There are some things I miss. Our chronological age misleads us. We can be deceived by numerical certainty into believing that the sum of our lived years tells us something absolute and incontestable about ourselves. However, “Age ain’t nothing but a number. Throwing down ain’t nothing but a thing. This something I have for you it will never change. Here I am, and there you are. Your eyes are calling me to your heart. All you gotta do is knock, I’ll let you in and we feel the passion that flows within. I don’t mean to be bold, but I gotta let you know I gotta thang for you and I can’t let go. Take my hand and come with me, and let me show you to ecstasy,” reports Aaliyah. Some people are born old and some never get old. One man reported that he has felt rather ageless for the past thirty years. However, he did feel old and troubled in his youth. A woman in her eighties explains: you know, to be eighty is nothing to dread, because at eighty you can be the age of whoever you talk to. If I’m with my grandchildren, the little ones, I understand them because I’ve been there and I know. If I’m with a twenty-four-year-old mother with young babies, I know exactly what she’s talking about. I feel like I’m her age and I can understand her World. That’s one of the nice things about being old. You’re the age of whoever you are with. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

Of course, there people have honest intentions in context to their agelessness. As a result of infirmary or retirement the open time and emotional spaciousness of childhood are often returned to us, but not childhood’s unquestioning ease of play, laughter, and imagination. When we leave art and the depiction of life only to the accomplished painter and the museum, instead of fostering our own artful sensibilities through them, then our lives lose opportunities for soul. A seventy-four-year-old former university professor recalls that his greatest problem when he first retired was shifting from a heavy-pressured, overly structured life to one of free form choices. The soul is a piece of art known intimately, not remotely. It is felt, not just understood. It is a daily involvement in mysteries and a personal quest for a corresponding ethic. A woman who was forced by Parkinson’s disease to retire at the age of twenty-two reports: “When I was employed, the routines required by work shaped what time I got up, when I ate my meals, when I went to the bathroom, when I could relax. However, upon retirement, I nearly drowned in an ocean of decision to be made.” That is because we have to listen to our bodies, and without soul, religion’s truths and moral principles might be believed in, perhaps, and discussed, but they are not taken truly to heart and lived from the core of one’s being. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

Care of the soul involves work, in the alchemical sense. It is impossible to care for the soul and live at the same time in unconsciousness. Sometimes soul work is exciting and inspiring, but often it is also challenging, requiring genuine courage, qualities of open-mindedness, resilience, a sense of wonder, and enthusiasm as the most valuable possessions of our species, to be cherished, nurtured, and cultivated. Rarely easy, work with the soul is usually placed squarely in that place we would rather not visit, in that emotion we do not want to feel, and in that understanding we would prefer to do without. However, choose eternal life according to will of the Holy Spirit even though the most honest route may be the most difficult to take. It is not easy to visit a place in ourselves that is most challenging and to look straight into the image that gives us the most fright; yet, there, where the work is most intense, is the source of soul. “People reap eternal happiness or misery according to spirit they obey,” reports Alma 3.36. People who evince agelessness in their manner of living are those who have retained innocent qualities throughout adulthood or have managed to accomplish their recovery. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

Since we never want to take up the piece of our emotion that is most in need of attention, we should give increased awareness to our dreams; for there they will find images that in waking life are very difficult to face. Dreams are truly the mythology of the soul and working with them forms a major piece in the project of making life more artful. “The Holy Ghost is gift of God unto all who diligently seek him,” reports 1 Nephi 10.17. The fact that we are dealing with invisible forces makes them no more intangible than any other force of nature with which we deal. All life is invisible, all energy is invisible, all causation is invisible. The principle of mind is invisible and its practice is invisible, but its results are the word of God made flesh. “Gifts are given by manifestation of the Spirit unto people to profit them,” Moroni 10.8. When asked what she regarded as the reason for her longevity, a hundred-year-old man explained, “I think my sense of humor has protected me from stress. My favorite motto on aging is this: ‘Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it won’t matter.’” As one of our earliest and most enduring capacities, laughter can help lead us back into childhood’s ease. At least momentarily, we loosen our hold on ourselves. When I was in my bed, having trouble walking, I started watching humorous movies. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

A few of my favourite funny movies were Home Again, Horrible Bosses I, Horrible Bosses II, and Ice Man. Although nothing is less funny than being flat on your back with all the bones in your spine and joints hurting, I made the joyous discovery that hours of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect. It lifted my spirits and made me feel better. It was like a natural anti-depressant, but all I was doing was watching funny movies. If you are ever sad or going through hardship, also try watching reruns of 2 Broke Girls. My doctor has studied the beneficial effects of humor on illness and she reported that, “It makes recovery possible because ultimately, and in the deepest sense, humor works by rallying, and by being a manifestation of, the will to live. Kaiser has some great doctors. It has also been reported that when you are afraid someone is going to die, find a way to make them laugh because it will give them the desire to talk, to laugh, and to eat. Laughter has been proven to extend a person’s life, and it makes sense. If stress can end a life early, then experiencing joy can extent it. Laughter brings us back to the present moment, to the sheer fact of continuing to be alive and viewing the spectacle around us. The science of the mind is just as definitely scientific and just as based on any other discipline. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

The approach of psychology to mental and physical healing has already passed through several distinct stages. Starting with mesmerism it developed into hypnotism; next into mental suggestion; and finally into mental explanation, which is the method employed by most psychologist. However, neither psychiatry nor analytical psychology is hypnotic, like religion, nor do they practice mental suggestion. Their entire field is one of explanation. In analytical psychology the explanation is drawn from the patient’s consciousness in such a way that one self-sees one’s trouble, and by this self-seeing the difficulty is supposed to be dissipated. In the earliest stages of analytical psychology it was thought necessary that the analyst should draw out of the consciousness of one’s patient every trivial incident which might have led to one’s mental and physical undoing. This has made of analysis one of the most subtle of arts, as well as one of the most difficult practices. If one expects to draw out of the consciousness of one’s patient the most trivial incidents of one’s life, the method becomes painstaking, laborious, and more or less cumbersome; generally the treatment must cover a long period of time. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

There is a tendency today among many practicing analysts and psychiatrists to short-cut this method somewhat, and to drain more quickly the psychic confusion from the unconscious memory of the patient, thus producing a quicker response. However, manipulating the mind of an individual can be dangerous. In spiritual mind healing we do not have to uncover every unconscious cause of mental confusion with its attendant physical distress. We know that broad, generalized statements often effect a healing of an ailment without either the practitioner nor the patient having any specific knowledge of its cause. We know that the clearer one’s consciousness is and the more definitely certain one is that Spirit is the Absolute Cause of all, and the God alone governs, the more quickly will healing take place. We know that silent recognition and realization elevate the consciousness to a place of greater power and make possible a more immediate manifestation. God does not analyze; he announced. “You shall grow in knowledge of him who created you,” reports Mosiah 4.12. We need to be invigorated to recover and feel the value of every hour that is free from trouble and annoyance. To tell you the truth, the reason I get up in the morning is because my doctor gave me a medication I have to take at the same time, every day half an hour after a meal. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

I have a great medical team at Kaiser and my urologist, he gave me a medication that makes my life so much easier. The most consistent meal most people eat, at the same time every day, is breakfast. I am very serious about my recovery, so I make sure to pay attention to what my doctors tell me and follow their advice religiously and as exactly as possible. We only get one body, and health care is so expensive and our health is very serious, so I want to do my best to take care of myself. It really makes a difference when you have a medical team that helps and cares about your recovery. We live in a little World. We shall be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it. It is necessary, and not in the least shameful, to take pleasure in good food, gentle smiles, nature and entertainment. Such simplicity becomes complicated in adulthood, sometimes. It is often difficult to recognize when we have had enough of the larger World and can cease trying to reach beyond that which is within our immediate grasp. No calamity is greater than not knowing what is enough. No fault worse than wanting too much. Whoever knows what is enough has enough. “You have been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things,” reports Matthew 25.21. “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, and the ends of the Earth your possession,” reports Psalm 2.8. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

We have to find key attitudes and strategies in dealing with dreams in a manner that preserves their integrity, allows meaning to emerge, and generally serves care of the soul. The intrusion of death in our affairs may prove to us that it is enough to go on living and to take pleasure where we can find it. After his father’s funeral, a forty-two-year-old man returned to the house where both he and his father had been raised and in which his grandfather and father had died. He spent a long time in his father’s study, sitting at his desk and looking at the photographs of the successive childhoods that has been contained in that house. Childhood, the origin of life, is the originality a person brings to every stage in life. The ordeals of ageing are certainly among the adult necessities with which a person has got to cope, but the lively survival of the child in the adult is a potent resource for coping with them. Childhood is life’s laughter, its hurt, its rage, its capacity for play, it boundless imagination, it lyrical sense of the future. We must resort to our definite technique for practice, and through mental statements arrive at a spiritual conclusion, a consciousness of the allness of God and the ever-present availability of good. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

We claim to have a science which can be delivered to all intelligent persons, and we claim that the average person can effectively use this science provided one complies with its principle and law. It is therefore necessary to deliver a definite technique and a conscious method for procedure. That is why we start with the proposition of perfect God, perfect humans, and perfect beings. Even if buried under the travails of many decades, resources like laughter and wonder can be summoned back at any point in life. Many people feel old, old, old and stiff and tired, except when they are engaged in a hobby they enjoy. Our joyful capacities are not bound to a particular stage of life any more than are our faculties for sorrow, love, or anger. Reclaiming them is our best hope for animating ourselves in circumstances otherwise demeaning or depleting. God is neither sad nor depressed. There is no life apart from God’ therefore my life is God. Consequently, I am neither sad nor depressed. God is not afraid of anything. My mind and the mind of God are one mind; therefore my mind cannot entertain fear. Fear is not person, place, or thing. It has no law to support it, no power to uphold it, no consciousness to conceive it, no law to enforce it, no person to express it. My mind is the mind of God—calm and peaceful, unafraid and certain. #RandolphHarris 10 to 10