Chapter 13: The Mountain

Since life’s journey is often thought of as climbing a mountain, it makes sense that the Soulmates Journey would also take place upon that mountain.  When we speak of learning advanced Soulmates strategies, we’re talking about an incremental upward progression. Because we have chosen God as our Marriage Counselor, husband and wife are climbing the mountain of the Lord together (3 Nephi 11:21-27).  We are here on earth to progress to become like him.  As both spouses climb higher, they become more like the Lord. Or we can think of it as becoming more like our Heavenly Father and his Wife.

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.” ~Isaiah 2:2

"Life can be like hikers ascending a steep and arduous trail." ~Elder M. Russell Ballard

There are various levels or degrees on a mountain.  In our relationship with the Lord and with our spouse, we progress through these degrees as each of us individually learns to obtain desires and resolve conflicts the way the Lord does.  When both spouses incrementally learn his advanced Soulmates Marriage strategies, we not only ascend but we also meet our spouse in the middle.  We get along better.  We rarely fight.  When we do, forgiveness and repentance happen more swiftly.  We develop top quality relationship skills.

Where each couple stops on that upward climb is a matter of agency as well as destiny.  The higher levels require both spouses to sacrifice more for each other.  The greater the sacrifice, the more intensely each will experience Sustainable Attraction towards each other.  This basically means they will need each other and so rely on each other more than anything or anyone else, other than God.  We’re putting all of our eggs in one basket.  

Listen: "(Everything I do) I Do It For You" by Bryan Adams

Some people are scared of this kind of relationship.  If the basket falls, all the eggs will be broken.  I hear them singing about this fear in other love songs.  

"We're heading for something.  Somewhere I've never been.  Sometimes I am frightened but I'm ready to learn of the power of love." ~"The Power of Love" by Air Supply

This kind of relationship is deep and requires intense faith as well as intense faithfulness.  It requires both individuals to hike high up into the mountain.  At the same time we can say that they are going deep inside the mountain as they become physically and spiritually one with each other.

"Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." ~Matthew 19:6

The wider levels require less of a sacrifice towards one person.  There are others involved in the relationship.  Spouses don’t just rely on each other but also on other family members and friends, who in turn rely upon them.  When these relationships are ordained by God, they are sustainable.  Attraction towards our spouse at these wider levels is less intense.  This basically means that we can rely on a number of people throughout our journey and throughout eternity.  We divide our eggs up between a few different baskets.  If someone drops the basket, not all the eggs will be broken.  This kind of relationship requires all involved to settle in the same locality on the mountain.  All involved go wide instead of going deep.

We decide how high or wide we want to climb by how satisfied we are with the intensity of Sustainable Attraction we experience within our marriage.  Most of us lie somewhere in the middle of going deep and going wide.  This is how we identify our destiny—the destination to which we said we wanted to travel during our sojourn here on earth.

It is not necessary to climb to the highest peak on the mountain to obtain a Soulmates Marriage.  But it is necessary to desire to climb to a similar level as our spouse.  If one desires to go much higher and deeper than the other, Attraction will fail over time.  This is a kind of Deal Breaker, not with God but with our spouse.

Personal Story
This is the Deal Breaker I am accountable for in my marriage.  Looking back I see there were two reasons for it.  First of all, I didn't yet understand all these things I'm talking about now.  I was blind to them.  But I felt them.  I sensed the mountain and my own need to climb it if I ever wanted to find balance in myself.  For whatever reason I could not find that balance "in the valley" or at lower levels of the mountain.  That meant that the Forcefield was not fully functional so I was extremely vulnerable to adversity.  I felt like I was in the middle of a storm all the time yet the storm was mainly inside of me.  

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires." ~Isaiah 54:11

The higher I climbed, the more the storms abated.  

The second reason is that I thought the goal for everyone was to climb as high as possible on the mountain.  That became my own mission.  I wanted to understand it all and I wanted to live what I understood.  I needed and wanted to put all of my eggs in one basket.  I did not and even could not rely on multiple sources for my own balance.  I had been living that way for years and it wasn't working.  In short, I wanted to become like Christ.  But everyone defines that so differently because they all see Christ so differently.  I hear such different descriptions of him from so many different sources.  And I think it's supposed to be that way.  What we come to believe Christ is defines who we are because we see him as a representation of the best any human being can become.  So however we come to understand what he is, is what we will aim to become. Yet we know that he exists independent of our personal definitions of him.  That means some of us will be more accurate than others. For my part, I wasn't interested in proving myself to anyone other than God or manipulating the truth to prove I was seeing him more accurately than others were.  I didn't want to play that game. I just wanted to get it right--get him right.  I really wanted to know who he was and how he lived and died the way he did because he was so amazingly beautiful.  I wanted to learn from him and repent for everything I possibly could so I could become that beautiful too.  So this is how I broke the deal with my husband.  I desired to climb higher rather than wider while he desired to go wider instead of climbing as high.  He didn't want all of his eggs to be in one basket.  Over time the distance between us became too much to sustain attraction.

The Mountain of the Lord and thus a Soulmates Marriage can also be compared to Alma’s planting and nourishing of a seed until it grows up to become a large fruit-bearing tree Alma 32:28-43. Even if we want to climb to a sub-peak on the mountain, we can consider that to be our peak of the mountain.  It is our final destination.  Alma 32:42-43 describes what this destination looks like:  

“And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst.  Then, my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith, and your diligence, and patience, and long-suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you.”

It's not a competition between marriages or even between spouses.  It has nothing to do with that.  But it is imperative that the spouses are balanced with one another on the mountain for a Soulmates Marriage to be obtained.