Randolph Harris II International

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God is a Pervasive Principle of Goodness

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference. All acts and all thoughts are irreducibly the products of individual human beings and therefore inescapably associated with the needs, desires, and purposes of humans. Such terms are reality and truth denote nothing complete and absolute; rather, they are intertwined with human intentions and deeds. Effective creativity of the human mind in organizing the Universe of human experience is in making or remaking reality. Humans make their truth along with their other values, beauty and goodness. Our axioms are never God-given but are human-made; they are not a priori verities but postulates, or working hypotheses, whose truth grows or diminishes within our experience. The logic we employ in gathering knowledge is dynamic and functional rather than eternally fixed. Our data are not the given, but the taken. Human being’s activity is focal both to epistemology and to metaphysics, and there is genuine novelty in our growing universe and no theoretical limit to human’s freedom. The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

Reality is a seamless logical unity, not a mere disjointed plurality; that in the Absolute all separateness vanishes; that nothing finite, nothing that changes, is ever quite real, not even human personality; and there is something makeshift, transitory, and unsatisfactory about the bits of matter we see, the individual acts we perform, and the private thoughts we think. That is all that exists for us. An independent or absolute reality that does not enter into our experience, or explain our knowledge, is irrelevant to us. Reality for us is piecemeal, incomplete, and plastic. It is idle to ask “What is real?” Rather, the only question we can answer is “What can I know as real?” Everyone’s situation is different, and the details of each life are unique. Nevertheless, we can make life sweeter, more joyful, even more glorious by being grateful. Spiritual gifts are powerful blessings. They increase our capacity as we develop them by drawing on the storehouse of Heaven. Our Heavenly Father did not put us on Earth to fail, but to succeed gloriously. It may seem paradoxical, but that is why recognizing answers to prayer can sometimes be very difficult. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

The reality revealed by our actual active procedures of knowing is not rigid but malleable, not completed but evolving. Because it responds, at least to some extent, to our working and probing, it must somehow be not unrelated to our needs and purposes. The process of knowing is never one of bringing the mind into relation with a fundamentally alien reality, but always one of improving and extending an already existing system which we know. What we call real is that which, for our own reasons, we evaluate as important. It is the result of the kind of selection by which we reduce the chaos about us to order. Some face life with only their own experience and capacity to help them. Others seek, through prayer, divine inspiration to know what to do. When required, they qualify for power beyond their own capacity to do it. Communication with our Father in Heaven is not a trivial matter. It is a sacred privilege. It is based upon unchanging principles. When we receive help from our Father in Heaven, it is in response to faith, obedience, and the proper use of agency. We are here on Earth to gain experience we can obtain in no other way. We are given the opportunity to grow, to develop, and to gain spiritual maturity. To do that, we must learn to apply truth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

How we face challenges and resolve difficult problems is crucially important to our happiness. Stress, culture, and community maintains that the primary motivation of human beings is to build, protect, and foster their resource reservoirs in order to protect the self and it social attachments. The more stress you are under, the more important it is to balance this by moving the body. Move the energy and do not let things stagnate. Stagnation can cause illness and pain. Identify the source of stress in your life and work to eliminate them by changing how you perceive things. So much worry comes from our imagination because we are always thinking of what might happen. The imagination and its ideas mediate between perception and will. As opposed to the conceptions of the understanding, which are finite, the ideas of imagination are both finite and infinite. An idea’s relation to its object is finite, but the activity of the imagination in this relation is infinite. The function of the will is to idealize the imagination’s ideas. The contradiction thus engendered gives rise to impulse, defined as the desire to restore destroyed identity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

For us to grow, we need to do what we feel is right. In time, God will answer. God will not fail us.  Through impulse, there is constant realization of ideals, but the ideas of the imagination are constantly striven after and never attained. The brain and body are completely pliable. One can shape one’s brain through one’s thoughts and actions. Once we recognize that the only thing we can count on is change and that change is inevitable, one can begin to let go of how we think things should be. One can then let go of the tension that comes from that way of thinking. The distinction between will and intelligence thus is relative, not absolute. From a higher point of view, they are identical. In intelligence, the I that acts and the I that knows are one. The acting I is an object for itself, while the know I merely perceives other objects. In action, there is no transition from the World of mind, for the subject has become an object to itself. Any change in the outer World is received as a perception, but every action causes such a change; therefore, action is perception. Self-determination is the primary condition of all consciousness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

Happiness depends upon ourselves. The soul never thinks without a picture. The people who give us trouble are our best teachers. What are we willing to learn about ourselves? The World and God have as common ground the incomprehensible basis of reality. Existence is a self-affirmation. God is the infinite affirmation of himself. The objective World is the unconscious poetry of the spirit creating itself. There is a striking formulation of the existential anxiety, which is also an anticipation of the psychoanalytic doctrine of resistance: The philosopher who knows his calling is the physician who seeks to heal with gentle, slow hand the deep sounds of human consciousness. The restoration is all the more difficult since most people do not want to be healed at all and, like unhappy patients, rise unruly outcry if one even approaches their wounds.  Family is an important part of one’s life, and is also very important to God. From Adam and Eve onward, God made humans to be together with love to guide and support one another. Through prayer, we can make out families stronger.  Alma 10. 21 reports: God will judge all of our iniquities; the voices of Angels cry out to his people telling us to repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

How much time are you spending sitting watching the TV? Watching other people’s lives and experiences rather than creating you own? When we seek inspiration to help make decisions, the Lord gives gentle promptings. These require us to think, to exercise faith, to work, to struggle at times, and to act. Seldom does the whole answer to a decisively important matter or complex problem come all at once. More often, it comes a piece at a time, without the end in sight. Endless appreciation to our Father in Heaven whose blessings depend upon our obedience, but whose ratio of blessings to obedience makes him a generous God! Heavenly Father, please shine your light upon our families. Give us strength to overcome all of the difficulties that we are dealing with now and protect us against any and all problems we may encounter in the future. Lord, please bring us together where we are meant to be. May the love that binds us only grow stronger as we fulfill the destiny you have laid out for us. Grant us forgiveness for any sins we have committed. May we also forgive one another Lord, as it is sometimes difficult to do. Bless us God, in your name I pray, bless it be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7