0:00:00 - 0:00:26 I want to make a video on a very, very specific point. Um How specific we remain, remains to be seen. Uh I grabbed sometimes books, catch my eye and I'll grab them and I'll say, Lord, why do you want me to look at this? And I flip through them and there's always something um this duct tape bound. This 0:00:26 - 0:00:44 is uh these are the scriptures I used when I was a missionary in Chile for the L DS church. Well, that's not a correct way to say it. I was a missionary for God and I just happened to be in the L DS church at the time. Uh There's a lot of things I would do differently if I repeated that. But I think 0:00:44 - 0:01:06 if you get through your life without being able to say that about just about everything you've ever done, you're probably doing something wrong. Um Anyway, this is a well worn copy and just flipping through it. Um gives me a lot of satisfaction over how I spent that time again. Not that I wouldn't do 0:01:06 - 0:01:30 things differently. But I think, I think one of the things that's gonna give us a uh greatest amount of joy in the eternities is uh is there anything we put our whole soul into that happened to be very difficult? And uh the interesting thing about that is pretty much anything can be very difficult if 0:01:29 - 0:01:52 you put your whole soul into it, especially because this world is designed to provide resistance and it's like the harder you try and the better the things you're doing, uh the more resistance there will be by design and thank God for that. Um That's interesting. This thing's marked to pieces. I've got 0:01:52 - 0:02:13 little notes tucked in here and it's covered with duct tape because um I just kept thinking as I was walking the streets that as a soldier, you don't put your rifle away, you have it ready because you never know when you need to shoot somebody. And uh I figured I better have this out and it got pretty 0:02:12 - 0:02:37 worn. So I covered it with duct tape. Um But I, I wrote topics on the side and they're in Spanish. But um I marked up scriptures and color coded it with these tabs because I've always been terrible at memorizing things and um with a lot of language, you, you need specific words to carry the power. So 0:02:36 - 0:03:00 um the tabs connected usually color coded dots with specific verses on whatever topic. And it helped me find things quickly. So I discovered that you have about seven seconds before someone makes up their minds. It's funny, this pattern is repeated on youtube. You can watch the, the drop off. Uh youtube's 0:02:59 - 0:03:20 got all these statistics that I really don't care about. But sometimes when I'm trying to do my job at answering sincere comments, you have to cruise through these things and um, they'll tell you what points and videos people stop watching and everything and I, I have yet to click on the video to see 0:03:20 - 0:03:40 what I said that caused people to leave. But it's about the same, you have seven seconds to hook someone. I think face to face, people will stay if they stay for seven seconds. But if, um, uh, you know, there's a, there's a continuous drop off of video because this is perceived to be extremely low commitment 0:03:39 - 0:04:00 . And I, I made a video the other day. It might have been yesterday, uh, on why? That's not the case. It's not low commitment, uh, because we're held accountable for what we have access to whether we care or not anyway. Um, this was what I was meant to see and it's a quote and it's in Spanish and I've 0:04:00 - 0:04:19 got it taped into the back cover and I read it and I said, wow, that's a really good quote. And it's worn, it's, it's like kind of dirty because I read it many, many times while I was out. It's kind of like this thing which I just so happen to have laying on the bed because I don't know where to put 0:04:19 - 0:04:46 it at the moment. This is my 3d to do list in our guest room. I've got, uh, an obscenely large pile of notes that I have not yet processed and having it over there helps me not think about it. Um, but I've got this thing which is a little ghetto laminated, double sided quote. Um, on the one side, it 0:04:46 - 0:05:16 has, uh, this from Matthew 22. Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And those are the two great commandments. And uh on the other side is D MC 93 1 and it says every soul who forsake his sins and cometh 0:05:16 - 0:05:53 unto me and call on my name and obey my voice and keepeth my commandments shall see my face and know that I am and uh case of manners to you, that is the true promise. And uh I've known that since the first time I read it uh through faith and now many times through experience. So, uh I'm no good at memorizing 0:05:53 - 0:06:30 things. So I uh wrote this out and it was in my wallet for many years. And uh and then one day the Lord said, I don't have to carry it anymore because it's in here anyway. That's not the reason I'm making this video. Uh So this quote is in Spanish and I took five minutes to try to find it in English 0:06:30 - 0:06:57 and I can't, if you can find it, please, uh post it and I'll pin it. Uh don't spend tons of time on it. But if, if you somehow have lots of Joseph F Smith quotes memorized. Um uh So I'll translate it. Um It says, um, and, and forgive me if this is a rough translation, I'm quite out of practice. I used 0:06:56 - 0:07:19 to be so fluent when I was in Chile. My goal was to be so fluent that people couldn't tell that Spanish wasn't my first language. And the reason for that is I would, I was always very frustrated when anything in me impeded the ability for the spirit to use me to communicate to other people. So when God 0:07:19 - 0:07:42 put something into my heart and mind and I, some limitation in my vocabulary or pronunciation prevented me from communicating that effectively to the people. I was there to benefit and serve uh it frustrate me. And so I worked very hard. I had this, I had this ring. It, it was like this big, it was bigger 0:07:42 - 0:08:04 than my head. And that's not easy. Um that made out of the metal coat hanger. And on that ring, I had a bajillion, tiny little cut outs from index cards, little pieces uh with a word and its definition, there were flash cards. And uh every single time during the day I heard a word that I didn't know 0:08:04 - 0:08:25 or I wanted to say something, uh, in English the thought occurred and I didn't know the Spanish word. I'd, uh, when we got back I'd, I'd study it and look it up and add it to the card pile and then I'd work over these cards every day. Um, and once I had a word mastered, I'd put it on the ring and then 0:08:25 - 0:08:46 I'd have a, a short pile and every once in a while I go through the whole ring and anything that wasn't uh second nature, I put into the short pile again. So I just worked at this and uh I knew I had made it one day when someone said, where are you from? Cause you sound Chilean but you look Chinese and 0:08:45 - 0:09:17 I said, I'm neither and I'm offended by both. But anyway, it, so I'm not fluent anymore in Spanish. I, I just haven't had um motivation or opportunity to practice, I guess. Uh anyway, so forgive me if the translation is rough man, sorry says no person can obtain the gift of eternal life. If he's not 0:09:16 - 0:00:00 willing to sacrifice all thing, all earthly things to obtain it, we can't uh we can't achieve this while our desires are focused on the world. If the Lord required me to give him everything that I possess, um I hope I can do it with joy and sorry and a good attitude or it might be grateful attitude. 0:00:00 - 0:10:34 And he says, Now, how many of us have the confidence in the Lord that Abraham had, suppose that the Lord asked of you your first born or whatever other beloved thing or you're good, uh, or your prized possessions. That's probably what that says in English. Um hm, I can't think of this word, not in Spanish 0:10:33 - 0:11:06 . Uh Would you go along with it without complaining? Doesn't quite say obey su support. Would you support it without obeying? That's, that's not quite right. Can we hope for celestial glory if uh there's some dark corner of our hearts that is still attached some deep corner of our heart that's still 0:11:06 - 0:11:33 attached to the world. Ask yourselves if you're worthy to receive ex if, if there is ask yourself if you're worthy to receive exultation in the ki uh celestial kingdom of God. I'm sorry. That was so rough. Um But you can probably guess why I like this quote so much, why I taped it in here. And I read 0:11:33 - 0:12:12 it often apparently from the wear on this thing, the yellowing um two things that I wanted to highlight from this first off. This is a very valuable thing to think about and ask yourself. It's funny how cyclic so many things are in the gospel and it's like this iterative, revisiting all the time of the 0:12:12 - 0:12:38 same ideas over and over and over again. But each time you go around the wheel, uh which I'm using that language intentionally because the ways of the Lord are one eternal round a wheel that just keeps spinning each time you go around though. You hit the same thing at a higher resolution. If you're growing 0:12:37 - 0:13:15 and you learn more and you see things more deeply and it changes everything. And, um, reading this today, I'm sure that different things crossed my mind than they did in 2007. And um deeper things and better things, more valuable things. And it's funny how many times the pattern is repeated in life where 0:13:14 - 0:13:42 you come full circle and you see things for the first time. And it's funny because that repeats itself over and over again. You're just constantly being reborn and greater information, greater value, uh greater truth, greater righteousness, greater holiness, greater love, greater joy, and uh greater 0:13:42 - 0:14:10 suffering, but for greater good. Um my sponsors pay me $5 every time I say greater. Um So the other thing that I wanted to highlight from this quote though is this idea. There's three things I said, there's two, I must say three is this idea that um you know, if you follow this channel, you know that 0:14:09 - 0:14:33 , that uh I'm not LD SI was excommunicated from the L DS church um for writing a book that highlighted some things that some church leaders said, and some traditions that some members believe very strongly in that contradict the teachings of Joseph Smith and they contradict the scriptures. Um And uh 0:14:33 - 0:14:56 there was a state president who didn't like that very much and the church leadership, uh, wrote rolls into the handbook about that sort of thing. And so that was the pronounced, uh, results of all of that. But anyway, there are things that Joseph F Smith did and taught that I think were absolutely not 0:14:55 - 0:15:25 what he should have done or taught. Um, and yet this quote is fantastic and if a person lived by what this said, I'm not sure how much more you would need to go by to be on a really good track. So um put another way, I think I struggled to believe that there are very many people who couldn't do more 0:15:24 - 0:16:06 of what this says to do. All that being said. Thing number three is, it's so important to pay attention. Well, how can I phrase this? There are layers of extraction of value, the information from words, from experiences from people and kind of the first pass is the um low granularity, rough cut and that's 0:16:06 - 0:16:28 really valuable. So if you've ever weeded a garden and it's overgrown the first time you hit it, you just kind of go nuts and you focus on volume, right? And then maybe the second time you go in, there are a couple of plants that weren't really easy to pull out. So you, you skipped over those after giving 0:16:28 - 0:16:47 them a quick tug the first time through. So the second time through, you get ready for the digging expedition, maybe you have a pickaxe or you've brought some friends or some kids do some forced labor. Get that those things out that are really tough. And then maybe the third time you go back and some 0:16:47 - 0:17:06 of the, the plants you tore out have regrown from the roots that got left behind and you couldn't tell. So now you go with a stirrup hole if you don't know what that is, it's like a, it's, it's something, it's a piece of metal that looks like that. It's connected to a pole and you just kind of work it 0:17:06 - 0:17:25 and it, it slides under the roots under the soil and it cuts them and uh it's, it's pretty intense work. My kids complain profusely about having to do that. Um But it works really well for those uh roots that stick around. So maybe it's not the first thing you use. But on that third go, that's a perfect 0:17:24 - 0:17:49 tool. So you might even hit it with a tiller and break out the big guns. And so when we try to extract value from language or experiences or people, um there are layers and they're, they're more than three. But that's just sort of an analogy to, to help you see how extracting the value of each subsequent 0:17:48 - 0:18:17 layer requires a different effort uh Both in terms of your approach and the actual um like the force of the effort, it's, it's very different. So, uh strategy and intensity are both different. So, um, if we just read this quote and I, I butchered this. So hopefully one of you can sleuth out this, this 0:18:17 - 0:18:39 quote in English. Um, I don't have the citation, uh, because I didn't write this thinking that almost 10, uh, almost 20 years from putting this in this book, I'd, I'd be making some youtube video. Um, I'm not even sure if I knew about youtube in 2007 or if the anyway, if it even existed, I don't remember 0:18:39 - 0:19:05 . Um But uh there's enough here that that first pass is probably plenty for you to work on. But maybe you're at the second pass level or the third pass level. And I want to use this as a specific example of an extremely valuable principle. And that principle is every time you see God working, this is 0:19:05 - 0:19:37 how it works. He, he put down the book, it's about to get serious. He's gonna use his hands to talk. Um So, so basically things are right? And um God sees that and then he admits undifferentiated chaos into that and that's a mouthful. But I want you to just think of a mixing bowl which is finite. It's 0:19:37 - 0:19:58 , it's got, you know, it's just the bowl, it doesn't extend out and there's stuff in it and that stuff has established connections among itself is all touching, right? Maybe it's been mixed up, maybe it's been sitting, who knows, who cares into that. He adds new ingredients. Is there ingredients that 0:19:58 - 0:20:25 also may have been worked somewhere else or maybe they're just kind of thrown together and he adds that in and that happens in a process that can vary, but we're just gonna skip over that and that new mixture has to be processed. They have those things have to sort each other out. So it doesn't matter 0:20:25 - 0:20:55 if we're talking about the creation of Galaxies or solar systems or planets or people, this is how creation works, right? Not just creation as an event, but I'm talking about everything as a process. Everything is part of creation. It's God's work. This is the pattern, this is always how it works. There's 0:20:55 - 0:21:19 something it gets mixed with something new and then in that process it changes. So let's talk about those changes in those changes. Usually something comes out. So something new went in, it gets mixed up and then something comes out. The thing that comes out is almost never exactly the new thing that 0:21:19 - 0:21:36 went in. It's a piece of the old stuff and maybe some of the new stuff. And I hope I'm not talking in too general of terms. I'm just giving you a picture we can drill down and I hope your mind is firing and the spirits working with you to apply this to all these things that you've experienced in your 0:21:35 - 0:22:05 life. But there's an aggregation in a mixing and a change and it's a real change. And then there's a sorting, not a sorting, like an assortment, but a space sorting. And in that sorting something comes out and what comes out is what doesn't deserve to stay in the boat. The bowls, like your working copy 0:22:04 - 0:22:22 , right. Your recipe. There's, there are recipes where you do something to something and then there's, there's waste, that's not what you're concerned with. Like, if you're making cheese, there's way and you don't care about that, you find some poor body builder to give it to. Um, and, and there are 0:22:22 - 0:22:44 a lot of recipes like that but um, where there's some by-product and that's not what you're after because you value something else more. So this is the process and we could talk a lot more about that, but not today. So this quote, it is great and there's tremendous value in it and maybe for where you 0:22:44 - 0:23:05 are, that's all that needs to be said. But it's a great example of how just a few words in this case present the next level of extraction of information. So if we read this through again, which would be easier to do in Spanish, but I'm not gonna subject you to language. You might not know or even worse 0:23:05 - 0:23:31 if you do know it. My pronunciation these days because my tongue has turned into glue when I try to roll my R's at this point. So, um, let me point out some things that are little sticky wickets. Um So going through this again, let's see, no person can obtain the gift of eternal life if they're not willing 0:23:30 - 0:24:00 to sacrifice all things. Let's pause there. Now, if you were trying to weasel out of extremely valuable truth while claiming to believe that truth, how would you interpret? I'm just gonna talk about interpreting. I'm not gonna try to pretend to know Joseph F Smith's motives in writing this or the translator's 0:23:59 - 0:24:21 motives in thinking and translating it because I don't have the original English quote in front of me. But I'm just using this as an example. If you knew that you didn't do that, that you wouldn't give all things and you're not giving all things. Let's put it that way. And you want to avoid feeling guilty 0:24:20 - 0:24:43 about that while having whatever benefits, residual benefits you could from saying, yeah, I believe that because it rings true and I don't wanna fight that because it rings true. How powerful would it be for you to hang on that word? Willing? So maybe this rings a bell if you're L DS or used to be and 0:24:43 - 0:25:07 you think about the sacrament prayers willing to remember him? Well, sure, I'm willing. I'm willing. Anybody can weasel into that work. Anybody, you can weasel anything you want into that and say like, well, I, I killed my brother yesterday, but I'm willing to obey the commandments someday. I try, I 0:25:07 - 0:25:34 do my best. It it, it's not as far fetched as it might seem. It's not as much of an exaggeration as you might think. And we can continue reading this. Um, we can't achieve this while our desires are focused on the world. Here's another one where you might say, well, I mean, I try to be a good person 0:25:34 - 0:26:08 . I, I desire good things. One of the craziest things about the gospel is this idea of sifting And in this theme and I deranged mind, I split the idea of sifting into. Um, so Jesus says to Peter careful because Satan desires to sift you as wheat. And we think sifting is therefore bad because it's something 0:26:08 - 0:26:33 Satan does, right? Well, Satan does a lot of things that can be done for good, like teaching, he teaches people. Um So it's not about the what as much as the why and the how in a lot of things, difference between good and evil motive is super important anyway, uh when it comes to sifting turns out that 0:26:33 - 0:26:52 what God does to you is not so different than what a farmer does to wheat when they are processing it. I've talked about this before. It's something I know very well. I've breathed in a lot of chaff, uh some from wheat, processing it by hand to see what that was like and a lot more from rye because that 0:26:52 - 0:27:18 happens to be a wonder crop where I live. Um But uh how do you do this in a low tech situation is you take all the raw uh, product, the, the heads of the grain and you put them on a hard surface like a concrete driveway works great. But in a low tech situation, you just need a flat rock that's as big 0:27:18 - 0:27:38 as you can find. And hopefully it's high up. So you actually, you have to carry this stuff to the top of the hill because the wind is blasting there, right? If you, if you haven't hiked up a hill, um, in recent history, it, it's like the wind is always blowing up in the hills, right? Because they're 0:27:37 - 0:28:00 exposed. So, uh, you hike this stuff up to a hill with a big flat rock, you dump it out and the way you process this is, you get yourself some oversized nunchucks and you beat the living daylights out of this stuff over and over and over again. It takes a really long time and you got a wail on it. So 0:27:59 - 0:28:16 , uh, once you do this for a while, then what you do is get, get yourself a fork, not like one you eat with, but a big old pitchfork looking thing and you pitch this. That's why they're called pitchforks. You, you pick up a bunch, you chuck it into the sky and so what you're hoping for, which is, it 0:28:16 - 0:28:36 doesn't happen as frequently as you'd like, which means it's a lot more work for you and throwing the stuff up over and over, you hope the wind blows as you throw it up because when the wind blows all the chaff is lighter than the wheat or the rye, the little seeds they fall down before the chaff. But 0:28:36 - 0:29:01 to get them to float off, you have to beat them first because you have to expose the part of the grain that's valuable, that's edible. It's in a hole. It's surrounded by a very fibrous. Uh What's the chaff? It's a, it's a covering that's waterproof and it, it uh you can't eat that. Uh Or else you're 0:29:00 - 0:29:19 gonna be friends with the toilet for a long time. Um So you wanna get that off of the, the grain and you have to beat it to open it and expose the valuable part. So hopefully some light bulbs are going off because there's a reason this is described so thoroughly in scripture and why God designed it this 0:29:19 - 0:29:43 way to teach us in a very visceral way because it's, it's kind of like your, your ability to eat, depends on it. So grains, a staff of men, we lean on it in most times throughout history when we're not swimming in nearly free oil uh to survive. So, um this winnowing process is what it's called, where 0:29:43 - 0:30:09 you separate the wheat from the chaff or the rye from the chaff as it as it may be. It's very important and it's important, not just for Satan, but for God, the process is different in many ways, but also the same in others. So I like to think of this in terms of Satan sifting you and God sifting you 0:30:08 - 0:30:36 because it's kind of the same process. But the outcome, that's the desired outcome is very different. God is trying to make you in, into uh wheat or I and Satan is trying to make you into chaff. He wants you to be blown away. And what does that mean? Um He wants you to be overcome by what wind or fire 0:30:36 - 0:31:02 ? Because the chaff is also burned. So what are these things? Uh this could be a long discussion but just one to attach one fruitful uh idea to each and you could take it where you'd like if you wanna think about wind, you can read John three jesus' description to Nicodemus about how the spirit is wind 0:31:02 - 0:31:27 and the Hebrew word. It's the same word. Um The spirit is like wind. And um so if you think about that in terms of information because the spirit is a realm of ideas. Um And then with the fire, that's, that's uh that's the consequences of reality. Consequences aren't negative, they're not good or bad 0:31:26 - 0:31:46 . Both of those are in there. It's like the word risk. We always think of it in terms of bad things, but it's not bad. Risk is, is opportunity and danger. They're both in that bucket and life is all about sorting the buckets, right? Good and evil. They're in the same bucket. You gotta pull everything 0:31:46 - 0:32:08 out and figure it out. And now we've come full circle. No pun intended because we started talking about circles and coming full circle uh to this idea of um coming around again and knowing much more than what you knew before and seeing things differently. Anyway, going back to why we started talking 0:32:08 - 0:32:34 about wheat and, and uh chaff in the first place as you get to the higher level of trying to extract information, you see these words and you have to sort the chaff from the wheat because Satan is going to use the chaff to distract you from what you need to subject yourself to, to become wheat because 0:32:34 - 0:32:58 right now you're both, you're both and Satan wants to push you over to the side of becoming full chaff and God wants to push you to the side of becoming full wheat. These are the ways of death and life. We're on this planet to choose to go more of one way or the other. We're here living to go forward 0:32:57 - 0:33:20 and many people choose to go backwards and that actually forward and backwards aren't good words to use for that. Uh You can go out of the way at any time and um you can come back into the way at any time, but it's not just going forward and backwards because if you pop off, you do go back, you have 0:33:20 - 0:33:40 to restart and it gets really complicated. But the way of life is a way of improvement from wherever you are to whatever is better and the way of death is anything else. And so that's why the way of death is broad and easy to find and most people are in it, but the way of life is narrow and it's hard 0:33:40 - 0:34:06 to find and few there be to find it and even fewer stay in it or go very far. So, uh in this quote, we talked about some examples of things that can derail people and what it does is it takes the, the power of these words and waters it down and neuters it so that um the benefit that you might have from 0:34:06 - 0:34:34 reading these things and understanding them goes out the window like chaff in the wind because um uh words are co-opted phrase or pre phrases are presumed to be understood already. Actions are um weaseled out of and so forth. And so, um when, so that's just a quote from a guy. But even when you're reading 0:34:34 - 0:35:00 the scriptures, it's, it's very possible and, and actually, unfortunately, super common that sorry, I hit the camera, you can read something and totally not get what it says, even if it's said in the plainest possible way. And one of the most uh detrimental influences to this process is tradition. So 0:35:00 - 0:35:28 , um another theme that comes up is this idea of uh the pros and cons of familiarity and that's a theme you could apply to people. So prophet is not without honor, except in his own country among his own family. Um Because when you know someone, well, you have uh many opportunities to take for granted 0:35:27 - 0:35:54 the value that they could otherwise provide you among other things among other potential problems there. But they're, they're strong pros of um proximity familiarity. Um, because for instance, you just can't get the same thing from someone at a distance as you can up front. And these don't have to be 0:35:53 - 0:36:13 some sort of weird situations that, you know, whatever. And I've talked extensively although honestly, I can't remember which of the videos I published and which I deleted uh because I didn't think it was the right time even though I spent time recording them. Anyway, these ideas are always buzzing around 0:36:12 - 0:36:35 in here about the need to bring people into your sphere of influence. Like Abraham did, he had uh 318 people according to Psalms living in his house. And those were just the men who were of the age to go to war. So there were also old dudes and Children and women and some people say that maybe there 0:36:35 - 0:37:10 are 2000 people in their tents cruising around with Abraham as he wandered the the promised land under his service. Um So, so technically describable as his servants, although he was the one serving them in. Um a very interesting irony. That's always the case in God's Kingdom. So, um anyway, um I had 0:37:10 - 0:37:30 a place I was going with that and I just totally lost my train of thought because I started thinking about Abraham. Um Right. So sphere of influence, it doesn't have to literally be in your house. But, but whatever good you can do in this world, that's your, that's your sphere of influence your potential 0:37:29 - 0:37:56 to, to reach out and help other people in whatever way that is whatever that looks like. And it could just be giving a random person a true and sincere compliment. When you're out in town, it might be, um, helping someone at work. It might be, um, picking up a piece of trash in the street. I mean, there's 0:37:56 - 0:38:18 no limit. It's just improvement. It's raw improvement everywhere. And, uh, well, I'm, I'm looking at the clock and the length of this video and I need to get back to writing. But, um, I appreciate you watching this if you got this far and I hope this, uh, smattering of thoughts is helpful to you. Cover 0:00:00 - 0:00:26 I want to make a video on a very, very specific point. Um How specific we remain, remains to be seen. Uh I grabbed sometimes books, catch my eye and I'll grab them and I'll say, Lord, why do you want me to look at this? And I flip through them and there's always something um this duct tape bound. This 0:00:26 - 0:00:44 is uh these are the scriptures I used when I was a missionary in Chile for the L DS church. Well, that's not a correct way to say it. I was a missionary for God and I just happened to be in the L DS church at the time. Uh There's a lot of things I would do differently if I repeated that. But I think 0:00:44 - 0:01:06 if you get through your life without being able to say that about just about everything you've ever done, you're probably doing something wrong. Um Anyway, this is a well worn copy and just flipping through it. Um gives me a lot of satisfaction over how I spent that time again. Not that I wouldn't do 0:01:06 - 0:01:30 things differently. But I think, I think one of the things that's gonna give us a uh greatest amount of joy in the eternities is uh is there anything we put our whole soul into that happened to be very difficult? And uh the interesting thing about that is pretty much anything can be very difficult if 0:01:29 - 0:01:52 you put your whole soul into it, especially because this world is designed to provide resistance and it's like the harder you try and the better the things you're doing, uh the more resistance there will be by design and thank God for that. Um That's interesting. This thing's marked to pieces. I've got 0:01:52 - 0:02:13 little notes tucked in here and it's covered with duct tape because um I just kept thinking as I was walking the streets that as a soldier, you don't put your rifle away, you have it ready because you never know when you need to shoot somebody. And uh I figured I better have this out and it got pretty 0:02:12 - 0:02:37 worn. So I covered it with duct tape. Um But I, I wrote topics on the side and they're in Spanish. But um I marked up scriptures and color coded it with these tabs because I've always been terrible at memorizing things and um with a lot of language, you, you need specific words to carry the power. So 0:02:36 - 0:03:00 um the tabs connected usually color coded dots with specific verses on whatever topic. And it helped me find things quickly. So I discovered that you have about seven seconds before someone makes up their minds. It's funny, this pattern is repeated on youtube. You can watch the, the drop off. Uh youtube's 0:02:59 - 0:03:20 got all these statistics that I really don't care about. But sometimes when I'm trying to do my job at answering sincere comments, you have to cruise through these things and um, they'll tell you what points and videos people stop watching and everything and I, I have yet to click on the video to see 0:03:20 - 0:03:40 what I said that caused people to leave. But it's about the same, you have seven seconds to hook someone. I think face to face, people will stay if they stay for seven seconds. But if, um, uh, you know, there's a, there's a continuous drop off of video because this is perceived to be extremely low commitment 0:03:39 - 0:04:00 . And I, I made a video the other day. It might have been yesterday, uh, on why? That's not the case. It's not low commitment, uh, because we're held accountable for what we have access to whether we care or not anyway. Um, this was what I was meant to see and it's a quote and it's in Spanish and I've 0:04:00 - 0:04:19 got it taped into the back cover and I read it and I said, wow, that's a really good quote. And it's worn, it's, it's like kind of dirty because I read it many, many times while I was out. It's kind of like this thing which I just so happen to have laying on the bed because I don't know where to put 0:04:19 - 0:04:46 it at the moment. This is my 3d to do list in our guest room. I've got, uh, an obscenely large pile of notes that I have not yet processed and having it over there helps me not think about it. Um, but I've got this thing which is a little ghetto laminated, double sided quote. Um, on the one side, it 0:04:46 - 0:05:16 has, uh, this from Matthew 22. Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And those are the two great commandments. And uh on the other side is D MC 93 1 and it says every soul who forsake his sins and cometh 0:05:16 - 0:05:53 unto me and call on my name and obey my voice and keepeth my commandments shall see my face and know that I am and uh case of manners to you, that is the true promise. And uh I've known that since the first time I read it uh through faith and now many times through experience. So, uh I'm no good at memorizing 0:05:53 - 0:06:30 things. So I uh wrote this out and it was in my wallet for many years. And uh and then one day the Lord said, I don't have to carry it anymore because it's in here anyway. That's not the reason I'm making this video. Uh So this quote is in Spanish and I took five minutes to try to find it in English 0:06:30 - 0:06:57 and I can't, if you can find it, please, uh post it and I'll pin it. Uh don't spend tons of time on it. But if, if you somehow have lots of Joseph F Smith quotes memorized. Um uh So I'll translate it. Um It says, um, and, and forgive me if this is a rough translation, I'm quite out of practice. I used 0:06:56 - 0:07:19 to be so fluent when I was in Chile. My goal was to be so fluent that people couldn't tell that Spanish wasn't my first language. And the reason for that is I would, I was always very frustrated when anything in me impeded the ability for the spirit to use me to communicate to other people. So when God 0:07:19 - 0:07:42 put something into my heart and mind and I, some limitation in my vocabulary or pronunciation prevented me from communicating that effectively to the people. I was there to benefit and serve uh it frustrate me. And so I worked very hard. I had this, I had this ring. It, it was like this big, it was bigger 0:07:42 - 0:08:04 than my head. And that's not easy. Um that made out of the metal coat hanger. And on that ring, I had a bajillion, tiny little cut outs from index cards, little pieces uh with a word and its definition, there were flash cards. And uh every single time during the day I heard a word that I didn't know 0:08:04 - 0:08:25 or I wanted to say something, uh, in English the thought occurred and I didn't know the Spanish word. I'd, uh, when we got back I'd, I'd study it and look it up and add it to the card pile and then I'd work over these cards every day. Um, and once I had a word mastered, I'd put it on the ring and then 0:08:25 - 0:08:46 I'd have a, a short pile and every once in a while I go through the whole ring and anything that wasn't uh second nature, I put into the short pile again. So I just worked at this and uh I knew I had made it one day when someone said, where are you from? Cause you sound Chilean but you look Chinese and 0:08:45 - 0:09:17 I said, I'm neither and I'm offended by both. But anyway, it, so I'm not fluent anymore in Spanish. I, I just haven't had um motivation or opportunity to practice, I guess. Uh anyway, so forgive me if the translation is rough man, sorry says no person can obtain the gift of eternal life. If he's not 0:09:16 - 0:00:00 willing to sacrifice all thing, all earthly things to obtain it, we can't uh we can't achieve this while our desires are focused on the world. If the Lord required me to give him everything that I possess, um I hope I can do it with joy and sorry and a good attitude or it might be grateful attitude. 0:00:00 - 0:10:34 And he says, Now, how many of us have the confidence in the Lord that Abraham had, suppose that the Lord asked of you your first born or whatever other beloved thing or you're good, uh, or your prized possessions. That's probably what that says in English. Um hm, I can't think of this word, not in Spanish 0:10:33 - 0:11:06 . Uh Would you go along with it without complaining? Doesn't quite say obey su support. Would you support it without obeying? That's, that's not quite right. Can we hope for celestial glory if uh there's some dark corner of our hearts that is still attached some deep corner of our heart that's still 0:11:06 - 0:11:33 attached to the world. Ask yourselves if you're worthy to receive ex if, if there is ask yourself if you're worthy to receive exultation in the ki uh celestial kingdom of God. I'm sorry. That was so rough. Um But you can probably guess why I like this quote so much, why I taped it in here. And I read 0:11:33 - 0:12:12 it often apparently from the wear on this thing, the yellowing um two things that I wanted to highlight from this first off. This is a very valuable thing to think about and ask yourself. It's funny how cyclic so many things are in the gospel and it's like this iterative, revisiting all the time of the 0:12:12 - 0:12:38 same ideas over and over and over again. But each time you go around the wheel, uh which I'm using that language intentionally because the ways of the Lord are one eternal round a wheel that just keeps spinning each time you go around though. You hit the same thing at a higher resolution. If you're growing 0:12:37 - 0:13:15 and you learn more and you see things more deeply and it changes everything. And, um, reading this today, I'm sure that different things crossed my mind than they did in 2007. And um deeper things and better things, more valuable things. And it's funny how many times the pattern is repeated in life where 0:13:14 - 0:13:42 you come full circle and you see things for the first time. And it's funny because that repeats itself over and over again. You're just constantly being reborn and greater information, greater value, uh greater truth, greater righteousness, greater holiness, greater love, greater joy, and uh greater 0:13:42 - 0:14:10 suffering, but for greater good. Um my sponsors pay me $5 every time I say greater. Um So the other thing that I wanted to highlight from this quote though is this idea. There's three things I said, there's two, I must say three is this idea that um you know, if you follow this channel, you know that 0:14:09 - 0:14:33 , that uh I'm not LD SI was excommunicated from the L DS church um for writing a book that highlighted some things that some church leaders said, and some traditions that some members believe very strongly in that contradict the teachings of Joseph Smith and they contradict the scriptures. Um And uh 0:14:33 - 0:14:56 there was a state president who didn't like that very much and the church leadership, uh, wrote rolls into the handbook about that sort of thing. And so that was the pronounced, uh, results of all of that. But anyway, there are things that Joseph F Smith did and taught that I think were absolutely not 0:14:55 - 0:15:25 what he should have done or taught. Um, and yet this quote is fantastic and if a person lived by what this said, I'm not sure how much more you would need to go by to be on a really good track. So um put another way, I think I struggled to believe that there are very many people who couldn't do more 0:15:24 - 0:16:06 of what this says to do. All that being said. Thing number three is, it's so important to pay attention. Well, how can I phrase this? There are layers of extraction of value, the information from words, from experiences from people and kind of the first pass is the um low granularity, rough cut and that's 0:16:06 - 0:16:28 really valuable. So if you've ever weeded a garden and it's overgrown the first time you hit it, you just kind of go nuts and you focus on volume, right? And then maybe the second time you go in, there are a couple of plants that weren't really easy to pull out. So you, you skipped over those after giving 0:16:28 - 0:16:47 them a quick tug the first time through. So the second time through, you get ready for the digging expedition, maybe you have a pickaxe or you've brought some friends or some kids do some forced labor. Get that those things out that are really tough. And then maybe the third time you go back and some 0:16:47 - 0:17:06 of the, the plants you tore out have regrown from the roots that got left behind and you couldn't tell. So now you go with a stirrup hole if you don't know what that is, it's like a, it's, it's something, it's a piece of metal that looks like that. It's connected to a pole and you just kind of work it 0:17:06 - 0:17:25 and it, it slides under the roots under the soil and it cuts them and uh it's, it's pretty intense work. My kids complain profusely about having to do that. Um But it works really well for those uh roots that stick around. So maybe it's not the first thing you use. But on that third go, that's a perfect 0:17:24 - 0:17:49 tool. So you might even hit it with a tiller and break out the big guns. And so when we try to extract value from language or experiences or people, um there are layers and they're, they're more than three. But that's just sort of an analogy to, to help you see how extracting the value of each subsequent 0:17:48 - 0:18:17 layer requires a different effort uh Both in terms of your approach and the actual um like the force of the effort, it's, it's very different. So, uh strategy and intensity are both different. So, um, if we just read this quote and I, I butchered this. So hopefully one of you can sleuth out this, this 0:18:17 - 0:18:39 quote in English. Um, I don't have the citation, uh, because I didn't write this thinking that almost 10, uh, almost 20 years from putting this in this book, I'd, I'd be making some youtube video. Um, I'm not even sure if I knew about youtube in 2007 or if the anyway, if it even existed, I don't remember 0:18:39 - 0:19:05 . Um But uh there's enough here that that first pass is probably plenty for you to work on. But maybe you're at the second pass level or the third pass level. And I want to use this as a specific example of an extremely valuable principle. And that principle is every time you see God working, this is 0:19:05 - 0:19:37 how it works. He, he put down the book, it's about to get serious. He's gonna use his hands to talk. Um So, so basically things are right? And um God sees that and then he admits undifferentiated chaos into that and that's a mouthful. But I want you to just think of a mixing bowl which is finite. It's 0:19:37 - 0:19:58 , it's got, you know, it's just the bowl, it doesn't extend out and there's stuff in it and that stuff has established connections among itself is all touching, right? Maybe it's been mixed up, maybe it's been sitting, who knows, who cares into that. He adds new ingredients. Is there ingredients that 0:19:58 - 0:20:25 also may have been worked somewhere else or maybe they're just kind of thrown together and he adds that in and that happens in a process that can vary, but we're just gonna skip over that and that new mixture has to be processed. They have those things have to sort each other out. So it doesn't matter 0:20:25 - 0:20:55 if we're talking about the creation of Galaxies or solar systems or planets or people, this is how creation works, right? Not just creation as an event, but I'm talking about everything as a process. Everything is part of creation. It's God's work. This is the pattern, this is always how it works. There's 0:20:55 - 0:21:19 something it gets mixed with something new and then in that process it changes. So let's talk about those changes in those changes. Usually something comes out. So something new went in, it gets mixed up and then something comes out. The thing that comes out is almost never exactly the new thing that 0:21:19 - 0:21:36 went in. It's a piece of the old stuff and maybe some of the new stuff. And I hope I'm not talking in too general of terms. I'm just giving you a picture we can drill down and I hope your mind is firing and the spirits working with you to apply this to all these things that you've experienced in your 0:21:35 - 0:22:05 life. But there's an aggregation in a mixing and a change and it's a real change. And then there's a sorting, not a sorting, like an assortment, but a space sorting. And in that sorting something comes out and what comes out is what doesn't deserve to stay in the boat. The bowls, like your working copy 0:22:04 - 0:22:22 , right. Your recipe. There's, there are recipes where you do something to something and then there's, there's waste, that's not what you're concerned with. Like, if you're making cheese, there's way and you don't care about that, you find some poor body builder to give it to. Um, and, and there are 0:22:22 - 0:22:44 a lot of recipes like that but um, where there's some by-product and that's not what you're after because you value something else more. So this is the process and we could talk a lot more about that, but not today. So this quote, it is great and there's tremendous value in it and maybe for where you 0:22:44 - 0:23:05 are, that's all that needs to be said. But it's a great example of how just a few words in this case present the next level of extraction of information. So if we read this through again, which would be easier to do in Spanish, but I'm not gonna subject you to language. You might not know or even worse 0:23:05 - 0:23:31 if you do know it. My pronunciation these days because my tongue has turned into glue when I try to roll my R's at this point. So, um, let me point out some things that are little sticky wickets. Um So going through this again, let's see, no person can obtain the gift of eternal life if they're not willing 0:23:30 - 0:24:00 to sacrifice all things. Let's pause there. Now, if you were trying to weasel out of extremely valuable truth while claiming to believe that truth, how would you interpret? I'm just gonna talk about interpreting. I'm not gonna try to pretend to know Joseph F Smith's motives in writing this or the translator's 0:23:59 - 0:24:21 motives in thinking and translating it because I don't have the original English quote in front of me. But I'm just using this as an example. If you knew that you didn't do that, that you wouldn't give all things and you're not giving all things. Let's put it that way. And you want to avoid feeling guilty 0:24:20 - 0:24:43 about that while having whatever benefits, residual benefits you could from saying, yeah, I believe that because it rings true and I don't wanna fight that because it rings true. How powerful would it be for you to hang on that word? Willing? So maybe this rings a bell if you're L DS or used to be and 0:24:43 - 0:25:07 you think about the sacrament prayers willing to remember him? Well, sure, I'm willing. I'm willing. Anybody can weasel into that work. Anybody, you can weasel anything you want into that and say like, well, I, I killed my brother yesterday, but I'm willing to obey the commandments someday. I try, I 0:25:07 - 0:25:34 do my best. It it, it's not as far fetched as it might seem. It's not as much of an exaggeration as you might think. And we can continue reading this. Um, we can't achieve this while our desires are focused on the world. Here's another one where you might say, well, I mean, I try to be a good person 0:25:34 - 0:26:08 . I, I desire good things. One of the craziest things about the gospel is this idea of sifting And in this theme and I deranged mind, I split the idea of sifting into. Um, so Jesus says to Peter careful because Satan desires to sift you as wheat. And we think sifting is therefore bad because it's something 0:26:08 - 0:26:33 Satan does, right? Well, Satan does a lot of things that can be done for good, like teaching, he teaches people. Um So it's not about the what as much as the why and the how in a lot of things, difference between good and evil motive is super important anyway, uh when it comes to sifting turns out that 0:26:33 - 0:26:52 what God does to you is not so different than what a farmer does to wheat when they are processing it. I've talked about this before. It's something I know very well. I've breathed in a lot of chaff, uh some from wheat, processing it by hand to see what that was like and a lot more from rye because that 0:26:52 - 0:27:18 happens to be a wonder crop where I live. Um But uh how do you do this in a low tech situation is you take all the raw uh, product, the, the heads of the grain and you put them on a hard surface like a concrete driveway works great. But in a low tech situation, you just need a flat rock that's as big 0:27:18 - 0:27:38 as you can find. And hopefully it's high up. So you actually, you have to carry this stuff to the top of the hill because the wind is blasting there, right? If you, if you haven't hiked up a hill, um, in recent history, it, it's like the wind is always blowing up in the hills, right? Because they're 0:27:37 - 0:28:00 exposed. So, uh, you hike this stuff up to a hill with a big flat rock, you dump it out and the way you process this is, you get yourself some oversized nunchucks and you beat the living daylights out of this stuff over and over and over again. It takes a really long time and you got a wail on it. So 0:27:59 - 0:28:16 , uh, once you do this for a while, then what you do is get, get yourself a fork, not like one you eat with, but a big old pitchfork looking thing and you pitch this. That's why they're called pitchforks. You, you pick up a bunch, you chuck it into the sky and so what you're hoping for, which is, it 0:28:16 - 0:28:36 doesn't happen as frequently as you'd like, which means it's a lot more work for you and throwing the stuff up over and over, you hope the wind blows as you throw it up because when the wind blows all the chaff is lighter than the wheat or the rye, the little seeds they fall down before the chaff. But 0:28:36 - 0:29:01 to get them to float off, you have to beat them first because you have to expose the part of the grain that's valuable, that's edible. It's in a hole. It's surrounded by a very fibrous. Uh What's the chaff? It's a, it's a covering that's waterproof and it, it uh you can't eat that. Uh Or else you're 0:29:00 - 0:29:19 gonna be friends with the toilet for a long time. Um So you wanna get that off of the, the grain and you have to beat it to open it and expose the valuable part. So hopefully some light bulbs are going off because there's a reason this is described so thoroughly in scripture and why God designed it this 0:29:19 - 0:29:43 way to teach us in a very visceral way because it's, it's kind of like your, your ability to eat, depends on it. So grains, a staff of men, we lean on it in most times throughout history when we're not swimming in nearly free oil uh to survive. So, um this winnowing process is what it's called, where 0:29:43 - 0:30:09 you separate the wheat from the chaff or the rye from the chaff as it as it may be. It's very important and it's important, not just for Satan, but for God, the process is different in many ways, but also the same in others. So I like to think of this in terms of Satan sifting you and God sifting you 0:30:08 - 0:30:36 because it's kind of the same process. But the outcome, that's the desired outcome is very different. God is trying to make you in, into uh wheat or I and Satan is trying to make you into chaff. He wants you to be blown away. And what does that mean? Um He wants you to be overcome by what wind or fire 0:30:36 - 0:31:02 ? Because the chaff is also burned. So what are these things? Uh this could be a long discussion but just one to attach one fruitful uh idea to each and you could take it where you'd like if you wanna think about wind, you can read John three jesus' description to Nicodemus about how the spirit is wind 0:31:02 - 0:31:27 and the Hebrew word. It's the same word. Um The spirit is like wind. And um so if you think about that in terms of information because the spirit is a realm of ideas. Um And then with the fire, that's, that's uh that's the consequences of reality. Consequences aren't negative, they're not good or bad 0:31:26 - 0:31:46 . Both of those are in there. It's like the word risk. We always think of it in terms of bad things, but it's not bad. Risk is, is opportunity and danger. They're both in that bucket and life is all about sorting the buckets, right? Good and evil. They're in the same bucket. You gotta pull everything 0:31:46 - 0:32:08 out and figure it out. And now we've come full circle. No pun intended because we started talking about circles and coming full circle uh to this idea of um coming around again and knowing much more than what you knew before and seeing things differently. Anyway, going back to why we started talking 0:32:08 - 0:32:34 about wheat and, and uh chaff in the first place as you get to the higher level of trying to extract information, you see these words and you have to sort the chaff from the wheat because Satan is going to use the chaff to distract you from what you need to subject yourself to, to become wheat because 0:32:34 - 0:32:58 right now you're both, you're both and Satan wants to push you over to the side of becoming full chaff and God wants to push you to the side of becoming full wheat. These are the ways of death and life. We're on this planet to choose to go more of one way or the other. We're here living to go forward 0:32:57 - 0:33:20 and many people choose to go backwards and that actually forward and backwards aren't good words to use for that. Uh You can go out of the way at any time and um you can come back into the way at any time, but it's not just going forward and backwards because if you pop off, you do go back, you have 0:33:20 - 0:33:40 to restart and it gets really complicated. But the way of life is a way of improvement from wherever you are to whatever is better and the way of death is anything else. And so that's why the way of death is broad and easy to find and most people are in it, but the way of life is narrow and it's hard 0:33:40 - 0:34:06 to find and few there be to find it and even fewer stay in it or go very far. So, uh in this quote, we talked about some examples of things that can derail people and what it does is it takes the, the power of these words and waters it down and neuters it so that um the benefit that you might have from 0:34:06 - 0:34:34 reading these things and understanding them goes out the window like chaff in the wind because um uh words are co-opted phrase or pre phrases are presumed to be understood already. Actions are um weaseled out of and so forth. And so, um when, so that's just a quote from a guy. But even when you're reading 0:34:34 - 0:35:00 the scriptures, it's, it's very possible and, and actually, unfortunately, super common that sorry, I hit the camera, you can read something and totally not get what it says, even if it's said in the plainest possible way. And one of the most uh detrimental influences to this process is tradition. So 0:35:00 - 0:35:28 , um another theme that comes up is this idea of uh the pros and cons of familiarity and that's a theme you could apply to people. So prophet is not without honor, except in his own country among his own family. Um Because when you know someone, well, you have uh many opportunities to take for granted 0:35:27 - 0:35:54 the value that they could otherwise provide you among other things among other potential problems there. But they're, they're strong pros of um proximity familiarity. Um, because for instance, you just can't get the same thing from someone at a distance as you can up front. And these don't have to be 0:35:53 - 0:36:13 some sort of weird situations that, you know, whatever. And I've talked extensively although honestly, I can't remember which of the videos I published and which I deleted uh because I didn't think it was the right time even though I spent time recording them. Anyway, these ideas are always buzzing around 0:36:12 - 0:36:35 in here about the need to bring people into your sphere of influence. Like Abraham did, he had uh 318 people according to Psalms living in his house. And those were just the men who were of the age to go to war. So there were also old dudes and Children and women and some people say that maybe there 0:36:35 - 0:37:10 are 2000 people in their tents cruising around with Abraham as he wandered the the promised land under his service. Um So, so technically describable as his servants, although he was the one serving them in. Um a very interesting irony. That's always the case in God's Kingdom. So, um anyway, um I had 0:37:10 - 0:37:30 a place I was going with that and I just totally lost my train of thought because I started thinking about Abraham. Um Right. So sphere of influence, it doesn't have to literally be in your house. But, but whatever good you can do in this world, that's your, that's your sphere of influence your potential 0:37:29 - 0:37:56 to, to reach out and help other people in whatever way that is whatever that looks like. And it could just be giving a random person a true and sincere compliment. When you're out in town, it might be, um, helping someone at work. It might be, um, picking up a piece of trash in the street. I mean, there's 0:37:56 - 0:38:18 no limit. It's just improvement. It's raw improvement everywhere. And, uh, well, I'm, I'm looking at the clock and the length of this video and I need to get back to writing. But, um, I appreciate you watching this if you got this far and I hope this, uh, smattering of thoughts is helpful to you. Cover 0:38:17 - 0:38:25 a lot of ground. So hopefully at least one piece of spaghetti sticks to the wall. Um, I'll talk to you some other time.