talk on the hg

Below is the talk I gave in church Sunday on the role of the Holy Ghost. If the idea of the Holy Ghost is unfamiliar to you or if you have something else that you feel guides you towards truth, feel free to substitute that idea as you read to make it more accessible to you.

Almost 8 years ago, in the first general conference after I moved to the beautiful city of Portland, Joseph Wirthlin said the following:

“Have you ever thought about the amount of light and energy generated by our sun? The amount is almost beyond comprehension. Yet the heat and light that we receive come as a free gift from God. This is another proof of the goodness of our Heavenly Father.

“The light from the sun breaks through space, bathing our planet as it encircles the sun with life-giving warmth and light. Without the sun, there could be no life on this planet; it would be forever barren, cold, and dark.

“As the sun gives life and light to the earth, a spiritual light gives nourishment to our spirits. We call this the Light of Christ. The scriptures teach us that it “lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Thus, all mankind can enjoy its blessings. The Light of Christ is the divine influence that allows every man, woman, and child to distinguish between good and evil. It encourages all to choose the right, to seek eternal truth, and to learn again the truths that we knew in our premortal existence but have forgotten in mortality.”

It’s the last part of that excerpt from Wirthlin’s talk that really catches my attention. That the Holy Ghost helps us to learn the truths that we knew in our premortal existence but have forgotten in mortality. I can’t say that I know this for sure, but I’m willing to bet that our understanding of the truth of all things was probably much fuller in our pre-existent state than it is now. I think we forget that we have access to what we knew before, who we are now and what we have the potential to become, and not just in the general sense that we are all sons and daughters of God with the potential to become gods and goddesses. I believe I can learn and know the specifics about who I was, what I knew before, why I came to earth with my given set of circumstances and how all of that can contribute to helping me become whatever I have the potential to become.

When stated like that, it becomes clear that learning to understand the role of the Holy Ghost in our lives and how we can more effectively access it are a couple of the most important things we can do in this life. Elder Wirthlin goes on to say:

"In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord calls the gift of the Holy Ghost 'the unspeakable gift.' It is the source of testimony and spiritual gifts. It enlightens minds, fills our souls with joy, teaches us all things, and brings forgotten knowledge to our remembrance. The Holy Ghost also 'will show unto [us] all things what [we] should do.'"

"President James E. Faust added that the gift of the Holy Ghost 'is the greatest guarantor of inward peace in our unstable world.'

"President Gordon B. Hinckley taught, 'How great a blessing it is to have the ministering influence of a member of the Godhead.' Think of what this means, the ability and the right to receive the ministrations of a member of the Godhead, to commune with infinite wisdom, infinite knowledge, and infinite power!”

From these quotes, we learn that some of the roles of the Holy Ghost are teacher, testifier, reminder and comforter. I believe that the Holy Ghost also acts as a corrective lense. We all have our own set of limitations to understanding ourselves and others that are the result of our own skewed perceptions of others, our experiences and the world around us. We see things through the lense of our own experiences. We like to pretend that we know why people do what they do and why things happen the way they happen, but sometimes all we end up doing is horribilizing or interpreting experiences based on our own limited world view. The person who cut me off in traffic is a jerk who was deliberately trying to make me angry. So and so says what he says and believes what he believes because he just doesn’t understand. That person was short with me because she doesn’t like me. Bad things happen to me because I’m less than others.

I believe that through listening to that very quiet inner voice that we call the Holy Ghost, we can slide a corrective lense in place to help us see things as they are instead of as we too often incorrectly interpret them to be. I was chatting this week with my soul sister Krisanne, and telling her about the topic of my talk and she shared some terrific quotes by a woman named Marianne Williamson. Marianne calls the Holy Ghost the “bridge back to gentle thoughts,” “the Great Transformer of Perception,” and she says,

“The Holy Spirit guides us to a different perception of reality: one that is based on love. His correction of perception is called the Atonement. He reminds us that, in every situation, the love you've given is real, and the love you have received is real. Nothing else exists. Anything other than love is an illusion."

"In asking the Holy Spirit to help us, we are expressing our willingness to perceive a situation differently. We give up our own interpretations and opinions, and ask that they be replaced by His. When in pain, we pray, 'Dear God, I am willing to see this differently.' Surrendering a situation to God means surrendering to Him our thoughts about it. What we give to God, He gives back to us renewed through the vision of the Holy Spirit."

I also love what Marianne says about the Holy Ghost and comfort zones. Sometimes I think we misinterpret our discomfort in certain situations or with certain people to be the spirit telling us to avoid that person or situation. Sometimes that might be the case, but sometimes it isn’t. Marianne says,

"Our comfort zones are the limited areas in which we find it easy to love. It's the Holy Spirit's job not to respect those comfort zones but to bust them."

So far I’ve discussed the roles that the Holy Ghost plays. I think it’s important to also talk about how we invite the Holy Ghost into our lives, how we go about creating and cultivating a partnership with the spirit that expands our minds and spirits. We could talk about the importance of prayer and scripture study and attending church and the temple, and those things can certainly play a role, but I’m pretty sure you’re all well acquainted with those answers. I want to talk about something that I think serves to further animate and enliven and give meaning to those familiar answers. I believe that in order to invite the Holy Ghost into our lives as a constant companion, we need to continually make ourselves vulnerable, like a child.

The good news about that, is that if you choose to engage in life and be in relationship with others, you will have plenty of opportunities to feel vulnerable. The key though, is to allow yourself to be seen by others in the world. Often, we are so busy holding up what we want others to see us as, that we don’t let them see who we actually are. We hold onto the roles that we play and let that guide our interactions with others instead of shedding the roles and allowing others to see us for who we are. If we don’t let people see and experience who we are, it’s more difficult to feel vulnerable and more difficult to have rich and healing experiences with the spirit. If we’re having fewer experiences with the spirit, it’s harder to recognize when it’s present and how it teaches and heals us.

That vulnerability takes us to a place that allows the spirit to begin to work on us if we allow it to. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we do things to distract ourselves from difficult feelings. Some choose to lose themselves in work or in school. I’ve had a couple friends this week say they decided to take a break from Facebook for a bit because they realized they were numbing themselves with it. I’m sure each of us could take inventory of our own specialized numbing agents that we use to avoid that feeling of vulnerability.

As I said before though, if we allow it to, the vulnerabilty takes us to a place where the spirit can do it’s thing. Catherine Thomas is a retired BYU professor of ancient scripture and talks about this and she calls this place of vulnerability “the twilight zone”. She says,

"This twilight zone is a transition state between having recognized one’s fallenness [and] not yet reaching to the solution. . . . This is a state of hunger and bondage—not total darkness, but hunger for something indefinable. We can recognize it in ourselves when our souls cry out, “Is this all there is to the gospel? Can’t I feel a richer inner experience?” We can get stuck in this twilight because we are . . . going through some motions . . . [or] we seem to be on the path; but still, there’s that nagging hunger in the heart that doesn’t know what it wants. People try lots of things to assuage the hunger. . . . But [these worldly pursuits are] counterproductive where happiness and being born again are concerned. . . .

"That half-and-half state is precisely the problem and the source of our hunger. The hunger comes from the need for the most powerful nutrient a fallen human can receive: the Spirit of the Lord. . . . The Fall creates the hunger. Perhaps the most characteristic state of fallen man is the hunger and the feeling of darkness or spiritual twilight. Many people experience only the hunger for their entire lives.”

So how do we let the hunger work for us? One, I think we have to allow ourselves to feel it and then two, invite the spirit to come in and teach us the lessons that are embedded in that hunger. Lessons about who we are, what brings us lasting joy, who we have the potential to become.

There’s a a bumper sticker phrase that originated from Joseph Campbell that says Follow your bliss. I’m sure many of you have heard it before. The second half of that phrase is rarely included, probably because it’s not so warm and fuzzy. The second half says your bliss is found at the core of your suffering. That part doesn't look so good on a bumper sticker.

It is when we allow the Holy Ghost in as our companion in suffering that we truly begin to heal and transform and find our bliss. Going back to Elder Wirthlin’s talk, he said,

"If [you will] open [your] hearts to the refining influence of this unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, a glorious new spiritual dimension [will] come to light. [Your] eyes [will] gaze upon a vista scarcely imaginable. [You can] know for [yourself] things of the Spirit that are choice, precious, and capable of enlarging the soul, expanding the mind, and filling the heart with inexpressible joy. "