Monday, March 7, 2016

The Learning Pattern of Acting

Learning by study and also by faith. Real learning is an act of both the body and the mind. In fact, while we mostly associate knowledge with the mind, it is usually best produced by the use of our bodies. The use of the body shapes the mind and prepares it to receive and retain light and knowledge. Preparation and application are the keys to gaining light and truth.

I have been pondering how important it is to identify specific actions that I can do in order to act on what I know. I have realized that so much of the power of my scripture study is lost when I fail to convert it into action that changes me. For example, I might say after studying my scriptures that I will be more kind. While I might say I have set a goal to act, all I have done is made a wish about how to react because I'm too lazy to or don't know how to make a commitment to act. If the goal is to bind ourselves to act, then I must have something real to bind myself to. How do I bind myself to act "more kindly?" There is nothing concrete to anchor my commitment to, it is a wish about how I will react. So how do I turn a wishful reaction into a concrete action? I must seek inspiration to specify my goal. For example, to whom will I be more kind? When? And how? What will I do? If I can answer these questions then I am much closer to a true action. 

I have found that the Lord has provided a perfect learning laboratory in which I can constantly practice my gospel actions. It is called the family. This is the ideal place to apply gospel principles. Almost always when I ask the questions "to whom will I be kinder?" "When will I be kinder to them?" And "what will I do to show more kindness?" The first answer that comes to mind relates to my family. For me, usually my wife. 

I think this pattern of acting to become what I am learning is really essential to my growth. For example tonight I attended a fireside in which President Brown spoke about family history. I left feeling that I should do better at family history. But I did not set a goal. I simply said, I will do better. When will I do better? How will I do better? What specifically could I do to be better? I realized that I rarely set real goals based on what I've learned. Most of my goals are actually wishes. I am not binding myself to act in holiness, I am wishing I was better at reacting in all holiness. I think that this approach requires that I recognize two objectives that lead to change. Knowing which one I am struggling with will show me what path to take towards improvement. 

The first objective is the formation of a habit. For many of my problem habits and behaviors, the solution is to develop a counter-habit. Good habits are an effort to tame the natural man, to reign him in. This is the value of a check yes or no approach to obedience. It provides a natural man incentive to defeat the natural man. The other objective is to make our habits holy, or to translate them to a higher plane. At this point I am not as focused on reigning in the natural man as I am on developing the strength of the spiritual man. This is where I move beyond the yes or no box into the realm of good better best. 

I must evaluate whether my struggle is one with bridling the natural man or of strengthening the Spiritual man. Obviously these two objectives are intertwined and affect each other. They are not separate, but by noticing the nature of my goal I can prescribe the appropriate remedy. For example, my goal is to be better at doing family history. Right now I believe my greatest resistance to that goal is in my natural tendency to procrastinate and be lazy. I tend to be lazy in the mental effort it takes to prioritize my time and to be lazy in the effort it takes to actually do the work. I believe I have a testimony of family history and temple work but it has reached it's highest potential growth based on the action I have put into it. My next course of action is to bridle the natural man. So I will set a specific goal to at least log in to my family search account once a day. This one small action may seem insignificant, but to be honest, it is much more than I am doing currently. And ironically the reason I am doing so little now is that I feel there is far too much to do! When I have mastered my natural man to the point that logging on once a day is not difficult at all, I may choose to increase the level of effort to looking up an ancestor at least 5 generations back. That's all! 

I might see a goal like this and think it is useless because it accomplished nothing. But to be honest, while my goal is the taming of my natural man, I will be doing more than many are doing and infinity times more than I was doing before. Following this pattern I continue to bridle the natural man. In the mean time, I am attending my meetings, studying my scriptures, saying my prayers and strengthening my spiritual man. So I am working in both directions although my focus at this point is on the habit. 

As another example, I am currently in the habit of praying, reading, and writing in my journal every day. Those actions are second nature now and require little thought and usually much less willpower to at least do. So my goal with these is not as much to develop a habit as it is to strengthen the Spirit and improve the habit. This will lead to different goals and more experimentation with better methods. For example, because I do not need to worry about whether or not I will be saying my morning prayers today, I can set goals and try methods to improve them. Like pondering what questions I could ask the Lord to make my prayers more effective. Or how might kneeling upright, or speaking aloud or praying in a different location change my experience? What could I do to get myself into the proper mindset and the right attitude to have a meaningful conversation with God? What could I study in the scriptures to strengthen my understanding of how prayer works? These are all avenues I can explore to improve my prayers, which are now habitually ingrained. If I fall out of a habit, I start back at the place were I need to to redevelop it.

It is important to remember that we do not need to run faster than we have strength because this is one of the most tempting things for us to do and one of the most common reasons we fail to change.

When I first started running, I found a lot of excitement in seeing my fitness progress. Too soon I started focusing on beating my run times and running started to become something I dreaded. I stopped feeling a desire to go because I was too worried about beating my time. When I realized this I decided that instead of focusing on how fast I ran, I would just focus on enjoying developing the habit. I would work first on subduing the natural man until running itself was no longer daunting. I stopped timing each mile and focused instead on pushing myself at a slightly uncomfortable pace for a certain period of time. It wasn't about minutes per mile anymore it was just about minutes. Once I made this commitment, running became fun again and I started to feel less dread about going. My focus had changed because I realized that my natural man needed to be subdued before he could be chiseled.

Possible scriptures:
John 7:17
Ether 12:6, 12, 18
D&C 43:8-9

4 comments:

  1. Very thoughtful and insightful Bryce. Thanks!

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    1. Thanks Dee, are you still living in St. George?

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  2. It deleted my long comment again. Maybe it has a stupidity filter.

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    1. It has been hard for me to post comments from my phone as well, I don't know why. Apparently it's easier from the computer.

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