Friday, March 6, 2020

Selective Mind Shielding

In D&D, there's a magic item called a Ring of Mind Shielding, which allows the wearer to block telepathic communication. While a person is wearing such a ring, they can effectively shut everyone else out of their mind. Yet, they don't have to shut everyone out of their mind. They can still allow some telepathic communication to occur, if they choose to. The Ring of Mind Shielding has other uses, too, but the control over telepathy is the one I want to focus on, because that's an ability that we all already have.

No one on earth actually has the power of telepathy, but we frequently receive mental communication from other sources. There are countless spirits that send us mental messages as often as they can. Some of them are good and prompt us to do good things, and some of them are evil and prompt us to do evil things. Yet, we choose which spirits to listen to. We can shut the evil spirits out of our mind. But that doesn't mean we need to shut all spirits out. We can choose which spirits get to send us messages and which ones don't. Through the help of the Holy Ghost and a good deal of will-power, we can shield our minds from the temptations of the adversary while still accepting communication from the Holy Ghost.

I am grateful that we all have the ability to block out the adversary, and I'm especially glad that we don't also have to block out the Holy Ghost while we're at it. We need the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and we need that guidance to continue, even while we shield our minds from the adversary.

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