Sleep, glorious sleep

I remember when I took my very first philosophy class at BYU, there was a foreign student that entitled one of his creative philosophical writings, "Sleep, oh you pieces of death."  Turns out that it is a plagiarism of an Edgar Allen Poe poem, "Sleep, those little slices of death; oh how I loath them."  Whether or not this foreign philosophy student got the title correct, he caught the meaning: if man (or woman) didn't have to sleep, we could get so much more done!  He went on, in his writing, to talk about all the things that you could accomplish if you didn't need to sleep.  Poe, and presumably that student, were a little bit crazy--as in there was something neurologically wrong with them!

Sleep, in truth, is a little gift to man (and woman).

I, personally, experienced what happens to a body (my body) when it's deprived of sleep--a small bout of the psychological illness called mania.  If I didn't sleep, if a human being doesn't sleep, they will die!  After my coma (how many of you can begin a sentence like that--"After my coma..."), when my son and his mother left me alone at home to go to California, I spent two weeks with little or no sleep.  I was manic.

During that period of no sleep, I did experience grandiose ideas (ideas that are magnificent and seem like a good idea to the temporarily insane, but to a rational mind they are simply delusions or delusional), although mine were not on a scale anywhere near what some documented cases have been written about by psychologists: "Since real estate is so expensive on Manhattan Island, it would be a great idea to make a huge profit by buying 100 square inch pieces of land right on the corner of Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue, that go up, vertically, above the street.  Then sell them when the cost increases!"  Imagine, a column of real estate that increases in value as time goes on, and that you can sell once the price is right to make a windfall profit!

Sleep, however, is the antidote to most illnesses.  Sleep can be the elixir that anyone and everyone needs for that which ales them!  As I went through my Abnormal Psychology class at UVSC (that eventually became UVU), I was amazed at the number of illnesses or disorders that had the root cause or a contributing factor being lack of sleep!  I imagined doing a Thesis for my Master's Degree on the effects of not getting enough sleep and the pathologies that stem from it.

Sleep, glorious sleep.  I know that all I needed to do to not have another manic episode was to get enough sleep.  I taught myself to be able to sleep under any condition (given that it was a time to sleep and not the middle of the day or the middle of an event that I was doing...), and that has been an answer to any sleeping trouble that I may or do have!  Sleep, glorious sleep.

Everyone knows that one of the things that your (that's right, even YOU!) body needs to stay alive and well is a certain amount of R.E.M. sleep.  You didn't know that?  It makes sense though, and you think you might have heard something about that before, right?  Dreams are your body's and your brain's natural method of "decompressing" or "processing" the events that go on during the hours that you are awake and keep your brain healthy and active and healthy.  Everyone needs to decompress and everyone needs to process.  Your brain does too...

JPS

The Lord's conservation of energy

We all know what conservation of energy is, right?

"In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot change—it is said to be conserved over time. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can change form; for instance, chemical energy can be converted to kinetic energy."  -- Wikipedia ("conservation of energy")

So, what is the Lord's conservation of energy?  Well, it parallel's man's physical law in more ways than one, but I want to talk about one aspect: The Lord conserves His spiritual power in not duplicating things that He has already done before (i.e. He doesn't reveal the same scripture for the first time, over and over, but simply has it kept safe or conserved and then revealed or translated).

For example, in the Book of Mormon, in the Book of 1 Nephi, chapter four, verses 14 and 15 and 16, we read about how Nephi was commanded to return with his brothers to the land of Jerusalem and to retrieve the Brass Plates.  We read:

"14 And now, when I, Nephi, had heard these words, I remembered the words of the Lord which he spake unto me in the wilderness, saying that: Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments, they shall prosper in the land of promise.

15 Yea, and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord according to the law of Moses, save they should have the law.

16 And I also knew that the law was engraven upon the plates of brass."

And so, instead of re-revealing the same Law of Moses to Lehi and his family, the Lord conserves His power and they retrieve the plates from Laban, thus conserving God's energy.  It's not that God is afraid that He'll run out or run low of His power, because He can't.  He won't.  Don't be silly!  God, though, is perfect.  He also is perfectly efficient and effective in the way that He does things.

Another case-in-point, instead of re-revealing the words and revelations of the Brother of Jared (Mahonri Moriancumer), the Lord simply had Mosiah translate the engravings from Adamic--the pure language of God that all the world spoke before the confusing of the languages at the Tower of Babel-- the original language, into reformed Egyptian and from there, had Moroni add them to the end of his record before his few final words (see Mosiah 28:12).

So, I could go on and on just about the Book of Mormon and God's Conservation of Power.  Need I remind you of Martin Harris and the lost Book of Lehi and that Nephi's writing already covered the more spiritual parts in that Book?

God's power and energy is conserved and we have the proof of that in His scriptures.

JPS

Spiritual Event Horizon

What is an event horizon?

From what I understand (and this is without referring to any notes or websites, because I'm positive that I could google "event horizon" and have a plethora of scholarly and otherwise sites pull-up giving me a definition), an event horizon is:

the shadow of the pull of gravity of a black hole that once breached or entered into, an object can no longer escape the black hole but is doomed to collapse or enter into the center of a black hole.

Now, what does spirituality have to do with black holes?  What is, exactly, a black hole anyway?

Once again, I will give you my layman understanding with no reference to websites or notes:

a black hole is a phenomenon where gravity becomes so strong or forceful that it will "suck-in" or pull everything to the point that nothing can escape that pull--even light cannot escape--and everything is crushed into that one point (however large it is).  That point (however large or small it may be) is what is known as a BLACK HOLE.

So, what I mean by spiritual event horizon is:

the amount of faith, the number of prayers offered, the amount of righteousness inspired by, the number of good deeds solicited from, the lessons learned, and the patience suffered by a person or people who are asking for a certain blessing from their Heavenly Father before their righteous desires are granted and that prayer answered.

There can be no granting of that blessing without it being the will of God, but as the President and prophet Spencer W. Kimball has taught me: we can change the mind of God or better put, we can change our mind to match the mind and will of God--for God's mind is immovable and faithful--and He has seen the end from the beginning.  Remember how President Kimball spoke about hastening-on the Second Coming with our righteous desires and works?  He taught that we could make it happen sooner (or not and later) by our own choices.

What?  How is that?

Let's say that the entire world and the even smaller, entire church, wanted to speed up the process or have Jesus return again to the Earth in His glory.  Now, let's use our event horizon premise:

the amount of faith, the number of prayers offered, the amount of righteousness inspired by, the number of good deeds solicited from, the lessons learned, and the patience suffered by a person or people who are asking for a certain blessing from their Heavenly Father before their righteous desires are granted and that prayer answered with regards to Christ's return to the Earth transpires.

Once there has been offered and exists a sufficient amount of faith, once a sufficient amount of prayers have been offered, once a sufficient amount of righteousness has been inspired and good deeds contributed, the lessons learned (both collectively and individually), the patience learned and or suffered gained, then Christ will have His triumphant return and not before then.

That would be a "spiritual event horizon" but you could apply that principle to anything or everything.

Don't push this adaptation of what I've explained to a literalness of concepts and remember that I've not researched anything about either concepts of black hole or event horizon, so stop holding both of these phases and my concept up to the light of your scientific understanding or spiritual one--this discourse will immediately fall apart and you will have entered too far into and past the shadow of the event horizon and would be crushed, destroyed, obliterated, squished, and demolished.  So, don't!

Two things make these blessings contingent, however: God must be willing to grant that blessing and we must have asked Him for that blessing.

JPS