I am finished! I am sorry it took me so long to respond, but I was waiting to be able to tell you that I am completely and utterly done. Ah, what a luxury to sit down to write to you without a stack of books glaring at me from my desk! Instead, I am sitting in my parents’ house, window open, warm Summer breeze puffing out the lace curtains, with nothing more malevolent glaring at me than the Rocklin Tribune. Just to lean back, sip some cool cranberry juice, and write to you—extravagance itself! You will be quite proud of me, I think. I came clean with my father. You may wonder how I worked up the courage to tell him. By barely scraping by in my classes! He took one look at my grades and sniffed. “How do you expect to get into medical school with grades like this” he asked? “I do not expect to. I do not expect to nor do I care,” I said. He nearly choked on his morning latte. “What do you mean, you do not care?” I replied, “Exactly that, Father. I have never wanted to go to medical school. And it is too late now to convince me otherwise.” He left the table with a thud of his chair and has not spoken to me since. I think it is only through my mother’s good graces that he has not thrown me out on my ear. I used to want to go to medical school when I was 12, but I was walking home from school and this man told me it would be really difficult, so I gave up the dream. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

Adults should never rob a child of their dreams because children will always remember those words. They are not mature enough to understand that some people want to discourage us from reaching our dreams. For many students, a passion for education is often ignited by inspiring teachers. Teachers are dedicated, to say the least. They work long hours, spend their own resources to innovate curriculum, and do everything they can to make sure their classrooms are safe and welcoming for students. Teachers generally stay motivated because they love helping children realize that learning can be challenging, and that is okay. They enjoy collaborating with other professionals, and explore the creativity needed to consider requirements of different types of learners. Students can also educate the teachers, too, about different cultures, abilities, and perspectives. By being a child’s advocate and helping students realize their own potential is one of the greatest career achievements of an educators, as there is noting better than having a student realise that they are stronger and more resilient than they ever thought possible. It is a great gift to teach the youth to think for themselves. Great teachers also have a genuine love for the subject they teach and they have a passion for communicating that love and knowledge to others. “Those who are wise will seek learning,” reports Proverbs 1.5. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

Parenting is the process of raising children and providing them with protection and care in order to ensure their healthy development into adulthood. If you have a student who is interested in working for NASA, and they get really excited about the really cool stuff in the Universe of engineering, it is a good idea to inspire them to eventually go out and create cool stuff of their own. Church members are repeatedly counseled to obtain all the education they can and to prepare themselves to contribute wherever they are. When my mother was a little girl, her mother used to make her real the Encyclopedia Britannica after school. Back in those days, it was common for every house on the block to have a complete volume of encyclopedias from A-Z on the book shelf. Education, particularly gospel knowledge, does not come all at once or without effort. “We will keep the knowledge we gain in this life when we go into the next,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 130.18-19. We cannot see the future with precision, but we can know what the Lord intends to accomplish and what it will take for each of us to qualify personally to participate. The Lord and his Church have always encouraged education to increase our ability to serve him and our Heavenly Father’s children. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11

For each of us, whatever our talents, God has service to give. And to do it well always involved learning, not once or for a limited time, but continually. For this reason, true learning must have a powerful spiritual component. That spiritual element, when it is effective, refines and uplifts the aims of our total education. Remember, we are interested in education, not just for mortal life but for eternal life. When we see that reality clearly, we will put spiritual learning first and yet not light the secular learning. In fact, we will work harder at our secular learning than we would without that spiritual vision. “We should seek learning by study and faith,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 88.118. Education must never stop. If it ends at the door of the classroom on graduation day, we will fail. And we will need the help of Heaven to know which of the myriad things we can study and would most wisely learn. The real life we are preparing for is eternal life. Secular knowledge has for us eternal significance. Our conviction is that God, our Heavenly Father, wants us to live the life that he does. Our mind is precious! It is sacred. Therefore, the education of one’s mind is a religious responsibility. The human mind is a complex organ of such beauty and intricacy that it is so important that we control our minds. The intelligence of each one of us as individuals is by no means limited. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

Of course, our opportunities and abilities will vary a great deal. However, in the pursuit of one’s education, individual desires are more important that is the institution of our choice; personal drive is very significant.  We can increase the level of our own intelligence as long as we have the fundamentals given to us through formal education, including writing, mathematics, and reading. However, the level of success does not depend solely on our education; it depends on our mental mastery. Our brain and intelligence level are but tools to assist us in achieving our dreams.  Mind and body must be cared for diligently and consistently. When we care properly for each part od the whole, the entire being benefits. Self-mastery is essential to invoke the power of God. This is because this great, divine agency can only be exercised in righteousness. “For the grace of God that bring salvation has appeared to all people,” reports Titus 2.11. Self-mastery requires self-determination and strength of character. Salvation is always right at ground level. We do not have to climb a high mountain, we do not have to pay one million dollars. We reach salvation through faith. “But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him or her because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice,” reports John 10.5. Self-mastery enhances our own gifts and talents in a remarkable way. It is the power of noble humanhood. Every human soul has the challenge of controlling his or her thoughts, appetites, speech, temper, and desires. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

Our life is the creation of our mind. We are in the possession immense intelligence, which make us recievers of its truth and organs of activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we allow a passage of its beams. The soul’s communication of truth is the highest event in its nature, since it then does not give something from itself, but it gives itself, or passes into and becomes that being whom it enlightens. Do not miss the opportunity of being still more conscious of the soul, we must give instant obedience to the Soul’s command. This obedience results in a still closer union between the subconscious soul and the conscious being. Truth will flow still more readily and copiously into the consciousness. This is the secret of inspiration. We must trust ourselves, which is merely trusting our perceptions of truth and we must have the faith and courage to express what the inflowing soul reveals to us. Here we stand; God will help us. The Inner Light cannot shine, unless there is faith and obedience to the voice of the conscience. When we obey, it becomes clearer. Many of us spend an exorbitant amount of time and energy and money to take care of our bodies, and trying to keep ourselves looking and feeling our best. However, when it comes to the mind, less attention is paid. For many people, taking care of the mind most often comes as an afterthought. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

The religious significance of events includes and transcends their natural significance. Those events which the prophets saw as acts of God can also be seen as having proximate natural or human, but they were supernatural; and the person of Christ, seen by Christian faith as divine, is depicted in the New Testament as being at the same time genuinely human. From a theological point of view, this systematic ambiguity, which is the precondition of faith, serves to protect human’s freedom and autonomy as a finite personal being in relation to the infinite God. The whole Universe is spiritual in character the phenomenal World of physics is merely the external manifestation of this spiritual reality. That which to itself is physical is to others physical. Atoms are centers of force or energy, it is not necessary to suppose them to be material or extended. These atoms are only the simplest elements in a spiritual hierarchy includes all those levels beneath t, so that God contains the totality of spirits. Consciousness is an essential feature of all that exists, but this assertion does not mean that every physical entity or phenomenon has its own soul. Only certain systems, namely, organic wholes, give evidence of possessing souls, and those bodies which do not are the only constituents of besouled bodies. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

The evidences of soul are the systematic coherence and conformity to law exhibited in the behaviour of organic wholes. The Earth, our eternal mother, is an organic besouled whole. The stars and the physical Universe as a whole are also bodies of this kind. God is the soul of the Universe; he is to the system of nature as that system is to itself. Immortality is based on the observation that many individual experiences which are forgotten or unnoticed may later be recalled into consciousness. If the soul as a whole is treated on the analogy of its individual experiences, then, since these do not vanish utterly but often return in the form of memory, the soul itself may likewise continue to exist in God’s memory. Mind and body are not parallel aspects of some third substance; they are identical. The persistence of mind is therefore no more difficult to entertain than the persistence of the material Universe itself, which is only the outward manifestation of an all-inclusive soul. The word “beauty” denotes the approximate subject matter of aesthetics. It is a word applicable to everything that has the property arousing pleasure directly and immediately. (Pleasure aroused by thoughts of the consequences of an object is nonaesthetic.) Our experience of aesthetic pleasure are simple, unanalyzable psychic atoms. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

The aim of an experimental aesthetics is to discover the objects that produce such atoms, that is, the causal laws connecting aesthetic experiences with the characteristics of outer objects. Our Creator expects his children everywhere to gain an education as a personal endeavour. “Seek diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; seek out the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith,” commands Doctrine and Covenants 88.118. When we leave this delicate existence, our material possessions will remain here, but the Lord ha declared that all the knowledge we acquire here will rise with us in the resurrection. In the light of this celestial perspective, if we impulsively drop out or otherwise cut short our education, we will not only disregard a divine decree but also abbreviate our eternal potential. To this day, one of my biggest regrets was dropping out of Mrs. Swanson’s Trigonometry class, I wish she would have forced me to take it, I wish the school would not have given me so many options over what classes I could take. I wish everything was engrained in stone. As youth, we are not fully cognitive and have no idea what we are doing sometimes. Looking back, I realise I dropped her class because I was lazy and did not want to challenge my brain. I was afraid of not doing well. I prejudged my own educational development without even giving myself a chance. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

These classes are not just about the material, they help our brain develop and learn to understand. And understanding is a gift from God. Perhaps if I had stayed in her class I would have avoided that ill trip to the mall, which has been haunting me my entire life. Within a Christ-centered home, love, trust, and confidence invite the presence of the Holy Ghost. In such a home the Holy Ghost can teach children to understand. Ultimately, it is not parents who do the teaching. Certainly, parents must diligently and effectively explain basic gospel doctrines, teach true principles, and share sacred experiences. However, who truly does the teaching and certifies the truthfulness of what we come to know? The Holy Ghost, the third member of the Godhead. He is the Comforter who knows all things. He is thereby able to search the minds and hearts of all of us and then tailor a blessing to us, according to our individual needs and circumstances. And it is teaching and certifying by the Spirit that produces understanding. Wisdom is the application of understanding in righteous judgment and action. It is the precious product that is nourished by knowledge and reason and understanding and revelation. “A wise person will hear, and will increase learning; and a person of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels,” Proverbs 1.5. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

The specific blessings of understanding are an increased desire for additional knowledge, instruction, and learning; happiness; and a precious perspective of the eternal that transcends the limited view of the mortal. We must also understand that not all happiness is created equal, and in our own pursuit of joy and bliss, we must keep in mind that the type of happiness we are after can make all the difference. Eudaimonic happiness—that which is linked to having a larger purpose or sense of meaning in life—is linked with healthy gene activity, where as hedonic, or pleasure-seeking, happiness is not. Those who are happy because they have a sense of purpose in life have lower inflammatory gene expression and higher antiviral and antibody gene expression than others. Eudaimoic happiness is something one builds up over a lifetime. If people have led good lives, they can get more happy as they age. Reading is also good for the mind. Reading a book can lower stress levels, help us sleep better, and keep our brains sharper, and also stave off Alzheimer’s. A heart that lacks attention needs more Sunshine. In this World, no matter how many more years I will live and how far I will further travel, what I can never forget is your encouragement and expectations. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11

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