Adam was a lone man in the garden, just as God was a lone man in the universe who expanded and conceived of us. Adam was thus split, so that he could behold and love also.

Adam and Eve are the beginning of the love that we should behold if we were to really see.

By zeios March 20, 2017

“Every person form and create in their imagination a vision of their greatest self. Imagine what you would be doing if you were acting on your values, if you were acting, given your talents, to your greatest capacity. Who would you be? What would you be doing? And how would you be accomplishing it? Imagine your greatest self given your gifts, given your capacities, given your history, given what you’ve learned, given your life experiences, and envision this person vividly, and then BE that person. CREATE……. and be creative.”

“Choose to see the good in other people, there is always evil there, but we get to actually choose what we pay attention to. Choose your attitude, choose to always be positive about the fact that we are blessed beyond belief and that the world is a beautiful place. Choose to focus on those things that work best. Choose to focus on the good in people. We have these choices, these are actual choices that we can make. It’s not a distortion because we all choose what we focus on and notice. We have this inherent capacity to choose the world we live in. The ultimate fact of life that is the greatest secret of life, is to choose to be happy. Happiness is a choice. Choose to be positive. Choose to be the person that smiles. Choose to be the person that enlightens the life of others. Choose to be the person that lifts others. Choose to be your greatest self, and your greatest vision of yourself. Once you climb that mountain envision again and become something greater.”

“Humans have the basic power to create themselves, to imagine a better life and to create that better life as they imagine it to be. Once we commit to what we imagine, we automatically begin to create and devise the means to arrive at what we imagined to be the case so that we can bring it about. We are very powerful beings. And creative beings.”

Charles Hartshorne, “each of us adds to the world something that no wisdom could have wholly foreseen. This creating, this deciding of the otherwise undecided, this forming of the previously inchoate, is our dignity. . . . Each of us is an artist whose product is life or experience itself.”

“The Mormon view of agency is that persons are co-creators of themselves with God through free choices. We are artists or creators of ourselves in the sense that we self-organize the data of our experience into our stream of consciousness. Our consciousness is in part our creation because we act to form the order which will make the swirling chaos into an ordered cosmos of our internal experience (See D&C 88:7–11; 93:23–28)”

“If we truly believe that God is love, I believe that love is the greatest power in the universe, and I will follow that love anywhere because it is the greatest value I know or can possibly conceive. That kind of being, that loves without any kind of limitation, in a divine way that is always committed to the best interest of everybody, that kind of love that is all encompassing and fulfilling. I believe that love is actually the ultimate- if you want to have a first cause that explains everything, I believe that is love. I’ll follow that and I’ll seek that Being. Actually I think that’s one of the most inspiring facets of Mormonism, this notion of the inherent free will that we have, that God is seeking to enhance by giving us greater options and inspiring us to greater vision of ourselves. In fact, such a great vision that it doesn’t stop until we have and are everything that God IS; an everlasting, dynamic, creative, advancement into novelty. God is ever increasing and so while God is in every moment the greatest being that actually exists, in the next moment God is actually greater because He is a creative being that synthesizes and creates a new vision and moves forward into novelty. What I want to say is that this is a vision that is worth committing ones life to. It’s a vision that is worth recognizing that the others in our lives are so valuable and incredible. Every person we meet with this kind of creative power, this kind of freedom, is a constant amazement. People who are constantly acting in ways that we can learn from forever. Every person we meet becomes a revelation to us of possibilities, of newness. Precisely because we don’t believe in determinism we won’t hold them in their past and say that we can judge them, because their past is not determinative of who they are or have to be. They are free to change. Because they are free to change we can’t judge them because of the belief that tomorrow they might make a different choice. We seek to inspire and be inspired by that choice. So it begins to look like something called Christianity.”

Blake Ostler.

http://www.exploringmormonthought.com/2017/06/part-two-of-our-discussion-of-mormon.html?m=1

The Bible says in Genesis that Eve and Adam were tempted by a serpent to eat of the tree of knowledge and surely die. They did and thus mankind experience the fall. Tradition teaches through our various Christian denominations that Adam introduced sin into the world and that as Adam falls and men die, even so in Christ are all man made alive.

But we all know that evil/sin (?) already existed, because it was the serpent who tempted them. The Hebrew word for serpent is nachash and it means shining one.

1 Enoch teaches that the real sin of the world is brought about by the fallen angels (the nachash, the shining ones) and then those their children the nephilim. That the role Adam and Eve played in the garden was secondary to the others. Thus Adam and Eve are not the originators of sin, but rather the sad victim of allowing themselves to be deceived by a shining light, an illuminated one, but not The Illuminated One.

Reading the Silmarillion tonight we read how Melkor brought about his darkness and I suggested that Melkor seemed to be a fallen angel and that the story line follows that of the book of 1Enoch. Jonas (15) thought about things, and then said that Norse mythology seems to also follow that story line and that ragnorak was likely brought about by the same fallen angels.

❤️😍🎁❤️ I love these kinds of conversations!!! Connections!!! Ideas 💡!! Losing the rigidity of finite knowledge about the infinite.

I went to Amazon and did a search for the Book of Mormon. Wow, there are a lot more than I realized; new formats, old editions, public domain books, and the official LDS as well as Community of Christ (RLDS) versions. There were a couple illustrated children’s versions, a journal version, and the very well done Royal Skousen version, not to mention the Denver Snuffer movements newest addition to the group. I was disappointed though, because I scrolled and scrolled, passing commentaries and study guides, but never saw on the list the two versions produced by Daymon Smith; The Abridging Works, which reads more like an epic poem along the lines of The Iliad and The Odyssey, or his 2nd version The Book of Mormon in three volumes. I’m glad that there is a need that exists outside the purview of the official LDS, or any sect. I’m glad that copyright laws open up the book to public domain status and helps unwrap the book from the octopus tentacles of the corporation. There is so much baggage there, and as the octopus looses its grip, and so much is revealed as false or true, or real or not, the opportunity to imagine new things (freedom) seems to be arising.

As I continued to discover new ideas, in the midst of leaving lds™️, and especially leaving the remnant, I realized that I actually didn’t know anything. The more I learned the less I knew. 😁 In contrast there are many who have picked up a few new ideas and now know the things that they currently believe. I like sharing ideas with others, willing to listen to other ideas, and hopefully be offered a turn to share my own ideas. It seems this requires imagination, were we each imagine ourselves equals and we each imagine other ideas worthy of conversation and listening and pondering. I feel like Daymon Smith presents his ideas in this way. He seems to say, “Hey, I have an idea that I think is pretty neat, what do you think of my idea?” And in the midst of his ideas he reminds the reader that he doesn’t know, but based off of evidences he perceives, he speculates out loud. He doesn’t know. And, of yeah, those other guys, they don’t actually know either.

I like that. I think it gives everyone the space to think their own ideas without the requirements to prove them. Proofs and evidences that convinces others, those for me shut down imagination. Besides, there are already plethora of apologists and critics. I appreciate them. Yet I think it’s time to make way for the imaginationists – those willing to dream new dreams and not be bound down by being right or wrong.

The Abridging Works by Daymon Smith.

“Mormon, however, would write in Reformed Egyptian, which need not bear any resemblance to whatever scripts scholars now call Egyptian, or its variations in Demotic, Hieratic, and otherwise. Mormon, after all, did not write his record after the discoveries of Thomas Young and Champollion, and need not be bound by anachronistic definitions, even those of 1828.”