Did you receive a patriarchal blessing? What did the experience mean to you?

As someone who has had spiritual experiences in my life, and prefer being labeled as "agnostic" rather than "athiest," my feelings about Patriarchal Blessings are that they are much like Tarot. Are there a lot of fraudsters who draw cards and happily state that every card has meaning and significance in any situation that they want to draw for? Yes. Absolutely.
Are there people who draw tarot, and sometimes find answers through the card imagery that provides wisdom and insight that was not immediately clear to them? Yes. In my opinion, absolutely.
I think Patriarchal Blessings are much the same. For the most part, it's a fun fortune-telling gimmick. But SOMETIMES, if you have a Patriarch who is genuinely gathering insight from whatever source that insight can be gathered from, you have something akin to a fantastic tarot draw, that can genuinely be helpful.
Universal consciousness? Good meditation? Krishna? I don't know, and I don't care.

murphy

No, as I was taught, a Patriarchal Blessing (PB) was essentially a telling of your future. I didn’t see how being told my future could be considered a blessing. At the time, I was very much against getting married and having children, and honestly, the main reason I didn’t want a PB was because I was afraid it would tell me I had to. Also, getting a PB doesn’t change your fate, so what was the point?

proudxmo

I did. It was generic and the life it foretold made me miserable to think about. The patriarch used what little knowledge he had about me to make a few statements, saying things like "you have the gift of love, service, empathy, and listening", "if you cling to your covenants, you will rise above all your challenges", "when the time comes you will find an eternal companion and enter the temple and get sealed", "you'll have lots of kids who will all look to you as an example of faith" (which was one of my worst nightmares), "you have a duty to do missionary work", and "you'll be resurrected". I was still trying to believe at the time and this "blessing" disappointed me and gave me a lot of anxiety. It didn't mean anything to me and it eventually became one of the items on my shelf.

frey

I received one of those shortly after turning 13 and thought I had a god-damned treasure map for how to be happy in life.
It was fucking wrong. The advice it gave me during the worst period of my life was the opposite of what I needed to hear. All of my leaders at the time said the same thing, so thinking I had received the same council from both my leaders and this mystical message from god, I doubled down, and it nearly killed me.
FUCK this shit.

layhandsondeez

I received mine at around 16? When it was over I really didn’t remember much but my parents were convinced I’d be a stake president. It talked a lot about missionary service and I remember reading it later thinking I’d be a street preacher, valiantly proclaiming truth and battling apostasy from a milk crate. My imagination was wild. My mission was not that exciting. I found most of the people who joined while I taught them, by knocking doors. Not one public debate while standing on a milk crate in two years lol.

ashmonster2000

I did, if I remember correctly I was about 16 years old. The experience at that moment was great because you will learn what God has planned for your life and if you remain truthful to the mormon church everything should be accomplished.

This was also a big issue when learning that the mormon church is not true at all. Once I learned that there's one God and as Isaiah 43:10 says: There's no other God, there never has been, and there never will be (NLT) this was shocking to me because my patriarchal blessing said that I was going to be a God and create my own worlds in the afterlife.
So at that point I also realized that the "patriarch" who gave me the blessing had 100% no clue in what Isaiah 43:10 said.
This also led to learn that mormons are actually polytheist. Because they think God was a man like us, this is an actual principle of mormonism taught by president Lorenzo Snow “As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.”
Meaning that when God was a man he probably had his own God, and if that's true then mormons believe in an infinite amount of gods. We get to this eternal regression issue where that God was a man and had a God which was also a man and had a God as well etc....

Also learning how my wife's patriarchal blessing was super vague taught me that is literally whatever the "patriarch" says and believes that's what you get. Plus a sprinkle of whatever conversation you had with him before hand, he will use that too to guide that "blessing"

searjasub

I did receive a patriarchal blessing and it was a bout as generic as it could be. Like everyone else I was from the tribe of Ephraim, I would go on to serve a mission, get a good job, and get married. There was nothing in there that was specific to me and my future. I guess I ruined it though by not believing hard enough.

spendiggity144

It was extremely meaningful until I found dozens of others just like it online. After another read through it, its counsel was no more specific than what you might expect from a palm reader at a carnival. Several of the prophesies in it simply did not happen.

elementalepistles

I did, and it was something that I took very seriously. There were things in my blessing that I took as direct signs of God's knowing of me. In particular the phrase "kindred spirit" being used to describe my spouse (I was a huge Anne of Green Gables fan.) Now I realize that there were large portions of my blessing that were damaging to me--it spoke of being a wife and mother as the most important thing I would ever do, and I always felt let down by that. I had more ambition than a life of motherhood. (In truth, I never really wanted to be a mother.) There's also a line in my blessing about how I wouldn't suffer from any "limiting or devastating diseases," which I now see as incredibly damaging and potentially dangerous. Get your health checked out by medical professionals!

Anonymous