When I voluntarily resigned from the Brighamite sect, I went through an agnostic phase where I was antagonistic against all things "religious." This phase lasted for years. But as time passed I realized that I was continually feeling that something was missing, as if I was a "cosmic orphan," abandoned by the Cosmos. When I started getting honest with myself, I realized that I liked believing I had a cosmic identity, but I was connected to a Higher Power and we are not alone in the Universe.
I liked being interlinked to a heritage, a cultural identity, like Jews often feel connected to their ancient Jewish ancestors and Judaism whether or not they believe in it supernaturally on every level.
I liked belonging to something "bigger than myself." I now think that while perhaps, if you have a big enough ego, you can make yourself the "center of the universe," for most of us we benefit from connecting to a Higher Power and a spiritual tradition that gives one meaning in life and an objective sense of morality. Returning to the paradigm of "God," gave me a higher standard: something I felt was lacking in nihilistic secular subcultures, resulting in a meanness and hatred and mob mentality that I saw replacing the God paradigm (and the ethical higher standard of Christianity), with neomarxist utopianisms and moral relativism. Seeing what the "absence of God" was producing I began to more value the "paradigm of God."
So I decided to find a way to reconnect with my Mormon heritage and upbringing, based on my knowledge of LDS Scripture and Mormon history, without allowing Brighamite dogma to interfere with my direct and authentic interaction with original Mormonism. In other words, I decided to let Mormonism empower me by looking at it with fresh eyes. As I examined Mormonism from multiple perspectives, not just from the perspective of anti-Mormonism nor just LDS apologetics, but from multiple angles, I found there was a way to to not throw out the baby with the bathwater, but throw out the dirty water and keep the baby.
When I realized I could benefit from all of the investment I put into Mormonism previously, and it being part of my cultural heritage (as I even have ancestors who practice polygamy), I began to feel better about myself and life in general. I stopped framing things as a traumatized victim and began to act like a victor by making my mormon-experience work for me not against me.
I realized that I did not need to have absolute blind faith and I could even treat Mormonism as mostly a mythology, but it was my mythology (see below). Yet also allowing the possibility of there being some real Divine Dimension behind the metaphors, symbols, and stories. So as I entertained this Emergent LDS Perspective, I noticed that it changed my existential mood and I felt more empowered with more self-esteem; as if I once again had the backing of the Cosmos or Ultimate Somethingness, the the Universe was on my side again, and I was not rebelling or fighting against God or Reality, but was aligning with the Mysterious Divine again. It felt like coming home, but as an individuated adult, being around loving parents who wanted me to grow up all along. So I realized I just felt better with my place in the the cosmos and I felt like it gave me a leg up in my self-esteem.
Why bother? I figured what do I have to lose by entertaining this Emergent Perspective. I realized that I could have the best of Mormonism has to offer, everything that's good and empowering about it, without the later traditions that arose in the 1900s which shrunk the original light-giving vitality of original Mormonism. Instead, I could go back to the original Smith-Pratt Paradigm which interprets LDS Scripture in a more life-affirming way, so that Scriptural Mormonism is a Life-affirming positive force.
So why bother? Because it not only made me feel better about myself and my place in the cosmos, but it began to enliven me with a pro-bodied active theology toward individual empowerment and Zion-minded synergy.
In the article For Nietzsche, nihilism goes deeper than ‘life is pointless’ by Kaitlyn Creasy, he explains that
On Nietzsche’s view, the beliefs that there is no point to life or that there are no moral values become nihilistic only when the individual holding such beliefs finds in them a reason for rejecting life and existence as a whole, for disavowing or disengaging with life itself. Nihilism involves a fundamental repudiation of life itself. It is life-denial, the negation of life. …
… the individual who believes that the value of life depends on the existence of a higher purpose. If such an individual comes to believe that there is no such purpose, this will be earth-shattering. It will also, Nietzsche thinks, elicit a host of emotions – despair, hopelessness, apathy, deep ambivalence, feelings of emptiness – and disruptions to the individual’s motivational life: she may experience irresoluteness, disengagement or resignation. Ultimately, these emotional and motivational disruptions undermine her will to live. In more precise Nietzschean terms, these disruptions undermine her ability to effectively engage her world, pursue her goals, and (as the scholar Ian Dunkle emphasises) grow in those pursuits. …
This notion to which Nietzsche hopes to bring his reader’s attention – that a change in certain life-orienting beliefs or value commitments can provoke profoundly life-denying changes in one’s emotions and motivational states, and ultimately hinder one’s flourishing – makes good sense. … If [God’s divine plan for your life] was the primary animating force of your life – or if you have no other animating force – you will feel unmoored, demotivated, disengaged from the world you thought you knew; your desire and/or ability to go on living as before may be compromised.
As Nietzsche puts it in his On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), in such a case, there is a real risk that your ‘physiological capacity to live’ will decrease. If, furthermore, you continue to value such a purpose despite your disavowal, as scholar Bernard Reginster points out in The Affirmation of Life (2006), feelings of existential despair – which can obstruct an individual’s ability to effectively engage her world, pursue her goals, and grow in her pursuits – are sure to follow. …
… The attitudes we typically associate with nihilism – such as those we find in [the movies] The Big Lebowski or No Country for Old Men – are important to notice [and disrupt when] they indicate or produce damaging emotions and motivational states.
This is what happened to me after I rejected the Catholic, Protestant, and Brighamite "divine plan," which left me in an existential "funk" for several years. When the reality of life conflicted with the utopian idealism I had through my Sunday School training, I thought I found refuge in Scientism but being a walking Mr. Spock felt empty and vapid. So I turned to Progressive Christianity and Secular Buddhism, but these worldviews were in my view ultimately anti-masculine, anti-capitalism, and devalued the rank ordering of organic life and attempted to repress our instincts. This was combined with a personal trauma and a case of severe anxiety that took me years to recover from, which led me into a phase of devaluing life and me living the life of a hermit for a while. As the article explains:
Nietzsche’s most striking [insight was]: if life-denial involves the negative judgment of this life and world as they actually are, then even beliefs and values that we typically understand as bestowing meaning and value upon life can function as covertly nihilistic.
I found this to be true myself. The demand for idealized behavior and utopian idealism was at odds with the real world. So basically I became for several years what Nietzsche was trying to prevent through his books. I did not realize then during this nihilistic phase, that I was ultimately absorbing Philosophical views which
… on Nietzsche’s view [are] life-denying beliefs and judgments [which] tend to originate in individuals who are alienated from or averse to life and existence. …
… To judge that life, as it actually is, is not worth living is a symptom of a dangerous weariness with life, an inability to effectively engage with one’s world, grow in one’s form of life, and flourish.
I strongly recommend one check out the whole article itself. But basically it does a good job of summarizing Nietzsche's intentions to restore psychological health to culture. I believe this was similar to Joseph Smith's intentions as he progressed from Evangelical Christian to more of a religious naturalist by the 1840s. Like Nietzsche, I think Joseph Smith was interested in affirming this this life. For Joseph was not alienated from or averse to life and existence at all, but the exact opposite; he engaged with his world, grew in form within life and flourished. His critics would say he indulged in life too much and affirmed life too much, but no one can accuse him of being "averse to life" with symptoms of a "dangerous weariness with life."
As I turned my gaze upon Mormonism again but through more "Nietzschean eyes," I began to experience Mormon Scripture and History differently, as a symbolic conceptual language which was ultimately attempting to cause human unity and flourishing. Through the point of view of seeing religion-making as a appealing to both chambers of the brain as Nietzsche puts it, I began to see that Joseph Smith's revelations, like Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was attempting to affirm life with what I describe as a theology of the body, with scriptural stories of upright heroes who both conquer with vitality (in the name of democracy and freedom), yet also seek peace and express Christian compassion.
From this perspective, Emergent Mormonism is an attempt to implement Mormon Scripture pragmatically and psychologically in a way similar to how Nietzsche intended his Zarathustra to affect his readers to affirm life. As the article above puts it, I see Joseph providing an Ethos to better "find life worth living" and grow in your "form of life" toward "psychological flourishing." I discuss this in more detail in my blog series Joseph and Nietzsche: The Rough Stone Rolling and the Dynamite Satyr.
So once I stopped judging Mormon Scripture, History, and Joseph Smith through a perfectionistic puritanical Lens -- nitpicking every little thing like the Tanners do in their magnum opus Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? which I read cover to cover -- I instead began reading through Joseph Smith's life and his scriptural productions through a more Nietzschean Lens, and I began to see Joseph Smith as at the very least a counteractive cultural-agent against Augustinian "body despising" and secular nihilism. I began to see him as a biological force of life, a volcanic rumbling force of instinctual energy and vitality which breaks free of Protestant restraints like a volcanic explosion with artistic expressionism upon the pages he produced in the 1840s and the life he lived with passion and vitality. From this perspective of Joseph Smith as a quantum of power, a vitalizing life force and expanding source of energy, I began to see that Joseph Smith if nothing else was a powerful force of will who infused into his People a will to thrive. As the Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 1 (1832-1839), in the Introduction, in the section Joseph Smith’s Place in History, ask their reader:
From the viewpoint of the present, what is the significance of this charismatic and forceful man?
… Joseph Smith stood against that rising tide [of disbelief in God]. … Smith’s historical role, as he understood it, was to give God a voice in a world that had stopped listening.[53] Smith stood on the contested ground between the Enlightenment and Christianity. … [Yet rather than reject the Enlightenment, he was not an] enemy of learning. An early revelation explained that “truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come,” and his followers were urged to seek that kind of truth. They were to “obtain a knowledge of history, and of countries, and of kingdoms, of laws of God and man, and all this for the salvation of Zion.”[57] A revelation commanded them to open a school, where, among other things, the students studied grammar as well as theology. In that same spirit, they established a school at which the students studied Hebrew under the tutelage of a Jewish instructor. “Teach one another,” they were enjoined, “words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom: seek learning even by study, and also by faith.”[58] The Nauvoo City Council moved to establish a university soon after the charter was granted. …
… While reviving traditional Christian faith, he was equally a prophet of the coming [rational] age.
They go on to point out that
Joseph Smith's faith in his own revelations powered Joseph Smith’s ascent from obscurity to eminence in the first half of the nineteenth century. The same force … enabled him to build cities and gather thousands of converts …
Clearly there was no "weariness of soul" in this man Joseph Smith as he exercised the artistic religion-making chamber of his brain that Nietzsche advocated. So I began to ponder, if Joseph could with sheer force of will and strong belief in himself and his vision, to do all that he did and infuse an entire culture with lifeward vitality through his Scriptures -- similar to what Nietzsche was trying to do with his Thus Spoke Zarathustra -- then could original Mormonism be viewed pragmatically as life affirming and psychologically vitalizing?
If life perspectives, worldviews, and attitudes are either life-affirming and empowering or life-denying and make one weary of life, then original Mormonism I would say is life-affirming. I began to see that Mormon Scripture can be a source of motivational energy: infusing an energy of vitality toward growth and flourishing. At least that is what it does for me through my Emergent Mormon Perspective.
Smith-Pratt Mormonism as a Pathway to Bliss: as a Mythology of Personal Transformation:
“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.” ~ Joseph Campbell
“Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors.”
~ Joseph Campbell
“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.” ~ Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
[Joseph Campbell] felt that myth offered a framework for personal growth and transformation, and that understanding the ways that myths and symbols affect the individual mind offered a way to lead a life that was in tune with one’s nature—a pathway to bliss.
~ David Kudler, from Location 194 of his Foreword in the book Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation by Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell is best known for his conversation with journalist Bill Moyers in the 1988 PBS documentary The Power of Myth. Here is what Joseph Campbell says about using one's own religion as a mythology of transformation; he basically says that whether it's Mormonism or Catholicism or Hinduism or whatever, make it work for you. He says the following in the book Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation:
... a society’s myths do provide role models for that society at that given time. What the mythic image shows is the way in which the cosmic energy manifests itself in time, and as the times change, the modes of manifestation change. … the gods represent the patron powers that support you in your field of action. … Of course, in trying to relate yourself to transcendence, you don’t have to have images. You can go the Zen way and forget the myths altogether. But I’m talking about the mythic way. And what the myth does is to provide a field in which you can locate yourself. That’s the sense of the mandala, the sacred circle, whether you are a Tibetan monk or the patient of a Jungian analyst. The symbols are laid out around the circle, and you are to locate yourself in the center. A labyrinth, of course, is a scrambled mandala, in which you don’t know where you are. That’s the way the world is for people who don’t have a mythology. It’s a labyrinth. They are battling their way through as if no one had ever been there before.
…There lives in us, says Dürckheim, a life wisdom. We are all manifestations of a mystic power: the power of life, which has shaped all life, and which has shaped us all in our mother’s womb. And this kind of wisdom lives in us, and it represents the force of this power, this energy, pouring into the field of time and space. … What myth does for you is to point beyond the phenomenal field toward the transcendent. A mythic figure is like the compass that you used to draw circles and arcs in school, with one leg in the field of time and the other in the eternal. The image of a god may look like a human or animal form, but its reference is transcendent of that.
… Now, when you translate the moving, metaphoric foot of the compass into a concrete reference—into a fact—what you have is merely an allegory and not a myth. Where a myth points past itself to something indescribable, an allegory is merely a story or image that teaches a practical lesson. … If the reference of the mythic image is to a fact or to a concept, then you have an allegorical figure. A mythic figure has one leg in the transcendent. And one of the problems with the popularization of religious ideas is that the god becomes a final fact and is no longer itself transparent to the transcendent.
… The nineteenth-century German ethnologist Adolf Bastian talked about there being two elements to every myth: the elementary and the local. You have to go through your own tradition—the local—to get to the transcendent, or elementary, level, and just so you have to have a relationship to God on both a personal and a transpersonal basis. ....
... the next sheath is called the wisdom sheath, vijñānamaya-kośa. This is the sheath of the wisdom of the transcendent pouring in. This is the wisdom that brought you to form in the mother womb, that digests your dinners, that knows how to do it. This is the wisdom that, when you cut yourself, knows how to heal the wound. The cut bleeds, and then a scab comes along; finally a scar forms, and this is the wisdom sheath going to work.
You go for a walk in the woods. Somebody has built a barbed-wire fence. It leans right into the tree. The tree incorporates that barbed wire. The tree has it, the wisdom sheath. This is the level of your nature wisdom that you share with the hills, with the trees, with the fish, with the animals. The power of myth is to put the mental sheath in touch with this wisdom sheath, which is the one that speaks of the transcendent. ...
... Eternity has nothing to do with time. Time is what shuts you out from eternity. Eternity is now. It is the transcendent dimension of the now to which myth refers.
All of these things enable you to understand what myth really is about. When people say, “Well, you know, this couldn’t have happened, and that couldn’t have happened, and so let’s get rid of the myths,” what they are doing is getting rid of the vocabulary of discourse between...mental wisdom and organic, life-body wisdom.
These deities in myths serve as models, give you life roles, so long as you understand their reference to the foot in the transcendent. The Christian idea of Imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ—what does that mean, that you should go out and get yourself crucified? Nothing of the kind. It means to live with one foot in the transcendent, as God.
As Paul says, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”[Galations 2:20] That means that the eternal thing works in me. And this is the meaning of the Buddha consciousness, the consciousness that is both the entire universe and you yourself. ...
... The rolling stone gathers no moss. Myth is moss. So now you’ve got to do it yourself, ad lib. I speak of the present as a moment of free fall into the future with no guidance. All you’ve got to know is how to fall; and you can learn that, too. That is the situation with regard to myth right now. We’re all without dependable guides.
Yet even now you can find two guides. The first can be a personality in your youth who seemed to you a noble and great personality. You can use that person as a model. ...
... All that we can talk about [mythologically] is what is on this side of transcendence. And the problem is to open the [mythic/religious] words, to open the images so that they point past themselves. They will tend to shut off the experience through their own opacity. But these three concepts are those that will bring you closest to ... Being, consciousness, and bliss.
... Now, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been thinking about these things. And I don’t know what being is. And I don’t know what consciousness is. But I do know what bliss is: that deep sense of being present, of doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself. If you can hang on to that, you are on the edge of the transcendent already. ...
Your bliss can guide you to that transcendent mystery, because bliss is the welling up of the energy of the transcendent wisdom within you.
... You can get some clues from earlier traditions. But they have to be taken as clues. As many a wise man has said, “You can’t wear another person’s hat.” So when people get excited about the Orient and begin putting on turbans and saris, what they’ve gotten caught in is the folk aspect of the wisdom that they need. You’ve got to find the wisdom, not the clothing of it. Through those trappings, the myths of other cultures, you can come to a wisdom that you’ve then got to translate into your own. The whole problem is to turn these mythologies into your own.
Now, in my courses in mythology at Sarah Lawrence, I taught people of practically every religious faith you could think of. Some have a harder time mythologizing than others, but all have been brought up in a myth of some kind. What I’ve found is that any mythic tradition can be translated into your life, if it’s been put into you. And it’s a good thing to hang on to the myth that was put in when you were a child, because it is there whether you want it there or not. What you have to do is translate that myth into its eloquence, not just into the literacy. You have to learn to hear its song.
~ Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation (Location 240, 257-284; and pages 19-25)
This is what I am doing in this blog and my other websites, I am using what I have learned from other religions and mythologies, and Nietzsche's philosophy, and as Campbell puts it, hanging on to "the myth that was put in when [I was] a child, because it is there whether [I] want it there or not." I am translating the Mormon mythos "into its eloquence" in order to "hear its song" as a source for growing strong.
So in my blog posts and documents I am writing as if Mormonism is an empowering mythology when interpreted through a Joseph Campbell point of view. Campbell explains in his body of work how mythology can be psychologically true as metaphor but not literally true historically, yet nevertheless be empowering when understood symbolically as sign posts to individuation, self actualization, and personal empowerment.
I realize that I have developed a point of view that makes both the anti-Mormons disgruntled and the devout-Mormons upset. As I am interpreting "original Mormonism'' as a form of psychological energy and a pathway to transformation as Joseph Campbell puts it above. The Mormon Scripture stories and symbolism can thus be empowering, but not as literally true but as mythologically useful.
I assume the Book of Mormon is not scientifically true nor a historical document. I see the Book of Mormon as a parable just like Jesus told parables that were stories to teach a lesson but were not meant to be taken literally. Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan wrote a book titled The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus, wherein he goes so far as describing all the biblical Gospels as largely parables themselves. While theologian John Spong wrote a book describing biblical literalism as a Gentile heresy, showing through the Gospel of Mathew that the biblical Gospels are largely based on midrash. Similarly, I see Nephi as a fictional character, his life as a kind of midrashic parable about self-overcoming and building your own ship to cross over the dark seas of chaos through the light of the divine; thus, Nephi acts as a powerful symbol of courage and trusting-faith toward brave action: as one going on what Joseph Campbell called "the hero’s journey."
So for me I'm less interested in questions like whether or not there is a God, and more interested in the effect that a psychologically healthy idea of God can have one one's psyche: in affecting their physiology and existential mood and worldview. Yet I am also open minded about the possibility of their being an actual real-yet-unknowable Divine Realm beyond my comprehension; and so I allow the potential or possibility of there being some kind of divine energy or "Spirit" (Pneuma) if you will, that works through all religions, not just Mormonism. But my belief in "God" or a divine "Spirit" is for me a possible spiritual energy that affirms the sexual body and the powers of organic life.
I choose to focus on Mormonism because it is the local mythology ingrained into me in childhood, and as Joseph Campbel puts it above it is basically there in my unconscious whether I like it or not, so as I see it: why not utilize it for my good rather than wasting energy only reacting against it. It is also my heritage, my cultural identity like Judaism is for many Jews even if they move past literal belief. It is also quite simply what I am most familiar with and what I know best. I agree with Joseph Campbell above that it's important to "go through your own tradition—the local—to get to the transcendent …" So I'm open minded about the idea that the divine realm (or divine mystery) could work through Joseph Smith's own artistic creativity; and the same divine mystery or "God" would work through Hindu mythology as well. To each his own, I say.
I don’t see mythology as just silly stories. I see mythology as very important just as Joseph Campbell did. Afterall, we are all living through some mythology, even if the current stories of science are one’s mythology. For example, many of the conceptual frameworks of modern quantum mechanics can sound very mythological. As a United States citizen I recognize that there is an American "mythology" (i.e. a deistic civic religion of "Americanism") encapsulated in the American scripture-like document The Declaration of Independence: which talks about the God of Deism (as “Nature’s God”) who as the Creator has endowed Americans with Reason and inalienable Rights. Science cannot prove one has inalienable Rights, or Free Will or a soul; but the Declaration of Independence asserts this as a type of article of faith that we have a soul and have Rights given by a Creator. Some scientists would argue that the idea of a soul and free will is a form of mythology; yet criminal courts operate on the idea of a person having a soul-like autonomous self and so we can judge the guilt or innocence of a person in a court of law (as if they have undetermined free will). So the judicial "mythology" of Americanism, that we can judge guilt or innocence is practically useful, and I would say necessary for maintaining a civil society today. So too, Mormonism as a mythological pathway to bliss, acts similarly in producing inner transformation through for example producing greater confidence, civility, equity, etc.; and gives a person a "meaning in life" and life purpose, and other positive results toward potential happiness or lasting bliss.
I realize that what I call "Divine" could just be cosmic forces and natural organic energies bubbling up from within the body, as Joseph Campbell puts it in The Power of Myth:
... All the gods, all the heavens, all the world, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other. That is what myth is. Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the organs of the body in conflict with each other. This organ wants this, that organ wants that. The brain is one of the organs.
Yet either way, natural or supra-natural (or some combination of the two), both views work in my approach to Mormonism.
