RELPC 122 Week 5 Chaos swelling in the land, Us unchanging

While many governments and well-meaning individuals have redefined marriage, the Lord has not. In the very beginning, God initiated marriage between a man and a woman—Adam and Eve. He designated the purposes of marriage to go far beyond the personal satisfaction and fulfillment of adults to, more importantly, advancing the ideal setting for children to be born, reared, and nurtured. Families are the treasure of heaven.

Elder Neil L. Anderson, Spiritual Whirlwinds

The quote and meaning is direct and is my own message as surely as can be said, but I think in different terms and have a different chaos that swells in me.  My mind was extremely focused and performing well, when I was a missionary and immediately after.  This is true, but it is also true that my mind was on a path that terminates eventually.  I was in a gradual decent toward doing what my mortal body could not, and thus failing, in terms of what I saw and what I was determined to do.  My perception was remarkably deep and accurate, but as with all cases of higher perception and over-stretched minds, there was also a fundamental flaw to it.  I did not reason correctly or interpret correctly what I perceived, and after pushing my body and mind as far as they would physically go, I became very sick, even unable to leave by bed for a little while.

Some could say my mind broke, but that is far too vague and implies an effective dysfunction of the mind evermore.  In reality, only part of my mind broke.  I lost my ability to perform well with Math; I was managing an A in Pre-Calculus by doing all my homework the hour before class, then, after becoming sick, I could hardly rely on myself to do basic Arithmetic correctly.  I had ongoing clarity filling my soul, before, as a remnant of the Lord's blessings in missionary service.  This clarity I refer to is that I was aware of the world working around me with precision, and I thought like a computer, but in a fashion that could be described as a perceptual amplifier.  After becoming sick, all that remained of my perception was the logic that developed from it.  I have to say that this, if nothing else, was a great and marvelous gift to remain with me.

I was ill thereafter and even during my time of escalation, though I did not know it, but the Lord prepared a very fast path of recovery for me, which led to a number of different states of my mind.

At the commencement of my illness, I likely would have been diagnosed schizo-effective, a common diagnosis, but I never saw a doctor; that is I was never willing to, and didn't commit any crimes that might have resulted in me being compelled to.  I can't share my miracle story in this post, but the Lord blessed me with miracles and revelation that led me to a full recovery just around 3 years later.  This recovery did not mean a restoration of my abilities or efficiency; it was only a recovery of my full reasoning ability sans paranoia, obsession, and the kind of imbalance that not even verbal therapy can ever correct.  In this state I managed my thoughts by directing them and letting them fly.  It could be comparable to a manic state, but fully induced by my own will and without the reciprocating darkness of depression afterward.

This was a state of mind that relied on a supreme joy and hope to fuel every good action and every superhuman feat.  That joy was in my marriage.  About five years after being married, I was divorced.  This absence of the joy that I used as fuel for managing and directing my thoughts was my turning point into darkness so deep it could be compared to bipolar depression, but without being unable to reason, and far more prolonged.  I, having had a perception and a certain knowledge of God and eternity, felt as though the most valuable establishment and relationship of my life was ever crushed and gone, and without malice I sincerely welcomed death as an end of my earthly suffering.  I felt as though there was nothing I could accomplish in life that could ever make up the loss and wanted to find a way to serve the Lord without having to face it.  I was probably very unpleasant to be around, but this darkness led me to the my next state of mind.

Through the time and support granted by my parents, I recovered a slightly better mentality by discovering that I could manipulate my general long-term depression into a tool of suppression.  I found that by having access to the darkest abyss of my mind, I could activate an absolute suppression of thought, impulse, and even desire.  Over time I developed greater precision in this, to where I could suppress individual thoughts, though the effect was still to more that just a line of thought, but also my general mood.  Much like in my artificial manic state there was a kind of wildness that would drive my mind, sort of like the moment you might think someone is absolutely crazy, right before they actually confirm it, except I wasn't actually insane, so that confirmation of crazy never came.  In my artificial suppression, all the darkness and instability of my life, even since I was a child, was building, or rather becoming much easier to perceive.  I managed to use and refine my new talent for suppression to suppress the chaos within my mind, including dark raging impulses, anger, and wanderlust.  As any therapist can confirm, suppressing dark feelings often results in them coming out in ways we do not expect.  This was not the case with me, for my suppression was so absolute that I was even suppressing my internal chaos in my sleep, and was aware of it, always.  With the immense pressure created by that very act of suppressing my feelings, the chaos became very intense and I became something I delighted to relate to science fiction; that is a vulcan, from Star Trek.  There is truly no better example of the state of my mind that I can think of than the numerous examples of vulcans in fiction.

While being very, exceedingly logical, and controlling my outward expressions no reflect my better feelings, though unnatural they my might come out of me, I managed very well using suppression, until I found something to enhance myself further.  Through my studies I discovered that there is truly a carnal drive that is not strictly carnal, but has spiritual implications also.  I speak of the drive to obtain a special kind of release in the brain, but you may call it satisfaction, pleasure, bliss, or whatever suites you.  I discovered that this drives the most noble of actions as well as the drug or sex addict.  I also discovered that I have partial control over at least one of the mechanisms of release in my own brain.  With this I discovered that I could direct my thoughts and behavior, even at the subconscious level, by controlling when my mind would anticipate this release or satisfaction.  Added to my existing techniques, I found I had a sufficient arsenal of mental tools to be something I never had power to be before...  I could be kind, patient, intensly focused for hours, obedient, and adaptable.  Even though I am still who I have chosen to be, and I still have many limits, I have learned to manage the chaos within me.

Now with all that I have experienced I see the drastic contrast the world has become, clearly.  The world has all the chaos as from within me, and more, but only very limited control.  One of the most essential points of control the world has lost is in the subject of sexuality.  I find the prevalent attitude in books, video, and public opinion is one of overwhelming ignorance and variance.  The world of people, on average, have no idea what is right or why, where previously, they at least avoided the public awareness of their darker deeds of evil.  With media, breaking of unrighteous prejudice, and the liberties afforded by technology, we have become a people freely exploding in thought and imagination, but without the most basic understanding of what we are or why exist the way we do.

As with the book of Helaman people seem free to follow evil, and they do.  Except for the Lord's promise that at least in this land the Lord's people will not lose everything before he comes to save us and the good that remains in the world, we may expect much of the same scale of rapid evil done in ancient times among the Nephites.