Required, in particular, is meekness of mind which recognizes God’s perfect love of us and His omniscience. By acknowledging these reassuring realities and accepting that God desires our full development and true happiness, we are readied even as the learning experiences come. Such meekness requires genuine intellectual honesty, owning up to the learning experiences of the past and listening to the Holy Ghost as he preaches to us from the pulpit of memory.

As the Lord communicates with the meek and submissive, fewer decibels are required, and more nuances are received. Even the most meek, like Moses (see Num. 12:3), learn overwhelming things they “never had supposed.” (Moses 1:10.) But it is only the meek mind which can be so shown and so stretched—not those, as Isaiah wrote, who “are wise in their own eyes.” (Isa. 5:21; see also 2 Ne. 9:29 and 15:21.)

God’s counsel aligns us and conjoins us with the great realities of the universe; whereas sin empties, isolates, and separates us, confining us to the solitary cell of selfishness. Hence the lonely crowd in hell.

Spiritual submissiveness means, instead, community and communion as the mind and the heart become settled. We then spend much less time deciding, and much more time serving; otherwise, the more hesitation, the less inspiration.

Yielding one’s heart to God signals the last stage in our spiritual development. Only then are we beginning to be fully useful to God! How can we sincerely pray to be an instrument in His hands if the instrument seeks to do the instructing?

Neal A. Maxwell

“Willing to Submit”, General Conference April 1985

Manifestations of the Holy Ghost

Other God-given helps for making right choices are the manifestations of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead. His function, defined in scripture, is to testify of the Father and the Son, to teach us, to bring all things to our remembrance, and to guide us into all truth. The scriptures include many descriptions of the manifestations of the Holy Ghost, such as a spiritual witness in response to an inquiry about the truth of the Book of Mormon. A manifestation is not to be confused with the gift of the Holy Ghost, which is conferred following baptism.

One of the most significant of God’s helps for His faithful children is the gift of the Holy Ghost. The importance of this gift is evident in the fact that it is formally conferred after repentance and baptism by water, “and then [the scriptures explain] cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost” (⁠2 Nephi 31:17⁠). Persons who have this remission of sins—and then regularly renew their cleansing by daily repentance and living according to the covenants they make through the ordinance of the sacrament—qualify for the promise that the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of the Lord, “may always … be with them” (⁠Doctrine and Covenants 20:77⁠).

Thus, President Joseph F. Smith taught that the Holy Ghost will “enlighten the minds of the people with regard to the things of God, to convince them at the time of their conversion of their having done the will of the Father, and to be in them an abiding testimony as a companion through life, acting as the sure and safe guide into all truth and filling them day by day with joy and gladness, with a disposition to do good to all men, to suffer wrong rather than to do wrong, to be kind and merciful, long suffering and charitable. All who possess this inestimable gift, this pearl of great price, have a continual thirst after righteousness. Without the aid of the Holy Spirit,” President Smith concluded, “no mortal can walk in the straight and narrow way.”

Dallin H. Oaks

"Divine Helps for Mortality", General Conference April 2025

already answered our question

...Recognize what God has already revealed to you personally, while being open to further revelation from Him. If God has answered a question and the circumstances have not changed, why would we expect the answer to be different? Joseph Smith stumbled into this problematic scenario in 1828. The first portion of the Book of Mormon had been translated, when Martin Harris, a benefactor and early scribe, asked Joseph for permission to take the translated pages and show them to his wife. Unsure of what to do, Joseph prayed for guidance. The Lord told him not to let Martin take the pages.

Martin requested that Joseph ask God again. Joseph did so, and the answer was, not surprisingly, the same. But Martin begged Joseph to ask a third time, and Joseph did so. This time God did not say no. Instead, it was as though God said, “Joseph, you know how I feel about this, but you have your agency to choose.” Feeling himself relieved of the constraint, Joseph decided to allow Martin to take 116 manuscript pages and show them to a few family members. The translated pages were lost and never recovered. The Lord severely rebuked Joseph.

Joseph learned, as the Book of Mormon prophet Jacob taught: “Seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand. For … he counseleth in wisdom.” Jacob cautioned that unfortunate things happen when we ask for things we should not. He foretold that the people in Jerusalem would seek “for things that they could not understand,” look “beyond the mark,” and completely overlook the Savior of the world. They stumbled because they asked for things they would not and could not understand.

If we have received personal revelation for our situation and the circumstances have not changed, God has already answered our question. For example, we sometimes ask repeatedly for reassurance that we have been forgiven. If we have repented, been filled with joy and peace of conscience, and received a remission of our sins, we do not need to ask again but can trust the answer God has already given.

Dale G. Renlund

"A Framework for Personal Revelation" General Conference October 2022

excited by posthumous fame

People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, sputters and goes out.

But suppose that those who remembered you were immortal and your memory undying. What good would it do you? And I don’t just mean when you’re dead, but in your own lifetime. What use is praise, except to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable?

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. P.41, Book 4, #19. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)

the words of life

The ancients saw, heard, and spoke the holy word, and the living spoken word enters the heart. That is one reason why Plato expressed doubt about the worth of writing. He feared that writing would not help, but hurt the power of memory. He feared also that the written word would have little power to inspire the reader by itself. Paul had the same concern when he taught that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” (2 Corinthians 3:6.) The words of life do not belong in books. “These words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7.) 

The Lord’s Question: Thoughts on the Life of Response by Dennis Rasmussen. Brigham Young University Press. April 1985. Chapter Three, “What Mean the Testimonies?” p.27

keep me in your heart for awhile

Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath

Keep me in your heart for awhile

If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for awhile

When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun
Keep me in your heart for while

There's a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done
Keep me in your heart for while



Warren Zevon - Keep Me In Your Heart, The Wind 2003.

you forget some things, dont you?

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

You forget some things, dont you?

Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.


Cormac McCarthy, The Road. Random House, Inc., 2006 p.12

music & memory

Music seems to go into the long-term memory of our brains. The replaying of a few notes of a song may instantly bring back not only the song itself, but a whole flood of other memories associated with it, be those recollections memories of good or bad parts of our lives.


Pop Music & Morality by Lex de Azevedo. Embryo Books. 1982. p.40

his memory, like the world’s, was getting spotty

Kiyoshi Tanimoto was over seventy now. The average age of all hibakusha was sixty-two. The surviving hibakusha had been polled by Chugoku Shimbun in 1984, and 54.3 per cent of them said they thought that nuclear weapons would be used again. Tanimoto read in the papers that the United States and the Soviet Union were steadily climbing the steep steps of deterrence. He and Chisa both drew health-maintenance allowances as hibakusha, and he had a modest pension from the United Church of Japan. He lived in a snug little house with a radio and two television sets, a washing machine, an electric oven, and a refrigerator, and he had a compact Mazda automobile, manufactured in Hiroshima. He ate too much. He got up at six every morning and took an hour’s walk with his small wooly dog, Chiko. He was slowing down a bit. His memory, like the world’s, was getting spotty.


Hiroshima by John Hersey. Vintage Books. 1989. p.152

they're forgotten

"But worst of all," Tarrou writes, "is that they're forgotten, and they know it. Their friends have forgotten them because they have other things to think about, naturally enough. And those they love have forgotten them because all their energies are devoted to making schemes and taking steps to get them out of the camp. and by dint of always thinking about these schemes and steps they have ceased thinking about those whose release they're trying to secure. And that, too, is natural enough. In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person everyminute of the day, without letting one's thoughts be diverted by anything - by meals, by a fly that settles on one's cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That's why life is difficult to live. And these people know it only too well."


Albert Camus, The Plague, Vintage Books. 1948. p.240, 241

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all… Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing… (I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life, as it did my mother's…)


Luis Buñuel Portolés (1900 – 1983) was a Spanish filmmaker who worked mainly in Mexico and France, but also in his native country and the United States. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. 1998. (Originally 1970) p.23 - 2:The Lost Mariner. This moving and frightening segment in Buñuel's recently translated memoirs raises fundamental questions - clinical, practical, existential, philosophical: what sort of a life (if any), what sort of a world, what sort of a self, can be preserved in a man who has lost the greater part of his momory and, with this, his past, and his moorings in time? - Dr. Oliver Sacks

Each Time I Pass

Each time I pass
under your window
I am struck by the fragrance
that still floats through you house

Each time I pass
the cemetery
I am pulled back by the strength
that still breathes inside your bones.


~Miguel Hernández (Translated by Hardie St. Martin. Roots & Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975. Hardie St. Martin, Editor. Harper & Row. 1976. p.275)

Deaths

The first thing I forgot was your voice.
Now if you were to
speak here at my side
I would ask, "Who is that?"

After that I forgot your footstep.
If a shadow were to gutter
in the wind of flesh
I would not be sure whether it was you.

One by one all of your leaves fell
before a winter: the smile,
the glance, the color of your clothes, the size
of your shoes

Even then your leaves went on falling:
your flesh fell away from you, your body.
I was left your name, seven letters of you.
And you living,
desperately dying
in them, body and soul.
Your skeleton, its shape,
your voice, your laugh, seven letters, those letters.
And repeating them was your only life, your body.
I forgot your name.
The seven letters move about, unconnected,
unknown to each other.
They form advertisements in streetcars; letters
burn at night in colors,
they travel in envelopes shaping
other names.
You're somewhere about,
all in bits, by now, dismantled and impossible.
There you are, your name, which was you,
risen
toward various stupid heavens
in an abstract alphabetical glory.


~Pedro Salinas (Translated by W.S. Merwin. Roots & Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975. Hardie St. Martin, Editor. Harper & Row. 1976. p.103-105)