The Pride Cycle of Recovery and Grace

 Dear Friend,

In our journey of recovery, we often rediscover truths that the scriptures have long taught — that our spiritual life moves in cycles. We rise, we stumble, we learn, and by grace, we are restored. The Book of Mormon calls this pattern the pride cycle, but in recovery, we might call it the awakening of dependence upon God.

1. Prosperity — Spiritual Growth and Gratitude (Alma 50:18–20)

When we live in gratitude — faithful, prayerful, and service-minded — life flourishes. Recovery deepens, relationships heal, and we feel God’s peace. Yet even here, we must stay alert: blessings are safest when they lead us to gratitude, not complacency. “Thank You, God, for grace undeserved. Keep me mindful that all I have comes from You.”

2. Pride — Forgetting Dependence on God (Helaman 12:1–3)

Pride is not always loud or arrogant. Sometimes it sounds like, 'I’m fine now; I don’t need a meeting today.' But pride separates us from the very Source of recovery. It whispers that we are self-sufficient — when in truth, recovery begins and ends with surrender.

3. Destruction — Inner Turmoil and Separation (Alma 32:13)

When self-will takes over, we lose our serenity. We feel the old restlessness and fear return. It isn’t punishment — it’s awakening. This moment of inner storm reminds us that peace cannot be built on pride. The good news: even here, the Spirit waits patiently for our return.

4. Humility & Repentance — Grace Restored (Ether 12:27)

Every time we turn back to God, He receives us — not with reproach, but with renewal. In AA, this is the spirit of Steps 7 and 11: humility, prayer, and a daily seeking of conscious contact. Through confession, service, and stillness, we realign with grace. The light returns, and the cycle becomes a spiral — upward, deeper, closer to Christ.

Reflection and Challenge

When you find yourself somewhere in this cycle, pause and ask:
- Am I living in gratitude or self-reliance?
- What blessings have I forgotten to give thanks for today?
- What step of humility can I take right now to restore peace?

The beauty of recovery is that the cycle never ends in despair. Each return to humility leads us higher — from pride to peace, from suffering to surrender, and from self to God.

Closing Thought

“Humility is not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less.” — C.S. Lewis

In this way, the Pride Cycle becomes not a warning of doom, but a map of grace — a reminder that every fall is a call to rise again, and every rising begins in surrender.

Note on the 'Pride Cycle':

The pattern of prosperity, pride, suffering, humility, and renewal appears repeatedly throughout the Book of Mormon, especially in the books of Alma, Helaman, and Ether. However, the term 'Pride Cycle' and its circular illustration come from modern missionary materials such as Preach My Gospel and the Missionary Handbook, where this recurring spiritual lesson is summarized for teaching and personal reflection.

Personal Reflection Notes:

🌿 Faith Through Fire: Alma 14 and the Witness of Eternal Grace

 Dear Reader,

There are moments in scripture that confront us with suffering so deep that only faith can interpret it.
In Alma 14, the prophet Alma and his companion Amulek are forced to watch as women, children, and sacred writings are burned by their persecutors. The scene is almost unbearable—yet in the stillness of that fire, Alma hears the Spirit:

“The Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory.”

The silence of God is not absence. It is a trust in eternity. The fire that destroys the body refines the soul.

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The Ancient Witness

In this passage, Alma’s refusal to act is not weakness but surrender to divine will. Like Christ before His accusers, he embodies faith that does not demand rescue. The martyrs’ deaths become living testimony that grace cannot be consumed.

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The Medieval Witness: Joan of Arc

Fifteen centuries later, another soul stood in the fire. Joan of Arc, a teenage girl who obeyed her divine call, was condemned and burned in 1431.
Her courage lit a nation and proved that conscience guided by faith outlives its persecutors. She declared:

“I am not afraid… I was born to do this.”

Her flames echoed the faith of Alma’s followers—the same fire of purification, not defeat.

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The Modern Prophet: Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith’s final moments in Carthage Jail mirror Alma’s captivity. Both faced mobs inflamed by fear and pride. Both met death with faith unbroken.
Joseph’s cry, “O Lord my God!”, rises with the same conviction that no bullet, no flame, can end the light of truth. His life and death became a modern witness of restoration and grace.

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The Collective Witness: The Holocaust

And then, in our own age, came a darkness that sought to erase an entire people.
The burning of Torah scrolls and the murder of Jewish families during the Holocaust repeat Alma 14’s tragedy on a scale the world can barely fathom. Yet survivors like Viktor Frankl bore the eternal message of grace:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

That freedom—the freedom of the spirit to love, forgive, and remember God—is grace itself.

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The Eternal Thread

From Alma’s martyrs to Joan’s pyre, from Carthage Jail to Auschwitz, the pattern holds:
Human cruelty cannot extinguish divine mercy.
Every age has its witnesses who remind us that faith is stronger than fire.

Eternal grace does not prevent the flames—it transforms them into light.
And in that light, we glimpse the truth of the Resurrection: death is not the end of faith, but its revelation.

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Closing Reflection

Perhaps the purpose of Alma 14 is not to make us question God’s power but to awaken our trust in His promise.
For every soul who stands steadfast in love and truth, the fire becomes holy ground.
The same grace that received Alma’s martyrs still burns quietly in the hearts of all who choose faith over fear.

“Neither death, nor life… shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
— Romans 8:38-39

Perhaps you have your own thoughts on faith over fear.  Share them.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen 

The Soul’s Return to God: Mary’s Five Steps and the Twelve Steps of Recovery

 

A Journey of Remembering, Healing, and Light

Dear Reader,

The Gospel of Mary offers one of the most moving portraits of the soul’s spiritual awakening found in early Christian writings. It tells of the soul’s ascent through the powers of wrath — the inner forces that keep us bound in ignorance and fear — and of its return to divine peace and unity with God.

Mary’s vision is not of punishment, but of liberation — a recovery of divine identity.
And in its essence, her teaching parallels the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous: a path of surrender, self-examination, and spiritual awakening that restores the soul to sanity and grace.

Both Mary’s “five steps” and AA’s Twelve Steps guide us toward the same truth — that we are not defined by darkness, but called to rise in light.

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Step One: Awakening to Knowledge — Remember Who You Are

Mary’s journey begins when the Savior teaches her, “Where the mind is, there is the treasure.”
She discovers that true knowledge — gnosis — comes from turning inward, not outward. The soul remembers that it was created by God, not by the world.

This is the first act of awakening: realizing that we have been lost in illusion and must return to the Source.

AA Parallel: Steps 1–3 — admitting our powerlessness and turning our will and life over to a Higher Power — awaken us to the truth that we cannot heal ourselves.
We remember who we are: children of God, not slaves to our fears.

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Step Two: Separation from the Powers — Seeing Through Illusion

As the soul rises, it meets the seven “powers of wrath”: darkness, desire, ignorance, zeal for death, the kingdom of the flesh, false wisdom, and anger.
Each claims authority over the soul, saying, “You belong to me.”
The soul answers, “You did not see me nor know me; I belong to the All.”

Here Mary reveals that liberation comes through seeing clearly — through recognizing false attachments and illusions.

AA Parallel: Steps 4 and 5 — the moral inventory and admission of wrongs — uncover our own “powers” of resentment, fear, and pride.
We bring them into the light, where they lose their hold.

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Step Three: Recognition of the True Self — The Old Self Falls Away

After confronting the powers, the soul realizes that it was never truly bound by them.
Mary’s soul proclaims, “What binds me has been slain; what turns me about has been overcome.”
This is the moment of rebirth — the false self dies, and the true self begins to live.

AA Parallel: Steps 6 and 7 — becoming ready to have God remove our defects of character and humbly asking Him to do so — mark our turning point.
We no longer defend our old identity; we let it fall away in trust.

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Step Four: Liberation in the Spirit — Rest in the Light of God

Passing through the final power, the soul finds peace and stillness.
Mary says the soul is “free from the chains of forgetfulness.”
It no longer resists or fears but abides in divine presence — in harmony with the Good.

AA Parallel: Steps 8–11 — making amends, continuing inventory, and seeking conscious contact with God — restore spiritual balance and serenity.
We learn to live in the light, guided by grace, one day at a time.

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🌈 Step Five: Bearing Witness — Sharing the Vision

When Mary returns from her vision, she tells the disciples what she has seen.
Though some doubt her, she speaks boldly, sharing her experience of truth and liberation.
Her witness becomes her ministry.

AA Parallel: Step 12 — having had a spiritual awakening, we carry the message to others.
What once shamed us becomes the testimony of God’s mercy.

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💫 The Journey of the Soul and the Heart of Recovery

Mary’s “five steps” reveal that the path back to God is not about escape, but remembrance.
Each time we awaken, see, surrender, rest, and share, we recover our original wholeness.
Her words echo the promise found in recovery and in Christ alike:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

The Twelve Steps help us live that blessing — not just once, but daily.
Through honest inventory, humility, and prayer, we ascend the same inner ladder Mary described — from darkness to light, from fear to love, from forgetfulness to divine remembrance.

In the end, the soul’s return to God is not a journey of distance, but of awakening.
God has been with us all along.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Light as Truth: The Spirit That Reveals

 

Dear Reader,

In my journey through recovery and faith, I have learned that light is more than brightness. It is truth made visible—understanding born in the soul when confusion and self-will yield to honesty and grace. When I open my heart in prayer or confession, when I admit what I once tried to hide, a gentle illumination begins to rise within.

AA speaks of living in the sunlight of the Spirit. Those words describe the moment when honesty replaces denial and love replaces fear. Step by step, we uncover what was hidden, and light enters the dark corners of the heart. Each admission, each act of service, each quiet surrender lets truth shine a little brighter.

The Scriptures echo this truth. Jesus taught, “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on a stand, so it gives light to all.” (Matthew 5:15; Gospel of Thomas 33). The Doctrine and Covenants reveals the same pattern: “That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light… receiveth more light, and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day.” (D&C 50:24). Across all these voices, light and truth are inseparable—divine understanding that grows only when shared.

The earliest followers of Christ described this same radiance. In the Gospel of Truth we read:

“The light appeared and removed the darkness.”

And the Odes of Solomon 36 sing:

“I beheld His light, and by it I was saved.”

To them, light was not simply moral clarity—it was the presence of God awakening memory, restoring wholeness, revealing that the darkness was never final. As the Gospel of Philip reminds us, light and darkness are “inseparable,” each revealing the meaning of the other. It is through our struggles that we awaken to the truth already within us.

Modern voices echo the same eternal principle.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
“In the midst of darkness, light persists.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” — C.S. Lewis

And President Russell M. Nelson calls disciples of Christ to “let His light so shine” that others may glorify the Father.

Recovery teaches that darkness is not destroyed by force—it is dispelled by truth. Every Fourth Step inventory, every act of amends, every prayer of Step Eleven is a movement from shadow into light. Our wounds and mistakes become windows through which the Spirit shines. And when we share our story, that light is multiplied in others—just as one candle ignites another without losing its own flame.

So today, let us not hide the lamp of understanding we have been given. Let our experience, strength, and hope become a beacon for those still stumbling in darkness. The light we share is not ours alone—it is the reflection of a Divine Source: Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, whose love illuminates all paths and all hearts.

May we walk in that Light, live in that Truth, and let the Spirit’s brightness heal our hearts and guide our way.  Amen

Becoming Whole: When the Two Become One

                 
Dear Reader,

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus speaks a mysterious but deeply moving truth:

“When you make the two into one, and make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and so make the male and the female a single one so that the male won’t be male nor the female female… then you’ll enter the kingdom.”

At first, these words puzzled me. But as I sat with them, I began to see their wisdom not as an instruction about gender or identity, but as a call to wholeness — a healing of the divided self.

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Discovering the Unity Within

When Jesus says, “make the two one,” I believe He is speaking to the human condition — how we so easily live divided between spirit and body, faith and fear, masculine and feminine, divine and human.
To “make the two one” is to let these parts of ourselves find peace together in God.

I have lived long enough to see that love and life do not fit neatly into categories.
I have been married three times — twice to women and once to a man. Each relationship taught me something essential about love, patience, forgiveness, and the need for truth. I could not easily call myself purely heterosexual or homosexual, and over time I have realized that those labels do not define who I am before God.

What matters is not how the world sees us, but whether our hearts are becoming whole.
Love, when genuine, leads us to compassion. It teaches us to see both strength and tenderness as divine qualities — what earlier centuries might have called the masculine and feminine within one soul.

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The Divine Image Restored

In the book of Genesis, we read that “God created man in His own image; male and female created He them.”
I’ve come to believe that the divine image holds both — not as opposites, but as reflections of one perfect whole. To enter the kingdom, then, is to rediscover that divine completeness, to remember the harmony that existed before we learned to divide ourselves into “this” or “that.”

The Gospel of Thomas invites us to live from that unity again — to make the inner life as honest as the outer, and to allow what is often hidden in the heart to shine in the open light of love.

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Recovery and Spiritual Integration

In recovery, I learned the hard truth that divided living leads to pain. Alcohol was my escape from that inner conflict — the war between who I appeared to be and who I truly was. But grace, through the Steps, through fellowship, and through faith, taught me to bring the pieces together again.

Step by step, I learned that healing isn’t about choosing one part of myself over another. It’s about surrendering the whole of who I am to God’s care. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has helped me see that this process — this making of the two into one — is what eternal progression really means. Christ stands at the center, the place where all opposites meet, where peace and truth abide together.

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The Kingdom of Wholeness

The soul that has made the two one no longer lives in conflict. Whether we call it masculine or feminine, body or spirit, strength or softness — all are welcomed and sanctified in the same eternal love.
Each part of who we are can find rest and renewal in the unity of our Divine Loving Father, Mother, God — the Source of all being, the wholeness from which we came and to which we return.

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Closing Thought

“There is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” — Galatians 3:28

“When you make the two one, you will enter the kingdom.” — Gospel of Thomas 22

“Wholeness is not about identity; it is about love — the love that heals and makes us one.” — A grateful soul in recovery

The Beginning Is the End: A Journey of Discovery and Return

 Dear Reader,

There is a saying from the Gospel of Thomas that has lived in my thoughts:

“The disciples said to Jesus, ‘Tell us about our end. How will it come?’
Jesus said, ‘Have you discovered the beginning so that you can look for the end? Because the end will be where the beginning is. Blessed is the one who will stand up in the beginning. They'll know the end, and won't taste death.’”

When I read those words, something stirred deep inside me — not as a scholar or theologian, but as a man who has walked a long road from confusion to faith. I see now that my story, like this saying, is a circle: the end of one life became the beginning of another.

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The First Beginning: A Child of Faith

As a child, I was introduced to a world where Spirit ruled over matter. In the Christian Science church of my grandmother, I learned that “Eternal Mind always has met and always will meet every human need.” That belief shaped my earliest sense of God — as Mind, as Principle, as divine order.

It was my beginning, though at the time I did not know what it would one day mean. Youth is full of questions, and life has a way of carrying us from our beginnings into tangled places. I strayed, not out of rebellion, but out of longing — longing to experience, to feel, to understand the human side of the divine equation.

That search led me through joy and heartbreak, through marriages, love, loss, and eventually into the shadowed valley of addiction.

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The Second Beginning: The End That Saved Me

There was a time when I thought my life had ended. Alcohol had become both friend and enemy — promising relief, but demanding everything in return. My faith, my family, and my sense of worth were slipping away. Yet, in that dark ending, I found a quiet invitation.

When I first walked into an AA meeting, I didn’t realize I was walking into a sacred space — a place where endings become beginnings. The Steps were simple, yet each one pointed me back to what I had forgotten: that God, however I understood Him, was not gone. He had been there since the beginning, waiting for me to remember.

Step by step, I learned what Thomas’s Jesus meant: “Blessed is the one who will stand up in the beginning.” Recovery was not about reinventing myself but about returning — about remembering the child who once believed that Mind and Spirit could heal all things.

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The Third Beginning: Finding Christ’s Church

Years later, my journey led me to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In its teachings, I found not contradiction but completion — a revelation that tied the circle together.

Where Christian Science had taught me that divine Mind heals, and AA had shown me that surrender restores the soul, the restored gospel of Christ revealed that the beginning and the end meet in Him. He is Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last.

I came to understand that “the end will be where the beginning is” because Christ Himself stands in both places — the Author and the Finisher of our faith. My baptism was not merely a new chapter; it was a return to the covenant written in eternity, the same Spirit that whispered to me as a child.

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A Reflection in the Mirror of Mary

When I read the Gospel of Mary, I hear another echo — a voice that calls us inward, reminding us that the path to salvation runs through inner recognition:

“Do not weep, nor grieve, nor be of doubtful mind; for His grace will be with you all and will protect you.”

Her message, like Thomas’s, affirms that divine truth is not distant but awakened within us. And when the heart awakens, we begin to see that our beginnings — no matter how far back or how hidden — were never lost.

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The Eternal Beginning

Today I can say that my end and my beginning have met in Christ. The journey through addiction, through discovery, through doubt and faith, has brought me home — not to who I was, but to who I’ve always been in the eyes of God.

I believe this is what Thomas meant: when we rediscover our divine beginning, death loses its sting. We are reborn into life eternal, and we remember that we have always belonged to God.

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Closing Thought

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” — Revelation 22:13
“Eternal Mind always has met and always will meet every human need.” — Mary Baker Eddy
“When we discover the beginning, we need not fear the end.” — A grateful disciple in recovery.

Between Mind and Light: Reconciling Mary, Science, and Faith

 

Dear Reader,

There are moments in life when the heart holds two languages of truth at once.
Recently, I found myself reading the Gospel of Mary—an early Christian text where Jesus tells Mary Magdalene that the “mind between the soul and the spirit” is where divine vision is found. The phrase stirred something ancient in me, a memory from my childhood in Christian Science, where I was taught that “Eternal Mind always has met and always will meet every human need.”

Two traditions, centuries apart, speaking to the same mysterious center: the mind illumined by divine presence.

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The Meeting Place Between Worlds

In Christian Science, I learned early that as we attune ourselves to Eternal Mind, healing occurs—not by human power, but through spiritual understanding that lifts us above the illusions of matter. The world of pain and limitation begins to fade as truth takes shape within us.

Later in life, as I came to faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I met another truth: that God is not only Mind, but also a living, embodied Father, and that Jesus Christ’s resurrection sanctified matter rather than denying it. The mortal world is not an error to be escaped, but a creation to be redeemed.

At times, those two visions seem to stand in tension.
One says: Transcend the material.
The other says: Transform it.
And yet, between them lies that sacred “mind” of which Jesus spoke to Mary—a space where thought and spirit meet, where we learn to see through both the eyes of heaven and the eyes of compassion.

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Mary’s Vision and My Own

In Mary’s gospel, the Savior praises her for perceiving the divine not through body or intellect alone, but through the mind awakened to light. Her revelation becomes a mirror for anyone who has glimpsed God inwardly and struggled to speak of it outwardly.

When Peter questions her, she does not argue—she simply holds to what she has seen.
That quiet courage resonates with me. I, too, have known seasons when faith could not be explained but only lived. Recovery taught me something similar: to trust the still voice within even when the louder voices doubt.

Perhaps that is what both traditions—Christian Science and the restored gospel—invite us toward: a healed consciousness that lives in the light of divine Mind while walking the path of embodied grace.

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Mind, Light, and Healing

Christian Science taught me that thought aligned with God can heal.
The Latter-day Saint faith teaches me that grace aligned with Christ can sanctify.
Different words, same current of love.

When I pray now, I no longer try to decide which language is right. I simply listen.
Sometimes the words are “Eternal Mind,” sometimes “Heavenly Father,” sometimes only silence and light. All point to the same Source that meets every human need.

Mary saw that light. She was told she would become “an image of the eternal, incorruptible light.” I believe we all can—through faith, humility, and that daily turning of the mind toward God.

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Reflection

If there is conflict in my understanding, it is the creative tension of growth.
I do not need to erase what formed me to live truthfully today.
Each tradition—Christian Science, AA, the restored gospel—has brought me nearer to the same eternal Presence that heals, guides, and loves beyond all boundaries.

And so, like Mary, I will keep seeking that light within and around me, trusting that in God’s eternal Mind, all contradictions resolve into harmony.

“The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” — John 1:5
“Eternal Mind always has met and always will meet every human need.” — Mary Baker Eddy

Amen.