Revelatory Dreams about the Church

So I have pretty vivid dreams. They used to only occur when I slept in an uncomfortable place like a couch, but now they happen almost all the time. And they're not just vivid; they have lots of visceral conversations, texts that I read, or events that happen, which tell me answers to concerns I have. Naturally, some of these concerns have to do the LDS Church.

What you'll find below are eleven dreams from the last three years that give revelations about the nature of the LDS Church. They speak indirectly; in almost all of them, the influx of information that happens has to come through the mask of whatever concrete details I'm interested in. So for example, you'll find some early on that have to do with the media I was into at the time (zombies and TV shows). People in my life pop up (I've taken out any names to avoid embarrassing anyone). You'll see references to Harry Potter and Doctor Who. But there is a discernible through-line of revelation in each one.

I've decided to italicize any part of the dreams that seems more relevant to the topic at hand than the other parts. For some of them, the whole dream is italicized; these dreams are explicitly about the Church.

Also, feel free to check out posts about two other dreams that fit this description:

My Dream about the Book of Mormon and a Wedding

My Dream about Joseph Smith, Swedenborg, and Fallout 4

I'll offer some brief commentary after each one.

Painting by J. Kirk Richards

The Dreams

8-9 October 2014

In a church function, I found one of the new kittens on the top bunk of my bed at Grandma's house. Our family and I brought the kittens and a dog ( possibly the yellow one) to Church with us. We were nervous that they would tell us to leave. We put the dog in a room where the mother's lounge is. There were teacher-age young men there.

You'll find this sentiment in many of my dreams: church members are judgmental. They cleave to the straight and narrow often at the expense of actual people. Is this good or bad? Both and neither. It comes with the territory.

27-28 January 2015

 I was considering writing a play about people in prison. Then I decide to write a play about the relationships between Mormons and Muslims.

Mormons and Muslims are "in it together," so to speak. This is very "in the air" right now. We are both cleaving to a way of life that's disappearing. We are imprisoned by the world and, by extension, we are also imprisoned by our restrictions.

7-8 August 2015

I am in a neighbors' basement. My non-LDS aunt is there, and she has an essential oil that is associated with Joseph Smith, as if it contained his essence. I ask her what she thought of it, and she said she didn't think it was real. The conversation drifts to Swedenborg on loves and correspondences to my saying that the only difference between religion and magic is political. This upsets her, and a parent gets in my way and tells me so.

Mormons tend not to like the magic and occultism that is, nevertheless, hard to hid from the religion. Things like essential oils and energy work betray our fascination with the magic-y things that we've tried to repress. We shouldn't; it's' our brightness. It's what makes us unique.

29-30 August 2015

At General Conference in a cross between Grandma's stake center and a cathedral (light revealing the dark) where President Benson's going to announce the two new apostles. On the stand, I can see that one of them is Asian. He starts talking about something else (perhaps on a senile way) and then talks about announcing the two apostles, but intimates that he already had. There is a musical number, and we find a seat way in the back. The front has a kind of blue mist veiling the very front, the very origin, and I can only see the front of the front. We sit by a friend from my singles ward, like I said I was going to in the dayworld the night before. The number starts, but I notice that the dividers are closed. I go to open them, but I get in the way of the dancers. Embarrassed, I go back to my seat. I leave, wanting to avoid the awkwardness, and a parent interprets that to mean that I'm going to my Singles Ward. So I leave the chapel, now the Grovecreek Stake Center by our house, and walk home. A feisty girl walks with me, wanting to tag along. I try to walk on the sidewalk but keep getting hurt by vines and thorns on overhanging the fence from unkept trees on the other side. The girl stays by me.

There is a mystical "background" to the Church that many people can't see. It is the endless like Endless is God's name. And it is blue, the color of the endless sky and sea. But the "dividers" can close it out. 

20-21 November 2015

A parent has talked with NYU and this I should go there for my Masters and live with relatives in New York. She has me go there immediately so I can meet with the LDS Institute people, perhaps for the purposes of meeting a girl to marry. I go to NYU, and it's Westminster, though it looks like Meridian. A professor from Westminster says I can still apply to the philosophy grad program at NYU (which he's in charge of) if I take the last ten minutes to take the philosophy subject tewst. But he says that even if I don't, he can arrange it so I take it some other time. I go to the computer lab to take it, but I can't find it. Eventually I settle in my apartment with someone like an actor from the theater, who helps me. It's Halloween again, and I realize that the previous Halloween wasn't the 31st but only a week-day combination that worked as Halloween for people who didn't want to celebrate it on the actual day. Trick-or-treaters come and ask for candy, even though it's only in the afternoon. One rogueish, bully teen group forces their way into the house (our Pleasant Grove house at this point) to get some of our pizza, but I force them to leave. I'm suddenly in the context of the last Harry Potter book, as if it's much more macabre and metaphysical than it actually is. There's a globe in Dumbledore's office representing and corresponding to the world, which is dividing into pieces and rearranging wrongly. there is the importance of lighting or electricity coming from Dumbledore and McGonnagal reuniting the pieces through continuity between the lighting branches. There are quarters of the globe that are much smaller than the other quarters they're stuck with; continents fit together wrongly like a botched Pangea. There is the possibility of touching a city on the globe and going there in real life, but it would be a sinister alternate reality where everything is red and violent. Salt Lake city is in a Utah called Idaho in this reality, and it's very sinister. 

The world is trying to unite itself together: not by means of the "continents" that are being united, but by means of the light between them. But it's a problem; something's going wrong. This happens beneath the surface, in the Shadow. We'll need to integrate it, to find the light in it. The Shadow in Utah is particularly vicious.

10-11 January 2016

In the Revolution (the TV show) world, Clara (from Doctor Who) is there, plus a horse that she communicates with by text a la the God King (from Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson), There's a blue suitcase that has a secret; it might explode if you do it wrongly. A parent barges in and opens it up completely, and we want to stop it from happening, but it doesn't do anything before we close it up. Then, after we do that, a projector comes out of the suitcase and plays a video on the wall, a la the Dharma Initiative in Lost. This is surprising, since, after all, it's in the Revolution universe (where electricity doesn't work). It's advertising a new nation, and it tells the history involved. It gives a list of numbers for its name, and at the end, it has two horses jokingly say that "you haven't seen this," as if to say that it's illegal and to tell me not to talk about it. It's from the Mormons. A boy/the horse is frantically copying stuff down.

Mormonism offers light to a dark world. It is a new nation hidden within this one. This happen despite the fac that people hate Mormons, but because of it. Wherever there is light, the darkness will hate it. Hatred is a sign that there is light stirring the pot.

15-16 January 2016

I'm in a desert area. Mormons down below have decided to stay down below, while the more righteous Mormons above have decided to take the train to a new place of refuge (a promised land), which was supposed to demonstrate your righteousness, but I know isn't really that.  They want me to come, but I decide not to. After they leave, I look at the railroad and think about last night's dream with the water park. I ask a black man working on the railroad what it meant. He says that the rails on the railroad signify literalism and righteousness, essentially. I can go in between and by fine. Down below there are anxious but good people.

Do you obey the commandments because they're commandments, or do you obey them because they outline a path to something more important than them? The rails aren't meant to be walked on; you can only walk between them.

12-13 February  2016

I'm reading a book that is giving me an influx of revelation. I realize that the text of the words doesn't matter; it's the meaning that occurs to me while reading that does. I read something about following the strait and narrow, and it makes me realize that the Church only has rules to that people don't stray too far when breaking them. It then talks about Tom Cruise being on the lam in Mission Impossible (the one with Burj Khalifa), and it makes me realize that my straying from the path (Tom Cruise's connection to the establishment in the film) is actually its own path that I don't yet understand.

The iron rod is a hard shell that keeps in the gooey center; it isn't the gooey center. It is the railroad that keeps the train on the tracks; it isn't the train itself, which remains between them. 

29-30 August 2016

In Pete's Dragon, watching the parts I missed. The boy is a Mormon, and he's been separated from Mormonism after his parents died. He is the key, but he's been lost. They find him again, and they go to a town fleeing something, where they find whole crowds looking at him. He's special, locally famous even. They put him in a blanket and toss him up like in "hip, hip, hooray!" The people who found him are a bit confused and disbelieving that he is Mormon or that Mormonism is worth anything. Something about the Book of Mormon being key.

The light is a boy that's been lost in the wilderness, but he's beginning to be found. This is true of both Mormonism as a whole against the world and the bright spirit of Mormonism against the hard shell of pseudo-Mormonism. The light is shining where before there was only darkness. The restoration occurs again whenever you see the light that brought it in. It is a lost boy being found. It is gold plates coming out of the ground. But it can be sheathed in darkness until you dis-cover it.

21-22 November 2016

We're in our old house, and there is a massive amplifier in the place of my old basement room that's also in a jungle. It makes the leopards that live on the stairs colorblind and harmless. This was a cruel experiment. We taunt the leopards and do a cycle where we go off of the leopards' reactions and learn about ourselves. This goes well for a while, even though I don't see parts of the cycle. But I decide to peek, and they're feasting on flesh by the start (by the amplifier/my old room), and I try to distract them to maybe save that person that didn't make it. I lock myself in the laundry room, which holds them off just for a bit. I need to leave by the window (we're on the second floor now), but a boa constrictor somehow got in the room. I manage to trick it out the window, and eventually, I figure out how to leave by it too, but it's a long struggle. I land in a kind of moat. We're now trying to escape Jerusalem as in the Book of Mormon, and I land right behind Laban. But a kind woman whispers to me and eventually tells me the way for us to escape. We leave, passing George Washington (who had killed the Indians; they're submerged; we are warned not to be like them). I realize that the Book of Mormon is obviously more than meets the eye, because of a preface I hadn't paid attention to in a while where Joseph Smith talks about space and time, how the indefiniteness of history means that it doesn't matter where or when you start. Hence the Book of Mormon's starting place. He also mentions how his prophetic career was constant from his birth, which meant that there's more to the Book of Mormon than we often think. 

The Book of Mormon helps us escape. By accepting it, a part of us is already free from whatever captivity we are in. It is our freedom in a self-contained unity, like a pill, like a circular timeline you step into. It doesn't matter where you start. Reading it, you enter an eternal round. 

27-28 March 2017

I am watching the temple movie. God says he wants to appear not as he wants to be but as he is. He steps down and becomes an ordinary man. I understand. He says that his embodiment is the "fatness of life." I understand the richness and lust for life that is implicated in true religion. Outside the temple movie theater, the walls to the world of spirits are boarded up. We are in the highest heaven. I understand that hell has infected it a good way, hence the barricade. A young man wants to go and get his friends on the other side but can't. I am for opening the barrier, but the others here with me aren't. I point out that hell will infect even here if we don't do something. That gives them pause. 

In this dream, I understood the embodiment of God. Embodiment isn't abstract; it's concrete; it's not what we want but what we are; it's the fatness of life. This is celestial life. But celestial life isn't opposed to evil; evil is the opposition to good, and by opposing evil, we give it strength. Look ahead; don't look back. Evil can't see a good that doesn't fear it.

The Takeaway

Mormonism is essential and holds the key to save the world. However, Mormons cling to the walls instead of what the walls protect. Don't turn toward the evil you're defending against; turn toward God. This will introduce the light into the whatever you pay attention to. Light will infect the world. And where does the light come from? The eternal, circular (for they are the same) history called the Book of Mormon.

Review: Anthroposophy in Everyday Life

Anthroposophy in Everyday Life by Rudolf Steiner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

To improve thinking, try to take mental snapshots of things and recall them with exact detail. Then, going back to the thing, notice what has changed. Let the world teach you, not representations of the world.

To strengthen the etheric body, the I, pay attention. Use force in your thinking!

Your higher self seeks out suffering to improve itself. You can think of all suffering like this.

There are four temperaments: choleric (hot-headed), sanguine (flighty), phlegmatic (passive), and melancholic (suffering). You help the choleric by being competent. You help the sanguine by guiding attention through your personality. You help the phlegmatic by cultivating interest through interesting people. You help the melancholic by letting her know your own experience in suffering.

View all my reviews

Review: Death as Metamorphosis of Life

Death as Metamorphosis of Life: Including "What does the Angel do in our Astral Body?" & How Do I Find Christ? by Rudolf Steiner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are angels working in the astral body who, if we didn't consciously acknowledge them by the year 2000, would start to descend into the etheric body and work on us while we sleep. This would have three effects:

1. We would become sex-obsessed
2. We would find pleasant but harmful medicinal knowledge
3. We would develop machines that gratify our egoism.

Check, check, and check.

I hope there's still time.

View all my reviews

The War of the Worlds, and How You Can Help

We are in a crisis of the spirit. There is a force causes us to shy away from spiritual realities and live only in physicality. And it's growing stronger. This is materialism  - the spiritual force that wants us to lose ourselves in greed, sensuality, and addiction. And yet at the same time, a force is growing that opposes this materialistic onslaught. There is, therefore, a war between the worlds, and I want to show you how you can help.

Spiritual Teachers on the War

But first, let me show give you evidence that there is such a war. These are various spiritual teachers that I greatly respect, each one of which teaches that there is a battle between physicality and spirituality being played out in the world today.

Rudolf Steiner called materialism "Ahriman": a spirit who actively pursues materialistic ends and causes us to do the same. As such, he writes that Ahriman and his forces are stronger than ever. They will overpower much of humanity unless something is done. Unless this "something" happens, humanity will gradually lose all connection to the world whose light we can now only see dimly if at all. But Steiner writes that there is indeed another force coming into the world that can overpower this "Ahrimanic" influence.

Without going into details, Steiner suggests that there is a force that will continually help us awake to another world while living in this one. Increasingly, many people will remember a light from beyond birth. We will be awakened to other worlds while living in physical life. The world will become increasingly transparent.

On the other hand, the spiritual teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee also teaches that forces of materialism are polluting not only the physical world but also the spiritual world. To help clean this mess up, we must become conscious of the unity of spirit not merely with the inner spiritual levels of our mind but also with the outer, self-conscious, physical levels.  We must remember the unity of life, for then life would express its unity.

You can find this sentiment even in Mormonism. In the seventh chapter of the Book of Moses, Enoch sees a voice coming from the bowels of the earth that says "Wo, wo is me, the mother of men; I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children. When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which is gone forth out of me?" This wickedness is the materialistic, Ahrimanic force that prevents us from seeing the light that life holds. She - the earth - is buried beneath our oil pipelines and our pornography. Our greed causes her to weep. But eventually, says the Book of Moses, the earth shall rest.

What You Can Do

The physical world is fighting the spiritual world. But it's not one where one wins and the other loses. If the spiritual world wins, so does the physical world, since it will be enriched beyond measure. But the forces of Ahriman won't let us see this. The fight is a fight that will end in an embrace, but it seems like death to one of the parties to give into it. But if the earth lets itself be embraced by spirit, so much will be better.

This tense embrace is being played out wherever spirit and matter are together in tension. As such, you can help them come together. Wherever spirit and matter don't like each other, you can help by helping them to embrace.  For instance, take autism. Autism is an expression of the tense union between heaven and earth. Just like spirit doesn't like matter and matter doesn't like spirit, we are a divided soul where our sense of self exists apart from the body and the body feels unnatural. I am autistic, and so I can help the world by incarnating in my own body.

Another place where you can help heaven and earth come together is in your religion. I am a Latter-Day Saint, and as such, I belong to a religion where heaven and earth are tensely avoiding each other. Our ordinances are powerful beyond compare, but Utah has the highest paid pornography use in the nation. The truth is that our spirits are overpoweringly bright, but they are disconnected from our bodies and their instincts. Here, again, heaven and earth don't like each other. If you're religious like this, you can do a great deal to help the world by uniting heaven and earth in your skin. Let your spirituality be expressed in your sexuality and vice versa. Doing this, you will become overwhelmingly full of life, and so will the world.

You can also help it whenever you wake up or fall asleep. When we sleep, we sojourn in echoes of the spiritual world, but when we're awake, we're in physicality. Normally, there is no continuity there - you don't remember what happened after a certain point at night, you can't remember what happened after a certain point in the morning. But if you could build up a continuous awareness of what went on between sleep and waking, heaven and earth would be linked by a golden thread of consciousness. We would be awake while we dream, dreaming while awake, another way of describing the world as it's meant to be.

In short, let tense muscles resolve. This sums up the whole issue. It will bring peace.

Stories about the World

So let me tell you a story. Last December I was with my family in the TV room in a half-asleep state. Suddenly, a Julie Andrews Christmas came on. I was so tired that I didn't hear the words, but the soft, warm tone in her voice came to me and made me joyful. Those tones spoke to me; I know that I was being heard and seen. Neither the singer nor the composer had any idea who I was, but the music spoke to me. I know it.

Another story. One day between classes at BYU, and I decided to pray for the answer to a question that's been troubling me. I have been growing very close to my Father in Heaven recently, more so than before, so I felt sure that if I asked him to answer my question before the end of the day, he would. A few minutes later, I went into the library, and I felt myself drawn to odd items in it: a fire extinguisher, a framed quote by Harold B. Lee, even a map of the building. But I didn't see "a fire extinguisher." I saw what the fire extinguisher said. As if it were a book or a face, I saw what it meant. I saw what they all meant -- together. God was speaking to me through the building.

Yet another story. My friend told me that works of art "call" to him. They don't shout for his attention; it ends up happening often in spite of his plans: going to see a movie when he wanted to sleep, seeing a play when he didn't want to, etc. But these plays and movies speak to him; they are intelligent; they know what he needs to hear. Mary Poppins was a personal message to him; he knew it was more than the literal plot.

These stories are glimmers of what I mean when I say that the world is waking up. The world is remembering how to move, speak, and think; it's getting a sense for its own dignity. And the baby-steps it's taking will eventually become a full-on sprint. For the world has forgotten its divine nature. It isn't unintelligent, but it believes is. But the world is peeking its head out and saying "Huh. Maybe I'm not just a dumb receptacle of people's will. Maybe I have dignity!" And it does. She does. When the world wakes up, the light trapped in her will come out for everyone to see. All things we thought were inanimate will come alive and speak to us. And with her unstopped tongue, she will enter into an everlasting conversation.

Let it out. Let it all out and she will come to meet you. I assure you that she will.

Why Darkness is a Great Sign

The world today is dark. You can see the dark in someone's eyes, hear it in their tone of voice, but you mostly feel it. It's deeply uncomfortable - a pit in your chest or a stupor of the mind that holds back light like molasses. But the dark always means that there is a bright light nearby. Why? Because all things in light - insofar as they aren't open to it - cast shadows.

This light is coming through. And it will come through by making us realize - even if it has to be painful - that you don't need to defend against the world, that you don't need to fear it. For opacity is what happens when you defend. But when everything drops away and you're left at the end of your defenses, you'll suddenly realize that "I'm still here." Nothing has changed; you're still breathing, the sun is still shining, but the tension is gone. Sinking down into your chair and your eyes becoming brighter, you'll say: "Yes! I don't own anything, but it's all given to me!" and you'll see that you were always safe. There is no need to be afraid. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

Every time something painful happens, it is the light's way of getting us to experience that fearless joy. Pain is resistance; resistance is fear; fear is separation. If fear comes, it's a sign that God has big plans for you. The worse the fear, the bigger the blessing on its way. The tenser the muscles, the more soothing the relaxation that will come when you can't hold them anymore.

Nothing has gone wrong; you can't escape God. When you see this and feel the light that comes with seeing this, all will be well. And all manner of things will be well.

The Autism Mirror

In the day I wanted the door shut. In the night I wanted it open, to keep an eye on anything that might enter. Carol came in through the mirror. Carol looked just like me, but the look in her eyes betrayed her identity. ... I would cry and look desperately into Carol's eyes in the mirror, wanting to knokw the way out of my mental prison. I began to hit myself in frustration - slapping my own face, biting myself, and pulling out my hair. If my mother had not been so good at it, the abuse that I poured out on myself would have put her efforts to shame. - Donna Williams, Nobody Nowhere: The Remarkable Autobiography of an Autistic, 1992

I think I subconsciously project myself into the things and the people around me. In a way I feel like an observer of my physical self, I. E. the version of me that communicates, senses, and interacts with its surroundings. Almost as if my senses are a movie theater, and my body is the main character, and instead of controlling it I am only witnessing my thoughts and my actions secondhand, in the same way somebody would witness a piece of fiction told in first person. Looking in the mirror is the place I'm most likely to have a moment of cognizance. It's where I see my body and I realize I am not the imaginary man in the sensory movie theater. The body I see doesn't belong to a protagonist in a theoretical fiction. It is mine. And when other people look at me, that is the way they see me. And when they remember me, what they remember is that physical manifestation. And for a brief moment, I lose the sense of self I project to the entire universe and I feel as if my sense of self is isolated to a geographic location inhabited in a universe containing many selves. Not only my self, but the selves of every other thinking creature - A friend of mine with high-functioning autism, 2017

1ST MAN But when I look in the mirror, I see some lumpy fool - "me", an...object. Reason says I have to be that thing - it moves when I move, talks when I talk. But the thought is too horrid to fathom. (He sighs) I stare into the mirror until I find a way to reconcile the two notions - how can I and that...thing be the same?
GIRL But what about now? Do you still see this "me"?
1ST MAN No, I see you. And now it makes even less sense. - Me, The Box, 2013

This article has been provoked as a consequence of the time I spent working in an early intervention centre for autistic pre-scholars. During my time in this centre I noted a particular fascination some of these children had with their mirrored image. This fascination appeared almost as fixation, accompanied with a mixture of both frustration and bliss, indicating perhaps a lack of mastery of the mirrored image and rather like the myth of narcissus, an entrapment in their own mirrored ideal ego. The question that springs forth from this observation, asks whether or not autism can be attributed to a failure at the level of the Mirror Stage? The Mirror Stage, as defined by both Lacan and Francoise Dolto, is one of the most important stages in the development of Subjectivity. It is at this stage that the child identifies with its own mirror image, a stage that is usually mastered from about six to eighteen months. For Lacan, this act marks the primordial recognition of one’s self as “I” as an imagined whole being, separate from the mother, where the mother is the first mother. It is a necessary pre-curser for entry into the symbolic order and into ownership of language. Prior to this stage the child’s body is in an autistic state, it is a fragmented body with a primitive rudimentary ego where there is little delineation between self and mother. The purpose of the Mirror Stage is to reflect to the child an imagined whole self, outlined with a clear separateness from the mother allowing for the development of the ego and the sense ‘I’ or ‘me’. - Alison Barry, Autism: Lost in the Mirror?, 2014

Right now, I am thinking about a mirror. It was a mirror in one of the rooms upstairs, in the house where I spent my second and third years of life…I would stand in front of it because I believed the mirror wanted to tell me a story. And I believed that the mirror wanted to tell me a story because I wanted to tell it a story…..One day, while I stood in front of it, I realized that it was easy to go through it and come out through it. And I realized that I could go in or come out only when the world behind me became transparent. Absolutely transparent. And where would all the colors of the world behind me go? I realized that the mirror would absorb all the colors within its own stretch of self. The blue sky behind the window would look bluer in the mirror. The sun-baked hills would turn browner in it…Stories waited for me behind the mirror. So I was needed on its other side. There was no great trouble to go through the mirror to the other side. All I needed to do was stare intensely at any shadow on the corner of the wall as it was reflected in my eyes. - Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, How Can I Talk if My Lips Don't Move: Inside My Autistic Mind, 2008 

GIRL Outside this Box, there's something more wonderful than you could ever imagine. Your "I" still exists, but somehow it exists....more. And, yes, there is an outside, but every outside is something else's inside.
1ST MAN It doesn't matter. This Box is too impenetrable to ever leave - I will never know.
A pause
GIRL As your conscience, I'm going to ask you to do one more thing.1ST MAN Yes?
GIRL Step through the mirror.
1ST MAN (He is confused, then he gets an idea) Ah. You're using a metaphor. What does it mean?
GIRL No, I mean it. Literally, step through the mirror.
1ST MAN But that's impossible.
GIRL (Reaching her hand through the mirror) Trust me.
1ST MAN, shocked, takes her hand and walks through. He looks at her.
1ST MAN You're real.
GIRL You're real, too. - Me, The Box, 2013