Promptings: What are they?

[Green Monstah]

Background: After a few bad experiences in downtown Houston dealing with panhandlers*, I created a pretty hard and fast, "don't give people money" rule, not because I don't want to help, but because I have felt unsafe taking cash out of my wallet a few times. Today, I was walking in the underground tunnels and I saw a man who appeared to be homeless counting pennies, nickles and dimes at a table in the main walkway. He was looking at the prices at a donut shop nearby. I walked by and then I heard something in my head say, "Go give him some money." I shook it off and it hit me again; "Go give him some money." Reluctantly, I turned around and said, "hey man, are things a little tight right now?" He nodded yes, and I gave him a five dollar bill and walked away.

I struggle with determining what is the spirit and what is not. I realized that for years I was "manipulating" the spirit by essentially getting amped up about a decision and claiming the excitement was spiritual confirmation. Since then, I've always had a difficult time. After the long lead in, here are my questions.

1. Do non-believers get these sort of "promptings"? How do you explain them? Do certain situations trigger our subconscious and tell it to act when given certain stimuli? Is it "intuition", where we can discriminate between instances where action needs to be/should be taken and others where it's not as important?

2. For the believers, how do you determine whether something is from God or it's simply you? Is it a mind n' heart test (like in D&C 8 or 9)? I've flirted with the idea that if I have doubt about the source, it's likely not from God. Unfortunately, that means I haven't had a prompting for nearly a decade, which makes me a little sad, quite frankly.






*Sidenote, if you're ever in downtown Houston and you hear a mid-50s black man with a medusa like head of white hair screaming, "F*&! You, White Bitch!", I'm pretty close by. I tried to give a panhandler three ones, but he saw a twenty in my wallet and told me to give him the twenty. I gave him a choice, take the three bucks or nothing; he took the three bucks, then spit at me. I think I flipped him off and now whenever he sees me, I get a nice little shout out.

[FMCoug]

Background: After a few bad experiences in downtown Houston dealing with panhandlers*, I created a pretty hard and fast, "don't give people money" rule, not because I don't want to help, but because I have felt unsafe taking cash out of my wallet a few times. Today, I was walking in the underground tunnels and I saw a man who appeared to be homeless counting pennies, nickles and dimes at a table in the main walkway. He was looking at the prices at a donut shop nearby. I walked by and then I heard something in my head say, "Go give him some money." I shook it off and it hit me again; "Go give him some money." Reluctantly, I turned around and said, "hey man, are things a little tight right now?" He nodded yes, and I gave him a five dollar bill and walked away.

I struggle with determining what is the spirit and what is not. I realized that for years I was "manipulating" the spirit by essentially getting amped up about a decision and claiming the excitement was spiritual confirmation. Since then, I've always had a difficult time. After the long lead in, here are my questions.

1. Do non-believers get these sort of "promptings"? How do you explain them? Do certain situations trigger our subconscious and tell it to act when given certain stimuli? Is it "intuition", where we can discriminate between instances where action needs to be/should be taken and others where it's not as important?

2. For the believers, how do you determine whether something is from God or it's simply you? Is it a mind n' heart test (like in D&C 8 or 9)? I've flirted with the idea that if I have doubt about the source, it's likely not from God. Unfortunately, that means I haven't had a prompting for nearly a decade, which makes me a little sad, quite frankly.






*Sidenote, if you're ever in downtown Houston and you hear a mid-50s black man with a medusa like head of white hair screaming, "F*&! You, White Bitch!", I'm pretty close by. I tried to give a panhandler three ones, but he saw a twenty in my wallet and told me to give him the twenty. I gave him a choice, take the three bucks or nothing; he took the three bucks, then spit at me. I think I flipped him off and now whenever he sees me, I get a nice little shout out.

I always carry a few ones in my pocket, separate from my wallet for precisely this reason.

[Viking]

I get "promptings" all the time. I have no idea what they are but humans only use a very small part of their brains and so perhaps a "prompting" is a glimpse into a lesser or never used part of our intelligence. I doubt it has anything to do with ghosts, holy or otherwise.

[Danimal]

I used to believe strongly in promptings and believed that God was really involved in the details of my life and would frequently prompt me to do things -- anything from smiling or saying hi to somebody in passing to giving money to the homeless, or as a missionary believing that I was being directed to talk to certain people and often being willing to approach people that many missionaries wouldn't.

I don't believe much in promptings anymore. I can only speak for myself, but my experience was that my promptings were much more related to anxiety about following God than anything else. In a situation, if there was any likelihood that God could theoretically inspire me to act in a beneficial way, then I would experience anxiety that I would be letting God down if I didn't do that. It didn't really matter if my behavior would be weird or unexpected because God works in mysterious ways! I then would have thoughts that I should do that behavior and would think that it was a prompting. I'm somebody who spends too much time in my head anyway, so these thoughts and feelings would really get me wrapped up in trying to decipher what God wanted me to do.

While I don't think that my "promptings" ever led me to do anything bad or wrong (other than bother a lot of people on my mission who clearly didn't want to talk about God) I think that I spent much of my time following false leads and over-interpreting thoughts as promptings. If God wants to let me know something he better make it a lot more clear than a random thought in my mind because thoughts aren't so reliable.

[venkman]

I struggle with this. Actually, I don't really struggle with this since I've long ago given up trying to recognize the promptings of the Holy Ghost. I'm not talking about the HG confirming truth, I'm talking the HG telling me to do or not do something.

I honestly can say that I don't remember getting a single feeling that I would call a promopting of the Holy Ghost. Maybe I have and didn't listen, just chalked it up to my own conscience or worry-wart mind. Of course, I've never even had that post "I fugured it was just me, then something bad happened and I later realized it was the Holy Ghost, next time I'll listen" moment either.

I'm jealous of those that do get promptings, recognize them as from the HG, and act on them. I believe they're real, it just doesn't happen to me.

[myboynoah]

Background: After a few bad experiences in downtown Houston dealing with panhandlers*, I created a pretty hard and fast, "don't give people money" rule, not because I don't want to help, but because I have felt unsafe taking cash out of my wallet a few times. Today, I was walking in the underground tunnels and I saw a man who appeared to be homeless counting pennies, nickles and dimes at a table in the main walkway. He was looking at the prices at a donut shop nearby. I walked by and then I heard something in my head say, "Go give him some money." I shook it off and it hit me again; "Go give him some money." Reluctantly, I turned around and said, "hey man, are things a little tight right now?" He nodded yes, and I gave him a five dollar bill and walked away.

I struggle with determining what is the spirit and what is not. I realized that for years I was "manipulating" the spirit by essentially getting amped up about a decision and claiming the excitement was spiritual confirmation. Since then, I've always had a difficult time. After the long lead in, here are my questions.

1. Do non-believers get these sort of "promptings"? How do you explain them? Do certain situations trigger our subconscious and tell it to act when given certain stimuli? Is it "intuition", where we can discriminate between instances where action needs to be/should be taken and others where it's not as important?

2. For the believers, how do you determine whether something is from God or it's simply you? Is it a mind n' heart test (like in D&C 8 or 9)? I've flirted with the idea that if I have doubt about the source, it's likely not from God. Unfortunately, that means I haven't had a prompting for nearly a decade, which makes me a little sad, quite frankly.






*Sidenote, if you're ever in downtown Houston and you hear a mid-50s black man with a medusa like head of white hair screaming, "F*&! You, White Bitch!", I'm pretty close by. I tried to give a panhandler three ones, but he saw a twenty in my wallet and told me to give him the twenty. I gave him a choice, take the three bucks or nothing; he took the three bucks, then spit at me. I think I flipped him off and now whenever he sees me, I get a nice little shout out.

I don't much worry whether or not my "promptings" are divine. I have a lot of thoughts running through my head at any one time and I'm "prompted" in any number or areas. Usually I act on them, but there are times that I don't and I don't sweat those times. Are they divine? I don't know and I don't know that it matters.

But there have been times in my life when I've had very strong impressions about someone, about a situation, or about an action that I should take. I have found those outcomes to have been very faith affirming.

[DrumNFeather]

For the majority of my adult life, I think I've recognized promptings more in hindsight than anything else. Now, a cynic might say that this allows me to say that the Holy Ghost is batting a thousand in my life...and I assure you, it is not...but I think that there are many times in our lives where we take action, both large and small that we can look back on and recognize as a prompting. Yet there are other situations where we can look back and very clearly see that we were the ones pushing the action.

I think for me personally (and I'm stepping into the confessional here) the most glaringly obvious one that I've struggled with for years is moving out west. I would love to get back out west (not even Utah perse) but those opportunities just aren't happening. In fact, every time I apply for a job out west and it seems like it might have legs, the door slams rather swiftly. Now, am I following a prompting to apply for jobs out west or do I just want to move out west? I'd say it is the latter.

So, I think that promptings are a little bit of both, and I think that it is nearly impossible to recognize them in the moment, but I do believe that people can have them, both member and non alike.

[mtnbiker]

My wife and I happened to have a chat about this a couple of weeks ago. I liked her thoughts on the matter, which I'll boil down to this: If I get the impression "Oh, I ought to do <something>", then it's probably my own thought or intuition or maybe conscience. But if I get the impression "You need to do <something>", then I take it as the Spirit prompting me. We've both had both kinds of impressions many times. In fact, we wouldn't have met if it weren't for the "You need to do this" type of prompting.

I'll tell you a sad story of not following through with promptings. When I was a freshman at BYU, I had the strong impression of calling my 85-year old grandpa and telling him I loved him. I didn't do it. A week later my parents called me and told me that my grandpa had been in the hospital for a couple of days and had just passed away. I felt really bad about not calling, and obviously still do. So when I get a strong impression, whether I think it's the Spirit or just me, I try to follow through.

[taekwondave]

I no longer believe in promptings from God, meaning I don't believe that God has a will or a plan or that It exists in time or space, but rather that promptings are more like... recognitions of patterns. I no longer give money to beggars from a principled standpoint; not because I'm afraid to open my wallet and get robbed, nor because I suppose they will buy drugs or booze with it, but because I had a rare opportunity to play the part of a homeless guy once and I know how weakened and pathetic I felt upon receiving a handout for nothing in return. I wouldn't wish that upon another human soul, regardless of how much they may be momentarily be wishing it upon themselves.

I still feel "promptings" to give though, but I simply see those "promptings" as temptations to do something stupid and unprincipled, much like I feel "prompted" to get really angry when someone says something I completely disagree with. An emotional response to the idea of giving is not, in my mind, justification for giving. Giving or not giving is a principled choice for me and I won't betray that principle because I have a natural inclination towards empathy. Promptings (ideas + emotional responses to them) can get us to betray a lot of sound principles. Just ask Abraham and Isaac. I say do your best to discover general principles and stick to those, regardless of what you may think or feel at some moment of weakness when the rubber hits the road. Only betray a principle when you have truly come to accept a principle that you believe overwhelms the former principle generally. (Thus, I ALWAYS used to give to beggars, and now I NEVER do)

*edit - I KNOW I could have written this better. I will not blame anyone for not understanding this post. I guess what I am saying is that promptings exist, but that it does us little good to assume they come from God. Rather than follow promptings, it seems to me a better plan to follow principles. Otherwise, it seems that momentary hunches could become the rule rather than the exception over time. Then again, that might make life more interesting. If I change my mind on this, I'll let you know.

[woot]

I get "promptings" all the time. I have no idea what they are but humans only use a very small part of their brains and so perhaps a "prompting" is a glimpse into a lesser or never used part of our intelligence. I doubt it has anything to do with ghosts, holy or otherwise.

This is false. I promise humans use all of their brains. Brain tissue is really expensive, so if it weren't being used it wouldn't be there.

That being said, you are not your brain. Your brain consists of a parliament of competing voices, leaving your conscious mind generally responsible for which ones to listen to and how to act. "Promptings" are likely no more than instances in which you recognize some of the ongoing competition in your head.

[taekwondave]

This is false. I promise humans use all of their brains. Brain tissue is really expensive, so if it weren't being used it wouldn't be there.

That being said, you are not your brain. Your brain consists of a parliament of competing voices, leaving your conscious mind generally responsible for which ones to listen to and how to act. "Promptings" are likely no more than instances in which you recognize some of the ongoing competition in your head.

Woot, you will be happy to hear that I read this in a BOOK recently. I know. My Senior Course professor is obsessed, not with English like he should be, given that we are english majors, but with neurology. And I found the debunking of this myth very satisfying. I might just read more in the future, who knows? Maybe I might be able to have an ACTUAL conversation with you someday. Maybe...

[creekster]

That being said, you are not your brain. Your brain consists of a parliament of competing voices, leaving your conscious mind generally responsible for which ones to listen to and how to act.

I find that a rather startling statement from you. What is the basis for this conclusion? If we are not our brain, then what is the source of our consciousness? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing all spiritual belief is based on? Isn't this exactly what the Indian guy whose name I cant recall right now asserts? I would very much like to know what you mean by this.

btw, I agree that the "we dont use most of our brain" stuff is non sense. I am not sure why this idea persists.

[taekwondave]

I find that a rather startling statement from you. What is the basis for this conclusion? If we are not our brain, then what is the source of our consciousness? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing all spiritual belief is based on? Isn't this exactly what the Indian guy whose name I cant recall right now asserts? I would very much like to know what you mean by this.

btw, I agree that the "we dont use most of our brain" stuff is non sense. I am not sure why this idea persists.

It sounds good. It gives bad ideas loose scientific justification. People like stuff like that.

[woot]

I find that a rather startling statement from you. What is the basis for this conclusion? If we are not our brain, then what is the source of our consciousness? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing all spiritual belief is based on? Isn't this exactly what the Indian guy whose name I cant recall right now asserts? I would very much like to know what you mean by this.

btw, I agree that the "we dont use most of our brain" stuff is non sense. I am not sure why this idea persists.

"You are not your brain" is an idea gaining momentum in psych/neuroscience, but it doesn't refer to ghosts living inside us. It just means that the part of your brain that is generally responsible for your identity, desires, etc. is only a part of your brain. We can be profoundly affected by the other parts of our brains, and much of my quest in growing as a person has involved controlling the fears and desires that crop up, questioning the ideas I come up with or beliefs I have about myself in the same way I would if someone else said them, and generally trying to be more mindful, allowing "me" to control my actions more often, rather than letting my auto-pilot impulses take the wheel. For those with injuries or other pathologies in the brain, this can be very difficult, and those auto-pilot impulses are probably what cause a large number of the atrocities we hear about in the news. Luckily, those are pretty benign for most of us.

So yes, "you" are in your brain somewhere; it's just helpful to recognize that "you" are not necessarily responsible for everything the various parts of your brain come up with, and are not obligated to believe what it tells you.

That's a pretty weak explanation, but it's complicated and my expertise on this is quite limited. There have been a few books published on this topic recently that I plan to read eventually.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I no longer give money to beggars from a principled standpoint; not because I'm afraid to open my wallet and get robbed, nor because I suppose they will buy drugs or booze with it, but because I had a rare opportunity to play the part of a homeless guy once and I know how weakened and pathetic I felt upon receiving a handout for nothing in return. I wouldn't wish that upon another human soul, regardless of how much they may be momentarily be wishing it upon themselves.

You have got to be kidding. You don't don't give because you played a homeless dude once and it made you feel icky?