Bondage

Human bondage: The condition wherein a given human being lacks the ability to choose and/or to act relative to a certain opportunity, as seen by an omniscient observer or as approximated by human understanding Bondage is the complement of agency.

1. Physical bondage:
   Synonyms: Slavery, serfdom, imprisonment
   Definition: 1. The location, change of location, and physical activities of a normal adult human being are controlled by some agency other than his own will. 2. A person is deprived of a physical body and thus cannot do those things which a physical body makes possible
   Ultimate: Death
   Examples: Russian peasant, 1784, 1984
   U.S. Negro in Georgia, 1820
   Feudal serf, England, 1100
   Inmate in a penitentiary.
   An unembodied spirit.
   Drug addict.
   Non-examples: A small child being carried by his or her mother.
   A patient in intensive care.
   Controls: Food, freedoms, guns, chains, iron curtains, promises.
   Opposite: Freedom to go anywhere and to do anything that can be done physically.
   Release: Increase of strength and/or might.

• Intellectual bondage:
  Synonyms: Intellectual blindness, being brain-washed.
  Definition: The knowledge, ideas, and thinking of a normal human being are controlled by other agent(s), possibly against his will and possibly unbeknownst to him.
  Ultimate: Lobotomy
  Examples: Cuban subject for whom all media presentations and educational opportunities are carefully controlled.
  A member of a church who is prevented from learning of other churches and religions.
  Non-examples: Students in a university class who are exposed to a variety of ideas and positions on the same subject.
  A child who believes his father and mother, knowing other beliefs which other people have which differ from his parents’ beliefs.
  Controls: Opportunities to learn, shame, rejection, grades.
  Opposite: To have a thorough understanding of all options on an issue. To have a complete understanding of all existence, of all possibilities and of all issues.
  Release: Increase of mind.
  
• Emotional bondage:
  Synonyms: Neurosis, psychosis, self-pity, self-justification.
  Definition: The feelings of an adult human being are self-controlled to create misery, the condition of an unhappily divided self. This self-destruction is often performed unconsciously, unbeknownst to that person himself.
  Ultimate: Insanity
  Examples: One who is enraged at the economic injustices of his society. One who feels unloved. One who is bitter about how his family treats him.
  Non-examples: Feeling temporary grief at the loss of a loved one.
  Feeling sorrow for one’s sins.
  Feeling sorrow for another person’s sins.
  Controls: Authorities, culture, which teach a person that he is not responsible for his own feelings, that feelings are just things which “happen” to a person.
  Opposite: A person who through correct ideas and habits has achieved the ability to feel any way he desires to feel, regardless of any influence his environment may have on him.
  Release: Increase of mind to understand every person feels only that which he desires to feel (speaking of emotion, not of sensation), plus increase of self-discipline to feel only positive emotions (gratitude, love, forgiveness).
  
• Spiritual bondage:
  Synonyms: Spiritual death, spiritual impotence, the bondage of sin.
  Definition: The spiritual experiences  and powers of a person are limited to evil sources because of his sins.
  Ultimate: To suffer the second death.
  Examples: One who prays and receives no answer from the Lord.
  One who lays his hands on to heal, but nothing good happens.
  One who wonders but cannot gain a testimony of  the Restored Gospel.
  Non-examples: One who gives up a promising career to fulfill a church calling.
  One who does everything which the scriptures suggest.
  Controls: Pleasure taken for its own sake, social power and esteem, physical strength used selfishly, indulging in evil thoughts and feelings, not using one’s might to serve God.
  Opposite: To have a fullness of spiritual gifts and spiritual power such that the powers of Satan and the powers of the earth can restrain that person no longer.
  Release: Increase of heart, might, mind and strength through forgiveness of sins (thus not to have to carry the weight of those sins and to suffer the lack of spiritual opportunity which those sins make necessary). This forgiveness is made possible only through the atonement of Jesus Christ and is available to men only through accepting and living by the laws and ordinances of the Restored Gospel.
  
• The bondage of desire:
  Synonyms: Selfishness, perversion, self-indulgence.
  Definition: The situation of a divided person, part of whom desires that which is good, the other part desires that which is evil. Desiring that which is evil is the bondage of desire.
  Examples: A medical doctor who smokes.
  A poor man who desires to be righteous, but who lusts after is neighbor’s wealth.
  A missionary who desires to help people understand the Restored Gospel but who thinks lascivious thoughts.
  Non-examples: A poor man who wishes he could help his equally poor neighbor.
  An ill person who desires to have the strength to fill a mission.
  Controls: Habit, past history.
  Opposite: One who has first reduced his needs and desires to zero, and then has come to desire with all of his heart that which is good and right in the sight of the Lord.
  Release: Increase of understanding until one understands that which is good and right, then increase of self-discipline until one desires only that which is good and right. This is the achieving of a pure heart.
  
• The ultimate (and independent variable) bondage is the bondage of desire. The bondage of desire is always the self-imposed bondage of desiring evil. As a Latter-day Saint disciplines himself to reduce his own personal needs (desires) to nothing, and at the same time learns fervently to desire those godly things which are shown to him by the Holy Ghost, he begins to be one person (to have integrity), to be a whole person (to be sanctified), and to be a new person, born again as a child and servant of Jesus Christ. That process is of course partly unavailable to a person who does not have the opportunity to accept the Restored Gospel. They may learn this unselfishness and implement it to a degree through the light of  Christ, but one nees the gift of the Holy Ghost to find the fullness.
  • But if a person hears and accepts the Restored Gospel and then is born again of the water and of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit then teachers him what is good and right that he may be able to desire what is good and right in all things eventually. He then has the opportunity to achieve a pure heart. A pure heart is a heart so trained to choose only that which is good and right that it never deviates from that choice. That training is done by each individual person as he allows himself only to desire that which is good and right. This is the agency of man: to choose what is good and right through the Savior, or to choose captivity and death through the flesh (and with the help of Satan). A pure heart is not the result of one such choice. It is the result of a long, unbroken series of such choices. Another way to describe such a long series is to say it is to learn to love the Lord with all of our heart, might, mind and strength.
    • A person who has a pure heart is able to bring himself to do the very best he knows to do in any and every situation of choice in his life. The first thing which a pure heart enables him to do is to gain control of his feelings so that he never feels any emotions except gratitude, love and forgiveness. This sets him free emotionally. Being free emotionally, he can than of his own present power minimize the intellectual and physical bondage in his life. If the Restored Gospel is available to him, it is possible for him to achieve elimination of the spiritual bondage altogether. But what can a person do if he does not know the Restored Gospel? He can do the best that he knows to do. The best one knows is to respond to the light of Christ rather than to the adversary. As one responds to that light, desiring and choosing the best he knows to do, one begins to feel better about himself and to be able to see the truth of things about himself and the Savior more clearly. Eventually that spiritual discipline of doing the best that he knows to do will lead him to accept the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ when it is presented to him. Through the Restored Gospel and its ordinances (through the gifts and mercy of the Savior), he may obtain eventual release from every degree of each bondage. To know the truth is to become free, and to be free indeed.
    • In the beginning man is not free. Each person suffers two versions of each kind of bondage except the bondage of desire, which is always totally self-imposed. The other bondages consist of bondage imposed upon him by others and also of bondage imposed upon himself by himself. The real freedom which this world affords it to desire and to choose what is right, this to be released from all self-imposed bondage. He who thus releases himself is then a candidate to be released from all other bondage by the Savior.
    • To reject the light of the Savior is to reject all of the good in one’s self, to reject righteousness, to reject freedom, and to reject increase. In other words, to reject that light is to be damned. Because our God is what and who he is, that damnation is always  self-imposed. We conclude that though every human being is born to self-awareness, each being fettered in the chains of multiple bondages, and ultimately each of these bondages is self-imposed.
    • He who avails himself of the freedom to increase through the Savior will be able to enjoy increase forever, even eternal increase. All of which begins with the freedom to desire what is good and right.