Life is a journey.
First: Begin with the end in mind.
Before you begin any journey you must have a destination.
Set your personal goal.
Decide what you want to accomplish.
Choose where you want to end up, and move towards it.
Learn what the options are, and make a choice.
Allow me to elucidate the options.
OPTIONS
1. Outer Darkness: The first option is a conscious decision to oppose growth. It is teaching lies and being destructive. It is the power of destruction. It is preventing growth. This power is an important one in the Universe because it gives people the ability to choose. It is real power! It means choosing darkness and shadows, and being comfortable in suffering.
2. The second option is doing what you like to do, living a life of selfishness. It leads to servitude, the lowest common man. It is only the power to do what you’re told.
3. The third option is being nice, and honorable. It leads to being creative, and having the ability to work with others to bring things to light, to engineer things that creators want.
4. The fourth option is following Christ, it leads to peace and rest, being angels to the gods, living among those who have the power of creation.
All foregoing choices are death, meaning you stay wherever you end up -- forever. The last option is different.
5. The greatest option is Eternal Life, which means ongoing growth, forever increasing in glory. This is the hardest because it requires constantly making, and losing, connections with others. It is also the hardest to find. “Few there be that find it.”
If you have chosen eternal life, read on, if you have chosen anything else, you’re done, and you can stop reading now.
After you’ve made the choice to achieve eternal life, you must take the steps to get there. You cannot get there alone -- it’s impossible. You can’t even get close. You can’t see it or understand it until you experience it first. You must know where you're going by understanding God.
Understand the Godhead:
Eternal Life is the life of God, our Father in Heaven. We go to Him. We speak to Him. We worship Him by seeking a connection with Him. As children we can grow up to be like Him.
Jesus Christ is the way to God. Without Him, there is no way for us to even communicate with God.
The Holy Ghost is our guide. The Holy Ghost speaks to our spirit, and we must understand that language.
Step 1: Connect with your spirit.
Your body is connected with the world around you with your vision, hearing, and other senses. By focusing on them you are unable to feel your spirit. The needs of the body scream like a little baby who is hungry. The spirit whispers. The senses of the spirit are quiet, and must be carefully and systematically connected to the body if you are to ever understand them.
Deny the body
By denying the sensory input from the body, you can strengthen the connection of the spirit. You will feel the spiritual connections more when the physical feelings aren’t being stimulated.
Fasting is a good way to do this.
Avoiding stimulation of other kinds such as comfort, excitement, sex, candy, adrenaline rush, coffee, alcohol, or other physical stimulation.
Pain is very good for making a connection with the spirit.
The more you avoid gratification of physical desires, the stronger your connection with your spirit.
Prayer
Taking your focus off of yourself and your own needs, training your mind to connect with God, whom you cannot see, will help you to feel. It can take years to learn how to pray. The basic lesson is changing from “I want” to “Thy will be done.” Prayer is not trying to convince God to give you what you want, but rather to find out what He wants you to do. As you get impressions, write them down.
Meditation
Take time to be quiet. Listen to yourself. Choose a topic to think about, to wonder about, something you want to know or understand, and ponder on it. Listen to what is inside, and write down your impressions.
Read scriptures
The Book of Mormon is the best way to start. It teaches all the basics of the Gospel to both the mind and the spirit. As you read ask yourself what it is you can learn from this passage, sentence, word, phrase, or story. Write down your impressions.
Step 2: Follow the spirit
The impressions you’ve been writing are the whisperings of the spirit. They are connected with the Holy Ghost, who is God. Once you are in touch with your inner spirit, you can begin to listen and follow it. Choosing to do what you are impressed to do is a hard thing. People tend to do what they want to do, and what they have to do. Few do what they know they should do. Do what you know you should do. When you hear the voice of the Spirit of God telling you to do something, or not to do something -- follow it! Those impressions are like gold, and will lead you to knowledge.
Step 3: Develop Faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ
Faith is gathering evidence. It is the substance that supports your beliefs. As you listen to your spirit, you will come to see that you are not where you want to be, and there is no way for you to get there. You are lost, and hopeless. So, you look around for a Savior, One who can help you get there. Jesus Christ has led the way. He takes you there. He takes you to wherever you want to go. Whichever choice you made, He will help you to achieve it. Without Him you cannot even take the first step. Without Him there are no steps, you are in a wasteland, a flat desert with nothing around, and your goal is ten miles over your head. Gravity binds you to the desert floor. You’re stuck. Jesus can lift you up. He is there. He has the elevator controls, and can take you out of your self-imposed prison. Follow Him. He knows the way. Seek Him, and learn of Him. Read the Scriptures. This will bring faith in Him, and you will then allow Him to help you.
Step 4: Repent
Humans like to skip this step. We feel like if God loved us He would take us just the way we are. He does love you, just the way you are. He created you as you are. However, He is holy, and different than you. You will not be comfortable with Him unless you become like Him. If you were dirty and smelled bad in a room full of people clean and nicely dressed, you would feel uncomfortable. In the same way, unless you change, clean-up your act, and be like God, you will feel uncomfortable in His presence. Repentance is the process of cleansing so you can feel comfortable in His presence. All your darkness will come to light. In His presence everyone will know everything about you, everything you think, and everything you have ever done. You stand there naked for the world to see. If you keep anything you want to hide, you will be uncomfortable. You must repent of ALL your sins.
Step 5: Baptism
Once you have no more darkness, you are ready to make a commitment. Because you are no longer a sinner, Jesus Christ can wash you clean of your past mistakes. Moreover, in being baptized, you are committed to bury your previous life, to sacrifice everything, to let the body and all that it desires die so you can rise up and be washed clean, living a new life in God. It is a simple and yet profoundly symbolic ritual. You will not understand everything about it even many years later. The commitment of this ritual is absolutely necessary for you to move forward, because it is the cleansing ritual that binds you to Christ. He is the Father of your re-birth.
Step 6: The gift of the Holy Ghost
After repenting of all sins, and being cleansed by water, you can receive the Holy Ghost, because the Spirit cannot dwell in unholy temples. Up to now you have had intimations of the Holy Ghost. You have received inspiration and guidance at times. You have had gifts given to you. You have had a witness and a testimony from the Holy Ghost. Now, however, you have hands laid on your head by those with authority to give the gift of the Holy Ghost. This is a commandment to receive the Holy Ghost as your constant guide through your life -- a guide to Eternal Life. The Holy Ghost tells you all things that you must do. All things. Every step of every day is given to you. You will receive other gifts - prophecy, revelations, visions, healing, and so forth. However, like any other gift, you must prepare yourself to receive it, by doing all of the former things. Then, you do the next step to maintain it.
Step 7: Take the Sacrament with real intent
The sacrament is a ritual that symbolizes how you may receive and keep the gift of the Holy Ghost. You take the body of Christ into your body, and His blood into yours. You become His child, flesh of His flesh, blood of His blood. He becomes your Father, and your Lord. If you remember Him always, do as He says, and take upon you His name, suffering for the sins of others, you will always have His Spirit to be with you. Each week you can remember Him, and re-commit yourself to follow Him, and to be His son. As you do this you will have comfort in the journey, in spite of sorrows or pain.
Step 8: Endure to the end
You have now started on the path to Eternal Life. From here, you have no other guide except the Holy Ghost. The Spirit will guide you on the rest of your journey. Nobody on Earth can tell you the way. It is straight and narrow, and is your personal path directed by God. If you quit, you don’t finish. Don’t quit. Don’t give up. Never give up. Stay in the race to win with all your heart. Quitters never prosper. They don’t reach their goals. In spite of all the hardship, pain, suffering, problems, and discomforts of following Christ, reaching your goal of Eternal Life is worth infinitely more. Every sorrow and difficulty you experience will lift you that much higher. Only those who endure the depths can reach the heights. The lower you go, the higher you rise. This is the joy in suffering. Jesus did it, follow Him to the end.
