Fallen mortal bodies are required to perceive additional light and truth. By nature, we will make mistakes in how we interpret what we perceive: as good or as evil. Our mortal bodies are a channel to our souls, and are a capacitor that either adds or subtracts light and truth from our spirits. When we die, this link is severed, and the growth stops. While we are absent a mortal body, we can still learn, but only within our current level of light and truth. While we can come to the point where we are reconciled to God at the level of light we have received, we cannot gain a greater state of awareness.
Thus, the task of mortality is to gain as much light and truth as we can while we can. We voluntarily subscribe to our eternal state through our attitude towards the acquisition and assimilation of truth in this life. This is why our mortal lives are called the “day of probation,” where how much truth we acquire and assimilate determines where and how we live after this life: “the day should come that they must be judged of their works, yea, even the works which were done by the temporal body in their days of probation.” (1 Nephi 15:32) This is why the Lord said of his own mortal life: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” (John 9:4)
This life is the time to reconcile to a level of “kingdom” trust in God:
31 Yea, I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer; for behold, now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.
32 For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.
33 And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.
34 Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world. (Alma 34)
The inability to become aware of higher levels of truth after death is the point of the parable of the ten virgins:
1 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:
4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
7 Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.
8 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.
9 But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.
10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.
11 Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
12 But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
13 Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. (Matthew 25)
These women knew they would need light when they were called—all of them brought lamps. They also all had oil. The “foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them” shouldn’t be misinterpreted to mean that they literally had no oil, as they were clearly burning their lamps when they went to sleep, and therefore said “our lamps are gone out” upon waking up, not “our lamps need to be lit for the first time.” It would be not foolish but ridiculous to carry an empty oil lamp, as possession of the lamp would indicate an intent to use it. So the foolish virgins brought no extra oil with them. We learn from the phrase “our lamps are gone out” that you burn oil as you wait. The wise virgins brought sufficient oil with them that they had extra for when the bridgegroom came. In this parable, the bridegroom’s arrival is death, when you can no longer add oil to your lamp.
The Lord once taught:
9 Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.
10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. (John 11)
The night is death. The light of this world is the Lord Jesus as experienced in your mortal life. Though God exists just as much in the afterlife as here, your awareness level can’t progress after you die.
Though you can’t progress to a higher level of awareness, you can fulfill what remains to be learned in your current level of awareness. The Lord says that “all kingdoms have a law given.” (D&C 88:36) What is a kingdom?
A kingdom is a discrete approximation of truth, a set level of awareness on the infinite continuum of truth.
If heaven is a state where a man’s knowledge places him beyond the power of anything pertaining to this sphere, hell is the condition of those with anything less. Hell is to be subjected to the minimal threshold of heavenly knowledge without having acquired and assimilated it into your character, something that can only be done in this life.
The acquisition of sufficient light and truth to overcome the fire of hell is inseparable from trust in God. This is an attribute that can only be increased in mortality, where God’s glory and power is not perceived by the flesh. This is how his glory becomes our glory, and it was demonstrated when Peter tried to walk on water. Christ called him to walk on the turbulent sea—something that was an apt example of the vast unknown knowledge pertaining to this earth. As Peter trusted God, he was able to overcome the unknown. As his trust waned, so did his capacity to overcome. The Lord taught that our adherence to him will determine our capacity to prevail against the world:
7 And by hearkening to observe all the words which I, the Lord their God, shall speak unto them, they shall never cease to prevail until the kingdoms of the world are subdued under my feet, and the earth is given unto the saints, to possess it forever and ever. 8 But inasmuch as they keep not my commandments, and hearken not to observe all my words, the kingdoms of the world shall prevail against them.
9 For they were set to be a light unto the world, and to be the saviors of men. (D&C 103)
We absolutely should trust the Lord in all things. He took upon him all our afflictions and sins. He knows precisely what faces us, because he went through it. How exactly did the Lord take upon him our afflictions and sins? Revelation provides the capability of vicariously experiencing the same things that someone would experience who is physically in the experience. As we increase in light and truth, we are exposed to a greater awareness of these things, and it is no different than if we had really experienced them. Throughout his life he was exposed to more and more of these things as he increased in experience with the Father. In the garden of Gethsemane he was made aware of everything left pertaining to this mortal sphere—what God himself only knows. Being exposed to it in a mortal body would kill anyone who did not hold his life in his own hand. He chose to endure it, having been prepared for this point through a sinless life, robbing death of any avenue of overcoming his flesh. Awareness, once obtained, does not go away except through disobedience to the Father. Jesus remained perfectly reconciled to the Father until the end. This means that his suffering continued after his prayer in Gethsemane. Until the moment of his death, he carried this burden. The scourging, crowning, carrying of the cross, nailing to the cross, and hanging on the cross were made unbearably more excruciating by the weight of his awareness and the perceived absence of the Father. This final test was what his entire life had led up to—the environment where he could show that nothing that earth possessed was capable of making him lose trust in the Father, and that his trust was not a result of special attention from the Father (that is, cheating). By what he did, he proved that it was possible for a man to endure an awareness of everything the world had to offer, and still trust the Father perfectly. The Lord maintained perfectly godly character in spite of a perfect awareness of all chaos pertaining to our present scope.
What does it mean to stand in the presence of God? It means to be capable of being exposed to the same degree of awareness of chaos that God is, and still maintain the character he has. Through how we live here, we can either become as he is, and withstand the flames of awareness, or we can be overcome by them and remain in perpetual suffering. Those things that can endure a greater awareness, that have a “law” or means of understanding advanced enough to overcome the greater awareness, will remain. Maintain the character of God, as far as you understand it, in any situation. A full life is full of suffering, because growth requires finding the cracks in our model of the world, and it always hurts to find out that your expectations of reality are wrong. When you overcome something, you either gain the context to realize why it is necessary, even if it hurts, or you learn that its negative aspects were based on illusion.