Spiritual vs. Physical Desires
Everything we’ve spoken of previously can be used for Spiritual or Physical Desires X CPER. I used the physical example of a journey to a destination to visualize our Desire Obtainment Process, but our Specific Desire can be Spiritual or Physical. When we spoke of our most General Desire being Joy, we were speaking of a Spiritual Desire. We can liken and compare everything we’ve said about Joy to the General Physical Desire for Health.
Our Specific Physical Desires can be Balanced or Imbalanced with our Desire to obtain Health. When we choose to pursue a Specific Physical Desire we are hypothesizing that when we obtain it we will obtain a greater and more sustainable degree of Health. Some example of Balanced Physical Desires are to be able to breathe normally, to see with 20/20 vision, to hear sounds and be able to interpret them, to be able to speak or communicate with others, to be able to smell, to have enough strength in our muscles to lift and carry things, to obtain specific physical skills for a job, to be able to eat and digest our food so that it nourishes our body, to have strong bones that support the structure of our body and the movement, to be able to have children, and to be able to walk and run.
We also have Specific Spiritual Desires and they can be Balanced or Imbalanced with our Desire to obtain Joy. These are mainly dependent on the relationships we have with our Causes and Children. Some examples of Balanced Spiritual Desires are: to love (faith and sacrifice), to have insight and vision, to be able to hear things that are unsaid, to be able to pray and receive personal revelation, to discern things before we actually know for sure, to have endurance through adversity and temptation, to make and keep commitments, to summarize and expand abstract concepts in balance, to have a destiny, to be able to help others so they can obtain Sustainable Joy, to develop relationship skills like patience, humility, gratitude, confidence, and empathy.
Specific Physical Desires can be Imbalanced to the Northwest or to the Northeast. When we seek to obtain them, we sacrifice our Health in the Process. Northwest Physical Desires can be categorized as the need for a rush, adrenaline surges, thrills, and intense sudden flows of Energy that come as a result of roller coasters, extreme sports, gamboling, or crazy stunts. Northeast Physical Desires are for pleasure, luxury, ease, and sensuality that come from indulgence, hedonism, and self-gratification.
Specific Spiritual Desires can also be Imbalanced to the Northwest or to the Northeast. When we seek to obtain them, we sacrifice Joy in the Process. Northwest Spiritual Desires can be categorized as the need for fast, intense difficult relationships. These relationships require us to sacrifice way too much for a short period of time. We’re willing to go overboard because we’re told the pain and sorrow of it is of short duration. We’re not going into it to develop healthy relationship skills and long-term relationships that return Sustainable Joy.
Northeast Spiritual Desires can be categorized as the need for easy relationships—ones that don’t require enough from us. We don’t have to give much to obtain the gratification. We’re not going into these kinds of situations to develop healthy relationship skills and long-term relationships that return Sustainable Joy.
There is also a Balance between Spiritual and Physical Desires. Most of us value Joy above our Health. Sometimes we have to temporarily sacrifice our Health in order to obtain Sustainable Joy. This was demonstrated by our Savior Jesus Christ. He sacrificed his life in order to obtain Sustainable Joy (Eternal Life) and Sustainable Health (Immortality) in the end. Because of him, Death is not the final Physical Result for us either. It seems like it is, but because of our Savior we will all be resurrected and receive Sustainable Health.
So when we put Spiritual and Physical Desires on a compass, we categorize the Spiritual as more General and the Physical as more Specific. We want to strive to balance our Physical Desires with our Spiritual and not the other way around. We do this because the purpose of our Physical life is to develop our Faith, our ability to Sacrifice, and our Sustainable Joy. The Physical life brings with it inherent sacrifices that we must make in order to live and help others live. Without it, we would not have the opportunity to sacrifice.
Spiritual vs. Physical Causes
God is our General Spiritual Cause and he is also our General Physical Cause. He has obtained Immortality, which is Sustainable Health. He is able to give us Immortality. Again, he allows us to die so that we can develop our Faith and ability to sacrifice for others for love and to bind us together in eternal relationships of Joy. After we die, we are restored to an Immortal body that can never die again. That’s why this life is the time to prepare to meet God.
Our more Specific Physical Causes are our biological parents who pass their genetics down to us. Our bodies are the Result of that, which becomes our Cause. We have to work with this body and all of its genetic defects as part of our sacrifice here on earth. Other Specific Physical Causes are our environment and our physical interaction with other people. We have some choices in who and what influences us but in other cases we don’t. We may have been born into a country where there is a dictatorship that prevents all its citizens from obtaining Health. It may actually cause them to be of poor health because they don’t get enough to eat or it works them like slaves.
Our Specific Spiritual Causes are those who teach us the General Desire Obtainment Process. They teach us values, morals, standards. And many fail to teach us these things or teach us lower level values. They train us to grab for what we want and look out for number one. But others sacrifice their lives for us. They teach us by example. When we are younger we don’t have the option of choosing our Specific Spiritual Causes. We follow in the footsteps of our parents. But as we get older and interact with other Specific Causes, we may form Spiritual Desires to change what we have learned. We desire to change how we obtain our Desires and resolve conflicts. We need to be retrained, remade, reorganized. Our previous upbringing becomes a sacrifice as we have endured the Chronic Conflicts that this type of behavior results in. We must further sacrifice old habits for new ones. Thanks to the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we will all have this opportunity. If we choose to be retrained and we come unto him, we will be.
Spiritual Causes teach us how to obtain both our Spiritual and Physical Desires by aligning our Specific Desire Obtainment and Conflict Resolution Processes with the General. They alert us to the traps of Conflicting Causes and their physical substances. They teach us how to avoid them by standing steadfast in Christ. When we develop strong relationship of Sustainable Joy with them, we are protected against overwhelming degrees of Adversity and Temptation.
Spiritual vs. Physical Desire Obtainment Processes
The Process to obtain both our Spiritual and Physical Desires is Physical Sacrifice. Physical Sacrifice requires us to suffer both Physically and Spiritually. We have the agency to choose our Spiritual Processes even though we are subject to Imbalanced Physical people and conditions. Because we can’t always stop the Imbalanced Physical Conditions, we are required to sacrifice. Spiritually we can choose to do this voluntarily, trusting in our General Cause and his overall plan for us to obtain Sustainable Joy or we can kick and scream about it. We can complain about it and refuse to do it. Usually we have to do it anyway. But sometimes we turned to Imbalanced Desires in order to compensate.
If we voluntarily submit to the Imbalanced Physical Conditions we are subject to, our General Cause does two things for us. First, he increases his Peace so that we experience a more intense Joy than we did before as a Result of our suffering. Second, he allows the suffering to motivate us to search for higher levels of knowledge, greater skills, and more strategic Conflict Resolution Processes. Through both of these Processes, our Faith and ability to sacrifice in greater degrees of Adversity and Temptation increase.
The General Balanced Physical Process is to eat a healthy diet with Calories in Balance with the degree of exercise we engage in on a daily basis. In the Northwest we don’t eat enough for how much we exercise. This might be good if we need to lose weight. In the Northeast we eat too much for how little we exercise. This might be good if we need to gain weight. But in General our goal is to eat in Balance with how much we exercise.
When we have control over the Physical Sacrifice Processes we engage in, we need to do our best to Balance them with our General Spiritual Processes. We’ll talk about the Threshold this creates in Levels 5 and 6. It’s within that Threshold that change and growth can occur.
Spiritual vs. Physical Effects
Our most General Physical Effect is Joy. Joy is a Balance of Peace and Energy. Our General Physical Effects are very similar. Feeling Healthy is what we all desires. health is a Balance of Physical Peace and Energy. When our Body is Healthy, it is able to maintain the Balance between Physical incoming and outgoing Energy.
To get a little more Specific with eating right, our goal is to find the Balance between Taste and Nutrition. These are both types of Physical Effects. Taste brings us pleasure while Nutrition challenges our bodies to be fit. If we eat just for the taste of things, we will be tempted to overeat because we’re not giving our body the nutrients it needs. That’s a Northeast Process. If we eat just for the nutrition, we will have a hard time even wanting to eat. We’re doing all the work to prepare healthy foods but if we can’t also enjoy them, then it’s going to be hard to choke them down. Usually this kind of Northwest Process ends us up rebounding to the Northeast. It doesn’t promote Balance.
The same is true on the exercise side of things. We need to find the Balance between strength conditioning and cardio. When we do cardio, endorphins are released that increase both our Physical and Spiritual Energy. When we do strength conditioning and stretching, we increase both our Physical and Spiritual Peace. If we just do the cardio all the time, we experience too much Energy and not enough Peace. Additionally we don’t build or stretch our muscles to be able to resist injury. That’s a Northwest Process. If we just do the strength conditioning and stretching, we experience too much Peace and not enough Energy. We also lose sight of the purpose of increasing strength and flexibility. We do that to prevent injury and atrophy throughout our daily exercising Processes. Our Effects signal this to us so we know before the Result becomes Chronic—before we actually injure ourselves or start losing muscle tissue.
Because we know these things about Physical Effects, we can like them to Spiritual Effects. Spiritual Effects can be more Tasty or more Nutritious. Comforting Peace is more like Taste and obtaining a greater level of Knowledge or reviewing the Knowledge we have already obtained is more like Nutrition.
When we build our Spiritual muscles, we are increasing our Confidence and Gratitude. Confidence and Gratitude are Sustainable Peace. We are able to stand steadfast in the General Desire Obtainment Process despite Conflicting Effects. When we increase our Spiritual flexibility, we’re increasing our Humility and Empathy. Humility and Empathy are Sustainable Energy. We experience a continuous Desire to serve and help others. We’re willing to change and admit our errors in our relationships. When we engage in Spiritual Cardio exercise we’re using our strength and flexibility to stand steadfast where we need to and be flexible where we can help others and endure their Imbalanced behaviors. We find our Balance between Confidence/Gratitude and Humility/Empathy.
Spiritual vs. Physical Results
Our most General Spiritual Result is Sustainable Joy. Our most General Physical Result is Sustainable Health. As already mentioned, we are required to sacrifice even unto death in this life. But because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ that Physical Failure Result is only temporary. In the final Result we will all be resurrected. We need to do all that is within our control to engage in Processes that sustain health. But we have many Imbalanced Specific Physical Causes that we are outside of our control. We are required to endure these trials. If we want to make use of them, we do that voluntarily in order to obtain our Spiritual Desires.
In this life Specific Physical Effects and Results do not necessarily define our Process. Even if we engage in a Balanced Physical Process, we may still end up experiencing Pain and Numbness. Likewise, even if we engage in an Imbalanced Physical Process, we may still experience Balanced Results, at least for a time. It may all seem so unfair. But when we focus on the real goal of this life—to obtain Spiritual relationships of Sustainable Joy, then we understand that the most important Result to track is Sustainable Joy.
That said, no matter what our Imbalanced Specific Physical Causes, if we will strive to engage in the General Physical Desire Obtainment Process by eating right (Nutrition/Taste) in Balance with how much we exercise (Strength-Flexibility/Cardio), then we will obtain the best Physical Results possible for our given genetics.
Things that are regarded as Successful Specific Physical Results in our society are financial success, a lean body, an exceptional running speed, tallness, strength, a certain type of facial structure, body type, and hair color that are regarded as beautiful or attractive.
Things that are regarded as Successful Specific Spiritual Results in our society are patience, endurance, steadfastness, a good listener, faithfulness, forgiving, etc.
So the bottom line is that we sacrifice some desirable Physical Results, both General and Specific, in order to obtain our Spiritual Results. Because we have to deal with the perceived Physical Failures, which are really our temporary or Chronic Conflicts that create the Adversity, we have to reach for Spiritual Success. There comes a day when we figure out no matter how hard we try we’re not going to obtain a certain Physical Desire in this life. And when that happens we can either collapse in Spiritual Failure or we can decide that we are going to voluntarily take it in order to seek after a more sure Result—our Spiritual Relationships, which is our Sustainable Joy that we will have in this life and in the life to come.
Everything we’ve spoken of previously can be used for Spiritual or Physical Desires X CPER. I used the physical example of a journey to a destination to visualize our Desire Obtainment Process, but our Specific Desire can be Spiritual or Physical. When we spoke of our most General Desire being Joy, we were speaking of a Spiritual Desire. We can liken and compare everything we’ve said about Joy to the General Physical Desire for Health.
Our Specific Physical Desires can be Balanced or Imbalanced with our Desire to obtain Health. When we choose to pursue a Specific Physical Desire we are hypothesizing that when we obtain it we will obtain a greater and more sustainable degree of Health. Some example of Balanced Physical Desires are to be able to breathe normally, to see with 20/20 vision, to hear sounds and be able to interpret them, to be able to speak or communicate with others, to be able to smell, to have enough strength in our muscles to lift and carry things, to obtain specific physical skills for a job, to be able to eat and digest our food so that it nourishes our body, to have strong bones that support the structure of our body and the movement, to be able to have children, and to be able to walk and run.
We also have Specific Spiritual Desires and they can be Balanced or Imbalanced with our Desire to obtain Joy. These are mainly dependent on the relationships we have with our Causes and Children. Some examples of Balanced Spiritual Desires are: to love (faith and sacrifice), to have insight and vision, to be able to hear things that are unsaid, to be able to pray and receive personal revelation, to discern things before we actually know for sure, to have endurance through adversity and temptation, to make and keep commitments, to summarize and expand abstract concepts in balance, to have a destiny, to be able to help others so they can obtain Sustainable Joy, to develop relationship skills like patience, humility, gratitude, confidence, and empathy.
Specific Physical Desires can be Imbalanced to the Northwest or to the Northeast. When we seek to obtain them, we sacrifice our Health in the Process. Northwest Physical Desires can be categorized as the need for a rush, adrenaline surges, thrills, and intense sudden flows of Energy that come as a result of roller coasters, extreme sports, gamboling, or crazy stunts. Northeast Physical Desires are for pleasure, luxury, ease, and sensuality that come from indulgence, hedonism, and self-gratification.
Specific Spiritual Desires can also be Imbalanced to the Northwest or to the Northeast. When we seek to obtain them, we sacrifice Joy in the Process. Northwest Spiritual Desires can be categorized as the need for fast, intense difficult relationships. These relationships require us to sacrifice way too much for a short period of time. We’re willing to go overboard because we’re told the pain and sorrow of it is of short duration. We’re not going into it to develop healthy relationship skills and long-term relationships that return Sustainable Joy.
Northeast Spiritual Desires can be categorized as the need for easy relationships—ones that don’t require enough from us. We don’t have to give much to obtain the gratification. We’re not going into these kinds of situations to develop healthy relationship skills and long-term relationships that return Sustainable Joy.
There is also a Balance between Spiritual and Physical Desires. Most of us value Joy above our Health. Sometimes we have to temporarily sacrifice our Health in order to obtain Sustainable Joy. This was demonstrated by our Savior Jesus Christ. He sacrificed his life in order to obtain Sustainable Joy (Eternal Life) and Sustainable Health (Immortality) in the end. Because of him, Death is not the final Physical Result for us either. It seems like it is, but because of our Savior we will all be resurrected and receive Sustainable Health.
So when we put Spiritual and Physical Desires on a compass, we categorize the Spiritual as more General and the Physical as more Specific. We want to strive to balance our Physical Desires with our Spiritual and not the other way around. We do this because the purpose of our Physical life is to develop our Faith, our ability to Sacrifice, and our Sustainable Joy. The Physical life brings with it inherent sacrifices that we must make in order to live and help others live. Without it, we would not have the opportunity to sacrifice.
Spiritual vs. Physical Causes
God is our General Spiritual Cause and he is also our General Physical Cause. He has obtained Immortality, which is Sustainable Health. He is able to give us Immortality. Again, he allows us to die so that we can develop our Faith and ability to sacrifice for others for love and to bind us together in eternal relationships of Joy. After we die, we are restored to an Immortal body that can never die again. That’s why this life is the time to prepare to meet God.
Our more Specific Physical Causes are our biological parents who pass their genetics down to us. Our bodies are the Result of that, which becomes our Cause. We have to work with this body and all of its genetic defects as part of our sacrifice here on earth. Other Specific Physical Causes are our environment and our physical interaction with other people. We have some choices in who and what influences us but in other cases we don’t. We may have been born into a country where there is a dictatorship that prevents all its citizens from obtaining Health. It may actually cause them to be of poor health because they don’t get enough to eat or it works them like slaves.
Our Specific Spiritual Causes are those who teach us the General Desire Obtainment Process. They teach us values, morals, standards. And many fail to teach us these things or teach us lower level values. They train us to grab for what we want and look out for number one. But others sacrifice their lives for us. They teach us by example. When we are younger we don’t have the option of choosing our Specific Spiritual Causes. We follow in the footsteps of our parents. But as we get older and interact with other Specific Causes, we may form Spiritual Desires to change what we have learned. We desire to change how we obtain our Desires and resolve conflicts. We need to be retrained, remade, reorganized. Our previous upbringing becomes a sacrifice as we have endured the Chronic Conflicts that this type of behavior results in. We must further sacrifice old habits for new ones. Thanks to the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we will all have this opportunity. If we choose to be retrained and we come unto him, we will be.
Spiritual Causes teach us how to obtain both our Spiritual and Physical Desires by aligning our Specific Desire Obtainment and Conflict Resolution Processes with the General. They alert us to the traps of Conflicting Causes and their physical substances. They teach us how to avoid them by standing steadfast in Christ. When we develop strong relationship of Sustainable Joy with them, we are protected against overwhelming degrees of Adversity and Temptation.
Spiritual vs. Physical Desire Obtainment Processes
The Process to obtain both our Spiritual and Physical Desires is Physical Sacrifice. Physical Sacrifice requires us to suffer both Physically and Spiritually. We have the agency to choose our Spiritual Processes even though we are subject to Imbalanced Physical people and conditions. Because we can’t always stop the Imbalanced Physical Conditions, we are required to sacrifice. Spiritually we can choose to do this voluntarily, trusting in our General Cause and his overall plan for us to obtain Sustainable Joy or we can kick and scream about it. We can complain about it and refuse to do it. Usually we have to do it anyway. But sometimes we turned to Imbalanced Desires in order to compensate.
If we voluntarily submit to the Imbalanced Physical Conditions we are subject to, our General Cause does two things for us. First, he increases his Peace so that we experience a more intense Joy than we did before as a Result of our suffering. Second, he allows the suffering to motivate us to search for higher levels of knowledge, greater skills, and more strategic Conflict Resolution Processes. Through both of these Processes, our Faith and ability to sacrifice in greater degrees of Adversity and Temptation increase.
The General Balanced Physical Process is to eat a healthy diet with Calories in Balance with the degree of exercise we engage in on a daily basis. In the Northwest we don’t eat enough for how much we exercise. This might be good if we need to lose weight. In the Northeast we eat too much for how little we exercise. This might be good if we need to gain weight. But in General our goal is to eat in Balance with how much we exercise.
When we have control over the Physical Sacrifice Processes we engage in, we need to do our best to Balance them with our General Spiritual Processes. We’ll talk about the Threshold this creates in Levels 5 and 6. It’s within that Threshold that change and growth can occur.
Spiritual vs. Physical Effects
Our most General Physical Effect is Joy. Joy is a Balance of Peace and Energy. Our General Physical Effects are very similar. Feeling Healthy is what we all desires. health is a Balance of Physical Peace and Energy. When our Body is Healthy, it is able to maintain the Balance between Physical incoming and outgoing Energy.
To get a little more Specific with eating right, our goal is to find the Balance between Taste and Nutrition. These are both types of Physical Effects. Taste brings us pleasure while Nutrition challenges our bodies to be fit. If we eat just for the taste of things, we will be tempted to overeat because we’re not giving our body the nutrients it needs. That’s a Northeast Process. If we eat just for the nutrition, we will have a hard time even wanting to eat. We’re doing all the work to prepare healthy foods but if we can’t also enjoy them, then it’s going to be hard to choke them down. Usually this kind of Northwest Process ends us up rebounding to the Northeast. It doesn’t promote Balance.
The same is true on the exercise side of things. We need to find the Balance between strength conditioning and cardio. When we do cardio, endorphins are released that increase both our Physical and Spiritual Energy. When we do strength conditioning and stretching, we increase both our Physical and Spiritual Peace. If we just do the cardio all the time, we experience too much Energy and not enough Peace. Additionally we don’t build or stretch our muscles to be able to resist injury. That’s a Northwest Process. If we just do the strength conditioning and stretching, we experience too much Peace and not enough Energy. We also lose sight of the purpose of increasing strength and flexibility. We do that to prevent injury and atrophy throughout our daily exercising Processes. Our Effects signal this to us so we know before the Result becomes Chronic—before we actually injure ourselves or start losing muscle tissue.
Because we know these things about Physical Effects, we can like them to Spiritual Effects. Spiritual Effects can be more Tasty or more Nutritious. Comforting Peace is more like Taste and obtaining a greater level of Knowledge or reviewing the Knowledge we have already obtained is more like Nutrition.
When we build our Spiritual muscles, we are increasing our Confidence and Gratitude. Confidence and Gratitude are Sustainable Peace. We are able to stand steadfast in the General Desire Obtainment Process despite Conflicting Effects. When we increase our Spiritual flexibility, we’re increasing our Humility and Empathy. Humility and Empathy are Sustainable Energy. We experience a continuous Desire to serve and help others. We’re willing to change and admit our errors in our relationships. When we engage in Spiritual Cardio exercise we’re using our strength and flexibility to stand steadfast where we need to and be flexible where we can help others and endure their Imbalanced behaviors. We find our Balance between Confidence/Gratitude and Humility/Empathy.
Spiritual vs. Physical Results
Our most General Spiritual Result is Sustainable Joy. Our most General Physical Result is Sustainable Health. As already mentioned, we are required to sacrifice even unto death in this life. But because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ that Physical Failure Result is only temporary. In the final Result we will all be resurrected. We need to do all that is within our control to engage in Processes that sustain health. But we have many Imbalanced Specific Physical Causes that we are outside of our control. We are required to endure these trials. If we want to make use of them, we do that voluntarily in order to obtain our Spiritual Desires.
In this life Specific Physical Effects and Results do not necessarily define our Process. Even if we engage in a Balanced Physical Process, we may still end up experiencing Pain and Numbness. Likewise, even if we engage in an Imbalanced Physical Process, we may still experience Balanced Results, at least for a time. It may all seem so unfair. But when we focus on the real goal of this life—to obtain Spiritual relationships of Sustainable Joy, then we understand that the most important Result to track is Sustainable Joy.
That said, no matter what our Imbalanced Specific Physical Causes, if we will strive to engage in the General Physical Desire Obtainment Process by eating right (Nutrition/Taste) in Balance with how much we exercise (Strength-Flexibility/Cardio), then we will obtain the best Physical Results possible for our given genetics.
Things that are regarded as Successful Specific Physical Results in our society are financial success, a lean body, an exceptional running speed, tallness, strength, a certain type of facial structure, body type, and hair color that are regarded as beautiful or attractive.
Things that are regarded as Successful Specific Spiritual Results in our society are patience, endurance, steadfastness, a good listener, faithfulness, forgiving, etc.
So the bottom line is that we sacrifice some desirable Physical Results, both General and Specific, in order to obtain our Spiritual Results. Because we have to deal with the perceived Physical Failures, which are really our temporary or Chronic Conflicts that create the Adversity, we have to reach for Spiritual Success. There comes a day when we figure out no matter how hard we try we’re not going to obtain a certain Physical Desire in this life. And when that happens we can either collapse in Spiritual Failure or we can decide that we are going to voluntarily take it in order to seek after a more sure Result—our Spiritual Relationships, which is our Sustainable Joy that we will have in this life and in the life to come.
