Happy Halloween! For many people, however, today is not a happy day, but it is the most disliked day of the entire year. This is when people seem to celebrate the death, the macabre, evil, darkness, the shadows, wickedness, perhaps even Satan himself. Those things are a big turn off for many people, particularly the most religious and devout.
President Joseph Fielding Smith, as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who later became the tenth President and "Prophet, Seer, and Revelator" of the LDS Church, wrote the following that was published in 1954: "IF EVOLUTION IS TRUE, THE CHURCH IS FALSE."
We've been surrounded by Christianity for many centuries, Mormonism for 200 years, yet it seems Christ consciousness hasn't penetrated most Western people, even those in Utah. Most don't know that Christ lives in them (Galatians 2:20).
I perceive that when Jesus introduced the "communion" of the bread and wine, it wasn't so that we would remember only the person Jesus, per se, but the whole of God's creation, the Universe, that Jesus realized he was One with. It was all his "body."
I don't think there is any evidence in nature that bodily resurrection can happen. I think this is a misunderstanding of the resurrection.
Much has been written, and there has been much contention throughout history, about this scripture and others like it that seem to justify the exclusive truth claims and saving power of Christianity. Other religions have made similar claims for their own paths, but for this post I'll focus on Christianity. I believe these claims rely on an interpretation of scripture that is partially correct, but unfortunately misses a greater and far more glorious meaning.
When the false self dies—the ego, the old creature, the constructed personality, the illusory self, the separate independent idea of one's self, the man of sin, the son of perdition, the natural man, the carnal mind—when this is seen for what it really is, when it is revealed in truth, when it is put off, taken out of the way, when it is crucified and passes away, then the true Self is revealed in glory.
I suddenly entered the heart of a reality so blindingly obvious, so total, so enlightening, so luminous, that I wondered how I had never before realized how easy this reality was to find and how easily I found myself in it.
He lays asleep, unknowing
Black nothing
Emptiness and nowhere
No time, no space
How did Jesus say we are to love ourself? How could we know how to love our neighbor unless we first knew how we are to love ourself? It seems Jesus was referring back to something he previously said, so that we could love our neighbor likewise.