Karma vs Chance vs Faith

This week I was deeply affected by a situation that happened at work.  I spent the week contemplating Karma vs Chance vs Faith.

First, some background:

We had a pyschologist visit from an east coast university.  He told us about his studies on the unconscious and how it interacts with judgment, behavior and conscious thought.   His program of research on social cognition, looks at structure and function of attitudes, beliefs and identity. His investigations of the predictors of corresponsdence between implicit and explicit preferences.  These interests are applied in domains of social import ance such as ethnicity and prejudice. 

This is an interesting experiment of person swap.  One guy is getting directions from a stranger and in the middle of the interaction, swaps out with someone new, normally the stranger never notices.  Certainly bizarre what we miss in life.

Ideology is essential. It is our sense maker helping us to understand a complex world.  However, it is constraining because often we can not think beyond what our sense maker allows and we miss so much of the world.  Our minds have a big task - it has to gather a lot of information and organize it so we can function in the world.  Without our sensory skills, he says we are blind, deaf and dumb to the world around us. We make top down assumptions based on our earlier experiences, based on things that we know about the world. 

He presented us with many different mind tests to show us as an audience.  One is this ambigious image below.  What do you see in this image?  There is an animal located in it. 

Once you do see it, even if you don't see this picture again for years, your mind will always remember it.  You can not get rid of the image - you do not get to decide not to see it. Your mind has made a decision to see it and says, "this is how I am going to understand this image." Once that conception is available, it just happens. 

One of the purposes for us to have the ability to use these theories, draw these conclusions, is to reduce the ambiguity of the world, fill in the gaps of our everyday living. We do this to simplify what it is we are looking at. This will allow us to think more deeply about how are we going to use this information.

He goes on to say this isn't just about perception.  These same inferences happen in our every day language, our memory, our judgment and in our making sense of the world.

Watch this 40 second video clip, keep the speakers off.  
It is a visual illusion experiment.  You will count the basketball passes. 
It is quite amazing to see what our brains pick up and what they ignore when we are focused on counting the passes. 

Well, somewhere in his 90 minute presentation, I heard him say, not to 'trust our feelings'.  I sat there, confused, frowning (as I am right now remembering the feeling I had), and thought to myself, THAT IS NOT RIGHT!  My heart started beating very fast, I gathered my composure.  I raised my hand, I asked him if I heard him right?!  He quickly realized where I was headed with my tone of voice and said, "I am not going to entertain the religious subject right now'.  My voice began to quiver and I felt the Spirit of the Lord put his hand on my shoulder.   In front of hundreds of people and video streaming through the company, I near tearfully said, "Sir, you don't have to, but I can't sit here and let even one person be misled by what you said, for that would be TERRIBLE.  We most certainly must trust our feelings.  Our higher power has given us that gift and we should use it as a source to guide us through our decision making in life."

After the presentation was over, I had a man approach me and thank me for sharing my coment.   That made me feel good.  I walked out of that room still shaking, disturbed and saddened by the Professor's comment and thinking, "I wish I didn't have to be exposed to such blind thinking here in the corporate world each day, how sad for my soul to be degraded in this way."  

My co-worker had been sitting by me in the meeting, later asked me what I thought of the speaker.  I briefly stated that I thought he had shared a lot of good psychology information.  However, I didn't agree with him on the feelings subject.  I added that I know through faith we can have the Holy Ghost as our constant companion to help us in life and that guidance comes through feelings. Subtle whisperings, dreams, thoughts and feelings that take time to tune ourselves to hear and be willing to follow.  It is an art.... a dance.  It takes effort and desire on our part to gain that sensitivity.  I know when I was first learning how to decipher the spirit, I would question those thoughts and wonder if I created them or even if Satan was trying to confuse me.  Overtime, I developed enough confidence to believe that the ideas/thoughts were from God.  I try to always give Him the glory by acting without questioning.  This will take a lifetime though.

She dismissed my faith comment quickly and instead surprised me by saying that she often tells her daughter that life is made up of karma.  I was sad to hear that she believed that bad things happen to people based on what they have done in their past or past lives.  Karma is simple cause and effect, action and reaction.   I do believe that if you do good in the world, then good will come back to you.  I call this a blessing from God.   I don't believe that bad things happen to good people because they deserve it.  Instead, I find peace knowing that trials and challenges are meant for our growth and that Heavenly Father does not leave us alone to deal with hard things, we have many ways to find support from Him. 

I know that Heavenly Father has no desire to move us around like chess pieces and cause things to happen or not happen.  He definately has his hand in our lives, but he has the difficult decision to not save us from every negative situation.  Life isn't meant to be fun every moment and certainly not easy.  We should also know that living isn't about chance either.  There is more to life than waking up and rolling the dice about how our day will go. We were given order through his Plan.  There is a purpose for everything. 

Today, I am grateful for that experience which strengthened my testimony in the Plan of Salvation.  I feel so relieved that I learned and believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  What comfort this knowledge brings me.