Love

Love is positive action and the feelings it produces.

As a verb, love is the meeting of needs.  Connecting with others is love in action.  Bonding, building trust, enjoying each other - that is love.  The actions of love produce the feelings of love.  This is true for all love including romantic love where our needs are deeper, the work to fill them is more difficult, and the feelings produced when we do fill them are greater.

The Demystification of Revelations and Miracles

If I say that something was revealed to me by God - some truth, some insight - many people may wonder.  But, it's really not that complicated.  When my son wants to know how plants grow, I share with him a bit about photosynthesis.  When he wants to know about things falling, I explain about gravity.  He then understands because I communicated that light and knowledge to him and he received it.  This is revelation.  Revelation occurs whenever one individual in possession of light and knowledge communicates it to another individual not in possession of that same light and knowledge, and that second individual receives it. 

None of us creates light or knowledge; it's already in existence.  God possesses all of it.  We're just the recipients of it.   

Whether a child is receiving light and knowledge from his earthly father or his Heavenly Father, the process is the same.  The only difference is the medium of communication.  Our Heavenly Father stands behind a veil and speaks to us through mediums we're not yet able to explain or dissect.  But, that's not bad.  In fact, it's very good!  

Like our physical bodies, our spirits have senses.  Our senses are mechanisms through which we experience.  God, our Father, can engage our  spiritual senses.  Spiritual experiences bring knowledge unlike what we experience through our physical senses.  Precisely because the spiritual is permanent and the physical temporary (we are not physical beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a physical experience), real experiences amass real, permanent knowledge, while temporal knowledge accrued through the temporal senses feels, well, temporary.

If I explained budgeting to my child over a cell phone, he could still learn the information.  I'm not near him, and he can't see me.   This is no different than God communicating with our spirits through spiritual senses.  Whether in person, over the phone, or through spiritual mechanisms, the concept of revelation remains the same.  

The idea of miracles is also frequently and similarly mystified.  The process of a seed being planted in soil, growing into a tree, and then producing fruit which I then eat, gaining energy for that day, is by some standards NOT miraculous because each stage of this process can be explained.  We can even draw pictures which illustrate our understanding.  However, when bread falls from heaven, it's thought to be different because we don't know how clouds can produce bread.  Regardless of means, miracles are Gods blessings for His children.  

The mystification of revelation and miracles stems from the belief that the explanation of a process is the same as the creation of the process.  In no case has a man or woman taught another a truth which did not first exist in God.  And in no case is any man or woman blessed by any thing resulting in any measure of joy which did not proceed from God, and which could not be called a miracle. 1

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1 A miracle is any expression of God's love - A Course in Miracles

Living the Dream

In plan A, there is a point called "as good as it gets".  Our Advocate has said, "There is no greater gift than the gift of Salvation" 1.  Plan B theology rejects the notion of "as good as it gets" 2.  Our adversary believes there is a gift greater than that which Plan A offers.  Part of the infamous lure of Plan B is derived from this prospect.  It is natural to want to maximize our happiness.  Therefore, we often do not accept limitations until we endure more pain in futility than the pain of disappointment.

Because our agency or Choice is our "self", eliminating it, even for a cause as worthy as Utopia, is self-defeating (pun intended). Because we are all interconnected (because we are all children of God) we cannot meet our own needs by eliminating another person's choice.  When we compel someone, we remove their choice.  When we remove their choice, we are eliminating them. When we eliminate them, we are destroying ourselves.

Here is the great dividing principle between people who live life, and people who are “living the dream”.  People who choose to believe that agency or choice is the essence of our "self" go on to live life.  People who choose to believe that agency or choice is not the essence of our "self” go on to live a dream.  We are either living life, or we are deluded. 3  

From the moment a person chooses to try and eliminate choice, a covering grows 3.  It grows over an empty pit - the one we are digging in our "selves".  This pit contains all the misery of unmet needs.  The unwanted removal of this covering is the stimulus for all violence.  This covering, or cloak, serves at least 2 purposes: 1) Painted attractively, it serves as The Lure to draw others unto it; 2) It hides them from The Love - God's light shining upon them.  

Hidden, covered in darkness, souls naturally begin to sleep 4.  There becomes less and less TO DO under that cloak.  Work is the tool for meeting needs. It's what adherents of Plan A do.  In the darkness, there is neither actual work nor a need for it. The Lure of the covering is supposed to instigate connections while the pressure of coercion maintains them, thus fulfilling one's every needs without work.  That’s Plan B.

God lets them sleep, mercifully.  Dreams become sinners' only refuge from the misery of unmet needs.  In their dreams, they can be the rulers of kingdoms of only imaginable varieties and glory.  There, their minds flitter through chaos, deifying bits and particles of unconnected imagery... 5 

…Until they are needed 6.  They are never destroyed 7.  For God’s purposes, there must be opposition.  And so, God allows them to R.I.P., under cover, in outer darkness.  However, when needed to fulfill God's purposes in the end of man, to bring about a marvelous work and a wonder, their covering is removed and they are roused from their slumber.  The removal of their covering exposes their pain and impels them to action.  But, they are bridled by God, for He can replace their covering at will.  God has subdued all His enemies.  Their actions suit God’s purposes 7.  This is how Lucifer, imagining himself a great usurper, came to be the catalyst in starting our great journey toward Godhood by tempting Adam and Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit, or how he contributed to the greatest good since creation's dawn. 9  Here is God’s description of His enemy: “His watchmen are blind.  They are all dumb dogs…lying down, loving to slumber.”  The zombies indeed rise from the dead, but all hell never breaks loose.

And so the anesthesia one imbibes for pleasure at the onset of path B, becomes one’s sedative in the end.  Choosing sleep is equated with death in scripture.  Can you see it?  Not working, waiting for Bliss to spontaneously combust, lying down to rest while waiting, in a coffin, captive to the covering, unable or unwilling to see the light of reality.  Limitless creations and kingdoms-for-one sustain the sweetness of slumber…until the lights turn on.  Then, there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. 10

antidote

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1 D&C 6:13

2 Isaiah 56:10-11

3 "All real pleasure comes from doing God's will. This is because not doing it is a denial of Self. Denial of Self results in illusions, while correction of the error brings release from it." - ACIM chp1, VII-1 ~ "For behold, the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep. For behold, ye have closed your eyes, and ye have rejected  the prophets; and your rulers, and the seers hath he covered because of your iniquity. - 2 Nephi 27:5 

4 Behold, he changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word; yea, they were encircled about by the bands of death, and the chains of hell, and an everlasting destruction did await them - Alma 5:7.  O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe - 2 Nephi 1:13.  Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death - Psalms 13:3.  In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord - Jeremiah 51:39.  ~  "Thus with the baggage of the world was I sweetly burdened, as when in slumber; and the thoughts wherein I meditated upon Thee were like unto the efforts of those desiring to awake, who, still overpowered with a heavy drowsiness, are again steeped therein. And as no one desires to sleep always, and in the sober judgment of all waking is better, yet does a man generally defer to shake off drowsiness, when there is a heavy lethargy in all his limbs, and, though displeased, yet even after it is time to rise with pleasure yields to it, so was I assured that it were much better for me to give up myself to Thy charity, than to yield myself to my own cupidity; but the former course satisfied and vanquished me, the latter pleased me and fettered me.  Nor had I aught to answer Thee calling to me, 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' And to Thee showing me on every side, that what Thou saidst was true, I , convicted by the truth, had nothing at all to reply, but the drawling and drowsy words: 'Presently, lo, presently;' 'leave me a little while.' But 'presently, presently,' had no present; and my 'leave me a little while' went on for a long while.  'O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death' but Thy grace only, through Jesus Christ our Lord?" - St. Augustine (354 - 430 A.D.) in The Confessions of St. Augustine. The Easton Press, 1979, The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written. pg. 129-130.
5 Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries.  Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists...but error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field, the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties...extravagancies and absurdities. - Benjamin Franklin, Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and Other Commissioners, Charges by the King of France, with the Examination of the Animal Magnetism, as now practiced in Paris (1784), as quoted in Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, in the introduction, by Kathryn Schulz.

6 For the day cometh that the Lord shall utter his voice out of heaven; the heavens shall shake and the earth shall tremble, and the trump of God shall sound both long and loud, and shall say to the sleeping nations: Ye saints arise and live; ye sinners stay and sleep until I shall call again. - Doctrine and Covenants 43:18 

7 1 Nephi 14:3  ~  "You can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of expression. You can make an empty shell, but you cannot express nothing at all.  You can wait, delay, paralyze yourself, or reduce your creativity almost to nothing.  But you cannot abolish it.  You can destroy your medium of communication, but not your potential.  You did not create yourself." ACIM 1-V-1,4-8
8 Isaiah 10:5-19, D&C 121:4
9 John 12:23-33
10 Matthew 22:13