Endowed From On High

Yesterday I received my Endowment in the Las Vegas Temple.


Wow.


It's kinda like this; In Church for the past 19 years they've been teaching me how to count.


We started off with "1, 2, 3", and eventually got all the way to "100". It was all fairly basic, and I learned it in the first few years of life. These are the "Primary Answers"; if you're asleep in Seminary and wake up to getting called on by the teacher asking you a question, you can go back to the basics, because it's pretty likely that the answer to any question is "Jesus", "The Prophet", or "Satan".


And Then, when I was in my early teens, I realized that there are also parenthesis; that what I'd been taught before has another layer of meaning. 1 is always 1, but it is also 1(2), 1(3), and many many more. Just as the Savior taught in parables, when you're ready to receive more light and knowledge, you'll understand more. It's been my goal in life to try and go into all the "deeper things" and, essentially learn everything. Of course that'll never happen, but I'm sure that when I'm old I'll be a lot closer than I am now. And that's the way it's been for me.


Until yesterday, when I found out that there's also multiplication.


The Temple takes everything I've ever learned, and puts it into one cohesive unit. Now I know that 2 X 3 = 6, that things are connected in ways I could never have imagined. It's a bit startling, in a good way. Things that I never really considered to be related are so tightly connected that they are practically two facets of the same gem of knowledge, two sides of the same coin, two pieces of an infinite puzzle.


Only having been once, I've just realized the most basic of the most basic things. I've seen the beginnings of the inter-connectivity of the Gospel, how every doctrine is completed by every other doctrine. Nothing is out of order, nothing is out of place, every piece references every other piece in multiple ways. It's one of the most profound experiences I've ever had, and I'm so excited to go back on Tuesday and learn even more! But the best part?


I know that, somewhere down the road, after I've discovered everything I need to learn, I'm going to find the beginnings of the next level of things, and the cycle will start all over again.