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Healing and Knowing and Being and Praying


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Not sure the degree this will be a topic of interest and I intend it to be conversational, not one topic; but I realized that I was derailing Duncan's thread about Spirit Prison, thus I carried this to a new thread.

@mfbukowski asked me the following: "When you are praying/meditating/ "in the zone", are you aware of communing with a personal intelligence or rather more like being merged with the universe and one with all things? Those somehow are not mutually exclusive by any means."

So my reply to that is that I have yet in my entire life to feel that I have connected with one being (male, father) in prayer (ish) or otherwise.

And in the past, my traditional prayers (kneeling by my bedside each evening or morning) were some of my most excruciating and hell-full experiences. There was no pleasantness, peace, or God there--or not that made it all the way inside to me. I'm not saying this is 'God's fault'. I have a complex view of that situation, and I know it arose from many factors.  But I rarely do a kneeling prayer these days. I try to avoid it. Sometimes I get to where I wonder if that's the ticket, so I'll try again, but, yea, normally I just talk to the air if I have something to say.

I have also never had the kind of ecstatic experience some may describe of connecting in one-ness.

I do have conversations with "dead" (not) people. I am constantly aware of my ancestors and husband and others I am not sure of except that they are there. I know (?) they are in the room or whatever their place is that still provides access to me (and vice versa). I know they help me (in response to prayer or simply as a matter of their love toward me). I know they hear me.

I do like to do a grounding meditation outside with bare feet. When I do that, it's usually the tree and I that end up having a conversation. Doing a little something, really only a minute or two, helps me gather peace for the day.

The person I try to talk to the most in my quiet times, is myself. Tapping into my own guidance, desire, authority etc of who I really am and have always been, even before coming here.

So that's where I'm at with that kind of thing.

Edited by Maidservant
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Thanks Maidservant, for the topic. I struggled for years with the kneeling and praying and feeling it one-sided. I too now skip that and talk to whomever, not sure, anytime throughout the day, but refer to it being God.. I hope a deity exists. Glad you know your loved ones that have passed on are there. I've felt mine are pretty silent until I remember that I don't talk to them. Do I try to speak out loud to them so they know to be around. My niece is a Medium and that is what she told me to do. If the veil is truly thin I think this makes perfect sense She also said they are busy on the other side, haha, love that! 

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32 minutes ago, Maidservant said:

Not sure the degree this will be a topic of interest and I intend it to be conversational, not one topic; but I realized that I was derailing Duncan's thread about Spirit Prison, thus I carried this to a new thread.

@mfbukowski asked me the following: "When you are praying/meditating/ "in the zone", are you aware of communing with a personal intelligence or rather more like being merged with the universe and one with all things? Those somehow are not mutually exclusive by any means."

So my reply to that is that I have yet in my entire life to feel that I have connected with one being (male, father) in prayer (ish) or otherwise.

And in the past, my traditional prayers (kneeling by my bedside each evening or morning) were some of my most excruciating and hell-full experiences. There was no pleasantness, peace, or God there--or not that made it all the way inside to me. I'm not saying this is 'God's fault'. I have a complex view of that situation, and I know it arose from many factors.  But I rarely do a kneeling prayer these days. I try to avoid it. Sometimes I get to where I wonder if that's the ticket, so I'll try again, but, yea, normally I just talk to the air if I have something to say.

I have also never had the kind of ecstatic experience some may describe of connecting in one-ness.

I do have conversations with "dead" (not) people. I am constantly aware of my ancestors and husband and others I am not sure of except that they are there. I know (?) they are in the room or whatever their place is that still provides access to me (and vice versa). I know they help me (in response to prayer or simply as a matter of their love toward me). I know they hear me.

I do like to do a grounding meditation outside with bare feet. When I do that, it's usually the tree and I that end up having a conversation. Doing a little something, really only a minute or two, helps me gather peace for the day.

The person I try to talk to the most in my quiet times, is myself. Tapping into my own guidance, desire, authority etc of who I really am and have always been, even before coming here.

So that's where I'm at with that kind of thing.

Being 100% transparent and honest, would you say that during the period of your “excruciating“, “hell full” prayer experiences that there was ever a moment when you prayed to God with genuine, living faith?

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11 minutes ago, Maidservant said:

The person I try to talk to the most in my quiet times, is myself. Tapping into my own guidance, desire, authority etc of who I really am and have always been, even before coming here.

Well then we have Luke 17:

Quote

 

20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

22 And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.

23 And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after them, nor follow them.

24 For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day.

 

I think that this brings up some very interesting implications which are raised by the CJCLDS in the interpretation of certain doctrines.

First of all we are all human, and we are taught that God and Heavenly Mother- the Divine Duality in my thinking- are our parents and we are able to "grow up" and be like them.

We are taught that we were made in their "image"

We are taught that they ARE the highest good to which we can reach and that we should be "perfect" ie: "complete" in our perfection as they are.

We must have joy in our aspirations to fill the measure of our creations and have JOY therein.

And where does this ideal being of perfection reside?  It resides within us, in our hearts.  The very idea of what it would be to BE a perfect human being is a projection of what we understand that idea to mean.   And we have the example of our Human God- Christ the annointed one- as the paradigm of what a perfected Human is.

Because our dialogue is with the Perfect Human who resides in our hearts, in one way of framing the concept, I can easily believe that it is our own inner perfect selves with whom we communicate.

At a certain point, being a good pragmatist, I see a distinction without a difference about whether or not God is "inside" us our "outside" us.  If we are in the process of BECOMING what we see as the Ideal Human, the line between our personal conception of what that is, and whether or not that Being is within our without grows so thin as perhaps to be invisible.

Yet on the other hand, I have had experiences where I have questions and ask them of that Being- perhaps my unconscious, perhaps someone/something else, and gotten answers that convince me that the answers I received was from a Wisdom that I do not have.

So am I conversing with my Ideal Self within me or the Ideal Human somewhere outside me?   

The line is blurry indeed.

I also had an experience once where I was lying on a beach in the usual place I went in my home town of San Diego, and suddenly as I looked at the grains of sand, I saw them all as independent worlds unto themselves, and suddenly it was AS IF they became the stars in the heavens, each grain a universe in its own, and I was a part of all of it, like life itself, going on within me and without me. :)  

This was all probably at least a decade before the church found me.  ;)

I don't pretend to have the answers, but I have found that formal mindfulness meditation helps me immensely.  No mantras etc- just an awareness of my thoughts and their connections to my body,  one guru of this form calls it "observation" rather than "meditation".

It has no particular "doctrine" or belief that follows from it, just the ability to observe one's own internal state as if all of experience is a movie, going by in the stream of consciousness, as a river flowing downstream, and the goal being to be able to observe all of it impartially without getting caught up in the hypnosis it offers.

 

 

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39 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Thanks Maidservant, for the topic. I struggled for years with the kneeling and praying and feeling it one-sided. I too now skip that and talk to whomever, not sure, anytime throughout the day, but refer to it being God.. I hope a deity exists. Glad you know your loved ones that have passed on are there. I've felt mine are pretty silent until I remember that I don't talk to them. Do I try to speak out loud to them so they know to be around. My niece is a Medium and that is what she told me to do. If the veil is truly thin I think this makes perfect sense She also said they are busy on the other side, haha, love that! 

Thanks for sharing, Tacenda. I hope that your journey towards peace and connection continues with many blessings ahead for you. :)

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24 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

Being 100% transparent and honest, would you say that during the period of your “excruciating“, “hell full” prayer experiences that there was ever a moment when you prayed to God with genuine, living faith?

Isn't the very act of kneeling and praying to God a clear demonstration of "genuine, living faith"?

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18 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

Being 100% transparent and honest, would you say that during the period of your “excruciating“, “hell full” prayer experiences that there was ever a moment when you prayed to God with genuine, living faith?

Hi, Teddy :).

I would love to hear you talk more about what 'living faith' means to you; how you define and experience that, especially in prayer.

I do want to mention that prayer has always been 100 percent functional for me in the sense that matters over which I pray are answered or done. For example, let's say I want to write something. If I pray for a clear mind, endurance, inspiration, etc, then that has been what I have experienced as a consequence. I have always been given the thing I have asked for, or an understanding of why not, or something better. This 100 percent, not 99 percent; for me. So I appreciate this.

However, as I've grown, I'm not sure I want to use God/my Heavenly Father/who or whatever it is as a vending machine for everything I (think I) want, nor to rest my final understanding of prayer as that.

Mfbukowski specifically asked me about my sense and my connection, so I answered to that.

My understanding and experience of faith would take place less on my knees and more after I get up from my knees. Faith is the planting of seed and tending that seed through fruition. This may or may not include vocal and energetic blessings (i.e. prayers). This may or may not include Help (i.e. from either side of the veil from benevolent persons with the inclination and capacity to help).

P.S. Fervency is not faith; and very few could outdo me in fervency lol.

But, again, I would love to hear more about what you've learned and how you go about things and how it feels to you.

As far as the trust I have in the universe/God for opening my way and pouring out blessings upon me, my trust in that reality is greater now than it ever has been, and will continue to grow, because it's really the only experience I am having these days. Some might define this trust by using the word faith; although normally I don't use faith to describe the trust--I use the word trust--nevertheless this trust is THE most valuable and core experience of my healing.

From the time I prayed as a child to the point in my late 30s or early 40s when I felt enough trust and autonomy to try NOT praying on my knees, and to more accurately describe to myself my own actual experience and to ask a few more questions about it, I can honestly say that every prayer was with the knowing I held at the time that I was talking to my Heavenly Father. I would say that the only thing I did have was faith; or 'faith' at least. Or at least the obedience. I prayed consistently despite the pain of it, because I believed in the instruction I was given and wanted to obey. The interpretation that I was talking to my Heavenly Father was the only knowing I could have had, because I was taught that from before I had my own mind. But that knowing came from the outside in. I had been told I was talking to my Heavenly Father and I had no reason to disbelieve or examine that. But it wasn't something that was actually happening--a conversation or a touch of a Being. It was basically just me blabbing and crying on my knees lol.

Coming before my Heavenly Father every day, then, again was not a good experience. Again, this is not a church thing necessarily; more a psychological one. Every prayer was to enter a state of helplessness, begging, shame, fear, and the silence. That is not to say that I did not have answers or support (that for most of my life I termed 'Heavenly Father') after praying or in life. But the actual prayer minutes were minutes of degradation (more in my adult life, not as a child).

Anyway, enough. It's a work in progress. :)

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1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Well then we have Luke 17:

I think that this brings up some very interesting implications which are raised by the CJCLDS in the interpretation of certain doctrines.

First of all we are all human, and we are taught that God and Heavenly Mother- the Divine Duality in my thinking- are our parents and we are able to "grow up" and be like them.

We are taught that we were made in their "image"

We are taught that they ARE the highest good to which we can reach and that we should be "perfect" ie: "complete" in our perfection as they are.

We must have joy in our aspirations to fill the measure of our creations and have JOY therein.

And where does this ideal being of perfection reside?  It resides within us, in our hearts.  The very idea of what it would be to BE a perfect human being is a projection of what we understand that idea to mean.   And we have the example of our Human God- Christ the annointed one- as the paradigm of what a perfected Human is.

Because our dialogue is with the Perfect Human who resides in our hearts, in one way of framing the concept, I can easily believe that it is our own inner perfect selves with whom we communicate.

At a certain point, being a good pragmatist, I see a distinction without a difference about whether or not God is "inside" us our "outside" us.  If we are in the process of BECOMING what we see as the Ideal Human, the line between our personal conception of what that is, and whether or not that Being is within our without grows so thin as perhaps to be invisible.

Yet on the other hand, I have had experiences where I have questions and ask them of that Being- perhaps my unconscious, perhaps someone/something else, and gotten answers that convince me that the answers I received was from a Wisdom that I do not have.

So am I conversing with my Ideal Self within me or the Ideal Human somewhere outside me?   

The line is blurry indeed.

I also had an experience once where I was lying on a beach in the usual place I went in my home town of San Diego, and suddenly as I looked at the grains of sand, I saw them all as independent worlds unto themselves, and suddenly it was AS IF they became the stars in the heavens, each grain a universe in its own, and I was a part of all of it, like life itself, going on within me and without me. :)  

This was all probably at least a decade before the church found me.  ;)

I don't pretend to have the answers, but I have found that formal mindfulness meditation helps me immensely.  No mantras etc- just an awareness of my thoughts and their connections to my body,  one guru of this form calls it "observation" rather than "meditation".

It has no particular "doctrine" or belief that follows from it, just the ability to observe one's own internal state as if all of experience is a movie, going by in the stream of consciousness, as a river flowing downstream, and the goal being to be able to observe all of it impartially without getting caught up in the hypnosis it offers.

 

 

I love this. And thank you for bringing the Luke scripture to mind, again. I think there is enough in scripture to support many ways of being and faithing; some of which our Church emphasizes and some of which has been mowed over, but still there, if you do the digging for the treasures.

See, I have heard so many visionary, oneness accounts by others, and I love that you've shared yours. It's just that I don't recall ever having one. I'm satisfied not to have one, maybe because I like this world so well and the experience I want to have IS this world. That's my vision :).

And, yes, to the degree that there is a single Father Being (and Mother) watching over all of us (I'm not saying there isn't, I'm just saying I haven't had a definite experience of it), I have no doubt that His work (as mentioned in chapter 1 of Moses) is to introduce us to ourselves and to our holiness and power. So it comes out to about the same.

Edited by Maidservant
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16 minutes ago, Garden Girl said:

I'm glad, Maidservant, that you are able to find peace as you pray.  I guess I've always been fortunate... because of the way my mom explained and taught me how to pray, starting as a small child, I always believed that I really was praying to my Heavenly Father, who was a loving being who knew me... I was never overwhelmed at the thought, and felt comfort and peace when I prayed.. and that is the way it has been through the years, even my "inactive" years, and is today.  Another thing that helped with this was receiving my Patriarchal Blessing at age 14.   I pray throughout my day... in fact, I do some of my best praying as I drive... garden... paint/draw...  I express my deep gratitude for the blessings I receive, i.e., for the guidance, the protection, my sound mind, my ability to control health issues, being able to provide for myself temporally... and most of all for spiritual blessings... and my testimony... Prayer is just part of me... and is directed to a Heavenly Father in the name of the Savior...

GG

I love this, and thanks for sharing GG.

I would never, ever, ever, ever want to take something like this away from anyone. Peace is too precious. And having a Heavenly Father, if one does know that, is too precious.

I'm just still trying to find my way, or have made progress in doing so and I'm in a more healed state than I used to be; but it just doesn't 'look like' I thought it would when I was younger. (Join the club, eh?)

I know for certain I/we live in a universe of Love. I'm just not sure all the names and faces yet, ha ha :).

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43 minutes ago, rockpond said:

Isn't the very act of kneeling and praying to God a clear demonstration of "genuine, living faith"?

No.

5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. (James)

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19 minutes ago, pogi said:

As long as there are not portals and multiple-mortal-probations, and zombies I'm cool with talking to dead people.  I also believe they are all around us and can hear us, and that we can sense them at times.  That is about as Latter-day Saint as it gets.

Nice. I agree that being Latter-day Saint normalizes the relationships we can have across the veil. It has perhaps been emphasized to me because my husband is passed. I told my mother-in-law that he and I still have the same arguments more or less. She said, "Well, at least now you get the last word." And I said, "Umm . . . I always did?" ha ha ha. Anyway, I know that my husband is involved daily in my life and that of our children. So, yes, indeed, that opportunity was built in as a Latter-day Saint, as something I could build upon in real time living.

I will say that I have never had a visual or auditory experience from "dead" people (that I recall), but neither can I deny the "thickness" of the air around me that seems to have personality and communication and love and emotion. I try not to interpret it very much, because I don't know, I don't know. But neither do I think I can dismiss it as just nothing. Something is happening/someone is there.

19 minutes ago, pogi said:

The bare-feet and talking to trees, on the other hand?  That is about as North-West as it gets.  So it is good that you are connecting with both of your roots :)  

Ha ha ha, yes :).

19 minutes ago, pogi said:

More people need to discover meditation and the connecting with self that you describe.  I can relate with you there.  

The way I approach meditation, I do tend to have more of a connectedness with the divine.  I certainly have experienced that ecstatic (in both senses of the word) connection you speak of.  I have tasted of that fruit, that unspeakable joy spoken of in scripture, that one-ness and pure intimacy with the divine.  It is real and worthy of every effort.

Thank you for sharing, and I'm glad you have something like that to recall.

Probably my nicest experience that came close to that took place last year. I was by myself in a swimming pool, in the perfect evening light and temperature. The hummingbirds, the mountain almost close enough to touch, the water, recent experiences, lifetime experiences, finally being fine with my own skin--peace crept into my cells for a good 30 minutes. It wasn't flashy; but it was a complete relief that everything was all right and I was where I was supposed to be.

I'll take it :) .

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1 hour ago, Calm said:

“if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.“

So then, it’s okay if there’s just an itsy bitsy, teeny weeny bit of wavering? Let’s see if we can lobby the brethren to change “nothing wavering” to “a nanoparticle of wavering.”

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What you call wavering and what God calls wavering might be two different things. What is unwavering hope and how hard is it to achieve?  I am thinking not that hard, even for someone with doubts. 

Edited by Calm
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On 6/26/2020 at 8:13 PM, USU78 said:

There's a cinematic conceit where Moses, when he hears G-d's voice, hears a distorted, more expansive, nobler version of his own voice.

I know that the one and only time when I heard actual words in response to prayer, the words were in my voice how I sound to myself inside my head.  The words were not my words, however, and they really jarred me.

I've had the same experience. It shook me pretty much to the core, but the advice worked. 

I very much look forward to hearing the voice of God - the leitmotif of Creation. 

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On 6/26/2020 at 6:32 PM, teddyaware said:

So then, it’s okay if there’s just an itsy bitsy, teeny weeny bit of wavering? Let’s see if we can lobby the brethren to change “nothing wavering” to “a nanoparticle of wavering.”

But remember by definition those things are "not seen" and what we have is "hope" for the unseen.

It seems to me a little wavering is built into the definition! ;)

 

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3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

But remember by definition those things are "not seen" and what we have is "hope" for the unseen.

It seems to me a little wavering is built into the definition! ;)

 

And yet the scriptures teach us that recipients of divine revelation actually come to know eternal truth. They don’t merely entertain an uncertain notion that they may know something that might eventually turn out to be true.

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On 6/26/2020 at 8:00 PM, Calm said:

What you call wavering and what God calls wavering might be two different things. What is unwavering hope and how hard is it to achieve?  I am thinking not that hard, even for someone with doubts. 

I don't know but you have to at least believe that He is There, listening to your prayer. I'm like GG I pray everywhere, driving, walking, sailing. Some of His most notable replies have been during these prayers.

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43 minutes ago, rodheadlee said:

I don't know but you have to at least believe that He is There, listening to your prayer. I'm like GG I pray everywhere, driving, walking, sailing. Some of His most notable replies have been during these prayers.

Why only believe he is there?  Why isn’t unwavering hope he is there enough given his promise?

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4 hours ago, rodheadlee said:

I don't know but you have to at least believe that He is There, listening to your prayer. I'm like GG I pray everywhere, driving, walking, sailing. Some of His most notable replies have been during these prayers.

No, you can hope.  It was only hope that I felt when I asked if He was there and if He loved me. The experience that followed is everything to me.

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