This morning I read Joseph Smith’s testimony of receiving the gold plates. What I thought was interesting was what Moroni told Joseph during the 4th visitation (after visiting him 3 times in the middle of the night a few hours before this). During this last visit, he commanded Joseph to go to his father and tell him of the vision and commandments which he had received.
Also, after Joseph’s first vision in the Sacred Grove, he almost immediately told his mother what happened and what his experience was.
This goes along with the thoughts that I shared a little over a year ago about how important it is to share our spiritual experiences (either with someone we trust or with our journals.)
I feel that when we have spiritual experiences, we need to immediately share them with someone (when prompted) or our journal because this solidifies the experience in our brains and creates another witness of sorts. If we just keep it all in our head/heart, then I feel like our brains will either forget or reject the experience over time, because there is no “evidence” and it is out of the norm and not mundane.
I also think that sharing our experiences or writing them down is part of the “physical creation” after the experience has been created spiritually.
These spiritual experiences are things that we see, or hear, or just feel in our hearts. They aren’t always big, earth shattering, angel appearing type experiences. Of course I am talking about those as well, but I’m also talking about the little moments where you receive a stroke of inspiration or an answer to a question that has been on your mind, etc.
I think that sharing/writing our experiences helps us to be able to have the conviction that Joseph Smith had when he said “why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen? For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it.”
