I must say it was delightful to get out. So often I don’t get to really appreciate Utah in the winter because the pressures of school mixed with the poor weather and seasonal illnesses keep me bound to buildings. For someone who spends 75% of his summers living in a tent this leads to some drastic cabin fever. So I was very grateful to get out and climb a mountain.
While climbing the mountain my mind went out to the book of Moses and how the earth is weeping over the great pollutions that have come upon it. I have often pondered whether to take this to mean that the earth actually has some kind of spirit or whether it was simply a symbolic reference. I have known too many animals to deny that there is a spirit within them but what about the non-living entities? If the earth has a spirit than do more ordinary things have spirits too? How about a rock or a waterfall or a mountain? I know that various native groups have believed it over the years but their belief doesn’t mean I should believe it too.
The pondering eventually produced the question as to whether the very mountain I was climbing had a spirit. If I could meet the spirit of Squaw Peak what would it be like? Can we interact with the spirits of non-humans? Certainly the bible offers a few occurrences of overlap, although only a few. I’m sure Balaam could tell you all about the spirit of donkeys and Elijah could tell you just how different the spirit of fire is from the spirit of God.. Even the stones under the feet of Christ once threatened to cry out in response to his glory. Even so these circumstances seem to be the exception not the rule
When it came right down to it my mind ended up thinking about our own spirits. What makes them up? I have long though that intelligence is the subatomic particle of spirit. Different combinations, arrangements, or quantities of intelligence produce different spirits just like DNA. Ours is designed after our Father and is different than other forms. The book of Revelation talks about different kinds of classes of creatures, (D&C 77: 2-3) I imagine the classification to be in some way connected to what kind of spirit they are.
Anyway, so say a human has a spiritual intelligence genome with 6 billion connections in a roughly similar pattern to deity. A dog may have 3 billion, a plant 1 billion and a rock maybe only 1 million. Now, how can you prove that an non-living (at least by biology’s standard) inanimate object has a spirit? Or for that matter, how can you prove that anything has a spirit? Well, I have yet to hear about an instrument that can detect spirits (although a certain Dr Duncan MacDougall tried to weigh the spirit as it departed from the body- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_MacDougall_%28doctor%29 ). Going to D&C we learn that spiritual matter is more refined (D&C 131: 7-8) than regular matter and that is can only be discerned by purer eyes. I think it was President Packer who said the most supernal communication we can have is spirit to spirit (“There is a perfect manner of communication through the Spirit, … That sweet, quiet voice of inspiration comes more as a feeling than it does as a sound. Pure intelligence can be spoken into the mind. The Holy Ghost communicates with our spirits through the mind more than through the physical senses. This guidance comes as thoughts, as feelings through promptings and impressions. We may feel the words of spiritual communication more than hear them and see with spiritual rather than with mortal eyes, Boyd K. Packer, “Prayer and Promptings,” Ensign, Nov 2009, 43–46). I would extrapolate that to mean purer eyes equates to spiritual eyes. What the last few sentences mean is that the only tool I have that can detect a spirit reliably, that I know of, is my own spirit (someday perhaps we shall talk about how I detect my own spirit).
Having thus made the connection I determine to reach out with my spirit to see if I could feel the spirit of the mountain beneath my snowshoes as I clambered up the steep slope…
I won’t go into details (well, not any more details anyway) but I believe that mountains have spirits. Suddenly the feelings I get when I’m standing on top of a mountain make sense; the sense of victory or of having conquered something or the communion of souls that takes place so readily in the outdoors. Perhaps nature recharges us because it’s finally quiet enough for our souls to communicate with the spirits around them. That communication of spirit is so pure simply because of the nature of the communing process and the nature of the pure spirits we are communicating with. (Pure spirits because they are absolutely obedient to God and thus without sin.) I always feel reoriented in life when I am out in the natural world. The mundane trifles of modern life melt away and I am left with the peace of knowing my place in the grand scenarios flowing before the mind of God.
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