but when it comes right down to it, he opts against sharing the things that have been revealed to him, because they all pale in comparison to the importance of the Plan of Salvation.

This is so, so true. At the end of the day, all the other things we learn from the Spirit are minor in comparison.

Jesus the Christ. Image here.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is so amazing in this regard. On the one hand, it is complex enough that you can receive spiritual downloads about it every day and still barely scratch the surface of its immense complexity. There is so much to learn about how it all works!
And yet, it is so simple that a child can understand.


One reading of the Book of Mormon, and every major question you ever had about life's purpose is answered.

One discussion of the Plan of Salvation can utterly change your life.

Just yesterday I was reading about a Holocaust survivor who had some serious questions about God after his experiences--can you imagine if he and his rabbi had understood the Plan of Salvation? What a huge relief and comfort it would have been. What peace it could have brought. From the interview:

Eisenhower liberated me in concentration camp. He came with his other general, and they saw the piles of bodies that they couldn’t burn. The Jews were on the bottom, and I was the only guy because the Czechs, they didn’t march me to death because of my Czech friends. They said you are a Czech. You’re not a Jew. Stay with us. So I was the only Jew the rabbi found. He was looking for a Jew. He said, “I’m a rabbi. Are you Jewish? I’m looking for a Jew.” I said I’m a Jew. I’m a Jew. Come over here, talk to me. So he came over and talked to me. 

I said you’re not a rabbi. You’re Jewish. You’re a soldier. He says no, I’m a soldier rabbi. So I’m asking you one question. Can you do me a favor, not for me, for my 4-year-old brother that I know now that he was burned? Where was God? Not for me, because I might have sinned. Maybe I deserved to be here, but my four-year-old boy had no sins whatsoever. He didn’t live long enough. He could have been a rabbi like you. Why didn’t God help him? 

He says I can’t answer you because I’m not prepared to answer your questions, so I started crying. I started crying because I said to him who am I going to ask? You’re the rabbi. You’ve got to help me, thinking because I believe in God, save me. So I’m not asking for myself. My brother could have been a rabbi like you. You don’t know what he would have become. God didn’t know yet because he didn’t sin yet. All of us maybe have a little sin. Whatever happened, God is a busy man. I understand that.

Reading that just broke my heart. For so many reasons, but especially because no one involved here understood the plainest part of the Gospel:

That we are God's children.

Image here. 

That He loves us.

That we lived with Him before our mortal birth.

That we all agreed in a Council in Heaven to come to earth to learn to be more like God.

That we understood we would be tested and tried and be given growth opportunities, opportunities for growth that couldn't have happened any other way.

That that we knew we would all fail.

That God promised He would send us a Savior, Jesus Christ, to atone for our sins and enable us to repent  and heal and come home after our mortal probation.

That everything in life is for our ultimate benefit: even that hard stuff, even the indescribably hard stuff, even the stuff that seems unfair and that doesn't make sense.

That even when things seem unfair, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, everything is fair--and merciful.

Can you imagine if that rabbi had had access to that knowledge?

Or if either of them had had access to a scripture like D&C 121? Even when I was a small child, D&C 121:7 brought me so much peace. I remember being a kid and thinking of it as I struggled with physical, spiritual, and emotional health problems. What a huge comfort it was. And is.

The Plan of Salvation is the most important thing.

So I guess in keeping with my Jubilee preparedness blogging: spend some time today with the Plan of Salvation. If you've never heard of it before, read up. If you are familiar with it, spend some time feeling grateful for it, praising God for it. This is the most important thing we can know.

Life support: my story is up

A story of mine is up on Progressive Prophetess's blog. Go check it out! It's about the breath, and how my awakening began after I decided to breathe more deeply. Breath is incredible.

Instead of reading a blog entry for the next 5 minutes, I challenge you instead to just breathe intentionally for five minutes instead. Notice how you feel inside your body, breathing in light and peace and breathing out toxins and junk. Breathe in relaxation, and exhale out all the tension in your body.

Do it again.

And again.

And again.

BREATHE!! :o)

Image here.

Tao Te Ching: Chapter 10 Commentary

This series examines the Tao Te Ching from an LDS, Christ-centered perspective.

Chapter 10 of the Tao Te Ching asks us to examine our steadfastness, our trust, our honor, our yin energy, and our wisdom. Here it is: 

Heavenly gate. Image here.

In holding the soul and embracing oneness
Can one be steadfast, without straying?
In concentrating the energy and reaching relaxation
Can one be like an infant?
In cleaning away the worldly view
Can one be without imperfections?
In loving the people and ruling the nation
Can one be without manipulation?
In the heavenly gate's opening and closing
Can one hold to the feminine principle?
In understanding clearly all directions
Can one be without intellectuality? 

Bearing it, rearing it
Bearing without possession
Achieving without arrogance
Raising without domination
This is called the Mystic Virtue

Six Virtues 

Here we find a list of virtues that Lao-Tzu (the writer) asks us to examine in ourselves. We are to be:

1. Steadfast in holding our soul and achieving "oneness," or, one might say, "union," the meaning of the word "yoke" in Matthew 11:29.
2. Childlike in our concentration and trust in the Lord (Luke 18:17).
3. Perfect in achieving an eternal perspective (1 Corinthians 13:11-12).
4. Guileless in love and governance (Revelation 14:5, John 1:47).
5. Submissive (feminine) with regards to God's will for us in His opening and closing of "the heavenly gate" (Mosiah 3:19).
6. Clear in our spiritual understanding without being nitpickingly intellectual (John 1:48-51).

Each of those virtues could have had like fifty scriptures linked to it, but I just picked one or two each. I had to use the story of Nathaniel twice because I love Christ's tribute to his purity and lack of guile, and I love how the story of him and fig tree portray trust. In the story, Christ comes up to Nathaniel, and praises him for having no guile. Nathaniel asks Him, basically, "Um, how do we know each other?" And Christ responds by referring to a secret, possibly sacred time when Nathaniel was alone under the fig tree. Rather than responding with suspicion ("How could you possibly know that???"), Nathaniel responds with trust: Rabbi, thou art the Son of God. Thou art the King of Israel.

In its way, this first part of Chapter 10 of the Tao Te Ching reminds me of a condensed version of Alma 5, kind of a series of guided questions for improving one's relationship with God.

Raising without domination

As a woman, I read the second part of this chapter in the context of children, bearing and raising children without domination, without arrogance, without possession. Our children are not ours; they are our stewardship. We do not possess them; we have only a brief time to teach them and raise them.

But this goes not just for children but all sorts of things. We don't truly own anything on the Earth; everything is God's, because He made it. He just loans us stuff. This was one of the points of the famous "Render Unto Caesar" speech in the Bible (Luke 20:25).

In this story, priests come up to Jesus to try and trick Him. They ask in Luke 20:22 if it is lawful for them to essentially pay taxes.

The tribute penny. Image here.

In verse 24, Christ asks the priests whose inscription is on the penny. They explain that it is Caesar's name and inscription. What the Bible leaves out is what the inscription actually says: on the penny, the denarius, it says, "Ti[berivs] Caesar Divi Avg[vsti] F[ilivs] Avgvstvs” (“Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus," claiming that Caesar is actually a god.

The question was: is paying tribute to Caesar an acknowledgment of another god? Is using this coin breaking the commandment to put no other gods before the God of Israel?

Christ's response is to "render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God's." There have been many interpretations of this over the years, but my inclination is to accept the teaching that everything is God's--see Colossians 1:16, or even just the story of Genesis. God made the world and it and everything in it are His. We are just stewards.

In the Doctrine and Covenants, we learn the importance of good stewardship over the things God is lending us. D&C 121:39-42 in particular cautions against unrighteous dominion, specifically in the context of priesthood leadership, but the same caution can apply to anyone.

The Tao Te Ching cautions against unrighteous dominion, against taking pride in or credit for our alleged accomplishments. All things are God's, anyway.

Conclusion

Chapter 10 of the Tao Te Ching echoes many sentiments from the Christian scriptures.

prepare: galvanized wash tubs

One thing I recently ordered for my preps was galvanized wash tubs and metal washboards. The pictures are links to the ones I bought.

I bought them sight-unseen, beyond what you see in the pictures, but when they arrived I was pleased at how large and sturdy they both were. I bought two of each--although now I'm thinking I should get at least two more washtubs. They will be useful also for washing dishes. They are just very sturdy things.



Once you have those things out of the way, you'll also need a laundry soap to wash your clothes with. Sometimes I make my own homemade laundry detergent, out of Borax, washing soda, and whatever grated bar soap I have on hand. I use cleaned kitty litter buckets to store my homemade laundry detergent. This is the recipe I use for homemade laundry detergent.

Having clean clothes will become a very serious issue--mostly for women (feminine hygiene may be significantly less hygienic) and children (diapers and potty accidents). Right now laundry is kind of more of an annoying chore, but if/when Things Get Bad, it can become a matter of life and death. You don't want to run out of clean pads or clean diapers. And in the case of plagues or sicknesses of whatever type, if someone barfs on you or you're stuck cleaning up after someone who is contagious, you will need both your skin and clothes washed.

Right now I've been focusing more on laundry, but getting a galvanized tub suitable for a bathtub has been on my backburner as something I might consider ordering in the future.

Any of you have laundry-related preps you are up to?

Prepare: muffin mix recipe

I started out my food storage packaging straight up flour--but then I realized, there's not much a person can do with just plain flour--particularly if you can only bring one container of stuff with you wherever you are going.

So now I am making and packaging my raw ingredients together, as biscuit mix and muffin mix. I write the ingredients on each bottle and instructions on how to mix everything up. I feel so much happier when I look at bottles of muffin mix than when I look at bottles of flour. I love that I can just pour it out and mix it up and not have to worry about finding where I put the baking powder or anything. It's all ready to go!

I try and make it as easy as possible on myself, so my recipes are based on 5lbs of flour (that way I can just pour in one whole bag of flour and get started--no measuring that, at least!

MUFFIN MIX RECIPE

Mix together:

- 5 lbs flour (20 cups)
- 5.5 cups sugar
- 6.5 tbsp baking powder
- 2.25 tbsp baking soda
- 2.25 tbsp salt
- 3 tbsp ground cinnamon
- 3 tbsp nutmeg

I pour these all into my normal flour bucket, seal it, then toss it around in my arms for a minute or two to mix it all up. It smells SO GOOD.

HOW TO BAKE
In total, this recipe would require an additional 2.5 c of nonfat dry milk. All told, the recipe calls for around 26 cups of stuff, so as we divide the mix up, we remember that the ratio is about 1 part nonfat dry milk to 10 parts mix. 

So for a 16.9oz bottle that stores 2.25 cups of muffin mix, we need to reconstitute a quarter cup of nonfat dry milk when it's time to mix everything together, along with 1/3 cup oil/shortening/applesauce, and 3.5 tsp vanilla extract if you have it. A 16.9oz bottle will make 6 muffins.

When mixing to eat, you can obviously add things like berries or grated carrots or chopped nuts or chocolate or butterscotch chips or whatever else you want to put into your muffins. Whatever you want!

For a 2L soda bottle, those hold 8.5 cups of mix. If you were to mix the whole thing up for muffins at once, you'd want to reconstitute 5/8 cup of nonfat dry milk, and mix with 1.5 cups shortening/oil/applesauce/mashed bananas etc, along with 4 tbsp vanilla extract if you had any on hand.

A 2L bottle would make up about 25 muffins, by my reckoning.

I do not really plan to make these in muffin containers, by the way. In real life, you can just pour the muffin batter into a cake pan or Dutch oven and bake like that--it is like making a coffee cake. So, whew, no need to stock up on muffin tin liners!

I don't think the nonfat dry milk is essential to this recipe, by the way. I'll have to experiment but that's my understanding. Everything can be substituted. So we'll see.

Prepare: commandments and blessings

This was my hookum this morning (a hookum is when you let your scriptures fall open with the intention that the page opened to will be just right for you):

Women in the wilderness.
Image here.

1 And it came to pass that we did again take our journey in the wilderness; and we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth. And we did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness; and our women did bear children in the wilderness. 

2 And so great were the blessings of the Lord upon us, that while we did live upon raw meat in the wilderness, our women did give plenty of suck for their children, and were strong, yea, even like unto the men; and they began to bear their journeyings without murmurings. 

3 And thus we see that the commandments of God must be fulfilled. And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them; wherefore, he did provide means for us while we did sojourn in the wilderness.

- 1 Nephi 17:1-3 

This was just right for me.

The promise here is that if we keep the commandments, God will work incredible miracles to keep us strong and nourished. If you must live upon raw meat in the wilderness because you are keeping God's commandments, God will use it to make you strong.

If things really did Get Bad, there's no way a year of food storage would be enough. A year's supply for one person is maybe a few months' supply for a family. A family's food supply for a year would be a month or a few days for a community. But the point is obedience. By acting in faith, we show God that we are preparing our hearts to trust Him fully enough to provide for us in the wilderness.

Keep the commandments! Receive the blessings!

Follow the Spirit: learn your baseline

In the Home Healing Course I'm teaching, we spent the past week studying intuition (among other things). A bunch of people commented that they wished they'd known this one technique for their whole lives, so I'm just going to share it here in the hopes that it helps others.

The secret trick: every time I pray with a question now, I have God remind me ahead of time what yes and no feel like.

So the other night, I had this weird experience where I was supposed to go to a social event, and when I got there, I started feeling like the Holy Ghost was telling me not to go. This was basically an enrichment activity involving just a bunch of people from the ward, and so I was very confused. Why would I be told not to go to that?

So I ignored the prompting, got out of my car and headed toward the house, only to be told over and over again not to go, not to go. So I went back to my car and prayed.

Image here.

Fortunately, I had this tool in my tool belt. I prayed for God to remind me what a "yes" feels like, and I allowed myself to feel that for a few moments. Then I prayed for God to remind me what a "no" feels like, and I allowed myself to feel the difference.

Then I prayed again, asking: should I be here? (No.) Should I go home now? (Yes.)

I went ahead and phrased my questions different ways--Can I go in? Should I leave right this minute? Do I need to be at home tonight? Just testing my answers' consistency. When the answers all matched, I ended up turning the car back on and driving on home, just on faith. I wanted to go be with friends but as soon as I acted on my prompting I instantly felt better. When I got home I felt to ask my husband for a blessing, for all my confused feelings. The blessing basically was like, "Good work following the Spirit!" and that was that. So I have no idea what that all was about, but I did have a good time alone repackaging my long-term food storage and listening to Har Hari Haray Wahe Guru over and over on YouTube.

That story is just an example, though, of this principle in action. I believe I was inspired to begin asking God for these reminders of what yes and no feel like. Getting answers to prayers can be hard enough without having to guess if the feeling you're getting is a yes or a no.

So, a challenge: spend some time this week with God just learning what a "yes" and a "no" feel like. Go ahead and take it a step further, if you want, and ask what a "deceptive no" feels like--the most convincing false yes that the adversary could plant in your heart. Practice discerning the difference. Watch how much more easily you will be able to discern the yes-no answers to prayers as you live your daily life. Where it used to take me personally quite a while, sometimes, to understand if I was getting a yes or no about something, now it does not take long at all. I still ask for reminders of yes and no at the beginning of important prayers, but overall I am much more confident at knowing that when I get a feeling, I will be able to recognize it for the answer it actually is.

Yes Feeling Samples

Image here.

Talking to random people who have tried this, "Yes" feelings seem to tend to include:

- feelings of light or warmth of tingling in the lungs and face
- feelings of spiritual expansion
- feelings of energy rising in the body
- feelings of spiritual "smiling"
- open feelings in the heart area

No Feeling Samples

- feelings of being closed off
- energy sinking downward instead of upward
- tingling on different parts of the body (my guts sometimes tingle, or a friend's ears tingle)
- feelings of constriction

False Yes Feeling Samples

- dizziness
- energy moving around, but not in the same way as a yes
- different body parts tingling than you would feel in a yes or a no

Everyone Is Different

It's important to figure out for yourself what your baseline is. You might have the same yes and no feelings that I do, or you might not. I suspect it's like muscle testing. For most people, if they stand up and ask themselves what their name is, their body will sway one direction or another as an answer. But for some people, instead of swaying, their body will make, for example, the right arm tingle or lift for yes, and the left arm tingle or lift for no. That's not wrong. It's just different. There are lots of different ways a yes or a no feeling might manifest for a person, but it's up to you to discover what those manifestations look like for you.

Personal prayer. Image from lds.org.

And it's so, so important to learn what a deceptive no feels like. The adversary wants us to fail when we seek answers from God. The more important the issue is that we're praying over, the more he will try and influence us falsely. If God's answer is no but the adversary's answer is yes, you need to be able to recognize what that feels like.

Similarly, you need to be able to recognize feelings of "yes" as being from God, because sometimes God tells us answers we don't want to hear. "Yes" feelings for me are not particularly comfortable. So if all I asked was a yes or no question and I got that uncomfortable sensation of yes, that buzziness in my chest, if I didn't know any better I could easily just tell myself that my answer was a no, because what would I have to compare it to? And a lot of times I think people seeking answers expect them to come in a specific way, without asking God if that specific way is appropriate for them or not.

Also, I'll mention that another thing I like to do is specifically pray that God will send me answers in a way that is unmistakeable, that I will fully understand. God will always send us answers, but there's no guarantee we'll understand them unless we ask for that understanding too!

God is not going to lead you astray with this. If you go directly to Him to get your baseline, He'll be happy to give it to you. He wants you to be able to easily discern between yes and no. I believe it's actually one of His big goals for all of His children. So I challenge you to spend some time this week practicing with this. Get on your knees and ask Him what yes and no feel like. Ask Him a question and ask Him to give you the answer in a way you won't be able to misinterpret. Notice the difference in the quality of your prayers.

Believe! Witness miracles!