This is a letter I wrote to send to a soulmate brother, my missionary trainer and companion, Eric Jacobsen. He got in contact with me after 25+ years and we had lunch in Portland in late 2013. I wrote this letter to further explain my path through life. I did not send it, feeling it would be too violent to him at this point. I may send it later. Either way, it is a "path of bread crumbs" that I can use to remember my walk. One thing that is not in this letter is a reference to my struggles with pornography over the years. While I would at times go years without incident, at other times it was a concern. To this day I feel at peace with how I reacted when I made errors as far as the Church was concerned. I confessed, repented, then continued serving. However, it was something I struggled with. I did not mention this in the letter because I didn't want Eric to dismiss my path out of hand because of those struggles. However, if I ever DO send this letter, I may describe this part of my life in a post-script.
Dear Eric,
You were my hero. And in some ways, I was yours. We played
off one another like we had been friends for lifetimes, although we had never
met before my first day in the mission field when you were introduced as my
trainer. We worked hard, and I was a good student. As we got to know one
another and I became more comfortable, I began sharing my life with you in a
more honest way. I was undoubtedly worldly; I shared with you things you had
never known were in the world that I had experienced. You laughed and I felt
comfortable with who I felt I was at the time. People were drawn to our message
and, to large extent, to us. Two good-looking men, both righteous, one a little
more recently than the other. No one knew that but you.
Twenty-five years later, you are a success in life. You’ve
served faithfully in the Church. You make decent money and have for years. Your
family – five children – are all over-achievers. Well, to the outside world
they are. Within the walls of the home you and your youthful wife have created
for them, they are simply doing what they, you and God expect them to do. They
have their challenges, their missteps – all people do – but that information
doesn’t leave the family. They’re as safe as I was.
Twenty-five years later, I have struggled in many ways. I’ve
never achieved the financial success you have, although I served in the Church
as well; seminary teacher, youth leader for 20 years, Gospel Doctrine teacher,
Bishopbric. I’ve been moderately successful from a worldly standpoint in that I
had nice cars, my wife didn’t work, my kids never wanted, we had a big house.
But I took shortcuts. In fact, I wouldn’t take a cut that wasn’t short in the business world. It didn’t matter. It usually worked.
My kids were fine. We had the Church and gospel.
But in 2006, things began to change in significant ways for
me.
Actually, things had been changing for years. I had taken a mandatory
philosophy class in college – a non LDS university after leaving BYU – that
taught me something about critical thinking. This was in the early 90’s. In
short, I was taught to take emotion out of opinion, like Aristotle did, like
Plato, like anyone concerned with truth; to challenge convention, sometimes
simply because it was conventional. It put me into a spin for a while, this
concept. I remember speaking to the professor after one class, my voice
elevated. He had spoken against the United States government, and I had a
problem with that. I was an American and a Mormon– no one was going to talk bad
about the Government of the Promised Land.
“I don’t hate the United States,” he had said in retort.
“But I have to look at what it does with an honest eye. I have to look at it
critically.”
That sounded pretty hard to argue with. If I knew something
was true without a shadow of a doubt, what had that truth to do with emotion?
It may bring emotion, obviously, but it was important to me that the truth stand
apart, separate and independent of anything human I was bringing to the table...
like emotion, like a preference for a certain outcome so strong it could make
the actual truth of the matter hard to recognize. It wasn’t long before I began
to think that this was particularly true when it came to matters of faith.
I remember making my way home one afternoon after one of my
philosophy classes, despondent. I allowed myself to admit that there were some
doctrines and ordinances that felt “forced”. Pre-Columbian horses in the
Americas, millions upon millions killed in upstate New York on and around a
single hill that has yet to turn up a shred of evidence of such ancient
carnage, not to mention the contradictory stories about the First Vision and how
the Book of Mormon came into being from the very people who were there. But
maybe worst of all were the myriad inane reasons for these and other LDS
beliefs that sat at odds with common sense, let alone critical inquiry (I actually
heard this in church once: “The horses referred to in the Book of Mormon were
actually deer.” Uh-huh.). Moreover, there was the feeling I would get from time
to time as I looked around the congregation on a Sunday that this seemed like a
lot of people getting together to convince themselves that they belonged there
and that there was something bigger at play. The long faces of the bulk of the
men were especially telling; sitting with supersized wives and families, their
detached and distracted demeanor or blank stares during the sacrament made it look
like most of them (but not all) would rather be elsewhere. Even while I was a
member, seeing them made me think that for the most part they looked and felt
emasculated. At times I felt like that, too, like I had been duped on some
level. I seldom admitted this to myself, and then only very, very briefly
before assigning these feelings to Evil and turning back to my scriptures. Later,
when I got involved in a multilevel marketing scheme wherein I would arrive at
meetings large enough to fill much of the Portland Coliseum and see tears of
hope and determination streaming down the faces of many people, I would recognize
it again. The rah-rah-raw emotion I saw and felt in those places seemed to have
a sibling in testimony meetings, where people often cried for similar reasons.
I made the decision that day on my way home from my philosophy class that I
would leave the Church if I ever found it to be untrue. I followed God, and God
made truth; it could be argued that it was His sole product. If the Church itself
turned out to be founded on or kept alive by something aside from God, and/or
used untruths to keep it alive rather than humbly admitting ignorance in areas
where the organization or leaders just didn’t know, I was simply not interested
in continuing. I loved God and still do. If he wasn’t in sacrament meetings,
the temples or the accepted interpretation of the gospel, I would find Him
wherever He was. It wasn’t a question.
When I got home that day, worried but determined, I
providentially found a copy of the Ensign on my coffee table. On the cover was
President Benson and inside was an article about faith. This was an interesting
idea; could faith dovetail with critical thinking? Did it have a place? I read
the article, hoping to find something that would help my depression over the
idea of possibly leaving the Church. But leaving did not happen then. The
article gave me another new caveat: faith does indeed have a place in critical
thinking. I believe that to this day. To have too much trust in my own mind (or
even the scientific process) and its ability to arrive at all truth is not only
dangerous, it’s arrogant. Isaiah 29:16 says, “Surely your turning of things
upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay: for shall the work say of
him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that
framed it, He had no understanding?” That
statement illustrates the idea that there can be a greater understanding at any
time, and in any subject. My conclusion that day was that it was best be
careful and not assume that just because I don’t understand every nuance it
doesn’t mean the concept cannot be all it purports to be, within reason. Besides, if the Church wasn’t true, how could supernatural, joyful experiences happen
within it and the Priesthood? The healings, the life transformations I had
experienced and helped guide… I examined my lifetime of experiences in the
Church and came away that day with the strong feeling that although there were
things I did not understand, the vast majority of my experience pointed to the
idea that the Church, and vastly more importantly the gospel it taught, was
true. I had lived to fight another day as a Mormon. Relief!
The experience had the effect of opening a new world to me.
I began to love my philosophy classes above all the others. I could embrace
them without fear because faith was my able shield. One of my professors, Ken
Stikkers, was fond of saying that he did not give “A”’s in his classes. I took
two philosophy classes from him and aced them both. In fact, I never received a
grade other than “A” in the four philosophy classes I took at Seattle
University. What I loved most was that I was suddenly able to really justify
looking for truth from other areas (always keeping in mind that Satan will tell
nine truths to tell one lie). My worldview had been narrow. No more. Now I
could have the Church and the Native
American teachings of Black Elk, and
Aristotle, and Marx, and Thoreau, and Abbey. What disagreed with Salt Lake I could pitch, what was in
alignment – and there was so much! – could remain. The gospel was my golden
rule. Even with my foot on that base I still felt expanded. Without knowing it,
I was embarking on the same journey undertaken by every mystic, a journey well
documented by the philosopher and author Joseph Campbell who spoke of the
marriage of universal cultural myths, as well as the hero’s journey.
As you know, before my college years had really started I
was married. We married young, engaged less than four months off my mission. Jill
and I had met once before I left and had written letters for 18 months. The
last real advice I got from President Bay was, quote: “an unmarried returned
missionary isn’t worth the powder to blow him to hell. Go get married, Elder
Marley.” This wasn’t hard advice to follow. I’d wanted to be married since I
was eight years old. Obviously Jill was LDS and, I’m a little chagrined to say,
to me she needed “saving” since she was a little “less-active”. I had, and
still have at times, what I call a “messiah complex”, a desire to save people.
The problem is that I save the wrong people or in the wrong ways and/or generally
make a mess of things. But she responded quickly to my advances and we became a
textbook LDS couple, married in the temple and at three years of marriage, expecting
our first child. I took my new found love of truth from whatever sources I
could find them and began to serve in the Church. Plenty of saving to do there.
I was and am naturally drawn to youth and they to me so I served there,
primarily. I taught Sunday School and seminary for several years (off and on), served
as a Scout leader more years than I care to remember as well as a decade as the
Stake DJ. I also served in Stake and Ward level positions that required
teaching and leading adults. I was good at all of it and well-loved and
respected throughout the Stake.
Back to 2006.
I had been into surfing for about a dozen years by this time.
During much of this time I had become absolute soul mates with one of my former
priests and seminary students, Paul Sorenson. I introduced him to surfing just
before his mission. As soon as he got back we were nearly inseparable, although
we were twelve years apart. On our surf trips we would talk philosophy. A movie
called “What The Bleep Do We Know” and a book called “Cosmic Banditos” introduced
us to concepts of quantum mechanics, providing even more fodder for our
discussions which stretched the length of the highways from northern Oregon almost
to Mexico as we drove throughout the years, surfing and looking for surf and
observing truth in and outside the Church - as long as it didn’t contradict it. Once an avid outdoorsman, I had given up
hunting after shooting, injuring and losing a nice bull elk on an archery hunt.
A serious knee injury and two resulting surgeries took me away from basketball.
Instead I added mountain climbing, running marathons and ultra-marathons,
snowboarding and road and mountain biking to my surfing. I became obsessed with
filling non-family, work or church time with anything to give me excitement.
Looking back, I was deeply unhappy, looking for something that was missing. I
felt empty underneath the righteous busy-ness of the life I had chosen, and
here the feelings of serious depression began to appear with increasing
frequency. I considered suicide on occasion, chalked it up to a lack of
dedication to God and redoubled my efforts as a father, servant and husband.
There was no other way. I had a good wife and, overall, a good and blessed
life. I sat and served in Church like all my friends and dreamt of the next
adventure in surf, snow and trail. In the late 90’s I also discovered the peace
that came on fasting journeys taken alone to fire-lookout cabins. I felt the
spirit, I felt direction, I felt peace, and I returned home to what felt like
less in every category of my life.
Paul and I decided we loved magazines. The short articles gave
us plenty of fodder for the 75 minute drive to the beach, which happened during
the few prime surfing months in Oregon (September and October) up to three
times a week. Of course we subscribed to Surfer, but I also subscribed to
National Geographic Adventure. It was here, in 2006, that I read an article
about an ayhuasca ceremony written by a well-published female explorer named
Kira Salak.
I was floored. Here was a woman that suffered like I did
with sometimes debilitating depression and low self-esteem, and here she was
cured by a godless voodoo-esque shaman of all things! She’d gone to Peru, took
a “sacrament” of sorts and saw visions that seemed to be shared simultaneously with
the shaman. What? I was absolutely taken with the article, which was written
about her second journey to this place. Tears filled my eyes as I read it, and
re-read it. I shared it. I wanted it, so badly. I wanted healing. I wanted
happiness. How was she cured of her condition by a jungle priest? I suffered
like she did, but I had the real Priesthood.
Plus I paid tithing, I served, I went to the temple. Where was Jesus? Why was I
so lacking in contentment?
I plugged the article into my “faith” machine and continued
looking for happiness and finding it here and there in the gospel, in coaching
one of my kids, in feeling and teaching by the Spirit or studying the scriptures
and in the temples, or in my relationship with Jill which was never even tense
because we never disagreed about anything. But something had shifted over the
past few years and far more reliably I found solace in the weightlessness of a
wave, speeding down a slope with headphones blaring, standing atop a mountain
or in strict solitude.
In solitude, whether camping or staying for days alone in a
cabin, I felt closer to God than anywhere
else. I heard His voice alone in the
wilderness like nowhere else. I felt the Spirit there, as much as I did in the
temple, easily. Because of this the environment and environmental concerns
began to be very important to me. I began reading books by Derrick Jensen that bemoaned our treatment of the earth as well as the distracted
and broken state of our culture. I agreed and noted with disdain the fact that
the main conveyor and judge of truth in my life, the Church, took and takes no
reliably active stance regarding environmental issues. Brigham Young spoke more
about it than President Hinckley, whom I loved. The Church acted like an entity
that is trying to keep from displeasing as many potential converts as possible -
presumably so prospective converts don’t close the door on the message of the
gospel before they hear it. I began to see the preservation of the earth as
something that is truly critical to mankind’s salvation, both physical and
spiritual. I saw the health of the planet and the exposing of the culture that
was killing it as far more worthy topics than many of those that I heard
addressed over and over in Saturday or Sunday Priesthood meetings, which were
about banal topics like home teaching numbers or manufacturing better turnouts
to ward and stake functions, all while the sun shone outside and the earth,
which spoke volumes to me in solitude, went unheard as it was and is being
systematically destroyed. These things, the home teaching and the other
Mormonisms had value to be sure, but where was the rest? Something seemed
amiss. If Heavenly Father was concerned for all His creation - including His
children that were not Americans or human - where was the rest of the
instruction from His leaders? It didn’t make the Church untrue, but… it
certainly seemed odd.
In late 2007 a book came to me. To this day I don’t know
where it came from. I bought it to be certain, but it is not the type of book I
can ever remember being interested in. It is called, “A New Earth: Awakening To
Your Life’s Purpose”, by Eckhart Tolle. It presented new concepts from a
Buddhist perspective very much in line with the conscious and subconscious
conclusions I had been deriving alone. It also passed the test of not
detracting from or contradicting the gospel…until I hit about page 78 if I
remember correctly. But here was the problem – even though Mr. Tolle presented
ideas that were in slight conflict with LDS doctrine, it made sense and rang
true; true enough to keep reading it in spite of my reservations. After all, I
sought truth wherever it lay. That practice had served me well and my faith in
the Church still felt solid in spite of my mostly latent questions. I was
confident the concepts Mr. Tolle presented would agree at some point on some
level. But I had not foreseen something. I had started the book in November and
finished it in December or early January. My faith was seriously shaken when,
at the behest of the book, I began Zen meditation for the first time in my life
and saw a distance between my true Self – my spirit - and my body. I felt
bliss, seeing this. I felt connected to God on a deep level in a new way that
didn’t require the temple, or church, or even the gospel apparently, since it
was being presented by a Buddhist. How was that? More disturbing were the
effects of this simple practice: my temper fled. Gone. I could now see that
anger was generally just ego arising, and that was not my deepest self. The
true “I” could sit back and watch it, observing the emotion rise and fall like
a swell on the ocean. Jill said I was suddenly becoming the man she’d always
wanted me to be and knew I could be. I was a better father. I. Felt. Peace. It was incredible; God
had answered my prayers through, not the teachings of the prophets, but of a
Buddhist-ish teacher with one trick: meditation.
I know that meditation has its place in the annals of LDS
literature. I know it set off DC 76 and 138 among others, and these were two of
my favorites. I know that the LDS prophets, ancient and modern, have spoken
about it. But how to practice it, I am sorry to say, is simply not discussed.
Now, you can do a search on it and find it mentioned any number of times, but I
know the gospel and I know the Church and it is not a priority. Yet here I was,
deeply affected by this practice on not only a spiritual level but more
importantly to me, a practical one, more than any other I could name in my
entire life, and almost immediately. Why was this missing in the teachings of
the modern prophets? Why was so much emphasis placed on “enduring to the end”,
basically gritting ones teeth through temptations or working towards another
“change of heart”, rather than seeing the cause of error as arising from a lack
of presence in the moment and the effects of egoic wanting, the realization of
which placed distance between the tempted and the temptation? Why did I live my
life in a constant state of disdain for this world, of an expectation of
something better later? Doing this, I was missing what was in front of me, this
unique, beautiful life. Other concerns and questions followed: Would a loving
God ever want to be feared? Could He ever be jealous, really? Would a god of
love ever command the murder of every man, woman, child and animal (Saul)?
Would he ever really command a human sacrifice? As a result of this one
practice, meditation, I became far more thankful for my blessings and began to
care far, far less about accumulating wealth if the search for it took me away
from my fragile peace. I became increasingly aware of the things that broke
into this new wonder I felt, even as my testimony took serious hits. Eventually
I drew the conclusion that the god I had understood was either incapable – or
at least not omniscient - or mean. I knew
there is no way a true God is either of those things, and still know that. The
tools I had accepted as the proper ones to acquaint myself with Reality became
useless because I could see clearly that some of them came from man’s
self-serving imagination. I knew I needed to find some new ones, or at least
let the useless ones go. I’ve kept what was in agreement with the rest of what
I was finding, rather than the other way around. In the past five years I’ve
looked at eastern philosophies, studied channeled literature and plumbed the
depths of my own psyche – sometimes with the assistance of “medicines” put here
to be taken respectfully for that purpose (of course like most things they are
generally abused by a culture that thinks that if a little is good, more is
better). In short, I’ve opened to many different ideas, all with the purpose of
becoming a “see-er”. I still don’t see with regularity because I am still
trapped in ego much of the time, but I’m closer than I was.
In March of 2008 I told my Stake YM President that I needed
to be released from my calling. I was the second counselor at this time. The
economy was in the tank and Bend was among the hardest hit regions in the
country. I was scrambling for any contracting work I could find. All this being
true, this was not the reason for asking to be released; it was only a cover
for the fact that I could no longer proclaim the LDS Church to be the “only
true and living Church upon the face of the whole earth.” There was too much
out there not remotely related to the gospel that I knew was also from the
Author of Salvation and I was not going to lie to young men and their leaders.
I was unwilling to “teach around the things I did not believe”, as a couple
close friends suggested. I was unwilling to go to the temples under false
pretense. From there it was an avalanche: I stopped wearing the garment,
started attending Buddhist meditation practice on Sunday morning before Church
and noting the differences in the meetings, which were not favorable towards
the LDS worship services. I “coincidentally” (I don’t believe in coincidences) ran
into and became friends with a man that I considered wise and a true mystic,
and still do. His name is Jeb Barton. He became my mentor and counselor,
helping me see the ego in my new direction where it arose, helping me sort out
my fears and preparing me for the changes that he knew were coming well before
I did; namely the mass exodus of my friends, family and support structure as I
distanced myself from the Church.
The most disturbing thing of all was in regards to my
relationship with my wife, Jill. My feelings of love for her as a wife vanished
like fog in the sun. I was concerned for her, but there was no way I was going
to be in a “part-member home” should I continue leaving, nor was I was going to
attend the temple under false pretenses. My conclusion was simple: the Church
was not what it proclaimed to be. No way to put that toothpaste back in the
tube. (Especially while observing it from the outside.) What I was experiencing
in and around Buddhism had far more power on a practical living level than
anything from Christianity, and knowing the doctrines of the Church around
marriage, there was no alternative but to cut her loose to find a man in the
Church that could take her to the temple so she could have what she wanted,
eternal life. She wasn’t going to come with me because I wasn’t going to invite
her. I made that decision because it was my journey and it was inherently unsafe
– I had no idea where I was going or what I would find. I know Jill; she would
need more security than I would be able to give her. So in late July of 2008 we
separated. The day we told the kids the news is the saddest day of my life. I
think it always will be. I will never forget it and can’t describe it. We were
all devastated, but I couldn’t help it. I was going to follow spiritual truth
no matter the cost. I am seven generations deep in this Church; my ancestors
joined in 1832 and watched over Joseph Smith when he slept. They were burned
out of Ohio in February and lived in Nauvoo for a while before being driven across
the river to Iowa with the Saints. There they made wagon wheels for the travelers
before eventually making the trek to Utah, almost dying in Manti their first
winter after being assigned there by Brigham Young himself. They suffered
privations that cannot be imagined, and made it. And now that was all gone for
me. The reasons I had attempted to obey the commandments – my whole moral
structure – was similarly gone. I had good habits but since they were all tied
to the Church and gospel they were suddenly suspect. In the past five years I
have pushed every boundary to find the “why” things are as they are, to find
the true consequences behind the commandments, to find a way to connect to God
since mine was so radically wrenched from me, to find the reasons. I threatened to sue the Church if they didn’t remove my
name from the records within 30 days of a letter requesting it and they
complied in mid-September of 2008. I made huge mistakes in the way I pulled
away from Jill, getting involved almost immediately with a woman I had known
for a few years as a close friend. She was in no way, shape or form the reason
for my testimony leaving, but she was right there when it happened, that’s for
sure. It was hell for Jill. I have to forgive her for involving her mother and
father and my children in our conversations, putting them in the front lines,
telling them everything she was finding out about my new life, turning them
against me. Only Sammi, my little soul mate that I had baptized only months
before would see me on a regular basis. I drove over the mountains 3 hours one
way every other Saturday morning to spend the day with her, and then drive back
to my tipi (where I lived in Sisters, Oregon for about a year in 2008-09) on
the same day. I have done this for five years, more or less, through serious
blizzard conditions at times, through times of serious privation, too. Sometimes
the older kids would come with Sammi and I, most times they wouldn’t. For one
stretch, Brad wouldn’t talk to me in any fashion for almost a year. My only
uncle that was a member – who had never been very active but who was
universally loved and respected – died suddenly before I could talk to him
about how to live my life outside the Church. I cried alone in the dark in my
tipi when Mom called me with the news. I became acquainted with loss, believe
me. My friends, even ones I considered as close as my brothers like Paul and a
brother named John Weeks, were simply gone. My family wouldn’t have much to do
with me. My LDS spiritual path had not been what it had purported to be and I
was now a lost and wandering soul. In some ways I still am. But the results
have been enlightening to an unimaginable extent. I have knowledge that was
incomprehensible to me only a few years ago. I understand so much more about
communication, intention, consequences, spirituality and energy. I understand
the Creator to a far greater extent. I see religions and how they have
developed and why they exist. I have explored my mind and my ego in ways that
have brought me some of the most treasured experiences in my life. I am far,
far, far less attached to what people think of me and am far more compassionate
to all people. I don’t really fear anything, having literally lost everything
but my health. Even when I could put everything I owned in a 10x10 storage
unit, in 2011, it was broken into and almost everything of value was taken. If
I am not a better man as an apostate, I am certainly more honest and more
complete, even though I still suffered at times almost more than I can bear. That
is still true. At least I have a view of the “why’s” of my suffering, how I
cause it, why I own it, sometimes what to do with it. I am also entirely
unafraid of death to an almost unhealthy degree because of my journey. I know
all this on a deep level borne of experience, not from a book.
Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to know how I
feel about your “knowledge” that the Church is true, or the Gospel, or the
Scriptures. You don’t know. You don’t know because your parameters for receiving
truth are dictated to you from outside your divine, inner and knowing Self; specifically
an organization, the LDS Church. It is an organization that you trust, that you
have “proven”, but have you asked why you trust them and have you examined your
process for arriving at your conclusions? Are you certain your assumptions
about your spiritual experiences are correct? Do they really mean that there is
only one way – in this life or the next – to God? And please, please, please…don’t
do the typical disingenuous LDS thing here, which is to split hairs about these
questions. You know the gospel, I know the gospel. To the LDS there is one way,
in this life or the next, to salvation. Period. From where you presumably are
as a TBM (true believing Mormon) either deeper spiritual truth is unimportant
to you or you get serious, delete the self or Church-imposed parameters on your
search for it and commit to finding it where it sits. You observe that you are
currently addicted to finding “evidence” to support what you hope is true
rather than looking for truth without fear of consequences of finding it. If
you can’t do this, you are settling for what you believe is “good enough”. This
is also fine, especially when you admit it to yourself. Don’t get me wrong; if
being LDS was dangerous I would have got my kids out of it long before now,
believe me. But other than not being what it says it is, there’s nothing that wrong
with it. It’s a place to put one’s faith, it allows people to grow in service
and teaches a lifestyle that makes wonderful people. People are often happy,
they are often healed, miracles often happen. I’ve supported two kids on
missions now and I’m glad they went. But Joseph Smith was no prophet, and Jesus
isn’t walking the halls of the temples, nor did he come back from the dead
(although from what we have of a very flawed Bible, he was a complete, honest,
inspired and beautiful man). Here’s an interesting assignment: do some research
into what was specifically happening in upstate NY around 1820. Read the
stories of spiritual phenomena from people who were there, who had no idea who
Joseph Smith was. Ask some questions about channeling, and about how the
leaders of the Church today treat the documents that come out about the
founders of the LDS Church. If you’re unafraid of truth, open your eyes to it
where it sits. It’s a big world out there and not all truth and not all viable
spiritual paths and not all healing and not all miracles must pass through Salt
Lake City. Nor should you try to create new doctrines to assuage your feelings
of compassion for my situation, another popular activity among people who “feel
sorry” for me. In the doctrines of the gospel I am damned, a child of hell and the
Telestial Kingdom, period. PERIOD (DC 76). No second chances, no forgiveness of
sins in this world or the next (DC 84), no mercy that is not delineated in the
written word. Otherwise it’s just more emotion and more creating doctrines
around it, and there’s far too much of that in religion in general. Yours is
full of it.
It’s interesting: I went on my mission and spent a year
around the reservations, trying to “save” the Navajos, yet I am now “a proud
Lamanite” so to speak, carrying a Lakota pipe and finding huge depth and
connection in their ceremonies. I am a fourth year Sun Dance pledge; I will
fulfill my commitment to become a full-fledged Sun Dancer in July. Within that
category I eagle dance, pierced through the skin on my chest, keeping attached
by a rope to a Tree for four days and nights while fasting from food and water for that length of time before
ripping the hand-carved chokecherry pins out late on the fourth day. It’s
visceral and the sacrifice is literal. In this way I pray for the people, the
earth and to the Creator and Creation; the stones, trees, waters and Helpers,
seen and unseen (and I have seen them). I had a vision to do this although I
don’t know all the reasons why. This much I do know: walking the road of a Sun
Dancer has been the hardest thing I have ever done; far harder than plugging
into memorized and dictated LDS spirituality. I look forward to the ceremony itself
every July. But I walk the Red Road without attachment to the doctrine and
dogma that dogs “religious” people. I may very well leave active participation
in this path one day and find another, maybe Buddhism, maybe pure mysticism
like Jeb. I have no connection to any one way of seeing and experiencing God.
Wakan Tanka/All That Is/Heavenly Father/Heavenly Mother are always with me, and
I am with and a part of Them as well. And They. Are. Everywhere. I see the
world as any other Mystic would.
Take care, Eric. You’re a good man. I am happy for your walk,
and your service has made the world a better place in many, many instances as
you are well aware. May your God bless you and may your faith sustain you if
you want it to. And if you ever really open the doors to truth, take it easy,
take it slow. It’s a lot to take, it’s a lot to lose, it’s a lot to gain; and
it’s all as beautiful and as deep as the Creator.
Peace and Blessings,
Eric
