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Explaining gospel topics with a pendulum, you know, um I was in an aquarium the other day at an aquarium. Thankfully not in one because there were sharks. I was at an aquarium the other day and throughout the whole building and all the, the uh exhibits, I noticed that the light was particularly blue and uh you see things differently in that light and I was looking over some pictures after the fact and they didn't turn out well because of that. But um I think sometimes when we're trying to understand ideas, we can apply, we can try to see them through a particular lens and hopefully extend our understanding of things along those lines in ways that might not be obvious um from our perspectives that we've applied previously. So today I wanted to do that with um, a very simple concept which is a pendulum. So you see these, for example, in grandfather clocks, they're the, the discs that are connected to a string or a rod and they sway back and forth from a fixed point. And uh the intent of this presentation is not necessarily to serve as a single source explanation for anything, but hopefully it'll trigger some new thoughts within you and maybe you'll understand things more extensively in some way than you did before. So let's start with this idea of opposition in all things. Oh, I will say just another preamble note um because of not attempting to explain anything from start to finish in this presentation, uh There's much more to be said for any of these thoughts, many more scriptures to be quoted, et cetera . But you'll find these things explained more extensively and from a different perspective in my books and other videos and on my blog. So opposition in all things, this is a concept that comes up many times in the scriptures and you see it throughout life. One way to think of this is in terms of this pendulum. So on the left side of the swing of the pendulum, we have evil and sorrow and on the right side, we have good and joy. And what I'd like to propose is that the way to proceed to greater good joy is to willingly proceed into greater evil and sorrow. And I'm not saying to uh sin, but to increase in your awareness in your experience of the effects of these things through other people. So in Alma 3620 we read of um this is Alma's description of what he went through because of his sin. In this case, he said, put joy in what marvelous light I did behold. Yeah, my soul is filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain. So just before this, he's describing how great His pain was because of his sins. And he came to a point where God revealed to Him. Um Exactly why those behaviors and thoughts and desires were evil and it crushed him. But um even though that pain was sort of beyond description for him because of this, he was able to reconcile to that awareness and then experience joy. That was just as great and indescribable as his pain was. This is a picture of what he went through. Um And in this case, it was because of sin. But uh we can go through this. And in fact, we're meant to go through this beyond the point or after the point where we have reconciled ourselves to our most sincere understanding of God. So on the left side and right here is what you get to know or comprehend through experience. And in alma case, this was God revealing to Him, the true nature of his, of how he was his character , his beliefs and his desires and his actions, which all stem from that. But in your case, if you are already reconciled to God, this could be a greater understanding of the capacity for evil that lies in the heart of men. It could be the rareness of good in the world in terms of the choices people make and their motives for making those choices, could be deep emotional pain because of other people and what they choose um could be AAA great host of things, greater understanding of the suffering that exists in this world. But as you experience these things, what happens is um it provides a gateway to experience the equal and opposite, good and joy. Now, the issue is that you can't yet comprehend that good and that joy. So when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden prior to the fall, they had a situation that was uh describable as paradise. But they couldn't recognize the worth of that. They couldn't comprehend the blessing that they lived in because they didn't know uh the equal and opposite, evil and sorrow. Now they're vacuously good, but they had not yet overcome these things. They had not yet experienced them and comprehended them and integrated them into their understanding of the world. When you experience good and joy uh in comprehension of what it actually means in appreciation um of what it means that comes from that appreciation comes from having experienced the equal and opposite. It doesn't mean the equal and opposite goes away. Like I said, this is a question of integration and uh weaving it into a belief system that is sophisticated and strong enough to allow you to feel that degree of good and joy in spite of the degree of evil and sorrow that exists. So, um that belief system is very important and this is the purpose of the Gospel. It's to give us a means to experience that good and joy in spite of the evil and sorrow that exists in reality. This is not a question of one being swapped for the other. It's not a question of arbitrary reward for arbitrary suffering. Nothing in the Gospel is arbitrary. It's all part of um a system and it's all part of uh an inescapable reality . So in order to progress the way you do this is you subject yourself to greater evil and suffering. Now, a note on this, you don't have to go looking for this. This is um Mosiah 319. It interestingly uses the word inflict. So we have to yield ourselves to the spirit of God and uh everything that God inflicts upon us like a child would to his parents. Um inflict is a really interesting word to use here. Uh That, that was a paraphrase, not a quote, but the, the word inflict is in the verse. Why? Because that's what it feels like. You don't have to go looking for it, but it will come to you and uh it will come to you in proportion to your faithfulness to God. And we'll get to that later. So as you experience these things and you comprehend it, it opens the window for God to teach you the principles that are sufficient to overcome it. And then just as the Gospel gives you principles to overcome sin. And this is sort of phase one of your gospel experience in phase two, once you've overcome that in yourself, you have to overcome the evil that is in the world. And um likewise, he'll give you principles that are strong enough to do that. And that will enable you to experience greater joy and happiness than you could. If you weren't aware of that evil, it's all equal and opposite. So the first, the first step of this is that you experience greater evil and sorrow. And um the second step, so that sort of happens on its own. The second step is that you become aware of the existence of good and joy, equal and opposite to that. So uh the trigger for this is understanding and and truly believing that God is just and loving and perfectly just and perfectly loving what that means. And you can lean into this to the extent that you believe it. What that means is that the more awful your reality, the greater , the good and joy that is possible. So another way of putting this is if you're cruising along in life and you say, oh, this isn't that bad. And then you get smacked down by a greater understanding of evil and sorrow, then you can actually rejoice in this because up until that point, the maximum amount of good or joy that you could understand, comprehend or even imagine was less than what it is. Now the key to that is because of the character of God. In our picture, God is like the, the, the uh pivot point of the pendulum from where the string is hanging. And you know, because of the laws of gravity and everything else that, that pendulum will swing to the same exact displacement on the side of good and happiness and joy. But you haven't experienced that yet. And this is the place that the ancients arrived where their faith in God was unshakeable to the point that they could be persecuted to a much greater degree than most people are and still have hope. The hope that through God's justice and his perfect love that they would experience good and joy equal and opposite to that evil and sorrow. Now I say most people have experienced but every righteous person experiences, it is not true. Uh It is a false belief that this is these sorts of experiences, experiences of that degree of evil sorrow, pain, suffering are reserved for some special people and not others. Or that there is any other way to obtain the degree of happiness and joy that God gives to the co heirs with Jesus. The only way to reach that point is to go through trials of equally awful uh sorrow, pain, suffering. Now, it might look different in the details and it might not be as externally visible as say, being sawn in half or crucified upside down or having everyone you know, and love turn against you uh or die or whatever, but it will be equal in magnitude in significance. The third step of this is that when you are finally prepared to receive and enjoy and appreciate the equal and opposite degree of joy and good, uh commensurate with the suffering, you've gone through the evil, you're aware of the sorrow you've felt, you will obtain it. And uh you can actually comprehend and appreciate this. You can actually receive the gift that God wants you to have. But there is no other way to obtain it because if you were to obtain it, even if somehow you could, you could dwell in that state which you couldn't, you wouldn't appreciate it. And that's the problem. Uh I wasn't intending to go down this side note, but I will briefly say this when I say you wouldn't be able to maintain that state. What I mean is that just as so the Gospel, the purpose of the Gospel is to give you a way of becoming a person that doesn't sin anymore. It's not just to take away the penalty of your past sins. What good would that do in the long term? Because provided enough time in the right situations, you would sin again because you haven't changed. So that part of the gospel, that forgiveness part is uh absolutely essential, but it's only one side of the coin. And without the other side, it's a very limited worth. Because until you become the kind of person that won't sin again, you will not be able to dwell in the presence of God because no unclean thing can dwell in his presence. And as long as you're capable of doing that sort of thing, you can't be there for very long. So if you want proof of this again, go back to Adam and Eve in the garden. How long did it take for Satan to totally demolish that paradise? And how hard was it for him to do? It was very simple and it didn't take very long at all. I don't know how long they were in the garden . It's irrelevant. The point is that all he had to do is come along and give a very simplistic temptation to Eve and bam, the whole thing collapsed because Eve was not yet at the state. She needed to be in order to never sin again. Given that level of awareness. Anyway, that's a side note, I'll just throw it out there. Ok. How about this thinking of the pendulum again? How would you go about getting something better than what you have? And I'm not necessarily talking about the gospel of, of uh of, of blessings here. Um I don't necessarily mean material wealth or anything else. I just mean improvement in general. How would you go about getting something better than what you have? Well, the only way is for the Lord to show you uh the evil and sorrow that lies within what you consider to be good. So this idea of opposition in all things that comes from second E 52 in the book of Mormon. And if you read that chapter very carefully, you'll see something that maybe you've never seen before, which is not just the idea that for every good thing, there's a bad thing or something simplistic like that. Although that's true at that level, if you dig into it more, you can see that there is evil and good in all things. So in any given thing, there is evil and good. And part of the purpose of the Gospel is to learn to distinguish between good and evil just as God discerned between evil and good in a way uh by working the creation. And so he looked at um a chaos at uh undifferentiated um potential, I guess you could say and he acted upon it to show what the distinction between each uh each, each element was. And then these things were grouped together according to their response to the invitation, the response to light, this is the same as what happens within uh anything in your life and in you. So if you want to go to a better place, the way to do that is to ask the Lord to show you more about it, about your reality, your present perception of it, of reality, your current approximation of how things really are. And he will show you that many of the things that you consider to be good have at least elements but maybe are wholly evil. In fact, at a greater level of awareness, at least. And uh he will show you that many of the things that or at least some of the things that you think are evil or not all evil. And there might be little pieces of good in them or maybe at a different level of awareness, there's good there. So as for example, when the Lord commanded Nephi to kill Laban, to that point, Nephi had thought at his lower level of awareness that killing someone was always bad. But it turns out that with higher awareness, there are certain situations where it is exactly what God would have you do and there are reasons for this and those reasons are good. So um this process, this looking into quote, what you have and uh seeing that things aren't exactly as you thought they were is exactly what Jesus did uh in his mortal life. He was shown he, he sort of arrived on the scene in a certain situation and step by step line upon line, the father showed him the limitations of what he was taught was good. I mean, taught by the environment situation. His, his uh parents, Joseph and Mary, uh his culture, et cetera. And eventually he through successive revelations, he was shown the impermanence of and limitations of everything he valued in life until all that was left was the father and the goodness of the Father. So God is good and good is God. I really like this quote from Psalm 19. It says therefore, I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right. And I hate every false way. I absolutely love this because it is, it is this idea of what is good, is what is God, whatever God commands is right? That is what it means to be good. And right, ultimately, if we truly believe that God's awareness succeeds our own, then we ought to submit to anything he thinks, right? Anything he says it is by definition higher than whatever we believe and think and feel. And the way to come up to that level of awareness is to first submit to it, obedience, right? And also to seek it, those are the two keys. Uh We should judge based on God's character, even if we admit that our understanding of His character is limited . It is still the compass that guides us towards what is right. And we will always be more correct than whatever our culture or our feelings or our parents or whatever teaches us is right. This is the difference between seeking to feel good and seeking to be good. So when we seek to feel good, we're looking to justify our carnal understanding and reconcile things to sort of our, our fallen belief systems But when we seek to be good, we seek to be more like God. And that presupposes one that we will try to understand more of his character than we currently have. And two that we will submit everything in our life to our idea of what that character is and how he is like, rather than forming our life after some vain pattern, that just is what happens to be in our mind at the moment. So back to the picture, I've talked before about this idea of compound interest and sorting, sort of letting it ride in terms of God's justice. I made a video on this. Um I've also taught about how we get what we want out of life. And as it relates to this picture, what this means is you submit to God and maybe even actively seek from God, greater awareness of evil and sorrow. And you ask him to reveal to you reality to a greater degree than you presently understand and comprehend. This will always include a great deal of pain and suffering for you. And um I asked God once I asked him after he had taught me some really major things that uh were significant in my life. I said, uh you know, I've had this relationship with you for a long time. I've, I've prayed, I've studied, I've done all these things to try to uh expand the channel, so to speak. Why did you wait so long to teach me this, it's so major. And he said, and it totally shocked me because this was a very positive thing. He said, uh, I couldn't teach you this earlier because you couldn't deal with the loneliness that it would bring. And it really struck me because he was right. He was absolutely right. Of course. Right. But, uh, I had never supposed that I had never supposed that what the Lord teaches us is limited uh among other things to what we can endure in terms of the negativity of the experience. So we talk a lot about faith. I mean, even the most basic Christian understanding includes this idea of faith, right? And belief. But where the rubber meets the road is why we need. This is because there are some really nasty things that are part of reality, it's heavy. And if you don't believe in God and you don't have faith in him and you don't understand and just rock solid belief in his love and his justice and his goodness, then these things will overcome you when he reveals them to you or when life reveals them to you. And um if you have deep faith and belief, you can actually go to him and say, look, I'm ready for the next step. Lay it on me. Show me what I believe. That's false. Show me what I believe that's limited. I'm I'm ready to move on to the next level. So what happens here? Is, the pendulum gets displaced further into evil and sorrow . And what does that mean? It means that eventually it'll swing back to the other side. And in fact, it is the only way it can swing back to the other side. That is what we're here for in life. And so, so many people are motivated by getting it to swing to the right. And they're like, well, if I can just get over this next little hill, I'll finally make it. If I could just work a little more, I can finally retire. If I could just find the right significant other, I'll finally be happy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they're looking for an escape. They're looking for a way to cash out their chips. But if you're smart, if you're wise, you will seek the Lord and say, lay it on me because this life is the time to repent. This life is the time to increase my trust in you. And I'm ready to go to work. I want to do what I was born to do. And I don't need to uh hang on to this, this swing to the right because my faith and trust in you is great enough to just sub subject myself to whatever it is you in your wisdom, want to teach me or whatever I need to get closer to you because that's what I want. Uh I, I don't want to feel good. I want to be good. And I understand that in being good, I will feel good, but it's also possible to fake the feeling good. And then you get hit by things that you are not ready for. And this is uh 11 element of what Hebrews 58 means when it's talking about the Lord. And it says though he were a son yet learned, he obedience by the things which he suffered. And there's a lot to this and I kind of already talked about this. So for the sake of time, I think I'll move on. Um So there's this concept in, in the scriptures, this phrase, rest of the Lord. So enter into the rest of the Lord. What does that mean? Well, in terms of this picture, we can use this picture to understand this. Um There are a lot of ideas here too. I I'm gonna try to keep it simple. Um It, it's the swing to the other side. OK? Now with a real pendulum, it'll swing to the right and then swing to the left again. But let's not take the analogy too far. In this case, it swings and stops. So um what are the pros and cons of this? Well, uh when you enter into the rest of the Lord, you obtain the experiences that are commensurate with the evil and sorrow that you've come to be aware of and overcome. Um So, so just obtaining the awareness isn't enough, you actually have to learn the principles that God has to teach you and be obedient to those and, and uh make it a part of your character so that you can overcome that degree of a fire. Basically. Um So once you've done that, what you've, what you've done is you've acquired sufficient trust in the Lord that you've qualified for um a degree of glory or an eternal state in which your awareness of greater evil and sorrow is kept. And that is what the rest of the Lord is. Um The benefit of this is I should have put this limit thing on the other side too. I didn't, sorry. That's a, that's a limit in the picture. Um The benefit of this is that the evil and sorrow that you are aware of is capped to that, which you've already integrated into your idea of how things work and your character and you've overcome those things. So essentially, uh what is left is only the good and the joy. OK. So what is this like again? Going back to the, the simplified version of things where you're just worried about your own sins. When you obtain forgiveness from God, the penalty of all those past sins goes away, it's not there anymore, but you retain all the good that you have and are, it's like that. But in this sense, uh your awareness of all the evil and sorrow goes , uh it doesn't go away, but you've overcome it because it's integrated and you're able to feel this great, good and joy in spite of all of that. And also because of all of that, but the downside of this, that's the pro the con is you also are kept in how much good and how much joy you can have. If you cap the evil and sorrow, you also cap the good and the joy, there's opposition in all things and these things must grow equally. Ok. So we're going to continue this thought, but we're gonna change the picture. So in the garden, there were two trees, one was the tree of knowledge, which is on the left and one is the tree of eternal life, which is on the right. And the fall of Adam took Adam and Eve from a state of eternal um existence to a state of death. And it did this because it expanded their awareness beyond what they had reconciled themselves to so to overcome the fall in them. And in us, what we have to do is reconcile ourselves to God by sorting through that increased degree of awareness and applying our uh growing understanding of the character of God to it. And as we obtained that degree of God's character, we reconcile ourselves to the tree of life and we obtain eternal life, which is going back to this slide, the ability to live forever in the state of good and joy, commensurate with our completed suffering. Our, our integrated understanding of evil and sorrow. OK? I hope you're with me still. So this is limited again to the current level of awareness. It's not a progressive thing . There's a cap but there is a way to make it progressive. And that is we voluntarily cycle back to the tree of knowledge. And we say, OK, I've reconciled myself to God at my current level of awareness, understanding knowledge, et cetera. And now I'm going to expand my awareness and this is what it means to swing the pendulum further left. You can keep doing this as long as you're alive. And if you're wise, you will do it again. This is our choice and this is what we set in life. Ok? So let me give you a few truth bombs, things that maybe you've never thought about or heard before. If you want to have more joy here and hereafter, you have to expect things to get worse and worse. You shouldn't just anticipate this. You should actually desire it again. You don't have to go looking for this. It will find you and all you have to do is be faithful to what God has already given you. And the next things will come, the greater dispensation of evil and sorrow will come. It will keep coming in life until you quit. You can cast your chips out at any time after you're reconciled to God. Once you overcome your own sin, in terms of reconciling yourself to God. After that, it's just a question of how far you want that pendulum to swing to the left. He will keep giving you more while you request more. Uh If you want a nice example of this, think of the difference between the disciples who said, hey, when we're 70 we want to come to you in your kingdom fixed and those like John, the revelator and the three knee fights who said, I want to keep going. I want to live here until you come again. Progressing. OK. So uh the greater your affliction, it's not just a bad thing. It's the very key to greater joy and happiness. It's also a sign of God's love and trust for you because whom God loves. He chastens and that's exactly what it means. He swings the pendulum further left because He loves you and because He trusts you and because He knows knowing all things that you have the capacity to bring about greater good. Because remember, this isn't just about you and the paradise that you will receive eventually here or hereafter. The more important thing is it's about everyone else who needs your increased capability of an awareness of good so that uh you can help them to be better than they are. I just want to briefly talk about uh how this, how this relates to the idea of ascent and descent. And I will put a link to a blog post I wrote a while ago on that in the, in the description, I hope you look at it. Um If you think of characters in the scriptures that had the greatest impact on the world, what environment did they were they were they brought to? So let's start with Abraham. And again, I'm just going to touch on this. You can look at the blog post if you want, Abraham was born into a family that was rebellious against God. His father was a priest of uh a pagan religion. And in spite of that situation, Abraham, uh the depth of that situation, the depth of evil and sorrow Abraham rose out of it. And so because he was brought into a situation that was far left on the pendulum swing, he was able to swing to the right. And if you look at the implications of this, uh he was, he was able to bring about massive blessings for himself, for his Children and for his children's Children to many generations . And it was for the sake of the goodness of Abraham that God blessed many of his descendants. The same sort of thing happened with Moses. And here's an interesting one that you may have never heard of before. The same thing happened with Noah. I don't know why, but no one seems to understand or have realized that uh Methuselah and lame, Noah's grandfather and father were wicked men. They weren't righteous. And when Enoch went away um you'll find support for that by the way. And Moses seven among other places, but when Enoch went away, Methuselah was left behind, it wasn't because he was righteous . It was because he was uh wicked. And so it says that he, he took the glo, he took glory to himself. And basically, when, when Enoch and Zion left the earth, uh Methuselah said, well, now I'm the king of everything because I have the birthright and this is great. It's all mine. And um Lamech wasn't much better. If you look at what he said when Noah was born, it's very clear that he had a very negative perception of God, God's behavior towards mankind. And he thought it was very unjust and unfair. And Noah was brought up in this environment without direct access to righteous men. And yet look what he did. He spent maybe up to 200 years building an ark and preaching the gospel to everyone and teaching his Children et cetera. And he was able to carve out a slice of good in a very wicked place. The savior, of course, is a wonderful example of this pattern. And I'm sure you're very familiar with that . So you can either do it the right way or try some other way and remember, and I've taught about this, that the some other way thing is really dangerous. That's the lie from Satan that there's some other way than what God has appointed. And you can think of this as trying to cheat the system and, and once your eyes open to this, you'll see it everywhere where people try to get something without paying the price of the something. And one way this can happen is that they try to go right before first going left. And how does this work? Well, people delude themselves and they try to, uh, pretend that in some way they can obtain the blessings reserved for those who have gone through much more than they have without actually becoming those kinds of people. And uh although this illusion may persist for some time, there's always uh one outcome to this situation. And that is that eventually reality will slap them right in the face and their whole world will snap back, at least their perception of the world will snap back to reality in a very violent way. And this is when people fall apart and they're exposed in an instant to what the real situation is and it creates massive amounts of pain. And the reason for this is two fold. First, you're instantly exposed to all of the things that you were willfully ignoring and denying and hiding from second, in addition to all of that, which is bad enough on its own. You also are filled with fear and trembling because um any ounce of security that you had is now ripped from you. And uh you're, you're filled with this fear. That's that that comes from the unknown, right? So everything that you thought you knew is now a mystery and this lack of security makes it even worse. Now, I don't have the words to convey what this is really like, but uh it exists at all degrees and this at some degree is exactly what hell is. If you want an example of how this works. A very simple example, think about our current economic system and what it does in the name of providing these benefits, these, this pendulum swing to the right to folks who have not qualified for them. It actually insulates people from the consequences of many of their choices. And in brief, what happens is it gives them a lot of rope to hang themselves with and um inevitably the outcome of this is not good and it ends up in much greater suffering for those people than they would have if that right, right word pendulum swing didn't happen. The, the worst part of all of this is that when you get violently adjusted to the left, you don't get to keep the good and joy that you felt before. It turns out that when it's based on an illusion, that's part of what's ripped from you and why it hurts so much. So, uh I've given examples of this in my books and things, but imagine you're married to someone for 30 years and you find out for 20 years they've been having affairs all of the joy and goodness that you saw in that relationship or at least the vast majority of it was an illusion. And it turns out that when you uh kind of mortgage this, when you mortgage goodness, when you try to obtain good and joy that you haven't paid the price for that bill will always come due and it will always cost more than it would have to just do it the real way, the right way. And those are one and the same, the right way and the real way anyway, I don't wanna spend too much time on that, but it's something to think about. OK. So what about limits of progression? So if you have a pendulum, it's, there's kind of a, a limit to how high you can pull this thing back, right? And that's what I'm showing here. Um I don't want you to get hung up so much on that limit and what it might be for an individual. But what I do want to focus on is how uh you're obtaining charity can actually increase the good and joy that you will experience. And in fact, it's absolutely required to have uh a fullness of joy. OK? So the best way to teach this I think is to think about God. So the Lord has said that his work and his glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal, eternal life of man. So it does not say that his work and his glory is to do what feels good for him or to do anything that relates to him. He says my work and my glory is 100% dictated by the outcome and experience of other people, namely man. Very interesting. This is 100% selfless, right? Which is interesting. So how does this apply to you? There's only so far you can go when you're self focused. But if you can turn that into other focused and you can obtain charity, then what you do is you multiply how far your pendulum can go? And the way you do this is through learning to experience and value the sorrow and the joy of others just as the equal and opposite apply to you on an individual level. They apply to you on a collective level. And as you obtain the gift of charity and the characteristic of charity, you will grow in the depth of vicarious feeling that you can have and essentially you will experience not only your own joy and sorrows, but the joy and sorrows of all of those that you love. And I use love there in the gospel sense, not in the modern sense and your depth of both will extend through all of those you reach and all of those they reach and so on and so on. And this can be an infinite and eternal growth. This is tied to an idea of what the role of awareness is and the level of joy that you can feel. Um in DNC 88 we read about glory, levels of glory in quotes. And uh this is the gray is a fire and it is both the degree of joy and happiness and the equal and opposite degree of sorrow and awareness of evil. And what this passage says is that you, as you acquire a level of awareness, you are entitled to that degree of glory and they're one and the same, it turns out and to be quickened by a portion of glory is to be reconciled to a degree of law. And all of this is in DNC 88 you can study that if you'd like to know more about this. And I talk about it in more depth in the book, The Glory of God is Intelligence, but that's the way it works. This is the pendulum swing. Uh That slide was probably out of order, but we'll just keep rolling. So back to this idea of charity. Um So this is, this is illustrated in the story of Enoch, especially what we read about him in the book of Moses, he only received the fullness of joy after he was shown the salvation of other men. Now, when we read shown, we shouldn't think like he saw a movie about it or something like that. The charity he had developed was it was the ability to sincerely feel and appreciate the happiness of others on equal footing to his own happiness. And so when he quote unquote, saw the salvation of other men. This was a supernatural experience for all intents and purposes where he actually felt the joy that they felt. And this is that diagram of, of propagation of joy. The more you're an instrument in the hands of God and helping other people to, to uh obtain eternal life, the more joy you will feel the issue though. And something you have to realize is that it's a pendulum and it swings the other way. It doesn't filter out the negative. If you're going to experience the joy of others, you will also have to feel their sorrows and not just the sorrows of the joyful ones, right? You'll experience sorrow in seeing people's potential and seeing it unfulfilled. And this too can progress infinitely and they grow equally. There are caps on both the joy you can feel and the sorrow that you can feel. And some of these caps are dictated by what you have learned or not learned. And some of them are dictated by limits in your body. So um let's start first by the knowledge part with the knowledge part. Uh So here's the quote that I was talking about and um enoch had to acquire charity and he also had to perceive the sorrow. So let's talk about the knowledge part . It says that the Lord showed Enoch all things and this is one of those um many, many phrases in the scriptures that are so underwhelming compared to what they actually mean, right? But seeing all things is a really big deal, probably should have its own verse number, whatever. Um But this was an immense experience, ok? And part of this part of seeing all things was seeing the bad things. It was seeing people choosing to do the wrong thing, it was seeing the innocent suffer. It was seeing um people choosing to do the wrong things in the face of massive blessings of prosperity and knowledge and the sacrifice of righteous people in order to bring that to pass. And so it's, it's seeing people turn away from immense potential. So as Enoch is going through this, this process of the Lord sharing him all things, he sees that God weeps and this kind of surprises Enoch, which is in itself surprising because it says something about the limit of understanding Enoch had in the character of God, even at this point in his life, which he's already walking with God. He's, he's having this, this uh marvelous miraculous experience with Him. He's very intimate with God at this point and still this surprises Him. But he says , how is it that you're crying because you know you're God. And um this is this is where God explains to him, his sorrow in Enoch has to experience this. He has to perceive the sorrow of mankind and the sorrow of God in seeing the suffering of mankind. And this is a really big deal and it's something that even enoch wasn't there yet when he had this experience. And it's through this experience that God helps him get there. Ok? But this is charity. This is what it means, the ability to feel others joys and sorrows equivalent to if you were experiencing them. All right. So now we talked, we talked about limits of knowledge and now we'll talk about limits of your physical composition. So there's a limit to the joy that you can feel uh in this life. So the reason for this, in this world, your joy is not full, but in me, your joy is full. The reason for this is that joy can be so intense that it would kill you. And maybe you've never thought about that before. So I'm at 27 we read about how this guy Ammon comes back from this long and hard mission. It was a real sacrifice. It was one of the suicide missions and yet it succeeded and it succeeded. Uh It, it, it succeeded immensely, it was immensely successful. He comes back from this mission and in reuniting with his friends who had done the same sort of thing, he's overcome in his joy and he, he's actually so happy that he, he passes out, he falls to the earth and it says this is joy which none receives. Save it. Be the truly penitent and humble seeker of happiness. So, um it turns out that you can experience more joy than that, but it would kill you. Um There's an interesting side note here that I won't dive into too deeply. But uh Alma and the brothers of Ammon who were the other folks who were there in that meeting. Um They were also happy but their joy did not exceed their strength. And the question you should ask yourself is why there are only two possibilities. One, they had greater strength than Ammon did or two. They hadn't sacrificed as much so their pendulum hadn't swung as far left. And uh that's an interesting thing for you to ponder. There is also a degree of sorrow that will kill a mortal and I have a feeling people will believe that more readily than the idea that there's a degree of joy that will kill you. Um So as evidence for this, I would invite you to think about the atonement of Jesus Christ and how that physical experience of fearing the pains and the sorrows of all mankind would, would kill anyone who wasn't the literal Son of God in the flesh. So it was because of the special capacity that Jesus had, that he was able to endure that. So what does this mean for you? Well, this is where we get into this idea of translation. And um the only way that you can receive a fullness of joy, which is what Enoch received is to either die or to be translated. Uh And Enoch was translated and there are people who have experienced this and uh they're still around. This is the end of requesting that the pendulum swing further left. Now, I'm not saying that the the end of all righteous living is translation. Um There are very righteous people like Steven and honestly like the Messiah himself, whose existence whose whose mortal life ended in death, not translation. But in general for those who are not reserved for that special mission, this is sort of the general goal I would say of all righteous people. It should be the default where that pendulum just keeps swinging left. What I'm saying here, I I said before that it keeps swinging left until you quit, until you say I'm ready to cash out my chips, swing me right ? So you say, hey, OK, I'll do this. But when I turn 70 I wanna die and come to your kingdom or when you say Lord just kill me. Um So when you don't say all of that and you say, Lord, I trust you and I actually believe that you are all loving and perfectly just swing that thing left. When you say that and you keep saying that and you don't give up, you refuse to quit and you just keep growing in your charity for all mankind and your love for God. Then this is the end because it has to happen or else you can't keep swinging left. So what prevents it from going there? Besides the obvious, which is obedience and effort? Well, the question is, do you still have something to learn from physical pain? Because physical pain ends a translation. The only pain you feel after that is sorrow for mankind, their poor decisions. So while you have something to learn from physical pain, you will not be translated while you have yet to develop charity to the point where translation is necessary, you won't be translated. So uh let me back up. I'm sorry, I didn't do this. Earlier. Translation means this, this change in the blink of an eye so that your, your body is no longer subject to death, that there's a change that's affected so that your body changes and and although you will be changed to be resurrected, you won't taste of death. Um I probably should have had to slide on that. I apologize. But back to what I was saying. So um a lot of times I see people succumb to the temptation. So Jesus said that a prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, meaning that the closer you are to someone, the less likely they are to recognize and value the light that God has given you. And the greater the light you have, the more uh extreme this becomes, for example, Jesus was not recognized as the Messiah by his brothers and questionably by his parents. Uh, at some point, at least now this changed over time and the whole, you know, him dying and being resurrected, that was a pretty clear signal to them that they had it wrong and there's evidence that they changed their minds. But, um, anyway, uh, we shouldn't use that concept, that principle as a license to ignore those right around us in our, in our, um, attempts to become, to grow closer to God, to become more righteous. And I've known so many people who have gone beyond the mark trying to do extreme things to uh for lack of a better phrase, be righteous . And meanwhile, they ignore their spouse, they ignore their kids, they ignore their, their family and the people at work, they've never ever brought up any gospel principle, whether explicit or implicit, any attempt to help increase the amount of light and truth possessed by the people around them at work. And yet they go to these conferences and they do all these extreme things. They fly to the third world and do this charity work for these people. I've never met. I don't understand it, but I do know that the coal face is right in front of you and until you master that you have very little business going beyond that. So uh what do I mean by that? When you go to mine coal, you don't somehow jump over the rocks right in front of you, you have to go through them and the coal face is where you work. You don't work some part deep in the mountain that you haven't dug to yet. It's, the work is right in front of you anyway. This is really easy with charity. And, and this is one. the Lord taught a parable about this in the New Testament uh that most people think means something else. But, but one very important meaning of it is do what you can for those around you before. You worry about those that you've never met before anyway. Um Translation won't happen while you still have to understand God's commandments before obeying them. You have to get to the point where you honestly trust him because the things that He could reveal to you that would kill you, whether they be in terms of joy or sorrow, um You're not going to get that before he teaches you. You're not gonna understand it before you experience it. It'll be through experiencing it that you're taught how to comprehend it. It won't happen while you struggle with loneliness. I made a little reference to one experience that I had. Uh But imagine so you can feel lonely while still very much in the flesh. And I'm not talking about artificial loneliness, genuine justified loneliness. If you strike out to follow God in all things at all times, you will feel very lonely. There's no question because as you ascend in light and truth, the atmosphere gets thinner in terms of how many people you can see eye to eye with. And that's not because you want it to be that way. It's just reality. And uh you start to become the kind of person that's not here to rub shoulders with people. You start to become the kind of person who's here to be consumed for the benefit of those who won't appreciate you. And um the kind of person whose only support is meant to be the Lord. And the last part of the book, The Glory of God's Intelligence is all about that. So if you're interested, you can read that. But that being said, there is no greater loneliness than being the kind of person who not only goes through all of that. But then on top of that also outlives everybody they know and have a personal connection to. Uh I had an interesting conversation with the guy on a plane the other day about childhood friends. And both of us, me and this guy have both maintained contact with some friends we had as little kids and he mentioned and I laughed and agreed that uh it's funny how in those sorts of situations, it's very unlikely that the kinds of people you've become that you would be friends with that person if you met them as an adult and how they turned out and how you turned out and yet you can still be friends and it's, it's cool to hang out together, uh, given the situation that you were good friends as kids and now you've sort of grown in different ways and now you can still be friends. But in this weird way, well, this is what it's like with the people you have personal connection to as you ascend and light in truth, you can maintain those connections you had. I mean, a lot of your friends will turn away from you and everything else. But um even in the extreme case where you know, your parents or your siblings or your spouse or your kids don't want anything to do with you. You still have them, they exist and uh no matter how lonely you might feel as a result of that relationship being what it is, it's still better than not having it at all. Right. So I may have zero connection with some sibling, for example, but I still have that sibling. And once you, once you get to the point where all the new people you're meeting, you're meeting only in terms of your calling in your ministry. Can you imagine what that would be like? Do you think John the revelator has friends? Right. So how does that work? Because absolutely everyone he ministers to uh is probably very far below him in any kind of connection as far as awareness goes or do you see what I'm getting at here? It's not like he has chums that he goes and plays pool with. Right. So think about what that would mean and you truly would just be connected to the Lord and of course, the, the church of the firstborn , your peers in this situation. But, um, anyway, that's something to think about and this concludes this presentation. And if it wasn't very polished, I apologize. There are a lot of thoughts here and I've been cooking this for a while and I decided to just put it out. So I hope that it gives you something to think about till next time.