I was reading a star trek book a bit back that started the churning of thoughts in my mind.
In the book the crew of the Enterprise come in contact with a deeply telepathic race, who’s minds all connect. They are, however, individual people rather than a hive mind but they have the potential of being stripped of their freewill and forced into a hive mind should a mind powerful enough come along and do so. As you may have guessed the story is about exactly that situation, when a troublesome mind (what they call it) from their own race comes along and unknowingly takes over the minds of the whole planet.
In the act of investigating this Spock, who is also telepathic as all Vulcans are, comes in contact with the troublesome mind and in in part taken over. The truly nefarious part of the indwelling possession of the troublesome mind is that those who become taken over do not know that they are nor do they believe that they could have been taken over. Only an outside observer such as Captain Kirk, who sees the differences in behavior of a longtime friend, can identify what has happened.
As the story progresses Kirk becomes aware of what has happened to his good friend and endeavors to bring the real Spock back. After capturing Spock and locking him up Kirk has a one-on-one conversation with him that results in Spock shutting down everything in his mind, expelling the troublesome mind, rebooting, and building up defenses against further attempts at psychic infiltration.
But here is the kicker, some of the chapters are from Kirk’s point of view, and some of them are from Spock’s. But Spock does not see that there is something wrong. Nothing seems out of place to him and all of his actions seem “logical”. And yet when confronted by Kirk, he is able to expel the troublesome mind. Later when McCoy asks how Kirk was able to convince Spock, he admits that Kirk was not able to do so. But that Spock trusted Kirk so completely as to disregard the evidence of his own experience and assume Kirk was right enough to take the first steps in expelling the troublesome mind, and only after completing the process could Spock look back and see that Kirk was correct the whole time.
It is that deeply intimate trust that has been on my mind as I began to read through the Book of Mormon again. And it is this deeply intimate trust that I see exemplified in Nephi in the first book. Specifically, chapter 17 of First Nephi.
Here we see Nephi and his family emerge from the wilderness to the land of bountiful on the sea shore. If you read through the first few verses of that chapter, we can see that the trip has not been easy. 8 long years filled with so much affliction and difficulty that they can’t write them all. The are blessed with sweet relief as they arrive in a veritable land flowing with milk and honey. A land so abundant with fruit and life as to be called bountiful. But then verses seven and eight drop.
“And it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had been in the land of Bountiful for the space of many days, the voice of the Lord came unto me, saying: Arise, and get thee into the mountain. And it came to pass that I arose and went up into the mountain, and cried unto the Lord. And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me saying: Thou shalt construct a ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters.”
How disheartening must that have been? The years of affliction and difficulty: they are not over yet, this isn’t your promised land, get up and get going again. I wonder if there is another meaning for when the scripture says he cried unto the Lord, for were it me tears would fill my eyes at that prospect.
Nephi then makes a choice that may at times seem impossible. He must have looked at the land around him, at the bounty of it, at the peacefulness of the place, at all the fruits, at his family rejoicing and relaxing, at a world that in every way is telling him this is the place, that this was where he was meant to come. He must have looked at it and then decided deep down that he trusted God so deeply as to disregard the evidence of his own experience and assume the Lord was right enough to take that first miraculous step and ask to be directed to ore to make tools.
It is no small thing to have everything you know telling you one thing and trust in someone enough to disregard it at there request. But just like Spock, Nephi does it. He leans on the Lord fully and builds a ship.
How is this something that we can do?
We can also learn from this from the examples of Spock and Nephi.
Spock’s encounter with the Troublesome mind was in 2270 but he meets Kirk for the first time in 2260. In the decade that followed he encounter him several more times, including spending several hours a day every day with Kirk between 2265 and 2270 serving as his first officer, thus forging a friendship that would literally span centuries.
Nephi starts his record saying “…having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days; yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and mysteries of God, therefore I make a record…” At a minimum we can guarantee that Nephi has known the Lord for at least 8 years but we can reason it has been much longer than that. Thus forging a relation ship where when asked Nephi could honestly say “I will go and do the things which the Lord commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandith them.”
I’m not saying that a decade is the requisite time frame to develop this trust but what we can see here is that it is requisite that we spend time with the Lord should we ever hope to develop this kind of trust in Him. If we will just be willing to spend our time with the Lord, we can develop this deeply intimate trust and then when the time come be able to rid ourselves of a troublesome mind and say to the Lord our comparable version of direct me to the ore.
In this new year if there was one resolution worth holding to it would be to grow your relationship with the Lord, spend your time in prayer, spend your time in scripture, spend your time in the temple. And next year we shall be directed to ore to build the tool to build the Kingdom.
As always I’m praying for thee; please pray for me.