172. The Power of Stillness: Mindful Living For Latter-Day Saints

Lately, I’ve been noticing just how loud the world feels—and how quickly that noise can turn inward. Anxiety. Judgment. The pressure to keep going, keep producing, keep proving.

In this episode of The Latter-Day Ladies Podcast, I talk about mindfulness and the sacred practice of stillness—and how slowing down has helped me find more compassion for myself and a deeper connection to Christ.

We talk about why stillness isn’t laziness, why emotions aren’t a lack of faith, and how Jesus Himself responded to chaos—not with urgency, but with calm presence.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, tender, or exhausted in your spirit, this conversation is for you. There is peace available—not after the storm, but right in the middle of it.

🤍 Be still, and know that He is God.
 

The Power of Stillness Book

The Power of Stillness AudioBook

Transcript

Therapy, Stillness, and Self-Compassion

[00:00:00] welcome to the Latter Day Ladies podcast. I'm your host and your friend Jenny Moss. And today we're gonna talk about a book that truly has changed the way in which I interact with the world. And that book is called The Power of Stillness. I love that I've been able to revisit this in the last couple weeks because I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a lot of noise, even more than.

Before, which kind of seems crazy because I remember thinking there was a lot of noise last year,

so I felt like this was the perfect time to share this book, some of the things that are found inside, and I highly recommend getting it. I will put the link of the book in my show notes,

the authors actually read it on the audio book. Holy moly. They have very relaxing voices, and so it feels like you're almost in a meditative state when they're reading it to you. So without further ado, this is a podcast on the power of stillness.

The beginning of this book, I felt [00:01:00] completely and utterly seen, when the writers said this. Quote, one of the most dramatic portrayals of the redemptive power of stillness is hidden in an ancient story, familiar to all Christians.

A woman caught in adultery is brought to Jesus by people ready to participate in one of the most extreme displays of power. Taking someone's life confronted by these indignant accusers. The Lord does not try to overpower them with dramatic words or shouting, nor does he step away in fear, although the crowd could have become a danger to him as well.

Instead, he holds still. And as though he heard them, not Jesus stooped down to the ground where he wrote with his finger in the dust as the agitated voices around him persisted in demanding an answer. The savior remained [00:02:00] fully calm, and then he offered. Some few quiet words, just a single sentence. He bent down again to the ground more than simply his words.

Something about the Lord's presence in that moment stilled and softened the crowd to the point that they dispersed entirely. There are moments in our lives when we are also confronted with a cacophony of noise and demanding voices. For contemporary saints, it is no longer a literal mob scene demanding our attention.

Although intensifying schedules and busyness can start to feel like one end quote, I loved so much that they pointed out. What Jesus simply did in that moment when there was an angry mob, when there were people who were yelling, shouting, um, very charged with emotional responses to what this woman had done.

They [00:03:00] came to him demanding, accusing, asking in a very angry way for the savior to deal with her. It was a twofold thing. They wanted the woman to receive the justice that they felt she deserved, and they also wanted to trick or see what this man who says he's a savior would do. Jesus Christ, in his wisdom, decided to take a minute before he responded and then.

Encouraged them to think what they were actually asking him to do. I love that we get to explore how this pace of Jesus Christ responding to, the people who came to him with the woman caught in adultery, how that could translate to our relationship with [00:04:00] God in our relationship with God, the expectation that we should immediately receive. In the book, it talks about. The roots of the Chinese character for busy, and it says this, quote, the Chinese character for busy point to some of the deeper effects of an over hectic way of life, namely the death or loss of the heart. Could we be losing the heart of our spiritual practices in large part through the exhaustion and frenetic pace of our modern lives. If so, what kind of changes does this call for? To start, we might ironically first need to stop, but immersed in nonstop news and entertainment. Many find it a lost art to be able to pause [00:05:00] and to deeply rest. End quote. I woke up this morning feeling incredibly anxious.

I had a hard day yesterday. A lot of mental strain, and I made a lot of judgements about that in my head and found a lot of frustration with myself that I had a bad day. And rather than continuing in that judgmental pattern, I came home and I did. A series of meditations. Refill My Soul is an app that a incredible woman has created and she creates beautiful meditations that are based on gospel principles and sometimes conference talks.

And so I laid in my bed and I listened to one of her meditations on peace. I realized how uncomfortable I was with the stillness because of all of the anxiety and judgment that I had [00:06:00] for yesterday and as I sat there with those feelings, thoughts, emotions, judgments, I realized that there.

It could be a lot of space for compassion in my head, for myself and my own life experience. 

This is not something that I could have come to. If I had continued the pace that my anxiety was asking me to continue, if I had immediately shoved myself into a project or started stress cleaning the house, I don't think that I would've gotten to the same place of peace because I was able to unravel and unwrap what my brain was trying to keep me from.

My brain was trying to keep me from the pain of,, feeling like I had failed and the judgments that I had made to get to that feeling. And once I actually was able to practice the stillness and the [00:07:00] mindfulness, I realized that, I had not failed by having a bad day. Depression is not sin, and I'm allowed to feel sad saying it out loud.

Now, of course. Sounds silly, and I'm laughing, but I felt like I had, somehow had less faith or less strength yesterday because I was experiencing sorrow. But we know even the savior experience, sorrow, emotions are not a sin. Struggle is not a sin and the way that we react to it shows the emotional resilience and that really is an indication of faith.

The deciding factor to move forward even when you are feeling that sorrow, that is beautiful. So I was able to find that compassion for myself, and I feel at one and at peace with myself because I took that time for stillness. The way that mindfulness is [00:08:00] talked about in this book, I feel like is very clear.

It says, quote. Mindfulness is a simple awareness. The skill of being aware of what's actually happening inside and around you. Thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and what the traditional five senses notice about the tangible world. This is an awareness of what's unfolding in the present moment.

Without overanalyzing the past or predicting the future. Thus, mindfulness also has been described as a conscious affectionate awareness of the moment. As you can see, it's not cold robotic observing. It's noticing with compassion. Compared to the death or the loss of a heart evoked by the Chinese character for busy.

[00:09:00] The character for mindfulness is a combination of two separate characters for now and heart, which when combined suggests bringing the heart into the present and the act of experiencing the present moment with your heart. End quote. So the reason why I'm sharing this on a gospel podcast is mindfulness is a core principle of the gospel, be still and know that I am God.

The Lord wants us to find our center with him through prayer, through studying truth, through being able to reflect the light of Christ in our countenance, but the expectation that we're gonna be able to do those things at the pace of the world is absolutely, I don't know if impossible is the word, but just so difficult.

It's so much easier [00:10:00] to enjoy the experience of. Being a child of God on this earth, learning who we are, eternally learning what eternal life will feel like. I feel like we have glimpses of that joy, of that peace of the many fruits of the spirit that we are promised when we slow down and actually allow ourselves to feel the fruits of the spirit.

One of the things about, accessing the fruits of the spirit is just like when we're going to eat an apple off of the tree. We don't just pluck it, look at it, and then chuck it. We take the apple off, we take a bite, we savor the tart or tang or the sweetness of the apple. We enjoy the experience and that is how we can [00:11:00] savor.

Being able to partake of that fruit. And if we wanna partake of the fruits of the spirit, , slowing down the pace of our life can help us be able to savor those moments, savor that experience. I know that there are so many things pulling at her attention. I have several different roles that I could be filling right now in this moment.

But the role that I'm sitting in and with right now is living my purpose of sharing things that have helped my life and brought me closer to Christ. That role is what I am currently inhabiting habiting, and if I sit in that, I really can feel the spirit, I can feel the, settling of the moment and the other [00:12:00] things that could be pulling at my attention, I'm allowing them to sit

I loved this part of the book. Where it talks about our religious heritage as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It says this quote, one reason we can be open to new light as a people, is that this is our religious heritage of faith.

Founded on an openness to all truth and inspiration. There's a strong sense from prophetic teaching that in addition to dispensing truth, the church is to be a receptacle of truth as well. For instance, the prophet Joseph Smith taught. That one of the grand fundamental principles of our faith is to receive truth, to let it come from once it may, encouraging saints to gather all the good and true [00:13:00] principles in the world and treasure them up as part of the restoration.

Saints anticipate that some of the additional restored light will be a return to ancient wisdom. Even a restitution of all things, all the hidden mysteries of my kingdom from days of old President Brigham Young, similarly called it the business of Latter-Day Saints, to gather up the truths of the world to the gospel.

We preach to the sciences and to the philosophy wherever it may be found in every nation, kindred tongue, and people to bring it to Zion. End quote. This really resonated with me because we do talk about this continual restoration that we're singing right before our eyes. I felt this restoration within myself as I learned about how my body functions, as I learned about how food can heal the [00:14:00] gut

as I learned about nutrition, as I learned about the body, I felt like I was learning more about God. It was so interesting because I read the word of wisdom completely different. After my health journey than I did before, and I feel like I was able to treasure up these truths that I found that truly changed my life and changed the way that I live on a daily basis.

I highly recommend.

Incorporating this practice of gathering truth into your life and recognizing that the Lord may have more goodness for you. I also highly recommend reading this book. It has helped me be more mindful of the pace in which I am living. There's so much more goodness, I haven't even gotten into the actual [00:15:00] practices of mindfulness.

They go through different scenarios. They go through how it could look in your life. I haven't even gotten to chapter one, but this. Book has given me pause to recognize that there is more for me, there is more learning, there is more light, there is more knowledge, there is more goodness I wanna continue in doing a little series about the power of stillness, how it's affected my life.

And so next week we're gonna be talking about doing. And how, we can associate the gospel as something we need to get done and accomplish things that we need to do, and shift that focus into things that we can be. I love you guys. I know that God. Is so proud of the person that you are.

He's proud of all of the changes that you've made [00:16:00] already in your life. I pray that we can find more ways to slow our pace so that we can hear him. We can. Be able to recognize the spirit more fully in our life, and also be able to feel the fruits of the spirit to savor them, to experience them, and to not feel burnout, but rather renewal in all of the gifts that God has already bestowed to us.

I love you guys.