Should Be Known

It is apparent that one property of self-deception is a need to have others validate your wrong-ness (as right-ness). You can't be settled or peaceful about your untruthfulness, to use a term I like to use. You must constantly seek justification from others, or attempted justification, we might say, since it is not real and is never satisfied. The scriptures are filled with examples of people who weren't satisfied to ignore the testimony of the prophets or the righteous and go about their lives. They needed to cancel them - kick them out of their cities, or kill them. The Zoramites couldn't even handle that the righteous whom they had kicked out were accepted by another people, and so they began a great war. Obviously the crucifixion of the Savior is another example of this need to cancel the person who is challenging your erroneous beliefs and works. There's no, oh well I don't feel the way he does but he's free to express and live his beliefs as long as my rights are maintained. No, there's not a feeling of equality, but a need to squelch the opposing viewpoint, to the point of harm. So there are extreme examples and there are far more common examples of people who are in the wrong seeking to impose their views on others, or not being comfortable with others having differing views. I don't know if I need to cite current societal trends, probably not. But if your view is correct and in line with God and your knowledge of the truth, through the light of Christ, which everybody has constantly, you don't have this need. You might not agree with people, their views may disturb you in a way, but not because it threatens your correctness. You might have a desire to convince others to your way of thinking, but it's out of love and a desire to do good and serve God and fellow man. So this becomes a clue to everybody, it seems to me, to detect if you're in the wrong about something or not. Do you feel a need for others to believe something you believe? Do you feel a need to silence or eliminate those who don't? If so, it's time to examine your position. This happens in more subtle ways every day in normal interactions, and that should probably be talked about sometime...

I discuss the mechanics of willpower and choice in the face of temptation. Basically, #1, in the face of temptation, should you have gotten yourself out of the situation or otherwise avoided it in the first place, or can you now? When Joseph in Egypt found himself in a bad situation with Potiphar's wife, he "got him out". He has been described (by Niel A. Maxwell) as having had good legs. So first avoid the situation or get out of it in the first place. Does a certain situation present temptations for you and you know it? Then avoid that situation, if you can. You don't have to ever go to the bar. You don't have to go to that party in the first place. You don't have to even touch alcohol, or drugs. You might not need to hang around that person. You might not need to use that app, or that website. You don't have to stay up way late at night with that person or those people. Be smart. Don't be dumb. Keep yourself out of those situations in the first place. #2, if you HAVE made some bad choices, or are otherwise struggling with a bad habit, or a resentment that's not good for you (they're all not good for you), and you can't seem to break free, you might need to do like the alcoholics anonymous people do, and acknowledge that you can't do it without a higher power. There are many traps in life, not just alcoholism or drug addiction or pornography addiction. Maybe we need God's help with even the "little" things, as well as the "big" things. So pray for that help. Your deliverance may not be immediate, like it wasn't for the people of king Limhi, but "That soul who on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I cannot desert to his foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never, no never forsake." God will make a way for your escape, and "though [you] were dead, yet shall [you] live."

Abstract: Dogs, who are not accountable before God and do not have the capability to make choices regarding good and evil, nevertheless get angry/aggressive, can have anxiety, low self-esteem, fear, etc., like a human can. This to me tells us that emotional stuff we deal with such as depression and anxiety are not necessarily (if ever?) a result of our own moral choices. If a dog, or a young child, can be self-deceived (be going against one's own knowledge of good and evil, on some level), knowing that they themselves are not accountable before God for their actions...well wait a minute, I thought only humans had the light of Christ and that having that means you have a knowledge of good and evil. So does this mean even dogs have the light of Christ? Even though they're not capable of differentiating between good and evil and will never be morally accountable before God? We know little children are not morally accountable until they get older and are able to know good from evil...but dogs never will, and they will be redeemed and saved. Great, now I've opened up a whole can of worms. But it's one that probably had to be opened. We need to understand this precisely. Full text: Hi, welcome to the Should Be Known Podcast. I'm Clayton Pixton. It is getting dark and I am pressed for time. I've got to get out and go for my jog, so hard to sit down and do this sometimes, but I'm going to do it. So welcome here and yeah, it's been a while. Blahda blahda yadda. But glad you're here. So I'm just going to say a few things that I've been thinking recently about psychology as we are wont to do, trying to figure out depression and anxiety and a lot of other things really. Kind of looking for a fresh foundation for psychology. Sounds like a pretty lofty goal. And maybe it is, but it's fun and I do believe there are some unsolved problems there, some puzzles that we don't know because there's something going on there that we don't understand in our current collective understanding of psychology. Everybody's got their own theories of psychology. I guess we all understand it in our own minds, but. Yeah, well. I'm not going to go back and uh. Review I guess where we are going to keep it a little short. So I was walking some dogs today. We are pet sitting some dogs...before I do that, I got to do a little more music... [music] So that was High on a Mountain Top. Or is it high on the mountain top? High on a mountain top? Pretty sure. On the mountain top.  [music] Not sure if that's the key. Probably is. Or maybe it is. [except I raised it after playing it, to Bb because it was too muddy in Ab.] So I learned to play piano in priesthood meeting in the ward of my youth in California - Clayton Valley Third Ward. What a great ward, I was very blessed to grow up in that. We weren't perfect, certain things could have been better, but we had...it was a great opportunity for me to grow and everything. And my calling was to play the piano in priesthood meeting. So I learned a lot of the hymns that way. I've learned a lot since. But I was kind of young and didn't know what I was doing in large measure when I started. Which is kind of the case with a lot of stuff I've done in the church - kind of inexperienced and didn't know what I was doing. Still am that way. Spent my whole fatherhood that way. I am almost an empty nester now. 49 years old. OK. But you didn't come here to listen to that. I was walking these dogs. And as I've thought before with dogs...so dogs don't have moral accountability. They are like the rest of the animal kingdom. Anybody besides humans doesn't have a knowledge of good and evil, and therefore is not responsible before God to make good choices over evil. A dog, you know, may be full of love and affection - and dogs are awesome and a great gift from God, in my view, I guess, as are other animals. But they are not morally accountable before God. They can be a good dog or a bad dog - they can have an accident on your floor, or they can eat something they're not supposed to, or get into something, or make a mess, or obey or not obey. It's not a moral thing for them, it's purely behavioral, right? Still love them. All of God's creations are worthy of our love and deserving of our love. And demand that. And I'm not saying we are under the obligation to treat them the same way we would a human life. I do believe that's different. Setting that aside. I don't know if they can be depressed in the same way that a person can be depressed. I don't know. They obviously can be sad. They can feel hopeless, I guess, in a way. Maybe not quite all the same ways that a person can be. But it's a curious study to me. Dogs don't have moral accountability. They didn't...there's no, you know...they're not doing anything wrong, if they're stressed... And we happen to know, very well, for example, multiple dogs of friends and stuff who experience feelings of stress, of anxiety. It's very easy to tell. We have taken care of a dog of some of our close friends who was allegedly abused as a young dog. And this dog cowers. Well, there's dog right now. This dog cowers when you approach it. Especially men, I guess. There they are protecting us right now. And is very timid and will freak out under certain situations with a human. See, what would I say about that? So this dog experiences anxiety and kind of fear and whatever you want to call that. Dogs get angry at each other. We know they fight and they can get angry at, you know, another animal or a human. They can be aggressive. They can be stressed, you know. We know that they're not making a moral choice there. It is a natural thing, independent, or I should say independent, at least of morality, to the extent that they themselves are not accountable. Now - did animals kill each other and be aggressive with each other before the fall? I don't know that they were. I feel like that happened after. And the fall was a result of a human choice, right? So anyway, I don't know the answer to all this. But I feel like I've heard some people kind of talk about getting angry or aggressive, or having, you know, negative emotions and reactions like stress and anxiety and fear and anger and stuff like that - because they are making a moral choice. And I think it's important to see that that's not the case. And I think knowing dogs is a great way to see that that clearly cannot be the case. And it's the same with children, right? Children get angry. Young children I'm talking about. What's the age cutoff? I'm not going to hypothesize that, but I'm going to just say young children. They can get angry, they can get stressed. Uh, they can. They can be bad, they can misbehave, you might say or be disobedient to their guardian or whoever else. And yet we know they're not morally accountable. Dogs are not self-reflective like a grown human is. Or children - are they self-reflective? I feel like they're kind of not yet. They're developing that and they have the capacity to be, whereas a dog never will be. It's just not who they are, OK? And now I'm really out of time. So yeah, just just thinking about that, so put that in your pipe and smoke it. But never smoke. Now I'm going to play. Who's on the Lord? 's side who? If you've heard this song. Great hymn. I don't know if I've ever sung it in church. [Friendly conversation with Amy] All right, who's on the Lord's side, who? Who's on the Lord's side? That's kind of low in my range. Or high. Who's on the Lord's side, who?  Now is the time to show. We ask it fearlessly. Who's on the Lord's side, who? We wage no common war. Cope with no common foe. The enemy is awake. Who's on the Lord's side, who? Who's on the Lord's side, who? Now is the time to show. We ask it fearlessly. Who's on the Lord's side, who?  Wow, I didn't do that very good, I'll try to edit it, but it's a great, great message, right? Who's on the Lord's side? Who is on the Lord's side, who? Now is the time to show. We ask it fearlessly - who's on the Lord's side? Who is on the Lord's side, guys? Choose ye this day... OK, one more little thought. And that is, just what is stress? What is stress? What's anxiety? I don't feel like we've nailed that down. Somebody might know what it is, but I don't know that I have that in my head. I mean, I've obviously...we all experience it. So everybody knows what it is as far as that goes. But what is actually happening? Is it a cognitive dissonance between what reality is and what is in our minds? Is it a cognitive dissonance like that but added that, you know, it's an undesirable thing or that it's something we can't control? I mean I don't know. I'm just asking the question. And five minutes before I pressed record I asked Google, "what is stress?" "Stress is how we react when we feel under pressure or threatened." OK, but that doesn't tell me anything. "It usually happens when we're in a situation that we don't feel we can manage or control. When we experience stress, it can be as an individual blah blah blah." This comes from mind.org.uk. That's a pretty unhelpful definition right there, I'd say. "What exactly causes stress?" This thing came up from the same website. "...don't have much or any control over the outcome of a situation, have responsibilities that you find overwhelming, don't have enough work activities or change in your life, experience discrimination, hate or abuse..." This might be a list, it's putting it in paragraph form here. [Google search] pulls up, "Is stress an emotion?" I mean, that's kind of a basic question... "stress is a feeling of emotional or physical tension." OK, well, forget the physical - we're talking about emotional tension. There's maybe a start. "It can come from any event or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry or nervous. Stress is your body's reaction..." OK, well, now we're talking about the body. I want to know about the mind. "[It] is your body's reaction to a challenge or demand. In short bursts, stress can be positive, such as when it helps you avoid danger or meet a deadline..." Yeah, this isn't really what I'm trying to get at. Yeah, "it "Stress is..." (this is from Medline Plus...no, I've already read that...) "Stress is a normal human reaction that happens to everyone." No... "Stress is a common feeling we get when we feel under pressure, overwhelmed or unable to cope..." Anyway, none of these to me get at it. None of them get at it. What is stress guys? OK, well this is hard to record with other occupants in the house, so I'm going to stop, but that's OK. So all I did is really kind of bring up questions today and make a few points, but I would like to understand, I mean, we don't know what depression is. Nobody knows what depression is, but man, we don't even know what anxiety is. Maybe somebody does and it's out there, but the Internet doesn't seem super helpful, at least in my little 5 minute search. [But these search results could give us a start, or some ideas, don't want to totally discount them...] All right guys. Thanks for coming to the Should Be Known Podcast. I'll try to get this out and y'all take care. 

Well the text below isn't super close to the words I actually uttered forth in my podcast, but here they are anyway. Enjoy and thanks for listening/reading! Monday, May 20, 2022 Offense a Conscious Choice? More on the idea that it's not totally accurate to say that getting offended or getting angry is a conscious choice. (Or getting anxious or …) Friday, June 2, 2022 Insight vs. New Information and Logic So I'm thinking about insight versus kind of actual new information, or might we say, conclusions or whatever. So what is insight? To me you get an insight just purely from thinking about something. It's an observation. Maybe that's a better concept, an insight is an observation. Then in the theoretical world, and really the world in general, you make an insight into an assumption or something, you use that insight to explain the world. And so all these theories develop that are based on one idea and one idea only. Evolution, for example. Or behavioral theory. Or brain chemicals, or sunlight, or cognitive theory,…. And of course none of these theories explains everything well on their own. In fact, even together they don't necessarily explain things that great. Maybe I'm just biased because I know that the principle of self deception isn't in there. But anyway none of them explain everything, and that includes the theory of self deception. It doesn't explain everything by itself. These are all parts of the machinery, right? All parts of the mechanism that work together to influence us to do what we do. Anyway what is the difference between an insight, and observation, an assumption, a conclusion, and anything in between? Maybe you can make anything into an assumption, or maybe to use a better word, you can take any idea and, assuming it to be true, reason from there. That idea may be right and it may be wrong. But you can reason from it all the same, just like you can do math using one number or another, you'll just get an erroneous result if you start out using the wrong number or the wrong idea. I wouldn't mind strengthening my ability to do logic. I wonder how I would do that? I'm sure there are books on it and maybe even YouTube videos. My minor in logic was a good primer, and the logic I used to program stuff for work is good training, and other reasoning in life all helps. I have the idea that Socrates loved to use words and phrases and statements in logic and go in a very step-by-step fashion through it to say what he wanted to say or make the point he wanted to make. But I feel like he changed the meaning of words or phrases in the middle of the process somehow to get people to agree to stuff that they didn't really think based on statements they would agree to. Something like that. Isn't that cold sophistry? Or maybe that Sophocles did that and that's why they call it sophistry. But I feel like Socrates did that too, kind of twisting stuff to his own benefit sometimes. But he was right a lot of the time too. Listing Psychological Principles I'm also wondering about making a big list of psychological principles. Thursday, June 9, 2022 Moral Accountability for Self-Deception and Choices Just a little thought to tack onto the discussion (is it written down or did I just say it in my podcast?), The discussion on the thought that if we are not held morally accountable for all of our self deception. I started trying to say, as I was doing my podcast, how mental illness probably isn't in the category of stuff that we're morally accountable for. But I was starting to wander into an area that I unsure about, so I stopped, and even erased what I started in the podcast. But my additional thought about that is that we don't experience life as a continual stream of choice or whatever before us. That's how I've heard it described by some philosophers I guess I'll say. We experiences, I mean we experience choices. They're more discrete and isolated. They're not continual. Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to be making significant moral decisions at every moment? What does that even mean? What kind of a concept is that? It's like the philosopher who made the riddle about shooting an arrow and it never being able to reach the target, because every time it got to half way there you could divide the remaining distance in half, and then when it got to that half you would divide the remaining distance in half, and so on ad infinitum, and so how could an arrow ever travel an infinity of distances? It's like that. Of course we know the arrow gets there just fine. So something is wrong with the concept of an Infiniti of possibly infinitesimally small distances rather than with the arrow. And the target. Friday, June 17, 2022 Funny how division works (referring to the above discussion) :) So if you divide something by infinity, and then multiply the result by infinity, do you get that same number you started out with? :) What is the result, anyway, of that first division? —— Jane Clayson on Depression and Power Over Emotions "So I guess that's the difference for me is when I'm discouraged I'm a free agent of my emotions, and when I was clinically depressed I feel like I certainly wasn't." -Jane Clayson In 'All In' podcast, 13:25 She couldn't feel the Spirit when she was depressed. What of the idea, expressed by that one lady who wrote the article I didn't love about mental health and the Church, that we all have the ability to cease from sin--unless we're mentally ill?

SBK039 Self-Deception is Not Necessarily Sin Transcript by Microsoft Office 365 dictate/transcribe – not super great, had to do tons of editing just to turn many many separated fragments on separate lines into sentences and paragraphs, not to mention the wrong words and everything, but here you go! *music* All right, good enough. Welcome to the Should Be Known Podcast, I am Clayton Pixton. If you're new and episode 39 is your very first episode, we talk about principles of psychology on this podcast, but not the ones that I guess you may be used to if you were used to talking about psychological principles from a psychology book or any of the kind of established sources of psychological knowledge or whatever, not to diss them, necessarily, at this moment, but we are taking it kind of afresh from the perspective of, what, just common sense and deriving principles from what I see and from, I guess revealed truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We draw upon the scriptures and inspired words that are consistent with the truth as taught by the Holy Ghost. And common sense, and then just ideas that we have that we don't know are true, which is called theories...yeah, theories are part of science, but you have to understand them right. Theories are theories. Science kind of makes up theories to explain what it sees and then...And goes yeah, yeah, that must be what's going on, and then it finds out, oh wait a minute, these things are inconsistent and then everybody says no, no, this is the theory, this is what we've accepted, it's right. And then some smart person is able to break through some ground and say no 'cause look - there are all these inconsistencies, and tell you what - I have a better explanation, a better theory and then ...Finally, after decades or generations maybe, hopefully though, not that long, people start to accept it, and then science actually moves forward. So I've got a little chip on my shoulder, maybe, with some of these things because I come from outside of the establishment and I'm used to being kind of, I don't know, rejected a little bit maybe, and I'm not...I'm not part of the establishment. I have a minor in psychology, ok, I have a major in philosophy. That's all I have. And I think about things, but I enjoy it and I actually think there's a lot of truth there to be had. I think that a lot of people are barking up the wrong tree, and what do we say I...I don't want to get too Far on a maybe negative path. I want to do some constructive stuff here, but yeah, that is not the introduction I was necessarily planning on, but there it is. It's been a little while since I've recorded a show, and the podcast is meant to be investigative. We're on a journey. I don't come to you with all the things I've already figured out, just with thoughts. But moving in a positive direction I hope. Yeah, so let's do some more music and then we'll go from there. *music* All right? Well, lots to talk about. Last episode we talked about the lectures on faith. OK, do you remember those, they were from Joseph Smith's time? It was a series of lectures or lessons kind of thing. Seven of them. They were actually canonized of a sort together with actual revelations from the Lord. But they are of a different nature really, so I don't know if you'd say canonized, but they were published as part of the doctrine and covenants first. It was called the Book of Commandments and Doctrine and Covenants. And I talked about that, and one of the first statements that came out of there. They're about faith, and how faith is like the main principle of action in all intelligent beings, actual statement goes like this - they quote the scripture: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” From this we learn that faith is the assurance which men have of the existence of things which they have not seen; and the principle of action in all intelligent beings. And I paused there, and I was like, Oh well, I actually don't know how it says that last part. Doesn't actually say in the scripture that I could see that it's the principle of action in all intelligent beings and I said, but I'm going to go with that because I wanted to go with that and talk about it. But yeah, the more I think about it, the harder it is for me to see how that derives from that. It kind of doesn't to me. And I also listened to a thing by a scholar that I know well [Noel Reynolds]. He was my stake President at BYU, which is my ecclesiastical leader, and he's a great scholar actually, and he kind of did a lot of research and figured out that the lectures on faith, the authorship points very strongly to not Joseph Smith, but to Sidney Rigdon, who was also an elder in the church, he was like in the first presidency, you might say, with Joseph Smith. He didn't continue, however, in that calling and in his in all his convictions. I guess you'd say he parted ways with Joseph Smith later, but anyway, so it it makes me, you know. Question a little more what is being said. However, I don't want to take away from whatever may be true there. But just just a little, you know, heads up there that faith very well may be the what is it called the principle of action and all intelligent beings but now I feel like I'm going to have to rethink that and be like, OK, is that really the case? I can't just plain old trust it like I maybe thought I could before but you know it's like most things. I'm pretty trusting of the scriptures. But you have you have to read everything. But you have to read everything with, well, with the spirit of the Lord, or else you're not going to know one thing from the other. You're not going to be able to discern truth from error. So whether you're reading in scripture or prophets' words or some guys book or speech, or lecture or something you're not going to have any guide to know what of that is true or not unless you yourself have the Holy Ghost with you. The spirit of the Lord with you. So, doesn't make it easy, doesn't make it easy, but that's the way life is. It's kind of your/my responsibility, to have that as a way to discern truth from error. OK, so I said what I need to say about the lectures on faith. I had a thought last night which will be my next thought here. We Are not morally accountable for all of our self deception. OK, we talk a lot about self deception here. You should know what it is by now, but I'll be nice and kind of say it again. Self deception is whenever you go against the truth that you know, the truth being the kind of right and wrong that we all have access to. We kind of call it our conscience, but it's more than that. But in this I guess in this case, at least, that's all it needs to be. If we ever go against that, then we kind of automatically deceive ourselves. We kind of have to tell ourselves a lie in order to do that to justify ourselves. That's kind of an oversimplification, but you can think of it that way. So yeah, self deception but… We're not morally accountable for all our self deception. Really, that's that easy. We are not consciously aware of our sense of right and wrong all the time. That sense of right and wrong is with us at all times. We've talked about this in episode 3 and others, but it is called the light of Christ in Scripture or the spirit of Christ. And it permeates all things. It's through all things. I don't want to pretend like I understand it completely. I think I know enough to say we cannot escape from it, so if we can't escape from our knowledge of right and wrong on a certain level, then whatever we do, that's wrong, whether we're taught that or not, we have to engage in self deception to do that. Let's see, we're not morally accountable for all our self deception. So I would submit that a child can very easily engage in self deception. Very easily. As you know, young child who I would also say is not morally accountable for their actions. Yet they don't, they're not held accountable before God. Do they maybe kind of know? Right from wrong, I mean kind of. Yeah, they're learning it. They still got the light of Christ. They don't have a lot of knowledge or experience and stuff, but they're able to get in patterns of self deception. Who's more responsible - them or their parents? Or other people? Well, I don't want to get in a blame game yet about parents and children but… Let's see how do I explain this? I feel like I had it clear in my mind, when I came up with it. Basically some people conceive of self-deception - and understand me right - Most people have no clue what self-deception is. Don't necessarily believe in it. Or if they do, they think it's something different than what I'm saying. But among the very few who ever think about self-deception in the way that I'm thinking about it, there are some who would call it a moral thing. All the time. Like if we self deceive we're going against our knowledge and we're sinning. So that's what they say, and that's what I'm saying is not correct necessarily. We can do that because we do sin - we do act against our better knowledge many times and we self deceive that way as well. It's all self deception, but it also includes self deception by people who are not held morally accountable before God, such as small children or people who don't have the mental capacity to know right from wrong and be accountable before God. OK, moving on. My house is empty. Everybody is at celebration at the station. I live in Kansas City area and I may join them after this, but I was really hot and not feeling the greatest and I really wanted to do this podcast frankly and some other stuff so I'm not with the rest of my family. But I have been, last whole weekend my my daughters were in Wichita in a state track meet where they did well really well. Proud of them and they're seniors. They're graduating from high school. The girls are two of the triplets. They have a brother. They're all amazing kids. And Speaking of that makes me think of something that I was thinking today. And I'm going to throw this in the podcast. Does it seem to you like or have you ever noticed how you read the scriptures and you hear the word of the Lord and you, you definitely get the impression that from the Lord's perspective this world is filled with wickedness. The children of men do not choose to let the Lord be their God. Meaning that of course he is no matter what, but they don't, they don't give sway to him. They don't allow God to take the prominent place in their life. They don't keep all his commandments, they don't…what's the word I'm looking for…they don't let God prevail in their lives. They may do many good things...in the scriptures people are wicked and, kind of dumb really, and mostly bad and sometimes good, but when you get to know people in the world around us and you get you know face to face, people generally treat you decently when you know them or when you talk to them face to face, or interact with them. So there's this weird dichotomy, right? You get up close and personal with people. It's like they seem nice on the outside and you know a lot of Virtue 2 and then you back up more towards God's perspective and you see that, well, actually there's a lot of wickedness, and it's not possible that all these people are really that good. If they were, the world would be a different place, right? So do you see the principle I'm trying to explain? What it makes me think is people...maybe they're nicer to your face than, you know, if they weren't interacting with you and you were some random stranger who they didn't know, they'd be rude to you. Maybe on the road they can't see you or they, you know, vote for legislation that benefits them and not you, or maybe they'd, you know, do business dealings that would would be bad for the rest of humanity, but... Making any sense here? You think of Germany and the time of, you know Nazi Germany and this is just one small small example of world history, right? But when so many allowed the Jews to be taken from their homes and others, you know the other groups. Who were they - the mentally ill, homosexuals, like the gypsies, I can't remember the name of the people besides the term gypsies – them…but all these different people were taken to concentration camps and regular German citizens just kind of let it happen and I don't want to single out Germany because lots of places would do the same thing, I'm afraid to say. People turned the other way. People have done that in America and surely every nation under heaven. But it's just amazing what people…what's in their hearts when they're not actually talking to you. Now take any one of those Germans and if they were to have an everyday exchange with one of their Jewish neighbors, or whatever it might be civil and they might act nice and stuff like that. It's just...you see what I'm saying, it's just a kind of a wake up for the world and you look around and you see people…like I was at a gathering and this huge stadium and all these people…And I don't have anything against these people, but just I guess knowing what I know…I feel it would be naive to believe that all these people are just nice to everybody and really acting in everybody else's best interest. And like I said I don't have anything against them. Personally, it's not my job to judge anybody, thankfully. You know the Lord has said I will forgive whom I will forgive but unto you it is required to forgive all men. So it's our commandment to love each other and forgive each other, and kind of not withhold our love from anybody. Or our forgiveness. That's God's job. And some people will say oh, that's a double standard. Yes, it is a double standard. It is a double standard. God gets to forgive who he will forgive. But we have to forgive all men. That's how it goes and he says vengeance is mine and I will repay. That's not up to us - vengeance is not up to us. OK, anyway, just an observation about this principle of the closer you are to people the harder it is to see them as wicked. But the more you back up, the easier it is to see how, well, the world is wicked, and I mean it seems like everybody is wicked. Especially the people we don't know, right? The foreign people and maybe other domestic people that we don't know but the unknown people have to be the wicked ones and the ones we know, I mean, they're so nice that how could they hurt a fly? But I think we have to be not naive and realize that lots of people can have…oh, what shall I say…murders in their hearts? And not everybody has murders in their hearts, but lots of people have a lack of love in their hearts for their neighbor and even we have that at times do we not? I mean, I do - I judge people all the time and it's just, it's a fight to not do that. We can do it, though. We are enabled to do it because of Jesus Christ But it's not a natural thing - you have to actually kind of choose to be good. OK, enough on that thought. Tell me what you think of that, if you don't agree or if you do agree. Alright, where are we here? David Burns thought from April 8th David Burns. Ok, know who David Burns is? I guess he was a professor at Stanford and he's a social psychologist or something like that. But he wrote a book, a couple books, and let me give all this intro. He said there are reasons - he calls them beautiful reasons - we don't want to give up our anxiety or depression etc. Because we don't want to be a bad person, we don't want to not care. What do you think about that? I guess my first question is, are they really beautiful or are they just, I mean, I'll tell you right now, I'm among the people who don't want to give up my misery because, you know, I don't want to treat myself too good because I want to perceive myself as a good unselfish person. I guess I question how virtuous that is, really, and how beautiful that is. But yeah, I definitely think that's a thing. OK, well I don't have any more to go on that thought so we'll leave it there. Would be good to pick up on it sometime. He had a book called Feeling Good. It had some, I think of some good thoughts and I didn't read the book…Actually I read parts of stuff or parts of the handbook that I guess went with it or something, years ago. But the title seemed a little popular for a scientific guy, but I don't want that to detract from the actual good insights that are in there or the good points that are in there. Yeah, the book Feeling Good and then another book called Feeling Great, that, I believe, contained basically that thought about getting rid of the reasons you don't want to give up your anxiety or depression or whatever. Which I think is a good point. I just don't know that I'd call it Feeling Great, unless I really wanted to sell a lot of books, which probably worked really well. OK. You know what the really cool…I was listening to this other little podcast theme that was good. *music* OK guys, that is it for episode 39 of this Should Be Known podcast. I am Clayton, your friendly host, have a great one, bye.

Monday, February 21, 2022 There's still a huge gap. I understand depression involves a lie, and anxiety. I understand a little about self-deception. But as it turns out all ways we err involve self-deception, not just depression and anxiety. I don't understand how people get depressed and anxious. I don't feel like I can explain the whole thing. Gotta keep trying. Maybe read some about it. I think Wendy Treynor had a good explanation for depression, in part at least. It is a rejection of the self. Or it involves or results from a rejection of the self. And she talks about self love a lot on her website, which has to be a thing. Amy weeks talked about that in church Sunday, and Elder ___ in conference. It has to be a thing. We are self-reflective beings. We can love ourselves, like we love other people? If that's all it is, in essence, failing to love ourselves, which is the lie I've been talking about (I've termed it as thinking we're worthless or whatever), then we just have to make the connection between there and all the resultant symptoms of depression, mental and physical. Can we do that? Or can we make an attempt? Maybe we don't have to understand exactly how all the physical stuff comes to be, just make a good case that mental stuff causes all kinds of physical stuff, using plenty of real world examples. There are plenty. And for now we might have to leave it at SOMEHOW these mental states sink in and dig in and become a pattern and a habit and an addiction, really, and effect our physical being. SOMEHOW the body and the mind are tied such that one effects the other in ways we might not expect or understand. Would we even have habit and addiction like we do if it weren't for our physical body? Or learning and proficiency? —— I really think we should know how these things come to be, if we're going to know what to do to get out of them. Wednesday, February 23, 2022 Like we need to be able to track how these things develop from one's youth. You start innocent. You start without any addictions, psychological illnesses, bad habits, preconceived notions, no sexual orientation, none of that. No coping strategies good or bad, nothing. You have who you are and have been for eons, and you'll have that all throughout your mortal life and again throughout eternity. And you have a brand new body, to house your spirit, that you need to learn to control and subject to your spirit. And a lot to learn through the world because you forgot everything. So as you grow up…what? Something happens, and it's right in front of us. No dumb experiments necessary. Saturday, February 26, 2022 Copied from Lectures On Faith, Lecture First: The author of the epistle to the Hebrews, in the eleventh chapter of that epistle, and first verse, gives the following definition of the word faith: 8 Now faith is the substance [assurance] of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 9 From this we learn, that faith is the assurance which men have of the existence of things which they have not seen; and the principle of action in all intelligent beings. 10 If men were duly to consider themselves, and turn their thoughts and reflections to the operations of their own minds, they would readily discover that it is faith, and faith only, which is the moving cause of all action, in them; that without it, both mind and body would be in a state of inactivity, and all their exertions would cease, both physical and mental. 11 Were this class to go back and reflect upon the history of their lives, from the period of their first recollection, and ask themselves, what principle excited them to action, or what gave them energy and activity, in all their lawful avocations, callings and pursuits, what would be the answer? Would it not be that it was the assurance which we had of the existence of things which we had not seen, as yet?—Was it not the hope which you had, in consequence of your belief in the existence of unseen things, which stimulated you to action and exertion, in order to obtain them? Are you not dependent on your faith, or belief, for the acquisition of all knowledge, wisdom and intelligence? Would you exert yourselves to obtain wisdom and intelligence, unless you did believe that you could obtain them? Would you have ever sown if you had not believed that you would reap? Would you have ever planted if you had not believed that you would gather? Would you have ever asked unless you had believed that you would receive? Would you have ever sought unless you had believed that you would have found? Or would you have ever knocked unless you had believed that it would have been opened unto you? In a word, is there any thing that you would have done, either physical or mental, if you had not previously believed? Are not all your exertions, of every kind, dependent on your faith? Or may we not ask, what have you, or what do you possess, which you have not obtained by reason of your faith? Your food, your raiment, your lodgings, are they not all by reason of your faith? Reflect, and ask yourselves, if these things are not so. Turn your thoughts on your own minds, and see if faith is not the moving cause of all action in yourselves; and if the moving cause in you, is it not in all other intelligent beings? From

Where do we look for the true principles of psychology? Why not the scriptures? The concepts there are actually true, while those from the philosophies of men may or may not be. I use the term "philosophies of men" to mean the ideas of the great thinkers of our time and times past. They may be great thinkers. But many of their ideas may be wrong. On the other hand, the ideas put forth in the scriptures ("ideas") are actually true and accurate. While I enjoy reading and listening to the thoughts of thoughtful men and women over the ages as well as from our time, they are actually full of errors. They may not have intentionally erred or misled, they just didn't know, and unfortunately many of them kind of acted like they knew, and act like they know. And many take their word for truth, because they don't know, either. Some is true and some is false, and you need to reference a higher knowledge to tell the difference. It's been driving me a little crazy that people don't try harder for accuracy in the principles they espouse. If you don't know you don't know. But as I've said, God gives liberally to them that ask (James actually said that) and we can seek and knock and ask and the Lord will open to us (the Lord actually said that). I don't want to give the impression that I think I'm perfect with regards to accuracy. I'm sure I'm mistaken about many things. But I try to be honest about what I know and what I don't know. I try, at least. And I feel like it helps a lot. So my point is just that we can look to the scriptures and the word of God for psychological principles. True ones. I believe they're in there, if we'll look. I'm going to keep looking. I suppose some might think asking God is for spiritual knowledge, not temporal or whatever. But that's not true. You can ask God for whatever knowledge you want. My testimony is that He's very liberal with that. And I guess that brings us to how God can give us knowledge. So first of all, all the knowledge we have is really from Him, whether it be about spiritual things or the workings of mechanics or electronics or chemistry or psychology or anything else. It's all from Him. So how do we get our knowledge? I'm not sure, it's a great question and I've been thinking about it. But you've obtained knowledge, you've been doing it all your life. What does it feel like when you get knowledge? It's light. You can feel it. You can taste it. It tastes sweet. It feels right. It enlightens you. Your mind expands, and you can thus tell it's right. I've had God communicate to me truths that I didn't know before that weren't revealed by anybody else, and you can, too. How does He do that? I don't exactly know. How do we gain knowledge when somebody besides God reveals it to us? I have a feeling its really the same. But I don't know how that is, exactly. When somebody else tells us something or shows us something, we have their words or images or tactile information or whatever other light we perceive at the time, but really the light comes from God. I'm just saying he can communicate intelligence to us in the absence of any sensory information, which I'm calling light, directly to our minds. Or He can do it while we're viewing something or hearing something. All the same, really. Is it not so, surely?

Sunday, January 17, 2021 So if the instant you cross the line you have to justify yourself, or in the… Read more 36: What Do We Do?

Sunday, January 17, 2021 So if the instant you cross the line you have to justify yourself, or in the… Read more 36: What Do We Do?

Full Notes: You know this thing where you can’t tell the violation from its justification—do we just say that certain… Read more 35: Leave It Alone

Full Notes: You know this thing where you can't tell the violation from its justification—do we just say that certain… Read more 35: Leave It Alone

(Full Notes) Why would a person believe a lie, I ask again?  Cognitive might recognize that the thoughts are unhelpful… Read more 34: Taking a Crack At It

(Full Notes) Why would a person believe a lie, I ask again?  Cognitive might recognize that the thoughts are unhelpful… Read more 34: Taking a Crack At It

(Full Notes) Tuesday, November 17, 2020 Sometime talk about Freud’s subconscious and self-deception. Saturday, November 21, 2020 Without looking up… Read more 33: Pride and Maladaptive Behavior

(Full Notes) Tuesday, November 17, 2020 Sometime talk about Freud’s subconscious and self-deception. Saturday, November 21, 2020 Without looking up… Read more 33: Pride and Maladaptive Behavior

(Full Notes) Tuesday, November 4, 2020 To the question, is there a different quality  of anxiety that is bad and… Read more 32: Fine Line or Day and Night?

(Full Notes) Tuesday, November 4, 2020 To the question, is there a different quality  of anxiety that is bad and… Read more 32: Fine Line or Day and Night?

You know how with that question the answer is something like “neither” or “both” – in any case it’s not… Read more 31: Which Comes First – the Act or It’s Excuse?

You know how with that question the answer is something like “neither” or “both” – in any case it’s not… Read more 31: Which Comes First – the Act or It’s Excuse?

(Full Notes) Friday, October 2, 2020 Depression is hard.  Anxiety is hard.  Schizophrenia I’m sure is hard, and the list… Read more 30: If Not for the Light of Christ

(Full Notes) Friday, October 2, 2020 Depression is hard.  Anxiety is hard.  Schizophrenia I’m sure is hard, and the list… Read more 30: If Not for the Light of Christ

(Full Notes) Saturday, August 29, 2020 I said that it is a delusion that you’re worthless.  It’s correct that it’s… Read more 29: It All Begins With A Lie

(Full Notes) Saturday, August 29, 2020 I said that it is a delusion that you’re worthless.  It’s correct that it’s… Read more 29: It All Begins With A Lie

(Full Notes) Wednesday, August 12, 2020 Just read in Bill Bryson's book how chemistry got on a firm footing with… Read more 28: A Continuum

(Full Notes) Wednesday, August 12, 2020 Just read in Bill Bryson’s book how chemistry got on a firm footing with… Read more 28: A Continuum

(Full Notes) Saturday, July 4, 2020 The thing with the learned behaviors mentioned in the last podcast is that it… Read more 27: More Scientific

(Full Notes) Saturday, July 4, 2020 The thing with the learned behaviors mentioned in the last podcast is that it… Read more 27: More Scientific

(Full Notes) Saturday, June 13, 2020 I really think there's something to learning attitudes and behaviors from parents in more subtle ways than we sometimes imagine. I would like to understand the mechanics of this. Why not try to describe this? Surely someone has already. Tuesday, June 16, 2020? I've been reading from 'Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith'. I don't know that I've read more lucid speech, more clear and simple and to the point, and on-target. Very inspiring, not to mention informative. So the thing with learning from our parents (or caregivers), is that we learn from them how to deal emotionally, or however you want to say it. We learn from them, not because they deliberately teach us, but because we sense their emotional needs, their emotional pressures. They in effect emotionally pressure us, despite all efforts, to have the issues they have. I'm not sure how we can avoid that besides actually fixing ourselves first. And how can we fix everything about ourselves before having any kids? Be like Abraham and be 100 when you have your first child? I just think we are going to pass on stuff, like it or not, and we just have to do our best, period. We love our kids and try to repent ourselves all the time and admit our faults as we discover them and just do our best, and our kids will be imperfect too. Thus we all have things to struggle with our whole lives - gives us character and makes us strong. That's just what I think, that's how I see it. I don't know that there's anything we can deliberately do to keep from passing stuff on to our kids except perfect ourselves as best we can. And maybe after that don't worry about it. Like both don't try to do something deliberate to not pass stuff on, and don't despair and obsess over it and fault yourself for your kids' faults. But maybe be aware that your issues will get passed on, and any pride or laziness on your part will exacerbate things, and surely unrepented sin will make you accountable for your childrens' sins in a way that you wouldn't be if you were trying honestly. That's how I'm seeing it. How does that pressure from our parents work? Alice Miller talked about this. Alright, so what am I going to talk about in my podcast?  Need something.  But that is a true principle that I just mentioned.  Not that I said it all right, necessarily.  But there is emotional pressure that children are sensitive to, in different ways and perhaps to different degrees, that they respond to and thus learn how to think and act and feel.  You never get away from the light of Christ, though, so untruthfulness always feels not quite right and breeds self-deception.  Or requires it.  Or is it.  So for me, for us here, self-deception is the great insight.  Self-deception as a necessity, when we go against the light.  And the fact that the light is stable.  It is constant.  It is forever there, unchanging, independent of us, or of our notions.  I don't understand the light of Christ fully.  But I do think it's clear from the scriptures that it permeates all things, and that you can't get away from it, and that it comes from God.  It dictates how we should act, and when we act contrariwise we enter a false world.  How does it work being partly in a false world and partly in a true one?  I don't know.  We speak of having the Spirit of the Lord or not, and perhaps that's true.  I don't know.  Either we flip often between the two, or there's some kind of mix.  But it does seem a little like it's one or the other, like not having the Spirit goes along with being prideful and comparative and everything else.  But I'll tell you I either flip a lot or there's some other mix.  Joseph Smith's mother said there are two spirits operating upon you, a good and a bad. Tell me more about those spirits, I pray. They're people, right? Good and bad. . .they have to be. But surely we have more spirits operating upon us than two. A person can be encircled about. Legion was possessed by many at once. How does that work? The Lord taught about this, and I feel like Joseph Smith taught about this. 43 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. 44 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. 45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation. I believe the Lord is not talking figuratively here. He's not. There are laws and principles upon which the spirits operate on us, which haven't been fully revealed. But there's one principle the Lord gave us right there. If a person is once enlightened, and repents, and later returns to their sin, their second state is worse than the first, and it had been better if they had not known the Lord in the first place. I would like to read more of Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young. Surely I will be run into the ground for saying that evil spirits have anything to do with mental health. Sorry. It's just the mechanics of it. Don't have to admit it, don't have to understand it. But then you're left as you are now, not understanding anything about mental health and its causes, and how do you like that? Wo unto the deaf who will not hear, and unto the blind who will not see. Your woe in this case is that you are left with a big question mark regarding all these things, awaiting additional data to come in regarding the brain. Must we kill and abuse so many rats and cats and monkeys in the cause of understanding the brain? I don't know. But I say we're barking up the wrong tree if we're looking for principles of self-deception in that way. Am I being too extreme? Are spirits on one side of the explanation, the spiritual side, and brain function on the other, and they're both just as true? Looking at the creation of the earth, there's the spiritual creation, and there's what happened naturally. I don't know if it's a creation or not. Seems from the reading that there's just a spiritual creation and whatever happened naturally was a result of it. I could study it I suppose, might be something there for me to learn. Still not sure what to make of Eric Skousen's theory. Lot of great insights and a good collection of inspired teachings, to be sure. The insights are always right, and the theories are usually at least partly wrong. Maybe helpful. Ok, well I'm going to keep writing here and I'm still thinking about anxiety.  What is it?  Too harsh to just call it fear?  Or is it true?  Surely it's a process full of deliberate effort, like digging a giant ditch and casting up a wall of earth.  Takes a great deal of effort and sweat.  But what pride will be had when. . .I should say, what satisfaction will be had when the victory is won!  Perhaps I am able to see some small victory already.  But it must be necessary to know where to cast the earth and not just dig willy nilly, filling in where one has dug just a moment before.  That's what I do, I fear, oftentimes.  My goal is to know how to direct my actions, or where to cast my earth, in order to waste less time and effort and make a more direct and steady course to my goal.  The old crow is getting slow. The young crow is not. Of what the young crow does not know The old crow knows a lot. At knowing things the old crow Is still the young crow's master. What does the slow old crow not know? —How to go faster. The young crow flies above, below, And rings around the slow old crow. What does the fast young crow not know? —Where to go.1 From For me I suppose that's getting to bed earlier, taking breaks, exercising and eating well, practicing slowing down and enjoying stuff and people...  I do read about these experiments involving mutilating the brains of animals and it troubles me a bit. Our curiosity exceeds our desire to leave the poor animals at peace, or something. I suppose it's meant to be for a good cause in the long run. . . I still don't like it, though. Well have I progressed with anxiety? Can we still say it's an unfortunate thing that happens to some people and our job is to do the best we can with it, while not making excuses, humbly, and we'll be judged on what we do with what we're given? Surely that's all true. But that's not enough. Not if we want to really understand it. Maybe we should admit that we can't judge in any given case how much a person can help or not, and that's not necessarily the point. I suppose we can detect sometimes if a person is making excuses and warn against that. But what of the mechanics - can't we understand the mechanics of it in a way that is super helpful and maps out for a person what can and does happen and just make them aware of it? With a true understanding you won't be overly condemned, and you won't be overly excused. You'll just be informed. No one will be telling you, "you are doing this all yourself and you need to stop it," and no one will be telling you "you are a pure victim in this thing and there's nothing you can do." Because neither is true, is it. Yes, there may be too many voices saying the latter, that we are just victims, and so the inclination of some will be to swing the pendulum the other way and declare that we are all responsible. But the truth is somewhere in the middle, right, and we can't judge exactly in every case how much a person is capable of stopping it. Surely this is the case. Monday, June 22, 2020 And beware me or anybody else telling you it's all one way or all the other - all victim or all responsible. We've talked about the position of making us too responsible. Perhaps I have done that myself. If so it's for the reason I said - too many voices saying we're victims. But you might as well be accurate if you can on this stuff. Surely a part of how much we are capable of effecting our own change is how deep we are in the trap. And surely a part of that is our own choices. And surely a part of it is beyond our choices, and that's important. How do you tell how much of a person's trap is a result of their choices and how much is a result of things beyond their control? How do you tell? You don't, right, unless you're given special insight or inspiration to help that person? But be awfully careful about judging someone - in any situation, right? Ok, I'm not saying you can't have insight into that, or even inspiration, you just have to be careful you don't judge. Right?

(Full Notes) Saturday, June 13, 2020 I really think there’s something to learning attitudes and behaviors from parents in more… Read more 26: Neither Condemning Nor Excusing

(Full Notes) Tuesday, May 19, 2020 It is a choice or is it automatic? When is it a choice and when is it not? Tuesday, May 26, 2020 Remember Jordan Peterson's two true perspectives? The one is like a right-wing point of view. And the second is like a left-wing point of view. Surely this is the same as the objective vs subjective I kept seeing as an undergraduate philosophy student. Thursday, May 28, 2020 I'm thinking of the two sacrament meeting talks I heard in New York that one day - both on finding peace. One person said how the only way to find real peace was through Jesus Christ. The other person said how you might need to go on a walk, etc. - whatever you need to do for you to find peace. And I believe both speakers were right. But you can see, can't you, how one perspective seems a little opposed to the other. How do you heal mental illness? Or address it, at least? One person might say pray and read the scriptures - in other words, strengthen yourself spiritually. This is the perspective that mental illness is a spiritual thing and needs to be addressed spiritually. Someone else might say to take medication and exercise and sleep and eat right. This is the perspective that mental illness is a physical thing. You know what I'm going to say next, right? That it's both? It's ok, then, to say it's one or the other, as long as you don't exclude the other, and say that it's just one. Surely this is the case. But why not better to just say right off the bat that it's both? (Have I said that it's just spiritual? Maybe. I'll correct it.) Friday, May 29, 2020 And this is how philosophy can help psychology. How many people are out there saying it's one of the other, and not both! When God gave us the account of the Earth being created, why didn't he give us something that matches more what we see? It is not because it's the spiritual account, from the spiritual perspective? Doesn't preclude the natural, it's just the spiritual? This I don't know - have to think about it. Sunday, May 31, 2020 This pattern is all throughout philosophy - seeming paradoxes, that aren't really paradoxes of course because there's no such thing as a real paradox, only seeming paradoxes. All throughout life. Meant to be that way. It's a pattern where two ways of looking at things seem incompatible, and people will fight wars over it, but really both sides have their valid points, and you don't have to make the other side ridiculous in order to maintain your side as true. For psychology at least one of these patterns is "whether" anxiety and depression are spiritual or natural. Chosen or caused. Psychological or physical. The spirit or the brain. I have made the differentiation between spirit and matter, that is, spiritual matter and physical matter (because that's what they are…) But I wonder if I shouldn't be talking about intelligence in the place of spirit, at least sometimes. Our spirit body is directed by our intelligence, or the germ in us that knows and that is conscious, and that acts upon everything else, including our bodies. Should I admit that there are three types of things - intelligence, spirit, and physical matter? The latter two are matter, the first, I don't know exactly how to describe it except how I have. It is our intelligence - that which knows and is conscious and acts. It has existed from all eternity, and will for all eternity, only because of God it takes on a spirit body and then a physical body as it progresses to become more like God, the literal Father of our spirits. Maybe I should be talking about our intelligence more, not just our spirit. More specific.

(Full Notes) Tuesday, May 19, 2020 It is a choice or is it automatic?  When is it a choice and… Read more 25: Paradoxes Aren’t Real

(Full Notes) Sunday, May 3, 2020 Well it looks like as it went I just couldn’t feel good about saying… Read more 24: Depression is Natural and Spiritual

(Full Notes) Sunday, May 3, 2020 Well it looks like as it went I just couldn't feel good about saying that anxiety is sin, and that depression is sin. Couldn't feel good about it. I guess that tells me I need to get off that track, don't be thinking that, or saying that. So I won't. And I want everyone to know that I can't feel good about it, so I don't want you to worry about it either. So don't. So then what does this say about anxiety? That all the psychology books are right, that basically anxiety is just inappropriate amounts of fear? Monday, May 4, 2020 But they're missing something, right? They're missing the ingredient of self-deception. Right? Wednesday, May 6, 2020, my kids' birthday Did this just happen or did heaven intervene? Isn't this the same question as some others we've been considering (what?)? My BACnet network is now working, I found out from Brandon. I went ahead and said a prayer of thanks anyway. You look at things from one side and it's all caused by God. You look at it from the other side and there's a natural explanation. Sunday, May 10, 2020 Jordan Peterson says he could have told his client how they were a victim , or he could have told them they were pathetic and need to take more personal responsibility or something, and both would have been true…. Both sides of the political spectrum might have their true enough points… Sunday, May 17, 2020 Then why do we tend to see things from one side or the other? How was the Earth created? Did God do it or is there a natural explanation? Well both are true, right? God works by natural means. Is depression a lie from the father of all lies? Or is it the result of brain chemicals? (See how philosophy is good for understanding psychology?) Is it a spiritual sickness, or is it scientific, explainable by natural science? Is it spiritual or is it physical? Was the Earth created spiritually or naturally? We know it's both! So in this light isn't it so much easier to see how it's wrong-headed to think that depression is just one or the other? Just natural and not spiritual, for example? Or the other way around? And of course the same with anxiety and everything else.

(Full Notes) Thursday, April 23, 2020 So apparently we can sin ignorantly (see the angel's words to King Benjamin and President Benson and who knows who else.). And the atonement of Christ covers for it (“his blood atoneth for [their] sins”). What does that mean? It means for one thing that a thing can be wrong to do whether we know it or not. The law exists independent of our knowing it. And it displeases God whether we know it or not. But since the atonement covers for it (if we don't realize it, that is) because of the atonement of Christ we are not condemned. Not because we are not doing wrong, but because the atonement covers it. Does sin cause anxiety and depression? Well it's a trap, right? Look into me in every thought, doubt not, fear not. Surely where anxiety is there faith is not, and where depression is there the spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind is not. How can we not be going against the will of God when we are in these states? Am I wrong somehow? It is a trap, though. It is a temptation we are all subject to. God understands. And the atonement of Christ atoneth for our sins as long as we are trying and sinning in ignorance. But are these things not sin? Do these things not go contrary to the will of God? And isn't that sin? Am I going too far here, guys? Maybe it's unproductive to condemn ourselves for sinning when we're trying our best at least right now. But isn't it technically sin to doubt and fear and not to look into God in every thought? My thinking is that we sin all the time without even trying and that's just how life is, even the best of us. We can't sit and think we don't sin. We all do, all the time. We're imperfect, and we're just sinning all the time. Right? In our thoughts, in our hearts, in our actions, in our inaction, and in our half-hearted action. We'd go crazy if we focused too much on how much we're sinning. That's what I think. But we are. Thank the heavens for Jesus Christ and his atonement. That's all covered for, if we try, and When we talk about sin we don't necessarily talk about it that way, right? We talk about it as if sin is a big bad thing and we're going to hell if we do it. Well we all do it, all the time. God will beat us with a few stripes, we may think, and at last we will be saved in the kingdom of God. No, if we sin it had better be in ignorance or else we can't be saved in the kingdom of God, only on conditions of repentance. So again, do we sin when we struggle with anxiety or depression or whatever? I can't decide. I kind of think so, but it's ignorant, but I don't even know that. You can be in the midst of that stuff and somebody can tell you or you can read, “look into me in every thought, doubt not, fear not,” and still struggle even with your best efforts, right? I don't care, I'm going to try that. God will help me. And with His help and according to His will I can make it out of this trap. Saturday, April 25, 2020 How about the story - neither did this man sin nor his parents, that he was born blind, but that the works of God should be made manifest… - or whatever. Our choices can have a role in that stuff, or they may not. And how do we know? We don't. Hmm. I ask for clarity on this all. Sunday, April 26, 2020 Is a person sinning who has Anxiety? Well I know you can have anxiety or depression and be temple-worthy. Looking at that question it seems silly. That's not what it's about, right? Is that a “philosophical question”? The question is framed wrong? But it would have an answer, right? Maybe that answer is maybe, maybe not. Hmmm! Ugh, this is hard! But I bet an understanding of this will carry over to other things. Speaking of knowledge of other things carrying over - was reading in my book about how electricity works. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could spell out how some of these spiritual laws work? These laws of psychology? Diagram them, quantify them, formulate them, etc? Can that even happen? Is that possible at all or is it just a pipe dream? Thursday, April 30, 2020 I don't have a burning thought, just want to sit and maybe work through something. Still don't know what Anxiety is. What if the bad, maladaptive anxiety really is the same exact stuff as the good, adaptive kind, just more of it? I don't get it. Why is it so different, then? Can't get there from here. And why isn't it correct to ask if a person is sinning who has anxiety? I guess if I were to answer for myself I'd say the Lord doesn't want me to worry about that - to worry that I'm sinning or whatever. He doesn't want me to feel condemned, because he doesn't condemn me. He is encouraging to me, I feel like - to look unto Him, to doubt not, to fear not. Excess laughter is sin. What else is sin? Countless things, right? Like King Benjamin says? The Lord doesn't want me to worry about it like I am. But I do sin, like all the time, surely, right? But the Lord, for me, doesn't want me to worry about that. What does that say? Maybe it says I shouldn't obsess over whether a person, whether myself or someone else, is sinning, when they have anxiety or are depressed. I might have to settle for now with "I don't know." Maybe the answer will come along the way, but maybe I can move on without knowing that. I know I definitely feel like I'm probably sending the wrong message to tell other people that. Hmmm. Ok, that was good. What about anxiety? I feel like I have to back up from this broken bridge and try another route or something. What is anxiety? What is anxiety? Depression is a condemnation of the self, a rejection of the self, a failure to forgive oneself, right? And I know I'm fearing too much, and I know I have anxiety. I know I fear too much because I know the Lord wants me to forsake my fear. Anything I need to forsake? Yes, Clayton, your fear. Well anxiety is built out of fear, right? What would Ryan the therapist say? I don't know - he said when I talked to him that one time kind of how anxiety and depression are related. There's a discouragement to depression, right? Is that part of it, or just a by-product? (I don't know.) Sheesh, I can't get anywhere! Maybe that's bad to say. I know for me the general message from the Lord is that I shouldn't worry about it so much. I worry about everything too much I guess, whether good or bad - just worry about it. Too much. He doesn't say don't worry about it "in the wrong way," He says don't worry about it so much. Or maybe He just says "don't worry about it." I'm worrying about all the wrong things. Worry about it, but don't worry about it. Well how am I supposed to help anybody if I can't figure this out? How am I even supposed to proceed with my podcast if I can't figure this out? Why can't I figure this stuff out? I'm sure I can. With the Lord's help I can. Can't be that hard. But what is it????? Another thing I know I'm supposed to do is enjoy stuff. Enjoy people, enjoy my work even. Let my love flow. And I'm supposed to go out of my way a little more to do things I enjoy. Still not doing so good with that. But I am musically collaborating with my sisters weekly, so I think that's part of it. Need to do more. I'll have to think about that. But what does that say? In general, I mean. It says that a person like me needs to do things they enjoy, to do some serious self-care. Kelly is the same way. She needs to do that, too. Maybe there are lots of people like me and Kelly. Interesting that she does her thing with social media, that what she does probably speaks to her and people like her. What I do probably speaks to people like me. Not everybody's like me. But surely the principles are static, if they're true, they're true. But you have to take the thought all the way. What am I going to do for my podcast? This stuff seems a little like drivel. I don't want to waste anybody's time. What is anxiety? Let's pretend for a moment that it's made out of the same stuff as light-duty, regular run-of-the-mill, ordinary, healthy, no-big-deal anxiety. All the same. Just a matter of quantity. Let's pretend that for a moment. Some is good, more is bad. Some is good, less is bad. Is that the case? Less than a normal amount is bad, too? Well probably, right? In that case, fear isn't good or bad in itself, it's just whatever. It's neutral. You're supposed to have some. And when the Lord says, fear not, He doesn't mean that fear is bad in itself, that any fear at any time is wrong, but that…what? "Look unto me in every thought. Doubt not, fear not." There's doubt in there, too, by the way. Does that pertain to depression? Doubt? I don't know. Let's look at a pattern real quick. The question is the problem of evil - why do bad things happen to good people and God doesn't stop them? The question has something wrong with it, first of all, right? Well anyway I know the answer I felt inspired about in my little blue book in the testing center was about the allegory of the olive tree where the Lord did everything he could for his vineyard but it kind of did what it wanted, to a degree. The Lord couldn't force it. To bring forth good fruit. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was about that scriptural story or whatever. How does that answer the question? Well doesn't it say how the question is wrong? The question assumes God can stop people from doing bad things to each other, for example. Friday, May 1, 2020 I'm thinking about this thing where fear is not good or bad in itself. Must be the same with sexual desire. And must be the same with other things. Laughter, maybe. What else? Would be useful probably to try and list them. I'm sure the list would go on forever. You can do anything 2 ways. Love someone. Hate someone. Forgive someone. Forget something. Remember something. Two ways for all that.

(Full Notes) Thursday, April 23, 2020 So apparently we can sin ignorantly (see the angel’s words to King Benjamin and… Read more 23: It’s All The Same Stuff

Full Notes: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 What I'm talking about, self-deception, is not a contributing factor to mental illness. If it were a contributing factor you could take it away and still have mental illness. No, it is common to all cases. It's common to us all. Again, it's like internal combustion in gasoline engines, or lift for something that flies. There all the time. Therapy is probably great, I guess, but isn't therapy really hard to do for some people, and maybe less effective for some people?  Wouldn't some people sooner self-medicate before they go make an appointment to talk to somebody and spill their guts out to a stranger?  Not saying they shouldn't do therapy, just saying some people find it harder, for one reason or another, and that's why many people don't. Even if they “need it.”  Maybe some of those people would listen to a podcast, though, or read a book. Or watch YouTube. Maybe some people would rather do it in private than do it with a therapist. Just a thought. Thursday, April 9, 2020 Again, not that more people maybe shouldn't do therapy. But you might reach more people that way. Plus not everybody has an issue at a “clinical level”. Many people might struggle with depression or anxiety or whatever, but it might be “sub-clinical”. Surely this is a spiritual thing. Surely depression is a spiritual sickness. And same with anxiety. May have physical factors, I guess. But surely it's a spiritual thing. Why do I say that?  I guess for me there is an attitude issue. There is a lack of faith. There's a gratitude issue. There's a lack of forgiveness. There's a lack of hope, which is despair. The lack of faith is doubt. The lack of confidence is fear. Doubt not, fear not. Look into me in every thought. I'm sure I don't look into the Lord in every thought when I'm struggling with depression and anxiety.  What does LDS social services say about this all?  How do they handle it?  (What are they called now, by the way?) Monday, April 13, 2020 Find a way to illustrate how sometimes you can't do much in the moment of great alarm, but you can in other moments. It's true, right? How do you illustrate that? Tuesday, April 14, 2020 How about tending to a plant? Allegory of the Lord's olive trees. Should I edit the Spirit episode to nix the unenlightening discussion on Christ and the legion of spirits, and put in instead how in ways we don't understand we are influenced by both good and evil spirits. I have to imagine that's how we are tempted/influenced to do bad things, and that's how we get stuck in traps of bad behaviors, etc. Evil spirits don't just help us in that process, they are integral to that process. And also good spirits have their part to play in our protection and who knows what else. We are surrounded. Both by the good and the evil spirits. And our choices make us subject to the evil spirits, who have the power to captivate as we subject ourselves to them. This is how I imagine it. Friday, April 17, 2020 Peace and happiness. Happiness and peace. Don't those correspond to depression and anxiety? Those are the two things we want, right - peace and happiness? And the absence of peace is anxiety, and the absence of happiness is depression? The opposite of hope is despair (and despair cometh because of iniquity…). The opposite of faith is fear. What am I getting at, here? I don't know. But we all want peace and happiness. And instead we get anxiety and depression. Depression is misery. It's not just the absence of feeling. I've been wondering if depression doesn't describe more than one thing. Because there's absence of feeling, and there's misery. There's being out of touch with yourself, and there's acute misery, right? I don't know. All I know is I need to have more fun in my life. What was that elder describing on my mission? It was basically depression, I'd say, but it was more about being out of touch with myself. What was that? What is that? I've been calling it depression. But then what's the more acute misery? Tuesday, April 21, 2020 Ok, what is anxiety? If you read any psychology book on the matter we're on the subject, it will tell you that anxiety that troubles us is no different than the normal healthy kind that we experience that keeps us out of danger and keeps us being smart. I just don't know that I think it's really the same thing. Seems to me like this bad, damaging, maladaptive kind of anxiety is different. It's born of a lie. That things are going to be bad and we can't take it and it will be the end of the world. There's a lie behind this stuff. There's not a lie behind driving safely. It's distorted. It's maladaptive. That means it's not helping us, and we're going in the opposite direction of what we should. So I guess to me it seems like there's a qualitative difference to this kind of anxiety. I could be wrong. But it seems like there's just a qualitative difference. What do you guys think? If we figured out the depression is in essence the lie that you are not worth anything, and anxiety is the lie that your world is going to end, and depression is a rejection of the self, or a failure to forgive yourself, Then what is anxiety? There's got to be an answer. There's got to be a way to understand this. No anxiety is definitely fear, right. Man, I don't know why this is so hard for me to wrap my head around. But I will celebrate when we figure this out. Anxiety is fear, or giving into your fear, and chronic anxiety, or the pattern of anxiety that we see, is an inset, established, biological practically or really actually form of the shorter term thing. Just like the shorter term depression is dissing yourself, and the longer-term is all the results of that, anxiety in the short term is fearing, and then the long term is all the yuckiness that goes along with that. Seems like these spiritual principles have a little lag time or something. To what can we liken that? We will keep working on this question. It's an important one – the relation between the immediate action and the long-term condition. I wish I had the answers to these questions right now, for your sake, but I don't. And that's what this podcast is. Maybe one day I'll have a podcast where I disseminate information without asking any questions, but it's not now.

Full Notes: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 What I’m talking about, self-deception, is not a contributing factor to mental illness. If… Read more 22: The Status on Anxiety

Monday, Mar 23, 2020 They were talking about the brain today, on my psychology podcast. People. More research is needed, he said. More research is always needed. When are we going to understand the brain, I ask you? Does the brain really cause our behaviors like you're thinking? Or doesn't it reflect our behaviors? Don't we cause our behaviors? I think we do, more than “the brain”. Just a personal opinion. What does it mean to look beyond the mark? It's the same as seeking for things we can't understand, is it not? Surely. And why do we do that? The answer is right before us, if we'll have it, isn't it. It's easier than we're thinking. We over-complicate things. That's what we do, isn't it. Some of us, at least. This is it. We have the answers not that far from us sometimes, but we don't want them. Is that what I do? Friday, Mar 27, 2020 But is it possible that as a society we could all be missing the mark together on a subject as big as this? Well we do with religion, right? We can all miss it together. But not everybody. Necessarily. Some people might know the truth, and it's just the general population that's missing it. But with depression and anxiety, seems like there's no group of people that get it, even an enlightened group. It would be on the internet, right? Somewhere. Surely somebody can figure it out and the word can spread, even if to a small number who are willing to hear it and understand it. Here's the thing. Satan is involved, and self-deception is involved, but the person isn't necessarily condemned before the Lord. We can't judge, right? You go against the light, you self-deceive, and your path is darkened. We're all fallen. We all fall short. We are all in need of the atonement. Why do we need to judge each other? We can say in our hearts that another has caused his own difficulties. Well that may be true, right, but isn't it the same with our own difficulties? Surely it's possible for us all to cause some of our own difficulties. And some not. We want to say officially that nobody causes their own difficulties, but that's not true. Sometimes we do. But that's no reason not to have compassion on one another. Right? Because don't we all do the same, in one way or another? We all do it, from the least to the greatest. Just not Jesus Christ. We talked about "What can we do?" What do you think we can do? What's the answer to that question? Or the answers? Is it many possible things, and they may be different for each situation? Surely that's it. But surely we can also find some commonality in our answers and give suggestions to each other. Which we do. Saturday, Mar 28, 2020 I want this podcast to be more fun. I imagine more laughing. Do I need Skye? Or do I need to be more relaxed when I do it? Tues, Mar 31, 2020 Isn't anxiety just a big excuse? Think about addiction. There is something appealing about anxiety and depression. There's a reward, make no mistake about it. Addiction needs a reward. Well anxiety and depression have rewards. The excuse is the reward. Excuse for what? In the case of anxiety, for not doing what you need to do that's hard and requires ignoring your fear. In the case of depression the reward is the excuse for being happy. That's why it's expressly miserable. That's the definition of depression - misery, the opposite of happiness. Misery gives us our excuse for…not being happy. It can be hard to be happy. It requires giving up our pride sometimes. Giving up our misery can be hard, it can take a hard swallow of pride. We can humble ourselves by being happy, by being grateful, by realizing how blessed we are. Surely this is it. This mechanism of self-justification and self-deception is hard to pinpoint - what the excuse is and what the deception is. It's a little hard to think about. Can I make some headway that way? Find the pattern, the universal description? But depression is a big excuse. And anxiety is a big excuse. Not like we think maybe, but it is. Excuse for what? For not being happy, and for not being peaceful, respectively. It can be hard to be peaceful. You don't get to have the excuse of being nerve-wracked. You have to face whatever it is alone, with just you and your laziness. “I was lazy, and a little bit rebellious.” Look that up. This is good. (Is not this real?). Thinking about it from the outside though this sounds terrible. How do I say this? With love. It is a trap. It gets worse the more you indulge. I say anxiety is a big excuse, and depression. But remember we are not necessarily condemned by God (right?) There are many reasons we can be in that pattern. But oh, it's there. You can't throw that away just because it's hard. And none of this is an excuse to stop loving anybody. That's always there, too. You can have issues and still deserve love. Everyone deserves our love. Surely the two are true at the same time. That we are excusing ourselves from going against the light in one way or another, and that we deserve love and are loved by our Heavenly Father. It's just the mechanics of this fallen world. Yea, this is going to go over great in the world. And there's a chemical aspect of depression and anxiety, like a bunch of things, and whatever else goes along with it. But I tell you that these things with self-deception are going on too, in every case. Oh yes, every case. Does that mean it's the "cause"? We've gone over this. No, not necessarily. This is a principle, like internal combustion, that is necessary but goes without saying, as long as you understand it. But understand it. Understand it. You would want to know about internal combustion to understand your car, and you might as well understand this to understand psychology. Understand self-deception. Understand there is a light we either conform to or self-deceive. Take it or perish. You never win going against it. But we do all the time, and that's part of life and frankly, it's ok as long as we're trying and if we believe in Jesus Christ and do works meet for repentance then we'll be saved, we'll be ok. But you can't do evil to yourself or anybody else, with impunity. Depression is doing evil to yourself. So since self-deception, self-justification are part of depression and anxiety, how do you combat them? Exercise. Sleep. Eat better. Work on your relationships. All those things they say to do. But just don't expect that you can do them and hold on to your grudge against yourself, or give in to the lie of anxiety. Those things have to be done, too. This is an imperfect podcast… I try to be as right as I can, while treading on some ground that is new. I hope you'll forgive me if I lead you astray in any way. I think, I hope, you understand the nature of this podcast. It's theoretical, it's not meant to take the place of therapy. I'm not saying all the things you need to hear, necessarily. It's imperfect and I'm acknowledging that. Most of all I hope you don't think that since you're doing these things that there's something wrong with you. Believe me, you're very normal. And I can tell you your Father in Heaven loves you, more than you can imagine. Maybe with His help you can deal with this thing. Maybe you'll get a lot better, maybe you will continue to struggle with it for the rest of your life to some extent. I pray you'll be able to get to a point where it will be at least tolerable and you'll be able to perform whatever mission your Father in Heaven has for you on this earth, despite your difficulties. None of us are perfect and many of us have to deal with very hard things, perhaps our whole lives to some extent. Hang in there. Don't stop trying. Maybe pray that we'll get a better understanding of these things. Try to do the things you can do. Your Heavenly Father loves you. Thursday, April 2, 2020 Satan is involved. He sure is. No question about it. Hate to say it, I know it's unpopular, but he is. He's involved. These things are traps. His traps. And his lies. And his power. All darkness is of him. All captivity is of him. You better believe it. Don't have to, but if you want to understand psychology and life then you do. No other way, sorry. (The brain.) None of this means God doesn't love you - He does, and though you may be in a trap, He's there for you, He's with you and wants you to be happy.

Monday, Mar 23, 2020 They were talking about the brain today, on my psychology podcast. People. More research is needed,… Read more 21: Fun More Seriously

Tuesday, March 3, 2020 YouTube. Some will say since every case of depression is different it's no use to try to help people in any broad way with their own depression. It has to be only individual, only by a professional. And professionals are great, when you can afford one and have time for one and when they know what they're doing. But to say that there shouldn't be any broad knowledge about psychology, to say there shouldn't be any DIY psychology, would be like saying there shouldn't be a YouTube for fixing cars. YouTube is great for fixing your own car. Sometimes that's the best option, and it's good for people to be able to do their own stuff if they can and want to. I say it's the same with psychology. Give the power to the people. Don't have to take away professionals, but why feel like the power has to be consolidated in paid professionals when there are so many things a lay person can do him or herself? That's what I say. Just like people can fix their own cars if they want to, let people do their own psychology if they want to. We can do a lot. I'm not saying all of it, all the time, just don't take away our ability to do that. Let knowledge flow freely. ($170 for a DSM book!) Was reading in [a book]. He says since we're actively producing our emotional problems, we can eliminate them at their source. (Through the means discussed in this book.) a few things. You're saying the source is our self betrayal. Is that the source, or is it just an aspect, a necessary ingredient, an essential part of the mechanism, like I'm saying? Then you'd be saying everybody's emotional problems is caused by self-betrayal. You focus on that thing, like it is the sole cause and therefore the sole solution. Don't do that. Then you're stuck, which you are, saying the only thing to do is to stop self-betraying, which is not directly possible) and everything else is futile to do, which is not true. Surely self-betrayal, or to me self-deception and all, is only an essential ingredient, helpful to understand but not necessarily the thing to focus on, or to try to directly do. What can we do? Read the talk Beware of Pride and go through the ways we can humble ourselves. Notice that none of the ways he says are “will yourself to be humble” or “stop being prideful”. We don't do it directly, we do it kind of indirectly. Even Terry Warner says on p 299, “we cannot get ourselves emotionally unstuck no matter how we might try. We cannot do it by denying or repressing our feelings or by willing ourselves to feel differently—feelings are subject to our indirect but not our direct control.” Also, if you say our emotional problems are caused by self betrayal, don't you have to say depression and anxiety are caused by self-betrayal? How can you separate the emotional problems that are higher in degree than others? Thirdly, there are no means discussed in the book, except the two I've said before - the writing exercise and asking forgiveness for failing to forgive. But those two things can be done in the wrong way too, so you're left with nothing. It's tempting to see these insights about self-deception involved in depression and anxiety and think that self deception is the root cause of depression. I would caution against that, and say that it is a necessary part of it, but not the root cause. If you say it is the root cause, what can you do about your emotional problems, except somehow stop self-deceiving? You might not be able to act on that directly, right? The thing you need to focus on may be completely different - forgive the person, pray for the power to forgive (the person or yourself), prepare more, organize better, get more sleep, change your job, do something fun once in a while, enjoy the people you're with, go to the temple more, pray, read the scriptures, go to church, fast, whatever it might be for you. See a therapist, take medication, whatever. Can't all those things help you not be stressed and depressed and therefore stop self-deceiving and self-betraying in that way? (Well medication might be more a treating of the symptoms?) Saturday, Mar 7, 2020 Hmm. When you see how self deception and pride are at the heart of emotional troubles it is natural to think that they are the cause and the solution, right? But something doesn't smell right about that. Like I've said before, those things are just part of the mechanism. Internal combustion. But the reason your car isn't going, while it is true that internal combustion isn't happening correctly, may be something electrical, or gas related, or whatever. You don't do a compression check every time your car stalls. Yes, compression has to be there, but you troubleshoot smarter than that. I hope that analogy is somewhat helpful. I'm just trying to say that while pride, while self-deception, while going against the light (or self-betrayal), while self-justification may be a part of all mental illness and depression and anxiety, surely it is not the proper thing to focus on. Maybe don't lose focus on it, or remember that it's part of it, maybe keep it in mind, but don't necessarily make that the primary cause. A discussion of causality is in order. If you think about it, isn't there no such thing as a single cause for anything? Isn't everything caused, so to speak, by multiple factors? And when we say that something causes another thing we are really saying it is the primary causing factor? The one that stands out, the one we need to pay the most attention to? What caused the airplane to crash? Well a lack of lift, right? Well of course, that goes without saying! But the primary cause, or the one that stands out, the one we should pay attention to, is going to be something different, right? Ice on the wings. A mechanical failure of any number of types. Pilot error of any number of types. An electrical error of any number of types. Analyzing the black box is a whole science (if it has one). Surely so is psychology. It's not just always self-betrayal, or pride, or self-deception. Those things go without saying. Monday, Mar 9, 2020 It's an interesting question, and one worth considering, whether there's a concrete action that can be taken to address the issue, or whether there isn't. Some say that since any concrete action, basically, can be done insincerely, it's basically no use trying. The only action to do is to stop self-betraying. But that's not right, is it! Though it's true that any particular action can basically be done two ways, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, if that's what's right for you. The Light of Christ can be your guide, surely! There must be SOMETHING each person can do in each situation to address whatever issue it is, maybe even if the answer sometimes includes being patient. That's what I have to think. Even you say to ask forgiveness for withholding forgiveness. As if that couldn't be done insincerely! Of course it can! And that one other thing you say to do (in the whole book!) - some writing exercise. You have to admit EVERYTHING can be done in 2 ways. Including those 2 things you suggested. So what can we do? Surely the Spirit knows. Surely it is different for each person, and surely there are multiple things a person could possibly do in at least many situations, if not all. A writing exercise. Prayer. Fasting. Address the person. Internally let something go. Exercise. Sleep better. Eat better. Ignore something. Pay attention to something. Remember something. Forget something. SOMETHING. Surely! This deserves some more discussion. And examples. Read your scriptures, go to church, go to the temple, something. Maybe more than one thing. And is it not true that somewhere deep down, we know what to do? Hmm. Might need some help from the Holy Ghost or somebody or reading something to know what that is. But surely we know it somewhere all along. I keep using the term self betrayal, to be compatible with other ideas I'm jumping off from. But I don't love the term. I don't think it's really accurate. It makes the self be the thing that is betrayed, it makes the truth that we go against come from the self. But the truth comes from God. So God betrayal would be more accurate, Or light of Christ betrayal. But then you have the word betrayal too. To betray someone is to do a Judas Iscariot did to Jesus Christ. You are friends with somebody and you turn them over to evil, or something. Anyway it's not the most helpful idea for what we do when we go against the truth. Wednesday, Mar 11, 2020 You gotta admit guys, this is fun! Tuesday, Mar 17, 2020 This question of "what can we do??" is big. Big, big. Turns out we're always talking about that. We're always wondering about it. I know I am, especially. We may not always like the answer. And I think of how people say "just don't worry about it," and how that's not always possible for everybody, or whatever. The answer might be that you can't always escape your problems right away. The thing you can do, or things, might be more indirect and choices made at off-times. Times outside the moment of alarm. We may not like that. I know I don't. Hmm. Again, I think of President Benson's talk "Beware of Pride". Many things we can do, to humble ourselves. Most of them are in the off-moment, if you know what I mean. Outside the moment of great alarm. Wednesday And he doesn't list them as things to do to escape or prevent depression

Tuesday, March 3, 2020 YouTube.  Some will say since every case of depression is different it’s no use to try… Read more 20: Killin Me

Just including all my notes here... Wednesday, February 19, 2020 I was listening to the car parts episode. That was a good one. I think we need to take more seriously the duty or whatever to be able to explain how something works, like depression and anxiety. We take time, and I'm thinking of a textbook, going through each individual theory and explaining how it accounts for why something or other happens, but we don't take enough time synthesizing the insights of those theories to explain in a real, substantive, helpful way how they help to explain how something happens actually. I remember in undergraduate school studying psychology, and after having read this entire textbook which had the above approach meaning that of treating each theory kind of separately, somewhere at the end as if in a little footnote, it was stated that the authors believe that all of the theories help to explain a different aspect of what's happening. Well if that's the case, don't you think you should synthesize them and use them to explain what's actually happening??? What are you trying to do anyway? Aren't we trying to understand these things? A lot of good you do telling students about all these different theories as if they individually can explain everything, and then move onto the next theory that thinks it can explain everything too. They obviously contradict each other. At least if you try to do it that way. They can't all be right. And don't theorists need to be a little more responsible and a little less dumb and realize that one insight will not explain every phenomenon in psychology? Surely we can be better. And surely we can have more discussions about how the different theories work together and what might be missing and surely other things. Lots on the spiritual side for sure. Which psychology wants to shun since it's not scientific. You're right it's not scientific. It has to do with things of the Spirit, which is the part of matter science doesn't see. It doesn't deal with it. Science deals with things you can see. Wednesday, Feb 19, 2020 Every thing that has knowledge has the ability to act according to that knowledge. A gnat has knowledge, and is free to act thereon. Beasts don't have a knowledge of good and evil, so they can't act on that, but we can. Beasts can act upon other things, including us. Just not per good or evil. We can act upon them for good or evil. A rock doesn't have knowledge, and so can't act. Only be acted upon. So that is how we get our ability to act, by our knowledge. We were given a knowledge of good and evil in the garden of eden. Before that Adam and Eve didn't have it, and were therefore like children. Can I say like beasts? No, they could speak and stuff, right? That I don't know. But they were at least like children. Power isn't given unto children to sin because they don't know sin from righteousness. They don't know good and evil yet. That's how the power isn't given unto them. Thursday, Feb 20 A lot of good it does to go through the more famous theories of psychology as they try to explain everything all by themselves in turn. Do you have students think about these things themselves? Adam and Eve must not have had self-reflection before the fall, before they partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They didn't know they were naked before, and then all of a sudden they knew they were naked. They could see themselves from another person's point of view. They could see themselves from outside of themselves. They could imagine what they looked like from another person's perspective. They became self-reflective. And it all happened when they gained a knowledge of good and evil. How did that happen? We have the time correlation, but not the link between knowledge of good and evil, and self-awareness or whatever. It had been given unto them to choose, before they transgressed. They had the commandment not to eat of the tree (it was forbidden), while they were yet child-like and innocent. Only after they made the choice to transgress the commandment did they gain a knowledge of good and evil, right? Only then did they become self-reflective, and see that they were naked, and were ashamed. Saturday, Feb 22, 2020 Just read something online that put brain chemicals at the top of the list of possible causes for mental illness. You're trying to be nice. But you're not helpful. You're the coach who tells the basketball player it's not their fault they keep missing. You're trying to make them feel better by telling them it's out of their control. Big help. Thanks a lot. Brain chemicals. Same website linked to another website that said brain chemicals as a cause is a weak argument often meant to make it feel less personal and easier to talk about and get treatment for. Well which website it right?? I say the latter. The latter cited a number of different factors, called it a complex combination of factors, but it didn't put brain chemicals and head trauma at the top of the list. My goodness! Friday, Feb 28 It's an addiction. It is an addiction. Surely it is an addiction. Depression and anxiety are addictions, the same as alcoholism or drugs or pornography are addictions. They're a trap. They come in grades - or it runs on a continuum from none to mild to serious. The more serious it is means the harder it is to escape. It's a trap of Satan. And yes, Satan is involved in depression. Sorry everybody. But it's a disease, you say, and it comes on at no fault of the person involved. Well diseases sometimes do and sometimes don't, right? Lifestyle and other things that happen can be factors in diseases forming. But you're right - it is a disease, and it can come regardless of the actions of the person involved. Still involves Satan. I'm sure you think diseases don't involve Satan either - then how does Jesus rebuke them at his word? Why does it say Jesus rebuked the fever? ------ Stop blaming it on the brain, guys! Stop blaming it on the brain! The brain is like gravitons. It's an unnecessary postulation for explaining stuff. Nobody understands it anyway. We push it off to something we can't understand, phenomena that nobody's observed, to explain what self-deception can explain just fine. Like the theory of relativity. Genetics is like gravitons. Genetics isn't understood, and while all these people think it's going to soon explain everything, let's face it, it's not. But why wait? We can see how people learn from the modeling and so forth of their parents and others how to behave and cope and think and feel and everything else, for one, and genetics isn't needed. You people! Why push off the explanation to something that nobody understands, which nobody can see? The Jews sought for things they couldn't understand, and so the Lord gave it to them. They didn't like plain things. They didn't want the simple explanations, the things right before their eyes. They wanted to look beyond the mark. Isn't that what we do when we push the explanation off to the brain, the mysterious brain, and to genetics? Who understands genetics? Very very little is understood of genetics. A few physical traits, may be understood. But people give it way too much responsibility. Stop blaming everything on genetics, guys! Stop blaming everything on the brain. Let's face it, you don't know that the explanation lies with the brain, you're just postulating that! You haven't seen it in the brain! Q: Do we have a sixth sense? A: Whatever you want to call it, we definitely have the ability to sense things spiritually, just like we do physically. We are half spirit, you might say. We're spirits housed in a physical body. And just as we have sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, do we not have similar senses on the spiritual side?

Just including all my notes here… Wednesday, February 19, 2020 I was listening to the car parts episode. That was… Read more 19: Stop Blaming the Brain

Major breakthrough. For me, at least. Depression is not forgiving yourself, just as you get spiritually sick (and maybe physically) if you fail to forgive another. That's the big insight. Terry Warner already did the work of explaining how when we don't forgive another we get spiritually sick. Apparently we can do the same exact thing, only with ourselves, and that's depression. We are self-reflective beings, which makes that possible. Forgiveness, whether of another or ourselves, is only possible through the atonement of Jesus Christ. And that whether you realize it or not - works the same. Have we wrestled depression to the ground?? We'll talk about this more.

Major breakthrough. For me, at least. Depression is not forgiving yourself, just as you get spiritually sick (and maybe physically)… Read more 18: The Essence of Depression

There are two kinds of things in the world: physical matter, and spiritual matter. Science deals with the first. Not the second. Psychology is largely a spiritual thing, sorry science. For life to exist, you need the spirit to be present. It's the breath of life. "Artificial intelligence", as it's called, is great, but it will never have consciousness, because you need the spirit for that. Wendy Treynor is not afraid to admit to there being spirit, so to me she's closer than a lot of people in understanding depression and psychology in general. If you can't admit to the existence of spirit, (which physical science can't by itself), then how far will you ever get to understanding psychology?

There are two kinds of things in the world: physical matter, and spiritual matter. Science deals with the first. Not… Read more 17: Spirit

In this episode we consider the "hardness" or what we're saying about depression and anxiety, namely that the individual bears some responsibility for their depression and anxiety, and is a participant in it, even if, before God, one is not condemned. But I think it's hard to hear, and I wonder how we should deal with that. I think we just have to be as kind as possible about it.

In this episode we consider the “hardness” or what we’re saying about depression and anxiety, namely that the individual bears… Read more 16: People These Days

There are many things I don't know. Most things I don't know. Here are some. But in defining my questions and wrestling some of them, I think we make some progress (in understanding anxiety and depression).

There are many things I don’t know. Most things I don’t know. Here are some. But in defining my questions… Read more 15: Things I Don’t Know