Monday morning I found myself in Walmart buying things that were on my list. This squeegee was one of them. I didn't know the layout of this store as well as the Super Center that I usually go to. But since I had dropped off my hubby at work (that's another story in itself) this regular Walmart was on my way home, so I stopped by. I found an employee that worked there and asked if they carried any squeegees. She replied, "Yes we sure do, shower squeegees" and proceeded to point and tell my which aisle to go to and where it would be found.
So I heeded her directions and pushed my cart that had David who was asleep and few of my other items till I saw the aisle with the toilet seats and turned to go down that aisle. My search for the squeegee was on. I mean how hard could it be for me to quickly find it, grab it, and put it in the cart and move on to my next item on the list, right??????
I looked down the left aisle passed the toilet seats passed everything else on that aisle then turned the cart to go down the other side of the isle looking and could not find the squeegee. I did this a few more times, even going slower, checking to see if maybe it was in different packaging like in a box or something. Still no luck in finding this squeegee that the employee was confident that they had. So again I went up and down the aisle being very careful that I didn't overlook it. Another 5 minutes pass by. I thought, "O well, I will just have to get it later and somewhere else." and proceeded to go to another part of the store to finish my shopping. I saw in a distance the same employee. I approached her and told her, "I could not find the squeegees. Either you guys are out, or I must be blind because I have spent this whole time searching and could not find it." She stopped what she was doing and invited my to follow her and together we walked back to the aisle I was previously in and toward the end of the isle and half way up she pulled off this thing that looked like a hanger . The label was hiding the handle part and at the time thought it was hiding most of the squeegee. But right there on the label it did say "Shower squeegee" and handed it to me and said, "Here you go." It was next to those shower organizers and other stuff. I replied, "Oh-this is not was I was looking for, this is clear" (it didn't register on my brain that this was the squeegee. I thanked her. Without her help I would not of found it. I was indeed blind. (reflecting on it now, I realized I was so focused on the handle part)
I was blinded by my "ideal" of a squeegee from all my past experiences of using squeegees in other people's homes, of what THIS squeegee that I was going to buy should look like. I had never used a clear one like this, it didn't exist in my mind. So that is why I wasn't able to find it in the store. I was looking for something that wasn't there. Sound familiar???
How often do we do this in our journey here we call life?
Having expectations, our perception of things, our past experiences, traditions, our IDEALS?
may I offer the following definition given by another for the word IDEAL?
Ideal is my knowledge of what ought to be, and if I know what ought to be, then I’ve got a struggle and a conflict to make it come to pass. And if what is never what it ought to be, if I compare it to an ideal, because I can never have everything that’s ideal because ideals contradict ideals.
When we have "ideals" on what is good and what is evil, expectations on people, God, LIFE, then we will run into problems. We will continue to be stuck partaking of the Tree of Knowledge of Good AND Evil . Do we really even understand what good= what evil= if we are still partaking from this tree and have not gone through the flaming sword and are partaking of the Tree of Life?
Q: What is the purpose of partaking of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?
Q: Is this how one gets a broken heart?
Q: Isn't entering mortality from leaving the safe, warm, secure womb of your mother and taking a breathe in mortality the same thing as partaking of the Knowledge of Good AND Evil?
The following that is in italic are excerpts taken from a transcript- Max Skousen-Moroni 7 Discussion. I listened and read it prior to my little shower squeegee experience.
"All judging is believing in ideals. Ideal is the knowledge of what it ought to be and it’s always different from what is, even when everything seems to be perfect. It won’t last, so it’s not totally ideal. I want to use this word, and it might be a shocker, for we have a lot of respect for ideals. But there is something far greater than ideals,
because an ideal is an illusion in a conclusion of what ought to be. As far out as that seems, somethings gotta happen to our minds to get us out of our vanity and unbelief, and we’ve got to turn our world upside down, to go through that flaming sword of truth that turns everyway, or we will never get off of the tree of knowledge and onto the tree of life. It’s got to be that dramatic and that drastic. So he is gonna let us enter into the rest of the Lord because it’s only by eating that fruit that we may enter into the rest of the Lord, to experience that which is most ”precious above all.” [1 Ne. 11:9]
I wish I was as computer savvy as I am with sketching things out with my hand and writing things out. I feel handicapped doing this blog on this computer. Ugg- Sorry got distracted for a moment.
Tree of Life=Tree of Spirit
FLOWING
Life + Love
it's UNION
no need or greed
real intent
Tree of Knowledge of Good AND Evil=Tree of Judgment
Separates and Divides
Tree of conclusion
Tree of ideals
another way to look at the words- good and evil without using ideals.
Good=to flow
Bad/Evil= to go rigid
(I pulled the above from the information below) I am a very visual person. So for me it is helpful to pull things out of a text, out of a sea of words. To make charts, draw outlines and pictures, ect. Continuing on.
"To do anything with real intent when we have a double mind, that is split between good and evil, because a part of our mind does evil and a part does good, so when we have that it’s impossible for us to do it with real intent, and if we do not do it with real intent, it profiteth us nothing, because of the nature of the mind. If I have a knowledge of everything that’s good, and did nothing else I have no self-condemnation, I didn’t condemn you. But we notice that we are not that way. There’s no way anyone can live the tree of knowledge of good and evil perfectly. No one is ideal. Nobody can be perfect. We can only try, but that’s not what it says - be
HOWEVER- if and IF you are looking from it from partaking of the Tree of Life THEN being Perfect is possible. I am NOT talking about the IDEAL of perfection.
Remember, we are dealing with the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which was the forbidden tree that kills us, it’s the tree of judgment. And we are dealing with the tree of life, the tree of spirit. To be of the tree of spirit, you are of the love of God, you are of the flowing. You are flowing with life, you don’t have to stand on your rights, you don’t have to defend this knowledge of good and evil. It’s the tree of the non-ideal, because what was right yesterday may not be right today. It might have been wrong yesterday to kill that person, and today it might be the most appropriate thing. It’s flowing and when a person comes from not judgment, but from the spiritual life and love, they never do harm, they never will harm anybody and they will work with wisdom and expediency and flowing, and a beautiful thing happens. Now we define, then, that evil is to go rigid and good is to flow. The devil’s plan was to come down here and make everyone good. Jesus plan was, ”No, no, no, don’t do that. Let ’em flow!” ”Yeah, but people will get hurt.” ”I understand, but it’s the only way to work.” The whole plan was to let people learn from their mistakes as well as their successes and Christ would come down and take care the death. But we don’t want to do that, see we want to get in there and fix it and use compulsion. Like the prophet said, ”We see that all men want to exercise power and dominion over their fellow man.” []D&C 121:37] They want to become satanic. When we want to push the right we are in a sense do the devil’s plan, in the name of good, but it’s not good. The peaceable flowing of spirit, which is to truly understand that everybody is all of the same process and that God’s plan is working, and out of that knowledge we begin to understand that those who are rigid can not do that which is flowing, and those who are flowing cannot do that which is rigid. And that’s how we have real intent, because when we have real intent and we are flowing we are not trying to get, we don’t come from need, we don’t come from greed. We are coming from spirit and spirit can not lose. Spirit is love and love is union. It’s never separate, whereas knowledge is always separate. It always divides, and that’s our experience living from that level. I’m not condemning it, because it’s part of our growing process, but we will never get to the tree of life until we go through that flaming sword and get cut of from all of our knowledge, all of our illusions of conclusions
Let’s read: ”[For] behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; (if we put in there, ”That which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do the ideal continually”, we never find that, because the ideal is contradicted by the ideal. But if we say, ”enticeth to be peaceful, to be harmonious, to be flowing continually,] wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do[flowing and to be flowing and to be unconditional love, to be with love, to do good] and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God. Wherefore, take heed, my beloved brethren, that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God,[He’s saying, ”Watch it, brethren! Don’t judge that which is evil to be of God] or that which is good and of God to be of the devil.
[He’s talking to members of the Church because they have all this knowledge of good and evil which is all part of their growing process. But he says, ”I’m gonna wake you up now. You’ve come to a peaceable level. It means you are not to rigid on our standard or you wouldn’t be peaceful. You are more flowing and you are more considerate and more understanding, and I see that. That’s why you are ready to enter into the rest of the Lord. And he’s saying that they will never enter into that rest being rigid, for sure. Because either you lie to yourself and you’ll judge yourself along with everybody else.]
For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night.[What’s weird here, see this is a paradox of truth, ”judge not, and I’m gonna show you how to judge.” If you come back to the ideal of judging, that it’s bad to judge, you judge judging. That’s why it contradicts itself. Everything
- do not kill; kill, do not judge, judge... He’s trying to teach us that the knowledge of good and evil, the inflexibility of conclusions is not spiritual, it’s not life, it’s separateness, and it’s what the devil is all about. It’s the devil’s plan. It won’t work. So don’t judge those things that are flowing to be of the devil, and don’t judge those things that are rigid to be of God, because God is flowing, God is peaceful, God is love. Not hate, not resistance. Resist not evil. Don’t resist it. And we say, ”I gotta resist it!” There’s a beautiful alternative. This is what he says.]
For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil;
[Since we don’t understand the spirit and we think that the spirit is knowledge of good and evil, because we have our knowledge of good and evil, we have the spirit, then we are in a conflict here. We can not go with this chapter. We cannot accept this gift that he’s given permission to give to us. We are gonna be stuck in our tree of knowledge and we are gonna stay children of the devil. We are gonna be children of resistance, children of compulsion, children of dominion; or we are gonna be children of peace, children of righteousness. We have everybody the spirit of Christ, the spirit of flowing that flows through the universe. It’s like the wind. To be born of the spirit is to be born of the wind, it’s to be born of giving, it’s to be born of going beyond need, it’s beyond fear. It’s like what John said, that through the spirit you have the perfect love of God which casts out all fear [1 John 4:18]. All of this rigidity, praying without real intent, it all comes from fear. We are afraid not to pray. We pay our tithing so we won’t lose the reward. As long as I serve the Lord to get to heaven, I don’t do it with real intent. As long as I serve the Lord to escape hell, I don’t do it with real intent. Real intent is to do it out of the love of doing it. So we all have been given this spirit of flowing, but the light shines in darkness and the darkness comprehends it not [Joh. 1:5; D&C 10:58; 34:2; 45:7; 88:49]. But all of them have been given that light so that they can know this peace, this perfect peace that passeth understanding [Philip. 4:7], this perfect love that casts out all fear, because he says, ”fear is torment, he that feareth is not yet made perfect in love.” [1 John. 4:18] Torment has nothing to do with Christ. It has to do with the devil.] For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, [that a person has to understand what the spirit is. If he thinks that the spirit is giving him judgment, to divide up everything, than he will judge evil as good. It’s given to ever man]
that he may know good from evil; [that he may comprehend flowing from resistance. We have two choices in life: to resist what is or to accept and flow with what is and see the hand of God in all things, or to resist it and fight it and then have our problems with it.]
There is much more then I shared. It goes deep and I mean deep. But for now what I have shared today will suffice.
Food for thought. As always, believe nothing I say. Don't take my word, or Skousen's word, or anyone else's word for it. You must work these things out for yourself and take it back to God. God will continue to work in you and through you through the Holy Spirit.
May we all be as a little child- humble, meek and, submissive.
I close with the following scripture that just came to my mind-
Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. (3 Nephi 14:7-8)
fun little fact- went back to the same Walmart this morning after dropping my hubby off to work- so that I could take a picture of the isle where that little squeegee was hanging up and take a closeup of what it looked like when it had the packaging on it.
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