When you die, are you D&G? (Code word for Dead and Gone — my dad used to say that.) And what about before you were born, were you non-existent until the sperm forced it’s way through the tough membrane of the egg?

I think a lot about intelligences. 

I mean the you that is you — the inner thoughts, experiences, life — that makeup who you are. The you that has always existed and will always exist, not your spirit, but your intelligence — the part that existed before your spirit body and before your mortal body.

I wonder what I was thinking and what I learned (and cannot remember because forgetting is a necessary element of this mortal life.)

The following is a quote from what is called the King Follett Discourse — a funeral speech given by Joseph Smith when Brother King Follett (his first name is “King”) was accidentally killed by a falling bucket of rocks in a well.

“The mind of man—the intelligent part—is as immortal as, and is coequal with, God himself. I know my testimony is true. . . . Intelligence is eternal and exists upon a self-existent principle . . . there is no creation about it.”

The comfort of all this thought is that there never is/was a time of not existing. You and I have always existed.

This life is part of a great whole and the experiences you encounter serve to enlarge your intelligence. As much as I crinch at the trials, and beg to be relieved and delivered of them, I do understand the value. I find I have more compassion for other people. Each day adds to who I am, and that essense of who we are never dies, but continues. We will always be the sum of all our experiences.

photos: That’s my mama holding me back in 1955.  That’s my proud dad holding me in 1954.

What was I doing as an intelligence clothed in a spirit body before my birth? I don’t know, but I feel to know that I existed.