Episode #269 - The Catalyst to Charity, Hope and Patience

Have you ever thought that there might be a celestial benefit to your mental and emotional illness?

Transcript

Welcome to Episode #269 – The Catalyst of Charity, Hope & Patience. So often I talk about the difficulty of mental illness. Today I am going to talk about the benefits of mental illness. Benefits you say. How can there be any benefit to mental illness? I admit that it has taken me decades to see what might be termed the significant advantages of my mental distress.  It see them more now as a catalyst that aids in the reaction that creates charity, hope and patience.

A catalyst is a chemical or group of chemicals bonded together that help a reaction to occur but it isn’t consumed by it.  For instance, when you drop a mento into a coke, the mixture explodes but doesn’t consume the mento.  In fact, the mento really stays almost the same.  But the mento plays an important part in the reaction.  It causes the change to take place and the carbonation to be removed from the coke rather suddenly.  Catalysts are very important to our world but I won’t bore you too much with all that they do.  I want you to understand what a catalyst does.  It helps a reaction occur that would not if it were not present.  You see there are great benefits to mental illness as a catalyst to charity, hope and patience in our lives.

Before I get to the benefits, I want to talk about the precursor to the benefits. Remember Nephi when his father told him that they were going to move from Jerusalem. He had to go to the Lord and the Lord softened his heart. We don’t talk about this much.  Nephi was given a great trial and the Lord softened his heart to endure it and to learn from it.  Almost every advantage we will discuss today comes from a learning heart. A heart that is open to the instructions and molding forces of the atonement. We need to come to a defined point of humility before the Lord. When we come to the this emotion of humility, we find deep learning. Yes humility is an emotion and it is both given and learned.  It is in this state that we come to know and be tutored by the Savior. Only under the presence of emotional humility can our hearts be changed and molded by the catalyst. What does this emotion feel like? When you have accepted the Savior and accepted your illness as his method of teaching you. When you have softened your complaints and your demands and your counseling of the Lord. He will begin to teach you the deeper lessons of the gospel, mysteries you have never before understood. You will receive revelations and dreams and visions. You will find yourself and the Savior becoming one. 

However, often we do not necessarily see the transformation as it takes place. We may see darkness and feel the pain and suffering. We may even feel lost and without happiness. But in those humble searching moments is where we find the deepest and most profound teachings of the Savior. We must be searching as President Nelson says as if we are gasping for air.  When we have great desires to learn is when the Savior can teach us those doctrines that bring exaltation.  Mental illness brings us to the door of spiritual learning again and again.  Over and over we ask and learn and move forward.  Yes it feels as though he is bringing us to our breaking point again and again.  Yet it is at this breaking point our heart is sufficiently open to receive him fully. And so we see that mental and emotional illness are the catalyst to the development of charity, hope and patience.  Now let’s take a look at each attribute. Here is the definition of charity, given by Mormon. 

And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Listen to many of those words that describe charity. How do you learn charity? You experience things that teach you to suffer long, to be not puffed up, to be kind and empathetic, to bear all things and to endure all things. Does mental illness teach us long suffering? Does it teach us to be kind? Does it teach us to be not easily provoked? Does it teach us to bear all things? I think you get the point. We learn charity by living principles to teach us. Mental illness teaches us these principles. Charity is not easy to learn. It is by far the most difficult principle and emotion to learn and we all need significant help. Mental illness is that aid we need to learn this principle.  It will take significant emotional events brought about by mental and emotional illness for our hearts and the core of our emotions to be changed towards the Savior.   Mental illness cannot be a short experience or it would not teach the lessons we need to be taught regarding the vanguard principles in our lives.  Charity is the grand key to exaltation as it encompasses most other attributes and leads the heart to many more.  Pure charity honestly implanted in a spiritual heart will cause the whole to be leavened and the transformation to celestial life can begin. 

We must come to our Gethsemane several times and cry out for relief as the Savior did.  This refining process of coming to the garden and pleading for help with profound humility causes this charity to be planted in our hearts permanently.  We learn kindness and empathy by feeling what it is to live without kindness and empathy in one’s life.  We learn how to suffer, when that suffering seems to have no end.  Interestingly enough our learning how to suffer also causes a greater joy and happiness to occur in our lives.  We learn to endure when we must rebuild our testimony from the ashes after every episode.  Building again and again those foundational principles.  We learn what works and what doesn’t, what lasts and what does not.  Our descent into the darkness has great purpose and design and I think that I have at the very least provided a foundation of understanding as to why we must experience it.  But why doesn’t always help us in the darkest moments.  What we need there is to find the Savior.

So often I have cried out in the darkness of my own garden moment only to realize what the Savior did.  There was and is no other way.  It is not easy way to learn the most profound principles of the gospel.  They can only be taught to us in very customized ways.  That is why mental illness is so individual to the person.  The Lord can use this illness to tailor our experiences with it to provide exaltation.  And if you think that your mental or emotional illness has nothing to do with your salvation and exaltation you are very wrong.  It has everything to do with it.  It is your catalyst to those emotional reactions that you need to plant that seed of charity deep into our core emotions.

Now you say Bro Socha, I don’t believe that I have seen any of what you speak.  Yes I might have changed a little but my reality is not the same as yours.  I agree.  Your experience is tailored to you but the results should be similar.  If the Lord did not see value in continuing your mental and emotional illness, you would be healed.  How do I know if I am doing it right?  That I am sufficiently humble during my experience so I gain the benefit.

I have found humility is not an easy thing to fully understand for most people.  Humility is an emotion that doesn’t necessarily exist at the mortal level of our consciousness.  Mortality and the mortal body tend to be self serving which is quite the opposite of humility.  Pride and humility are antithesis to one another.  Pride is selfish and humility is unselfish.  Pride is about me.  Humility is about us.  Humility towards the Savior is quite simple.  You defer to his expertise which is exalting mortal beings.  So if you find yourself in complaint mode, or self destructive mode both are quite selfish behaviors.  Complaint is our way of counseling the Lord rather than taking counsel from his hand.  It is to say I hear what your saying Lord but this is the way I want to do it and I want to have my blessings as well.  We want to walk our own path according to our knowledge and have the eternal blessings.  

The self destructive mode is to talk to oneself as though you have no value.  The purpose is to talk oneself into sin and selfish patterns of life that hurt ourselves and others.  I can do what I want mode.  It is my life if I want to destroy it mode.  This mode is terribly prideful and self-destructive even to those trying to live the gospel.  We spend far too much time telling the Lord how we want it rather than asking the Lord how we would like it to occur and what we should be learning from our experience.

Yes there are other selfish modes in which we tell ourselves there is no God only me.  Or I don’t care if there is or isn’t a God.  We attempt to provoke him to action.  The key to humility is to ask for and patiently wait for God’s hand to be revealed in our lives.  This doesn’t mean we can’t be honest about our own emotions.  I tell the Lord that I am having a bad emotional day quite often.  Meaning I am more in the counseling mode rather than the take counsel mode.  The Lord then settles me down after listening to my rants about what isn’t or is happening to ruin my life or take it off its course.  When you accept the Lord’s course for your life, then you are never off course.

The key to over coming mental and emotional illness is to accept it for what it is, a pathway to learning.  This doesn’t mean that we accept the full weight and don’t worry about managing our illness.  Part of the learning process is the management of the illness.  So we need to do everything we can to manage our illness and we will learn significant skills to managing our celestial lives.  However, we should not complain, tell the Lord what we are feeling and would like to feel, yes. But not complaint that leaves no room for the Lord’s counsel.

I want to leave you today with a question that I want you to ponder this week.  I want you to try to remember who you were when you were younger with your illness and what you have learned from it.  Has it taught you valuable lessons.  I sure that you will see those blessings but then I want you to ask the Lord to show you what he is teaching you.  Your world will then expand and you will begin to see the Lord’s hand more fully in your life.  Until next week do your part so that the Lord can do his.