I've kept meaning to post this, because I figured you all as a family would appreciate it, but I keep forgetting, so here is a talk I gave two weeks ago in Sacrament meeting. I was asked to talk about the Emotional Self-Reliance class that Allison and I have been teaching/running this year, a topic I was NOT actually that excited to talk about initially.
BUT I got excited when I realized I could combine some of my recent reading of "Dune" as the intro to the talk, which got me MUCH more excited about giving it, so here it is:
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge nerd, and luckily for me, I can usually draw analogies from the stories and books that I read to the Gospel. The Elders quorum can probably attest I have brought up Lord of the Rings a few times already, but today I wanted to start my talk by talking about the story of Dune.
Along with the Atreides and the native populations that harvest the spice, the planet is also populated by a native group called the Fremen. This seemingly smaller group are defined at first as native insurgents on Arrakis that live and survive outside the protected city limits despite the dangers the natural environment presents, and without help from the larger galactic order. They are also directly opposed to any of the stewards that come to the planet to harvest the spice, and are very secretive about who they are, and what their purposes might be.
As the story goes along, and after a number of major events that I won’t detail here, Paul Atreides eventually comes to befriend and ally himself with the Fremen, and observes and learns their ways of surviving in this desolate and harsh environment. As it turns out, the Fremen society is a massive network of cities and locations across the entire planets surface, and has it’s own distinct history, culture and traditions. As can be supposed in such a hot, barren and brutal landscape, the traditions of this society focus almost solely around the sacredness, preservation and efficient use of water, along with emphasizing characteristics of discipline, strength and mastery over the natural human instincts in pursuit of a greater societal purpose. Every action the Fremen take is for the sole purpose to retain and preserve this water. From suits and masks that cover their full body to recycle their sweat and breath into water to drink, to building their cities underground and only travelling at night to avoid the heat of the day, everything they do is meant to preserve water both for their short- and long-term survival.
There are a lot of different lenses to see this story though, but the ecological struggle that this desert people undergo was particularly interesting to me. There’s a pivotal scene in particular where Paul is travelling with the Fremen to one of their cities, and along the way they enter a large underground cavern, where unseen from the surface, and certainly a surprise to him, sits a reservoir of millions of litres of water. Seeing this, Paul Atreides begins to wonder why the Fremen still continue to live so frugally with their water consumption when so much water is readily available. Sensing the prince’s surprise, the leader of the Fremen speaks the following, gesturing to his people around him: “There were those among us in need of water, yet they would come here and not touch this… It has been calculated with precision, we know how much we need, and when we have it, we shall change the face of Arrakis.” As the book reveals, the Fremen intend not only to live each day on the water that they have, but they intend to collect water in small, almost insignificant fractions over generations, contributing what they each can day by day and depriving themselves of momentary comfort, in order to eventually terraform their planet into a more habitable and hospitable world for generations after them.
I’ve never been to a desert before or had to go for long stretches of time without food or water, but this level of resolve in this story struck me. Would I make small and painful sacrifices to my own personal comfort each day over my entire lifetime in the hopes of achieving a better life for generations much further in the future? And would I trust the people around me too to be working towards the same goal as fervently as I was? More than anything for me, the resiliency and internal mastery of this people over their natural human instincts in the hopes of a better future for others was particularly striking.
King Benjamin from the Book of Mormon, in Mosiah 3:19 said:
19 For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.
As one of our core beliefs, we believe that everyone that has lived, are living, or will live on the Earth are spiritual children of God, and that we were sent to Earth as spirits by God to demonstrate our willingness to follow Him. While here on Earth, we join our spirits with a physical body, and thus gain an essential element to be more like God. The tricky part though is that after we gain a body, we have to undergo the “proving” step of our earthly experience, where over a lifetime, we each can experience both the good and the bad elements of mortality. There are definitely some highlights along the way, like happy, joyful moments with family and those you love, reaching big milestones or achievements after a lot of hard work, and moments of spiritual closeness or inspiration with Heavenly Father and the Holy Ghost. It seems like more often though, the physical elements of living in the world are more difficult and more plenteous. Physical injury, sickness, and weird aches pop up with more frequency as you age. Things don’t always go our way. There are stresses with our families, our friends, our work, someone says something offensive to us, work that we put in doesn’t always yield a successful result, and life can seem unfair. And to add to that, external conflicts arise between people and groups and nations that affect us both directly and indirectly, and ultimately just add more weight to the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual strain put on each of us.
The number of responses to these events in our lives are as varied as we all are, but invariably I think the responses can go one of two ways: we either, to some degree, allow the natural man and our physical bodies, appetites and desires take over and rule our actions by being prideful, selfish or reactionary, or we allow our spirits and the influence of the Savior to overcome our natural instincts, and remain calm and receptive to the Spirit and it’s influence.
Elder David E. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said the following in a 2013 talk (“We Believe in Being Chaste”), speaking about the Natural Man and the words of King Benjamin I mentioned before:
To some degree, the natural man described by King Benjamin is alive and well in each of us (see Mosiah 3: 19) The natural man or woman is unrepentant, is carnal and sensual (see Mosiah 16: 5; Alma 42: 10; Moses 5:13), is indulgent and excessive, and is prideful and selfish.
In contrast, the “man [or woman] of Christ” (Helaman 3: 29) is spiritual and bridles all passions (see Alma 38:12), is temperate and restrained, and is benevolent and selfless. Men and women of Christ lay hold upon the word of God, deny themselves and take up His cross, and press forward along a strait and narrow course of faithfulness, obedience, and devotion to the Savior and His gospel.
As sons and daughters of God, we have inherited divine capacities from Him. But we presently live in a fallen world. The very elements out of which our bodies were created are by nature fallen and ever subject to the pull of sin, corruption, and death. Consequently, the Fall of Adam and its spiritual and temporal consequences affect us most directly through our physical bodies. And yet we are dual beings, for our spirit that is the eternal part of us is tabernacled in a physical body that is subject to the Fall. As Jesus emphasized to the Apostle Peter, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).
The precise nature of the test of mortality, then, can be summarized in the following question: Will I respond to the inclinations of the natural man, or will I yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit and put off the natural man and become a saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord (see Mosiah 3:19)? That is the test. Every appetite, desire, propensity, and impulse of the natural man may be overcome by and through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We are here on the earth to develop godlike qualities and to bridle all of the passions of the flesh.
This topic has also been on my mind because of the Emotional Self-Reliance class my wife Allison and I have been conducting over the past few weeks and months. When we were first asked to run the class, I was a little hesitant to take it. I really only had some informal experience with helping friends or family to work through emotional, mental or spiritual issues in their own lives, and didn’t feel qualified to lead a whole class about subjects such as depression, anxiety, stress, anger, or addictive behaviors, as I don’t feel I had ever experienced lengthy periods of emotional or mental distress in my life. There have definitely been times in my life when I’m feeling more aggravated or stressed, or anxiety over a larger workload at the time made me more snippy or short fused, but I was worried I wouldn’t have much extensive experience to draw on for this class.
Trying to maintain an open mind though as we started meeting weekly, I was surprised when, during the various activities and commitments that the class has participants take on, that I felt I could apply events of even my current day to what we were learning or working on. I noticed that even the small and seemingly insignificant things that we committed during class to do over the next week, or the discussions we had had in the class the week before, came to my mind when I was having a more stressful than usual day, or when I was having a discussion with someone at work that I was butting heads with. They felt like such small things of reframing my own thinking, or changing my behavior in small and simple ways, but that ultimately led to big improvements in how I felt, and how others around me felt too.
Probably the most visible effect of this thinking was in my relationship with my wife, Allison. We do fight on occasion about real things like everybody does, but probably more often than that, we also fight about really, really inconsequential things, like different approaches to playing video games, or whether certain movie franchises are better than others. And 9 times out of 10, halfway through the heated discussion, we readily acknowledge how ridiculous it is that we’re fighting about whatever the topic is, and then jump right back into it. Whatever it is though, whether it’s something ridiculous and unimportant, or a bigger point of conflict that we have with each other, we both would usually feel very passionately about our positions, and wouldn’t back down.
Now not really wanting to ever back down from these “discussions”, I would normally just interrupt her explanations with retorts, or try to talk over her while she was trying to explain her position. But after reading through one of the earliest placed lessons in Week 2 of Emotional Self-Reliance titled “Healthy Thinking Patterns”, and reviewing a list of common inaccurate thinking patterns that can occur when we are conflict with someone else, I realized that a lot of my thinking in these discussions were overgeneralizing and mislabeling her thoughts, and that I was usually jumping to conclusions about her real opinions rather than listening to understand her fully. In essence I was letting my natural instinctual response take over the more appropriate and thoughtful response. In should listen to understand first, and only then once she had expressed herself should I express my own ideas in the hopes that she could understand me more too.
Once I noticed that, and started praying to see and respond more appropriately when we did disagree, I couldn’t help but notice a shift in how we could relate to each other. Even if we didn’t agree completely on something, or there were unresolved questions between us, we could still both move on while accepting each others differences, and without any residing anger or frustration. More often than not though, we ended these discussions feeling closer to and more in sync with each other.
“Because your Heavenly Father loves you, He sent His Son Jesus Christ to strengthen you during any situation you face in life. This group will help you learn spiritual and practical skills to help each of us care for our body, mind, emotions and relationships. As you attend this course, work with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to know how to apply what you learn to your life and the lives of those you love.”
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