☠✩ Patriarchal Blessings

Patriarchal Blessings are a Gypsy Trick ! I can prove it. It really is a form of Cold Reading. The ONLY reason why people believe in this Mystical Power is because stupid people believe that a certian Organization of People and Leaders "is" Perfect and always will be perfect - Based upon a book that was translated by a man.

I am not really good at cold reading or using tarot cards. But I bet I can do a Much better job of using this *mysitical* power than well most of the Old Ass "Patriarchs"

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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

Cold reading is a series of techniques used by mentalists, illusionists, fortune tellers, psychics, and mediums to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they actually do.^[1] Without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.

From Mormanity : Live Joyfully with Your Wife: "I have always been grateful for my patriarchal blessing, the personalized blessing that LDS people can receive once in their lifetime from special servants of God called patriarchs. I received mine long before I was married, but it offered lot advice that would help me throughout marriage. One important part tells me to be 'solicitous' of the needs and wants of my wife and to give her adequate time and attention. I think that is valuable advice for anyone, but given my weaknesses and pressures, I think it was extremely important to have that for me to ponder. There are times when I wish I would have heeded it better.
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I'm so grateful that I paid attention to that counsel in my patriarchal blessing which helped me have one more day of 'living joyfully with [my] wife' (Ecclesiastes 9:9).

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From http://www.mrm.org/patriarchal-blessings

So fast-forward, after college: I was 24 and I was serving in the Relief Society presidency in my singles ward. I was a pillar of the ward, actually; I had a testimony and everything. I’m not saying this to boast. I just need to clarify that I was going through a period of optimism and non-jadedness at that time. Okay, maybe I’m boasting a little bit. I admire my younger self greatly. But boasting is not the point; I’m just setting the stage. I was in Sunday School, see, and we were talking about patriarchal blessings that week–what they were, why they were important, etc. The teacher said it was like a road map for your life. People were talking about what their own blessings meant to them, how they had helped them make critical decisions in their lives, blah blah blah, and since it was a small class and everyone was sharing, I felt like people expected me to share something, too. So I shared that I didn’t actually have my patriarchal blessing, that I hadn’t ever gotten one.

I want you now to imagine a collective gasp of horror that filled the room upon this revelation. That, followed by a chorus ofYou haven’t gotten your patriarchal blessing? But you just have to have a patriarchal blessing! It’s a road map for your life! Your life! And I’ll be honest with you, I was a little bit embarrassed. I mean, here I was, non-jaded and a pillar of my ward community–they were letting me serve in the Relief Society presidency, for the love of Mike, and I did not even have my patriarchal blessing. Well, now that I thought of it, what was I waiting for?

So I got myself a new recommend (seven years after getting the first one), and this time I actually made the appointment with the stake patriarch. I thought this was going to be good, because it seemed like it was so good for everybody else, and I was kind of excited about it. I was very curious about what it would say. A blessing just for me. All for me. Me me me. A road map, no less. FOR MY LIFE. I was very, very interested in how it would turn out.

So I met with the patriarch, and he asked me some questions about what I was doing with my life, if I was going to school, if I was working, my plans for the future, etc. I told him I was out of college but planning to attend graduate school in the near future, having been accepted to a couple of MFA programs in creative writing. He asked what I planned to do with that degree. Oh my, how I hated that question. Not that he asked it in a snide or otherwise offensive manner, but I really didn’t know what I was planning to “do with it”; it just seemed like the thing to do because it was the thing I was good at, and also, I was young and single and if there’s ever a time to pursue a completely worthless graduate degree, it’s while you’re young and single and have nothing to spend money on but the fruits of your own narcissism. I couldn’t very well admit that, of course, so when I hesitated to answer and he asked if I was planning to teach, I said, “Ah…I’m considering it”–even though I wasn’t considering any such thing. I just felt like I had to look responsible, since I was there to get a Very Important Blessing, and I wanted to appear worthy. And not lazy.

I think that was my first mistake. My second mistake was when he asked if there was any particular issue that I wanted guidance on. Now, I was not particularly full of angst at this time, but I’m sure if I’d thought about it long enough, I could have come up with an issue or two to get guidance on. The only thing that was really springing to my mind was Heavenly Mother. I was mostly at peace with the whole Heavenly Mother business; that is, I was at peace with not knowing anything about Her (or Them, or Whoever), and I didn’t spend much time or energy worrying about it the way I once did. The truth was, I had taken a tremendous leap of faith to reconcile myself to the fact that I was never, ever going to get satisfactory commentary on such mysteries in this life. Yeah, I know, it’s not a real inspiring story of faith–not up to Joseph Smith standards or healing-cows-on-the-plains standards–but I had worked really hard to get to that point; it was what had allowed me to move on with my religious life and embrace the gospel at long last. I was really not keen on taking a step backward and admitting that it still bothered me, at least a little bit.

So when he asked if I had any issues, I just shrugged and said, “Not really. Surprise me!” Okay, I may or may not have said, “Surprise me!” That was certainly in keeping with the spirit of my actual remarks, though, and I know I was thinking it. If I’m to be perfectly honest, I have to admit that I was testing God here. God and the stake patriarch, too, maybe. If this blessing was really important, if it was really supposed to be a road map for my life, then I really wanted to know what God had to say to me that He thought I should know–not what I thought I should know. I know, it almost sounds like it wasabout faith, rather than a lack thereof, when I put it that way. But that’s neither here nor there. My point is that I was not as forthcoming with the patriarch as I could have–maybe should have–been, and I will always wonder how much difference it would have made if I’d simply told him what was really on my mind.

You see, I got my patriarchal blessing, and let’s just say I was underwhelmed. I continue to be underwhelmed to this day. Now, there’s nothing wrong with my patriarchal blessing. It’s fine. It’s nice, even. It basically tells me to keep the commandments, which is always good advice. In my (quite extensive, I assure you) research for this post, I read some e-articles and a lesson from the Young Women manual about patriarchal blessings, and from those (extensive) readings I learned that some people have certain promises in their patriarchal blessings and that it’s important to bear in mind that those promises are not necessarily to be fulfilled in this life. Apart from thinking that it would be funny to put that little disclaimer in the fine print on your blessing’s hard copy, I also thought I must be pretty lucky on this front because my patriarchal blessing doesn’t promise anything particular, so I have no cause to be impatient or disappointed. Score one for me.

The only problem with my patriarchal blessing is that I thought it would tell me something about myself that I didn’t already know. I wanted to be surprised–but I wasn’t. In retrospect I think that this must have been wisdom on God’s part. (Him being God and all, what else would it be?) As I get older, I realize that I don’t actually like surprises all that much, so asking for one then was asking for that which I ought not, and we all know how God feels about that sort of thing.

For More Information Read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchal_blessing

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