Joseph Smith must have had a huge libido. I think that comes with being a very creative person. I imagine Joseph Smith to have been tripping on shrooms from a very young age. I myself have never done it, but I have read up on it and it really seems like it's what he had going on. In the Nauvoo days, he said "It is my meditation all the day, and more than my meat and drink, to know how I shall make the Saints of God comprehend the visions that roll like an overflowing surge before my mind." There are naturally growing hallucinogenic mushrooms in the area where he grew up, and he grew up in the folk magic community which definitely knew something of drugs, so I don't see it as too distant of a possibility.
In any case, I have often felt the same way, walking around with an overflowing imagination and wishing I could share it with people. Imagination was a big part of what led Joseph Smith to do the things that he did, which I think is cool. I mean, a lot of the challenges of the future are definitely going to require a lot of creativity on the part of leaders to solve. Unfortunately I think he was the last leader of the church with any creativity or charisma at all. I wish they'd let me take the reigns of the church.
Haha, isn't this what people always do when they leave cults or churches, they come back and say that it should be them running the place? Well now I get why. It's only when you enable yourself to view your own life or your organization with some objectivity that you are able to see the problems that need fixing. You have to be willing to admit that you might be making some mistakes, in order to be able to fix them. You have to drop the magical thinking that comes with the spiritual narcissism of Mormonism, and say hey, maybe I'm not perfect. Maybe no one is perfect.
There are still a lot of parts of the Bible that I believe in, because they line up with what I've experienced to be true in life. Here's a good part:
There are still a lot of parts of the Bible that I believe in, because they line up with what I've experienced to be true in life. Here's a good part:
"And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."
Jesus told a guy that no one is good but God. I think when Mormons read this, it leads them to be self-righteous and kind of fake-humble. But lets all stop crying from the beauty of this guy's humility and actually examine what the fuck he's talking about.
There's no one good but god? Dude, you're just going around being a good guy to everyone. Who's better than you? I think the only thing that Jesus can be referring to here is the idea of subjective reality instead of objective reality. What's good to one person might not be good to another person.
This is a big, big concept in Buddhism. The idea that we shouldn't judge life as good or bad, but simply accept what is without wishing it were anything else. There's a zen parable about a guy whose son breaks his leg and his neighbor says "Oh no!" but he said "Meh, could be good or bad." Then the next day the military comes to enlist all eligible men to be in the army and the young man gets to stay. It goes on and on back and forth in the parable, but you get the idea. It's like, you might buy flowers for someone but then they might end up being allergic to flowers.
So in life, it's not that everything happens for a reason and that's why we can be ok with it. We can be ok with it, but because our notion of what is good and bad might be wrong at any given moment of the day. It's my opinion that Jesus was teaching Eastern philosophy to the Jews through what they could understand.
This is important because it taps directly into what is going wrong with the church. A gerontocracy has been been established as the government of the church. This is where the oldest guys automatically get the power. I think Joseph Smith originally wanted it to be a hierarchy but that didn't work out. The thing they need to realize is that the true spirit of Christ can't be expressed through any authoritarian power structure, because Christ is against all authority but God's and therefore is anarchic (without any power structure or authority) and, I would say, socially democratic.
So yeah. In my opinion, the people in charge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, specifically the Presidents, Counselors, Apostles, and Seventies, need to be overthrown and replaced by other committees of people who are genuinely committed to the principles that were taught by Jesus Christ. Why not dissolve the church altogether, you say? Well I mean, I still think that the church could have an important mission in the world, but it needs to change from what it is now. You can't just say that you really want to be like Jesus Christ but then lead the people in a totally different direction. They just spent 3 billion dollars on a luxury shopping mall and all of the prophets and apostles were there cutting the ribbon and shouting, "let's go shopping!"
So the question becomes, well, what is good? Like, what is that "god" thing that Jesus referred to? If that's what's good, what is it? Well, in Mormonism there was an image of an iron rod that got used a lot. "The iron rod is the word of God." It's like a thing we can hold onto in this world of Satan's confusing mists. Like the parable of the house built upon the rock and the house built upon the stone. You have to have some kind of footing in this world so you don't get "tossed around by the waves of the sea," as James said. I think that the iron rod we can all hold onto is simply, love. Meaning, do unto others and you would have others do unto you. Non-judging love. Total acceptance of reality. For me what it means is that if you're the one in the situation bringing the vibes down, then you're the one that's wrong, whatever the situation may be. Aight, Hurt out.
Jesus told a guy that no one is good but God. I think when Mormons read this, it leads them to be self-righteous and kind of fake-humble. But lets all stop crying from the beauty of this guy's humility and actually examine what the fuck he's talking about.
There's no one good but god? Dude, you're just going around being a good guy to everyone. Who's better than you? I think the only thing that Jesus can be referring to here is the idea of subjective reality instead of objective reality. What's good to one person might not be good to another person.
This is a big, big concept in Buddhism. The idea that we shouldn't judge life as good or bad, but simply accept what is without wishing it were anything else. There's a zen parable about a guy whose son breaks his leg and his neighbor says "Oh no!" but he said "Meh, could be good or bad." Then the next day the military comes to enlist all eligible men to be in the army and the young man gets to stay. It goes on and on back and forth in the parable, but you get the idea. It's like, you might buy flowers for someone but then they might end up being allergic to flowers.
So in life, it's not that everything happens for a reason and that's why we can be ok with it. We can be ok with it, but because our notion of what is good and bad might be wrong at any given moment of the day. It's my opinion that Jesus was teaching Eastern philosophy to the Jews through what they could understand.
This is important because it taps directly into what is going wrong with the church. A gerontocracy has been been established as the government of the church. This is where the oldest guys automatically get the power. I think Joseph Smith originally wanted it to be a hierarchy but that didn't work out. The thing they need to realize is that the true spirit of Christ can't be expressed through any authoritarian power structure, because Christ is against all authority but God's and therefore is anarchic (without any power structure or authority) and, I would say, socially democratic.
So yeah. In my opinion, the people in charge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, specifically the Presidents, Counselors, Apostles, and Seventies, need to be overthrown and replaced by other committees of people who are genuinely committed to the principles that were taught by Jesus Christ. Why not dissolve the church altogether, you say? Well I mean, I still think that the church could have an important mission in the world, but it needs to change from what it is now. You can't just say that you really want to be like Jesus Christ but then lead the people in a totally different direction. They just spent 3 billion dollars on a luxury shopping mall and all of the prophets and apostles were there cutting the ribbon and shouting, "let's go shopping!"
So the question becomes, well, what is good? Like, what is that "god" thing that Jesus referred to? If that's what's good, what is it? Well, in Mormonism there was an image of an iron rod that got used a lot. "The iron rod is the word of God." It's like a thing we can hold onto in this world of Satan's confusing mists. Like the parable of the house built upon the rock and the house built upon the stone. You have to have some kind of footing in this world so you don't get "tossed around by the waves of the sea," as James said. I think that the iron rod we can all hold onto is simply, love. Meaning, do unto others and you would have others do unto you. Non-judging love. Total acceptance of reality. For me what it means is that if you're the one in the situation bringing the vibes down, then you're the one that's wrong, whatever the situation may be. Aight, Hurt out.
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