Christmas is coming up soon and it is one of my favourite holidays. I make a marvelous Christmas pudding! It is similar to the fruitcake my mother insists on making for us each Christmas. The woman does not set foot into the kitchen all year, unless it is to make a last-minute change to the menu. However, every year, as the Christmas season approaches, she dons a lace-edged apron about as effective as a paper cake doily and waves all the staff out of the kitchen. Mother emerges hours later, hair floured, a smear of molasses on her cheek, and a shine in her eyes that could only be brought about by “sampling” the brandy, but victoriously bearing a fruitcake. It generally has the appearance, textures, and taste of a caramel sundae, and we all eat a hearty slice on Christmas Eve. The joy we had last year. Ava was eating my delightful Christmas pudding. Both Deacon and Tennessee insisted on examining the box I had sent, to make sure I was not holding out on the. Even father begged for more. When my mother asked, with the air of jealous mistress, how this pudding compared to her fruitcake, we were quick to reassure her, “Oh, the Christmas pudding is good, but it is very…you know…British.” We left her to interpret just what that meant. Some prophets receive this symbolic knowledge directly from the celestial souls. Such reception involves the prophet’s imaginative facility.  #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

The holiday was peaceful. I regret to say that last year Santa Claus did not leave a kettle for me, but I did get a splendid new tennis racket. I could not hardly wait until the snow thawed to try it out. Ava stitched a beautiful bookmark that reads, “A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.” And my father presented me with a watch, a gold number with a thick chain. He told me it was his father’s watch and his father’s before him. “Now that you are a man, Ryan,” says he, “and have some direction in your life, you will need something to help guide you. You know where to go, but now you will know when to when to go.” I have a sharp mind that can be wielded like any sharp weapon. The human soul and the rational knowledge it acquires are emanations from the Active Intelligence, which is an entity existing independently of humans, coming from the Divine Source known as God. As such, the body receives the soul and the soul receives rational knowledge. Certain combinations of formed matter induce the reception of Active Intelligence of the vegetative soul. The soul is immortal. If one was to come into being fully mature and rational but suspended in space so that he or she was totally unaware of his or her physical circumstances, one would still be certain of a single thing—his or her existence as an individual self. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

In a higher form of prophecy that is intellectual, the prophets from the celestial intellects not only the first intelligibles, without the need of the soul’s preparatory activities, but also the demonstrative knowledge involving the internal and external senses—sensation, memory, imagination, estimation, and cogitation, or imaged thinking. Prophetic reception of knowledge thus differs from the philosophical in manner. It also differs in quantity. The prophet receives all or most of the intelligibles from the Active Intelligence all at once. This intellectual revelation is then translated into the language of imagery and divulged to the public. It includes the basic commands of the revealed law, without which man or woman as a political animal cannot survive. Hence, divine goodness must reveal the law at certain moments of discussion through the prophets. Prophecy is thus necessary in the sense that it is required for the survival of civilized society and in the sense that it is necessitated by the divine nature. This is all part of the mystic’s spiritual journey to God: Beginning with faith and motivated by desire and love, the mystic undertakes spiritual exercises that first being him or her to interrupted glimmerings of the light of Truth. These experiences become progressively more frequent and durable until the stage of arrival is reached, in which the mystic has a direct and an uninterrupted vision of God. If you heed the voice of God, all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

God’s gifts put human’s best dreams to shame. We have forgotten the gracious hands which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessing were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. It is interesting that people take credit for all of the good things in life, but what they do something ungodly, they refuse to take responsibility. This is known as the causality of freedom. Human freedom is categorical or such that their actions are not entirely determined by factors which they have no control. Causation is constant conjunction; humans, when acting voluntarily, always act in accordance with their strongest desires and aversions; justice, morality, and the administration of the laws all require such casual determination of behavior, and so on. However, it seems some people are only helpless products of an impersonal nature who govern neither themselves nor anything else but are simply carried along to whatever destinies the circumstances of their lives inflict upon them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

The unconscious is the master of every fate and the captain of every soul. Typical cases are quite well understood by psychiatrists—the man who uses someone and puts his life in danger so he can get TV show and keep paying his bills, while he gets free publicity by emotional manipulating a kind soul. The compulsive gambler who always plays until he loses, the man who inwardly loves filth and so washes his hands constantly, the mother who lets her child perish of illness on the train because she “must get to her destination,” and so in. We can, if we are honest and sophisticated, see our own lives and conduct partially mirrored and perhaps begin to have some inkling of the unconscious, deeply hidden but powerful forces which almost entirely determine what we are and what we do. Father in Heaven, I know you are the God of Acceleration, and if you transformed water into wine in a split second for the wedding party centuries ago, I know you can accelerate things in my life. Thank you for taking me further faster. I know you will thrust me years ahead. I want to thank you thank you that I will accomplish my dreams sooner than I think. God is about to release everything that belongs to you. It will happen sooner than you think. It will be bigger than you imagined. He will bring out gifts and talents you did not even know you had. He will open up new doors of opportunity. God loves to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5