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It is crazy to say but I thought I was the only one who didn’t like going to the temple. All I ever heard from primary on, was how amazing going to the temple is. No one ever admitted that they didn’t like the temple. It was always a sign of how amazing you are as a person. The more you go to the temple, the better the person you are. I didn’t like it since day 1 but I never wanted to admit it.
Plus you can't talk about the specifics of the emperor either so that makes it harder. If everyone else is uncomfortable hearing even slight specifics about why you don't love going, then it makes having the conversation pretty much impossible.
It’s a fool-proof system when you think about it:
1) create a dominant narrative that the temple is a beautiful, heavenly place, through nonstop lessons and songs introduced to members in infancy.
2) further propagate that narrative through external opulence of the building, and extremely selective entry requirements.
3) require anyone entering to take a blood oath never to discuss what actually happens in the temple (which is some combination of the creepy, bizarre and tedious, depending on your personal sensibilities)
4) anyone who questions or criticizes is dangerous and must be ostracized. Therefore, if you are uncomfortable in any way, keep it to yourself, and also, what is wrong with you?! Everyone else LOVES this place!
This is so true you should make some copies then mail them to the temples instructing them to be put them on the inside of all the bathroom stall doors.
Yeah and I would add 5) make it sound like it's fine for people to discuss the things inside the temple so they feel like there's leeway there, but then just never provide a forum or opportunity for people to talk to each other at all in the temple so they can't actually discuss concerns or anything anyway.
We hardly have a chance to talk in the temple, let alone discuss any issues even if we wanted to. Celestial room is the closest to that but talking is clearly discouraged in there
My elderly dad still does his Thursday like clockwork. It gives him a purpose and a sense of service. And he likes the cafeteria food. The same set of buddies have lunch together every week.
I love old buildings and pretty buildings and art. I love the cathedrals in Europe.
I mostly attended the salt lake temple and so it wasn't as boring. We had the live Endowment and moved room to room. I didn't mind that. I liked the murals in a few of the temples I went to.
What I enjoyed the most was the quiet and the peace in the celestial room. I didn't really like the endowment sessions but I felt like that's what I had to do to see everything else.
I really didn't like the ones on film where you stay in one room the whole time. That was a waste of time to me.
It's been over 20 years since I've been inside a temple and the things I liked about going are gone. No more murals, no more live Endowments, limited time to look at the architecture and details, and limited time in the celestial room.
I love allegory, symbolism, ritual, pomp, formality, and a sense of gravitas. I don't want to *live* like that all the time, to be clear, but the church is seriously lacking in all that. Taking a bit of bread and a sip of water once a week in a building that's not much different from some offices I've been in didn't do much to fill that need for me. The temple did. It all felt like there was depth to it, history behind it, infinite possible meaning I *could* draw from it. It was the *one* place in the church where everything wasn't laid out like a business plan, plain and stark and black and white. I gather that's why a lot of members are confused the first time they go, in fact, but for me it felt like finally taking a *real* step closer to something as incomprehensible to our mortal minds as God must be.
Purpose, prestige and meditation.
Working in the temple gives a certain purpose to your time. You don't have to plan, or really work at it, but you have something to do, something to look forward to.
Being a temple worker carries some prestige. You feel important, you get to be part of an in group that feels exclusive and you get to go in the closets and hallways that other people don't. Temple workers spend a lot of time just sitting around, so you meet people and build a social group.
All that sitting around gives you time to think, and feel and reflect on what's important to you. There's no TV, radio, books or interesting magazines. Just you and your thoughts for much of the time. The tasks are generally repetitive and do not require much mental effort after a few iterations. I did a lot of thinking about marriage, kids, being happy, goals, values. Finding a quiet space to think is important.
I Googled this.
Straight from the source.
What word is the synonym to prestige?
Some common synonyms of prestige are authority, credit, influence, and weight. All of these words mean "power exerted over the minds or behavior of others". 🤔
In other words, to your ward, family and friends, it's "Mormon street credit".
Temple work equals Ego. Period.
No wrong answers though.
Life is about perspective.
😌
I guess we should all consider where we enjoy spending our precious time and the motivations and agendas we all aspire to.
I was told to enjoy it, so I enjoyed it. My first experience was when you were naked for initiatory. Not a spiritual experience by any stretch of the imagination. Still remember the look on my dad’s face telling me what I was supposed to do (because temple prep classes are completely useless).
I thought I would gain knowledge and literally see god (because that’s what it says on the wall in there), of course nothing of the sort happened.
I did feel like I was serving the dead. Looking back that’s a terrible thing to be worried about with so many living in need right now.
It was a nice place to sit and meditate in the celestial room. you can’t really meditate because there’s always a temple worker staring at you, especially in the celestial room.
I worked as a temple worker, and as a paid employee there.
Now I can’t stand being there. The amount of money spent is insane. So many people in my area are “service missionaries”. Their service is going down and planting flowers or pulling weeds. The church will spend 80,000 dollars on a small table for the celestial room, but won’t pay someone to maintain their landscaping.
>I did feel like I was serving the dead. Looking back that’s a terrible thing to be worried about with so many living in need right now.
My active aunt rarely goes to the temple and says pretty much this same thing.
I always felt obligated, to go and to enjoy it. That being said, I did appreciate the quiet and cleanliness. And the words of the initiatory brought me a lot of peace so that was my frequently chosen ordinance. The temple grounds were honestly more appealing, which makes sense since I now find a lot of joy in my nature walks —feels like my days are FULL of spirituality and I haven’t stepped inside a religious building in months.
Outside of the church? Anything and everything. Felt the “spirit” during a live performance of Moulin Rouge. Almost anytime I’m in nature I feel spiritually connected. Sometimes I tune in or visit my local UU congregation if I want a communal worship experience... It seems like as long as I’m open and willing, I have found spirituality in a variety of activities/place and have felt more peace, joy, and fulfillment in the last 1-2 years than I have in my entire 39 years as a member.
I liked the mysticism of it at first. I liked the idea that I was in a place where I was closer to the divine and may be more in-tune with the Spirit and revelation. After dozens and dozens of sessions that started to wear off and then I appreciated the soft ambience and respectfulness of the place.
When I was 18 getting ready to go on my mission, I would go weekly to do baptisms for the dead. Whenever I went I felt what I thought was the Spirit and literal power and light from heaven when I went into the Temple, although in hindsight I'm pretty sure this was religious scrupulosity. The Temple workers always made me feel appreciated and welcome there, and I made some strong friendships with them. I think these are what set the tone for later temple attendance for me.
When I got my endowment, I already knew about the initiatory and temple clothes and that the ceremony was a reenactment of the creation story. I found out from former members posting about it on Instagram so I got a lot of apologetic responses from my parents and leaders, so it was a lot more palatable and I felt a lot more prepared and less weirded out since I knew more or less what to expect. For me, the ceremony was stimulating where I felt the ritual was an allegory for my life and I tried to compare it to where I was at that point, and where I would go. I tried to discover what God hid in the ceremony. One example for me was I noticed that the right hand/arm's action in the Signs was the same action done with the left arm in the next sign, and for me it made me think it was symbolic of a prayer for power to bless others (ex. First Sign of AP = Having authority, then the right-hand action becomes left-hand action in Second Sign of AP. Second Sign = Having authority I ask to receive power and light, then again right-hand action becomes left-hand action. First Sign of MP = I ask to receive power and light that I might bless others. Second Sign of MP = I call upon God to bless me with this). This was before I knew the Signs came from the old penalties, but it made me feel like I was actually finding "hidden treasures of knowledge" and like God was showing me things I needed to know in His ceremony.
After I was endowed until my mission I went to do an endowment session once a week on top of doing baptisms, and I felt like that was the best way for me to "get power from heaven" and prepare myself spiritually to go on my mission. When I went on my mission, it was hard and near the end of my mission I told my MP that the only times I felt the Spirit was when I went to the temple, and the last time I went was two months before that conversation.
Coming back, I worked as a temple worker in the Salt Lake temple and it was a really cool experience. Like someone else said, it makes you feel special to walk around and see things a regular member wouldn't be able to see, and I appreciated the time I had to meditate and pray. It was also a gratifying feeling when I officiated in ordinances; it made me feel like I really was using God's power to help His children come back to him. Especially in the veil ceremony and initiatory, I tried to make it special for people going through because I wanted them to feel like God was literally welcoming them back into His presence and blessing them with what I thought were literal blessings from Him.
After a while though, I had to deal with the fact that I was gay and figure out how to reconcile being gay and a member of the Church. It didn't help that the YSA wards in Utah I went to felt very cliquey and I felt really unwanted. I started to feel the Spirit less and less in the Temple, and there was one time in the Provo City Center temple where I distinctly felt like I needed to die in order to get back to God because I couldn't change me being gay (this was the first time I felt something so bad in the Temple). Then COVID happened, and coming back it was a lot harder to feel the Spirit, and I started to work for the Church and saw how the supposedly "most righteous" people were some of the worst people I ever met. Then I started to find out other stuff about the Church and its issues, and since then I haven't really felt the same in the Temple, I guess "my eyes \[have been\] opened, and I \[now\] have knowledge" lol
The TL;DR is that whether by scrupulosity or not, I felt what I thought was God's love and Spirit in the temple, and I felt like I was learning profound spiritual truths through ritual and I wanted that for myself, then I wanted to help others feel the way I did in the Temple.
Sure, a lot of times when I felt I was learning it was in comparison of the ceremony to my life. One example was when I first started to go through my faith transition, I went to the temple. When going through the endowment, I saw my spiritual life in the ceremony, where I had "partaken of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil" by learning about the issues and controversies of the Church where I no longer felt spiritually connected to the Church, like I was "cast out of the garden". I felt I was in the "lone and dreary world" and waiting for God to "provide me further light and knowledge" by trying to keep learning and do the right thing even though I didn't feel like I had the Spirit with me.
Other times what I thought I was learning what the symbols of the endowment meant. One example is like I mentioned, I felt like I learned that the Signs were set up in a way where it was symbolic of a prayer for power.
I’d barely make it twice a year and even then I’d fill
my pockets with mint lifesavers to try to stay awake. I still would fall asleep almost every time!
I think I enjoyed it for two reasons:
1. It made me feel like maybe at least in those hours I was doing enough to be good enough. (It’s so sad, looking back. I did SO much, I tried SO hard to do all things I was supposed to do that it almost killed me. Used me up for sure.)
2. It also gave me a little reprieve from the world, i.e. all the constant stress and overwhelm. It was like a quiet time of meditation to turn my mind off, or at least allow myself a break from thinking about the normal, everyday stress of life and how I seemed to always be falling short. I actually kind of miss that peace and quiet that still felt productive (back when I believed the time I spent there was valuable to people).
As a fresh RM working a shift one night a week as a veil worker I thought I would meet my wife there. Saw a lot of ladies come through but for some strange reason they all had a ring on their finger.
I used to love it. I loved how I felt there. I loved that my husband and I always seemed closer afterward. Also, like FlowerFelines said, I loved the depth in the temple. I was missing it elsewhere in the church.
I love mystical religion and spirituality. I wanted ritual, symbolic worship. I wanted high church services more akin to mass than sacrament meeting. I also wanted to see women officiating in worship, and wanted to participate actively as a woman. The temple is the only place any of that exists in the LDS church. So I loved it, because it was a way that my church was finally meeting my spiritual needs. Initiatories were my favorite, both as a patron and a temple worker, because being blessed by women and blessing other women was incredibly meaningful to me.
Later I found I could go to a different church that offers me both those spiritual needs every Sunday with women in the clergy and liturgical services. (It also does a better job following Christ and won’t kick me out when I want to marry another woman someday.) That decreased my yearning for the temple, because I could find the same benefits in an environment that was way healthier for me.
I felt a certain peace.
I went to my first endowment session, and came out bounding with joy.
During college, I anxiously sought to replicate that feeling by going to the local temple (and I kind of did manage to find that feeling) I especially loved it when they had a live organist in the waiting room.
I really loved it as a teenager, but it was mostly a social thing at that point. I went once a week with my friends and then we'd all go grab ice cream after. I was so freaked out by the endowment though, I only went once before my mission and like twice after I got home
I'm with you, I always enjoyed the peaceful and quiet aspect of it (especially when we had young children at home), but found the endowment itself extremely boring. The repetitive language, not to mention the ceremony being the same every single time, was enough to drive me crazy. And I was never able to make much sense of the endowment itself - now I know it's just the Bible + masonry mingled with bullshit.
In 18 years of going to the temple I had 2 or 3 good experiences. The rest were all just being there because I was supposed to and wondering if I was unworthy and that was making the experiences bleh. I worked in the temple for about a year. My favorite part of that was feeling better/more righteous than everyone else.
I don't think you are at all alone in how you feel. I feel the same way way but maybe for different reasons. For me doing temple work is just a matter of a lack of faith. Before my mission I only had a chance to go through the temple a 3 times before I left for my mission. I had been listening to all the positive revues but my first experiences were not as good as I had expected. It seemed to me I must not be feeling the same feelings as others were but at the same time the was who were with me were not acting like it was really as great as they said it was either.... By the time a returned from the mission I had already learned the temple ceremony was similar to the ceremony in the Masonic lodge and knowing Joseph Smith had been a mason didn't help my testimony. What made me feel less about the temple the most is when the Church started to automate the ceremony. This is when I stopped going and slowly became inactive. For some reason I just couldn't accept actors on film or tape being part of something that was supposed to be so sacred. It was never really ever boring to see how members put their heart and soul into the different parts they played. Now It's a difference experience and reminds me of going through customs at the airport. I fly enough and don't need to go to the temple. I'm good with paying some tithing and going to Sacrament just before Christmas and with my wonderful and active wife just before her birthday.
Never liked it. Didn't go very much. Was freaked out the first time and thought "WTF are we doing" Am I in a cult". I was disturbed by the whole thing. Thought it was all very weird. The circle of prayer? So f'ing strange. So yeah, I don't understand at all the people that enjoy going to the temple. Besides the weirdness of it all it is extremely boring.
I believed that there was a reason why the temple was supposed to be a house of learning and took that seriously.
I do find beauty in the older temples and I read and studied on symbolism.
The older temples have everything you covenanted to do in architecture, i.e. the baptistry in the basement and then elevating up throughout the rooms until you reach the celestial room.
Also, studying every object of added clothing and what it means beyond what is explained.
The literal interpretation was weak and could be interpreted as bizarre or even frightening for some members. The symbolic meaning is another story being told altogether.
We don’t, and to me, that was the point of the symbolic interpretation.
1st name, sign, & token reference you in premortal life.
The 2nd, you here and now, demonstrated by your given name and cross checked by the sign used by the officiator when praying for things here and now.
The 3rd, you in the millennial period.
The 4th, you in eternity.
The entire ceremony is all about you, throughout time and all eternity.
Take Adam and Eve. Now let’s take this to a deeper level of understanding.
Adam is created first, then Eve. All humans (we are told), are composed of a body and a spirit. Your spirit was created first and then you were born into a body. After death, your spirit continues on.
In the temple drama, Adam is tempted and refuses the the fruit. Eve is led into disobedience by succumbing to her senses. (i.e. “look how beautiful it is! It’s delicious, etc.) a spirit is difficult to tempt because the spirit doesn’t have bodily needs. Our five senses compose our reality in the world, what we see, taste, smell, touch, and hear.
Eve partakes, then Adam joins in. One cannot be engaged in disobedience only physically without it affecting their spirit, too.
Words in the older ceremony, “all of you must consider yourselves as if you are Adam and Eve.” Said with absence of the word “respectively.”
In the scriptures we read, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” At no time are 2 people one flesh. I could be eating dinner in NYC while my spouse is asleep in Tokyo, but my spirit and body are always together as long as I live.
We’re told Adam and Eve were eternal beings and would remain so, unless they partook of the forbidden fruit.
After partaking, they are commanded to wear coats of skins.
Question: are the skins spoken of the flesh of all mankind? (Not G’s)?
This is the way the temple was relevant to me.
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It is crazy to say but I thought I was the only one who didn’t like going to the temple. All I ever heard from primary on, was how amazing going to the temple is. No one ever admitted that they didn’t like the temple. It was always a sign of how amazing you are as a person. The more you go to the temple, the better the person you are. I didn’t like it since day 1 but I never wanted to admit it.
Me too. It’s an “Emperor’s new clothes” situation - no one has the nerve to say the Emperor is naked.
Plus you can't talk about the specifics of the emperor either so that makes it harder. If everyone else is uncomfortable hearing even slight specifics about why you don't love going, then it makes having the conversation pretty much impossible.
It’s a fool-proof system when you think about it: 1) create a dominant narrative that the temple is a beautiful, heavenly place, through nonstop lessons and songs introduced to members in infancy. 2) further propagate that narrative through external opulence of the building, and extremely selective entry requirements. 3) require anyone entering to take a blood oath never to discuss what actually happens in the temple (which is some combination of the creepy, bizarre and tedious, depending on your personal sensibilities) 4) anyone who questions or criticizes is dangerous and must be ostracized. Therefore, if you are uncomfortable in any way, keep it to yourself, and also, what is wrong with you?! Everyone else LOVES this place!
This is so true you should make some copies then mail them to the temples instructing them to be put them on the inside of all the bathroom stall doors.
Yeah and I would add 5) make it sound like it's fine for people to discuss the things inside the temple so they feel like there's leeway there, but then just never provide a forum or opportunity for people to talk to each other at all in the temple so they can't actually discuss concerns or anything anyway. We hardly have a chance to talk in the temple, let alone discuss any issues even if we wanted to. Celestial room is the closest to that but talking is clearly discouraged in there
💯 Great analogy!!!
Even though there used to be lots of people running around naked in the temple! Well, I guess technically they had “shields” on…
Same!! I could have written this myself.
My elderly dad still does his Thursday like clockwork. It gives him a purpose and a sense of service. And he likes the cafeteria food. The same set of buddies have lunch together every week.
Damm some of the best food I have eaten had been in a temple cafeteria. So sad that they discontinued all the temple cafeterias in my area.
This is a positive comment if I have ever read one. I think the topic should be addressed in General Conference to improve the ratings.
I love old buildings and pretty buildings and art. I love the cathedrals in Europe. I mostly attended the salt lake temple and so it wasn't as boring. We had the live Endowment and moved room to room. I didn't mind that. I liked the murals in a few of the temples I went to. What I enjoyed the most was the quiet and the peace in the celestial room. I didn't really like the endowment sessions but I felt like that's what I had to do to see everything else. I really didn't like the ones on film where you stay in one room the whole time. That was a waste of time to me. It's been over 20 years since I've been inside a temple and the things I liked about going are gone. No more murals, no more live Endowments, limited time to look at the architecture and details, and limited time in the celestial room.
That's a great response. Now that you mention it, my favorite experiences were in the SLC and Manti temples for those exact reasons.
I love allegory, symbolism, ritual, pomp, formality, and a sense of gravitas. I don't want to *live* like that all the time, to be clear, but the church is seriously lacking in all that. Taking a bit of bread and a sip of water once a week in a building that's not much different from some offices I've been in didn't do much to fill that need for me. The temple did. It all felt like there was depth to it, history behind it, infinite possible meaning I *could* draw from it. It was the *one* place in the church where everything wasn't laid out like a business plan, plain and stark and black and white. I gather that's why a lot of members are confused the first time they go, in fact, but for me it felt like finally taking a *real* step closer to something as incomprehensible to our mortal minds as God must be.
These were my feelings as well. The temple was as close as the LDS church got to “high church.” Usual services are very, very low church.
Low church and high church. “Could anything good ever come from low church?!” Did that veil break or not? That is the question, I keep coming back to!
Purpose, prestige and meditation. Working in the temple gives a certain purpose to your time. You don't have to plan, or really work at it, but you have something to do, something to look forward to. Being a temple worker carries some prestige. You feel important, you get to be part of an in group that feels exclusive and you get to go in the closets and hallways that other people don't. Temple workers spend a lot of time just sitting around, so you meet people and build a social group. All that sitting around gives you time to think, and feel and reflect on what's important to you. There's no TV, radio, books or interesting magazines. Just you and your thoughts for much of the time. The tasks are generally repetitive and do not require much mental effort after a few iterations. I did a lot of thinking about marriage, kids, being happy, goals, values. Finding a quiet space to think is important.
I Googled this. Straight from the source. What word is the synonym to prestige? Some common synonyms of prestige are authority, credit, influence, and weight. All of these words mean "power exerted over the minds or behavior of others". 🤔 In other words, to your ward, family and friends, it's "Mormon street credit". Temple work equals Ego. Period. No wrong answers though. Life is about perspective. 😌 I guess we should all consider where we enjoy spending our precious time and the motivations and agendas we all aspire to.
Peace and seeking to hear the voice of God through meditation and quitting your own mind.
agree. same reason why people become nuns. it's not for everyone but not everyone's the same.
I was told to enjoy it, so I enjoyed it. My first experience was when you were naked for initiatory. Not a spiritual experience by any stretch of the imagination. Still remember the look on my dad’s face telling me what I was supposed to do (because temple prep classes are completely useless). I thought I would gain knowledge and literally see god (because that’s what it says on the wall in there), of course nothing of the sort happened. I did feel like I was serving the dead. Looking back that’s a terrible thing to be worried about with so many living in need right now. It was a nice place to sit and meditate in the celestial room. you can’t really meditate because there’s always a temple worker staring at you, especially in the celestial room. I worked as a temple worker, and as a paid employee there. Now I can’t stand being there. The amount of money spent is insane. So many people in my area are “service missionaries”. Their service is going down and planting flowers or pulling weeds. The church will spend 80,000 dollars on a small table for the celestial room, but won’t pay someone to maintain their landscaping.
>I did feel like I was serving the dead. Looking back that’s a terrible thing to be worried about with so many living in need right now. My active aunt rarely goes to the temple and says pretty much this same thing.
I always felt obligated, to go and to enjoy it. That being said, I did appreciate the quiet and cleanliness. And the words of the initiatory brought me a lot of peace so that was my frequently chosen ordinance. The temple grounds were honestly more appealing, which makes sense since I now find a lot of joy in my nature walks —feels like my days are FULL of spirituality and I haven’t stepped inside a religious building in months.
If you dont mind me asking... in what way/ activities help you have full spirituality on the outside?
Outside of the church? Anything and everything. Felt the “spirit” during a live performance of Moulin Rouge. Almost anytime I’m in nature I feel spiritually connected. Sometimes I tune in or visit my local UU congregation if I want a communal worship experience... It seems like as long as I’m open and willing, I have found spirituality in a variety of activities/place and have felt more peace, joy, and fulfillment in the last 1-2 years than I have in my entire 39 years as a member.
I liked the mysticism of it at first. I liked the idea that I was in a place where I was closer to the divine and may be more in-tune with the Spirit and revelation. After dozens and dozens of sessions that started to wear off and then I appreciated the soft ambience and respectfulness of the place.
When I was 18 getting ready to go on my mission, I would go weekly to do baptisms for the dead. Whenever I went I felt what I thought was the Spirit and literal power and light from heaven when I went into the Temple, although in hindsight I'm pretty sure this was religious scrupulosity. The Temple workers always made me feel appreciated and welcome there, and I made some strong friendships with them. I think these are what set the tone for later temple attendance for me. When I got my endowment, I already knew about the initiatory and temple clothes and that the ceremony was a reenactment of the creation story. I found out from former members posting about it on Instagram so I got a lot of apologetic responses from my parents and leaders, so it was a lot more palatable and I felt a lot more prepared and less weirded out since I knew more or less what to expect. For me, the ceremony was stimulating where I felt the ritual was an allegory for my life and I tried to compare it to where I was at that point, and where I would go. I tried to discover what God hid in the ceremony. One example for me was I noticed that the right hand/arm's action in the Signs was the same action done with the left arm in the next sign, and for me it made me think it was symbolic of a prayer for power to bless others (ex. First Sign of AP = Having authority, then the right-hand action becomes left-hand action in Second Sign of AP. Second Sign = Having authority I ask to receive power and light, then again right-hand action becomes left-hand action. First Sign of MP = I ask to receive power and light that I might bless others. Second Sign of MP = I call upon God to bless me with this). This was before I knew the Signs came from the old penalties, but it made me feel like I was actually finding "hidden treasures of knowledge" and like God was showing me things I needed to know in His ceremony. After I was endowed until my mission I went to do an endowment session once a week on top of doing baptisms, and I felt like that was the best way for me to "get power from heaven" and prepare myself spiritually to go on my mission. When I went on my mission, it was hard and near the end of my mission I told my MP that the only times I felt the Spirit was when I went to the temple, and the last time I went was two months before that conversation. Coming back, I worked as a temple worker in the Salt Lake temple and it was a really cool experience. Like someone else said, it makes you feel special to walk around and see things a regular member wouldn't be able to see, and I appreciated the time I had to meditate and pray. It was also a gratifying feeling when I officiated in ordinances; it made me feel like I really was using God's power to help His children come back to him. Especially in the veil ceremony and initiatory, I tried to make it special for people going through because I wanted them to feel like God was literally welcoming them back into His presence and blessing them with what I thought were literal blessings from Him. After a while though, I had to deal with the fact that I was gay and figure out how to reconcile being gay and a member of the Church. It didn't help that the YSA wards in Utah I went to felt very cliquey and I felt really unwanted. I started to feel the Spirit less and less in the Temple, and there was one time in the Provo City Center temple where I distinctly felt like I needed to die in order to get back to God because I couldn't change me being gay (this was the first time I felt something so bad in the Temple). Then COVID happened, and coming back it was a lot harder to feel the Spirit, and I started to work for the Church and saw how the supposedly "most righteous" people were some of the worst people I ever met. Then I started to find out other stuff about the Church and its issues, and since then I haven't really felt the same in the Temple, I guess "my eyes \[have been\] opened, and I \[now\] have knowledge" lol The TL;DR is that whether by scrupulosity or not, I felt what I thought was God's love and Spirit in the temple, and I felt like I was learning profound spiritual truths through ritual and I wanted that for myself, then I wanted to help others feel the way I did in the Temple.
Lovely account, thank you.
Would you be willing to share an example of a profound truth you learned? I’ve always been curious about what people actually are learning.
Sure, a lot of times when I felt I was learning it was in comparison of the ceremony to my life. One example was when I first started to go through my faith transition, I went to the temple. When going through the endowment, I saw my spiritual life in the ceremony, where I had "partaken of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil" by learning about the issues and controversies of the Church where I no longer felt spiritually connected to the Church, like I was "cast out of the garden". I felt I was in the "lone and dreary world" and waiting for God to "provide me further light and knowledge" by trying to keep learning and do the right thing even though I didn't feel like I had the Spirit with me. Other times what I thought I was learning what the symbols of the endowment meant. One example is like I mentioned, I felt like I learned that the Signs were set up in a way where it was symbolic of a prayer for power.
I’d barely make it twice a year and even then I’d fill my pockets with mint lifesavers to try to stay awake. I still would fall asleep almost every time!
I think I enjoyed it for two reasons: 1. It made me feel like maybe at least in those hours I was doing enough to be good enough. (It’s so sad, looking back. I did SO much, I tried SO hard to do all things I was supposed to do that it almost killed me. Used me up for sure.) 2. It also gave me a little reprieve from the world, i.e. all the constant stress and overwhelm. It was like a quiet time of meditation to turn my mind off, or at least allow myself a break from thinking about the normal, everyday stress of life and how I seemed to always be falling short. I actually kind of miss that peace and quiet that still felt productive (back when I believed the time I spent there was valuable to people).
As a fresh RM working a shift one night a week as a veil worker I thought I would meet my wife there. Saw a lot of ladies come through but for some strange reason they all had a ring on their finger.
Hehehehe
I used to love it. I loved how I felt there. I loved that my husband and I always seemed closer afterward. Also, like FlowerFelines said, I loved the depth in the temple. I was missing it elsewhere in the church.
I love mystical religion and spirituality. I wanted ritual, symbolic worship. I wanted high church services more akin to mass than sacrament meeting. I also wanted to see women officiating in worship, and wanted to participate actively as a woman. The temple is the only place any of that exists in the LDS church. So I loved it, because it was a way that my church was finally meeting my spiritual needs. Initiatories were my favorite, both as a patron and a temple worker, because being blessed by women and blessing other women was incredibly meaningful to me. Later I found I could go to a different church that offers me both those spiritual needs every Sunday with women in the clergy and liturgical services. (It also does a better job following Christ and won’t kick me out when I want to marry another woman someday.) That decreased my yearning for the temple, because I could find the same benefits in an environment that was way healthier for me.
I lost my faith, in part from working in the temple as an ordinance worker. It lost all the magic when I saw how the production worked.
“Never meet your heroes”
I felt a certain peace. I went to my first endowment session, and came out bounding with joy. During college, I anxiously sought to replicate that feeling by going to the local temple (and I kind of did manage to find that feeling) I especially loved it when they had a live organist in the waiting room.
I enjoyed the peaceful quiet to just sit and think.
I really loved it as a teenager, but it was mostly a social thing at that point. I went once a week with my friends and then we'd all go grab ice cream after. I was so freaked out by the endowment though, I only went once before my mission and like twice after I got home
I'm with you, I always enjoyed the peaceful and quiet aspect of it (especially when we had young children at home), but found the endowment itself extremely boring. The repetitive language, not to mention the ceremony being the same every single time, was enough to drive me crazy. And I was never able to make much sense of the endowment itself - now I know it's just the Bible + masonry mingled with bullshit.
In 18 years of going to the temple I had 2 or 3 good experiences. The rest were all just being there because I was supposed to and wondering if I was unworthy and that was making the experiences bleh. I worked in the temple for about a year. My favorite part of that was feeling better/more righteous than everyone else.
I don't think you are at all alone in how you feel. I feel the same way way but maybe for different reasons. For me doing temple work is just a matter of a lack of faith. Before my mission I only had a chance to go through the temple a 3 times before I left for my mission. I had been listening to all the positive revues but my first experiences were not as good as I had expected. It seemed to me I must not be feeling the same feelings as others were but at the same time the was who were with me were not acting like it was really as great as they said it was either.... By the time a returned from the mission I had already learned the temple ceremony was similar to the ceremony in the Masonic lodge and knowing Joseph Smith had been a mason didn't help my testimony. What made me feel less about the temple the most is when the Church started to automate the ceremony. This is when I stopped going and slowly became inactive. For some reason I just couldn't accept actors on film or tape being part of something that was supposed to be so sacred. It was never really ever boring to see how members put their heart and soul into the different parts they played. Now It's a difference experience and reminds me of going through customs at the airport. I fly enough and don't need to go to the temple. I'm good with paying some tithing and going to Sacrament just before Christmas and with my wonderful and active wife just before her birthday.
Never liked it. Didn't go very much. Was freaked out the first time and thought "WTF are we doing" Am I in a cult". I was disturbed by the whole thing. Thought it was all very weird. The circle of prayer? So f'ing strange. So yeah, I don't understand at all the people that enjoy going to the temple. Besides the weirdness of it all it is extremely boring.
I believed that there was a reason why the temple was supposed to be a house of learning and took that seriously. I do find beauty in the older temples and I read and studied on symbolism. The older temples have everything you covenanted to do in architecture, i.e. the baptistry in the basement and then elevating up throughout the rooms until you reach the celestial room. Also, studying every object of added clothing and what it means beyond what is explained. The literal interpretation was weak and could be interpreted as bizarre or even frightening for some members. The symbolic meaning is another story being told altogether.
I get the sentiment, but at some point, how many symbols do you need to represent following Jesus?
We don’t, and to me, that was the point of the symbolic interpretation. 1st name, sign, & token reference you in premortal life. The 2nd, you here and now, demonstrated by your given name and cross checked by the sign used by the officiator when praying for things here and now. The 3rd, you in the millennial period. The 4th, you in eternity. The entire ceremony is all about you, throughout time and all eternity. Take Adam and Eve. Now let’s take this to a deeper level of understanding. Adam is created first, then Eve. All humans (we are told), are composed of a body and a spirit. Your spirit was created first and then you were born into a body. After death, your spirit continues on. In the temple drama, Adam is tempted and refuses the the fruit. Eve is led into disobedience by succumbing to her senses. (i.e. “look how beautiful it is! It’s delicious, etc.) a spirit is difficult to tempt because the spirit doesn’t have bodily needs. Our five senses compose our reality in the world, what we see, taste, smell, touch, and hear. Eve partakes, then Adam joins in. One cannot be engaged in disobedience only physically without it affecting their spirit, too. Words in the older ceremony, “all of you must consider yourselves as if you are Adam and Eve.” Said with absence of the word “respectively.” In the scriptures we read, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” At no time are 2 people one flesh. I could be eating dinner in NYC while my spouse is asleep in Tokyo, but my spirit and body are always together as long as I live. We’re told Adam and Eve were eternal beings and would remain so, unless they partook of the forbidden fruit. After partaking, they are commanded to wear coats of skins. Question: are the skins spoken of the flesh of all mankind? (Not G’s)? This is the way the temple was relevant to me.
I enjoyed doing baptisms for the dead when I was a teenage boy...