Continuing from a previous post, “Spiritual Lightening”, Catherine Thomas wrote:
President Joseph F. Smith taught that in the premortal life we knew much of what lay before us: “Can we know anything here that we did not know before we came? . . . I believe that our Savior is the ever living-example to all flesh in all things. He no doubt possessed a foreknowledge of all the vicissitudes through which he would have to pass in the mortal tabernacle, when the foundations of this world were laid, “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” . . . And yet to accomplish the ultimatum of his previous existence, and consummate the grand and glorious object of his being, and the salvation of his infinite brotherhood, he had to come and take upon him flesh. He is our example. . . . If Christ knew beforehand, so did we. But in coming here, he forgot all, that our agency might be free indeed, to choose good or evil. (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1977], p. 13.)
So we came to earth to acquire an essential knowledge that was not fully available to us in the premortal world. We had to come and gain the actual experience of making our own way through a plan that was designed to bring across our life paths those experiences we most needed to fulfill the purposes of our mortal probation.
God knew that we would arrive in a fallen world with no memory, no knowledge, and no power to make our way successfully alone. Once in mortality, we would begin to make choices before we had much knowledge, or judgment or ability to choose right over wrong consistently, and we would inevitably make mistakes. As we grew in a fallen environment, we would form strong opinions, make false assumptions by which we would then govern our lives, embrace many precepts of men. We would create a veil of unbelief (see Ether 4:15) and would, as a result, leave a lot of imperfect products behind us. We would make many choices before we had grasped the significance of even the light that we had. Many would reach an advanced age before they really saw the light. Some would never see it in this life. Provision was made according to the circumstances and true desires of these people.
So we realize that even though the natural man is wonderfully designed to give way to the spiritual (see Mosiah 3:19), he must first, by divine design, experience the errors of the natural man which would cause him to taste the bitter (2 Nephi 2:15; Mses 6:55). We ourselves may have grown comfortable in the natural mind and may have been slow to give it up. Like Amulek, we might have said: “I did harden my heart, for I was called many times and I would not hear; therefore I knew concerning these things, yet I would not know” (Alma 10:6).
We came to earth to acquire an essential knowledge that was not fully available to us in the premortal world. Elder Maxwell wrote: “Perhaps it helps to emphasize—more than we do sometimes—our first estate featured learning of a cognitive type, and it was surely a much longer span than our second estate, and the tutoring so much better and more direct. The second estate, however, is one that emphasizes experiential learning through applying, proving, and testing. We learn cognitively here too, just as a good university exam also teaches even as it tests us. In any event the books of the first estate are now closed to us, and the present test is, therefore, very real. We have moved, as it were, from first-estate theory to second-estate laboratory. It is here that our Christlike characteristics are further shaped and our spiritual skills are thus strengthened.” (All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1979], pp.19-20.)
Earth life, then, is something like a laboratory. Our manuals are full of vital instructions, though we may have esteemed them lightly (see Doctrine and Covenants 84:54-55) and thus find ourselves in a spiritual twilight. Even when we have understood the purposes of life, there is, at times, an undeniable ambiguity in our lives. We do not always understand our lives because “now we see through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 23:12), and “it doth not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3:2). We may grope around in this twilight of knowledge, anxious that someone is either going to blow up our experiment or the whole laboratory altogether. It can seem so out of control.
I may see that some of the people around me in the lab are making some dangerous choices . They’re not following instructions, they’re using the wrong ingredients. I may see that my husband or my teenage son or my married daughter may not be conducting his or her experiments very wisely.
To my dismay, I find that one of my worst fears is that they make me look bad. (Didn’t I teach them how to do their experiments? Won’t the world judge me by the way they are doing their lab work? Aren’t I responsible for the way they are doing their work?) Maybe I think that if I can fix them, and they get fixed, I won’t have to feel guilty about them anymore. But here I am trying to fix their lives, no matter that I cannot perfectly conduct my own. How can I keep my hands off their experiments? To what degree am I my brother’s experiment keeper? As we harbor feelings of confusion, anger, and fear the spirit of relief eludes us.
We can see on reflection that one of our greatest stressors may be our own pride, our mixing up our own personal value with what another person is doing. Spiritual lightening helps us to straiten that out answering one of our hardest questions. Where is the line drawn between my responsibility and his or hers? How do I discern between help and interference? We cleanse our hearts of pride and then can rise above the twilight, oblivious to what our neighbors may think. Soon we can pray: “O Lord, help me to see what appropriate help I can give. Help me to exercise enough faith in thy plan for my loved ones that I can leave them to thee when there is nothing more I can do. Help me to find the serenity that is independent of what another is doing.”
One source of relief lies in spiritual examples illustrating this idea of not letting others’ choices ruin ones’ life and health. Here is Alma, weighed down with sorrow, having been cast out of Ammonihah. An angel appears to him and says: “Blessed art thou Alma; therefore, lift up thy head and rejoice, for thou hast great cause to rejoice; for thou hast been faithful” (Alma 8:15). Obviously the extent of our happiness rests primarily on what we do and not what another chooses to do. We don’t need to let another person’s choices hold our happiness prisoner. The Spirit can with its rich feelings of happiness transcend the otherwise unraveling elements of our lives. ~M. Catherine Thomas, Spiritual Lightening (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996), p. 9-12
