Men are that they might have joy

Men are that they might have joy

Obtaining happiness and peace through Jesus Christ.

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

Chapter 1: Men are that they might have joy

“...men are that they might have joy.” (2 Nephi 2:25)

Most people are happy at least sometimes. For most people, it is easy to imagine a not-too-unusual scenario that would be sufficient to prevent their happiness.

Accordingly, it isn’t unusual to consider our happiness as something we can influence, but yet see it as something that ultimately lies outside of our control.

There is a better way.

You can be completely happy, content, and fulfilled all the time. You can come to the point where nothing that could ever happen to you could reduce your peace, happiness, and joy.

Joy is not an externally imposed feeling. It comes from within. It is not something that is possessed or experienced, but the value you perceive in what is possessed or experienced. It is informational. It comes from knowledge.

Joy is not something that happens to you, but rather something you go find.

Joy is not a situation—it is an outcome. Joy is something that you can build once you have the tools to do so.

Humans are self-directed, autonomous creatures. We are capable of acting and securing what we desire. Acquiescing to whatever chance circumstances we find ourselves in is living far below our privilege.

You can learn how to act instead of merely being acted upon. You can choose how to be. You can acquire the tools to manufacture internal happiness that can’t be affected by what is going on around you.

You can create joy by discovering the actions, beliefs, and desires that produce it, and by implementing them in your life. As you incrementally increase in your understanding of the recipe for joy, and your degree of adherence to it, you will increase in joy.

Many claim to hold the keys to greater happiness. Gurus and religionists are chief in this group. However, the lives led by these people and their followers cast serious doubts on their claims. This deficiency must be due either to their failure to practice what is taught, or the inefficacy of the teachings themselves. In many cases, there is nothing wrong with the content of the teaching, but there is a lack of understanding of how to use it properly.

Such it is with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to lift your understanding and character to the point where you can encounter the greatest possible joy given even the harshest realities of this world.

There are many religious people, and they certainly do not hold a monopoly on happiness. There are many aspects of the gospel of Jesus Christ that are unused or unknown to most who profess to be Christian. All of these aspects are explained in scripture, and many of them are highlighted in this book.

The failure of so many Christians to obtain what Christianity promises is not a failure of the teachings themselves, but of the people who profess to be Christian. Owning a set of paintbrushes does not make someone a master painter. There really is no value in religion except inasmuch as it benefits above and beyond that held by those without religion who are able to live the same lives.

For most people, attempting to be a good person as long as it doesn’t cost too much is all there is to life. Like ships without rudders on the sea, when things are good, they are good; when things are bad, they are bad. This is not the path to untouchable joy.

We are created to have joy.

Though we are created to have joy, it is not automatic. By nature, humans are miserable creatures.

The difference between one in the circumstances of complete fulfillment and one in less than this is only a matter of their possession of and application of the tools necessary to obtain it. The difference between the default state and one of joy lies in obtaining and living the tools provided by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The more of the gospel you obtain—the more accurate your understanding of it, and the more fully you live it—the greater your happiness will be.

How will you know if this assertion is true? Jesus said.

The Lord Jesus Christ taught everything one needs to overcome all darkness in this world. Through what he taught, it is possible for anyone to be completely happy, content, and fulfilled all the time. It is possible for anyone to get to the point where nothing that could ever happen in this life could affect their joy.

Perhaps you find yourself regularly overcome by life. Perhaps you struggle with depression or anxiety. Perhaps you have recently experienced surprising circumstances that have caused you to question any past happiness you thought you experienced. Perhaps this is the first time you’ve considered whether more happiness is available to you. Perhaps you consider yourself to be a happy person and aren’t sure whether there is anything more to have in this life.

Obtaining joy and happiness is the objective of this life. If you don’t have happiness and joy, it is either because you have not yet discovered the tools to obtain it, or you have not followed the directions you’ve already received.

This life consists of a complex web of what amounts to background noise. The signal that leads to happiness and joy is always present, but it must be actively sought out. It is not what most people preoccupy themselves with or even notice.

Children, for the most part, are joyful beings. Unhappiness in its many forms tends to correlate with the transition into adulthood. Like one’s body, a maturing individual’s awareness of reality changes substantially between childhood and adulthood. Like physical changes, awareness of reality seems to amplify on its own.

Unfortunately, the tools that were sufficient to cope with an immature awareness of reality are not only insufficient to contend with an amplified awareness of reality, they also do not automatically grow like the awareness itself seems to. Furthermore, the greater the intelligence of the individual, the more drastic will be the increase in their awareness, and the less sufficient their childhood tools will be for contending with life.

Today’s world employs a flood of chemical and physical approaches to contend with the challenges of increased awareness. Thanks to a flood of information, people today are much more aware of the serious challenges of reality compared to those who came before. Most respond to these challenges not by seeking their solutions, but by muting the signals they produce through saturating their brains and schedules with things that help them ignore them.

None of these external approaches actually address the underlying problem. Instead of fixing the problem, they merely make it possible to care less about it. The honest sufferer has to admit that no amount of pills, liquids, or hedonistic living will actually take away the suffering they experience.

Mental anguish is a symptom, not a disease. Uncountably numerable and significantly complex biochemical processes drive every aspect of your control of your body. The connection between your mind and your body chemistry is responsible for every action you consciously take, from focusing your eyes on an object far away to lifting a weight off the ground. It would be absolutely correct to say that 100% of these tasks are chemically driven. Yet, these tasks are also 100% mentally driven. The mental portion of these tasks drives the physical portion. Therefore, it would be absolutely incorrect to say that these physical tasks happen independently of your mental choices and perspectives. If this is the case with lifting a weight and looking at an object, why should it be different for how you feel about situations in life?

Chemical imbalances are the symptoms of the real problem, not the cause of it. Society isn’t suffering from a chemical imbalance, but an information imbalance.

Modern individuals are being exposed to far greater understanding of the breadth and depth of reality than any former generation, but they are not in possession of remarkably stronger tools than prior generations.

That these tools are rarely observed or employed does not mean they do not exist. You can’t type fast on a keyboard you don’t know exists, and even knowing it exists is insufficient if you don’t know how to use it properly. If you presently lack joy, it doesn’t mean having abundant joy is impossible. It may just mean you have not yet found the best practices that yield it.

We exist in a system that has structure, rules, and limits. To have greater joy, we have to navigate reality, including a great many things that lie outside of our understanding or capability to change, or both. It is as if our birth places us at the entrance of a hedge maze, where the closer we get to the center, the more happiness we obtain. The gospel is a set of instructions to navigate both the known and unknown elements of reality in ways that produce the greatest joy.

No matter your circumstances, there is radically more joy available in this life than what you currently possess. In spite of how bold or unlikely these claims may seem, they are true.

This book is dedicated to all the children of God who have encountered the overwhelming sadness and suffering that comes in this world; for those who have pleaded to God for relief of burdens that seemed too heavy to bear; for those who have yearned to be supported and embraced by one who is truly trustworthy. This book is the answer to the question many of you have asked: where is the Lord? When will he come from his hiding place and save me?

The seeds of perfect, lasting joy are already within you. It comes from within you, not without.

The Lord said: “...behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)

The kingdom of God is like a seed that grows into a mustard tree (see Mark 4:31). It requires searching, acquiring, applying, and growing.

All of the instructions for one’s greatest joy are available all the time to all people. Why do few come to possess and live them? They don’t know where to find them (see D&C 123:12). They don’t know how to obtain them. They haven’t learned that these things are costly to obtain (though more than worth it). They have to be sought out at great cost, applied against great opposition, and received in certain subtle ways: persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, love, kindness, pure knowledge, and sincerity (see D&C 121:41-43). These things can only be taught in ways that most people are unlikely to notice, value, or accept. People seem to only listen when subjected to violence or manipulation, and God does not use those tools.

This book teaches you the actions, beliefs, and desires that produce joy so that you can obtain more in your life. In this book, you will encounter tools that will free you from the power of depression, anxiety, sadness, and suffering. You will find wisdom from God that will give you the tools to acquire greater happiness than you imagined possible in this life and after this life. You will feel the love of God to a greater extent than you ever knew.

If you apply these tools in your life, you will discover for yourself the veracity of these claims. As you gain the tools required to overcome the dark things in this world, you will also gain awareness of and appreciation for far greater joy than you currently possess. By employing these tools, you will encounter the things I have promised you, and in so doing, know that what I am telling you is true.

Chapter 2: Knowledge and joy

For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy... (Ecclesiastes 2:26)

Joy is one of those things that everyone says they want but no one seems to have.

Joy is not possessed by many because they are not aware of where to find it. One critical piece of understanding in your search for joy is the relationship between joy and knowledge.

The amount of joy you experience is limited to the amount of knowledge you have.

In Eden, there were two trees: the tree of life, which granted eternal life to all who ate it as long as they ate it, and the tree of knowledge, which dispensed a greater understanding of reality to those who ate it as often as they ate it. Adam and Eve did not have joy until after they gained knowledge by eating of the tree of knowledge.

Adam and Eve lived in a paradise before the fall, but they didn’t comprehend their situation. They had to acquire experience to comprehend what they had in Eden.

Without experiencing negatives, we can’t even notice—let alone enjoy—the equal and opposite positives.

Joy requires knowledge. Without knowledge, you can never notice— let alone enjoy—the good things you have. Without knowledge, you likewise can’t comprehend the negative experiences. Without comprehending negative experiences, you can’t overcome them.

The first step in increasing joy is to obtain more knowledge. Getting more knowledge means gaining a greater understanding of reality, and is discussed extensively in the author’s book, The Glory of God is Intelligence.

A vast array of circumstances can generate more knowledge. For example: generating new questions, discovering limits of existing ideas, finding new problems, etc.

Joy is not the same as minimizing pain. It is much richer than that. As will be discussed in much more detail in other parts of this book, suffering is absolutely required on the way to obtaining more joy.

One aspect of seeking joy that generates suffering is the acquisition of more knowledge. When you obtain more knowledge, that knowledge will always include a greater comprehension of the things in this world that cause suffering. This is what Solomon meant when he wrote: “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” (Ecclesiastes 1:18)

Knowledge tends to generate sorrow because every new piece of information causes one of several responses within you. In the least likely case, it will give you confidence by reaffirming what you already thought you knew. It is more likely that it will suggest that some aspect of you or your life is not as you thought it was. This can take the form, for example, of showing you that something or someone has less value than you thought, and should be removed from your life. It can also show you that something or someone has more value than you thought and should be added to your life. Both of these revelations cause sorrow because, in the first case, you will tend to interpret the experience as loss, and in the second case you will be challenged to change. Trust in God, in both cases, is the key to choosing to interpret both of these experiences as positive. In reality, both are steps along the path to greater joy.

Another example of the suffering caused by knowledge is how you feel when you better understand the goodness and beauty available in something you have not yet obtained.

At times, you may question whether the positive aspects of life are worth its negative aspects. Remember that God has promised that they are, and he has explained that there are many positive aspects that he has not yet revealed to you.

This should cause you to ponder what reasons he might have for withholding knowledge of these things from you. Even if the timing is not right for you to receive them, couldn’t he at least tell you about them so you know what is coming later?

It turns out that God can only reveal to you the good things currently outside of your comprehension as far as you trust him, because inasmuch as your trust in him is limited, his revealing them to you would cause sorrow beyond what you can bear, because you would understand what is available as well as how much better it would be for you to experience it, and it would cause you pain to not have it yet.

In all cases, sorrow that comes through knowledge is a positive thing, because it is a necessary precondition to obtaining what is required to have greater joy.

Every time you learn something new, you expand or improve your conscience. You see how some things improve in ways you didn’t previously realize, and you see how some things cause harm in ways you didn’t previously realize. Your understanding of right and wrong is changed. With these changes, you receive opportunities to reconcile your actions, thoughts, and desires to your improved conscience.

Your conscience is your compass that guides you to the best life.

When you are completely reconciled to your conscience, you enjoy all the positive consequences of the principles you live. You are enabled to have joy equal and opposite to the depths of suffering you have encountered because, having learned the principles that overcome that suffering, you can now comprehend, value, and appreciate all the benefits of having done so.

Everyone’s conscience tells them right from wrong at their degree of understanding, no matter if they are religious or not.

When you disobey your conscience, you experience guilt. The opposite of this guilt is joy.

All that matters in life is the degree to which you follow your conscience, and the degree to which you expand it by how you seek and react to new information. While this may seem a bold claim, realize that everything good in this life is obtained to the extent that you follow your conscience. It is your individual roadmap to the maximal joy that is available. It will lead you precisely where you need to travel to encounter the greatest joy.

Your path may not obviously intersect with anyone else’s. Conventional wisdom is wonderfully successful in one thing: producing people who are just like everyone else. If you want to be miserable, divorced, and poor, then by all means get and follow conventional wisdom. If you desire something better than what most people have, you must by definition find a path that is better than most people follow.

What other people think is right will never free you from the guilt you will feel about something your conscience incessantly cries is wrong.

What other people think is wrong will never free you from the small voice inside you that incessantly whispers there is something more than what other people think and do: “Now, there was a punishment affixed, and a just law given, which brought remorse of conscience unto man.” (Alma 42:18)

Following your conscience at all times and in all places will give you immense peace that is independent from anything anyone or anything can do to you.

Following your conscience without exception will free you from the guilt you feel when you don’t do the best you know how to do and from the guilt you feel when you realize you are different than what others want you to be and do. It will free you from the anxiety you feel when the small voice inside you tells you there is something better out there than what you have, because you will know that you are firmly on the path to obtaining it.

Once you are reconciled to your conscience—meaning you submit in all things to your present, sincere understanding of what is right and wrong—you will encounter peace of conscience.

Because having a clean conscience is such a wonderful situation, one might be tempted to remain in this state forever. Unfortunately, freedom from guilt is not the same as freedom from consequences. Ignorance of how things really work does not protect you from how things really work. Even when you completely align yourself to your conscience, you are still exposed to all the negative consequences of not obeying the knowledge you do not yet have about reality.

Even if you were resolved to remain at the state of understanding to which you are already reconciled, you would find it very difficult to avoid the revelation of things you do not yet know. Life is designed to bombard you with clues that there is more available than what you have. Ignoring these clues—which tend to be anything but subtle in how overwhelming they are—is like a child pretending that covering his eyes makes him invisible.

The Lord said: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) Rest in the Lord means a state of uninterrupted peace and joy. Rest in the Lord requires two things.

You have to conquer the darkness of which you are aware. When you do this, you retain all the joy available at this level of awareness, but lose the sorrow. You have to remain unaware of the darkness beyond the limits of what you have overcome.

That darkness is going to come for you, whether you seek it out or not. You may as well go out to contend with it instead of waiting around for it to contend with you.

Therefore, you should constantly seek to keep learning everything you can about life.

The Lord’s disciples asked him why he taught in parables. He said.

Jesus was explaining that we are only ready to learn more once we understand and apply what we’ve already been taught.

If you are reconciled to everything you know, you are prepared to learn more.

Learning more is not about detached factoids. Learning more means that what you do or why you do it changes.

As you learn more, your conscience will advance. You may see some things as right or wrong that you previously didn’t consider or considered to be neutral. You may come to see more or less benefit than you did in your previous perspective. You may see positive or negative consequences that you didn’t previously see.

od will continue to send us as much hardship as we can bear, with temporary breaks as we need them. As he increases the heat, there will likely come a point in a day, week, month, or matter of years, where we hit a situation where we refuse to listen to his voice (mostly represented in our conscience). We lose some level of light and truth at this point, but if we mount up and take courage, we will eventually be given another opportunity to succeed where we have failed.

Note that God has promised to never send us more than we can handle.

If we fail, then, it is by our own choice.

The two trees in Eden give a nice allegory to understand the cyclical relationship between gaining joy, gaining knowledge, and gaining sorrow. Anytime you choose to, you can “eat” from one tree or the other. When you gain more knowledge, you also gain the opportunity to reconcile to it. Should you choose to, you can then either rest in peace (at least until more awareness comes to you unbidden), or you can willingly seek more knowledge.

Though this process tends to be experienced as a cycle, it need not be. If you choose, you can opt out of rest. It is possible to maximize your joy through remaining in a constant state of learning, but doing so is only possible through complete trust in God. Opting out of rest by seeking continuous learning is very difficult because most people will limit their trust in God without constant reassurance that he will indeed deliver good things to them in response to their seeking him. However, the greatest joy in life is available only to those who trust him without limits—even when it isn’t obvious how what he is providing will turn out in their benefit.

Unconditional trust of God includes not needing him to give you breaks or milestones. You must come to this point before you can live what was described by Jesus when he said “seek ye first the kingdom of God...”.

The ideal way to move through life is to be continually increasing the number of situations we have put under our feet. This process does not have to take much time.

Chapter 3: The relationship between joy and sorrow

...and they shall obtain gladness and joy; sorrow and mourning shall flee away. (2 Nephi 8:11)

You might think that a book on joy is going to tell you things aren’t as bad as they seem. If it did, you would rightly set it aside, because while we all wish that were true, if you are reading this book it is probably safe to say your experience suggests otherwise.

Things are not only as bad as you have experienced, they are far worse. That is the bad news. The good news is that God has tools that are capable of enabling you to feel greater joy than you ever have in spite of what you know, and that these tools are also sufficient to overcome all the bad of which you are not yet aware.

This world is a dark place. In fact, it is almost surely darker than you yet know.

How bad is it? We all have a physical limit of pain, the point at which we would die because it is so great. We seem to be able to endure more mental pain than physical pain, but there, too, exists an absolute limit.

This world is a bad enough place that if you were to experience the depths of what can happen here without the appropriate tools, you would immediately die.

Fortunately, good exists in equal quantities to bad. The tools God provides are capable of minimizing the duration and effects of the negatives while maximizing the duration and effects of the positives. Those who obtain and use the tools that are available to maximize joy will eventually see the reasons for what they’ve gone through, the promised result, and that there was no other way.

Their torment will turn to joy, their sorrows will flee away, and all that will remain is the joy they’ve obtained.

In this life, you perceive only the suffering that is directly before you and not the blessings that are yet unseen.

Why keep moving forward deeper into the darkness when the light always comes slower than the darkness and in ways that seem fleeting and insufficient to make it worthwhile? Hope provides the answer.

But what are you to hope for? Paul said.

How can you hope for what you have not yet seen, heard, or thought about? How can you hope for what you can’t even imagine?

An understanding of the law of equal and opposite is the key to having the tenacity of hope required to obtain great joy in life. The Lord explained this principle when he explained the outcome of those who have lost everything for his sake.

For every possible suffering in life there exists an outcome much greater than the price. If you believe Jesus, you can have peace so immense that you can be free from fear and anxiety, in spite of anything the world can do to you.

Hope in God is always possible, no matter how dark your situation may be. The Lord is the light, “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:5) The light shines in all things and through all things, even if all things are not aware of it.

This description is not figurative. You may feel like you are drowning in darkness, but in reality you are always surrounded by incomprehensible amounts of light.

You can find immense joy in anything, anyone, and any situation if you trust God enough to endure the specific set of lessons required to unlock your ability to perceive and comprehend the light and darkness in it.

When we are surrounded by darkness, we ought to hope for equal and opposite joy. We ought to realize that, although the full details of how it will happen and of what it consists lie outside our present understanding, we will indeed encounter joy that surpasses all the pain and suffering we have experienced.

Not only is God just, he is not arbitrary. Everything you endure is limited to exactly what is necessary in order for you to gain the equal and opposite. “But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.” (2 Nephi 2:24)

God ensures that “...all things wherewith you have been afflicted shall work together for your good, and to my name’s glory...” (D&C 98:3)

These are not trivial concepts. They are powerful, and embracing them will strengthen you against any trial in life and beyond.

For instance, Stephen had enough peace while being stoned to death that he prayed for his assailants. Isaiah was able to be sawn in half without doubting his mission and purpose.

The Lord himself was focused enough to arrange for the care of his mother, address the needs of a man crucified with him, and pray for the soldiers who nailed him to the cross, all while suffering maximal physical and unimaginable spiritual affliction on the cross.

Tough times abound, and while you are in them, they are allencompassing. In order to overcome these tough times, it becomes necessary to realize and trust in the fact that tough times never last forever and always yield results that are worth the pain.

There exist many situations here so brutal that the only way you can endure them is by trusting that God would only subject you to them for your benefit.

There exist many situations here so intense that the only way you can make it through them is by trusting that God will always make everything work out for your benefit.

There exist many situations here so murky in purpose that trust in the power and knowledge of God is the only way to see them as precisely engineered circumstances for your benefit.

This perspective is empowering.

No one looks at a marvelous building and imagines the extensiveness of the scaffolds used during construction. After trials have served their purpose, they go away. When they do, you retain everything you have learned and receive everything you are now prepared for.

The almost universal reaction to afflictions is to avoid them rather than learn what is revealed through them. This is why most people who suffer awful tragedies never reach the point where they see the value in their experience. Instead, by seeking to avoid what the experience reveals about life, about people, and about themselves, they ensure that their only protection against what they lack is their ability to forget the situation. Only by learning the lessons exposed by the experience can you come to the point where you truly overcome it and benefit from it.

When you cast metal, you make a mold out of sand. Mold making can take a long time if it is an intricate design. Once the mold is made, you pour in the molten metal. Then you break the mold apart and blow away the sand, and all that is left is the metal object. It was formed by the shape of the sand, but after you are done, all the sand goes away.

This is how tough times are in life—provided, of course, that you learn what they are meant to teach you. Once you've learned what they are trying to teach you, the sand blows away and you are left with the prize, which is the joy available to all those who know that thing.

The positive benefits of what we suffer extend far beyond the immediate effects. Suffering makes joyous moments prolonged and much deeper. By teaching us what we lack, it helps us appreciate what has value, and we retain that valuation long after the suffering ends.

Our transient memories shorten the duration of the benefits of contrast provided by cycles of suffering and joy.

Imagine if, after a workout, the endorphin rush never faded. When you die, you will have a perfect memory of what it was like to go through what you did. You get to keep the gratitude of it being over. You will retain the benefits of contrast. To an extent, you can learn to feel this way in life as well (as will be covered in the chapter “All things before you continually”).

God is both the happiest and saddest being. Those who embrace all that God has to give do indeed encounter a state of never-ending happiness.

And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it. (Mosiah 2:41)

However, they also encounter massive afflictions and trials. Their destiny, if they manage to become heirs of God, is to experience the depth of both the joy he experiences and the sorrow he experiences.

Consideration of this fact yields several conclusions: 1) it is possible to have maximal happiness in spite of the presence of any degree of sadness; and 2) tools exist that make it possible to do so.

Joy and sorrow are not mutually exclusive.

Joy and sorrow exist in equal and opposite intensities.

Everything in life has a price. The price is always denominated in the opposite of what we seek. The way these things work is that the more of something you want, the more of its opposite you must endure. Conversely, the more you are willing to endure something negative, the more of its opposite you will acquire. This works with discomfort and comfort, toil and satisfaction, darkness and light, sorrow and joy, stress and peace, sadness and happiness, pain and pleasure, and loneliness and belonging.

It turns out that no matter what degree of sorrow you’ve experienced in life, there is a lot more out there you are not yet aware of. It is fair if that terrifies you, but realize that these things are merely the unavoidable price of things of equal and opposite goodness. All things work in terms of opposites: “...what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain...” (Alma 36:20)

If you want to receive all things, you must first suffer all things.

Finding greater joy is like swinging a pendulum. You increase in joy by first being willing to suffer. This willingness to suffer doesn’t require you to invent ways to suffer. Rather, it is your subjection to the unending process of self-scrutiny and learning. You will gain a greater awareness of what is evil in this world—including in yourself—and you will have opportunities to fight against it: by changing how you are and by acting in spite of the way the world is.

The absence of sorrow is not joy. The pathway to greater joy always includes greater suffering, at least initially.

Every portion of awareness consists of increased evil and suffering, and only through trusting God can you endure it sufficiently to obtain the equal and opposite good and joy that it also entails.

This is a process. You have to trust in God enough to subject yourself to evil and suffering you do not yet understand; then you can grow to understand it, and reap the joy that comes in equal and opposite proportion. First, you learn the depth of evil by experiencing it. Second, you experience even greater sorrow and pain by becoming aware of the existence of the good and joy commensurate with the evil and sorrow you’ve experienced, without actually experiencing it yet. Third, you finally obtain the joy you are now prepared for, because you have a knowledge of what it is like not to have it, what the opposite is, and you can comprehend and appreciate it.

This process is always the same. It involves a great deal of suffering on our part. However, this suffering is the only way we can, through the justice of God, encounter the great blessings he anxiously awaits to give us. Like releasing the pressure on a pressure cooker before the meal is cooked, if we exit early, all our suffering will be in vain.

There are two ways to minimize pain in life. The first way is to actively try to avoid it. Almost everyone will say that they are interested in finding greater joy, but almost no one will do what brings it when given the chance. Those who are at least willing to entertain the idea, for the most part, are actually just interested in minimizing the pain they are experiencing in life.

Some suffering is truly avoidable and unbeneficial. Avoidable pain and sorrow are caused by living contrary to the path of happiness, which can happen in one of two ways: 1) you do not know the way or 2) you don’t walk in the way even though you’ve been shown it.

Avoidable pain is a signal that there is something more to learn about the situation causing you pain. If you are wise, you will either use that pain to motivate you to search for what you lack or to accrue evidence for more carefully living up to what you know.

We should not pray to have God remove trials from us. Instead, we should reconcile ourselves to God's will and ask him to bless us with the knowledge we need to overcome our trials.

Some sorrow is unavoidable, but beneficial, and seeking to avoid it will only cause you and others more pain.

Unavoidable and beneficial sorrow is typically tied to perceived value. We can only derive joy from what we value. Sometimes, the only way to obtain an actual valuation of something is to experience its opposite.

Realize that everything you unavoidably suffer is a necessary precondition to receive the equal and opposite good that you likewise do not yet know. Before you know great sorrow, you can’t really know great joy. How can you ever be maximally grateful while you remain unaware of just how bad things can be?

You can try to avoid pain by detaching from people and situations, from intentionally diminishing your needs and feelings, or by masking your pain with things that distract you from it. Although each of these tactics might reduce pain caused by a specific thing, they will actually increase the amount of pain you suffer because they will fail to address the underlying problem while causing other additional problems.

God turns up the affliction and temptation knobs as fast as we can handle them. As we increase in favor with God, he allows us to experience more and greater affliction. Consider the patriarchs and other righteous people. Without fail, those who were promised eternal life by God were exposed to miserable hardships. These men and women lived out lonely lives filled with suffering. Yet, Jesus approached near unto them in accordance with their sufferings.

God only withholds trials from those who have demonstrated their inability to deal with them. Instead of rejoicing when times are easy, we ought to take careful stock of our lives.

The second way to minimize pain in life is to learn and grow from it. Learning requires suffering.

The gospel is not the path to avoid suffering. It is the path of maximized joy, not minimized suffering.

There is a popular yet erroneous belief that because of Jesus’ life and death, we don’t have to suffer. The Lord’s sacrifice does not magically remove suffering. Rather, his purpose was to forgive previous sins and provide a path to obtaining and obeying his teachings.

The Lord’s life and death don’t magically remove your suffering. But it does provide a path to avoid the suffering that is due to suboptimal behavior and to make unavoidable suffering worthwhile.

The gospel frees you from the portion of sorrow you bring through your own mistakes by teaching you better ways to live, but the other portion of sorrow—the part caused by other people—actually gets worse the more understanding you have, not better. The gospel does not free you from all sorrow; it makes the sorrow worth it.

We are told that “...men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25), not “men are, that they might avoid pain.” You can't improve your situation without first experiencing the discomfort of recognizing the reality of your situation, and that includes all the ugly parts. Suffering can come from several sources.

Consequences from acting contrary to joy, truth, or God. Whether you seek it or not, you will be ever-exposed to a greater share of the consequences of your actions. God does this to help you better understand the path to the abundant life. Pain from things done to you. This increases the more you serve God because the more you serve him, the more frequently and intensely people will persecute you. Charity for others mitigates this type of suffering. The revelation of the unknown. This increases with awareness, but can go away completely through trust in God. Everything he does is for the benefit of the world. All things work for good to those who love God. Vicarious suffering through empathy for those who act contrary to joy. Inasmuch as you care about other people, you will experience their pain as if it were your own. This can exceed their present pain to the degree that you comprehend consequences of their action or inaction that they do not. This increases with your growth.

The sources of suffering suggest that, rather than avoiding greater suffering, we ought to embrace learning and all the suffering that must occur to enable it.

Suffering empowers us to experience heightened joy. Sorrowful moments grow our purpose. With a stronger, better purpose, we can withstand more intense sorrow. With a strong enough why, you can endure any what.

You have to actually comprehend the magnitude of good and evil. Whether you choose to or not, you will eventually be exposed to everything, anyway: “we shall have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt, and our uncleanness, and our nakedness.” (2 Nephi 9:14) The choice is not whether it will be revealed, but whether you will seek to learn it now— when there is still benefit in doing so—or later, when you no longer have the opportunity to obtain the tools to have maximal joy in spite of your knowledge.

Maximal joy is perhaps the rarest thing in life. One reason for this is that it is encountered in the deepest sorrow. Don’t fear the revelation of greater sorrow. The only way to approach maximal joy is through great suffering.

The joy you find in life will be determined by how much sorrow you are willing to walk through first. When you place a limit on how much you are willing to suffer, you will always limit how much joy you can receive. You have to suffer everything there is to suffer before you can experience all available joy. If we want to have more joy, we ought to expect things to get worse and worse.

Some people possess tools that are adequate to contend with the degree of sorrow they are aware of. This doesn’t mean there doesn’t exist sorrow beyond the strength of their current tools. In order to contend with all of the negative things possible in life, you need all of the tools that are available in this life. You can’t overcome what you have not yet experienced. You must descend below all things in order to ascend above all things.

If a child has the fortune to be born into a stable family, they will grow into a young adult largely insulated from the chaos of life. Part of adulthood is coming into unchaperoned life.

Adults do not have walls to protect them from the occasional but often intense exposures to what this world is capable of doing. When a person is hit with the first main crisis of their lives, they undergo a descent into degrees of sorrow of which they were perhaps not previously aware. Some never come out of it, and others escape it through the same seemingly random events that got them there. Some few actually gain an awareness of what they previously lacked, obtaining the tools required to overcome the thing that initially overcame them. These people end the experience having ascended to greater joy than they had prior to the decent into greater sorrow.

Descent can consist of many different things. Typically, it includes the revelation of a greater degree of reality beyond your previous awareness.

If you want something better than what you have, the only way to get it is for the Lord to show you that what you have isn’t as good as you thought—either by exposing you to something better or by showing you something worse about what you thought was good.

You are free to embrace what you have been shown and actively seek to incorporate what you have learned into your life, or you can attempt to flee from it.

Fleeing from increased awareness may free you from thinking about reality, but it will also free you from any chance you have of improving your outcome. Also, turning from increased understanding won’t free you from the consequences of your understanding. Falling doesn’t hurt less if you don’t realize you are falling, but realizing you are falling may give you an opportunity to stop before you hit the ground.

To maximize the amount of joy you obtain in this life, it is necessary not only to recognize the pattern of descent and ascent, but to realize that it is a cycle, and you can make as many rounds upward as you choose to.

The Lord taught that while some descent arcs come whether we seek them or not (see Matthew 5:45), we can opt to participate in more by choosing to be teachable: “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 14:11) Teachability is a factor of how honest we are about life, others, and ourselves, as well as a realistic view of how little we know.

Did Jesus experience descent? Of course he did. He had to live through the successive revelation of the impermanence and limitations of everything he valued in life, until all that was left was the goodness of the Father. Meanwhile, what he understood of the goodness of the Father increased line upon line.

Descent cycles help us improve. Pause for a moment and consider the last time you were in a great deal of pain. The pain need not be physical— emotional pain is at least as effective. How close were you to God before the onset of that pain? And during? How willing were you to find something better before? During?

While we are in a descent arc, it is much easier to seek and apply what is needed to improve. We are more willing to ask: What am I lacking that this shows me? What am I going to do about it? What is the principle that conquers this, either in removing the effect of some previously unseen cause, or in providing me understanding to allow me to experience joy in spite of this pain, or in helping me appreciate what I previously took for granted?

It is possible to be just as pliable in an ascent arc. There are those who can cry out to God with just as much earnestness outside of suffering as in it, but for most of us, this is beyond our current capability.

Suffering shows you the limit of your trust in God. Even Jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered: “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;” (Hebrews 5:8)

Suffering provides you the opportunity to acquire the next level of trust in God.

The Lord said.

Branches are living. They are connected, through other people or directly, to the true vine, Jesus Christ. His light and truth flows through them.

To be clean is to be reconciled to the truth you have received already, or to be living up to everything your conscience tells you.

He will teach you more, improving the capacity of your conscience by increasing what you understand and changing the way you see things. The more branches you grow, the more knowledge you have, the more fruits you have the capacity to bear.

There is a difference between branches and fruit. There are things in your life right now that you see as branches that are actually fruits, and there are things in your life that you see as fruits that are actually branches.

Fruits are terminal. They appear at the end of branches. They are not connected to anything else. They grow from blossoms to buds to fruit, ripen, then are enjoyed and perish or rot and perish, but either way they perish.

Fruits only grow on young branches. Choosing to stop growing means choosing to end your fruiting. You can stop with one little stub of a branch, or you can grow into a massive cluster of fruiting branches.

Fruit can be very enjoyable when it is ripe, but it will always, in the end, be "purged," or taken away. It is in the sustaining of the branch, and not the preservation of the fruit, that fruit will continue to be available. It won’t be the same fruit, but it will be more fruit. It is taken away by increased awareness that shows it isn't what you thought, that it changed, or that there is something much better.

Chapter 4: Overcome all things

...be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

Most people seem to think that happiness comes from without. As long as your happiness is a product of the environment you find yourself in, you are a prisoner to things outside of your control. The goal of our existence is to gain the tools we need to become actors on our environment, and not subjects to it; to reach the point where our happiness is no longer a function of what happens to us, but rather emanates from inside of us independent of what happens to us.

The Lord publicly read this scripture to announce the beginning of his earthly mission.

God wills “to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from confinement and from prison those who sit in darkness.” (Isaiah 42:7, Gileadi Translation)

Our incremental but deliberate march towards a more effectual understanding of reality and how to interact with it is the path to greater joy and happiness.

As you acquire God’s knowledge, you will learn how to break free of any and all bondage you find yourself in. No matter how thick the chains that may bind you, Jesus has all the power and knowledge necessary to not only free you from them, but to make you stronger as a result of your experience with them.

Obtaining the tools that provide you with joy and gaining power over the things that presently deprive you of joy is called overcoming all things. To overcome all things is to have maximal joy and happiness in spite of a full awareness of the depths of reality. It is to have the understanding, actions, beliefs, and feelings sufficient to have great joy and happiness in spite of anything that has happened, will happen, or could happen to you in this life.

The Lord has overcome all things. He said: “...I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) He promises that inasmuch as we seek and follow him, we will do the same: “He that is faithful and endureth shall overcome the world.” (D&C 63:47) Jesus overcame all things and extends to you the opportunity to do the same as you become one with him through learning all he knows and becoming all he is.

The Lord created this world and all things that are on it. He is intimately aware of all the crosses that exist here that we must carry, and he has commanded us not to shy away from those burdens. But he has not left us alone. With the crosses of mortality he has also provided the path where we, like him, can attain both great purpose in the midst of our suffering and unimaginable joy as a result of it. As Christ was resurrected to glory and life through his cross, we can encounter glory and life through ours if we learn from him how this is done.

Information is the tool through which the Lord teaches us the understanding, actions, beliefs, and feelings sufficient to have great joy and happiness in spite of anything that has happened, will happen, or could happen to us in this life. The Lord imparts information to us through his word. A simplistic view would consider his word to mean scripture. It is much more than that.

The Lord’s word is truth, and truth is the Lord’s word, because all truth comes from him. It is not limited to what is found in scripture, but also includes—for the individual—the sum total of everything manifested in one’s conscience. It includes all observations, introspections, and critical thoughts about reality. The Lord’s word is one’s sincere idea of what is good and what is bad, what is functional and what is not, what is pragmatic and what is idealistic, and so on.

Clearly, one’s position in these things will differ from another’s based on their effort, capacity, and experience. The degree to which an individual’s understanding approaches the Lord’s is the degree to which they have overcome all things. To have a fullness of joy, one must approach the understanding of God himself.

It is the truth that makes us free. Obtaining and applying successively more information makes you free.

We suffer and are imprisoned by lack of information. God sends information to teach us how to overcome what besets us.

This information is found in God’s word revealed as you live through life’s circumstances.

It is the truth that provides the tools to overcome all things. The Lord makes it possible for you to overcome things not by taking them away but by giving you the understanding, beliefs, and desires you currently lack that are necessary to overcome those things.

Overcoming all things is not a magical gift. It is a mechanical relationship between cause and effect. While other things can overcome you, or inhibit your joy and happiness, you still lack understanding that is available to you. It is through showing you what you lack that God guides you in obtaining all understanding.

The Lord inspired Isaiah to write the following promise to all those who follow him.

Here the Lord explains both that all who seek and follow him have the promise of overcoming any challenge and that the means of this is to learn from him how to live.

God’s word is the only way that all things can be overcome. It is the only foundation that endures in spite of everything that can happen to you in this world.

More accurately, God’s word is the very set of things that endure in spite of everything that can happen to you in this world.

Remember that “his word” is not limited to spiritual subjects. The Lord created the earth and all things upon it. He knows better than anyone how things work—all things, including what we consider to be temporal. His way of seeing things—all things—is the best way to see things in terms of maximizing outcomes for our good. This is as true for things we consider deep and spiritual as it is for things we consider shallow and mundane, and all things in between.

The relationship between cause and effect is not always obvious in this life. In fact, one could make a case that most often, it is hidden from us. This is not, as it may seem, an obstacle to our growth, but rather a gift that protects us from bearing the full weight of reality before we have the tools necessary to bear it.

As you wend through life, you encounter pain. Much of our suffering in life comes as the result of our understanding, actions, beliefs, and feelings. The pain you encounter is typically a signal that there is some principle, belief, or action you or someone else lacks. In other words, pain is typically an invitation for improvement.

From time to time, the Lord exposes us to the consequences of our present understanding, actions, beliefs, and feelings in order to reveal to us the limits of our present choices and perspectives. In scripture, this is called being chastened by the Lord.

The Lord’s chastening is anything but the arbitrary punishment some think it is. God is not capricious. He works only through cause and effect, and only for our benefit.

The Lord’s chastening is nothing more nor less than his teaching us more about cause and effect. He improves our perception of reality by giving us greater exposure to cause and effect, and in so doing gives us more tools to improve ourselves and obtain greater happiness and joy. His chastening is a gift, not a punishment.

Not everyone will derive the same amount of improvement from the same stimulus. Some will not notice the improvement opportunity at all. Of the rest, some will derive a little improvement, some a lot, and some few will derive an amazing amount of improvement, all from the same stimulus.

How often and how effectively you learn from the pain from your failings and the failings of others will determine the amount of joy you obtain. How much you learn from an improvement opportunity will be dictated by your desire to improve and your efforts to do so.

Increased exposure to the consequences of our actions is necessary for us to improve and receive greater joy. Left in a state of insulation from consequences, we would never learn.

When you feel overcome by anything in life, you can rest assured that God is showing you the path to come to him and learn the lessons required to overcome that thing that is currently overcoming you.

The Lord teaches us what we lack to prepare us with what is required to live a life of greater happiness and joy. While the description of this process is always couched in scriptural jargon, the process of successive revelation of more information to enable us to live in greater joy is clearly laid out all through the scriptures. For example.

The Lord’s chastening can help us understand the true value of things. It is only through suffering that we can gain appreciation for what is good. The Lord said to Adam “...they taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good.” (Moses 6:55) Wise Solomon wrote: “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.” (Ecclesiastes 7:3)

The Lord’s chastening can help us to have a clearer and more correct view of cause and effect (see the section titled “The Lord will strengthen you to endure the fire”).

The Lord’s chastening can improve our understanding of what is good and what is bad.

The Lord’s chastening can show us what is lasting and what is fleeting (see the section titled “Identifying the things that are fleeting”).

The Lord’s chastening can show us what has power over us. Paul said: “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” (1 Corinthians 6:12) We can learn who and what we rely on when they or it is removed. We can learn what has power over us by noting what prevents us from reconciling ourselves to what we know is right.

The Lord’s chastening gives us tools to overcome all things.

The Lord will only ever expose us to situations he also provides us access to the tool to overcome.

This promise requires our seeking and obeying any new truth he offers us directly or through others.

Suffering for the sake of learning is the one and only way to improve, because it is the only way we can break through the limitations of our own understanding and perceptions. Suffering is how the Lord himself overcame the world. He learned “obedience by the things which he suffered;” (Hebrews 5:8) We must as well: “And my people must needs be chastened until they learn obedience, if it must needs be, by the things which they suffer.” (D&C 105:6)

It is possible to get to the point where suffering no longer holds anything more to teach you. The Lord reached this point through his mortal life, and we must as well. You overcome the world to the extent that you become like him.

While reaching this point does not mean you won’t suffer, it does mean that you will be free from suffering from negative consequences of your choices. This is significant because the remaining suffering—due to the choices of others—can be attenuated through adopting the idea that you can help them through enduring the consequences of their actions.

So much disappointment in life is due to the realization that you didn’t have what you thought you had, or that what you thought was good turned out to be anything but. This type of suffering is completely due to ignorance of things as they really are.

It is possible to get to the point that you have winnowed all things in your life that can’t endure.

The Lord will teach us what is lasting and what is fleeting. His teachings establish us on a foundation of joy and happiness that can’t be shaken or removed.

One way he shows us the path to enduring happiness is by exposing us to the storms that reveal the failure points of what we currently possess or practice.

Only by understanding the limits of our current circumstances can we seek, apply, and appreciate something better.

God can give you peace in one of two ways. The way most know of and seek is the external alleviation of discomfort. God can relieve you of your discomfort in the same way someone can hug you when you are feeling bad. It makes you feel better, but it doesn’t address what is actually causing you pain. The better way God can give you peace is through showing you how to overcome what is depriving you of it.

Increased exposure to consequences is like a farmer inspecting his chicken coop and finding where a predator has been burrowing under the fence. If he routinely inspects the coop and fills all new holes with concrete, he will have an ever-stronger defense against anything that will harm his chickens. Rather than treat the symptoms of the problem by replacing chickens, the farmer addresses the cause of the problem by improving the defenses of the coop. He does this because he knows that he can’t control the fact that the predators exist; he can only develop a coop that is stronger than they are.

So it is with life. You can’t avoid all the harmful things in life. No matter how much you hide, they will find you and steal your joy unless and until you become stronger than they are.

The Lord said that the truth will enable us to “endure the fire”.

Gold is refined not by taking it out of the fire, but by leaving it in the fire long enough for all impurities to be burned away.

Reality—the full range of cause and effect—is the fire that burns out our impurities. God shows us more of reality by allowing us to suffer consequences for our imperfect actions or through experiencing the consequences of the imperfections of others so that we can learn more about reality and change the way we think, feel, and act in order to be capable of feeling the same or greater joy than we did before, in spite of knowledge of greater suffering or evil.

The way to an abundant life has already been figured out. It need not be invented, only discovered.

The majority of man’s suffering comes from his disobedience to God’s law, known and unknown. Man is his own tormentor: “His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.” (Proverbs 5:22) Alleviation of this suffering comes through obtaining a greater understanding of God’s truth: “For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life:” (Proverbs 6:23) The remainder of our suffering comes from the folly of others, most of which can be overcome through obtaining sufficiently strong principles.

The failure point in your procession to joy is not an inability to find it, but an unwillingness to heed the guideposts all around you. Life shouts the way, but few people recognize, listen to, and rejoice in the guidance provided.

The conversion of Paul the apostle provides a poignant example of the appropriate intensity with which we ought to react to new truth when it is offered to us.

Note how immediately, openly, and intensely Paul reacted to each new revelation from God. When confronted by Jesus, he immediately asked who he was. Upon learning, he immediately and totally changed his understanding, beliefs, and desires, asking “what should I do?” Then he immediately did what he was told. Jesus, who had been his mortal enemy the day before, was now his master. In the three days he languished without sight, he opted not to eat or drink. He took what had happened to him as seriously as is possible. Immediately after being healed, he received baptism as well. Immediately thereafter, he preached Jesus with as much zeal as he had previously persecuted him.

Paul illustrates the level of intensity required to get wisdom with all your getting.

Most people have some degree of happiness in this life. However, most honest people can identify a list of things that could cause them to lose the joy they possess. Perhaps they console themselves by imagining that those things are unlikely. They may see their occurrence as bad luck. But can you ever truly be happy if your happiness is based on a roll of the dice? Can you really be happy if you aren’t yet capable of overcoming all things present in life?

Happiness the world offers is fleeting. It can't endure a greater awareness of the sorrow and evil that exists in this world.

How permanent is the happiness you feel? How easily could it be stolen from you?

Those who dwell on the default aims of life will, sooner or later, find themselves robbed of what they had placed value in and subsequently flooded with mental anguish and a lack of meaning.

If your joy is derived from anything false or temporary it will be shaken and destroyed. In this, you have no choice. Your choice is whether that shaking comes as a result of reality in the form of a nasty surprise at a time that might be too late to change it, or whether you will seek out God to shake and destroy it through revealing greater truth to you.

When you encounter unhappiness or your joy is stolen from you, consider it an invitation from a loving God to obtain what you lack; to learn the principles that you currently do not have that will empower you to feel greater and more enduring joy.

You can get to the point where nothing that could possibly happen in this life can cause you to trust God less than perfectly and unconditionally; where nothing can rob you of the joy you feel. It is possible to reach a point where nothing you could think of, feel, or experience can take your joy from you.

God is the happiest being because he has the tools to maintain greater joy in the face of greater suffering than anyone else. The gospel is the means he uses to provide these tools to you.

Discover the limits of your present joy, and seek for improved sources of joy both in intensity and also duration. Find joy that does not perish, is not fleeting, and that can withstand all things present on this earth.

Chapter 5: Peace, not as the world gives

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:27)

Unshakable peace is a goal both almost universally sought and almost universally not found. Part of its elusiveness stems from a misunderstanding of what it comes from and how it works.

The Lord said his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

The more aware you are of how things really are, the less likely you are to describe anything about reality as easy or light.

The key to understanding the apparent contradiction between what the Lord promised and what experience suggests is to understand that the peace the Lord offers is not what we think of when we hear “peace.”

The Lord said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:27)

The type of so-called peace offered by the world is extrinsic. It is found in things that come from without; what the scriptures call carnal security: the apparent absence of negative circumstances. Note the key elements of this definition: apparent absence is not the same as actual absence. So many of the things that have power to shake us from our peace are everpresent in this world. From one moment to the next, the most unlikely disaster can strike. This is in addition to the many less-than-disaster events that can still be quite disastrous.

The so-called peace offered by the world is not the real thing. It is a precursor, an invitation to seek and find the real thing.

While worldly peace is fleeting, fragile, and almost totally outside of your control, God’s peace is impenetrable, inalterable, and completely within your control.

We can be at peace the same way the earth is at peace in spite of the fact that it is constantly orbiting the sun, and despite the fact that the sun and all its planets are barreling through space. The sun’s heliosphere creates a bubble that pushes back the intergalactic radiation, which is like a fire. It creates ordered, mostly repetitive paths for the planets to traverse. It reduces the seemingly limitless chaos of space into an ordered system.

In a similar way, the Lord provides us with controlled exposure to the chaos of life. He has overcome all things. As we turn to him, we turn away from unfettered exposure to the chaos and into a guided experience whose outcome is for us to do the same.

Baptism is an illustration of the transition from unfettered exposure to chaos into the guided mentorship of Jesus Christ. The baptismal applicant responds to some limited exposure to the chaos possible in this world by aligning themselves with what little they know about God. As part of this, they seek a representative of Jesus Christ to receive the ordinance of baptism. The person who represents Jesus Christ immerses the applicant completely in the waters of chaos. While held in the protective embrace of the representative, the applicant is made aware of a limitless amount of chaos, but only for the moment it takes to be completely immersed in the water. After being pulled up from the water, the person is qualified to receive the Holy Ghost as long as they completely submit to Jesus Christ as their master. The Holy Ghost guides the baptized person through ever-increasing quantities of chaos, in an intentional, protected, personalized tour of the chaos that occurs as fast and for as long as the person is willing to learn.

The Lord is completely aware of the chaos we have only tasted. He dwells in this chaos, protected only by the principles he chooses to live by. The peace he has is available to us: first through trusting in his ability to filter our experiences down to only what benefits us so long as we obey and seek him fully, and second through tutoring us in his character so that we gain the power to overcome all things just as he has. Our access to both of these types of peace comes through our trust in him.

The world finds security in carnal things—temporal situations that are temporary, unreliable, and of low relative value compared to the peace that God offers.

Peace in the world is measured by your goods or tangible situation. If you have lots of money, you feel secure. This is how the world gives peace, and it is completely worthless. Who your friends are, how much money you have, or whether your house is paid off will not protect you from bad things that can happen. The better your temporal situation, the more you have to lose. Worldly peace costs mental peace, and it seems like you can't have both at the same time.

When you realize the fleeting nature of all things here, you cease to seek or find peace in them. Enduring peace comes only from God.

The Lord Jesus said he gives peace, but a different kind of peace than the world purports to give. God's peace is not like what the world calls peace. It is not an externally induced calm or comfort. God’s peace, in contrast, is intrinsic. It comes from inside, and the more of it you have, the harder it is for anything outside of you to affect you.

God's peace has absolutely nothing to do with your temporal situation. You can have the Lord’s peace even when everything in this world seems to be going wrong.

The Lord’s peace can be present in spite of awful external circumstances.

King David was able to have tremendous peace in spite of awful situations that included being hunted for his life, being persecuted by those he had loved at great sacrifice, and living in conditions far poorer than his righteousness merited.

He further proclaimed.

This was not figurative—David’s life was indeed sought by tens of thousands of people on more than one occasion. Yet he maintained tremendous peace.

The Lord’s peace has nothing to do with what things might be happening in your life, or what others are doing. It has everything to do with your relationship with and trust in God.

Stephen had perfect peace when being stoned to death because he trusted in God.

He was not alone in this. Paul was joyful in spite of imprisonment, beating, shipwrecks, and a death sentence.

Jeremiah had perfect peace, even when he couldn’t find anyone to listen to his message, which he preached at peril of his life. He still had peace, even when imprisoned in a cesspool.

Peter had perfect peace even when being crucified. Isaiah had perfect peace even while being sawn in half. Countless disciples of Christ had peace while being burned at the stake.

In every case, these people maintained untouchable peace because of their relationship with God. They knew him. They spoke with him. They knew from him their standing with him. They had no doubts as to their eternal posture with God. They did not merely believe that they were in good standing with God, they knew it.

Jesus had peace even when he was surrounded by fools, cowards, betrayers, and those who wanted to kill him. He did not get frustrated when his mission was complicated by the actions (or inactions) of others. He knew that if he was sincerely living up to what he knew was right in all things, he would please the Father, and that was all that mattered to him. His peace came from being able to say: “...the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.” (John 8:29)

The world can’t break God’s promise of peace to those who love him. The Psalmist wrote that “...the Lord will bless his people with peace.” (Psalm 29:11) Paul wrote.

This world is full of turbulence, and it will get worse. Do not buy into any illusion of carnal security. Do not sell your birthright for a bowl of porridge. The only safety is in God's will and word.

You receive the Lord’s peace as you have trust in him. Trusting in him means much more than merely wishing for peace. It requires actually believing everything he says and actually doing what he tells you. Trust in him means to seek him, learn from him, and act according to everything you learn. Or, as the Psalmist put it: “Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord.” (Psalm 4:5) When you really trust God, even your feelings align with what he wants. Your heart becomes one with his.

God’s peace comes from a) knowing God's will for you, b) doing it without exception, and c) knowing his character sufficiently to believe his promises to you. When these qualities are present, you will have the peace that pervades the hearts and minds of all those that love God, and nothing in this world will be able to cause you to deviate from emulating God's character in yourself. No matter what hell you are put into, you will be in heaven. No one and nothing can take that away—only you can, through turning away from or distrusting God.

All of the manifold blessings from God come in a simple choice to trust him. That choice is yours to make.

A significant amount of peace that God offers is found in his promises. No matter how bleak the situation may seem, God’s promises remain unalterable: “Who am I, saith the Lord, that have promised and have not fulfilled?” (D&C 58:31)

God’s promises will be fulfilled to the letter, every time, no matter what anyone else says or does, and no matter how hopeless a situation may seem.

Because of his power and reliability, God’s promises are the greatest source of peace available. They are a strong support in times of trouble, especially when joy is not readily apparent, because they can be leaned on to empower you to endure all things.

Abraham leaned on God’s promises, and because of it derived great strength and peace in spite of the fact that he still lacked a son in old age.

Paul leaned on God’s promises, and was able to not only be of good cheer himself, but to encourage others to do the same in spite of a terrifying shipwreck and subsequent struggle to stay alive.

It is easy to dismiss Paul and Abraham as exceptional, suggesting that God’s promises are out of reach for so-called “normal people.” However, God is no respecter of persons. He does not vary.

There exist situations in life that are too hard to endure without trust in God. “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13) Those without promises from God will fail to obey him in all things and in all situations. Their trust in him will be overcome by the difficulty of the situation. Therefore, it is critical to obtain promises from God.

The good news is that these promises abound. The scriptures are full of them. But do these promises apply to anyone?

God is perfectly fair and consistent. He provides the same blessings to anyone willing to fulfill their preconditions.

God’s promises are merely the explicit statement of the relationships of cause and effect of which he is aware. Therefore, all you need to do to receive his promises is the same thing anyone else did to receive them. The receipt of God’s promises—and therefore of God’s peace—is not a factor of obtaining arbitrary favor with God, but of seeking out the conditions of the promises, and following them. God’s promises are available to all those who love God, seek him, and obey him in spite of opposition: “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” (Hebrews 10:36)

God’s peace requires adhering to your sincere understanding of his character in your actions, beliefs, and feelings. His promises require that we conform to the conditions appointed: “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.” (D&C 82:10) In order to receive his promises, you must actually do what he says.

The greatest of God’s promises is the gift of eternal life, which is the promise of all he has to give. Those who possess this promise, available to all who love and obey him, will have strength to overcome all things in life and obtain all joy.

There is no earthly power that can stand against God's will and word. As you follow him, you will see situations as impossible as the Israelites’ escape from Egypt, and you will see God’s promises cut right through them. The key to injecting this power into your life is to keep all of God's commandments, to seek and yield to his will in all things.

A tremendous source of peace for the faithful is the knowledge that anything that happens to them is precisely arranged by an all-knowing, allloving God to lead them to the greatest possible joy: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) God does “all things...for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:15)

At times it might puzzle you to wonder how what you are going through is for your good. Trust God. He “...knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it.” (2 Nephi 9:20) Furthermore.

Even if it doesn’t make sense to you, he knows how it will work for your good.

The Lord’s promise to care for those who seek, obey, and love him is easy to explain, but can be difficult to believe, particularly when surrounded by the afflictions existing in this world.

It is easier to trust God when we realize that we really have no clue just how good the things he has prepared for those who love him are: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9) If we can’t even imagine what good God has prepared for us, how can we assume we know the details of how to get there? The only way to get there is to trust God unconditionally.

If you love and obey God, you have every reason to believe that no matter how bad your situation may seem, it is the shortest possible path to greater joy: “All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.” (Psalm 25:10) Following the path he provides you will lead you to the greatest joy you can experience, both here and hereafter.

Everything that happens to you is for your good if you love and obey God, and that promise can bring you great peace.

If you believe and trust in God, you will be freed from fear. While any fear persists in you, you can be assured that you still need to learn to trust God to a greater degree. The key to gaining more trust in him is to learn more about his love for you.

The scriptures are overflowing with the promise that those who trust in God and obey him will be in his all-powerful care.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7)1.

The Lord has repeatedly promised that whoever obeys him will be kept in his way: “...inasmuch as you keep my sayings you shall not be confounded in this world, nor in the world to come.” (D&C 93:52) For example, he has said that.

Here, what seems like a promise to a specific individual is actually, on a careful reading, explicitly offered to all who serve the Lord and who live what he teaches them.

The Lord taught that.

He continued that we ought to lean into the promise that his purposes can’t be frustrated.

And why shouldn’t you trust that God can accomplish anything he wills? After all, he “knoweth all things.” (2 Nephi 2:24)

Chapter 6: With God, all things are possible

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose... (2 Nephi 2:27)

Life is full of disappointments. Don’t misinterpret these to mean that great things aren’t possible. Disappointments don’t indicate that your desires were false or unachievable. They only indicate you haven’t yet discovered what it takes to find the real, enduring object of your desire.

Even your greatest dreams are less than what God desires to grant you. Think of the greatest outcomes you could ever imagine for yourself in life. Now, realize that if you seek God with all your might, mind, and strength, what he will lead you to is unequivocally better than that.

Paul said.

If you limit your dreams, you will unavoidably limit your actions. Without great hope in the future, you won’t be willing to do what it takes to obtain the best life you could otherwise have.

Don’t be afraid to dream. God will give you far more and far better than you can imagine if you will trust in him and follow him with full purpose of heart.

If you can convince yourself to dare to dream, the next step is actively thinking about what it might take to obtain what you seek. If you stop short by doing less than what you pictured, you already have the reward you are willing to receive.

To obtain what you seek, you must find and walk the path God has appointed for it.

A path is what leads to an outcome. An outcome is what happens as a result of traversing the path that leads to it. Typically, choosing an outcome will dictate the path you must traverse to arrive there.

Choosing a path only leads to the desired outcome when you know how to get there. This requires a perfect knowledge of the relationship between cause and effect under those circumstances, which hardly anyone has for hardly anything. Because of this, you can pick the outcome or the path, but usually you can’t pick both.

There is a path to every outcome. We do not get to choose what this path is, only whether to discover it and follow it.

God works by cause and effect. He knows the path to reach whatever outcome we desire. All things happen in this world according to the law ordained by God before this world was created.

Whether we recognize it or not, whenever we obtain any outcome, it is by traversing the path God has appointed to obtain it.

All outcomes are possible. There is a path leading to each one. The question is whether you are willing to do what it takes to get the outcome, and whether you are willing to receive the outcome in the package it comes in.

Desires. Imagine for a moment that you could have anything you desire. What would you choose? Would you be willing to do anything to get it? If not, consider the possibility that you don’t actually want what you say you want. If there is anything you aren’t willing to do, then not doing the thing you aren’t wanting to do is what you really want, not the outcome you say you desire.

Perhaps you dismiss the possibility that what you most desire will require experiencing what you least desire. Maybe it’s not so unlikely. After all, your understanding of cause and effect is seriously limited compared to God’s. Furthermore, we claim to believe in a God that requires the sacrifice of all things. That especially includes the thing you least want to sacrifice.

You can have anything you desire. Or rather, you receive the outcomes of all paths you traverse: “For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” (Matthew 7:8)

Why is it necessary to know the difference between good and evil in order to receive according to your desire? Because “good” things are those which lead to better outcomes and “evil” things are what lead to anything else.

When you have the capability of discerning what benefits and what does not, you become responsible for the outcomes you receive. You are “given according to [your] desires.”

Wishes vs. desires. We get sloppy when it comes to differentiating between desires and wishes. You wish when you say you want something while being unwilling to do what it takes to get it. Desire, on the other hand, requires doing what it takes to obtain a certain outcome.

Saying you want an outcome is not the same as actually desiring it. For example, many people say they want to go to heaven, but do any of them live after the manner of heaven? How many actually keep God’s laws without deviation—a requirement to live in his kingdom?

Wishes require the severing of the link between cause and effect. You will never experience anything that doesn’t have a cause, and you will never permanently obtain anything for which the price has not been paid. Fulfillment of desires requires finding the set of causes that produce the desired effect.

Temptations vs. desires. The Lord has instructed us over and over to ask him for what we need, promising that he will give it to us.

And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive - and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive. (Alma 7:23)

In spite of these and many other injunctions to ask for what we desire, most Christians tend to try to suppress their desires. They misunderstand scriptures such as “...bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love...” (Alma 38:12)

To bridle one’s passions is not the same as to quench them! To bridle means to steer.

While God has commanded us to bridle our passions, he never told us that desires are bad. In fact, the scriptures suggest that passions are absolutely necessary to provide us motivation and endurance as we seek to fulfill our desires.

It is not in our desires that we sin, but in the means we incorrectly choose for fulfilling them. Temptation is not about what you desire, but rather describes a non-effectual path to that desire. For example, someone experiencing same-sex attraction may believe that their happiness lies in a homosexual relationship. If indulged, they will, in time, find that what they sought in a homosexual relationship was not to be found there. All good things come from God, and enduring good things can’t be found outside of the paths he provides.

God knows best how to fulfill what we yearn for. It is only when we subject our limited human understanding to God’s perfect understanding that we will find what we yearn for. Sooner or later, we will find that the path to actually obtain what we seek aligns perfectly with God’s commandments. We can either immediately trust him and take the shortest path to our goal, or we can assume we know better than him only to admit later that he was right all along.

Surface-level desires will contradict God’s commandments, because humans assign the fulfillment of their desires to things that can’t actually fulfill them. If we introspectively search into what we really yearn for, we will find that at their core, all human desires eventually arrive at joy. Those who seek joy directly will find it, and they will find it directly from God.

Those who do not seek joy directly will be waylaid by a path to something lesser—something that is fleeting and limited.

Temptation is found in anything that deviates from the path to the outcome we desire. Temptation is seeking effects in causes that do not produce them. For example, this is what James refers to as asking according to our lusts.

Lusting is not the same as desiring! Lusting is seeking an outcome outside of the path God has ordained to obtain it. It is to seek what is not real; what is vain and fleeting.

In this case, the people James describes traverse a path that doesn’t lead to the outcome they wish for, then they are surprised at not receiving the outcome.

The wrong path will never result in the right outcome. As Alma put it, “...wickedness never was happiness.” (Alma 41:10)

Temptation is only possible when the information possessed is incomplete or incorrect. The cure for temptation is more or better information. It isn’t, as most assume, the stifling of desire. Desires are informed by, constrained by, and driven by information. If you sincerely believe a certain path can’t deliver the outcome that some think it does, you will not be tempted to traverse it, period.

If information is the cure for temptation, why doesn’t God give you everything he knows? Weightlifting provides a good analogy to understand this mystery. Suppose that the challenges of the world require strength to overcome. To drop 500lbs on your chest during a benchpress would not help you get stronger—it would kill you. In order to progress in strength, there is a gradual process that consists in structured lifting of progressively heavier weights combined with sufficient nutrition and recovery to grow. In the process of time, you can get to the point where you can lift heavy weights, but there is no other way to achieve this outcome.

You can only gain information as fast as you seek it, obey it, and value it. Those interested in this topic should read the author’s book, The Glory of God is Intelligence.

Most people discover the path to the outcomes they seek through some combination of random guessing, educated guessing, and rational study and thought. All of these tools can result in successful outcomes. None, however, guarantees that every step taken is the most direct approach to the outcome sought. Even with the strongest rational thought process, one is limited to the value of the available information.

God knows every path to every outcome. When anyone obtains any outcome it is only because they have discovered and followed the path that God already knew. This is true whether or not the individual recognizes this is the case. As before quoted.

It is possible to discover the path to a given outcome without explicitly considering or believing in God. It happens all the time, all over the world. However, given that God already knows the way, and therefore possesses the most valuable information available, why not seek him, whatever your desired outcome may be?

We act as if we know how to fulfill our desires. We make decisions big and small every moment without having the slightest clue of how things will turn out or what we ought to be seeking. While it is true that a great deal of wisdom can be learned in this world, at the end of the day we must honestly admit that we are woefully inadequate in our ability to navigate this world.

The Lord informs us bluntly that our best thoughts will often be inadequate.

He knows the path to the outcomes we seek—we do not: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8)

Even those who appeal to God in their decision making tend to do so from the presumption that they have any clue what they are talking about. We ask God to intervene in our lives to make things happen as we imagine they will or ought to. We don’t even think to ask whether they can happen the way we imagine. We don’t submit to his perfect knowledge and wisdom of both what is possible and what is right.

When you seek any outcome in any but the way God has appointed, you can fool yourself into thinking you have or will receive it. However, the end of any such attempts will always be greater sorrow than you would have otherwise had. There really is no other way, and trying to force one or find a shortcut will inevitably result in more pain. Typically, the pain occurs during a violent snap back to reality from whatever illusion you have constructed. In other words, you go through at least as much pain as you would have if you had simply trusted God, but you gain none of the outcomes you would have acquired if you had followed God.

One of the many ways his “thoughts are not [our] thoughts” is in the limits we unceasingly place on the paths we are willing to consider to reach our desired outcomes. We insert all sorts of expectations and constraints on what we are willing to do to reach our desired outcome. While on occasion the path to our desired outcome does not hit the wall of our selfimposed limits, there are many outcomes from which we will be permanently cut off without being truly open-minded.

To avoid obstacles, you ought to consider what you really desire. Do you desire the outcome you think you desire, or is it more important that you encounter or avoid the criteria you have artificially set along the way? You ought to think of what you actually seek and not the packaging it might come in. You ought to think of outcomes and not the means to obtain them.

You ought to ask God about both, knowing that you will probably get to choose one or the other.

The scriptures are replete with examples of outcomes whose paths ventured into the taboos of those who sought them. Naaman the Syrian was miraculously healed from leprosy by God, but only after he went to Elijah the prophet instead of the king of Israel, and only after he bathed in the Jordan river instead of a Syrian river. His assumptions of what his healing would look like were completely wrong. If he had insisted on leaning on his own presumptions, he never would have been healed.

In order to obtain every good thing God desires to give you, you must let go of your preconceived notions.

How much we are willing to detour from our expectations will determine how many of our desires God can fulfill. Those who trust him completely will be led to blessings greater than they can imagine, while those who insist he lead them along paths they know will encounter only a small portion of the blessings he desired to give them.

Faith is not wishing. God is no genie. Contrary to popular opinion, which conflates faith with wishing, faith is to seek, discover, and do what God has said will lead to what we seek.

Another way of saying this is that the more you know God, the more directly you will traverse the paths to the outcomes you seek.

No matter what you desire, the best way to obtain it is to grow in your understanding of God.

The more of his knowledge you possess, the more outcomes you will know how to obtain.

All things are possible, but not in all ways.

As the path wends along, it twists and bends in ways that are sure to defy your expectations. There are always conditions to satisfy, and the more significant the outcome, the more likely you are to be surprised by the requirements. If you want a happy marriage, you can get it, but maybe not with the partner your lusts desire. If you want carnal security, you can get it, but maybe not in the career you have a passion for. If you want salvation, you can get it, but maybe not in the religious tradition you grew up in.

The path may be outlandish, but it may be the only way. In Abraham’s case, he had a child only after he (and more importantly after his wife) had passed into old age. There was a way for Abraham and Sarah to have a child: it was through their aging to the point of impossibility. There was a way for Abraham’s son to have an immense posterity as promised to Abraham: it was through Abraham sacrificing him on an altar.

These were not peripheral stories paralleling the main interactions between Abraham and God. These were the very keys that unlocked the outcomes given to Abraham. For instance, in the case of his posterity through Isaac, the Lord said.

Staying on the path requires letting go of what we already have and moving towards what we really want. The path to what you really want may not be totally clear at the outset, and it is very likely to change as you gain more information by traversing it.

Your estimate of the path changes as you learn more and more about the path. Be willing to allow it to change. Remember that the path must be subject to the outcome. It is the outcome you seek, not the path.

Jesus said: “all things [are] possible to him that believeth.” (Mark 9:23) Our challenge is that we are unwilling to trust God enough to traverse the unique, non-negotiable path to obtain them.

Because our hope is based on things we don’t yet fully understand, we ought to be prepared for it to be fulfilled in ways other than what we anticipate. Desire requires doing what it takes to obtain a certain outcome. Since you don’t know the way until you obtain what you desired, you should count on your understanding of what it takes to get it to change. When your understanding of what is required changes, you will have to decide whether you are willing to pay the new price.

To stay on the path, we must be willing to learn and change: in our expectations of how we will arrive, in what we are willing to do, and even in what our destination looks like. Step by step, God will increase our understanding through adding detail to it, correcting mistakes in it, and showing us course corrections to bring us closer to the outcome we seek.

He will help correct and improve any action or attitude that is not fully aligned to what is required to bring about the outcome you desire. When you walk “in the light,” you are constantly assessing and reassessing the path you have taken. God will give you more information to elucidate the efficacy of your path.

As long as you have not yet obtained your outcome, you can guarantee that something about your path is misaligned with the outcome you desire. Not having what you seek is a clear indication that you haven’t yet fully uncovered the path to get it.

You may be tempted to think that the difference between where you are and where you would like to be is just a matter of something you need to do. Many times, it is also about what you need to become (see, for instance, the chapter, “Joy is value”).

Although we don’t know the complete path until after we’ve traversed it, temporary targets for our hope are still very powerful in spite of being mere placeholders, as we don’t really know the specific circumstances of our general desires.

We won’t recognize the difference between outcomes and milestones along the path until we reach them. We ought to develop the capability of distinguishing between the two when we reach them, and the ability to maintain as great or greater hope as we reach each marker as we had earlier in the journey, in spite of the discernment provided by ever-increasing detail in our growing awareness.

We can hope for any number of situations. The details we add will give us strength as we make specific calculations about cost/benefit. However, we must always remember that it is very unlikely our desires will be fulfilled by God—who knows all things—in the way that we imagine— knowing almost no things. The core true principle is that no matter the details of why, trusting God with all your heart is always the path that will yield the greatest outcomes for you and everyone else.

The supreme target of our hope is provided by our knowledge of the character of Jesus Christ. Because we know he is all powerful, has all joy, knows the path to become like he is, and is capable of escorting mankind to it, we can trust that whatever he subjects us to, no matter how little detail we know of the future or how difficult the path, is precisely what is needed to lead us to greater joy.

Many times the path toward something better is through something worse. We shouldn’t require that current circumstances be indicative of eventual outcomes on a given path. Many, many worthwhile outcomes require temporary but intense hardship. In fact, this pattern is so prominent that it is mentioned frequently in scripture.

Many times the adversity we experience is an unavoidable part of the path to the outcomes we seek. The Israelites’ path to freedom from Pharaoh was through temporary increased suffering during Moses’ plagues. God brought great riches to the Israelites through having Syria siege the city, then miraculously sending them away in haste, when they left great spoil (see 2 Kings 6-7). The path for the ancient Jaredites to reach the New World was through a long, dark journey on sealed barges through massive ocean waves (see Ether 6).

It is important to remember that it isn’t your current situation that you are after, but long-term outcomes.

As people choose what they desire, and seek what they desire, they will discover themselves in a feedback loop. Depending on what they choose to desire first, they will find themselves in a cycle where each thing they choose to desire proves itself to be a milestone on the path to what they seek rather than what they seek itself. Just as springs form tributaries that flow into a mighty river, with each discovery, the individual will find themselves getting closer and closer to what they really yearn for, deep down inside. All desires move you closer on the path to eventual fullness of joy.

Suppose someone desires to be rich. If they seek riches with all their capability, they will discover that being rich does not fulfill what they really desired. If they are honest, they will have to admit that what they wanted was something more transcendent. If they are wise, they will realize what they really wanted all along was joy, and that they mistakenly believed it to be found in money. This same line of thinking applies to all desires but joy.

It is for this reason that the scriptures instruct us again and again to focus on becoming like God. God is exactly what one needs to be to have a fullness of joy, and a fullness of joy is the greatest thing one can desire.

Chapter 7: Willing to receive

“...my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God.” (Alma 25:11)

God possesses all joy and happiness. It is his will for us to have all that he has. While he can give you some things (such as your mortal life) without any action on your part, the majority of what he has to give you can only be received through your choice. He is not limited in what he is willing to give, but you are limited in what you are willing to receive.

We can receive God a little, a lot, or not at all. For example, when the Lord visited his followers after his resurrection, he delivered many teachings and blessings. Still, he had to stop short of all he had to give because they were not able to receive it.

Why have you not yet received all that he has? He said: “...I will order all things for your good, as fast as ye are able to receive them. Amen.” (D&C 111:11) He is not the arbiter of what you receive—you are.

To receive God means to learn his knowledge, to develop his character within you, and to obtain and endure all experiences necessary to do so.

Receiving God is neither automatic nor easy. It takes effort and work on our part.

We receive God by learning more about and from him.

Receiving God means living as he lived.

We are received by God only to the extent that we receive him.

What are you willing to receive from God? What limits what you receive from God?

Faith is a principle of action. Faith is belief unto action, or what we are willing to do because of what we believe. Faith is the ratio of how much you are willing to do to how small a reason you have to believe. Your ability to believe things that are not readily apparent will dictate what and how much you can receive from God.

Unbelief is when you do not believe things when given sufficient reason to. Unbelief will limit your actions, which will in turn limit what God can give you.

You can only receive what God wills to give you up to the level of interest and effort you exercise.

Unbelief is not an all-or-nothing affair. Rather than being like a light switch, it is more like a fuel gauge. Unbelief happens by degrees, just as faith—its opposite—does.

Unbelief is manifest in many ways, each of which is further described below.

Do you really believe that God has all power? Or do you minimize his capabilities by what you are willing to believe is possible? What reason has he given you to limit him? The honest answer is that the source of the limits you place on him is to be found only in yourself.

Some people write off their low expectations by citing humility. Humility does not mean minimizing the value of what God has given you. In fact, it is impossible to be humble if you do not recognize and value the gifts and blessings God has given you because to do so would mean that you have those of yourself or that they are not really worth much. “And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more.” (D&C 78:19)

Humility does not mean minimizing the value of what God is willing to give you. In fact, humility requires you to realize the true magnitude of what you lack—what God has that you do not. The more you think you have, the less you will get.

When you are humble, you have exceedingly high expectations, because you don’t limit what you can imagine to your own constraints. The Lord said: “...He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do....” (John 14:12) If you believe God has incredible things to give you, and that as he teaches you and blesses you, you will likewise do incredible things.

You must deeply believe that no matter what you presently have, there is something radically better beyond your awareness. Do you believe God possesses all things? Do you possess all things? If God possesses all things, and you do not, then in order to fulfill his promise of your becoming a joint heir with Christ and possessing all things he possesses, you will have to change.

Don’t be afraid to dream. If you limit your dreams, you will unavoidably limit your actions. Without great hope in the future, you won’t be willing to do what it takes to obtain the best life you could otherwise have.

Even your greatest dreams are less than what God desires to grant you. Think of the greatest outcomes you could ever imagine for yourself in life. Now, realize that if you seek God with all your might, mind, and strength, what he will lead you to is unequivocally better than that.

Paul said “...eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9) Isaiah wrote: “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” (Isaiah 64:4)

We have been warned about “understand[ing] not the things which are prepared for [us].” (D&C 78:10) If you go with the current of society, you will be blind to what you could be experiencing, because you will be convinced that whatever you currently possess is all there is to have.

Do you believe that God has prepared things for you that exceed anything you’ve ever considered? If so, how do you think you will get them? They are “prepared.” They are “wait[ing]” for you. Recognize that something is being offered. It is already there.

We are ignorant of most of what God offers. The cure to this is to assume great things are always offered to us beyond what we recognize. This opens us to what we need to see. It is all already there, you just haven't claimed it. What are you doing about it?

The only reason you would act differently than you do now is if you thought there was a better way, far more available than you possess, or something far greater than you have already experienced. What is better is unlikely to seem that way from your present vantage point. That's why you don't have it already.

You can't have more joy without believing and acting differently than you do now. In order to live an abundant life, you must obtain something extraordinary. You don’t see miracles because you don’t go to where they are found. Nothing radically good ever happened to anyone unwilling to do radical things. In order to obtain that which is greater, you must be willing to do things that are different from what everyone else does.

Those with faith live a life filled with things that are difficult and unlikely. Their lives are an unbroken chain of long shots. In absolute terms, they have missed many more shots than normal people. But their success in life is not the ratio of wins to losses, which is much worse than normal peoples’, but rather the sum of their wins. People with faith fail more, but they are the only ones who ever bother trying what other people consider impossible. Because they try, they discover that many impossible things are only difficult. In trying what others dismiss as impossible, and by pushing past where others quit, they encounter experiences and outcomes that others never see.

God will give you far more and far better than you can imagine if you will trust in him and follow him with full purpose of heart.

What if God told you there was an indescribable amount of joy available to you, but it would require you going through the thing you least wanted to go through? Would you still do it?

What if he told you it would require two years to obtain? What about ten? What about four decades?

What is the limit of what you are willing to endure to receive what God promises you? Because, in fact, he has promised you unlimited joy if you will but set aside any limits you place on what he is able to do and how he needs to do it.

God requires the sacrifice of all things. He requires all of our heart, might, mind and strength. There is no discount available.

There is an oft-repeated story in the New Testament that is typically used to illustrate how relative effort is more important than absolute contribution.

What is at least equally important is how this parable shows that everyone is required to give all they have. Those who follow the gospel path unabashedly describe as their goal being joint-heirs with Christ. In other words, they make claim on everything God has. Fewer believers realize that the price for everything he has is everything you have.

Are you willing to do anything God asks you? Or do you arbitrarily limit what he can give you through an unwillingness to travel certain paths to obtain it?

A seemingly cryptic story appears in the Old Testament where the king of Israel visits the prophet Elisha to enlist God’s assistance in the impending invasion by the Syrians.

The miracle by Elisha was intended to teach the importance of intensely seeking what God is willing to give. Elisha’s disappointment at the low intensity of Joash is indicative of God’s response when we seek him with faltering intensity.

The behavior of the blind man healed by Jesus is an example of the intensity that enables us to receive the fullness of what God offers.

This man responded to obstacles by increasing his intensity until he received what Jesus was willing to give him.

Jesus told two parables to demonstrate the importance of tenacity in receiving him.

Receiving what God offers requires everything we have to give.

Full purpose of heart means that we desire him more than all other things in this world; it means all our heart, all our mind, all our strength.

Imagine, for a moment, that you knew it was going to rain. What would you do? If you didn’t particularly care about water, you would do nothing. If you really appreciated it, you would put out a container to catch it. What size of a container would you grab? Some would grab a measuring cup, some a bowl, and some a garbage can, depending on how much they valued water.

Most people are indifferent to God’s blessings. Some care as long as what he wants to give overlaps with what they desire. Some few are wise enough to realize that anything God offers is worth obtaining, whether it fits into what they currently understand to be valuable or not. These last people are capable of receiving everything God has because they do not choose containers too small to fit what he offers.

You can only have what you are willing to pay for. Too many people stop far short of the happiness and joy they could have were they willing to work as hard as required, endure the pain required, sacrifice what is required, and so on.

Low intensity is insufficient to receive what God would like you to have. It is foolish to expect great outcomes without great effort. It’s only after you have done all that lies in your power that you can assume the Lord will intervene to do great things.

You truly have to “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” (Matthew 5:6) God requires “all [your] heart...all [your] might, mind, and strength....” (D&C 59:5) Your heart refers to your desire. Your might refers to your capacity. Your mind refers to your thoughts. Your strength refers to your effort. All of these things determine how much and what you obtain from God. If you want to receive all he has, it requires all your desire, all your capacity, all your thoughts, and all your effort. Anything less than this means you are leaving behind good things he wills to give you because you are not willing to receive them.

We miss out on too many opportunities for greater joy by being fearful. We fear that our attempts at finding greater joy will fail, leading to pain and suffering. If you are afraid of failure, you won’t try: “The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.” (Proverbs 22:13)

The root cause of fear paralysis is a misunderstanding of how things work. God doesn’t promise you that everything you try will work. What he does promise is that if you try everything you can, enough of what you try will work to make the effort worthwhile. God doesn’t need you to be successful at everything you try, but he does need you to try enough things with enough effort that he can work through some of them to bring about great things.

God gives us as much as he can without overcoming us. The more we trust in him, the less we will fear, and the more we can endure without being overcome.

The amount of peace and joy you have in your life is not a function of luck. It is a function of how many times you are willing to fail and still try again. The happiest people are not those who find themselves in externally easier circumstances. Rather, they are the people who relentlessly searched for more and more happiness in spite of a mountain of failures. They are never satisfied with what they’ve already found. They always risk it all again and again in the search for more.

The happiest people realize that there is no failure so large that it can cut them off from eventually encountering all the joy God has to give.

If we truly believe him, we will fear nothing. If we truly believe him, we will leap into enough things with enough intensity that we will not miss out on opportunities he intends to use to help us receive all that he has.

The principle limit we place on God isn’t so much in what we think we want or how much we think we want it, but what we are willing to endure as the Lord sends us what is required to obtain what we want.

The Lord said, “Behold, I am the law, and the light. Look unto me, and endure to the end, and ye shall live; for unto him that endureth to the end will I give eternal life.” (3 Nephi 15:9) To “endure to the end” is to retain your willingness to let go of what you already have in exchange for something better, even when it is not readily apparent that it is better, until God has given you all there is to receive and all he has.

What are your limits?

Perhaps what you think you lack is ideal starting conditions. Lack of ideal conditions is insufficient to preclude trying. “The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.” (Proverbs 20:4) “He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.” (Ecclesiastes 11:4)

What is your pace?

How do you limit God in how fast you can receive things? Is there any aspect of your life that is off limits to improvement? Is there anything you aren’t willing to do?

How different are you willing to be? Can you withstand unlimited persecution?

How long are you willing to endure? The length of the path is insufficient to preclude trying. “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.” (Proverbs 22:29) “A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.” (Proverbs 28:20) When you try to take a shortcut to the desired outcome, you fail to experience the process that is required to become the type of person to whom those outcomes manifest. Your desire for the outcome without the requisite process will require you to engage in unsavory means to achieve what can’t be purchased without a price.

How much effort are you willing to exert? It will require everything. “The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour.” (Proverbs 21:25)

How far can you go until you quit? If the spirit comes upon you to the point of overwhelming you, do you say “Lord, it is enough?” If the Lord provides pathways to higher blessings, do you say “Lord, this is too hard”?

Be willing to endure all things. Realize that the path to obtaining all God has is through descending below all things.

Receiving from God requires having gratitude for what you already have and appreciating what you don’t yet have.

Gratitude doesn’t simply mean acknowledging the fact that you’ve been given something. It means to comprehend the potential of what you have been given and appreciating the cost.

God does not ask us for gratitude as most humans would—to satisfy petty pride or to feel good about himself. He asks it solely for our benefit. This benefit is realized only when you comprehend and use what you have been given for its full potential.

Far too many people treat God’s gifts—ranging from every specific thing to the gospel itself—like the key to a storage shed. God’s gifts are something they never think about and only use every once in a while, for a brief moment.

Suppose you are gifted a sports car. You could drive it fast, as sports cars are meant to be driven. Or you could drive it slowly, making it no different than a normal, far less expensive car. Or you could just leave it in your garage, making it less appreciated than any car that is actually driven. Or you could leave it parked outside to slowly rust, never being driven, tossed aside like filth in the streets. Only the first option uses the gift to the full extent of what was intended.

Gratitude for what you already have determines how much more you will receive. When the Lord said: “...prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it,” (Malachi 3:10), part of what he meant was that he will be bless you up to just beyond your capability to recognize and appreciate. When you learn to recognize and appreciate what you have, you will receive more, and in that instant, God.

Gratitude means accurately assessing the value of his hand in your life. You become an expert at feeling overwhelming gratitude for his goodness. You act as grateful in plenty as you would be in want, in pleasure as you would be in pain, in abundant belonging as you would in absolute loneliness, in wealth as you would in abject poverty.

In order to receive more of what you don’t yet have, you first have to learn to appreciate what is good but not yet valued.

Adam and Eve lived in paradise, but they did not recognize or appreciate it. They did not recognize what the two trees offered them in Eden. They did not value the fruit of the tree of life. They did not appreciate what it would be like not to have it. That is why they made very little use of what was offered. They could not receive the joy God had prepared until they suffered very much.

Everything God has is always offered to you, but you will only receive what you value. What God offers is repulsive to those who do not yet have it. We lack the knowledge and wisdom to value what is of great value. As we have faith, we can walk down paths we would otherwise not walk, and he can teach us of the true value of things.

When accosted by opportunity to receive more, most people react with some form of disobedience, rebellion, or obstinance. These reactions are all about rejecting what God offers and instead adhering to what they already have. They react with “wonder and amazement, and with anger.” (Mosiah 13:8) Anger is obvious, but wonder and amazement aren’t so obvious. Telltale signs of this reaction include people being entertained by an idea, but not activated by it, as if to say, “well, that’s something...”, having a reaction far lower in intensity than the interaction merits, eliciting a response devoid of any interest whatsoever, or eliciting an outright rejection.

There are several telltale signs to indicate that you have ceased to receive more from God. Invitations to change will start stacking up. Don’t fool yourself into believing that you are considering them and just need more time. A decision not to decide is still a choice, and it is a choice that will permanently stall your progress with God until you correct it. You will note that the reasons you enumerate for not responding to an invitation to change will not be the real reason. Your choices will cease to be rational and self-consistent. This is an honesty problem. Whenever you are willing to be dishonest about your reasons, you will find your vague ambiguity about the situation will always and suddenly convert into a hard turn away from what you know is right. You will remove yourself from the opportunity to receive more by avoiding thinking or even being around situations that draw your attention to the problem and the consequences of your lack of action to resolve it. You stop arguing, stop talking, and stop acting. You put yourself in the power of the idea that you have decided upon instead of standing in the light and letting it lead you along. You are like sheep who not only stop obeying the shepherd, but pinch their eyes shut and turn off their ears as they run headlong into a worse situation. The good news is that you will find relief from the cognitive dissonance that previously assaulted you. The bad news is that the relief comes from the loss of the light that showed you the path forward (see D&C 93:39).

There is a skewed perception in the world that our relationship with God is about what we give him. God has absolute dominion. He needs nothing from us. Rather, everything he does is about giving what he has to us. The only thing he asks is for us to act in a way that maximizes what we can receive from him.

Even the most arcane or ritualistic sacrifice is not about what we give, but about what we become willing to receive.

Believe you are nothing. Believe you know nothing. Only an empty vessel has room to be filled.

Believe God has all things. Believe God will give you all things. Only a hopeful person will seek what can be found.

Chapter 8: Making good choices

...it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. (Moroni 7:15)

So much of the insecurity felt in life is due to how decisions are made. It is possible to make decisions in such a way as to free you from doubt.

You can know what is right and what is wrong with absolute surety. The key is to understand how you should decide and when to reconsider what you’ve already decided.

Good, in a scriptural sense, means that which improves you. Nothing more, and nothing less. What is evil? Evil, in a scriptural sense, means that which degrades you. Nothing more, and nothing less.

While these definitions are simple, they are powerful, and their implications are tremendous in impact and eternal significance. To know whether something is good is quite simple, as long as you know these definitions.

How do you tell good from evil? You use “the Spirit of Christ [which] is given to every man, that he may know good from evil.” (Moroni 7:16) This is your conscience, your individual repository of light. It is your sincere understanding of what improves and what degrades.

The difference between good and bad is a matter of information. The more information you have, or the greater your awareness of reality, the better the decisions you can make. While anyone can make the proper decisions within the scope of information they possess, not everyone has the same degree of information. To obtain a life of abundant joy, you must learn everything you can about reality. An abundant life requires abundant information. While the two great commandments (love God and love your neighbor) are simple, the degree to which you can apply them depends on the depth of your understanding of reality. What it means to live these commandments will differ for all people depending on their degree of awareness.

As you wend through life, your awareness will increase to the degree that you seek for more understanding and live true to what you already know. At every stage, you must be careful in how you judge between good and evil.

Find the things that bring you more joy than you have. Choose actions that optimize improvement. For every action, consider.

What are the consequences of this action? Though the accuracy and expanse of your understanding of consequences can (and should) grow over the course of your life, and though they will enable you to affect much greater good, the question itself does not change. Your capacity can grow or diminish, but the question remains the same. Will this action benefit? Your understanding of benefit can and should grow as you learn and apply more truth. From day one, however, you can and should adopt this as your criteria of choice in all things. Another growth area is to learn to measure benefit globally: to truly value the benefit of others as you do benefit to yourself.

You should record and remember your reasons so that when challenges come you can resist them. Make a list of the pros and cons when you made the decision. Write it down on paper. Write a pro and a con column, and write out everything you can think of, then make your decision, considering only what is written on the list.

By focusing on defined pros and cons, you may be shocked to realize just how influential your desires are. You see, as humans we are very apt at coming up with reasons for why we do what we do after the fact. In other words, we are very good at pretending to be rational, but this is almost never our means of deciding. Remember that human nature doesn’t produce good desires. Our natural desires will always lead to something less than what God could provide. Our rational capability is the tool God has provided for us to overcome our natural desire on the one hand, all the while increasing our knowledge for future decisions. Confining yourself to what is on the written list will help you detect and overcome your natural desires.

Even when overcome in the moment of decision, desires have a way of growing back over time. The typical way of dealing with this is to change our minds and invent reasons why we did. The list will provide a record of why you chose what you did. When the doubts come, you can check your list. If there is no new information, you can throw out those doubts. If there is new information, you can consider it in conjunction with everything on your list. If you go by that method, and you pick what benefits the most, you will never be led astray.

If you are making decisions properly, you should be able to provide material reasons for exactly how they benefit. Under this framework, there need be no doubt that you are making the best decision you can. Under this framework, the best choice will be clear, you will be able to identify the rare circumstances where all options are equally beneficial, and you will also have a ready way to address any new information that may appear.

Many people act as if pain and sorrow were universally bad. They do so selectively, of course, as pain and sorrow tend to be ignored when the decision that generates them aligns with natural desires. Regardless, the idea that bad is what hurts and good is what feels good is supremely foolish. Those who adopt it will choose to interact with the world in a way that permanently and severely reduces the joy, happiness, and material blessings they can obtain in life.

Even the briefest consideration would show that the meaning of good and bad is not as simple as what feels good and what hurts.

Sorrow is not universally bad. Many painful things are considered good and are not only endured with joy, but sought for: childbirth; training for a successful vocation; weeding a garden. No one chides a mourner at a funeral, and almost every worthwhile thing in life requires toil.

Pleasure is likewise not always good. Many pleasurable things are considered bad, such as taking addictive drugs. Happiness, when based on something false, always ends up causing more pain in the long run than joy in the short term.

Pain and sorrow are not always bad, and pleasure and happiness are not always good. How do we determine when they are good and when they are bad?

The Lord taught that the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, those who are merciful, those who are peacemakers, and those who are persecuted are all in a blessed state.

In providing these sayings, Jesus is inviting us to reframe our experience.

How can it be that states of suffering can be referred to by Jesus as states of blessing? Because of the outcomes they provide. These particular ways of suffering yield the kingdom of heaven, comfort, inheritance of the earth, fulfillment, mercy, etc. These are blessings, indeed.

Jesus charges us to consider ourselves benefitted from God when we experience these conditions and qualities. He’s charging us to have joy and happiness that derives solely from our adherence to him and our application of his teachings in our actions, thoughts, and desires, no matter what our external circumstances may be.

In the scriptures, focusing on improvement is called living after the manner of happiness (see 2 Nephi 5:27). It is synonymous with being spiritually-minded (see 2 Nephi 9:39). It is opposite to wickedness (intentionally acting against your sincere understanding of what is right) and being carnally-minded (seeking immediate pleasure for yourself vs. long-term benefit for all).

Notice how what improves is typically not what feels good in the moment. You shouldn’t conflate happiness and pleasure. “He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich.” (Proverbs 21:17) Pleasure is fleeting. It is often short-sighted and selfish. It is inherently fixed on the here and now.

Pain and sorrow are only bad when they result from the consequences of ignorance of God or disobedience to him. Pleasure and happiness are good so long as they occur as a result of adhering to God.

Information is infinite. Your ability to obtain and process it is finite. The more serious the decision, the less likely it is that you will have all the related information, even when you apply all effort possible to obtain it. However, by listing pros and cons, you can guarantee that the decisions you make are the best you can make, and this is what is required to feel confidence, peace, and contentment in spite of your imperfect knowledge.

Given your imperfect knowledge, you should anticipate situations where new information presents itself. This means that no decision should be final. This is a scary proposition for most people because most people derive fleeting security from illusory things such as past decisions. For example, people get married in part because of the security they find in someone saying “I do.” The problem is that some 75% of marriages end in divorce. By mere statistics, marriage is most likely not going to last, yet people pretend it will.

Jesus taught that we should not make oaths, but rather let our “communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” (Matthew 5:37) Why? Because our understanding of what benefits is guaranteed to change if we seek God, who will teach us a more accurate understanding of reality. This is why James said.

Security does not come from human promises, no matter how sacred and inviolable they seem. God provides the one and only form of surety: strength of character. If you find someone who is trustworthy, their entire lives will provide an integral testament that they, like God, always do only those things that are for the benefit of the world (see 2 Nephi 26:24). While you won’t find a person who has the same amount of knowledge as God, it is possible to find a person who consistently makes decisions the same way, and anyone who does less than this is as unreliable as anyone else you come across, no matter how sure their promises seem. Jesus knew this during his mortal ministry, and it is why he would not lean on even his apparently most devoted disciples even during their most zealous display of worship (see John 2:25).

Understand that nothing is final. While no one says they think they know everything there is to know, almost everyone acts as if they do. If you believe that the decisions you’ve made are final and should never be reconsidered, you must also believe that you know all there is to know. If you don’t know all there is to know, you must also consider that there may exist sufficient information currently unknown to you that would change your mind.

There is always something more to know, and knowing more will always change how you see things. If you are learning and growing, it will not be infrequent for you to see something as good that you used to see as bad and vice versa. If you haven’t recently reconsidered your previous perspective on a major topic, chances are you have a lot to gain by becoming more open-minded and less sure of what you think you know.

When you get new information, there are two typical responses.

The first is to ignore the new information, acting as if it doesn’t affect what you already decided. If your decision was rational—that is, based on facts and intelligence—then it necessarily was both based on information and subject to new information. If you don’t incorporate the new information into your previous decision, your decision—whether rational at first or not—is now necessarily irrational. You now have no guarantee that your course of action is the best way for you to obtain more joy and happiness.

The second typical way people respond to new information is by ignoring all previous information. In this case, the typical situation is that the new information comes as a surprise and in the context of intense emotion. Intense emotion has the effect of dimming the strength of the mind. In this case, people who are surprised with new information tend to forget the thought process they went through when they made the original decision. New information must be evaluated with prior information in order to make a rational choice.

There is a better way. When you get new information, find your list that you used when you made your decision. Add the information to the list. Try to be as impartial as possible when integrating your expanded view of things.

Be willing both to make a completely different decision and to hold fast to what you previously decided. Both choices are attached to powerful psychological forces that have to be intentionally resisted. When we have made a difficult decision and face opposition, we will be tempted to overweigh any new information that detracts from our decision, because it would be easier (but not better) for us to decide differently than we have.

Challenges will come with every important decision you make. The challenges will be as difficult as the decision is important, every time. Here is a sampling of what you can expect.

Confusion. You will forget the reasons for your decision. You will feel anxious or guilty because you have to recreate the reasons you had for the decision, and they won’t be as good as the original reasons which you’ve forgotten. This is why it is essential to write down your reasons.

People. When people disagree with your decision, they will judge you and persecute you. You might start losing confidence in your actions. You can minimize their effect by treating them as a source of new information. If they have reasons for how they feel, you can incorporate those reasons into your list. If they are significant, you should change your mind. If they aren’t, then their words, actions, and feelings should not bother you.

Distractions. Life requires you to get busy with other things, which might cause you to forget how massively important these things are. You have to keep your priorities sorted. Left to normal life, even matters of life and death become secondary to less important things: here and now takes precedence over clear, long-term benefit; spiritual progression takes a back seat to what others will think of us, and so on. When you make your decision, also write out why your decision matters and the outcomes you expect because of it. This is something that can provide you great strength against the tendency of life to distract you, as well as a safety valve to get out of a bad decision. When new information suggests that your decision will lead to an outcome significantly worse than what you expected, it is a likely sign that you are now able to replace your previous choice with a better one.

Every time we take a step towards something better, we learn more than we knew before. The revelation of this knowledge will always include increased awareness of what is incomplete or incorrect in ourselves, because we are not yet perfect.

When you turn a light on in a dark room, you see things you didn't see before. The light does not make things good or bad. Rather, it reveals details that were not previously known, and these details reveal what is good and what is bad.

In scriptural vernacular, every time light is dispensed, it reveals darkness. You get to decide how you react to that revelation.

It is very unusual for humans to react with joy to the opportunity to know more about the darkness inside themselves.

If you truly want to improve—if you truly want greater joy and happiness—you must also develop a love of correction. The path to greater joy and happiness will always include a greater understanding of what you lack.

Unfortunately, almost all people will turn away from opportunities to learn more about themselves. They do not want to be good, which requires change. Instead, they want to feel good, which is all about avoiding evidence that they aren’t actually good.

No one would proclaim that they hate improvement. Instead, the way this attitude manifests itself is through one’s feelings and actions. People tend to hate having their choices, actions, beliefs, and words questioned. They hate when others point out something better than what they do. They want to fit in. They want to please others. They don’t want to be different. They don’t want to fight conventional wisdom. They don’t want to deny their base desires.

When you make good decisions, you are choosing to fight against human nature. When you decide to improve, you should be prepared for the opposition that will come. Before, during, and after good decisions, you will be subjected to powerful forces within and without that will challenge your decision.

Most do not want to know more than they do. They prefer to remain in their previous blindness. They respond to the gift of light by squinting their eyes shut. They decide against the light because they do not like the evil it reveals in them. After this rejection in their hearts, they create reasons in their minds to justify their decision. These reasons rarely make sense. In fact, they typically are so inconsistent and illogical that even a child could pull them apart. But they don't see it themselves, because in their embrace of darkness they have inadvertently lost a portion of the light they previously possessed.

Some few love the light. They love when they are shown how they can be better. Some of them react this way for a while, perhaps for a few iterations of greater light. Very, very few will endure everything God shows them, step by step, until there is no darkness left. When there is no darkness left, you have eradicated all the barriers to receiving God's light in you. It is only at this point that your eye is single to the glory of God. It is only at this point that you have withheld nothing from God. It is only in this state that you can overcome all things and receive all things that God offers. It is only through this path that you can encounter what we all seek deep down inside: eternal happiness.

We can choose how we act, think, feel, and believe. We can't choose where those choices lead us. Where those choices lead us is predetermined and fixed by eternal law declared before this world was created. Almost everyone will receive far less than what they desire, because they are unwilling to walk the path that leads to the fulfillment of those desires.

There is no fault in not knowing the way. However, everything needed has been provided in and through Christ who said he was the way. The fault comes in turning away from the way when it is offered to you because you think you know better than God. You think that it isn't really necessary to submit to his wisdom, mercy, and love.

O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish. (2 Nephi 9:28)

Perhaps you reject the gift because it comes in a wrapper that doesn't fit your preconceived notions. Regardless, for the vast majority of humankind, the judgment will contain the phrase: “you received what you were willing to receive, though far greater things were offered you. This is the situation you have chosen.”

It is upon this hinge that all of salvation rests: how will you respond when the light shows the darkness that remains in you?

As long as someone is living according to the light they previously received, there is no way of knowing ahead of time how someone will react to greater light. The only way is to give it. This is part of the price paid by those with greater light. They continuously reach out knowing that almost all of the time their efforts will be rewarded with pain, hatred, and persecution from those they love. They do it anyway.

We think we are quite clever. We come up with sophisticated plays to turn away from truth in such a way as to hide what we are really doing and why we are doing it from ourselves and others, as we suppose. It turns out that these clever ideas are anything but. In fact, they are so common that the patterns can be described specifically.

Preferring emotional arguments to rational arguments. When we prefer emotional arguments to rational arguments, we say “I will disregard your valid argument that proves my position incorrect but will favor how I feel instead.” Turning away from rational arguments is turning away from the light within us and turning away from God.

God is a god of reason. Nothing he asks us to do is arbitrary. There is always a reason, and usually multiple reasons.

Feelings should not play as important a role in your decision making as they do for most people. Feelings are not trustworthy. Feelings can be dead wrong. You can feel very bad about a good decision, and feel very good about a bad decision. This is so well known in psychology that they even have a name for when you feel bad about good things. “Cognitive dissonance” describes the painful state you encounter when you have learned something true that disproves something you previously believed.

Feelings can be useful, but they are always subordinate to reason. Your feelings are subordinate to your mind, not the other way around.

In rational decision making, you have to learn to isolate your feelings and realize that you are much more than your feelings. Put another way, while we should not ignore our feelings, we should see them only as just another information source instead of the overwhelming, consummate source of information. As a practical example, instead of considering your feelings as all encompassing, consider them as you would some data point you got out of reading an article on a topic relevant to your decision.

If you can’t explain your actions with rational argument, you should not be confident in your choice. Any feeling—no matter how strong—ought to be subject to reason.

One key to seeing when you are actuated by feelings instead of rational reasons is that you start to believe you will magically receive outcomes that have no logical expectation of being realized. You will not be able to describe a coherent path from where you are now to what you expect to receive.

Any reasons ought to take precedence over any feelings. God never asks us to act based on a feeling, unless the intended action is to search for reasons. If you don’t have any reasons, find some or refuse to take a position.

Some without reasons will say something like “I just need to listen to my heart.” Remember that a person’s heart by default is evil continually (see, for example, Genesis 6:5). Would you bet your life on a compass that you know is regularly wrong when only slight deviations are sufficient to get you completely off course? This is the whole reason we need God—our default understanding is insufficient to lead us to happiness.

It is certainly possible to have accurate feelings that lead to a better place. The problem with feelings is that the bad ones will always be louder than the good ones. Doing what is right is more often painful than blissful, at least at first.

In order to favor emotional argument, one must ignore one or more rational arguments. If you find yourself responding to a rational argument by saying, “yeah but,” chances are you have already made your choice, you’ve made it based on feelings, and you have made your choice contrary to reason and contrary to God.

Turning from what you know. Some people directly ignore what they previously knew. This is what the Lord was describing when he said.

Turning away from rational argument is no light thing. At this point, critical thinking has ceased. Instead of seeking for what is right, the person begins maneuvering to feel right given the decision they’ve already made. They are looking to rationalize their behavior, not evaluate options for how to behave.

When we turn away from something we know, something changes in us. Enough of our conscience remains that we recognize light, but we have devolved enough to be repulsed by what we know is right. Our decisionmaking ability is in a crisis, and what we do next will be critical. Typically, once the first step is taken, the rest tends to happen without explicit thought. It is never too late to turn back to what is right, but the longer we wait, the harder it will be and the less likely we will be to do what is required, as we already proved ourselves unwilling to do little and now we must do much more than that.

When you turn away from God’s light, you darken your mind. You blind yourself to seeing what ought to be obvious. You cripple your ability to make wise choices. You become “past feeling” because you have closed the channel through which God can instruct you. Being “past feeling” means that things that should be sufficient to persuade you will be insufficient for you. For example, if an angel were to appear, it should be convincing to say the least. Yet those past feeling are blind even to tremendous evidence.

What does this look like in practice? Do you know any person like this, a person who has removed themselves from any form of persuasion due to their unbelief? A person who is so stuck in their ways that they absolutely hate all forms of correction? A person who rages at the thought of something they do not agree with? A person who is so prideful that their self-identity is completely coupled to their belief system, and therefore they can't modify any part of it without risking ego death? A person who lashes out against those who clearly love them and would do anything for them? Who punishes and abuses people they previously cared about without any change in the recipient’s behavior?

When we suspend our allegiance to the voice of our conscience, we damage its capacity in every other aspect of our lives. The scriptures use the phrase “dwindle in unbelief” to describe the loss of discernment that happens when someone willingly turns from something they know is true, and it is an accurate descriptor because we become less than what we previously were and we believe in God less than we used to. Turning from the truth makes you a liar. It makes you a hypocrite. It wounds your conscience.

Turning away from one thing makes it more likely for you to do something worse, because you are dimming the light inside you making it harder for you to see the right course of action in any given situation. Thus, turning away tends to be cyclical process—a downward spiral—and not a once-off.

Those who turn away from what they know is right will soon after find themselves violating their principles: “...Behold, thou knowest the wickedness of this people; thou knowest that they are without principle, and past feeling...” (Moroni 9:20) They alienate themselves from God.

King David provides an unfortunate example of what happens when we turn from what we know. Upon learning Bathsheba was married, David should have left her alone. But he didn't. He turned away from what his conscience told him. Doing so opened the door to greater sin, because it dimmed the light within him, making it possible for him to do worse than he otherwise would have. David never would have considered arranging for Uriah's death if he hadn't first turned away from what he knew to be right in seeking Bathsheba after learning she was married.

Rejecting just one thing the Lord tells you brings you out of alignment with God until or unless you repent. Jesus atoned for the sins committed in ignorance, and while he also provides the ability for you to be forgiven of every deliberate sin you forsake, he will not save you while you willfully rebel against him.

Normal people struggle to outwardly admit full rebellion from what they know is right, even after they have already internally made the decision to rebel. You can tell you are turning away from the truth when something has sufficient rational arguments to seem good, but you find it repulsive. You will try to create new reasons for what you have already decided. For example, if someone decides to leave their partner but doesn’t have selfless reasons for doing so, they will try to anger them so that they have a reason for what they already decided.

The more they damage their conscience by taking small steps toward what they know is wrong, the easier it will be to surface the ugly motives they have deep down inside. It is a pattern that is so common that you can correctly predict the future when you see the starting steps down the path. You can know how a person feels even before they do.

Keeping your pro and con list will help protect yourself against turning from what you know. You are accountable for acting in complete alignment with your most sincere idea of God's character as applied to your life.

Sorrow for consequences. When we make poor decisions, we encounter poor outcomes. Sometimes people who choose what they know is wrong will retain sufficient light to notice bad things are happening as a result of their choices. This is not the same as regretting what they chose.

Negative consequences suggest you should change, but they don’t make you change. People can regret the consequences of their actions without regretting their actions. Sorrow is not repentance. Laman and Lemuel sorrowed deeply for their sins when severely chastised on multiple occasions. Did they actually change? They did not.

People can choose how they react to an invitation to repent. Most ignore it completely. Some react with sorrow, but not because they love God more than they did previously. Rather, their reaction is driven by their desire to avoid the consequence of sin. They want to feel good, not be good. Any attempt at being good will always make you feel bad, until or unless you change and align your actions and beliefs with what you understand is right.

Surface-level sorrowing is described in the scriptures as the “sorrowing of the damned”.

Those who experience the sorrow of the damned may go through great lengths to feign repentance. When King Saul sinned in disobeying God's direct command to kill all the living things in the kingdom of the Amalekites, Saul tried to defend his disobedience by saying he had spared the best to sacrifice to the Lord.

A person's sacrifice does not matter. It doesn't matter if someone says they are sorry or weeps or does extreme things in response to their realization that they have sinned. What matters is if they are now willing to obey God. This is the only sacrifice that God is interested in: the heart of the person.

You can tell when someone is sorrowing unto repentance when they forsake their sins. They'd rather die than do it again. For example, a group of murderers repented, buried their weapons of war, and chose to die rather than to take up arms again (see Alma 24).

Real repentance is a matter of the heart. When a person really repents, they change their core. If their sin is caused by selfishness, for example, they stop being selfish. They fix the problem, not the symptoms of it.

This manifests in all the outward behaviors that are in any way relevant to the core problem. When someone repents only at the surface level, they may change a specific behavior or two, but you will see that their hearts are not changed because the same core problem will continue to manifest in other behaviors.

If someone's repentant behavior changes back once the external stimulus is removed, then they have not truly repented. If they repeat their sin in any way, they have not truly repented.

Exercise extreme care with those who only surface-repent. Their hearts are not only still capable of the sins they previously committed, but they are now capable of worse sin. They are in the turbulent position of having a worse character while simultaneously thinking their character has improved. These people will continue flailing in the dark towards offenses that were previously unthinkable for them to commit. Make sure you don’t put yourself in their path.

Escalating warnings. All of us have access to the spirit of the Lord, which tells us the difference between right and wrong through our conscience. When we offend this often subtle source, we must rely on signs in this world to help us see where we have been foolish, as we have placed ourselves beyond the ability to notice it for ourselves.

Typically, the signs that we’ve made a mistake include awful afflictions and trials sent to us from a God that loves us enough to carefully expose us to the consequences of our rebellious and foolish actions in hopes that we will repent. Most times, the rebellious will be blind to these afflictions, blaming them on others or pretending that they are just unlucky. This is called "kicking against the pricks."

Sometimes, God sends human messengers to us in obvious and nonobvious ways to snap us out of our rebellion. While the spirit speaks in a still, small, easily-offended voice, God's servants have “faces like flint.” They do not care who they offend. They pay the price, having exercised exceeding mercy beyond what the spirit can in obtaining and delivering God's word in plainness and boldness, in hopes that their intercession— which almost always results in rejection and persecution—will help the person who is persisting in rebellion.

Ripe in iniquity. When a person repeatedly chooses against what they believe is right, they come to a point where not even the intervention of God or his servants can help them. To become “ripe in iniquity” or reach a “fulness of iniquity” means to hate what improves so much that nothing can convince you to accept it. It is to cut oneself off from any teaching, any chastisement, and any improvement. At this point, those in this condition have offended their conscience, God’s spirit, and God’s servants so thoroughly that they can outright reject an invitation for something that is clearly better. People in this stage are devoid of reason. They will say and do things so absurd that it will bring into question their very sanity. They will embrace depravity in equal and opposite quantity to the light they previously had. They will walk away from promising careers, destroy previously stable marriages, embrace addiction, and engage in all manner of sin.

We live in a time where this condition is much more common than it should be. You may think this condition is rare. Consider this: our modern culture has popularized and glamorized the idea that reality is just a social construct. On things large and small, our modern culture insists that whatever vain imagination we have can be just as real as reality itself, and in many cases it is held as more real. Every single step in this direction—every little belief persisted in this spirit—moves a person into greater darkness and cuts them off more fully from any hope of reaching them. No matter how subtle this march may seem, it all has the same outcome. Small doses of poison will still kill a person over time, and the more doses the quicker it comes.

There comes a point where a person constrains God’s means of helping them so thoroughly that the only tool he has left is to turn them over to the full weight of the consequences of their choices, a situation called “the buffetings of Satan” in the scriptures. When does this happen? When mercy ceases to benefit. This happens when, for example.

The person's prolonged behavior will break God's promises. For instance, the Lamanites who tried to kill Ammon were instead killed because God had promised to preserve his life (see Alma 17). When the unpaid debt of justice has built up to a point where postponing it further would make God unjust. This happened, for example, when Abigail’s righteousness so exceeded Nabal's that God killed Nabal to both free her from his oppression and to clear the path for her to have a righteous husband (David, see 1 Samuel 25). When the continuous and deepening wickedness of the person has caused them to remove themselves from the channels God could use to reach them, such as when the wicked cast out the righteous from their cities, cutting themselves off from the only source they have to hear God's correcting voice, having long ago offended his spirit to the point of being past feeling it.

Sometimes, the consequences of their choices include an ignominious death, as when Saul was killed in battle, when Korihor was trampled, or when Jezebel was eaten by dogs.

You don’t have forever to figure it out. There is a point where it is too late. Many blessings have an appointed time and place. Sometimes, it is too late to attain what you could have had.

The example of Saul is illustrative of time-constrained consequences. Saul was anointed king over Israel, but because of his disobedience and rebellion, he was deposed and replaced.

Similarly, Saul sought the life of David, who righteously fled from him and would not fight back. Saul’s murderous intent incurred the penalty of his own death. Saul repeatedly tried to kill David (who was not only innocent, but was also the Lord's anointed and also repeatedly forgave Saul by sparing his life when David had the chance to justifiably kill him). Ironically, David did not kill Saul because Saul was also anointed by the Lord. All of these factors worked together to cause an irreversible decree from heaven: Saul would surely die due to his crimes and David's consistent righteousness. The Lord's justice could no longer be withheld.

No matter how blind you choose to be, there will come a day when you are shown in undeniable plainness how often God reached out for you, and you would not listen. You will see the price that has been paid for you by the Lord Jesus so that you could have a way out of your sins. You will see the price paid by his servants when they tried again and again to put the weight of your sin on their own backs to give you yet another chance to repent. You will be shown in undeniable plainness the blessings that were prepared for and offered you but that you refused to receive. In that day, you will find yourself in a hell you have prepared for yourself, an awful jail cell of your own creation.

Turning away from better things is a behavior that has far reaching consequences. It will suck the joy out of your entire life, far beyond the bounds you suppose the decision is limited to.

Inspect your life for willful disobedience and purge it from yourself. Do not allow yourself to believe the lie that your surface repentance is sufficient. Come to Jesus Christ with all your heart, might, mind, and strength, and be truly healed of your weakness through the things he will teach you. Expose all of your darkness to his light, and rejoice in the cleansing burning it brings.

Chapter 9: Patience

And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. (Matthew 23:12)

The ancients suffered for their obedience to God. For example, the apostles “rejoic[ed] that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name” after being beaten and jailed (see Acts 5:41). Peter said “if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.” (1 Peter 4:16) Why did they subject themselves to suffering? How did they find joy in doing so?

The answer is found in the principle of justice. Justice is the receipt of what is merited. God is just, in that everyone always eventually receives what they deserve (see Alma 41:15).

Justice requires two components. First, the recognition of what is merited. Second, the delivery of what is merited. Recognition of what is merited requires knowledge, without which reality can’t be perceived correctly and completely enough to establish an accurate accounting. Influence of outcomes requires power to arrange circumstances according to cause and effect.

One can only be as just as their knowledge of what is right, recognition of what is merited, and power to arrange outcomes allows. What good would it do for someone to recognize injustice if they have no ability to change outcomes, or to have power to arrange outcomes if they have a limited sense of what is right?

God is perfectly just. “He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.” (Deuteronomy 32:4) God knows all things: “O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it.” (2 Nephi 9:20) God has all power: “...with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)

God’s justice is much more effectual than any other being’s justice could be because he has all knowledge, all power, and sees all things—meaning he is able to more accurately know what is right, recognize what is merited, and arrange outcomes according to what is merited.

Some assume that God’s justice is primarily negative. Justice means to give what is merited. Justice is neither inherently negative nor positive. It comprises both reward and punishment. Whether God’s justice drives blessing or punishment in your life is wholly dependent on the degree to which your desires and actions are aligned with him.

For example, God’s justice inclines toward blessings for the righteous and punishment for the wicked: “God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.” (Psalm 7:11) For those who are oppressed, God’s judgment provides redemption: “The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.” (Psalm 103:6)

God’s justice is not rooted in either punishment or blessing, but in cause and effect. The root of God’s justice is consequence of things as they really are. To maximize your benefit from God’s justice, you should align your desires and actions completely with your most sincere understanding of his character and will, as he is the complete embodiment of things as they really are and the perfect example of how to be in order to navigate reality for the greatest joy.

In this life we are surrounded by examples of situations that seem anything but just. Many have found themselves in a similar line of reasoning as the following.

This life is intentionally designed to provide the ideal environment for developing trust in God. Were the complete effects of every choice immediately obvious, it would be impossible to grow in trust in God of our own free will. As a result, justice is not always instantaneous in this life.

While God’s justice is not always instant, it is unavoidable. The wicked may be “...exalted for a little while, but are gone and brought low; they are taken out of the way as all other, and cut off as the tops of the ears of corn.” (Job 24:24) The righteous may be persecuted for a moment, but as sure as the Lord lives, they will be compensated many times over if they remain faithful.

The Lord interestingly promised that though his followers would endure extreme persecution, “there shall not an hair of your head perish”.

This is a very interesting promise, given the fact that he indicated that their persecution, at least in some cases, would include being put to death. Most people will see that as a contradiction, because if you die, surely your hair will perish! The Lord was trying to teach the principle of patience through emphasizing that we ought to have an eternal view of things. In the end all things will be paid out in justice.

The trajectory of one who seeks joy will necessarily pass through temporarily unpleasant things. There is an unavoidable purpose in this, and as you trust in God, you will adopt a long-term view of your state.

The patient realize that perspective ought to include not just the present, but the future. You will be able to acknowledge short-term affliction but be in the mindset of long-term benefit. You can face, for example, betrayal by family, friends, and even face death, and still feel that “not an hair of your head [will] perish.”

Though things are presently murky, there will be a day where those who lived long lives free of toil will wish they could trade it all for an eternity of joy, while those who were willing to temporarily live with affliction will enjoy never-ending joy.

We often don’t receive the joy that God desires us to have because we are unwilling to wait the requisite time he has appointed for us to receive it. God’s timeline isn’t arbitrary. It is based on his knowledge of things as they are.

You would never plant your garden in the wrong time of year. You would know that doing so would guarantee that your crops would die. You would never prematurely harvest your produce. Gardeners know when to plant, and they know that after they plant, they must wait until harvest.

Only foolish farmers would worry about the time it takes corn to grow. Instead, they worry about planting in the time of planting, weeding in the time of weeding, and harvesting in the time of harvesting.

It is wise to be honest about the need for patience. Many good things unavoidably require temporary suffering or the passage of time before they can be realized. Put another way, you will be permanently kept from obtaining many things until and unless you are willing to suffer.

In a scriptural sense, patience means to maintain your trust in God while receiving something less than what is merited. Your patience is a manifestation of your trust in God or lack thereof.

Patience is not just an accessory to God’s plan. It is an essential step in the path of what we seek because the absence of it will prevent us from doing the things that we need to do to obtain the greatest joy.

In tough times, it might seem like God is arbitrarily punishing or testing you. There is nothing arbitrary about God.

He does all things according to his perfect knowledge. “But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.” (2 Nephi 2:24)

He does all things according to his character, and he is perfectly loving. “He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world.....” (2 Nephi 26:24)

When he tries you, it is only to help you. If he is telling you that something is not right for right now, know that he has your best interest at heart, because he only does the things that benefit you.

When you trust that God knows all things, you can find rest in your trust in him and in his eventual justice, even when you don’t know exactly how or when it will be fulfilled.

God not only knows all things, he also loves you more than you love yourself. Submitting to him in all things, no matter how foolish they may seem in your very limited perspective, is the absolutely optimal path to maximize your joy.

Better understanding God’s love for you can empower you to have greater patience. Paul wrote.

Paul is illustrating that we acquire patience through first believing in the love and wisdom of God. Hope in these qualities of God will give us power to endure situations that appear negative in our limited understanding, but are actually pathways to greater joy in God’s perfect understanding. As we submit to God’s will, we will find time and again that every tribulation we encounter is nothing more than what is precisely necessary to bring us to a state of greater joy than we previously enjoyed. With every cycle through this process of hope and fulfilled experience, we gain greater and greater trust in God, and more and more patience.

This cycle of hope through affliction to experience to greater trust in God is what James was describing when he said: “...the trying of your faith worketh patience.” (James 1:3)

When God’s will requires waiting, the waiting part is just as important as doing the rest of his will: “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” (Hebrews 10:36) In terms of cause and effect, the cause of your blessings is not limited to living his commandments, but also often includes the need to wait for God to fulfill his promises in a timeline different from your own.

When we trust God, we will find great strength in the belief that the situations he places us in will lead to greater joy than we could have found of our own accord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)

Our organic impulses are insufficient to lead us to the glorious end God intends, as “...the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Good things only come from God, and yielding to them is essential if we will obtain all the joy he desires for us.

Note the use of “inflict.” The truth is that God never inflicts anything on anyone. It just seems that way to those with limited understanding. He doesn’t create cause and effect. He does a great deal to insulate us, to varying degrees, from it. What we perceive as him inflicting trials or dealing punishment is nothing more than his stepping out of the way to expose us to greater degrees of the consequences of reality.

Everything he does leads to better outcomes. All those who trust in God will eventually see that. Those who trusted in him will have everlasting joy in what they received by following him and in comprehending how much he loves them, while those who chose not to trust him will experience great sorrow, anguish, and pain through the everpresent knowledge that he did everything possible to guide them to a better place but they stubbornly refused.

How much are you willing to go through in order to obtain the joy God would like to give you? He has unlimited joy. If you seek unlimited joy, you must develop unlimited trust in him, because to obtain it will require you to walk through greater and greater difficulty.

One reason God delays his justice is to give time for the wicked to repent before their consequences are paid out in punishment.

Another reason God delays his justice is to give time for the righteous to compound the blessings he will eventually pay out to them.

We accrue God’s justice when we willingly relinquish the blessings we have merited and patiently await the fulfillment of his promised justice.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord taught that when we are justly compensated, we have received all that is due to us, and can expect no further blessing.

The Lord was trying to teach that there is a way to leverage God’s justice beyond mere fair compensation for your works.

His justice gives great strength to those who trust him, because it dictates that no matter what you endure, you will always be given an outcome that is worth the price.

The accrual of unjust suffering (that is, suffering that does not come as a consequence of your poor choices) will not only always lead to greater joy, but is the only path to joy greater than any joy you’ve known. Paul said.

Those who test these promises by enduring afflictions without complaining will find that they are true. In the end, they will see what joy they have obtained and understand that they never could have had it without experiencing what they did, and will be that much stronger for the next set of challenges.

Some would object to these promises because they have gone through hard things and not yet experienced great joy. Those who fail to see the fulfillment of these promises are either still in the midst of the process or ejected from the situation too soon. Like pulling a cake out of the oven before it is done baking, they failed to see through the process that would bring them the very thing they desired.

The joy God can give us is limited by the depth of patience we are willing to endure. If God had a tremendous blessing prepared for you, but it took one week of apparent suffering to go through what was required to obtain it, would you do it? Women endure nine months of suffering to have a child, and consider it a worthy endeavor. What about one year? What about ten? What is your limit?

When you are extremely trusting of God’s justice, you will not only trust in God to deal justice out to you, you will actively seek experiences (such as giving support to those who can’t pay you back) where there is no foreseeable path to justice. For example, he said.

In the scriptures, the idea of subjecting yourself to experiences below what you have merited through obedience to God is called abasement. The Lord said, “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12)

To abase oneself is to willingly seek out experiences that relinquish the good things one has merited.

The scriptures use the word “condescension” to refer to abasement for the purposes of helping others.

The way we obtain greater blessings is by enduring faithfully through times when we receive less than we deserve. When you willingly subject yourself to experiences below what you have merited through obedience to God, you will eventually be proportionately blessed by God in fulfillment of his justice.

This willingness to suffer below our privileges is akin to compound interest. Instead of withdrawing from our principle in demanding what we have earned, we patiently wait as the Lord continues to postpone the delivery of his justice. In abdicating our just reward, we compound interest to our account with God, and end up much better off in the end than we would have been were he to instantly deliver what we have merited.

Consider the case of Hannah. A barren woman, she cried in righteous humility to the Lord for a child and was blessed with a son. Instead of being satisfied with this miracle by enjoying her son, she instead dedicated him to the Lord, sending him to live as a priest at the temple in the care of another. This defies reason and is incredibly hard to imagine. Yet, in doing so, she obtained an even greater blessing, as God gave her three more sons and two daughters (see 1 Samuel 1 and 2).

For another example, consider the case of Joseph, son of Jacob. Joseph was the most righteous of his father’s twelve sons, yet he was persecuted by his siblings and sold into slavery. As a slave, the Lord blessed him with propriety, which his master soon noticed, resulting in his promotion to head of the household. He was falsely accused by his master’s wife, resulting in his imprisonment. He maintained his character and was promoted there as well. Eventually, he had an opportunity to interpret the dreams of two of his fellow prisoners. Had he failed to maintain his character, this opportunity wouldn’t have arisen. A full two years after his interpretation came to pass, one of his two former fellow prisoners finally remembered him. He was given an opportunity to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, and as a reward was placed at the head of the kingdom where he not only enjoyed more freedom, power, and wealth than he ever would have had in any other situation, but more importantly became an instrument in God’s hands to save entire nations from starvation.

In Joseph’s case and in ours, we must be willing to endure patient suffering, knowing God’s justice will eventually be poured out on us in blessing. We must realize that the greatest blessings can only come through compounded suffering. We must trust God enough to endure pathways that seem unlikely and even impossible, and learn to rest in our assurance of his goodness no matter how terrible our situation may seem.

Compounding blessings is not an idea whose focus is maximizing what we get from God. Those who intend to use it for selfish purposes will quickly realize that their corrupt heart is incapable of the degree of trust in God necessary to live it.

The principle of compounding God’s blessings through voluntary abasement is not a gospel accessory. It is a vital tool that is absolutely necessary to use in order to obtain the joy God desires to give you.

For example, Abraham only obtained the great promises God gave him after he “...had patiently endured....” (Hebrews 6:15), or exercised a willingness to continue in a state of prolonged delayed justice. You, too, can obtain promises from God by abasing yourself: “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” (Hebrews 10:36)

It is only by exercising abasement that you can “possess your soul...” (Luke 21:19) because you can’t obtain all that God has through the merits of your own character—only by leveraging God’s character, namely his justice. It is the only way to obtain the “crown of life.” As James taught.

Jesus once taught a rich young man that the only way he could “be perfect” was to “...go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” (Matthew 19:21) You “lay up treasures in heaven” any time you voluntarily abase yourself, creating a situation where God will bless you much more in the end than any cost you incurred while awaiting his justice.

The state of inheriting all the joy that God has is called “being perfect” in the scriptures. Jesus taught that the key to obtaining this state is voluntarily sacrificing for others beyond what they deserve and beyond their capability to repay you.

James reiterated this lesson when he taught.

The full magnitude of blessings of the law of justice is available only to those who are subjected to co-occurring delays of God’s justice. The more numerous and intense these stacked tribulations are, the greater the trial of faith, and the more substantially God compounds the blessings accrued.

For some reason, the common assumption is that situations requiring patience will come independent of the desires and actions of the people they come to. These situations can certainly occur that way. However, the full magnitude of blessings available through this law is only obtained by those who desire, seek out, and accept opportunities to relinquish the blessings they have merited.

When a person refuses the blessings they have merited, they compound the degree of blessing that comes to them. The compounding ceases when we accept the blessing merited. In some cases, however, it is possible to perpetuate the compounding indefinitely. Perpetual compounding does not mean never receiving the merited blessings. Instead, the blessings compound to the point where dividends from them can be paid out without reducing the principle. If this sounds a lot like living off the proceeds of investments instead of the invested capital, it is because this is precisely how it works.

When you live off the interest of your merited blessings, all the outpourings of God's love you receive are given to you not as the payment of the blessings you have merited, but as part of the bare minimum of those blessings that must be paid out to you in order to maintain the law of justice, which like every other law has its absolute limits in how long it can be put off. The bare minimum is given to you to strengthen you through experiences that, were it not given, would overcome you. Moreover, living off the bare minimum will lead you to greater growth in joy and growth in your relationship with God than any other path.

Many people ask why God lets bad things happen to good people. The answer is simple: he doesn’t. Everything that happens to good people is good, even if they don’t yet realize that. As Paul said, “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) How could Paul be so confident about this? He knew that God loves us more than we can imagine, and far more than we love ourselves. He also knew God knows all things. He knew that anything that happens to those who sincerely reconcile their lives to their best idea of God is for their good—whether or not it matches what we want or when we want it.

Whenever our will conflicts with God’s, it is either because we lack the knowledge he has that shows his will to be beneficial to us, or we do not believe how it benefits us even after we are shown.

Like Laman and Lemuel in the Book of Mormon, we are quick to dismiss things we don’t understand as foolish because we aren’t familiar enough with God’s character and/or don’t believe the things he has told us.

Everything God puts you through is good. To help you find joy and peace in spite of situations you don’t yet understand, imagine scenarios where what you are going through becomes worth the cost. Expecting mothers can think about what holding their baby will be like. College students can imagine the flexibility and security that comes through a stable, well-paying job. Boot camp attendees can imagine pinning on their rank. Recently dumped romantic partners can imagine undiscovered problems with their partner, or unmet needs they may fill with a future partner.

Bad things don’t happen to good people, because they will only encounter situations they can learn and grow from, and they will always be recompensed by a just God for their suffering: “There shall no evil happen to the just...” (Proverbs 12:21) When you trust in God and in his character, you can trust that all things that happen to you are actually blessings, even when you don't see how that could be.

To have greater joy in life, you must come to trust God’s will.

The idea of trusting in God’s will may be easier to apply in some situations than others. While it is easy to imagine the benefits of a new partner, it is not so easy to imagine the benefits of cancer, losing a child, or losing your home. We seem very focused on denominating benefit in temporal terms. We seem reluctant to realize just how much of our existence flows from our mind and character. If happiness truly stems from how we perceive life, what greater benefit could there be than obtaining a perception capable of greater happiness?

Many things that happen in life do not have a joyful temporal outcome. But they can and do have a joyful mental outcome. Great loss shows you where you need to grow to find enduring happiness. Significant affliction seems to be the only path to gaining true appreciation, which is critically linked to deep joy.

The Lord taught.

Beware the temptation to measure life’s outcomes solely in terms of the temporal. The kingdom of God is within you, and seeking it first means putting a much higher value on how much of God’s knowledge and character you have acquired and assimilated than you do on anything else—up to, and including, life itself.

The Lord said that “...the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) How and why? The truth is the knowledge of things as they really are. As your perception of reality becomes closer to things as they really are—things as God sees them—you will be free from avoidable suffering and empowered to contend with unavoidable suffering. One part of this is being freed from worrying about things you can’t change. Great torment occurs when we worry about things we can’t change. This is the root cause of depression. The cure to depression is an awareness of and trust in the character of God.

When you understand God’s love, you trust him completely. When you trust in God completely, you can’t be scared of anything that happens to you. The apostle John wrote: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear....” (1 John 4:18) Mormon wrote: “...I fear not what man can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear.” (Moroni 8:16) When you trust in God completely, you let go of the things you can’t change, because you trust that he knows what he is doing and that everything he does is for your benefit. If God ordains it, it must in the end be for your good. Trust in him!

Chapter 10: All things before you continually

...all things are present with me, for I know them all. (Moses 1:6)

The Lord knows all things and, for him, it is as if all things in time are happening all at once.

Because God knows all things and all things are present before him continually, he is constantly aware of all joy, all sorrow, all pleasure, and all pain. This tells us a lot about God and about positive and negative things. It tells us that God has a way to feel complete joy even when exposed to complete sorrow, to feel complete pleasure in spite of also feeling complete pain. It tells us that God possesses the tools to interpret these experiences in a way that does not prevent him from having not only a net positive experience, but greater joy and happiness than any of us have ever experienced. While other chapters discuss some of these ideas, here we will focus on the idea of having all things before you continually.

God is willing to show you any and everything he knows and experiences just as quickly as you are willing to receive it.

In the resurrection, you will have a “perfect knowledge” of all things, or, in other words, a correct perspective of the experiences you had in mortality and the cause and effect relationship between your character in its present state and what brings happiness or misery.

In that day, you will not have a choice in whether or not to have this awareness. Those who have not prepared for this degree of awareness by living righteously will be filled with indescribable misery.

There is no reason that you can’t voluntarily acquire this degree of awareness while still in this life. This is, in fact, the very way to prepare for it in the life to come.

Knowledge consists not only of information but also confidence in its accuracy. God knows perfectly well what will happen with perfect confidence. This confidence is absolutely necessary to having all things before you. This confidence helps you experience far greater joy by enabling you to rest assured that even if positive things are intermittent, they will surely come again, just as a clock reads the same time twice every day.

All things are present before the Lord because he knows all the laws of cause and effect. You obtain this gift by increasing the knowledge you receive from God. He knows all things because he knows how all things work together. He can see the end from the beginning. To him, the universe is like a clock. He knows everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen due to his knowledge of every component, the laws of reality, and patterns of how things work. The more you learn from him, the more you will do the same.

When you begin learning about how reality works, you are sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect. As you learn more and more, while your understanding may still be incorrect or incomplete, you will have more and more moments where your predictions of the future become reality. As you learn more and more about reality, your confidence of the accuracy of your understanding will increase, and you will learn to have all things before you.

As you draw closer to God, he will show you more of what he knows. Through the Holy Ghost, he can tell you “the truth of all things.” (Moroni 10:5) The closer you draw to him, the more all things will be before you continually.

God not only knows the laws of cause and effect, but he believes them. He believes them so thoroughly that his confidence in them overpowers any perception of what is happening in the moment. Because of this, he can endure the most awful situations possible in this world, knowing exactly why they are necessary for the greatest benefit in the long term. As we have faith in him, his faith in himself (his trust in these laws of cause and effect) will provide us with the same strength.

Positive and negative things both exist in this life. Sorrow and joy cooccur in equal proportions of intensity, but they do not co-occur in frequency. Sorrow and joy have a rhythm.

All positives are equally balanced by negatives, and vice-versa. By default, you will experience sorrow far more often than joy. Good things in life tend to be instantaneous flashes surrounded by long periods of toil and drawn out negatives. Even if positive things make up for it in total intensity, their infrequency can make life difficult, especially for those who subject themselves to all things the Lord sees fit to inflict upon them.

A more correct and detailed understanding of how your awareness is not time-limited can make life much more enjoyable. This understanding could be described as the integration of your experience.

To integrate your experience is to combine all your experiences, past, present, and future, and see your life as a composite whole.

As you approach an awareness of all things, you also come closer to constantly feeling as if every bad thing possible in this world is happening to you all at once. You see, you are not decreasing your awareness of the bad. On the contrary, you are actually increasing it from the normal state (sometimes really bad things happen) to a more accurate state (really, really bad things happen all the time). What changes is that you actually develop the tools you need to overcome the unpleasant things in your life. Normal people rely on fading memory, distraction, and ignorance to get around the bad things in life. These are inadequate to deal with the true depth and breadth of the bad things in life. When you experience maximal joy and maximal sorrow, all at once, all the time, you need a stronger set of tools.

As daunting as increasing your awareness of the bad may seem, the benefit that comes from the commensurate increase in awareness of the good is more than worth the cost. In spite of the pain this entails, it is not a relatively costly thing, because so much of the pain is not due to temporal separation but rather a lack of awareness. Most of the negative things are already present, you just aren’t aware of them. An awareness of them doesn’t change their ability to hurt you, only your perception of them, and there are tools for dealing with perception. Being able to saturate stretches of your life with the joy that comes from moments of good provides a much stronger positive outcome than the cost of increased awareness of bad.

When you integrate all things, you hack the typical arrangement where good things tend to be islands surrounded by seas of negatives. Instead, you dwell in a state of happiness that isn’t significantly altered even by the periodic occurrence of negatives. In a sense, you minimize the cost of the negatives by realizing they are temporary and you maximize the benefit of the positives by keeping them before you always.

The most beneficial thing about integrating the good things is that you can vastly multiply the net positives in life by genuinely savoring them long before and long after they actually occur.

The positive aspects of this gift are that you are able to rejoice in the present over all pleasant things in your life, even if they lie in the past or in the future. You can exercise godly patience in all things, because the passage of time no longer has power to diminish the value of your future blessings. You become resilient to shocks, because you are aware of what is to come and have substantial lead time to prepare your heart for even the hardest experiences.

Lead time comes from God revealing painful future events to you. We read the promise that “...the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7) God desires to reveal everything he knows to all his children. Why is this promise only to prophets? It isn’t.

Prophets are not magical people to whom God reveals things, but rather people who seek and receive what he has to teach. In other words, a prophet is a description—one who receives what God gives—rather than a title—one to whom God gives things. See the difference?

What determines whether he will tell you future things before they happen is your degree of trust in him. Remember that he doesn’t do anything that doesn’t benefit you. He will only tell you the future if it will help you and others to do so. If your lack of trust in him would result in greater sorrow for you by knowing the future before it happens than it would to surprise you, he will just let it happen without telling you.

Does it seem far fetched that you could have greater pain by knowing the future than by not knowing? Suppose God told you that in ten years’ time, your spouse would die. Can you imagine how, if your trust in God was limited, this would cause much more pain than if you just didn’t know? Now, can you see how if you had great trust in God, this would help you treasure each day and give you more joy than if you hadn’t known?

Preparing for potential reality goes beyond knowing for certain what will happen, and includes everything that could happen. To the extent that you have faith in God, the line between what is and what is possible will blur. You will be able to act in the moment as if all positive things were already yours, as if every challenge were already conquered, as if you couldn’t fail, and as if every person were as perfect as God.

As a practical example of this gift, let us consider how we perceive and experience the death of loved ones. Death is ever-present. Every living thing is born with the eventuality of death. In spite of this eventuality, whenever we experience the death of a loved one, the typical response is one of painful surprise and shock. Why is this the case? First, it is important to realize that the source of our surprise is dishonesty. Everyone knows that everyone will die. Because normal people lack the tools to contend with this fact, they willfully ignore it. How we handle death is not so much about an event but about being confronted with an obvious piece of reality that we are normally really good at ignoring. Grief is not a coping experience, but the passive passage of sufficient time for us to once again regain our ability to ignore this aspect of reality. How do you prove it? Consider how many people, distraught by the loss of a loved one, are equally distraught by the death of their next loved one.

Should death be capable of robbing you of feeling the uninterrupted love of God? Paul thought not.

A person who has all things before them continually does not see death as normal people do. They integrate the death of every living thing into the life of every living thing. When a person dies, they are not hit all at once with the reaction to their absence. Rather, they carry it every day of their lives. Like a mortgage, the pain is thereby amortized into smaller, manageable pieces that are constantly present. By the time the event occurs, it is much easier to contend with.

Importantly, this perspective carries with it not only reduced intensities of pain, but far greater joy. One who has integrated death into life not only experiences death as a much less intense event, but also rejoices in every single interaction with the person during their life. One for whom the absence of something is ever-present will rejoice in its presence as if it had returned from the dead. Every interaction becomes a singularly joyful and valuable experience.

Though this detailed example described how integrating all things works with death, it is equally applicable to the presence and loss of all things.

Having all things before you continually doesn’t mean that you always have uniform feelings or that experiences don’t affect you. It doesn’t mean you feel as sad as you can all the time, or as happy as you can all the time. The resurrected Lord felt a fullness of joy with the Nephites.

If having all things before you continually meant no variation in one’s feelings, the Lord would not have been able to say his joy was full, and he wouldn’t have wept.

The Lord was upset when he saw the wickedness of the people who rejected Enoch’s ministry.

Enoch was surprised to see that, in spite of God’s knowledge of all things, he wept in response to the behavior of others in a given moment. But, once God showed Enoch why he felt the way he did, Enoch felt the same way.

Interestingly, the way Enoch escaped from the sorrow of this exchange was through seeing (in the future) the coming of the Son of Man. The key way God helps us endure hard things is by showing us why they are worth it. This requires trust in God.

Having all things before you doesn’t mean you aren’t affected by present events. It simply provides you with tools to contend with them.

Being affected isn’t the same as being overcome. The Lord has overcome all things, but he is still affected by them. There are many things on this earth that cause great sorrow for the Lord, and there are many things that cause great joy. However, none of these things have power to overcome his character. Nothing will change what he does or why he does it.

It isn’t always easy to discern between paths of enduring joy and paths of fleeting pleasure. Sometimes, those who are least interested in walking the path of enduring joy seem to have it better than those who do. The key to resolving the difference is taking a long-term perspective.

The joy of the wicked comes because they have not yet encountered the awareness of reality that would overcome their perspective. The righteous have learned principles that allow them to overcome everything that the world can throw at them. Their suffering brings continuous refinement. Therefore, they might suffer for a season, but will always have greater joy.

The wicked are like a boat that isn’t really seaworthy, but hasn’t yet encountered bad weather.

The righteous are a boat that regularly gets buried in mountainous waves, but always comes back up unscathed.

There is more than one reason to desire a ship that can withstand great waves. While waves will come whether you like it or not, it is the waves that carry you to greater joy.

Chapter 11: Joy comes from value

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. (Matthew 13:44)

Normal people have arbitrary ideas of what brings them joy. Regardless of how these perceptions developed, they have only random correlation to what benefits. As a consequence, their degree of happiness fluctuates like a ship on the sea. Happiness tied to anything but benefit is fleeting. It doesn’t tend to endure very long in this life, and it can’t endure after this life.

Those who insist on choosing less than the maximal benefit in life will find themselves working against the Lord. Everything he does is calculated to maximize benefit. Any deviation from that is contrary to his work and his will. Those who work against God can’t invoke his help in obtaining greater happiness, because their objectives differ from his.

To the extent you choose to have joy from the things that benefit, you will have far more joy than if you tie your joy to anything else. Joy from benefit to you and others is eternal. This kind of joy can be maximized through obtaining and leveraging the tools and power that God provides.

Many people believe that pain and sorrow are things that act on you. This idea governs how they choose to interact with the world, but it is a foolish one. Even the briefest consideration would show that this belief is false.

Suffering is neither good nor bad in and of itself. The goodness or badness of suffering lies fully in the perspective of the sufferer. If it is according to a purpose, suffering can be good and even sought out. A woman seeks out the suffering of pregnancy and childbirth because she believes in its purpose. Perceived purpose converts sorrow into joy.

How you feel is not dictated by what happens to you. Suppose your spouse dies suddenly but you haven’t heard the news. Alternatively, suppose you have won the lottery but you haven’t checked the numbers yet. In both cases, extreme emotional response would seem unavoidable, but you don’t yet know, so you don’t react. Clearly, it is not the situation itself that causes the response, but the perception of the situation. Clearly, the subjective perception of the situation is what generates the response. You can only influence reality so much, but you have full control over your perception of it!

You don’t have to feel bad even if bad things happen to you, any more than you have to feel good when good things happen to you. You control how you feel by how you react to what happens to you, and you do this by how you interpret reality. You fully control your perceptions.

Consider the following scriptural example of how perceptions can drive experience. Here, a husband (Lehi) and wife (Sariah) react very differently to the extended absence of their children on a journey suggested by Lehi’s vision from God.

At the conclusion of the matter, both had full joy, but Lehi did not have to suffer first as Sariah did. How was he able to have joy the whole time, where she first had to suffer? Lehi began this experience by trusting in God. He filled in the unknown aspects of the situation in a way that assumed that God’s love and power would bless them. Sariah assumed the unknown aspects of the situation would transpire in a way that would cause her harm. Because Lehi’s perception of reality was infused with trust in God’s love, this situation was insufficient to temporarily steal his joy.

Heaven and hell are literal places. Where they are is determined by their physical location. But how they are is completely governed by the perspective chosen by those that inhabit them.

It is the perspective of those in heaven that allows them to dwell in eternal happiness in the presence of God. It is the perspective of those in hell that prevents them from doing the same.

Heaven and hell are no different except in the perception of the occupants. Heaven itself would be torturous to any who are unprepared to appreciate it. Obtaining heaven is not about obtaining a reward, but rather about preparing one’s character to recognize and appreciate what it entails as a positive experience. Those who come into God’s presence unprepared are not filled with joy. They are filled with terror.

We like to think things that are good are always good and things that are bad are always bad. In actuality, nothing is good or bad innately. Rather, good and bad are constructs that are wholly dependent upon the circumstances and perspectives of those involved. What is good for one under one set of circumstances is bad for another under different circumstances.

As it is with good and bad, so it is with joy. A given outcome can produce a fullness of joy in one person and nothing but pain in another.

Every outcome has the potential of producing a different range and depth of joy. Not all outcomes can produce the same degree of joy, and even for a given outcome, the amount of joy actually experienced by individuals will vary depending on their experience and perspectives.

Lasting joy and happiness come from within, not from without. “The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways: and a good man shall be satisfied from himself.” (Proverbs 14:14) Enduring joy and happiness are not about what happens, but how you interpret it.

To grow in lasting joy and happiness, you have to grow in your ability to perceive the good in situations that don’t seem good. The way you do this is by learning more of what God knows and becoming more like he is. The more you seek to acquire and assimilate God’s character and knowledge, the more your perceptions will match his, and the more joy you will have.

If value is the source of joy, how do we increase value? By increasing desire and appreciation. These things come from our perceptions. They can be informed by observation, by introspection, by choice, and by experience.

Jesus said.

A pig’s primary concern in life is to eat ravenously. They do not want pearls. They want slop. Slop is far less valuable than pearls, but they don’t know that. Pigs do not value pearls any more than dirt. Dogs are similar. Animals do not perceive value in even the most valuable things. To them, all experience is reduced to a narrow band: something is either food or not, and most things that should not be food are still considered food (dogs eat vomit, pigs eat anything).

By default, humans are animalistic in their recognition of value. Instead of joy, we seek pleasure. Instead of lasting benefit, we seek what can titillate us here and now, without regard to future penalty or risk. Jesus said.

Merchants spend their career learning the value of things. They buy things for less than they are worth and then sell them for what they are worth. They make their living by repeatedly trading everything they have for something more.

By default, humans are poor judges of value. They do not learn to discern between good and evil. They do not know the true cost of things, and they do not know the true value of things. They do not realize that what is better always requires more than what is worse.

Jesus said.

By default, humans do not know the difference between a normal field and a field that contains a treasure. They do not seek for hidden treasures, and only see the surface of the fields. They do not seek to see things in a different, more accurate light. They do not seek to differentiate between the commonplace and the valuable.

It is incorrect to think that what will bring you the greatest joy will be obvious to you or easy to obtain. It will be neither. By default, you are like a pig who can’t tell the difference between pearls and slop, a novice merchant who misjudges the value of things of great worth, and like a farmer who has no interest in seeking buried treasures in seemingly ordinary fields.

Joy comes from value. It isn’t intrinsic. There is no such thing as something that is equally valuable to everyone, because value is dependent on perception, and perception varies.

Value does not come from the price paid for it. Rather, it comes from what you get out of it. You can get something for free and value it highly, and you can pay dearly for something and feel it is worthless.

Value comes from the use you can derive from something. An expensive hammer and an inexpensive hammer could have inverted values if the inexpensive hammer works better than the expensive one.

Life is just as much about gaining the perception to value what God values as it is obtaining what God values. When you don't value something, you can't have joy. Adam and Eve dwelled with God in Eden, but because their lack of experience prevented them from valuing what they had, they did not know joy until after they were ejected from his presence.

It is easy to take for granted the valuable things we are constantly showered with: “And your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief, and because you have treated lightly the things you have received...." (D&C 84:54) Yet, these “small and simple” things can be critically valuable.

Several scriptures describe the unimaginable magnitude of the good things God is willing to give us.

Why are these blessings so difficult to describe? Why have they not been heard or seen?

One reason is because we do not yet have the perception necessary to recognize these things as blessings, even if they (or their precedents) are all around us. In other words, were you to describe it to a person who has not obtained it, they would just see those events as very normal.

There isn't anything in heaven that doesn't have a precedent here. It is quite easy for God to say "you know that thing? That thing here is just like this other thing in heaven. That is the sort of thing that awaits you if you love me." But he doesn't do this often, or rather for many people. Or for hardly any.

Paul knew many of these things. He had been there, after all. He could have given a sermon on the things he knew, but he didn't. Instead, he said “eye hath not seen,” etc. Why? Because when you tell people these things in plainness, they don't understand them or worse, they reject them, because these things, whatever they are, don't match their preconceived notions of what heaven ought to be like. They do not value the true qualities of heaven like those in heaven do.

Obtaining maximal joy requires obtaining those things that have the ability to deliver maximal joy and learning the value of those things. Having only one of these two requirements is insufficient to produce maximal joy.

Part of the purpose of the gospel is to help us establish a more correct valuation of things that are available here. By default, we place great value on carnal things that actually have very little value when seen in the context of a greater understanding of reality. For example, a child finds a piece of candy immensely valuable. An adult finds a first-world home immensely valuable. An elderly person finds independence immensely valuable. In the scope of things as they really are, each of these things and many more besides have very little value. By default, we place very little value in things that are actually good: honesty, unconditional love, patience, service, etc. As greater degrees of reality are revealed to us, by suffering if need be, our valuations adjust to be more accurate.

The gospel reveals hidden levels of sorrow and joy in “normal” life. It increases the depth of our awareness in knowledge, but also in emotion. If you asked one who loves God what their happiest moments are, they would start with something that just happened in the last few days because their happiness steadily increases through time, and they would also describe things that to you would seem quite normal. Perhaps they would be overcome with joy at remembering a momentary interaction with one of their children, or finishing a challenging but seemingly mundane task at home or work.

Awareness not only increases the amount of joy you experience, but also increases the quantity of joy you find in things you are already aware of. One New Testament story helps illustrate this principle.

This man Simon had invited Jesus to his home in spite of the negative press it would bring. And yet, Simon appreciated Jesus far less than the woman who was also present. Jesus had power to forgive the sins of both Simon and the woman. While forgiveness was of equal objective value to both these people, the woman was far more appreciative of that value than Simon, because she was much more aware of what it would mean to have it.

Likewise, you probably take a great deal of what is offered to you for granted—whether you presently have it or whether you merely have the means to obtain it. Central to your quest for obtaining greater joy is obtaining a more accurate valuation of what you take for granted. What is common to one is a treasure to another. What is mundane to one offers supernal peace to another. What is boring to one is infinitely interesting to another.

By default, humans do not find beneficial things pleasurable.

It is only through consistent and prolonged subjection to the influence towards greater things that a person can develop a love for what they ought to love—that which helps them improve the most.

We learn to find good things pleasurable through practice. We iteratively exercise trust in God by acting in obedience to what he says, even when it seems extreme or risky. As our experience validates his wisdom, we gain sufficient trust to endure more difficult situations without losing the hope of a positive outcome.

God teaches us the value of things by incrementally revealing to us a greater understanding of how things really are. He subjects us to a greater share of the consequences of what we believe. He exposes us to a greater share of what there is to know.

God typically teaches you the value of things by showing you previously unseen negative aspects of what you thought was good or neutral. He shows you how rare happiness is, or how unreliable people are, or how fleeting joy can be. He is limited in how quickly and completely he can do this by the trust you have in him, as revealing these things to one who didn’t trust him would quickly overwhelm them.

Do you know the true value of what is possible in this life? Can you know the true value until you’ve hungered and thirsted after these things, and until you’ve paid the price for others to have them from you? From common things—like children, food, and shelter—to more elusive things— like peace, forgiveness, altruistic service, and unconditional love—correct valuation requires experience, and experience requires pain.

God will teach you the greater value of things you take for granted by taking those things away from you. He will teach you the lesser value of things you unjustifiably treasure by exposing their limits to you. He will teach you the greater value of things you do not yet know to seek by exposing you to the needs those things fulfill. All of these lessons require suffering, but all of them provide a pathway to far greater joy.

Instead of rejoicing in opportunities to learn the value of things, we are upset with God. “Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness...” (Isaiah 26:10)

Jesus once said: “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” (John 16:12) Likewise, there are many things that he needs to tell us to help us have more joy, but we can’t bear them now because were he to tell us, we would be offended by them.

Why do “...fools despise wisdom and instruction”? (Proverbs 1:7) Because it hurts before it feels good. Fools want to feel good, not be good. They are willing to feel better as long as it doesn’t require them to first feel worse.

Jesus said: “...blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.” (Luke 7:23) Those who trust God enough to trust what comes from him, even if it hurts, will be blessed far more than those who do not.

So much of what is offered is rejected because of preconceived notions. This is, for example, the key to understanding Peter’s otherwise cryptic saying about the “things the angels desire to look into” but did not obtain (see 1 Peter 1:12). Why did angels merely desire to look into greater things? What held them back? Why didn’t they actually obtain greater things instead of merely desiring to look into them? Because they were not willing to pay the price. They were willing to believe there were radically better things available than what they had experienced, but not willing to believe that the price was also radically more than they expected.

The amount of joy you receive will be determined by how much you are willing to suffer. The amount of light you receive is determined by how much darkness you are willing to walk through because the amount of light you perceive is determined by how much darkness you experience.

For example, when we read how Ammon and his companions experienced incomprehensible joy after their epic missionary labors, we are told what it cost them.

Interestingly, even among this group where each person experienced “incomprehensible joy,” there was still a significant difference in the amount of joy each individual felt. Ammon, for instance, felt so much joy that he was physically overcome.

Why was Ammon’s joy greater than the others? He had sacrificed more. Why do you need to be truly penitent and humble and a seeker of happiness to obtain such levels of joy? Because those who are not penitent will not submit to the negative experiences required to get there, those who are not humble will never recognize the value of things others take for granted, and those who do not seek happiness will never find anything different than what they have by default.

What you learn is limited by your level of humility. People tend to be terrible at accurately measuring blessings and suffering in ourselves and others. There are those who think their lives are abundant when they are actually shockingly beneath their potential. There are those who think their lives are awful when they aren’t remarkably worse than others. There are those who falsely believe that some people have it much better than they do. There are those who vastly underestimate the suffering of others. Your ability to improve your valuation of life’s experiences will depend on the accuracy of your perception of reality.

There is no need to limit yourself to those things that are learned by your own experience. You can reflect on the situations of other people. Perhaps you can gain greater appreciation for having functioning legs by sincerely reflecting upon the condition of a paralyzed person. Perhaps you can gain greater appreciation for having comfortable shelter by sincerely reflecting upon the plight of a homeless person. Perhaps you can gain greater appreciation for the food you eat by reflecting on those who do not have enough to eat. Perhaps you can gain greater appreciation for your job by reflecting on the situation of those who have no job or have to work harder for less pay than you.

The Lord once told the story of David eating bread set apart for priests. He explained why David ate the bread.

The Lord differentiated having need and being hungry. David was both hungry and wanted to eat. You can be hungry and be fasting, or you can be hungry and want to eat.

Many other scriptures make distinctions between need and want. The Lord “healed them that had need of healing.” (Luke 9:11) It does not say he healed all the sick, but only those that had need of healing. He only healed those who desired it. The Lord said, “joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.” (Luke 15:7)

Everyone is a sinner, therefore everyone needs to repent. But not everyone chooses to recognize that. Not everyone wants to.

There is a difference between what you have and what you appreciate. There is a difference between what you could have and what you want. You don’t always want what you need, and you don’t always need what you want.

You can only have joy in what you appreciate. You can only have joy in what you want.

Of what value is a gift if it is not desired, used, or appreciated? It has no value beyond how much it is desired, used, and appreciated. Only that which is valued can bring joy. Consider the Lord’s teachings from Matthew 7.

What does it mean to ask? Does it just mean to verbally request? What does it mean to seek? To knock? What does it mean to seek with all your heart, might, mind, and strength? What would it require if seeking required all your desire, all your capacity, all your intelligence, and all your effort? Those who do this will find what they seek.

In order to have joy in a gift, you must appreciate the gift. Part of God answering a request for “bread” is ensuring that the recipient knows what it is like to really be hungry. Part of God answering a request for “a fish” is ensuring the recipient knows what it is like to only have bread to eat. The purpose of God’s work is not to relieve suffering, but to increase joy. Therefore, the more the petitions we make are focused on relieving our suffering, the less recognizable will be his responses, which will always wend toward helping us grow in appreciation for what we take for granted.

One way to learn to appreciate something is to experience what it is like to be without it. A glass of water is much more valuable to a person who has spent three days in the desert than to a person in normal life.

Whether you lose something you once had, or whether you comprehend what it would be like to have something you have not yet received, in both cases learning to appreciate something requires suffering. The Lord himself was said to have learned “obedience by the things which he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8) You learn obedience by the things you suffer because by suffering, you learn the wisdom of submitting to what God teaches you: “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.” (Psalm 119:71)

Value is determined by what you are willing to pay for something. Those who are prepared to receive all that God has must be willing to pay any price for it. If you are unwilling to do, become, not do, or not become anything, you set limits on what you are willing to receive, and you do so because of a lack of value. What you are able to receive is limited only by what you are willing to suffer in order to receive it.

Suffering is what shows us what we need. It is what unlocks our willingness to do what it takes to obtain the joy we say we seek. Consider the example of a certain blind man that was healed by Jesus.

This man deeply felt the loss he experienced by being blind. His motivation was sufficient not only to seek Jesus, but to actively overcome his disciples, who told him to go away and be quiet. Instead of listening to the crowd, he shouted that much louder. Had he not been willing to act so radically, he would not have been healed.

There are many joyous outcomes in this life only available to those who are willing to shout past the voices of the mainstream. To help you marshal the motivation sufficient to encounter them, God will help you comprehend your unmet needs through either taking away what you thought you had or causing you to comprehend what you have yet to obtain. This will help you find joy in what you otherwise would not have appreciated: “The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.” (Proverbs 27:7)

Chapter 12: Assuming responsibility

...I will recompense thy ways upon thee... (Ezekiel 7:4)

Responsibility means being aware of and receptive to the consequences of the actions done and undone. It requires reconciling our feelings and actions to what we say we want.

Responsibility requires realizing what we are able to do. A great deal of the suffering we encounter and the joy we don’t encounter in life is due to an incorrect estimation of what we are able to do.

In this life, we are responsible for all the good we could do, all the suffering we could relieve, and becoming the person we could be if we were to fulfill our potential.

Joy comes from receiving what we value. What we value is a composite of our experience and knowledge, but also our perspective. Specifically, our perspective of our purpose—or what we choose to find important—is an important driver of what we value.

Joyful moments do not erase moments of pain and suffering—they make them worth it. We get to define not only what we do, but also why we do it. There exist whys that are strong enough to endure any what. There exist whys that are strong enough to produce joy in spite of any hardship.

Purpose and choice explain the massive difference between sacrifice and loss. Loss is something taken from you. Sacrifice is something you give, finding greater value in what you give than what you receive. The more committed you are to your choice and the greater the sense of value you find in your purpose, the more joy you will encounter through your sacrifice.

Our purpose is whatever we choose. It is difficult to underestimate how important our choice of purpose is to how much joy we experience. An optimal purpose will maximize your present joy given your circumstances and ensure your placement on the path to unlimited joy. A suboptimal purpose will vastly decrease the amount of joy you experience presently and also place a hard limit on the joy you can obtain in and after this life.

Seen this way, the search for your purpose in life is the choice between many paths, each with different outcomes. Only one leads to the best outcome. To our benefit, the search has already been conducted and the optimal path already determined. The gospel of Jesus Christ provides the path to obtain and fulfill the optimal purpose.

For our purposes in this chapter, we will refer to the Lord’s summarized description of his gospel: love God and love others. To love God, we must seek to be like him, which means an incessant dedication to self-improvement. To love others, we must make their benefit our principle concern. Making these things our purpose is the path to maximal joy.

For some people, choosing the optimal purpose in life is made difficult by the temptation to take a self-centered perspective. This is shortsighted, and any honest person exploring that path will quickly find that it doesn’t yield the joy and happiness it purports to. This is the path King Solomon walked.

Solomon’s main question was, “what is the purpose of life?” To find the answer, he purposefully set out to test every hypothesis he could think of. He tested pleasure, wine, women, property, and money, and found that none of these delivered enduring happiness that exceeded their cost (see Ecclesiastes 2). He tested wisdom and knowledge, and found that when weighed on the scales of personal benefit, the cost to obtain and exercise wisdom and knowledge exceeded the benefit.

Solomon’s principle conclusion was that the purposes pursued by most were nothing but vanity—without worth, empty, or fleeting.

Solomon correctly concluded that, for those who seek what this world can provide: “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour....” (Ecclesiastes 2:24)

Solomon drew so close to what he sought, but he never obtained it. Although he went farther in his pursuit than most who have dwelt on this earth, he stopped short of his final destination. Though he realized that setting one’s heart on the things this world provides is indeed vanity, he failed to discover the key to increasing joy. He realized that the pursuit of “wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” (Ecclesiastes 1:18) He didn’t realize, however, that while it is possible to increase sorrow without increasing wisdom or knowledge, those whose sorrow comes in the pursuit of either will invariably also encounter commensurate joy. The key he failed to discover was that enduring joy sought for self can never be obtained.

Solomon failed to discover the value of serving others. Solomon sought to maximize his benefit from the world, not to the world. He focused on what he could receive instead of what he could give. Enduring joy can only be found in selfless love for others.

Like Solomon, those who only see this life in the context of what they get out of it will find only pain, disappointment, and emptiness. Though they may find temporary pleasure, it will eventually be taken from them, and they will conclude that it is better to never have been born and that the best they can do in this life is enjoy the things they have and to avoid the unnecessary complexity found in excess.

For those who are paying attention, it is clear that loving improvement and loving others is the clear path to maximal joy. What inhibits us isn’t confusion over that fact, but rather the challenge of seeing ourselves as capable of developing a character similar to God’s or having any sort of meaningful impact on the lives of others. The rest of this chapter focuses on believing in your divine potential.

The Lord paid the price of the penalty of sins for those who believe in him. Was this his only purpose in coming to this earth?

Of at least equal importance was the outcome he delivered by living a perfect life in spite of being subject to all the temptations of mortality. The Lord “...was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) By living a perfect life as a man, he showed that it was possible and showed the way for all others to do the same. He said.

Note the ideas Jesus conveyed here and elsewhere: those that seek him and obey him will be empowered to do what he did and greater, without exceptions.

Paul said it more concisely: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Philippians 4:13)

If you believe in Jesus, you have to believe that people have the potential to be as Jesus was. You must believe people are capable of greatness!

Believing in the divine potential of all humans will immediately infuse you with great purpose: to do whatever you can to help them achieve it.

It seems that most people who think they are exceptional aren’t, while most who are don’t know they are. Both problems can be addressed by paying attention to how people interact with the situations life provides.

It seems that most people drastically underestimate the breadth of human character found in this world. That’s because diversity of character is much like a paper fan. When closed, all parts of the fan are smashed together. It is only when you expand the fan that you see the distance between each of the folds, and it is vast. Only those with a great deal of knowledge, wisdom, and character can perceive the true extent of differences in human knowledge, character, and wisdom. Like with IQ, you have to be of a certain stature before you can realize the breadth of options and the difference being of a certain stature makes. The problem is that this awareness is rare and subsequently the status quo is designed from the perspective of sameness.

Sameness is a destroying influence. Most of the good in the world is done by a few elite people. Normal people need elite people to keep the world from falling apart, and exceptional people need to know they exist to rise up and do what only they are willing to do.

We are all unarticulated chaos. You only know who you are by how you react to the unending chain of stimuli life provides.

This is both massively empowering and seriously crippling. You can be anything you are willing to be, but you are also only what you are willing to be.

We have a strong socially-imprinted aversion to anything that suggests that we are not the same. Yet all nature testifies that it is so. People have different heights, different preferences, different dispositions, and different levels of productivity. Why shouldn’t we have differing outputs?

Correct beliefs can be ascertained by considering the utility of the outcomes of the belief. Supposing there are differences among us, what is the outcome if we assume we are normal? We will be no different than the average person, because even if we have the capacity to be more, we will never believe it and never try it.

The world needs you to stand up. The world needs you to lift what you are capable of lifting. There are people in this world whose lives would be so much better if you were to do what only you can do.

Elitism is the belief that some people are more capable than others, whether by birth or by will. In general, people stay far away from elitism.

Elitism does not require that you believe that some people have less intrinsic worth or potential than others. It merely means that you recognize the fact that some people do more with their potential than others.

Some wish that everyone were the same. They conflate our equal opportunity from God with equal outcomes. God has said over and over that all his truth is available to any and everyone just as soon as they exercise the required heed and diligence. In other words, you are fully in control of what you receive from God.

All men have equal privilege.

But all men do not equally exercise the opportunity given them by God.

Elite people are exceptional only because they do exceptional things. While there are certainly natural differences between people—that is, differences due to birth—these are significantly overshadowed by differences in what we choose. A person who chooses to practice piano five hours a day for years will be better than any person with natural aptitude who doesn’t practice.

Almost every large company’s productivity follows the 80/20 rule: 20% of the people produce 80% of the benefit. When someone among the 80% doesn’t do a good job, not much noticeable difference in output occurs. Output is much more sensitive to those who are making outsized contributions. If the salesperson who closes 10-100x the normal volume goes on vacation, sales will take a noticeable plunge. What if that salesperson believed they were average? How would the company fare? How would that change the resources available for each of the many people in the 80% segment? This is at least as true in society as it is in work.

Differences in output will be observable in any sufficiently large set of humans. That can’t change without force, and force can never yield a changed heart.

Many avoid entertaining a belief in elitism in order to avoid the responsibility or guilt that comes with it. Elitism challenges your pride: if some people are exceptional, why aren’t you? Elitism challenges your worth: if you could be elite, why aren’t you?

If it is possible to be elite, but you are not, you are either willingly abdicating what you could do, or you are less than those who are elite. Neither conclusion is appealing to the natural man, but neither conclusion ought to occur.

Elitism can cause negative outcomes. It can be twisted and used as an excuse for some to control others. It can cause differences in outcomes that hurt the feelings of those who produce less than others.

Even with its drawbacks, elitism is an indisputable fact. It is reality. Ignoring what is true does not change reality.

It is wrong to think that only situations without drawbacks can be optimal. The question should never be whether something is perfect, but whether it is worth it. A belief in elitism is indisputably worth it. Those who could do more will never do more without first believing they can. All improvement of which they are capable lies beyond where they currently are, which is the permanent bound of the belief that we are all the same. We aren’t.

If you are willingly abdicating what you could otherwise do, you ought to stand up and achieve your potential. No matter who you are, people need you to rise up to your potential. No matter who you are, there are specific people who will suffer unnecessarily if you do not rise up to your potential. No matter who you are, you will never have peace as long as you are living less than how you know how.

Even if you retain the belief that you are not capable of doing great things, you should embrace elitism, as it provides you with the hope that those who are elite will do for you what you can’t do for yourself. After all, what person would be upset that they have friends that can help them move things that are too heavy for them to carry themselves?

Some are scared of thinking themselves elite. That is understandable. In believing that being exceptional is up to you, you assume a massive weight of responsibility, as we are each responsible for the good we could have done.

For of him unto whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation. (D&C 82:3)

Some are scared of what others might think if they live their potential. That is understandable. Other people are, by definition, normal. The more you live up to your potential, the more different from them you will be. You will be misunderstood, misjudged, and persecuted. But the very things that make you different will be what helps others encounter more joy themselves.

When two of Jesus’ disciples asked to have places of honor in heaven, Jesus said he could not arbitrarily give that privilege to people, but suggested that if they were willing to “drink of the cup” that was required to obtain that outcome, they could have it.

Here, Jesus was teaching his disciples that greatness—like everything else in this life—is a matter of cause and effect. Those desiring a certain outcome need only discover and follow the recipe for obtaining that outcome.

There is a belief that Jesus was divine because of the virgin birth. Jesus did not come to the earth with any special powers. He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) He obtained special powers by learning more than any other man had ever learned, in the same way that all men must learn.

He learned incrementally, line upon line through dedicated selfimprovement and through dedication to the benefit of others: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” (Luke 2:52)

The driving differentiation in Jesus’ life was not magic capability, but rather a relentless drive to learn and do all that he could. Jesus was divine not because he had magic powers, but because he was humble.

The Lord taught his disciples that if they wanted to share the glory and honor he possessed, they needed to do the things he did.

The world needs you to do more. The world needs you to get more from God. The sheep need to be fed, and there are things that will never happen if you don’t do them.

Are you overwhelmed by the charge to be like him? Good. You should be. This very feeling of nothingness is what will enable you to follow his example.

It is because we recognize the greatness of God that we feel weak. Jesus called himself the least of all.

He “descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth....” (D&C 88:6) His power was the result of his humble submission to the Father. Like Jesus, if you submit yourself completely to God, you will be enabled to receive all he has.

Being elite looks and feels the opposite of what many would assume. It is not the belief that you are special. Rather, it is the belief that you are nothing connected with the belief that God is everything connected with the belief that he wants to give you all things by making you like he is. When you subscribe to these beliefs, you open the gates of what God can give you, and you will do amazing things because he is amazing and because you don’t inhibit him by asserting your own supposed goodness.

Being elite is not a quality; it is a choice. It is about what you are willing to subject yourself to. He who submits himself most fully to God will be greatest among men.

The greatest strength of men is nothing compared to the greatness of God. The Lord followed this path in his mortal ministry by submitting to the Father in all things.

Similarly, we can do the same by submitting to the Lord in all things.

It is only through an ever-increasing knowledge of our own nothingness that we can access ever-increasing quantities of God’s greatness in our lives.

One man of God described this attitude as follows.

Greatness is not about being better than others. Greatness is about what you are willing to be responsible for.

Greatness is not found in seeking for experiences to meet inflated selfperception of qualifications. Rather, it is found in seeking qualifications to fit your desires to help others.

It is not our “specialness” that qualifies us for the work, but our desire—our willingness to assume responsibility. If you don’t desire to be great, you never will be. Meanwhile, “...if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work.” (D&C 4:3)

The Lord said: “...If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35) If you are willing to truly consider yourself the least of all, willing to descend below all things, you will fully open the gates to receiving God’s goodness in you, and you will do God’s works. Jesus said: “...the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” (John 14:10)

Rising to your true potential is not about being better than others. It is about helping them to the extent of your capability and seeking greater capability for that purpose. When his disciples were arguing over who was the greatest, Jesus said.

Being elite is not about exercising dominion. It is about serving others. The Lord said: “...if any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35)

Being elite is about “...doing these things thou wilt do the greatest good unto thy fellow beings, and wilt promote the glory of him who is your Lord.” (D&C 81:4) It is about a consummate focus on what benefits the world without regard to what it costs you (see 2 Nephi 26:24).

Those who are willing to seek God with full purpose of heart and who do everything he says will encounter the greatest joy available. They will be the most improved and they will be of the greatest service to their fellowmen. They will find themselves doing great things—not of their own goodness, but because of what God gives them.

God provides all people with access to his influence, which will quietly but consistently whisper that there is something much better and much greater for you than what you presently have and are. Your capacity to contribute to this world is a fundamental part of your joy. “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17) You ignore your potential at your own peril, with steep consequences that range across all aspects of this life and after.

Normal dogs were bred to be low-intelligence but affectionate companions. Sled dogs were bred to pull a burden for miles and miles every day. They are energetic and intelligent animals. When put into the situations they were designed for, they are happy and capable of deep bonds with humans. When you cage or confine a sled dog, depriving it of the duties it was born to do, it gets anxious, mean, and destructive. Like a sled dog, you were designed for abnormal tasks. Like a sled dog, you will be miserable if you do not live the purpose for which you were born.

Your conscience will drive you to do all you can. You will never have peace or contentment while you are doing less than you are able.

Great mental unrest is caused by an uncalibrated sense of responsibility. Depression stems from recognizing that there is something much better and much greater for you without having the tools to articulate or achieve those improvements. Anxiety stems from attempting to fulfill this visceral urge through ineffectual means (e.g., things outside of your control). Anxiety is remitted by explicitly evaluating the efficacy of potential actions and learning to replace unfruitful actions with fruitful ones. Depression is remitted by choosing a purpose and finding means to work toward it.

Of final note is the importance of realizing that, though you can run from your destiny, life has a way of helping it find you. In one instructive story, Jesus led Peter to walk out onto the water with him. Figuratively speaking, most Christians sit in a boat still sitting on the shore and claim they hold all the benefits God bestows to those who love him. Were you to pull their boat even into the shallows—as life always finds a way of doing—they would find everything that brings them peace in their simple situations to be insufficient for the chaos life provides. Meanwhile, those who actually believe God and follow him will find him taking them by the hand, leading them by foot on the water to the roughest seas. For them, there is no question of what God’s power is. Without it, they would instantly sink. They have no illusions about what God provides them in life, and they would never find themselves describing their lives as normal.

You were not created to be acted upon. You were created to act. Do not waste away the opportunities before you. You are a child of God. Do not squander your inheritance. Rise up and claim it!

Chapter 13: Absolute honesty

...the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are... (Jacob 4:13)

God see things as they really are. If we accept the idea that he is the happiest of all beings, and that the more like him in character and knowledge we are, the happier we will be, we too must learn to view things as they really are. This is what it means to be honest.

Dishonesty is the degree to which we think, feel, or act inconsistently to what we know. It is the degree to which we are at odds with things as they really are, as far as we understand reality.

Honesty is like a seesaw—it is easy to be off to one side or the other, but very difficult to be balanced. People tend either to be too hard on themselves (one form of dishonesty) or not hard enough on themselves (another form of dishonesty). They tend to be too exacting of others (another form of dishonesty) or too quick to make excuses for others (another form of dishonesty).

Dishonesty blocks opportunities for both increased joy and reduced suffering.

Being dishonest is so common that most people would be shocked to hear just how prevalent it is. They would scoff at the label being applied to what is (to them) normal behavior. Here are several examples of dishonesty that are rarely acknowledged.

1. Worrying about things you can’t change.
2. Ignoring things about yourself that you don’t like.
3. Ignoring signs in your life that indicate a need for changes to your behavior.
4. Ignoring things about others that differ from how you see them.
5. Blaming others for things you have the power to change.
6. Blaming yourself for things you don’t have the power to change.

It seems impossible to overstate the prevalence or effect of dishonesty in society today. Nearly every case of suffering in the world today is due to dishonesty. We have wantonly ignored what is plainly evident right before our faces to a degree impossible in a pre-industrial society. Today’s society drowns in oil-fueled surplus abundance which makes it possible to ignore consequences even when they reach great magnitudes. While to a righteous people, such abundance would be sufficient to help usher in a utopia, all we’ve managed to do is magnify our sin by covering the consequences of our evil desires by pretending reality is something other than what it is.

You must learn to see things outside of the perspective of your ego. Your brain is smarter than you know, and it will engage in the most elaborate and irrational gymnastics to avoid self-incrimination. In order to consider things that might grant you greater joy, you have to navigate a maze of automatic subconscious reactions, any one of which is sufficient to completely shut down any chance for improvement. Your subconscious will generate thoughts such as, “if this is true, I am a far worse person than I thought,” or “what would this mean about all those sacrifices I made on a false pretense?” or “if this is true, then those bad things I’ve gone through (or done) are my fault.”

Learn to think about things as if you were an impartial observer. Don’t allow your subconscious to interpret things through the filter of what you consider impermissible. View things for what they really are without thinking about the implications.

Self-implication is always a good thing. If you implicate yourself, that’s a good thing, because you are identifying something you can improve, and improvement always leads to joy.

There is absolutely no benefit in focusing on things you can’t change. It causes extra suffering and limits joy. It is far easier and more beneficial to be realistic about what you can change and focus your efforts on that.

There is never anything you can do to change the past. You can and should identify past mistakes because it means you have learned from them, won’t make them again, and now have the wisdom to help others avoid them. If you realize something you’ve done to hurt others in the past, it gives you the opportunity to try to make things right. What you can do about realized mistakes and past offenses, like everything else you can do something about, lies in what you do about it today.

There are always things about the future that you can’t do anything about. However, there are also always some things about the future you can do something about. It is good to consider the future as long as it is in order to trace it back to what you need to do today to affect desired outcomes. Focusing on future events outside of what you will do today is dishonest. It will create a feedback loop of anxiety that will prevent you from doing what you actually need to do today, causing less joy and more suffering in your life than what could have been had you not selfsabotaged.

Anxiety is experienced when we confuse the things we can change with the things we can't. Anxiety comes as we incorrectly assign the feelings that come when we aren't doing what we can about the things we can change to the things we can't change. Anxiety is caused by dishonesty and a lack of faith in God, and any treatment that doesn’t address the cause will fail to relieve the symptoms. If you are anxious, you are either not doing all you can do today, or you don’t trust that God will take care of the rest. Anxiety is relieved as you correctly parse out the things you can change from the things you can't change. When you list out these things, on paper if need be, and isolate the specific actions you can take to work on the things you can change, your anxiety will end.

The only way to affect the future is by what you decide to do today. When we do everything that lies in our power to reconcile to reality as far as we understand it, we can trust in God to ensure that whatever happens from that point is exactly what he sees as absolutely necessary on the path to our greatest joy.

When the Lord appeared to Paul to convince him that he should stop persecuting Christians, he asked how long Paul would “kick against the pricks.” He was trying to make Paul aware of the available evidence that Christ was the Messiah. He had the stories of all the miracles Jesus had performed, the darkness and earthquake during the crucifixion, the hundreds of eyewitnesses to his resurrection, and the witnesses of those who saw the righteous dead co-resurrected with Christ. He should have recognized Jesus as the Messiah—he knew the law of Moses and the prophecies. It took a fantastically bold vision and subsequent blindness for Paul to finally get it.

Jonah tried to run away from God’s will. Finding himself in the hellish outcome of his foolishness, he prayed to God in plain humility. He said, “They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.” (Jonah 2:8) In order to make the best of any situation, you must first decide to get honest about what is really going on.

We should be easier to entreat than Paul or Jonah, who are typically scapegoated as examples of obstinance. We look at them and sneer, “what fools!” Countless examples show that obliviousness is not specific to them. God constantly assaults us with signs that what we perceive is incorrect or incomplete. We are mostly oblivious to them, and typically only respond when something hits us so directly that it threatens to destroy us completely. “Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction: but he that regardeth reproof shall be honoured.” (Proverbs 13:18)

No greater witness to the human tendency towards “kicking against the pricks” exists than the epidemic of depression and suicide. Depression is caused by dishonesty—specifically, an unwillingness to accept things as they are.

The path to greatest joy is the one most aligned with reality. You can fight reality all you want, but you will never win.

Some hesitation to change may occur due to fear of making a mistake. There is no harm in being unsure. It is good to recognize when we don’t know the answer. The harm comes when we either a) know the answer but have convinced ourselves that we don’t yet know, or b) we forget that the one and only way to find the answer is to act.

The key to knowing what is good is using our intelligence to think about what would benefit. This will result in a collection of potential positive and negative outcomes for each choice. Then, we act to obtain more information about the path that seems most beneficial. As we take the path that seems more positive, we will know with a surety whether that path is how we imagined it as our actions either result in the expected outcomes, something worse, or something better. This is a process that happens as quickly as our actions are bold.

Bold, quick actions generate clear and fast answers. Slow, subtle actions generate slow, subtle answers that can be easily misinterpreted. In other words, confusion need not be anything but the most temporary state. Confusion is an invitation to ponder on the situation, to catalog choices, to consider positive and negative consequences, and finally, to act. People who follow this recipe will hardly ever make a mistake, and when they do, they will very quickly notice it and any damage incurred will be absolutely minimal compared to those who follow some other practice. Those people, in contrast, will find themselves constantly tormented by a mediocre life, tormented by thoughts of what could have been and a deep nagging feeling that they aren’t being their best selves and living an abundant life.

Hypocrisy is to claim to have standards that you don’t actually live by. A dishonest person is rarely overtly evil. Instead, they subconsciously twist and contort reality so that, in their own minds, they are better than they really are. They want to feel good, but they are unwilling to actually be good. They will engage in astonishing levels of deception to preserve the polished shell necessary to convince others that they are more than they really are. This fuels their self-delusion, and prevents them from having to contend with the true state of their own heart.

Jesus railed against hypocrisy. Why did he spare no expense in chastising those with this characteristic? It is because of its high eternal cost.

When you refuse to recognize reality, you cut yourself off from any potential improvement because you close all channels to God correcting you. Because you remove yourself from relieving the cause of your affliction, you seal yourself to it.

Hypocrites can’t be reclaimed because they cut themselves off from anything that could be used to help them self-correct.

Hypocrites cause a great deal of trouble to themselves and others.

Hypocrites have a standard reaction when confronted with evidence that they are not what they pretend to be. Like slugs exposed to salt, their convulsions are violent but predictable. They will.

Deny. They will engage in immediate and blatant lies to avoid what is painfully obvious. Deflect. They will twist and contort reality to make things someone else’s fault. Lash out. They will get astonishingly angry.

Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees provide ample examples of each of these reactions. Let’s just look at one of each. There are many more. Deny.

Deflect.

Lash out.

What is in your heart? What do you desire? An apple with a rotten core will disintegrate from the inside out, but those with desires single to the glory of God will find themselves full of light that permeates them and radiates from them. Seek not to feel good, but to actually be good.

You are an independent agent, endowed by God with the freedom to choose.

A massive portion of your situation is wholly within your control, including the ever-important perspective you choose to interpret the circumstances of your life.

Be responsible for your life and what you use it for. Don’t blame other people for things that are your fault.

If you wish to improve, the place to start is by asking what you could do differently to obtain a better outcome.

Sometimes, some portion of your situation is due to the choices of others. Even then, 100% of what you can change about the situation lies in how you react to it. What are you going to do about it?

Don’t suffer needlessly for things you can prevent.

Jesus came to free you from the prison in which dishonesty traps you.

He said: “...the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)

He frees you by showing you something better—which requires you to be ignorant of something or wrong about something.

In order for the Lord to lead you to greater joy, you have to be willing to be a fool. You have to get to the point where you care more about what God thinks of you than what others do.

Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. (Jeremiah 17:5)

You can’t care about both at the same time.

Improvement requires letting go of what you already have. Obviously, the beliefs, relationships, circumstances, or goods you currently embrace bring you some level of joy. But it is dishonest to pretend that this means that they are final, perfect, or flawless.

There is no harm in seeking joy and happiness. That will always lead to something better. The harm comes when you assume that what you presently possess precludes the existence of something better.

Only those without wisdom are foolish enough to think that something imperfect or incorrect is final, perfect, or flawless: “Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom: but a man of understanding walketh uprightly.” (Proverbs 15:21)

The body has sophisticated mechanisms to detect and kill cells that are harmful. It is not uncommon for cells to develop problems. When this happens under normal conditions, the body detects and destroys them before they can propagate. Cancer occurs when the body’s natural ability to detect aberrant cells is somehow curtailed, allowing the damaging cells to multiply in both number and effect. Cancer is caused by environmental and genetic factors. For example, when certain people smoke cigarettes, their bodies start creating lung cells with thicker-than-usual cell walls that make damaged cells invisible to the mechanisms that normally destroy them. When a damaged cell happens to develop, the body has lost the ability to see it, and therefore can’t fix it.

Self-honesty is to your spirit as cancer detection is to your body. It is your mechanism to sort out what benefits you from what harms you. When you are dishonest with yourself, you willingly give away the mechanism God has given you to lead you to the most joy and happiness by turning off your ability to see what harms you.

Few people perceive the consequences of their character, and even fewer exercise the interest and intensity required to remedy it. This isn’t so much a problem of perception as it is a problem of honesty. “A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” (Proverbs 22:3)

Life will show you what you lack, even if you have only a little interest or intensity. “Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment.” (Proverbs 13:23) Where people diverge from the abundant life is in their honest recognition of signs that things could be better. They commit the same mistakes over and over again. “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.” (Proverbs 26:11)

Through challenging situations, life constantly shows us where we lack the tools required to have an abundant life. Unfortunately, it is almost always the case that we deny these signs. We convince ourselves that our present situation isn’t that bad, or that there is nothing we can do about it, or that it is someone else’s fault, or that there isn’t a better possible outcome, or that the other possible outcomes are not as good compared to what we have as they actually are. All of these perceptions are manifestations of dishonestly—not the kind of dishonesty a child shows when he says he didn’t steal the cookie he snuck, but the kind of dishonesty we exhibit when someone asks us how they look and we want them to feel better than reality supports.

This kind of dishonesty is dangerous when inflicted upon others, but it is most dangerous when inflicted upon oneself. When we engage in selfdeception we willfully blind ourselves to the only guidance system we have to direct us toward the most abundant life.

What do the signs of self-deception look like? A recurring inability to provide the necessities of life for ourselves and those in our care, the existence of circumstances that make us feel overwhelmed, and the experience of sadness that overcomes our ability to have joy and happiness.

Jesus was saying that people were hypocrites because they were clearly capable of critically examining the clues around them, yet they conveniently ignored the signs that contradicted what they wanted to believe.

Dishonesty is the failure to exercise the required amount of interest and intensity in response to signs that you are at odds with reality. When you lose your job, you can blame it on something that lies outside of your ability to change, or you can make changes that make you more resilient against the next time it could happen: you could obtain a more valuable skillset, you could develop a more robust mental capacity to handle hard things, you could choose a job where you are more valued, you could save enough money to get you through unexpected unemployment, etc. None of these things are easy and they all require faith, but there is certainly a way to act so that you are less susceptible to suffering should something similar happen again.

Be honest about your past. So many entrap themselves in fairy tales about the past, making it seem better than it really was by either deliberately maintaining what they know is an illusion or by artificially inflating what they know wasn’t as good as they wish.

God warned the prophet Lehi about Jerusalem’s impending destruction. He fled before it happened. His sons had different perspectives on this event, as they had different levels of honesty. Nephi said.

Laman and Lemuel didn’t believe that had they stayed in Jerusalem they would also have been destroyed. Laman and Lemuel insisted on viewing things in an imaginary way, comparing their present situation, which was difficult, to a situation that was not possible.

Own up to the mistakes you have made. It will both prevent you from making the same mistake again and also yield transferred wisdom to different future situations. Honesty about your past is the key to securing freedom from guilt. Admit your fault, change your principles so it will never happen again, and trust in the forgiveness of Jesus.

It is possible for you to be totally blind to something you are doing wrong that ought to be obvious to you.

David was an unusually wise man with a heart good enough that the Lord described it like his own. How did he not perceive that he was the man Nathan was talking about? Furthermore, why was Nathan even needed to help him see that he had done this, when David was so easily able to correctly judge the fictional man in Nathan’s account?

God, by default, shows us right and wrong. When we turn away from what he has told us in our conscience, we remove ourselves from that insight. This happens situationally, meaning we still have the capability to know right and wrong in other things. David had turned against his conscience in the matter of Bathsheba. Nathan’s story was sufficient to help him use the light he still had to judge the situation and then apply it to his own.

It is unlikely a servant of God is going to come help you discern between right and wrong—though they might. It is very likely, though, that you will be given many testaments of the fruits of your actions in your life and in the lives of those you know. Be wise enough to recognize these signs in your own life, and to learn from the mistakes of others by wisely applying them to your own decisions.

Self-discovery comes in stages that can be compared to an astronaut in a space station. The first stage is investigating inside the space station, which is akin to how normal people interrogate life.

The second stage is investigating outside the space station while being tethered to it. This is akin to having defined periods of bounded contemplation, for example, when you are alone and clear-minded. In this stage, introspection is something that feels like it is outside of the “real” you. Here, only some of the products from your introspection cross the thought-action barrier into your external life.

The third stage is when you cut the tether to the space station. In this stage, you are consummately dedicated to self-discovery. Your contemplative self is your “real” self. Everything from your introspection makes it through the thought-action barrier into your external life.

Perhaps surprisingly, the amount of introspection you conduct and how much of it translates into external action is a factor of your honesty. It is easy to fill your life with the cumbersome activities and concerns of normal life. Like being on a hamster wheel, it will keep you occupied without really providing any lasting value. On the other hand, being consummately dedicated to real improvement yields a constant supply of precious fruit in all aspects of life.

It is possible to go through your entire life in what you think is deep change, but is really just cosmetic change to your exterior. This is not what life is about, and it can’t provide the deep joy attained by those who are constantly remodeling the interior of their character. It is honesty in these “inward” and “hidden” parts of ourselves where the deep and meaningful progress is made.

The inner voice that calls us toward introspective self-discovery and self-improvement is God’s voice. It is our conscience. As we follow that voice, we will improve and literally and figuratively come to God.

We will fight the darkness, and we will free ourselves from sin, which is doing less than what we know is our best (see James 4:17).

Our dual quest in life is to 1) obtain a good character and 2) obtain the tools to maintain it in all circumstances life provides. Life will constantly barrage you with circumstances that make it challenging to do both. Can you maintain your character in spite of life?

There are plenty of illusions in life that will tempt you to act contrary to good character. When you find yourself confronted with a situation that causes you to deviate from good character, it ought to trigger you to search for tools to overcome that situation.

There are numerous circumstances that will compete with your desire to maintain a good character. These include the constant urge toward pleasure, the necessity of obtaining food and shelter, and the psychological challenges associated with letting go of previously held beliefs that you now know are inferior.

Are you totally honest with yourself and others? Life will provide numerous situations where hiding who you really are may seem like the best path. Maybe you have traits others do not like. Maybe you have traits that you do not like. It is best to honestly confront them. Life will provide numerous situations to say, feel, or act in a way that is out of alignment with your sincere understanding of reality in order to feel better than you would if you were honest. Don’t succumb to that temptation.

Are you sincerely interested in self-improvement? Your pride will tempt you again and again to believe that what you currently know is all there is to know. There are massively better outcomes available, and anything and anyone that helps you take a step in that direction is a gift to be sought and treasured. Your humility will be tested through new truth offered to you through correction that will crush your illusory self-image, test your limits, come through unlikely sources, and address unexpected topics. Love correction in any form it comes.

Are you consummately interested in the benefit of others? Life will continually assault you with opportunities to place the welfare of another person ahead of your own. Who you really are is not about who you feel you are, but about how you behave toward others and why you behave that way.

If you possess total honesty, relentless drive towards self-improvement, and enduring charity for others, you are by all means one of the rarest people on this planet.

Chapter 14: Dance to the music in your heart

He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. (1 John 2:6)

Some never get to the point where they dare to discover themselves. If you are to achieve an abundance of joy and happiness, you will have to brave that introspective journey.

Who are you, really? When you subtract out all the cultural camouflage, what is left? Deep down inside, who are you?

There are many names for this self-essence: your spirit, your conscience, etc. Everyone has it, although each person is more or less aware of it. It is individual and unique to you.

One way of describing this entity or influence is as a song. It is easy not to notice it. The song is always going, but typically it is very quiet. Almost anything in life can drown it out, but if we learn to notice the music and pay attention to it, we can become adept at paying attention to it over whatever is going on around us.

We can be in situations where we are unaware of background noise. For instance, imagine sitting and talking in a kitchen, oblivious to the hum of the refrigerator. Until someone points it out, you may be unaware of what is actually a significant and constant sound.

This song is the song of your heart. If you follow its influence, it will lead you to greater joy and happiness. It will lead you to feeling integrated, honest, and stable. It will lead you to understand more about God and to act more like him, which makes you resilient to all the darkness you are and will be exposed to in this life.

Dancing to the music in your heart means being true to who you really are. It means externally acting, feeling, and believing in a way that aligns with how you are internally.

The Bible contains records of several occasions where King David danced. This wasn't merely a celebration. David knew the Lord's influence within him, and he was adept at tuning his whole being into that music. On one occasion.

Why did David dance?

David was a man who was accustomed to acting in ways that were true to himself even though they diverged from what was expected from him. He was a warrior when his brothers and father thought he should be a shepherd. He was a king when his government thought he should be a knight. He was mighty when the world considered him weak.

He lived according to who he knew he was even through stiff resistance from those around him. For example, in the previously-quoted story, when David was literally dancing to the music in his heart, his wife despised him for doing so.

Why was Michal so upset? Because she wanted him to be something other than what he was. She wanted him to be like she was, and was angry because his song was different than hers.

When you dance to the song in your heart, you will look like a fool to some. Others will resent you. Some will hate you. If you persist in dancing, some may even try to kill you. Why? Because your living according to God's song is living proof that they could do the same, but choose not to. You show them what is possible, and they will hate you for it.

Hearing and dancing to the music in your heart is not easy. It certainly isn't the default state. It isn't the most obvious path to joy in spite of being the only path to joy.

If you are going to dance to the music in your heart, you will have to do it in spite of the world. You are going to have to be willing to dance even when everyone around you wants you to sit down and shut up.

Life hits you right in the music. Life will always try to drown out your music. Life cuts the volume. It takes out the melody and leaves you with a lonely baseline.

Dancing to the music in your heart requires intentional effort. You have to fight back. When you encounter opposition, just keep dancing. Dance even harder.

You have to learn to listen to the music. You have to go out of your way to get to quiet places to hear it. Drown out the noise of everything else in this world, and dance to God’s song—his light—within you.

If you lose your friends, dance anyway. If your spouse resents you, dance anyway. If your work colleagues hate you, dance anyway. Dance in poverty and dance in plenty. Dance in sunshine and in rain. Dance with all your heart, even if no one else hears the music.

Some try to drown out the song inside them. They want to fit in and be like everybody else. They may be weary of the opposition from their friends, family, and coworkers.

There are situations and people that act as filters for the song of your heart. The song in your heart can be temporarily drowned out by busyness, social media, drugs, alcohol, or any number of other things.

Your song is the lifeline to the best you. Anything you do to oppose it will significantly affect who you are and lead you away from the degree of joy that could be yours.

You will never have peace, joy, or contentment while you are ignoring your song. No matter what you do, it will always whisper to you in the quiet moments: this is not right, you were meant for more than this, others need you. It will never cut you a break; it will never let you make excuses for yourself. It will point out your self-deceit and your rationalization.

Just as you can choose situations that attenuate the influence of your song, you can choose situations that amplify it.

When light interacts with light that has the same wavelength and phase (called coherent light), it amplifies in strength. This is how a laser works. Alternatively, light that interacts with light that has a different wavelength or phase is attenuated—the waves cancel each other out.

Find people and situations that add to and amplify the song in your heart, like a cellphone signal booster. Avoid people and situations that tune out, diminish, or obstruct the song in your heart.

Anyone can be happy on a sunny day. As you grow in strength, you will learn how to dance so consistently that you can even dance in the rain. Then you will see something magical happen: you will see that by embracing the light inside of you, you can amplify your internal song to the point where other people dance to it as well.

Through seeking and living by your song, you will increase its volume sufficiently so that you can broadcast it out into the world. Doing so doesn’t take fantastic or extreme actions. Though it might sound like a superpower, you can have this outsized effect on the world just by loving God and going about seeking to reflect his goodness in your daily life.

You step forward, regain your breath from the shock of greater realization of sorrow and evil, and then decide anew whether to do it again. Like an inchworm's next tiny lurch forward, your daily acts will amplify your song as you stare into the darkness and decide to take a single step forward in spite of it all.

It is one of the great contradictions of reality that everything good and grand in creation is the result of small, single steps into the darkness taken by otherwise normal people. It is a soul-crushing contradiction because of the implications for what you—normal, nothing-special you—have the power and duty to do.

There is a popular idea that when you die you experience a flashback of your life. This isn't exactly correct. Your situation will be much different than you may imagine it.

In this life, you have a fantastic ability to lie to yourself about why you do what you do and how you feel about it. There, you will know why you really did what you did, and why you didn't do what you didn't do.

You will have a complete, constant awareness of your life: everything you did and didn't do, freed from all the excuses and delusion you used to hide from the truth during your life. You will lack the ability to cover your failings, fears, unbelief, and selfishness with lies.

We will be stripped naked of our excuses, and we will see ourselves as we are seen by God: in truth.

In that day, we will feel joy to the extent that we reconciled ourselves to the song in our hearts, and indescribable pain and regret to the extent that we did not.

This life is the time we have been given to learn to listen to that song inside of us. This life is the time we have been given to live in a way that amplifies its volume.

You are not designed to be defined by your life. Don't let the world act on you—you act on the world. You are designed to define your life by following the music within you, the song of your heart.

Who you are, deep down inside, is not the rut of life that your environment has produced. It is what your song is. This is the light God has given you. It expands and develops as you heed it. Transform what is outside by listening to what is on the inside.

This life is the time we have been given to lose ourselves in dancing to the song of God's light. In doing so, you will find yourself in the person you become. Like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, become the reason you were born.

Chapter 15: The sacrifice of all things

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)

Is what you have good? How would you know if there were something radically better?

Pride tells us that what you know is all there is to know, and what you have is all there is to have. Humility declares otherwise.

We all know deep down that there is something better than what we have. There is always something radically better than what you already have. Even the most prideful hear a soft whisper from time to time saying it is so.

Believing something better exists is a prerequisite to receiving something better, and progressing to the point of knowledge from the point of belief necessarily involves pain. Why? Because gaining the awareness that something radically better exists while not yet possessing that something is painful. It is a revelation of what you lack, the difference between your present and possible joy.

In truth, nothing in us is really all that good: “...verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.” (Psalm 39:5) In the scriptures, the word “vanity” means something that can’t do what it purports to do.

We are overcome by the world. Nothing in us is sufficient to overcome the world, even if it sometimes seems that it can. We only overcome the world as we replace what is in us with what is from God. As we are exposed to more and more of reality, our understanding of our nothingness increases.

When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah. (Psalm 39:11)

Experience shows us that even the things we previously prized are altogether insufficient, as when Daniel was visited by a heavenly messenger and exclaimed, “...there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength.” (Daniel 10:8)

We derive a tremendous sense of security from the ideas that 1) things are consistent and 2) that most everything is known. We derive an immense amount of happiness and security from fleeting illusions—things that are actually incapable of maintaining the degree and duration of happiness they have given us to date.

Belief in illusions doesn’t stem primarily from lack of sight, but rather from the terror that comes from admitting what you really see. The signs are all around, but no one cares to admit it.

What would it mean to you if something radically better was always available? It would make both your expectations and your promises absolutely worthless.

In order for God to give you something better, you have to let go of something worse. He will show you the impermanence in what you thought was permanent. He will show you sadness in what you thought was happy, the sorrow of what you thought was joyful, the pain of what you thought was a source of pleasure, and so on. There is opposition in all things, and there is both good and evil in all things. He will show you a greater degree of good by showing you a greater degree of evil.

Much of what is available on this earth does not have the power to last. John the Baptist said: “A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.” (John 3:27)

In the end, every support you lean on that lies outside of God’s character will fail you: “For whatsoever things remain are by me; and whatsoever things are not by me shall be shaken and destroyed.” (D&C 132:14) What God offers can’t be overcome by the world. It endures everything that can happen here and hereafter.

God helps us find what endures by showing us how what we think we have does not endure. If you have lost something, you can either wallow in the termination of what has been shown to be an illusion, or you can rejoice that you have been freed from a path that could never provide what you really seek.

While the good feelings you’ve experienced are real, your understanding of what they come from is faulty. What you thought they came from will prove to be temporary or illusory until and unless you understand what God does.

The way God will direct you to the fulfillment of your dreams is through successive realizations of the lack of value in what you currently have. He will open up pathways to the fulfillment of your dreams that you will not recognize or walk in until and unless you realize the lack of value in the alternatives.

Psychologists say that humans will do almost anything to avoid loss. Anyone who has spent any time trying to persuade people will readily agree. Fear of loss is a strong motivating force.

In order to consider the facts that there are radically better things available and that you have no clue just how good they could be, you have to surrender to the idea of a just and loving God.

Humans tend to focus on what their natural inclinations drive them toward, and that is never ideal: “... for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.” (Mark 8:33) Instead of petitioning God to give you what you think is good, you ought to seek whatever he tells you is good. Trust in God is the only anchor that can keep you steady in the midst of an ever-changing sea of reality.

Unfortunately, it is rare that people willingly accept the inefficacy of the lies they cherish. Instead, they sit around until life hits them hard enough that they must admit that what they currently possess is inadequate. They realize their tools are insufficient to cope with the degree of darkness that exists in this world, and that even the best of times they’ve experienced thus far are inadequate to make all the other times worthwhile.

So much of our suffering in life is due to our refusal to let go of what can no longer bring us happiness. As earthly supports are kicked out, we can either scurry to find replacements or choose to increase our trust in God. We have to let go of who we think we are and what we think we have in order to find him. Improvement means obtaining things greater than what we currently possess, which means letting go of what we currently possess.

Several analogies may help us understand how God shows us something better.

The earth is constantly bombarded by solar radiation of varying intensity. The earth has a protective field, and when the sun hits it with particularly intense waves, the field attenuates to less than its full strength. In some cases, the field is momentarily nullified, and the radiation hits the earth directly. Like the earth’s reaction to solar energy waves, your ability to cope with the darkness of life will wane when you are hit by particularly intense circumstances in life. Unlike the earth-sun connection, you can grow in your ability to withstand greater and greater negative circumstances until nothing that can happen on this earth has the power to take away your joy.

Like fossilization, as quickly as we allow the decayable things to decay, they will be replaced with things that can’t decay—things that are stronger in standing up to everything this world can cause to happen.

Like a piece of carbon, pressure can make us better. Carbon becomes diamond as pressure upgrades its molecular structure into crystal by aligning it into a more coherent pattern. When the pressure comes, you can either seek to relieve it, or you can seek to use it. Using it means recognizing that a better way is being revealed. Not only is the pressure conquerable, it is essential—you can’t see what you lack in any other way.

We are like sponges. Initially, we are completely full of the world—the status quo understanding of what life is all about and who we are. The more life squeezes out of us, the more opportunity we have to absorb what God offers. Whenever we are squeezed out, we can either seek to refill ourselves with what the world offers (family, friends, children, drugs, alcohol, work, pleasure) or to fill ourselves with God.

These catalysts are external, but our reaction to them is internal. As external things push on us and tear at us, or are torn from us, we can actively choose to leave those slots empty until God fills them inside of us. We seek him to refill the holes left inside of us through our trust in him: through his spirit, his knowledge, and his reliability. We replace what is faulty in us with what is perfect in him.

God is good. If God is within you, you will be good, too. You are darkness, but God is light. If you submit to him and seek him in all things, his light will fill you.

This is not a merely spiritual process. You will see tangible, temporal fulfillment of this in your everyday life as you embrace the process. You will see your actions here and now leading to better outcomes in your life and in the lives of those you interact with. Your weakness will turn into strength.

You will be unconquerable to the extent you have gained trust in God. God has overcome all things and by trusting him completely, you will, too.

There are two levels to the challenge of letting go of what you think you have.

The first level is the fear of loss of what you already have when you have access to a tangible, viable alternative. Fear of loss will make you question the superiority of the presented option. When the alternative is well understood and clearly viable, the only thing that can prevent you from taking it is your degree of self-honesty. We tend to be very good at fooling ourselves when we want to. You can fool yourself into believing that what you have is better than it really is, and you can fool yourself into thinking the alternative is worse than it really is.

The second level of letting go occurs when your alternative is something that isn’t readily apparent except through faith. In this case, the main doubt you will have is whether or not a better alternative actually exists.

There is a level of joy and happiness that can only be accessed by those willing to let go of what they think they have before moving ahead—in fact, before you even see the next opportunity. This, in turn, requires you to be completely honest about what you know are the permanent shortcomings of your present situation. It requires you to choose to let go even when the replacement is not yet present or obvious.

Maximal joy requires moving past reliance on placeholders. Dropping what is not ideal requires that you really believe that God is serious when he says he has blessings prepared for you that are greater than anything you have even imagined (see 1 Corinthians 2:9). Those who truly trust God will incessantly and tenaciously search for what is better, even when it means setting aside something good when something better isn’t always apparent.

If there is always something better available, do we need to be permanently uncommitted to what is before us here and now? No. It is necessary to fully invest in the here and now in order to enjoy what we have and also be ready for what is to come.

While you hold back from the present, you will remain unprepared for the future. Once, a group of people were led by God to build a city knowing full well they would need to move in the future.

They built houses in spite of the fact that they knew they would soon move. This is merely one of many examples where God asked someone to do something that seemed permanent knowing full well it was not. So many things that we cling to are meant only to be stepping stones to something better.

Placeholders are not always bad. We are all strangers in a strange land, following our hearts towards a destination we do not yet know. Milestones will appear frequently along the way. These placeholders strengthen us and give us respite during our arduous journey, but they are not what we seek. The means are not the end. Living abundantly requires you to walk a razor’s edge consisting on one hand of deeply savoring good things that are nevertheless temporary, and on the other being willing to let go and move onto something better and less fleeting when the opportunity arises.

There are some select situations and people where forward progress doesn’t require moving on. While most things in life are like a snail who periodically leaves his fixed-size shell when he outgrows it, some few are like a vine, which grows with the tree it is wrapped around. The best things in life are infinite. They will grow with you. Their benefits will continue to increase through time.

You can wish for any number of outcomes. However, if a certain desire requires everything to obtain, you will not be able to simultaneously desire anything else, because it will require everything else to be displaced in order to get it. The best things in life are exclusive.

Unlike milestone desires, which can be reached without necessarily prioritizing their attainment above all other things, joy will not compete with any other thing. If you desire maximal joy and happiness, you have to realize that it will cost you everything to get it.

Obtaining full, enduring joy requires that it be the most important thing to those who seek it.

If you limit what you are willing to do to receive joy in any way, you will never find it in its lasting fullness.

How do you know whether it is worth everything if you don’t know what it is like? How do you know what sacrificing everything means when you haven’t yet experienced it? The challenge of the gospel is that you need to believe in outcomes far greater than anything you can presently perceive, and you have to be willing to pay any price to obtain them.

Seeking joy is a difficult road: you are promised that you don’t really know exactly what a fullness of joy is. Paul said.

Isaiah wrote.

The difficulty of this road is exactly why we need God. We need God in this journey because without him, we would not know the way and we would not have the strength to walk it. Through incrementally increasing knowledge of his character we are given the tools to know what sort of person we must be to obtain, retain, and appreciate the joy he possesses. This is why he said: “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” (D&C 6:36)

While we develop the faith necessary to truly believe God and believe in his character, it is right and good to place our hopes on tangible stepping stone situations. These placeholders will come and go as we face situations for which they are insufficient, particularly in light of their revealed limitations.

Eventually, however, our hope must be in Christ himself. It is our faith in him that will drive sufficient hope to maintain complete obedience to him in spite of all the obstacles life presents.

Without him we would surely fail. We would not even start the journey if he didn’t tell us the potential outcome. We would not know even where to start without him showing us the way. Even if we knew the way, we would not get very far without a knowledge of his justice, love, and mercy, all three of which are essential to endure through the tribulation and toil that are required to reach the joy we desire. Jesus said.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the way to maximal joy, he is the embodiment of the truth that gets you there, and he lives the life we seek for ourselves.

Jesus showed that the sacrifice of all things is required to obtain all the joy God wants to give you, and he showed the way we submit to that sacrifice.

Jesus lived his life fully reconciled to his most sincere understanding of the Father’s will. Still, his final hours of life were the chief challenge of his hard life. His path to a fullness of joy required him to feel as if he were forsaken by the Father on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) Contrast this with his later statement: “It is finished.” (John 19:30) His torment did not end until he was ready to hang on the cross for all eternity, if that is what the Father willed.

The Lord had previously told his disciples: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) After his sacrifice of all things, he told them: “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” (3 Nephi 12:48) Being perfect means perfect, total submission to God, to what is right, and to what benefits the world.

In other words, the pinnacle realization in this life is that nothing of this world is worth having. Only what is from God is worth the cost. This is what Jesus meant when he asked: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)

Paradoxically, there is a law appointed in heaven which dictates that eternal possession requires sacrifice. It isn’t until you stop looking for your reward here that you actually gain it, and there is nothing you can do to fake it.

In other words, you can only retain eternally what you are willing to sacrifice first. In mortality Jesus had power over life because he was willing to die. He obtained all things by losing all things. Abraham retained Isaac only because he was willing to let him go. Nephi was given power to seal on earth and in heaven because he was willing to submit his will completely to God’s.

If you want to save your life, you have to first lose it. You can't permanently retain what you aren't willing to give away.

The whole purpose of creation and the gospel is to provide the means by which individuals can obtain maximal joy. The means consist of information and power. He gives us an understanding of the best outcome we can aim for, he reveals to us the path we must walk to get it, and he provides all the information we need to appreciate it. When you know how to get there and you have the ability to get there, it becomes your choice whether or not you do.

We may not know God fully, but we know enough about him that he can serve as a tangible target for the joy we seek. If we trust that God has all joy and his whole purpose is to guide us to the same outcome, he can bridge everything we don’t know yet. He can be what tips the scales in favor of our decision to sacrifice all things (knowing we don’t yet know what that means) in order to receive all joy (knowing we don’t yet know what that means).

There are few things as refreshing as a clear, crisp, sunny spring day after a cold, dark winter. Light has the ability to give us hope and happiness in spite of exposure to exceedingly difficult times. Light is not limited to the visible kind. God’s light is in all things and through all things. The more of his knowledge and character we obtain, the more of this light will be within us. Though darkness is thick in this world, and though your awareness of just how pervasive and intense it is will increase as you seek for more joy in your life, it is possible to have such light within you that you can outshine any amount of darkness, even on the darkest day.

You can be a light in the dark. Jesus said he is the light of the world, and inasmuch as we follow him, we will have his light: “...I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” (John 8:12) He said that if we do this, we will also be the light of the world.

The first step in becoming a light in the dark is to overcome the darkness within you. You can do this by embracing the light within you to reveal ways you can improve yourself.

You can’t obtain maximal joy without first putting yourself in order. Heaven is not a place that changes you. Rather, it is a physical place you go after your state of mind has changed to prepare you to find it joyful. The transition to heaven after this life is not a change in who you are, but merely a change in who and what is around you. If you want to go to heaven, you have to first become heavenly. You can have heaven here. If you don’t have heaven inside yourself here, you will not have it inside yourself there. If you are miserable now, you will be miserable then.

In order to obtain maximal joy, you have to be happy here and now. You can only be permanently happy when you can be happy independent of your external circumstances.

Jesus said that “the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 13:28) What did he mean? Lasting joy can’t come from without. It must come from within. It is one thing to absorb joy and happiness from external sources. It is quite another to create joy and happiness from within.

Enduring happiness comes from within as we act in accordance with what we know is right. Use the light inside of you—your conscience—and continually expand your knowledge of what is right.

The second step in becoming a light in the dark is to shine the light on others. Darkness is the default state. Though light is everywhere, it is unnatural to see it: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:5)

Through obtaining and sharing tools to deal with the darkness, you can help others step into the light.

When you become heavenly, you project heaven to those around you, even if you aren’t yet physically in heaven. You can show others what heaven is like and why it is desirable before they’ve obtained it themselves. By standing up to the darkness and forging ahead, you can blaze a path that makes it easier for others to do the same.

The vast majority of people will not rise up and fight against their own darkness unless they see someone else do it first.

If you dare to stand against the darkness, the very example of your existence can give others the courage to do the same. They will not have to guess whether or not it is possible, because they will see you and instantly know it is. They will not have to wonder how to do it. You will show them.

Most people prefer to stay in the dark. They will shun any opportunity to shed light on themselves or others. “For they love darkness rather than light, and their deeds are evil, and they receive their wages of whom they list to obey.” (D&C 29:45)

These people will persecute you the more you try to shine light.

Be who you are, knowing that most people will hate you for it. You aren’t seeking them. The people who need you need you to be yourself— the fulfillment of your true potential.

When people persecute you, maintain your character at all costs. Always do what you know you have to do. Turn the other cheek and rejoice when you are persecuted, knowing that the people who need you are out there.

The fire in your soul can light up the whole world.

If you choose to seek joy in life, you will be persecuted and betrayed by those who should love you. Jesus said: “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” (Matthew 10:36) You will find that everything you lose will be replaced with something better—something closer to the real thing.

The vast majority of the good we experience here on earth is merely a stepping stone to the real thing. These placeholders are necessary to train us to trust in God sufficiently to do what is required to obtain the real thing. Without the stepping stones, we would be both ignorant of the way to obtain what we desire and unwilling to traverse the path to obtain it.

There are some things that, once possessed, can’t be lost. These are the exception rather than the rule. While this means that you permanently possess far less than you think you do, it also means that the losses you endure are different than you think they are.

Anything you lose was never the real thing. It was merely a steppingstone to the real thing. Because of this, the loss is not really a loss. If you’ve lost something, you never really had it in the first place.

Rather than thinking of what you perceive as loss to be the removal of a positive thing, think of it as the revelation of something greater; namely, more information about what it is you still lack.

Jesus taught that every time we receive a blessing from him, we should be prepared to lose it. He explained that the fruits we bear in seeking and worshipping him will be constantly purged.

When Jesus speaks of abiding in him (verses 4-7), he means to remain reconciled to him as he gives you more light and truth. Fruit buds and grows when you allow the flow of information from Christ to come into every aspect of your life. Fruit is worthless unless it endures. It requires a continuous connection to God to preserve the fruit. As you continuously seek him, he will show you everything that could take away your joy "that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." The purpose of additional light and truth—additional information—is to provide you with what you need to bear more fruit.

What we colloquially call sacrifice is a lot less about “giving something up” and a lot more about embracing something better.

One of the things animal sacrifice shows is that obeying God's commandments will require you to give up or give away the fruits that you worked hard to obtain in trust that you will receive something of a different, but better form. God never actually asks you to “give up” anything. Instead, he repeatedly asks you to make room for something better. He will continue to do this as long as you live.

God will purge your fruit by “asking” you to give it up to him. Asking is in quotes here because while it may come through him actually speaking to you and saying “I want you to stop doing this thing or start doing this other thing that will change how your life goes,” it is much more likely that it will come by his showing you how what you previously thought was a good thing is actually not as good as you supposed.

And what if you don't want to know? What if you would rather believe that ignorance is bliss? If you seek to keep the fruit you have by ignoring what he wants to show you, you immediately remove yourself from the vine. You become a detached branch, and you are fit only for the flames.

What are the flames? They are reality. Reality will come for you whether you like it or not. Reality will test your ideas and beliefs whether you want it to or not. ALL people will be tested by this fire after they die and gain a perfect knowledge of things as they are, pertaining to this world. Those who willingly subjected themselves to the Master's guidance in this life with full purpose of heart until death will be prepared to endure that fire and will retain all the joy they thought they had—and much besides— forever. Those who fall short of this, to any degree, will be surprised by the depth of pain they will experience. But this is not all.

Jesus said: "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." (John 15:3) He wasn't saying these people were clean just because he spoke some words. He was saying they were clean because they obeyed what he had taught them. They responded to additional information by reconciling their lives to it. In doing the same, we are justified.

However, reconciling yourself to what he has said is not the same as staying reconciled to what he will say in the future. That will require letting go of even more.

Many of the things experienced in this life have an end. The rich young ruler was surprised and saddened to learn that his riches were fleeting and could not endure in the path toward a fullness of joy.

There are, however, things that endure forever.

In one exchange, the Lord made a distinction between what will endure and what is fleeting.

In a sense, life is about searching for and obtaining the “good part”—the things “which shall not be taken away,” but will endure forever.

God knows what endures and what does not, and his gospel is about providing the path to those things that endure.

If we seek and trust in God, we will learn what endures and what does not. We will obtain what endures, and it will never be taken away.

You can’t truly be happy in a state of ignorance, because knowledge of the bitter is necessary to recognize and appreciate the sweet. As you progress, you will be waylaid again and again by darkness as you grow in light. It is unavoidable because exposure to the darkness is required to know what you lack, which in turn is required to gain light.

You don’t need to pretend it isn’t hard. It is really hard. But it isn’t the hardest thing. The hardest thing would be doing anything else.

When the difficulty of what they were being asked to do started dawning on them, Jesus’ disciples were overwhelmed. Sensing this, Jesus asked them.

Jesus said, “...my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Matthew 11:30) This is only true with respect to the alternative. It is easier and lighter than ignorance, no matter how enticing ignorance may seem in the short term. The wrong thing is always harder in the end.

There are only two choices: what is right and what is wrong. Perceiving the right thing as difficult requires conjuring up a third way where things can remain as you imagined them prior to being shown more information about how things really are. That third way doesn’t exist. If you persist in lying to yourself to maintain the illusion of how you saw things before, you will still be just as subject to the consequences of what you now know. Reality doesn’t change just because you ignore it. These consequences will hurt you far more than doing the right thing will—by definition, this is what makes the right thing the right thing.

That the right thing is worth it is evident by the fact that it is right. If it wasn’t worth it, it wouldn’t be right. That is what makes it right. The difficulty isn’t related to whether it can be done or not, but rather how much you desire to do it.

The happiest person is not the person who thinks they are happy while remaining ignorant of the darkness that exists. The happiest person is the one who knows the most darkness, and has peace and contentment and joy in spite of it.

Happiness is not the absence of darkness. It is power over the darkness. The secret to maximizing joy is not avoiding this darkness, but embracing the idea that your awareness of darkness is the key to greater happiness. Feel the depth of the bad, so that you can learn what it takes to have the good.

You were created to be a warrior. Jesus is a warrior: “The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies.” (Isaiah 42:13) You know you will be torn apart as you endeavor on this journey. Don’t let that stop you. In this battle, victory doesn’t include survival.

Ride into the battle with courage and good cheer. Be courageous, and be happy. Find joy in your mission.

Chapter 16: Joy abounding, everlasting

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (Isaiah 35:10)

The Lord said: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39) God has everything. Why do you think he described his work and his glory in terms of the growth of others?

God has all power. Why do you suppose “He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world”? (2 Nephi 26:24)

Isaiah wrote that in spite of the tremendous suffering Jesus would endure here, there would come a point where it would seem worthwhile to him.

During the Lord’s mortal ministry he prayed for those he ministered to in their presence. Afterward, he said, “...Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, my joy is full.” (3 Nephi 17:20) In saying this, Jesus did not mean that all the negative aspects of his experience had magically disappeared from his perception. Rather, he was making a statement of the value he derived from what he was experiencing in that moment. To him, the greatest value he could (and can) experience was leveraging all he had done to bless those who would receive it. This momentary event was sufficient to fill him with joy—to make everything up to that point worthwhile.

God chooses to define his happiness in terms of the happiness of others his actions create.

If we want to obtain maximal joy—the joy God possesses—the only way to obtain it is by adopting his views, character, and works. That means complete charity—complete submission to the benefit of others, at any cost. It means that you arrange everything you are and can be, and everything you do and can do, to maximize the benefit you can give to the world.

Arbitrarily derived joy tends to be self-focused. People like this fix their happiness on what they find joy in, rather than what provides joy to others. This limits the joy they experience to what is inside of them, which will always be far less than the sum total of what is inside everyone else.

If your motivation is limited to your own progression, you will hit an absolute limit in your progress. This limit is far less than the quantity of darkness that exists in this life. If your primary motivation is anything but the benefit of others, you will collapse far before the journey is over. You will quit before you overcome all things. At some point, your selforientation has to shift to altruism. Most won’t dare reach this point. Of those who do, most will only think they do. Life will not hesitate to blast you with ample situations to illustrate where your heart really is.

Life is somewhat like figure skating. You can be quite amazing on your own but, simply put, there are things you just can’t do alone. If you really want to execute the flips and tosses and spins, you have to find someone to do them with. You can magnify your joy by finding others who receive the light you have and/or people from whom you can receive light. Like an electric arc, what you have with them will be far greater than what you could experience alone.

If you desire a fullness of joy, you likewise must acquire sincere empathy for others. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Lord taught that we are responsible for all those for whom we could do good (see Luke 10:29-37). How many people will you allow yourself to consider your fellowmen?

“He that despiseth his neighbour sinneth: but he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he.” (Proverbs 14:21) How much will you allow yourself to care for your fellowmen?

Serving others is not a box to check. “When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.” (Mosiah 2:17) True dedication to the benefit of others will expand joy far beyond the finite bounds of what an individual can obtain in any other way.

When you help others encounter more joy, your joy breaks through the limit of what you can experience from your own growth. You experience the joy of those you help, the joy of those they help, and so on, in an eternal chain.

A single man, no matter how productive, can only do so much by himself. If he turns his labors to inspiring others, his limit of contribution will expand to include the amplified works of those he inspires. If he can show them, in turn, how to inspire others, his contribution and his joy become unlimited. As long as your sense of happiness is derived from what you alone feel, your happiness will be limited, or finite. When you learn to rejoice in the joy of others, your happiness becomes unlimited, or infinite. Serving others is the way you achieve unlimited happiness—there is no other way.

We have lost the ability to experience joy vicariously. Jacob said.

Jacob invited his audience to find great joy in these promises, quoted from Isaiah, even though the people he was speaking to would never experience their fulfillment, and those who would were many generations in the future.

It is good to learn to value the happiness of others and to experience it vicariously through them. With that vicarious capability comes the necessary opposite—you also feel the sorrow of others. If you have understanding that exceeds theirs, you will feel commensurately greater sorrow, because you will be aware of all the things they are doing and not doing that detract from their happiness. They may be lumbering along in blindness to the fact that they are about to encounter some awful things that they could avoid if they just put their trust in truth. You will feel all the pain of what they have not yet experienced, plus more because you will know it could be avoided. For you, it will be as if it is already occurring, even if it is a future event.

A story from the life of Enoch illustrates the role of concern for others in your search for joy. Enoch “received a fulness of joy” but only after “the Lord showed Enoch all things....” (Moses 7:67) Included in “all things” was his view of the suffering of men and the salvation of those who would seek and follow God. In order to receive a fullness of joy, Enoch first required the ability to experience the feelings of others as if they were his own. Only after he perceived the sorrow of men and God could he comprehend and receive the joy accompanying their salvation (see Moses 7:28).

Rejoice when you suffer afflictions. When you trust God and use each trial as a way to learn what you lack to overcome it, you will also acquire knowledge that you can then share with everyone else you meet. You will find limitless joy in the possibility that your toil prevented them from having to endure the same.

Our suffering for others is required, because it is the only way they can perceive how great love God has for them. It is through seeing our pain and toil for them that they realize just how much God loves them. Through that sacrifice, they are enabled to then love others according to their increased understanding of how God loves them. In doing so, they will receive a fullness of joy.

Paul taught.

How deep and how wide will you allow your heart to expand? Will you permanently prevent your heart from waxing cold? Will you suffer to the greatest depths for the benefit of others without quitting?

The only way to obtain a fullness of joy is to love others as God has loved you.

Do this, and you will have joy, abundant and everlasting.