September 15, 2007

Why is it that it's hard to go to bed early and it's hard to get up early? Even with the same amount of sleep it seems to be easier to go to bed late and to sleep in than early to bed and early to rise. I believe it is a test of our will power. We are commanded in the scriptures to not oversleep.

D&C 88: 124
Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated.

I once heard that if you were in a mine or someplace where you had no concept of what time it was that you would run on a 25 hour cycle instead of 24. I can certainly believe that. It's interesting to think of sleep as such a vital aspect to our personal progression. Now I just have to conquer my other vices...

September 14, 2007

For the last couple of days I have had that genealogy bug that seems to hit me every couple of years. The reason it hit me this time is directly related to the book "Spiritual Roots of Human Relations" by Steven R. Covey...which I have still only read the first couple chapters of. Having accomplished my goal of getting up at 6:30 a.m. every morning (today was the second day) I have had time to study scriptures in a quiet setting. There are a couple chapters near the beginning of Genesis that outline the genealogy from Adam down to Noah. As I was reading this I began writing the connections in a Word document so that I could visually see how they were connected (which is a good thing because I had no idea before this that there were two Enochs pre-Noah...one in Cain's line and the other in Seth's). As I finished the chart for my scripture study my drive to continue doing genealogy work didn't cease and I was hooked. My cousin Carmell sent me all of her genealogical work so I was able to combine what I had with what she had and now I am going to go through what my mom gave me a few years ago and add any missing information as well. So much fun.

The other day I read the first couple chapters of a book by Stephen R. Covey called "Spiritual Roots of Human Relations" and it talks about personal development. Everybody is at different levels of growth in different aspects of their lives. Using a rating system, somebody might be a two emotionally and a six physically. To go from a two to a six one has to go through steps three to five first. In developing spirituality one has to begin by learning to control his/her own appetites. He talks about over eating or gluttony and oversleeping as some of the first things to work on. So, in response to this, I have decided to begin going to bed at around 10 - 11 pm and getting up at around 6:30 am. Though I really don't need to be up until around 8 or 9 when my kids get up I figure I can be more productive in the first hours of the day than I can in the last hours. I have decided to begin reading the old testament every morning since I've only read it once and that was in Spanish. I also created a list of different areas of my life that I'd like to develop spiritually, but I plan on going step by step, precept upon precept until that perfect day.