Things as they really are - Cobb has a Totem, do you?

The person who posted this youtube video was probably just in the theater filming this with their digital camera, or more likely at home because every time I saw that part in the theater there was a "OHHH" by the whole crowd. Either way, if you have seen this movie you experienced the crazy feeling that came after that scene where you don't know if you are also dreaming. When I was walking out of the theater for the first time, I thought that I was in a dream. It blew my mind. It was the first time I had been taken that far into the story and idea of a movie since the last time I had seen one of Christopher Nolan's films (The Dark Knight). It really made me ask myself a question: What is real?

So many philosophers have asked this question including Plato in his classic Allegory of the Cave. Feel free to click and watch this on my homepage. The prisoners in this cave are convinced that the only thing that is real are the shadows on the wall. That is all they know. That is all they have ever known. Until one of them is released and is dragged up the path and into the light of the day. His mind is blown in similar fashion as he begins to see things as they really are. He sees the light of the day and a sun and a tree and a person walking and people dancing (all of which are things he never had imagined).

Moses had a similar experience. He was about as high as you could get in society and politics in Egypt. He knew Egypt in all its grandeur and had everything the world had to offer.

Then one day he had a vision. He was able to reach into the heavens with the eyes of his understanding quickened by divine allowance. God showed him everything: "there was not a particle of it which he did not behold..." (see Moses 1). The closest thing we have to this now is what we get from the Hubble Deep Field imagery (which is also quite amazing). After Moses saw these things he said: "I know that I am nothing, which thing I never had supposed."

On top of Mt. Sinai where Moses had this vision.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image

How could you suppose such a thing? It is seemingly impossible to conceive something so vast and reaching with the human brain. Even that image that was taken by Hubble makes me have a cerebral-server overload (every dot in that image is an individual galaxy). I feel so small. But it is something that makes me also realize that there is so much more than is on the surface. We only see what is in our immediate presence and what is within our peripheral view. So how do we know and understand what is real and what is not?

Jacob answers this question after mentioning the impossibility of man to comprehend. He says:

"the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not...it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be..." (Jacob 4:13)

Therefore, the Spirit is the only way to know the way things really are. What is the alternative? Just Google it. Right? What if you aren't "feeling lucky" in your search or it doesn't give you the results that you are looking for or the only result you get says: "did you mean (fill in the blank)" and it is not even close to what you are looking for. At some point you will reach a moment in your life when you can't just go to Google for an answer. Especially an answer about what is real - an answer about what to do next in your life, and about who you really are and always have been. The only way to know what is truly real is to have the Spirit. This allows you to access the incomprehensible even just for a moment. In the movie Inception, Dom Cobb has what he calls a totem that helps him to know that he is not dreaming. It is something that only he knows the exact dimension of and that is unique to him. Something that when he uses it and engages all his focus on it, it lets him know that he is not dreaming and that things are real. Cobb spent a lot of time in a dreamworld that was not real. A place that had such high fidelity that he lived there for years and couldn't tell the difference. The dreamworld seemed just as real as anything he knew, but it wasn't. The only way to discern was the totem.

We live in what could be called a dreamworld. Jacob even recognizes it as such: "our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream" (Jacob 7:26). This is because we are not from this world and even though there are inklings of reality in many things in this world, there is never a fullness unless we tap into the source of reality and look to where we are from. And the way to tap into that source is through the Holy Ghost. The Spirit is our totem. It is the only way to know things as they really are. But do we really take advantage of it? Do we seek the Spirit? Or are we content with what we already know and with the pseudo-reality that confronts us every day? I feel like I live far below my privilege in using my totem. Here are some passages that make me realize how much is available:

I shall not attempt to paint to you the feelings of this heart, nor the majestic beauty and glory which surrounded us on this occasion; but you will believe me when I say, that earth, nor men, with the eloquence of time, cannot begin to clothe language in as interesting and sublime a manner as this holy personage. No; not has this earth power to give the joy, to bestow the peace, or comprehend the wisdom which was contained in each sentence as they were delivered by the power of the Holy Spirit!

This is Oliver Cowdery attempting to describe an encounter with reality, when he was visited by a glorified heavenly being - John the Baptist. (find this on the last page of Joseph Smith History) He continues:

Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught...but fiction feeds...many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind.

I also love these words of C.S. Lewis (in "The Weight of Glory"):

We are half-hearted creatures fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

These words make me want to reach higher and search deeper for my own totem, for the Spirit which will help me know what is real, who I really am and who I always have been. Lewis explains this further in my favorite chapter of Mere Christianity. With the Spirit we are given a username and password (as it were) to access for a small moment, reality. That is the only reality there is on this earth, and it is not from this earth.

When, through a process we call inspiration and revelation, we are permitted at times to tap [the] divine databank, we are accessing, for the narrow purposes at hand, the knowledge of God. No wonder that experience is so unforgettable! (Neal A. Maxwell - Meeting the Challenges of Today)

Indeed, an encounter with the only source of reality we have is an amazing experience. I just need to use my totem more often and truly tap into that source of the knowledge of God. Anyone can, if they will.

But as it has been written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nether hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God. (1 Cor. 2:9-10)

Therefore it is given to abide in you; the record of heaven; the Comforter; the peaceable things of immortal glory; the truth of all things; that which quickeneth all things, which maketh alive all things; that which knoweth all things, and hath all power according to wisdom... (Moses 6:61).

See also Things as The Really Are

It's Magic Pony Time

The question is, which magic pony do I ride?

Last night we had the annual company Christmas party. I have been kind of busy lately and not very responsible for my social life and was therefore dateless. Everyone at a company Christmas party has a date or a wife or a husband and so going alone is always a little awkward. So I decided to sit at the table with some of the directors of the company so as to glean from their wisdom and build rapport. I sat next to one of our directors who just came to our company after being with Google China. He always has something interesting to say and he was also conveniently dateless. I always like to observe people who have made a great impact like Jared and as I was looking over, I saw that he had a couple of note cards. I thought he must be

studying or something or just had some idea pop into his head about a new product or feature that he wanted to code. Then as I looked closer (call me snoopy), I saw a bullet point with "Ride the Magic Pony" written. This kind of threw me off. I expected anything but a magic pony on a notecard of a multimillionaire from Google. But as he got up in the end to speak, he said some things that really made me think about my life right now. What direction I am going and where the destination will finally be.

His speech was about the past and future of the company. He talked about the past starting in the basement of Scott Smith (he is the one in the video below), the BYU marketing research professor who needed a tool to do his research online and came up with this idea. Then to a few developers and sales guys, then more and a new building, then buying the building, then over 100 employees, and hundreds of thousands of users and now millions of responses monthly with clients all over the world. Next week we will be again moving to a new building where even more growth can happen.

At the end of the night every employee received an irregularly hefty cash bonus along with an awesome backpack that was stuffed with high-quality embroidered hooded sweatshirts. At last year's Christmas party they had a raffle for one flatscreen 50 inch HDTV. I'll just say that this year, there was no raffle. Everyone got one, and more.

Then Jared said something as he looked down at the notecard I saw about the future of this company. He said something to the effect of: "I have been at many great companies before, Word Perfect, Novell, Google, what have you,... and there is always a point in the progress of the company where it begins to significantly expand and then explode in just a few years. It's what I call the 'magic pony time'. You all have the opportunity to make a decision. You can stay with Qualtrics and ride the magic pony till you see that you wont need to worry about money anymore, or you can have great experiences elsewhere. But this is the magic pony time - when you can get on or get off and either way you will see this company do things that no other company has ever done...." and he went on.

Needless to say, it has made me think A LOT about what I am doing with my life. Where I am in the company. What I have accomplished there. Where I could be in 5 years, and whether I want to ride the magic pony of Qualtrics or find another pony to ride. Another successful businessman (who was the visiting father of one of my dear friends at the company) told his daughter (who then mentioned to me later) that if we stayed at Qualtrics, we would never have to worry about money and to "stay if you can".

All this has been difficult for me to digest as I have been planning to go to grad school all along. Money is very comfortable. More money is even more comfortable. And I like the comfort, and being the dateless snooper that I was, I thought about supporting a family and how cheap it is to have a baby (though I am neither pregnant nor married) under the insurance they have and how great the benefits are. I just have a picture in my mind of someone who worked for Amazon, or facebook who left because they didn't really see a future in it because they thought it was boring or that it was not for them, then they kick themselves now that these companies are booming successes. So for the next five years (which will very much influence the next 50 years) I will either be at the Q developing new ideas and building it, or I will be at grad school, or I will be doing something else entirely. So what do the Ponies look like?

Magic Pony #1

Score well on the GRE this Friday, finish all the grad apps (some of the deadlines have already passed for my top choices). Some are not till early to mid January. Go to grad school in the fall of 2011 by myself, hopefully with scholarships.

Top picks: UMass Amherst, Penn State, U of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, University of Michigan. All programs are in communications and media effects. I was informally offered an internship position for the summer near Boston that is totally relevant to the field and I have been preparing for grad school for my whole undergrad career.

Why I should go:

It makes a lot of sense. I am passionate about knowledge. I am passionate about education and the current effect of the technology explosion/revolution and the media on everyone and everything in the world. I love history and knowing what the masses are thinking and the direction they are going. What is happening now with technology and the media has NEVER happened in all history (at least on this world) and there isn't really a reference for what is happening. I have high aspirations and would like to have more than a bachelors degree in psychology from BYU in the end. The longer I wait (if I decided to wait another 20 months - if I don't go in the fall, that's what it would be), the less valued and relevant my undergraduate letters of recommendation will be.

Why I should not go:

It is expensive (without an amazing scholarship or series of grants). I still don't know what exactly are the jobs that a masters or PhD lead to (other than a professor of communications or a research consultant). I feel like my search has not been comprehensive in where to go. I just feel like there are places that I don't know about and I am making a decision to go to (the ones listed above) because I haven't heard of many others in what I am looking for. Though I have a fervid passion for learning, I don't know if I eventually want to end up in academia. It does seem like more people trust you if you have PhD after your name, but really though, who cares in the end if I can still learn and can comfortably support my family? Speaking of family, I don't have my own. I'm not married. I am not even dating anyone. This can change pretty fast and I may find some amazing and special young woman before I ship out in 8 months, but if not? Should I fly solo? I think not. I always told myself I would never go to grad school alone. Call me a banal Mormon, but in the end what matters most? Family matters and if I end up with 3 advanced degrees and respect and research and all the erudition this world has to offer and yet no one to share with? What then? Start a facebook fan page? No. That doesn't feel right. I do want more education. Don't get me wrong. I've always wanted to be Dr. Proctor. But I feel like I need to follow the counsel of one of the prophets and slow down, and remember what matters most. Here are some penetrating words:

"...it is good advice to slow down a little, steady the course, and focus on the essentials when experiencing adverse conditions.This is a simple but critical lesson to learn. It may seem logical when put in terms of trees or turbulence, but it’s surprising how easy it is to ignore this lesson when it comes to applying these principles in our own daily lives. When stress levels rise, when distress appears, when tragedy strikes, too often we attempt to keep up the same frantic pace or even accelerate, thinking somehow that the more rushed our pace, the better off we will be."

So I feel that slowing down and not trying to forget everything in life other than grad school and GRE prep would be wise. Plus I am scheduled to take it in 6 days and not prepared as I should be. I just can't get my speed up. I know a lot of the stuff. I just need to be more nimble.

Magic Pony #2

Hold back for 20 months. Study longer for the GRE. Get a better grasp on exactly what I want to study in grad school while building multiple streams of income, taking more time for social endeavors, and developing some things at Qualtrics that will establish me as credible and dependable.

Why I should do this:

Because it feels better. I know that in this time frame I could create multiple streams of income that will be a huge blessing not only during grad school, but for the rest of my life. I already have the ideas for them, but just need to "push the button" and begin. Many of them are things that I am almost as passionate about as education and that would very possibly be a better way to support a family than being a professor. I currently am giving up everything other than food and my job and church to figure this out. I have sequestered myself to my room and the library to study so that I can study more. I do love studying, however, I also want to love people and to finally love one young woman. I treasure these words from Thomas Jefferson about this in his inner debate between love and intellectualism:

“Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly; & they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives.”

I love this. I seriously want to be an educated person like TJ was, but even deeper within is the desire to be a supportive loving husband and a confident dependable father who enjoys on a regular basis these "spasms of the heart". I haven't had such spasms for a while. The only spasms I have had were due to food poison! Yuck.

Additionally, if Qualtrics really does explode and become the worlds authority in research, it will be a good team to be on. Who needs a PhD when all the PhDs come to you for help already?

And I won't have a heart attack because of the stress that I feel right now. I could actually enjoy the Christmas festivities and focus on people instead of tasks.

What makes me nervous about this:

I kind of already did it once last year and I hate feeling like I am a consistent giver-uper. I look indecisive and unprepared. It makes my letters of recommendation fade in meaning if I want to ever use them (it is hard for professors to recommend me if they don't remember me because of how long it has been). It even could seem that I am 26 years old and have no definite pathway in life. These are the main things that I worry about. Or if I end up losing the window of opportunity for grad school (which I don't see happening) and Qualtrics doesn't pull through (which I also think is hard to imagine).

Magic Pony #3?

Something else. Go to a film school? Work my way up at some other technology company after establishing myself at Qualtrics? Other opportunities unforeseen?

I am leaning heavily to Magic Pony #2. What do you think?

PS - I commend you for reading this far.