As anyone who has ever cleaned out a closet or a basement can attest, clutter is a reality of life. And it's not just a physical reality. Our minds can become cluttered too, filled with beliefs about everything from our relationship with God to our feelings about our bodies to our housekeeping methods.

Some of these beliefs are what author Virginia H. Pearce calls "Truths with a capital T." They are eternal and will always be true, whether anyone believes them or not. The confusion in our lives comes because mixed in with those Truths are other beliefs, some of which might be useful but some of which are just plain harmful.

In this insightful new book, Sister Pearce invites us to become "inquirers after truth," to examine all of our beliefs and try our best to see them in the light of the Truths we know to be eternal. By doing so, we can discard the half-truths and lies that may be hindering our progress. Our lives can be filled with greater happiness than we ever thought possible as we learn to see them Through His Eyes.

Contents:
Acknowledgments
• The Closet
• A Useful Map
• We All Believe - Something
• True, true, and Not-true-at-all
• Getting Personal
• Finding and Starving the Half-truths and Lies
• Finding Half-truths and Lies through Questions
• Finding and Feeding Truth
• Steps to Finding and Feeding Truth
• Truth Matters
Sources
Index

Deseret News book review of Through His Eyes by Rosemarie Howard (Click Here)

A Useful Map
A road map always tells you everything except how to refold it.
—Author Unknown

Our inquiring adventure will be easier to navigate if we are all looking at the same map. This map, of course, can’t fully explain the very complex and individual ways we experience thoughts, emotions, and behavior, but it might help us to visualize a kind of sequential flow—even if it is grossly oversimplified.

The starting point for the journey we repeat over and over is the flow of outside information coming in through our five senses—in addition to that sixth sense, our spiritual sensations. We hear words, see and hear nonverbal messages, smell, touch and are touched by others, and sense spiritual promptings. In short, we take in all the data from the world outside of us.

This data has no real meaning until we sort and sift through it, interpreting it in terms of our past experience and the beliefs we already hold. And so, within seconds of our receiving the data, meaning is attached, resulting in an emotional response, which is followed by action of some sort. This is a road we travel countless times each day. Our subjective experience is that it is automatic—we hear or see something, and our emotions move us to respond. It just happens. And it happens quickly and almost continuously. Therefore, we might not even imagine that it is open to ­modification.

A quick example:

The starting point is Data Input: The counselor in Relief Society calls to ask me if I will teach Relief Society in two weeks.

I rapidly move the data through my filter of Thoughts/Interpretations/Beliefs: I am not a good teacher; she probably asked me because she feels sorry for me and wants me to feel important.

Within a nanosecond there is an Emotional Response: Fear, anxiety, ­embarrassment.

As these thoughts and emotions work in me throughout the week, they shape my Behavior: On Sunday I stumble through the lesson, communicating anxiety to everyone in the audience.

And of course, the road now doubles back in a continuing circle because there is now more Information/Data Input (the perceived discomfort of the audience) coming in to confirm my Beliefs that I am not a good teacher. The Emotional Response I have the next time I am asked to teach may be so much more uncomfortable that the Action I take is to refuse to accept further teaching invitations. Do you see how this automatic process grows stronger and stronger? And, in a case like my example here, more debilitating?

As we look at this progression, we may feel that the most sensible place in which to intervene is with our Behavior. After all, our own behavior is a matter of choice. So we try and try, making resolutions about what we will do and not do. And it sometimes works, but often it does not.

Should we try to stop all of this at the Data Input point? Probably not. We can’t usually do much about the data coming in because other people and circumstances generally control it.

So what about Emotions? Unfortunately, they seem to have a life of their own—­we usually aren’t very successful about simply making a decision not to be anxious. Emotions can be so strong and seem to come unbidden. What to do?

I am going to postulate that the Beliefs/Thoughts/Interpretations/Expectations segment in this ongoing cycle is the most profoundly important. It is the driver of emotions and actions. It provides the filter through which we process all the sensory information in our environment. Furthermore, I am also going to suggest that this “spot on the map” is fairly consistent over time and also the biggest mystery—both to ourselves and to others. Others cannot see what beliefs we are operating out of—and often we don’t either. Our “Belief Boxes” hold a multitude of things—many of them deeply personal and specific to us as individuals. And we are what we think. Our emotions and our actions spring from our beliefs.

Joseph Smith wrote the thirteen Articles of Faith as statements of belief in his letter to John Wentworth. President Gordon B. Hinckley, at a BYU devotional, referred to that as he shared with us ten statements of his personal beliefs in 1992. In that talk, President Hinckley said: “Each of us is largely the product of his or her beliefs. Our behavior is governed by these. They become our standards of conduct” (“I Believe,” 2). Do you recognize the flow from our road map? Our behavior grows out of our beliefs. Yes. And along with our behavior come the emotions that motivate our behavior.

Will you, my friend, accept an invitation to inquire after truth as we poke around in our own individual Belief Boxes? What we have stored in there is important enough to spend some time and energy investigating.