A lady from church just posted on facebook that they spend the weekend in SLC and that the endowment session was beautiful. My experience with the endowment was anything but beautiful; I just didn't see it and still don't. What do TBMs see as being beautiful about it?

I always found it rather upsetting and bizarre, but that's just me.

Me too. Is it just beautiful because they make it be?

I recall doing a session with my district as a missionary in the MTC, and when we got to the celestial room at least half the guys were crying. I can still recall my companion's face clearly, his eyes literally red with tears, and his whole face drawn down. We did a session every week, and the results were always the same that I can remember.

I sat there in that pristine white room, occasionally getting up to consider my own expression in one of the mirrors. I was clearly not moved on the same emotional level as the other guys, and I wondered if this meant there was something wrong with me, or if I didn't have enough faith to experience the spiritual manifestation that they had.

I tried to conjure up the feelings, but it just wasn't happening for me. I felt at peace (it was quiet and I wasn't expected to memorize some discussion or vocabulary list, what do you expect?), but I wasn't ready to start bawling or anything. It was then that I decided that my way of feeling the spirit was different from theirs.

And my way meant sitting there in the celestial room figuring out good explanations for why Adam was expected to study the scriptures when they hadn't been written yet.

Wait do they really believe that?! I don't think I ever heard about Adam being expected to study the scriptures!

I can only think of two references off-hand. The first is where Satan teaches Adam the philosophies of men mingled with scripture ("what scripture?" was the question that went through my mind, "and even if there was scripture, wouldn't Adam have been the person who wrote it?")

The other is the Law of Sacrifice, which we are expected to keep "as contained in the Old and New Testaments," and which the endowment ceremony specifically said was given to Adam when he built his altar.

Don't forget about Satan trying to get Adam to sell his tokens for money. What money?

Wow...I had never thought of that before. Money...there wasn't any money. There were no scriptures. Duh.

I thought of that one during those MTC temple trips too.

Peter: "Do you sell your signs or tokens for money?"
Adam: "What the heck is money? I hold them sacred, though even if I didn't, there wouldn't be anybody to sell them to."

My best answer I came up with to these questions was that Adam must have gotten his endowments much later in life, and we know he lived some 900 years or so.

Later, as I began to accept evolution, I saw these things as evidence that Adam and Eve weren't in fact progenitors of the human race, but were likely just the first two individuals to represent God's religious movement, or some such.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2012 04:13PM by kimball.

In 1993 the Provo temple president told me that the whole ball of wax was allegorical. He said that Adam and Eve didn't get their endowments that way and that Peter, James and John were just representations of angelic priesthood holders. I asked why they didn't just say it was allegorical, and he responded that he thought everyone knew it already. It's like they just make up shit to suit the question.

I considered that too, but it was too close to admitting that the whole thing was made up.

For me, I did think that the celestial room was beautiful, and there was always a peaceful feeling in the temple (I now recognize that that was in part my own interpretation of the mood, my expectations, and what I forced myself to feel), but I never liked the endowments on the whole because they were so illogical. Even when I did believe, I didn't like doing them. It bothered me that there is no reason that an all-powerful, all-knowing God would need sentinels to guard heaven and why secret handshakes (forbidden in the BoM) would get us in there. The things about Adam and scripture and money also caused me doubts, so I tried to avoid it to avoid feeding my doubts.

Or.......wait for it................................Adam and Eve never existed? It's made up!

Does the church hijack "communing with God" so that members are conned into thinking that they only way to do that is in the temple?

I mean, I can go sit by the river and watch the water, clouds, plants, feel the breeze, see the animals, and in doing that am able to reflect on life, eternity, stewardship, responsibility, blessings, and walk away with a renewed clarity and focus. But if I had been raised in the church, maybe I would have believed that the only way to learn about mortality and eternity is in the temple, hence it's beautiful?

I didn't think the endowment was beautiful, but I thought it was peaceful and calm. Of course, I had been very thoroughly innoculated beforehand by my extended family, so I had positive associations with the temple from the start. While I lived in Utah, I went twice a month, then after I moved I was a temple worker at least twice a month in addition to attending as a patron.

When my mother committed suicide, the bottom fell out of the temple for me. I absolutely hated it and had to force myself to go. It was a very abrupt transition. To this day I had no idea why it happened. I'd been a temple worker for years and had to quit because I couldn't stand to be there anymore. But I still believed in the doctrine and thought I was just having a crazy reaction to my mom's death.

After I no longer believed in the gospel, I went through a session one last time, just to see if I could re-capture what I once felt. Um, NO. Big mistake. I high-tailed it out of there as soon as I got through the veil. I felt like I was in the presence of evil.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2012 03:39PM by stbleaving.

They trick you into watching the first part, always wondering if you'll get a peek at Eve. Then after she gets dressed in her Jehovah jumpsuit, you can tell how truly blessed she is, making it all the more regrettable that you didn't get that peek.

Now that I am ex I realize that the endowment film and the Sears catalog are just child's play compared to Google images.

The throat slitting gesture and "suffer my life to be taken" traumatized me. No amount of mental gymnastics could ever turn that into a "beautiful experience". I'm just saying what happened to me. Mormon temples give me nausea. Mormons have the right to think what they want but I won't lie anymore. I guess that makes me an apostate traitor.

I can remember thinking, "How beautiful this all is," as I
pantomimed slitting my own throat. "How wonderful and
spiritual," I thought to myself as I mimicked cutting open my
guts and letting my intestines spill out onto the ground. "How
sacred and profound," I pondered as I went through the motions
of ripping my heart out.

Hahaha +100 XD

Funny. I thought those very same thoughts as baura, word for word, as the nasty old guy felt my buck naked body up with water and oil while mumbling incantations in a trancelike state...

I still find temples well appointed. That is about it. The endowment itself (including the video presentation) are nothing short of bizarre, counter-intuitive, and off-putting.

But like I said, temples are beautiful. Some temples are beautiful. Others are McD'd and contrived. Beautiful surroundings are beautiful surroundings. Maybe she is confusing beautiful surroundings for beautiful traditions/rituals etc.

Well, there was this naked chick in the film, and she was very stunning, but there were always stupid tree branches, and small animals in the most inconvenient of places.

I'm pretty sure that Eve is actually wearing a tube-top with a sort of flowery design. I swear I caught a glimpse of it once. Hmmm, might have to review the hidden camera footage.

yah you'd need to be a MORmON elite /insider/ pal of tyrant Brigham Young in the old days to view Eliza R. Snow playing Eve to get a real dose of nudity in the LDS endowment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbyNEnq-Stw

The first time I went I was too preoccupied by doing everything right.
The other times, well, I thought they were some beautiful movie shots of the part about the creation of the world and it felt good to disconect a bit from 'the world'
But I always felt that there was way too much repetition and it was way too long.
I never liked the initiatories (is that how they were called?)

The first time I went, the part that Lucifer tells we will be in his power if we don't obey every covenants 'made at this alter' scared me a bit but by the last time I went, that part made me want to burst out laughing because it was so 'corny'.

I always thought the shots of the earth during the creation sequence were beautiful. Not that that kept me awake for them.

The rest was tedious, repetitive, and silly.

don't forget us gays!
disappointed that we never even got at least a torso shot of Adam...not even a nipple!
damn their modesty!!

LOL, I never noticed that they always covered up Adam's nipples as well.

There was a time when I did think the temple was beautiful.

In hindsight, the perceived beauty mostly came from believing that Christ himself was walking the halls during the off hours. I always went with a sense of expectation, like some other-world thing might happen at any moment: angels, heavenly choirs, deceased ancestors, or whatever. Of course, nothing really ever happened. Looking back, it almost seemed like a form of self-hypnosis.

As far as the ceremonial aspect of the temple, I had the opposite reaction from most people. Weekly LDS sacrament meetings were so mind-numbingly boring and colorless that I actually welcomed the ritual and pageantry of the temple. It broke the monotony of the shallow religious expression that dominates Mormon culture. I attended after the penalties were removed, so I don't know if that would have changed my experience.

Of course, once I began to examine the temple critically, the doctrinal discrepancies and overt manipulation destroyed any notion that Christ would possibly inspire such a thing. As a natural consequence of this, the perceived beauty went away. Without that layer of spiritual expectation, I see it now as quite a bizarre, mish-mash of ill-fitting literary elements.

I am not answering the question directly but just feel the need to chime in.

As a really serious LDS Teen, I shouldn't have felt strange about the temple but I always did. Baptisms for the dead was a strange concept and the ritual just didn't make sense but I was in need of pats on the back and therefore never questioned a thing.

The first time through the endowment, just prior to mission, completely messed with my head.

Pay Lay Ale, and Swearing to take my own life at 18 while dressed up like a pillsbury dough boy was life altering.

I tried to get my Bishop Father to explain but he refused.

Every visit to the temple thereafter, even on wedding day was torture. I now fully understand why 25 years later.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2012 05:01PM by michaelff.

I love being molested under the guise of religious ritual, then being coerced to pledge to give up everything I own and will ever own, and then being sworn to keep this exploitation and abuse as a secret at the threat of my life. Yah, that was awesome!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTDKUmI-NOE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CiyrZd-kB0

I'll never forget going through the temple for the first time. This was just after they removed the death threats, but while you were still wearing just a poncho while old guys rubbed oil on you here and there.

I was 19, prepping to go on my mission... Even though the old guy never touched me in a naughty place, I remember being extremely uncomfortable. I just kept telling myself that "Mom and Dad said this was OK, they wouldn't tell me to do anything that I wouldn't be OK"... Now, I'm not so sure...

Later during the "movie" portion of the day's torture, I just kept thinking "Isn't this exactly like the secret combinations that the Book of Mormon preaches against?" Not to mention the worry of getting things right, the general weirdness of it all, seeing my parents beaming happily at me while wearing those strange outfits, knowing that I looked just as weird.

Then in the MTC, it was just a chore to get out of the way, on my P-Day no less, nothing says relaxing like taking several hours out of your only day off to watch the worlds most repetitive movie.

I used to think that the Celestial room could be pretty, but now, I do see it as a white version of almost any mid to upscale hotel. They just need to spread some magazines around on the (ironically named) coffee tables and it's a waiting room.

I'll never set foot in a temple again, you couldn't pay me.

I never thought it was beautiful, although I liked the celestial room as it was at least peaceful. I wonder if those who have been told since they were wee tots that the temple is beautiful are more apt to see it in those terms. I was a convert and it was not what I was expecting.

The word 'beautiful' never came to mind. I found it corny, nonsensical, boring....I could go on and on. I didn't like the celestial room much better. Just what is it was I supposed to do there? It wasn't exactly a place where you could feel peaceful and meditate. A brightly lit wide open room with total strangers sitting around on white sofas is not a spiritual experience.

The best part was when it was over and I got dressed and left. I dreaded going to the temple. I tried to like it, but I couldn't find anything about it to like.

I usually left there feeling a bit degraded. Veils over my face felt claustrophobic. Being wrapped in layers of meaningless veils, ponchos, belts,pantyhose,dresses, slips, garments. It made me feel like I was in a straight jacket. I couldn't wait to get that mountain of crap off of me. It's the only time i've ever felt claustrophobic in my life.

Frankly, I hated going to the temple. I can't believe I ever did that to myself.

Stb leaving said, "I felt like I was in the presence of evil."

That was how I felt every time I was in a Mormon temple. That overrode any feeling of peace or beauty that I could have had. Nature is beautiful, even on the dreariest, barest November day, and no one tells you to move on out, to make room for another group, and to pray somewhere else.

Anyone with eyes who has seen really great architecture, can honestly say that Mormon temples are beautiful.

How can a building without windows be anything but creepy and off-putting. Those huge, heavy doors for giants--fake!

A smiling bride in a bridal gown is beautiful.