Letters to a Doubter: On Gender and Sexuality

Hello, everyone! Terryl Givens recently wrote an essay called "Letter to a Doubter", in which he addressed common doubts that occur to Latter-Day Saint youth about the Gospel. I thought that his piece was such a good idea that I felt compelled to write one of my own. So, in this post I will write a letter to a fictional friend of approximately same age about his doubts and worries. In the imagined letter he wrote to me first, this friend asked about the ever-present issues having to do with gender and sexuality in the Church. So in what follows, I will give my perspective on these controversial topics, ones that seem much more relevant now then ever before.

As a side note, I am very aware that I am a straight male and of all the privilege that comes with that status. In what follows I will talk about issues proper to women and LGBT individuals, but know that I don't have firsthand experience of the issues they commonly face. In the case that your experience goes against what I say here, I defer to your judgment and experience. 

***

My dear friend,

It's so good to hear from you! How long has it been since we last met? Ages, undoubtedly.... In any case, I'm both flattered and a little embarrassed that you sent me this letter. You ask some tough questions (some that I have asked many times myself), but in many ways I don't feel qualified to give you an answer. I'm not much older than you, and I suspect I don't have nearly as much knowledge about gospel questions as you think. But I will try to give you my best answers...solutions that have occurred to me when I've pondered these toughest of questions

Your first question is interesting, and I can't say it's something I haven't wondered myself: "Why does the Church distinguish between men and women in roles and responsibilities?". Here's my crack at it; tell me what you think:

While I don't deign to understand all the mysteries of God, I've done my fair share of reading with religious texts. As such, I've begun to notice a pattern. Wherever they talk about two complementary opposites, they usually will have something of the following in mind: one of the opposites is active, and has more to do with doing than with being what it is. On the other hand, the other opposite is more subsistent, and has more to do with being than doing. If I were to continue this pattern in a list of attributes, it would look like this:

• Opposite 1
• Activity
• Doing
• Categorization and distinction 
• Form 
• Contingency 
• Transcendence 
• Externality
• Opposite 2
• Existence
• Being
• Unity and reconciliation
• Substance
• Necessity
• Immanence
• Internality

Knowing all this, I'm about to say something that you could very easily take the wrong way. You see, the masculine and the feminine as symbols or archetypes correspond to Opposite 1 and Opposite 2, respectively. By that I do not mean that women can't be active or do things. Likewise, I don't mean that men can't work toward unity and reconciliation. All I intend to say is this:

The masculine and the feminine, as archetypes that manifest themselves in human bodies, are symbols of higher spiritual realities.

This will take some explaining. Many great spiritual teachers (like Swedenborg and Ibn Arabi, for instance) have taught that the physical world is nothing more than a collection of symbols that represent higher spiritual realities. You've heard of allegories, right? Like how the Chronicles of Narnia supposedly symbolize Christian teachings? Well, these teachers say that the entire world is like that--that every little thing you see is a symbolic correspondence of something that exists in the eternities. That might be a little hard to believe, but my experience has told me that they're onto something. Many coincidences in my life have been too meaningful to ascribe to mere chance, and they make it seem like my life is the plot of a story. You know about literary techniques like foreshadowing, motifs, and recurrent metaphors? Well, my life has those, and I bet yours does, too. You just need to look for them.

Along those lines, even you are a symbol. That's how I interpret the idea of the relation between my spirit and my body--my body is a symbolic image in the physical world of an existing being in the world of spirit. Now, there's nothing that stops you from being a symbol of multiple things at once--you're the image of God, aren't you? I interpret that to mean that both God and that spiritual "you" express themselves symbolically as your physical body. 

So too with the masculine and the feminine. If you know your anatomy, you'll see the principles listed above written in each sex's bodily attributes: men are usually physically stronger, and multiple male bodily functions evoke the ideas of directness and force toward the outside world. The woman's body, on the other hand, is far more internal--not only are the reproductive organs more hidden, but the woman's internal body temperature is higher than the man's (just as the man's external body temperature is higher). The idea, then, is that the masculine as an archetype manifests itself in the bodies of men, and the feminine as an archetype manifests itself in the bodies of women.

But again, you are not identical with either the masculine or the feminine--one of them just expresses itself in your body. While it is true that these archetypes can and do express themselves in our personalities, these are inconsistent and have many exceptions. The feminine, after all, can express itself just as fully in a man's mind as in the mind of a woman (and vice versa). Before you are a man or a woman, you are human, and your humanity is the most important symbol making upon your being. Because your mind is not identical with either the masculine or the feminine, there is nothing that stops you from going after your own path. Women should definitely pursue careers. Likewise, I see nothing wrong with a stay-at-home dad. Do whatever you want to do with your life, and don't let stereotypical gender roles determine your destiny.

But while you are identical with neither the masculine or the feminine, it is an unalterable fact that your body expresses one of them far more fully than the other. While this says nothing about your inner nature, it is not an accident that you are the gender that you are.  For a purpose only God can know, He gave you both your body and all the spiritual expectations that come with it. Gender, you see, is a compass. If you do what God tells you to do with respect to your gender, it will open up a window by which the light of heaven can come in and infuse your everyday life.

I speak, of course, of eternal marriage. In God's plan, men and women (regardless of sexual orientation) are expected to cleave together for eternity. And it is this that lets heaven come down to earth. Am I saying that the man and the woman need each other to be complete? Not really, though this often does happen. Instead, I mean something far more spiritual than psychological:

Eternal marriage, and the sexual union it permits, are a sacrament that symbolizes the union of Opposite 1 and Opposite 2 in the eternities.

In this respect, marriage and sex are powerful in the same respect that the sacrament is powerful--they act as symbols that represent spiritual realities and processes. But here's the key point: by approaching this ritual prayerfully, you can use it to discern the nature of eternity and the things of God. Again, you are not identical with Opposite 1 or 2 any more than the bread in the sacrament is literally Christ's flesh--your body is just a living symbol of it. But your sacred duty is to use your body to represent the mysteries of eternity, for by doing so you can find yourself in heaven while still on earth.

This observation is conceptually close to the reason why women can't be ordained to the priesthood in the Church. As far as I can tell...

The reason only men can have the authority of the priesthood is because men, as a symbol of Opposite 1, represent the active aspect of divinity. On the other hand, women represent divinity's subsistent and self-existent aspect.

In a sense, you can think of these differences as you would with ballroom dancing. While it is true that one partner in the dance leads far more than the other, it is only because of this seeming imbalance that the dance is beautiful (i.e. it is the reason that it conveys the aesthetic reality that manifests through it). And there is a beauty in the dance, don't you think? To see the masculine and the feminine so play off of and complement each other is a joy to my heart. And just like with the aforementioned dance of divinity, the fact that the woman acts receptively while dancing says nothing about who she is as a person. She might very well be an athlete or even a soldier, but she chooses to participate in the dance in order to convey beauty that cannot come any other way. Likewise, the fact that a woman doesn't have the priesthood says nothing about her inherent worth, her spiritual power, or her closeness to God.

Before I move onto your next question, let me offer a brief aside. While no one is wholly identical with the masculine or the feminine, it has become clear to me that the feminine is closer to the essence of divinity than the masculine is. It is true that the masculine is associated with the priesthood, or the "power of God"; however, the feminine is associated with something far closer to divinity than power. You see,

The feminine represents the being of God, and as such conveys divinity even more than the masculine priesthood.

I think that this is why we don't speak of the Heavenly Mother. Speaking is an action, an act of conceptualization and categorization, but the feminine in God transcends all of that. To use Wittgensteinian language, we cannot say things of the Mother--we can only show them. The feminine in the divine lies closer to divinity (and to us) than any theory, idea, or unit of speech, and it would be nothing less than idolatry to so convey it. But the Mother is very present in the Church--she shows herself through the unspoken mysteries of our faith, those that all the faithful know but cannot put into words. In that sense, she is the foundation upon which all divinity rests, for without her all action and power would be empty.

Now to your second (and last) question: "Why do you think that God sends some people to the world with same-sex attraction? Isn't that unfair?" This, my friend, is a doozie of a question. If all that I said above is true, it would seem to go against the divine plan to make people sexually desire what is inherently sinful. Some have taken this dilemma to suggest that same-sex attraction is a choice, that we all come straight, but that some of us somehow mess up and become gay. This is a cruel lie, one bred of ignorance, one that has caused far more pain than good. I declare in opposition that just as you did not choose your gender, you did not choose your orientation. But I will go further: no matter who you are or who you desire sexually, that desire was not given to you as a curse, but as a blessing. 

You may think me crazy, but let me explain myself. Sexual desire comes in two core aspects: there are the physical sensations proper to the sexual hunger, and there are the mental fantasies that stoke the fire of those sensations. Both are blessings, and both are there to teach you. Let me treat them one by one:

The physical sensations that come with sexual desire may be the most pressing and urgent drive you've ever felt. You may have fallen prey to these urges at times, finding yourself submerged beneath their rising currents. You may also have learned to forcefully subdue these feelings. As the Mormon thinker Adam S. Miller pointed out in this book Letters to a Young Mormon (link), both of these strategies will leave you lifeless. You were not given your hunger in order either to carelessly succumb to it or to mentally force it down, but to use it for higher purposes. What I'm about to describe is difficult, and may take years of practice, but the time will come when you learn to channel your hunger to something ambitious and constructive.

C. S. Lewis wrote an allegory that explains this point. He says that a man arrives at the gates of heaven with a lizard on his shoulder, one that constantly whacks his face with its tail. An angel at the gate says that he could not enter heaven with the lizard, and offers to destroy it. The man eventually accepts the offer and lets the angel use a wave of fire to kill the reptile. Though it painfully scalds the man in the process, when he looks down at the lizard's corpse, he watches it grow and transform into a magnificent stallion. He then mounts the horse and charges energetically into the wonders of heaven.

The lizard is your sexual hunger, and the horse is the courage, vitality, and energy that will come when you choose not to succumb to it. This will take a great deal of pain and discouragement, but you will eventually realize that the sexual hunger you experience is heaven's boundless energy lying dormant in you. When you bridle your hunger, you will discover more capacity than you would have ever known.

In this respect, straight people are no different from gay people. We both have an incessant sexual drive, and though it may be directed at different objects, we must both learn to master it and redirect it constructively. Thus, the energy and sensations of that hunger are a blessing for all.

But what about the fantasies that stoke the hunger? They are blessings, too, but this will take some more explaining. I own a book (link) that makes a most unusual claim, one that I'll here quote word for word:

"As a rule of thumb, it can be said that what we yearn for sexually is a symbolic representation of what we need in order to become whole."

This is a principle that, though I was initially skeptical, has proven true again and again. In the most normal kinds of sexuality, the man's desire for the woman is a sign that he needs to incorporate the feminine into his mind, as is true with women and the masculine. But it is more comprehensive than this.

The book I just quoted from gives the interesting example of a man that could only make love to a woman by first kissing her feet. He naturally thought that he was perverted in some way, but when he went to a therapist he eventually discovered that he looked down on women as if he were superior to them. The act of kissing the woman's feet was his mind's way of letting him know that he needed to treat women with more value, for it caused him to act subserviently to a woman, almost as if he were worshiping her.

There are other examples of this principle: one woman who had rape fantasies realized that she was too controlling, and a man who fantasized about becoming a woman realized that he was not using his potential for empathy as fully as he could have. You can imagine many more examples, I'm sure.

But the key point here is that your fantasies tell you where you need to go. By harnessing that strongest of all energies, they forcefully point us in the right direction, even if we can't understand it at the time.

By all means, this should work for gay people, too. Though it would be a gross oversimplification to say that all gay people have their desires for the same reason, in each case it seems true that their desires and fantasies should point them symbolically where they need to go. I don't know what these directions are, by any means.  But I have seen to much to suppose that our innate sexualities are accidents.

However, I'm not saying that gay people should give into their sexual desires in a physical way. That goes against the principles of the sexual sacrament I mentioned above, for sex should primarily be a symbolic conveyance of complementary spiritual realities. What I am saying is that you should pay close attention to your fantasies and heed where they symbolically point you.

You see, nothing in our sexuality should be regarded as perverted or evil. While we aren't permitted to physically embody all of our fantasies, they can all teach you about your mind, your soul, and your life. Likewise, the sensations and energy of sexual hunger can give your purpose, energy, and resolve where other things wouldn't have. So don't feel like you need a sexual outlet in order to be happy--many people before you have gotten along very happily without one. 

But in any case, don't feel like your sexuality is a curse. It is a blessing, whatever it is. You just need faith that it will bear fruit (a lack of chastity is, after all, a sexual lack of faith). Have faith that, if you cleave unto God and His gospel, he will lead you to His kingdom, a place where all the deficiencies that contribute to your hunger will be filled, so that you will be whole.

That's that, then. You may not like my answers, but they are from my heart, and I intend them to help whoever reads them. 

Take care,

Christian

Finding Myself in Another (My Thoughts on Ordain Women)

Hello, everyone! In light of recent events concerning the Church in the news, I feel obligated to tell you all how I feel about the issues they bring up. More specifically, I feel suddenly inspired to give you my take on the halo of controversy surrounding how the Church has reacted to the "Ordain Women" organization.

First, let me say that the initial news of the excommunication threats brought sadness to my heart. Regardless of how I felt about the group's policies, I have never thought it a happy thing to see someone's efforts and passions be reduced to naught. Moreover, it seems likely that these events will cause many people's testimonies to waver, and that is never a good thing in my book. So know that, even though I don't sympathize with the views of Ordain Women, it was a very sad day for me.

That said, I get the feeling that the intellectual foundation upon which Ordain Women stands is a fallacious one. In fact, their premises seem to rest on only a single tenet: that if I am to get what another has, it must be given to me apart from him or her. But this is a lie. In fact, this lie is so destructive, so pernicious, and so evil that it has caused me more pain and sorrow than any other belief I have held. You see, I have a high-functioning form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. Because of this diagnosis, there are things that will always be harder for me than for neurotypical people: I will likely always find it hard to "be at ease" in social situations, and I fear I will never enjoy the pleasure of playful flirtation that I see come so easily to others. But it isn't just Asperger's--other, more private things have caused me to feel great pain when I see other people who lack my struggles.

But in all this I was missing something. In all the sorrow over my limitations, I never stopped to consider that a life-changing idea was hidden just below the surface. And this idea, which I have come to realize only slowly, is this:

My life was never about me in the first place. Of myself, I am fundamentally limited; it is only in other people, and in God, that I will find myself.

This is the key to everything. Without it, we exist separately and singly for all eternity, never being able to share an intimacy that is more than skin-deep. If this were not true, the being and love others have would forever be locked away from sight, and I would never be able to venture beyond the boundaries of my body and my spirit. But it is true. If I love another person I can find myself within her, and if I look hard enough, I can find her within me. 

The knowledge of this mystery seems to be sorely lacking in what I have encountered of the Ordain Women movement. For they believe that women can only get what men have by getting it apart from men, that we must receive for ourselves the same gifts as anyone else in order to enjoy them for ourselves. But this, as I said, is a lie. If I am not a practiced piano player, must I learn to be a maestro in order to enjoy the instrument being played? What if I don't play soccer--does that man I can't watch the World Cup? The logic of Ordain Women rests upon the idea that I must have something for myself in order to enjoy it. But in truth, I can enjoy others' gifts as much as they do, if not more.

The way I see it, God gave us differences not so that we can protest them and demand that they be taken away, but so that we can learn to depend on, love, and find ourselves within each other. If we were all the same, our ubiquitous self-sufficiency would cause us to ignore each other and only seek out what is for our own good. The bland homogeneity of such a world easily disgusts the imagination, for surely no one would want a world where everyone was exactly the same. But we are different from each other--some are short, some are tall; some are abstract, some are concrete; some are men, some are women. And how much better we are for it! What good does it do to flee from the world of difference? Such a world is colorful and multifaceted, and it seems that the only reason someone would move away from it is because they think that others' gifts do not belong to him or her. But that, again, is a lie.

You may protest me at this point. "Wait!", you might say, "how is it possible for someone to have what belongs to another? I guess it's a nice sentiment, but surely it doesn't reflect the facts!" In fact, it does. It's true that I can't literally enter into someone's mind and see their thoughts, but that state of affairs is but a poor image of what's really possible. Didn't you know that your life is like an iceberg? You see your body, your mind, and your thoughts, but that's only the ten percent that peek above the water. Beneath the surface of what you can see with your eyes, you are more glorious than than even the vastness of the cosmos. The stars and swirling galaxies only shine dimly in comparison to the blazing light that emanates from within you. In the luminous depths within us it is not only we who shine, but others as well--for in this interior vastness we all see each other as we are.

A very wise fox once said that "it is only with the heart that one sees rightly" and truer words have never been uttered since. With your eyes you can see a little ways both into space and into minds, but you can never use them to reach the heights attainable by the heart. For it is love (along with faith and hope) that allows you to see how things truly are. With love, you begin to see the secret reality that precedes everything visible; you learn the secret that all things contain all things, that nothing exists that isn't a window to the entirety of being.

You may see this with your scriptures--how the more you dwell on a verse's meaning, the more the wisdom of God pours out through it. You may also have seen this in your relationships with others--how you can feel suddenly at home with another person, even though you consciously know nothing of what goes on in his or her head. This secret also comes in how something can suddenly remind you of someone dear, perhaps one that has died. For these situations are not mere tricks of memory--the reminder is really a window for you to share love with someone across the boundaries of life and death.

Knowing this, that we are secret neighbors of all that is, what reason have you to despair over not having what belongs to the other person? Sure, you may not have the priesthood in this life, but you have the potential to live many lives. Though you may not see it with your earthly eyes, the depths of your spirit can live the life of another just as well as your own. All that you lack in this respect is a clear vision of what you feel, but that too will be remedied once you pass on from this side of the veil.

I have felt the state I just described, and so this post has turned into my way of expressing what I thought was inexpressible. But there is more to be said. For I have wondered: if we are truly connected to all that is, why is there this appearance of separateness and discord? I meditated on this subject, and the answer came to me in an image: this life, I realized, is a dance. We had always existed in the brightness of eternity, but one day it occurred to us to dim the lights a little so that we could put on a show. We divided ourselves from each other, preparing to take different parts in this elegantly choreographed piece that is the world. Sure, we may have different roles to play--men may have one part and the women another--but none of that is limiting. On the contrary, it is just this limitation that is so joyful for infinity. For the finite and the limited are but a brief interlude in the eternal round of heaven--one that began, one that will end, and one that lets infinity shine through it. But it not a sad thing. On the contrary, it is the very joy of heaven to interrupt its boundless infinity with the constraints of finitude (finitude, after all, is the only thing that infinity lacks). For we are creating a masterpiece for the glory of God, and the fact that we do not now discern its movements does not stop His light shining from within every part of it.

Life Outside of Time and Space

Of all the ideas I've gleaned from the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, none have struck me as deeply as his teachings about time and space. He taught that time and location do not work the same way in the spiritual world as they do here--instead of existing as the end-all, be-all of our existence, there they only function as an "appearance" of something deeper. This specifically means that spiritual time and place only appear as something that corresponds to someone's internal state. Or more simply--the more two people are internally similar, the closer they draw to each other in spiritual time and place. Two angels with a similar state of mind would therefore be closer to each other than two angels with discordant internal states, meaning that in the spiritual world we are grouped into communities according to how similar we are to each other (heaven and hell being the two largest such groups).

But there is a deep philosophical principle underlying these concepts, for by presenting the above ideas Swedenborg paints a picture of two possible relationships between place and state. While I established that the spiritual world favors the latter more than the former, in the physical world it is exactly the opposite--we are often never in the place or time that our seems to fit how we are inside. How often, after all, do we have to leave a vacation before we're ready? What about the annoyance of long-distance relationships and the necessary travel for them to work? Both situations are examples of how physical time and space are more fundamental here than how we are inside, and they both  illustrate how this world can make us feel "out of place".

As a matter of fact, one of the biggest arguments you could give for the existence of a spiritual world is that the physical world so often frustrates our desires. If we are just physical beings (as many people claim), why do the limitations of physicality frustrate us as much as they do? If physical evolution were the only force acting in our makeup, then it would seem far more biologically convenient for us not to get upset over, say, the death of a family member. But in reality, the reason we get upset over death is because it interrupts our timeless experience of love with the limitations of a finite lifespan. Thus, any anxiety we feel from endings in this life (whether spatial or temporal) is evidence that we are not made to fit a world that contains them (reference a very similar argument in President Uchtdorf's talk Grateful in Any Circumstances).

(As a side note, another argument you could give for the existence of Swedenborg's spiritual world is the existence of the Internet. For though he lived in a time where mail was the fastest form of communication, his description of the spiritual world featured things like a) the instantaneous communication of ideas with anyone else, b) the sharing of thoughts and knowledge with the totality of heaven, and c) the organization of people into communities based on what their members love. Each of these descriptions reflects our everyday experience of the Web, for the Internet is really a world whose geography is rooted in mental states. But this is precisely what you would expect of displaced spiritual beings given limitless technological power--to inadvertently recreate their native country within the foreign world of space and time.)

But there is a sense in which we can be free of the constraints of time and space even in this world. You see, both place/time and state are a part of our experience of the world, and we can choose which one we want to focus on more than the other. To focus on time and space at the expense of state is to fall under the constraint of sequence. By foregroundong places and events instead of emotions, we find ourselves restlessly seeking after whatever situation we think will make us happy. Whether it's the promise of a new possession or a new relationship, or whether it involves the end of something that we hate about our present situation, time and space entices us with the mirage of the "not yet". We seek after anything and everything that will lead us from our seemingly miserable circumstances, never stopping to consider that something new has never made anyone lastingly happy.

If we wish to become happy, it will not happen by a change in the physical world. When we foreground state, we accept whatever is given to us by the happenstance of time and space as only secondary in importance to the demands of one's internal state of being. The Mormon theologian Adam S. Miller expresses a very similar idea when he says:

"The givenness of life (and with it, the grace of Christ's atonement) appears to the degree that the present moment is received as unconditionally imposed without regard to how  one arrived there or where one is going. The atonement, as what gives life, is what calls us back to the living grace of the present moment."

We are here--we have never been and will never be anywhere else. As such, we will never find happiness there, for "there" only exists in the world of time and space. Peace will only come when we embrace our current state--if we seek after change (even spiritual change) in space and time, we will only end up on a wild goose chase. If we are going to really change, it will only come in what Miller calls the "everlasting fire of the present moment", or rather, independent of space and time.

When we are free of the constraint of sequence, we can truly have a taste of what life is like beyond the veil. Eternal life, not as everlasting time but as the kind of life that God lives, occurs when we disentangle ourselves from the bonds of attachment to the past and the future and, instead, see the eternal world of state beyond the world of place and time.

Notes on Fiction, Possibility, Love, and Truth

For the past several months, I've been keeping a philosophical journal on my computer. In it, I reflect on intellectual problems that have been troubling me and, through that reflection, try to find a solution to them. However, though many great insights come out of that process, I end up forgetting about them as the months go by. In fact, it was just today that I decided to revisit some of my old entries, and I couldn't have been more surprised--they were full to the brim with tremendous connections and probing insights. I eventually came to the conclusion that these connections were too powerful to keep to myself, and so I made this post as a combination of some of my favorites.

What follows is written aphoristically (like two other posts on this blog, the most recent being my worldview). I acknowledge that this post may be hard to understand--not due of my language but because of the abstractness of my ideas. However, I echo Wittgenstein when I say that this post will have acheived its purpose if there is one person to whom it offers insight, pleasure, or peace.

1. What is fiction, really? It is unreal, but it lets the light of reality shine through in a curious way.
2. What is this way? How does fiction refract the light of being?
3. Fiction displays unmanifest possibilities--this much is unambiguous
4. Unmanifest possibilities are always striving toward the light of actuality. They want to be real.
5. The world is pregnant, always giving birth to possibilities.
6. Fiction creates a fact [i.e. a grouping of possibilities in our perception]; it sees in connection those things that appear separate.
7. Fiction imposes itself upon the world. From the moment they take on a ghostly form in our imagination, fictions will creep in until they are supplanted.
8. Connection is akin to copulation. It results in the reproduction of these possibilities together to create a synthesis.
9. The poles of the connection strive toward each other. They lust for each other.
10. Consciousness is the only place where they can satisfy their lust. We are the meeting ground of possibility.
11. We are the boundary between actuality and possibility. 
12. If we take possibility and fiction to be the same thing, then because all actions are possible before they are actual, all reality comes from fiction.
13. This, perhaps, is the meaning of the doctrine of pre-existence.
14. What evidence is there for the existence of possibility? Could there not just be an actual world, after all?
15. The metaphysics of possibility is merely a way of saying that there are different "here"s. In order for a possibility to become actual, two "here"s must connect.
16. When Swedenborg says that truth "clothes" love, he means that every "here" becomes manifest as a "there". "Here"s reveal themselves as "there"s through truths [i.e. a perceived state of affairs; a fact].
17. Every truth conceals a disguised "here". Thus, truth is a means of connection.
18. In other words, truth is the means of love, for love and connection are the same thing (as in Swedenborg).
19. Love seeks to separate itself from itself (through truths) so that it can connect with itself in actuality.
20. Truth distinguishes a set of loves from itself. Without sufficient truth, we perceive only a single mass.
21. Truth reveals "there"s, and through them, "here"s
22. Truth separates seemingly identical "here"s  and allows us to see and connect with them as "there"s.
23. In other words, truth lets us grow in distinctness.
24. Swedenborg says that usefulness [his term for "action" as a metaphysical phenomenon] combines love and wisdom together, but what does this mean?
25. If I am right, usefulness connects things that are already distinct.
26. Usefulness is the act of participating in a fact as if it were you.
27. Reading a book, bearing a testimony, being in a relationship with another person, etc. are all ways of behaving as if the corresponding states of affairs were part of your identity or being.
28. When we believe in a truth, we let the corresponding love become manifest--we are a midwife to it.
29. This is why faith is the root of all action: all actions come through beliefs. But they do not originate there.
30. Actions originate in loves.
31. Everything is ultimately a form of love. Love strives toward reality through truths.
32. Love is possibility and connection as it exists in itself.
33. Fiction is merely the attempt of various loves to strive toward the light of usefulness.
34. When we have faith in the reality of something, we let the corresponding love use us to bring it about.
35. Love (i.e. connection and possibility) seeks out truths (or perceived "there"s) in order to connect to itself more fully. It wishes to become embodied in distinct multiplicity so that it can become more substantial in its connection. In other words, it wishes to become embodied.
36. Reality is moving through ever-increasing degrees of connection and embodied possibility. The evolution of mankind's consciousness was such a huge step, as was writing, the printed book, and (most recently) the Internet. 
37. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin alludes to with his concept of the Omega Point, unmanifest possibility and connection are working toward their biggest breakthrough yet: what we call the Second Coming.
38. This ultimate incarnation of possibility and connection will let us see past the boundaries of past and future. It will join the living and the dead as one body. It will reveal everything that ever was, is, will be, or might have been as a single, intricately connected whole (see D&C 84:100-101 and 130:6-9 for scriptural support of these ideas).
39. This does not mean that time will end. Time will continue, but we will see all of its moments pervading each other.
40. Though the Second Coming will happen collectively, I see no reason why an individual can't experience this breakthrough of possibility on his or her own (this is perhaps what we mean by those who are taken up into Heaven without dying).
41.  We can experience this now, even if only in miniature. All we have to do is practice faith, hope, and charity. These three virtues let us perceive unmanifest possibilities and bring them into our experience of the world (reference Moroni 7:25's declaration that we can lay hold upon every good thing through faith).
42. By having faith in the unknown, trusting in the future, and doing good to those whose minds are hidden from us, we can issue forth into our world connections and possibilities that would remain hidden otherwise.
43. By acting as if reality's unknown parts were a part of our world, we make that belief true. This is what faith, hope, and charity have in common--they stretch our souls beyond where we can now see.

Why I am both Nothing and Everything

I've always been very upset that there is separateness in the world. I thought, "Why is it that one person gets one experience, but I get another? Why can't I experience it all, even the things that my individuality, my species, and my gender preclude from me?" I thought it was extremely unjust that I was separate from other people at all; I wanted a chance to be anyone and everyone.

Naturally, this perspective doesn't mesh with the world very well. I'm stuck with my body and its limitations for the rest of my life--I simply can't peer into someone else's mind or trade identities with another person. As I put in another post, I am doomed to forever wander the corridors of my mind alone.

And yet, that last assertion isn't quite true. It certainly is true that I can't see the the mind of another person perfectly, but, in truth, neither can they. You see, people assume that we know ourselves completely, that we are an expert on what goes on in our heads. But that's simply not the case. How many times have you forgotten something, only to remember it again sometime in the future? Was that information gone? No; it was a part of your mind, but you just didn't realize it.

That goes for many things: do you consciously know how to beat your heart? Do you have any deliberate notions of how the mechanics of your muscles work? What about dreams? That's a part of you, but they can surprise you as much as anything in the external world. The same is true for any sudden intrusion into the mind, whether it be a fleeting thought or a sudden mood. 

It's true that, at least in one sense, I'm a stranger in the world. But it is also true that, in the same sense, I'm a stranger in my own head. I might not know what's going on in another's mind; however, it can sometimes take great effort to know what's going on in my mind! When I realized this, I suddenly began to see that I'm only as separate from other people as I am from myself. Or rather, I began to realize that what I had thought of as "my self" didn't really exist at all.

When most people use the word "self" in a philosophical context, they tend to mean something that belongs to you. Even I thought this, though I didn't realize it. Though I may have professed to believing that the self was an immaterial light of consciousness, I actually thought of it as identical with the contents of my consciousness (i.e. my thoughts, sensations, and emotions). But that is a mistake.

If you, like I did, define your self as the impersonal witness of the contents of your consciousness, that's fine. However, as soon as you start identifying yourself with any of these contents, you immediately open up the door to misery and anxiety. To see this, let's say you get a disfiguring illness they leaves your body looking hideous. If you identify yourself with that body, then you are hideous. If you identify yourself with your thoughts and have an evil thought, then suddenly you are evil. Moreover, if you identify yourself with your sensations (as have many philosophers) and you suffer endless, miserable pain, then you become that endless, miserable pain.

I repeat the meditative recitation of many Dharmic practitioners: I am not my body, I am not my mind, I am not my feelings, I am not my thoughts. Identification with these things only brings misery--anxiety over maintaining them, and despair over being limited to them.

But there is an even deeper layer here. To express it, let's turn to a quotation from Ludwig Wittgenstein's notebooks:

"As I can infer my spirit from my physiognomy, so I can infer the spirit of each thing from its physiognomy. [...] Only remember that the spirit of the snake, of the lion, is your spirit. For it is only from yourself that you are acquainted with spirit at all."

I am separate from myself--I know my character by observing how I act in certain situations and learning about the way I think, feel, and behave. Exactly the same is true of how I know anyone else. I learn about my behavior; I learn about their behavior. I see myself getting angry; I see another person getting angry. There is no essential difference here.

In one sense, I am nothing--I can't point to anything in the world and undeniably say "that's me". For precisely the same reasons, I am able to say to anything that "I'm just as much you as I am anything else!" Nothing in the world belongs to me; I am its transcendental witness, its Wittgensteinian limit. But because I have shrunk myself to a mere nothing, other people and their emotions belong to me just as much as the stuff going on in my head. There is no essential boundary--only a single continuum that includes me, you, and everything else.

One of my favorite songs has a lyric that I profoundly resonate with: "I can be anything that I see" (link). And it's true. I am not just Christian Swenson. In the same way that I am him, I am also my friends, my family, my neighbors, and my pets. I am man, woman, girl, and boy. I am the stars and the ocean and the mountains. But so are you! And in the end, that's the greatest news I could have asked for: that we are each other, and that together we share the totality of our being, our world, and our selves.

That's that. You may have found this post odd or unnecessary--indeed, this seems to be a complicated way of solving an unbelievably simple problem (like Adam S. Miller's Rube Goldberg Machines). But it has brought my peace, and I post it here that it might do the same for one of you.

Reflections on Gratitude

As usual, my favorite talk from the last session of General Conference was one by President Uchtdorf, specifically the one entitled "Grateful in Any Circumstances". In it, Uchtdorf displays his usual aplomb in discussing spiritually deep subjects, for though he never says things that are hard to understand, he is not afraid to venture into the esoteric (or even the mystical) to get his point across. This particular talk discusses the healing power of gratitude--that one can find solace in any situation by being grateful. 

To give an example of the talk's pure inspirational power, take this quotation:

"We can choose to be grateful, no matter what. This type of gratitude transcends whatever is happening around us. It surpasses disappointment, discouragement, and despair. It blooms just as beautifully in the icy landscape of winter as it does in the pleasant warmth of summer. When we are grateful to God in our circumstances, we can experience gentle peace in the midst of tribulation. In grief, we can still lift up our hearts in praise. In pain, we can glory in Christ’s Atonement. In the cold of bitter sorrow, we can experience the closeness and warmth of heaven’s embrace."

President Uchtdorf presents gratefulness as an attitude that can buoy you up in any situation, no matter how hopeless or desperate. If you exercise gratitude, you can infuse suffering with peace and replace despair with hope. If you are grateful, Uchtdorf says that you can see God's love even in the midst of maelstroms and flights of arrows.

However, Uchtdorf never explains exactly what one who is grateful in her circumstances should be grateful for. If, as he says, our gratitude should not depend on any outward circumstances, what exactly makes it qualify as...well...gratitude? Uchtdorf never answers this question, but I think I have found an answer in another place: in the book Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology, by Adam S. Miller.

Miller explains:

"To be catalyzed by the atonement: to see and enter the kingdom of God as it is manifest in the grace of whatever is given in the present moment. / The gospel: a promise that joy does not depend on what is given but on its givenness."

Miller sees all life as a process of giving and receiving. In several of the aforementioned book's essays, he explains that it is incorrect to view a person as a simple, discrete whole. You borrow your life from other people and things--whether you take oxygen from the atmosphere, knowledge from a book, a facial feature from a parent, or a mannerism from a friend you spend time with. It follows from this observation that your life comes totally and unconditionally from elsewhere, and thus that you receive your entire life as a gift.

However, you can receive this gift in two different ways. One the one hand, you can focus on the content of the gift--becoming happy when the gift is good, but being depressed when the gift is sub-par. But you can also choose to focus on the gift's givenness, or rather on the fact that it is given.

I think that this is the essence of President Uchtdorf's teachings on gratitude. Instead of letting your happiness depend on the contingencies of everyday cause and effect, you should instead rejoice that you are given this awkward, messy, incomplete thing called life at all. Instead of bemoaning the short-end-of-the-deal you perceive your life to be, be joyous that you do indeed have a gift! The quality of your life doesn't matter in this respect; to quote Wittgenstein, "Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44). Heavenly joy doesn't come contingently; it shines upon all circumstances, and you receive it to the extent that you see the events of your life as the grace of God.

But what about sin? What about those people who, despite their best efforts, remain entrenched in sinful behavior? Should someone with an addiction be grateful? How can that person see the grace of God in what she was given?

In answer, the weakness you might show in trying to follow the commandments lets you know that something's wrong with your mental "insides". Without those outward manifestations, the selfishness or pride inside you would hide itself away from both your eyes and those of others. As Swedenborg has said many times, the Lord's divine providence makes sure that evils become expressed, because if they weren't expressed, they could never be removed. So, be grateful for your weaknesses! If you sometimes fall prey to sin, know that each time you repent from it you draw closer to God than you were before. Sin, at least as outwardly-manifest behavior, is thus a great blessing to those who repent (even if it's again and again)--it teaches you to be humble and patient, and to always rely on the atonement.

If we remember Christ, everything that happens to us (even our sins!) is for our benefit. Knowing this, we can truly feel "encircled about eternally in the arms of [God's] love" (2 Nephi 1:15). And what better reason can there be to be grateful? He will care for us no matter what comes, and when we receive whatever is given to us as the grace of this love, we will find peace in our fitfully ascending path to the light.

Heavenly Fire

Hello all! This is going to be a short post, consisting only of my comparison of five quotations and a brief subsequent analysis. 

As you read them, pay attention to the ways (both obvious and not-so-obvious) that they are similar:

"Hear it all ye ends of the earth--all ye sinners, repent! Repent! Turn to God, for your religion won't save you, and you will be damned. I do not say how long, but those who sin against the Holy Ghost cannot be forgiven in this world or in the world to come; they shall die the second death. As they concoct scenes of bloodshed in this world, so they shall rise to that resurrection which is as the lake of fire and brimstone. Some shall rise to the everlasting burning of God, and some shall rise to the damnation of their own filthiness--as exquisite as the lake of fire and brimstone." -Joseph Smith, the King Follett Discourse

"If I accept the lowest in me, I lower a seed into the ground of Hell. The seed is invisibly small, but the tree of my life grows from it and conjoins the Below with the Above. At both ends there is fire and blazing embers. The Above is fiery and the Below is fiery. Between the unbearable fires grows your life. You hang between these two poles. In an immeasurably frightening movement thr stretched hanging welters up and down." Carl Jung, the Red Book

"Divine love and the divine truth that comes derives from it are like the sun's fire and the light that comes from it in our world. The love is like the sun's fire, and the derivative truth is like the light from that sun. By reason of correspondence, fire means love and light means the truth that comes from it." -Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 13

“The student said, “What is love’s official duty in the nothing?” The teacher said, “This is love’s official duty: that it incessantly penetrates into the something, and when it can find a place in the something that stands silent, love takes the something and rejoices in it with its fire-flaming love more than the sun in the world. Love’s official charge is incessantly to kindle a fire in the something and burn up the something and hyperinflame itself with it." The student said, “Oh dear teacher, how shall I understand this?” The teacher said, “If it is the case that love were to kindle a fire in you, you would feel how it burns away your I-ness and how it greatly rejoices in your fire, so that you would rather permit yourself to be killed than to reenter your something. Furthermore, love’s flame is so great that it will not leave you. Even if it costs you your temporal life, love goes into death with you in its fire. Even if you enter into hell, love would shatter hell for your sake” -Jakob Boehme, The Life Beyond the Senses

"Our God also is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our everlasting joy. But if we refuse His love and remain in the coldness of sin and opposition to Him and to other men then will His fire (by our own choice rather than His) become our everlasting enemy, and Love, instead of being our joy, will become our torment and our destruction." -Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

As I came across these quotes one by one over the past year, I was startled by how similar the authors' symbolism was. In all five cases, these mystical thinkers symbolically associated God and Heaven with fire. What's more, three of the five explicitly identify this fire with love. Notwithstanding the beauty of this symbol, I can't help but wonder how all five of them came up with the same image. As far as I am aware (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the Bible never explicitly associates God with a flame, still less that flame with love. And apart from the Bible, I can't think of anything that all five of these thinkers would have read. 

I take this case as evidence that all five thinkers received some kind of revelation from God. And while Swedenborg would identify this revelation with his concept of "divine influx", and Jung would likely pin it down to joint influence from the "collective unconscious", I think we can all agree that they're talking about the same thing.