The Bottomless Pit

I’ve talked a lot here on Good News! about the Pit of Illusion and the vexation that comes from being in the Pit of Illusion momentarily. But when we live in the Pit of Illusion all of the time, we live in a bottomless Pit and that is excruciating pain. 

A few years ago, I met a man (I’ll call him John) who when he was nineteen had left a girlfriend he loved very much in order to serve a mission. She promised to wait, but while he was gone she met and married someone else. This upset John so much that his life has become bitter. He never married. He can’t hold a job for long because he can’t get along with other people. He left the Church because he can no longer believe in a God who would betray him like that. He haunts himself with the thought that while he was doing God’s work, God let his girlfriend marry someone else.

John’s life has been one of pain and vexation because he is living in the Pit of Illusion all of the time. The simple truth is that his girlfriend married someone else. But instead of dealing with that truth—finding ways to heal and to move on with his life—John has spent his life based on the illusion that the girlfriend ruined his life. He nurses that thought. He bases all his decisions on that perceived thought. He feels like everyone is against him just like she was. He is working so hard to deal with the illusion that he can’t see the truth let alone accept and deal with it.

There is always pain in the Pit of Illusion. But it is self-inflicted pain and all we need to do to relieve the pain is to stop inflicting it. When we stop the unnecessary pain and climb out of that horrible Pit, we find that God is a God of truth and is there to help us.