Is considered a good thing if I am Mormon.

When the voice in Nephi's head told him to decapitate Laban and steal his brass plates, that was a good thing. How lucky was it that Laban's servant hated his boss?

When I was TBM, I hoped to hear God inside my head. But it was a gift reserved for his prophets. I had to settle for being normal. Nephi's paranoid delusions carved upon golden plates could only be a role model, not something I experienced myself.

At least Russell M Nelson has his lighted pen so he can write down the voices in his head. And a wife who writes books about how awesome he is when he takes such dictation. He must be a true prophet. Let's hope he never goes on psych meds.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2023 10:21AM by bradley.

It doesn’t matter if <this> religion is true, what matters is whether or not people believe it is…

Russ & Sister Wendy are riding a chariot that will only delay their passing into history, not prevent it; they pretend not to notice that the wheels are coming off & it’s on fire…

sic transit gloria

It grows larger, naturally...
Outside of Mormonism

In modern times, if you say that you hear voices in your head, or see visions, people are going to encourage you to seek treatment for that.

I was taught to hear the holy ghost/the voice of god instructing me as my own internal voice, except only when I was in a primed state of mind and the voice was saying something positive about the church.

This really screwed with me after my shelf started breaking, because I heard my own internal voice struggling with the things I was researching and discovering saying things in doubt. Like, "Is this Satan? Am I being misled?" was some stuff this internal voice said and versions of those same things. I mistook it for the Holy Ghpst prompting me to turn back and turn away. Funnily enough, I was on the church website itself when discovering these horrible contradictions, so, I didn't actually listen to it because I knew I was right where I was supposed to be. I was on the one resource I knew I could trust at the time.

I don't really remember how I got my own internal voice back. It was a progressive process, I know that. I just remember that first few months feeling more and more betrayed, the more I learned about this corporation and how they'd taken advantage of me. They'd twisted me inside. Told me that my own voice inside, my most intimate partner and guide in this life was actually two outer beings warring to manipulate and control me. I had to learn to trust this internal voice as my own again. They'd told me that bad or negative feelings were evil, that desire was evil, that I was not safe when I felt angry or sad. It took me a while to trust myself to let my feelings be felt and to trust my own desires as a natural part of me that I can choose to follow or not.

Many small voices play in my head, and none of them are ‘small voices of silence’. But I no longer look for God or gods among them. I only require that they speak well, preferably poetically.



After quoting 1Kings 19:9–12, which ends with “And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice,” Harold Bloom goes on to say:

“The Hebrew *qol demmanah daqah* is oxymoronic. It could be translated as “a soundless stillness,” “a small voice of silence,” or, better yet, “a voice of thin silence.” The King James Version triumphs in “a still small voice.”

—Possessed By Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism—

I started this thread to mock Mormon weirdness, but of course intuition is a vital human skill. The problem may be human language, which is not the language of spirit. Or in the words of Lao Tsu, the Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao.

On rare occasions the "voice in the head" intervenes to prevent disaster. Often enough that one would have to entertain the existence of unseen entities beyond the physical realm.

The body is said to be the placenta of the soul. Mormonism may have something with the concept of "feels true". If Mormonism feels true to you, maybe it is true. Until it doesn't and then it isn't. Why would I belong to a church that sees that as a problem?

“The body is said to be the placenta of the soul.”

I’ve not heard that before. Interesting. Have to look into it. Aristotle or something?


Oh, I meant not to impede mockery. And mocking the Mormon sense of the Holy Ghost and his ‘still, small voice’ is necessary and good. I was just spinning off the cuff selfishly, per usual.


On voices and feelings and truth: I’ve read too much poetry by now to untangle all that into further words. Can8t do it. But I can say that I often feel something is true long before I can demonstrate its truth. And conversely, I have known things to be true upon demonstration that somehow never end up feeling quite true.

One of the larger problems of recovering from Mormonism is learning to trust our feelings and intuitions. On the way out of LDSinc sometimes rationality and ‘critical thinking’ are overvalued.

My son hears voices. It is a daily thing. Yesterday, he woke me up and needed my phone. (He threw his phone out in the sprinklers last summer as he didn't like what it was doing--can't remember what it was.) He told me he needed to call 911 as someone had hacked into his computer and his playstation 5 so that they were nonfunctional. He had to call 911. I didn't argue with him and then realized I couldn't text his father who lives downstairs as I now didn't have a phone. Sheriff called my ex and the sheriff talked to my son for a while and gave him his card. They said they couldn't admit him as long as he isn't willing to go. He is 37.

I luckily had an appt with my therapist yesterday. Hadn't been to see him in a while, but had called for an appt because of other things my son has been doing. It was a huge help and he provided me with a lot of information.

(My ex's sisters and mother and a niece have mental illness like this.)

True that Summer!
cl2notloggedin I so admire your strength all these years in dealing with all that has been put before you. I'm sorry about your son's mental illness. I hope he can someday get the help he deserves.