No Coincidences

Category: Uncategorized

  • Dreams and Temptations

    Dreams and Temptations

    I’ve long been fascinated by dreams. For the last six years I’ve written down every night-time dream I can remember in the morning. They are in multiple notes in my phone and at this point make up tens of thousands of words. Dreams have even turned into some blog posts.

    Through writing down so many of my dreams, I’ve been able to clearly see the themes that repeat themselves.

    What feels like many years ago now, even though it’s only been seven, I cold turkey’d a lot of bad and immoral habits. These things that used to weigh me down mercilessly have stayed consistently in my dreams ever since.

    I was pondering on why this was recently. Why is it that nearly, I don’t know, 15-20% of my dreams, if I had to guess, have the theme of drinking alcohol and regretting it in them?

    As with all things, I believe there are no coincidences with God. God wouldn’t give us this powerful memory/experience in our minds at night if there wasn’t some purpose. Of course, I believe that God can speak to us in dreams. I believe He has before to me. For me personally, through this introspective exercise, I came to appreciate the powerful effect dreams have had on me.

    In the book The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav, I read,

    “What is temptation?… It is the energy through which your soul is given the gracious opportunity to have a dry run at a life lesson, at a situation that, if you can see clearly, can be removed and healed within the confines of your private world of energy and not spill into a larger energy field of other souls. Temptation is a dress rehearsal for a karmic experience of negativity.

    “The entire dynamic of temptation is the compassionate way of allowing you to see your potential pitfalls, and cleanse yourself before you can affect the lives of others… As you respond to the decoy, you cleanse yourself by becoming aware and not having to actually live through the experience.”

    This perfectly describes how I’ve come to feel about my dreams. They are dry runs.

    The most common temptation theme in my dreams is drinking alcohol. There are many dreams I have of either trying to avoid drinking alcohol or actually giving in. I haven’t experienced a hangover in a long time. After one of these dreams, while I don’t feel the ill physical effects I would if I actually drank, I do feel the guilt of having given into temptation.

    When I wake up from one of these dreams, I can feel how I’d feel if I gave in. I wake up feeling how disappointed in myself I am. I wake up thinking, “Seven years, seven years of not touching it and now I’m basically starting over.” I wake up feeling that real feeling of guilt. There is power in this, I’ve learned. I haven’t come head on with this temptation in years. Meaning, I haven’t seriously considered drinking alcohol in a long, long time. I haven’t been in a bar, no one has offered me a drink. But, because of these dreams, I can know how I would feel if I did give in, and I can know I don’t want to feel that. I can remember, because of these dreams, that a night of drinking would not be worth the disappointment in the morning. And that’s to say nothing of the hangover!

    This is not the only temptation I face in dreams. There are others. Because of these dreams, I can know with surety there are things I don’t want to do. If there is any doubt or weak part of my soul that considers doing something terrible, I have the dreams to remind me how terrible some of those actions are and the guilt I don’t want to feel.

    Pretty amazing, really. What a protection these dreams have become to me. As Gary Zukav said in his book, “How exquisite is temptation.”

    I wonder if others have had this sort of experience with their dreams? I wonder if this is unique to me. Maybe it’s some divine protection God has given me. If that’s the case, I’m so grateful for this protection.

  • Bees Perceive Time….or do they

    Bees Perceive Time….or do they

    Can bees perceive time?

    Scientists put sugar water outside of a beehive every day at 4:00pm and found that the bees soon started coming out of their hives for the sugar water at 4:00pm every day. The bees did this even when there was no longer any sugar water left out for them.

    Therefore, bees perceive time.

    But some said, “Hold on, what if the bees are measuring the angle of the sun.”

    So they did the experiment in the dark. The bees still came out at 4:00pm.

    Therefore, bees perceive time.

    But…some said, “Hold on, what if the bees are measuring the heat from the sun?”

    These back and forths happened repeatedly until the experiment was eventually performed underground in a salt mine.

    But…some said, “What if the bees are measuring the rotation of the Earth?”

    How do we prove that bees perceive time?

    Then, a scientist did the exact same experiment, not in a salt mine, but in Paris. Then that scientist flew the bees to New York City. The bees left the hive at 10:00am because they had jetlag.

    This proved that bees perceive time… I think? (Maybe bees have an internal clock completely separate from our “time.” Do bees, in this case, perceive time “more” than I do because I don’t think I could be that precise…. But I digress). I’m not smart enough to think of another, “What if bees were doing this,” scenario, but what this did make me think about is how faulty our human logic is. Almost anything can be proven or disproven. What do we really know…about anything?

    With all our science, logic, and knowledge, we still basically know nothing. Our very own bodies are a mystery. We still don’t know how the pyramids were built. There are theories, of course, but we’ll never really know until it is revealed to us. I’m amazed at the pompous ignorance of our generation. Our generation believes that because we can Google something we’re the smartest generation to ever live on the earth, while most of us can’t begin to explain how “Google” even works.

    This story just made me think of the frailty of our own brilliance.  It’s hard to prove anything and we’re really not as smart as we all think. That’s all. 

  • A Bride Goes West

    A Bride Goes West

    What’s the worst thing you could do to hurt yourself? I think one of the answers might be to feel sorry for yourself.

    I read this in an autobiography from a woman who left a comfortable East Coast lifestyle to become a frontierswoman. This meant no running water, no clean floors, no society or people within any reasonable distance, and many other missing conveniences we take for granted.

    She stated in her book that the worst thing she could possibly do through all her many (and there were many) difficulties was to start to feel sorry for herself. She said she thought that was one of the worst things a person could do.

    I thought about that, and I think I agree. Once you start to feel sorry for yourself it’s completely downhill from there. A mole hole becomes a mountain. Inconveniences become distressing moments. The cliché that is all too true: life is what you make of it.

    This woman who lived such a hard life came from a great position of power to speak on feeling sorry for oneself. Of all the people I’ve read about, she’s near the top of the list of someone that had good reason to complain. And yet, her life would have likely been much more difficult had she succumbed to her own self-pity.

    These are my other favorite quotes from this book:

    “I have always thought that fear is our greatest sin. It shows such a lack of faith.”

    “I was worn out, and once more took to feeling sorry for myself…  I stuck to my rule of not whining.”

    “I have often noticed that it is the little things that trouble a woman, while only the big ones trouble a man.”

    “When you have lived without money as much as I had, it loses a great deal of its power to hurt you.”

    “I led a hard life. Perhaps-but I don’t think an easy one is ever half so full.”

  • Unity, Peace, and Love

    Unity, Peace, and Love

    I recently watched a video depicting the famous rameumptom of Alma chapter 31. I’ve written about the rameumptom before.

    The rameumptom was a tower built by the Zoramites for their prayers. They would stand atop this small tower and pray. Their prayers consisted of proclamations of how they were better than their brethren, and they thanked God for making them so much better than others. 

    In this video depiction, it showed a fancily dressed person strutting to the rameumptom, pushing aside someone on his way, cutting a line, and walking to the top while someone was already there. That person, apparently properly interpreting the danger of standing up to this man, quickly left his prayer so this man could yell with pride, “Holy, holy God, we believe that thou art God and we believe that thou art holy.”

    That video can be watched here if you’re interested.

    What I thought about as I watched this video is how strange the behavior would be for a follower of God to strut and push someone out of their way to offer a public prayer of pride. It was the spiritual God-follower pushing someone rudely out of the way that stood out to me.

    President Nelson, Elder Soares, and Elder Christofferson recently all talked to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about being kinder, more charitable, and avoiding contention in one session of General Conference. The impact of three of the highest-ranking members of our Church and apostles and prophets of the Lord all speaking on essentially the same topic in a 2-hour span was quite jarring.

    The three talks were:

    President Nelson – Peacemakers Needed

    Elder Soares – Followers of the Prince of Peace

    Elder Christofferson – One in Christ

    As I watched this video of the corrupt Zoramites, I worried about this message from our leaders. I personally have been witness to so much contention and unkindness in social media in “LDS” or “doctrine” or supposed “Christ-centered groups” where combativeness sometimes seems more important than kindness and love. This has led me to lessen my usage of social media, despite loving the doctrinal topics sometimes explored, due to the hateful nature that the topics are explored in.

    I worry about members of the Church of Jesus Christ that take being right more seriously than being loving.

    How many members of our religion and all religions strut around with our beliefs and act like we’re better than those around us? We must not be the Zoramites. This, I believe, is what President Nelson, Elder Soares, and Elder Christofferson are trying to tell us. Followers of Jesus Christ should be loving first, second, and last. Followers of Jesus Christ should be distinguished by their kindness.

    This behavior of someone knocking someone out of the way to go pray looks so similar to someone debating the merits of Christ’s gospel by putting down and insulting others. I hope we all avoid this behavior. As representatives of Jesus Christ, it’s important we remember the two great commandments: love and love.

  • Why do we Love our Children?

    Why do we Love our Children?

    I recently heard a quote so good I want to quote it in full:

    “Think about this. When a little baby is born, that baby cries at inopportune times, makes a lot of noise. It soils its diapers; it demands to be fed when it wants to be fed. It costs you a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of lost sleep. So why do we keep putting up with these little creatures? It’s because there’s this deep, underlying feeling of love for these children of ours. We love them so much that we don’t look at what it’s costing us. We keep infusing life and we keep teaching, and we keep forgiving, and we keep working with, and we keep nurturing and feeding and helping them to grow to become who they need to become and who they have the capacity to become.”

    I think that’s an awesome quote. Well said.

    I’ve been thinking about this more lately. With a toddler that is so full of joy and happiness, and also, sometimes, not. And a 7-month-old that still isn’t sleeping great. And with plates thrown and irrational frustrations (by the toddler), and crying and no sleep and…

    Ivy “loving” Sage

    *Sigh

    The energy it takes. The life force being sucked out of me.

    And.

    Would I go back if I could?

    Not in a kagillion-billion-zillion-babillion years. I love them so much. It’s all worth it.

    Is it hard? Heck yeah. It’s so hard. Do I feel like I’m dying a slow death sometimes? Uh, yeah, I do.

    And then, Ivy smiles and says, “Dada. I love you.” And Sage sees me and inexplicably giggles. And suddenly, all that sucked out life force flows into my body from my head to my toes in a rush of energy and exhilaration and LOVE. It’s like nothing else in this world: looking at my two daughters. The love.

    As a parent, speaking for myself, there’s a point where you become numb to the sacrifice and all you give up for your children. There was a time when having to get up once in the middle of the night to check on anything would ruin my entire night of sleep. At this moment, the average night has at least 3 middle-of-the-night wake ups. Zero wake ups in the night is a miracle.

    Early on with Ivy, I really struggled with this. I started to wonder how I could survive without getting sleep. And now we’re starting over with Sage who doesn’t sleep nearly as well as Ivy did. I’m probably getting hours less sleep per week than I ever have. And yet I feel alive and invigorated. Somehow, I’m surviving. I think it’s that infusion of love I get from seeing them happy, healthy, and growing each day.

    Ivy the morning after waking me up three times in the middle of the night. She didn’t go to sleep with the crown.

    The time, the noise, the diapers, the feeding, the money, the energy, the sleep put into these “little creatures.” And yet, do I regret it? A resounding NO! I want more. I love them so much, it hurts. Sometimes it physically hurts how much I love them. That quote above came from a video of a guy discussing the Lectures on Faith. I’ll link it HERE.

    He was talking about the attributes of God. That wasn’t where the quote ended.

    “If we as mortal parents can figure that out (the love for our children), how much more do perfect, eternal parents have that figured out? God is a God motivated by love. It’s not just this outward thing, it’s part of the divine characteristic. God is love. Without that, you and I can’t have full faith in God unto life and salvation.”

    We’re here to learn to love like God. God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost love so perfectly that they have become one in mission, intent, and purpose. That is the love I feel for my family. I would give anything for them. My wants and needs have taken three back seats. Beth, Ivy, and Sage’s needs are so much more important than mine. The “world” will try to say this is unhealthy, that I need to “put myself first” or “take care of myself.” Of course, I don’t completely disregard my health and care, but that idea that I come first is extremely wrong. I don’t come first. I know that. And not coming first is what gives me strength each day. That infusion of love that comes from my family makes every sacrifice the sweetest sacrifice there is.

    If I feel this way, as a mortal man who knows how to give good gifts, how much more perfectly does God love me? How much more is He willing and able to give me because He loves me? I know God loves me. I am eternally grateful for His love. Now, He is teaching me how to love.