It would be silly to ask someone if they wanted to go to heaven. The almost universal answer would be yes. This excitement would die down if, attached to that question, were an accurate description of the path. It has been said that everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. Getting to heaven takes far more than dying, of course, but the point remains: we tend to make an artificial separation between the outcomes we seek and the path to obtain them.
Because of the leveled nature of truth, everyone—no matter who they are—faces limitations in their present awareness. These limitations manifest as problems. Pain and uncertainty are symptoms of the limitations of a given level of truth, and though the specifics change at each level of truth, there are always limitations at each level.
Every person seems to desire to have these limitations alleviated. No one likes to experience the gut-wrenching emotional crash of seeing one of your core beliefs inarguably disproven. No one likes to see something or someone they’ve relied upon for comfort fail them. No one likes to experience the fear that comes when you have no idea what comes next, or the realization that everything you thought was solid suddenly isn’t.
And yet, there is a palpable disconnect between cause and effect. Like treating symptoms instead of the disease, we endure unfruitful situations for far longer than is needful.
Seek to change causes, not consequences. Seeking to understand the cause of the undesirable outcomes is the key to changing the outcomes.
There are two types of situations: first, situations in which you know the cause of the undesirable outcomes, but you choose to ignore it, and second, situations in which you are unaware of the cause of the undesirable outcomes. Perhaps surprisingly, both situations are a result of a lack of faith.
In the first situation, you know what is ailing you, but you ignore the changes you know you need to make. This is loving a lie, and is discussed in Part I.
In the second situation, it is less obvious that you are struggling from a lack of faith. The failure here is that you haven’t translated undesirable outcomes into a search for the cause—a search that is one and the same as the search for an expanded awareness. Whenever you experience an undesirable situation, your first question ought to be how you can acquire further light and truth to reveal the cause and cure of these symptoms. It doesn’t matter what the situation is—your dog dying, a prognosis of cancer, losing your job, losing your temper, or not having enough money for bills. 178
Anytime you experience an unfavorable situation, interpret it as an invitation from God for further light and truth.
Making this connection is critical, because it opens your mind to the possibility that the answer to your search may be found around you. You will start asking questions, which triggers the expansion of your awareness. You will also pay more attention to those around you (literally or figuratively through, for instance, the internet). You will realize that you are not that special. If you have a problem, chances are that there are and have been many others with the same problem. Odds are that at least one of those other people had or has more light than you on the issue, and thanks to our technological advantages, you can probably find their solution in far less time than it took them to figure it out. Through leveraging the light of others in this way, you can obtain solutions to far more problems in far less time than imaginable for almost all humans ever born on this planet!
So why haven’t you? Because light and truth doesn’t come shrinkwrapped, clearly labeled, and with a bow. Yes, sometimes there are attractive sources of further light and truth. But most times, it seems more like needing to drink from a car radiator when you are out of water than it does pulling a bottle of Fijian spring water out of an icebox. Truth is like a cashew nut—most people are allergic to the packaging, and only those who learn how to get around that can enjoy the prize.
In this case, it isn’t just the fact that the solution to your problems lies in accepting truth from other people—people who probably offend you. The bigger struggle is probably that it is very hard for you to recognize and believe that what they are saying is connected in any way to your problem. Recognition and belief are two different problems.
The problem of recognition is huge. It is so often the case that God sends the solution to the very problem someone is struggling with, and the recipient never even seems to notice, even if it is offered explicitly as the solution to their problem. We seem to have a strong disposition to disbelieve that our surroundings are connected to our problems, both in terms of noticing the causes and in noticing the solutions. For example, suppose you are struggling with money. Chances are that you know many people who are not. Have you spoken to any of them about what they would do in your situation? If not, how much effort have you expended in dealing with the consequences of your lack of money? How much effort have you expended complaining about your situation? You can substitute practically any problem for this one, and the fact remains that the vast majority of people do not make use of the resources they have to find solutions to the things that bother them. And this is, 100%, a problem of faith.
The problem of belief is huge. A willingness to believe must precede any test of a new principle. Another way of putting this is that you will never know the truth of anything you aren’t first willing to believe. You will never be limited in your progress from believing too much. Remember, the belief scale (dogmatic to open-minded) is independent from the discernment scale (undiscerning to discerning). You can never believe too much, but you can test too little.
Belief really comes down to this question: Are you hungry enough for a solution to your problem to consider anything and everything that has any hope of solving it? For most people, the devil they know (their problem) is preferable to the devil they don’t (a potential solution). A willingness to believe that there is something better available is called humility. The secret to acquiring massive amounts of truth is developing such a willingness to believe that you do not need to experience massive discomfort in order to hunger and thirst for better ways:
13 And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and he that findeth mercy and endureth to the end the same shall be saved.
14 And now, as I said unto you, that because ye were compelled to be humble ye were blessed, do ye not suppose that they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word?
15 Yea, he that truly humbleth himself, and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed—yea, much more blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their exceeding poverty.
16 Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, blessed is he that believeth in the word of God, and is baptized without stubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe. (Alma 32)
Humility is intricately connected to faith. Faith is a willingness to act on a putative truth. Humility empowers faith because it determines how many times you will try and how much you are willing to try. Some putative truths take only a little humility to be willing to test. If you were told that a $100 bill is in your left pocket, you’d probably check, even if you thought the chances were low. Some putative truths take a massive amount of humility to be willing to test. If you were told a $100 bill would will appear if you went into a public place and quacked like a duck as loud as you can, you probably would pass.
We all start out with massive humility and faith by virtue of being children. Why do children have so much of both? Because they are woefully ignorant of the world, and everything they do shows them this. They do not know what causes generate what effects, because they pay attention to surprises. They have to try to walk and fail perhaps a thousand times before they take their first step. And it is like that with everything. How are we different than children? We think we know everything—not because we are necessarily more successful in linking cause and effect—but because we have developed the ability to ignore our ignorance. We also have developed a strong unwillingness to keep trying when our initial tests fail.
It has been said that the successful don’t succeed more often than others, they try more often than others. They fail faster and more often than those who are less successful. The same holds true in seeking truth. If you recognize putative truths around you as potential solutions to your problems and believe enough to try them out, you will fail in your tests much more often than those who don’t. But you get to keep everything that proves true, and you will accumulate much more truth than those who don’t believe solutions to their problems exist, and don’t believe enough to try them out.
This process need not involve another person, but more often than not, it does. It typically requires someone else who has walked the way to help us see the path. It takes humility to believe that another person may hold the solution to your problem, and it takes faith to test the putative new truth. There will be many propositions that do not solve the problem, but you have to have belief to recognize a potential link to the problem and to test the solution.