The best die first - in the womb or as young children.
The worst are not incarnated.
The longaevus (you and I) are somewhere in between - the middling people.
Hence the world is mixed, a mixed picture - Good and evil - and it is hard to say which predominates, overall...
I have been praying for guidance to understand this and feel I am making progress. In the philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, the protagonist experiences what might be characterised as an elaborate and painful spiritual growth during which he comes to realise the falsehood of an aristotelean metaphysics which is a pervasive fundamental error undermining the modern man's collective consciousness. It is his battle to overcome his alter-ego Phaedrus and move to an enlightened position of acknowledging the central importance of 'quality' (or moral value) which moves his spiritual development towards congruence with the deeper platonic reality of existence. We all possess a Phaedrus (a 'potentially' evil misguided spiritual component to our character ) and a divine potential. Mortal life is 'the refiners fire' and under the influence of divine guidance, if we let it using our divinely given free will, heavenly father will forge us into greater beings and help us move beyond our personal Phaedrii (if that is a word) towards perfection.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mormonchannel.org/blog/post/the-refiners-fire-mormon-message
In the beginning there were separate, discrete primordial intelligences, the greatest of which (God) forged the minor into divinely inspired self - autonomous souls or spirit children (us), some of us already understood truth and beauty, virtue and the opposing values of good and evil perfectly, and therefore required only brief or not at all, the potential spiritual lessons of mortality, but we all benefit from a body into which to resurrect.
Some spirits were innately evil and God did not incarnate them (the fallen angels).
We are the longaevus, the slow learners but with hope of glorified perfection if we follow the plan for salvation and if we can tune into the frequency of good and God and tune out the whispering static of those spiteful spirits that were not incarnated that yet hang around to thwart our masters working upon us towards glory in the refiners Furness of mortality.