Stop abusing your power. Stop forgetting that you have it. Stop forgetting the inevitable limitations of your kindred here! Remember, this is an exposition of souls, a bartering of extraordinary revelations. Evolution best accounts for the presence and variability of living forms on Earth. Mutations (deviations from the main form) occur by chance or because environmental factors. If the mutations favor the organism by enabling the organism to adapt to its environment better or to survive its environment, then the mutant organism is selected-for by nature and will survive. Other organisms without the mutation die off. Surviving mutations will mate and produce variations, and so on. The implications of this are important. It means that even though evolution is still going on (so slowly that we cannot observe it in ourselves), it is safe to say that characteristics that humans possess have just as much survival value as characteristics possessed by other life forms. For example, if sneezing is selected-for by the evolutionary process, as is suggested by its universality among all people and other animals, it means that it performs some function that is essential to the life of the organic survival of all people and other animals. So it is with all other behaviors: blinking, shivering, sensing danger, feeling pain, sexual excitement, having five fingers, having an opposable thumb (it can touch the finger tips of the other four fingers), having abundant hair on only certain parts of the body, etc. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

All living organisms retain structural and functional evidences of their distant evolutionary past. Whatever the conditions under which they are born and developed, their responses to stimuli are always affected by the experiences of the past which are incorporated in their genetic make-up. The evolutionary steps though which humans reached the level of Homo sapiens explain, for example, why the structure of their backbone can be traced to the early fishes, or why the salinity of human blood still reflect the composition of sea water from which terrestrial life originally emerged. The first thing that interests us in understanding the essential self is what makes us go. What it is that makes people tick has been the subject of countless books, but it all properly fits in the bio-psychological study of motivation, which begins with the physiological needs of our bodies. Not that the tissue needs are the most important always, but they are fundamental to those we acquire later. They are prepotent. Later in life, learned or acquired motives are very important, but if the basic physiological needs are not met and the tension to satisfy these needs builds up, they assume urgencies that override the acquired motives. Probably the most obvious example is the physiological need for oxygen. A person strangling for lack of air is very little concerned with needs for prestige, affection, money, or even food. At the moment, air is one’s greatest needs, so breathing assumes a prepotency over all other needs. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

The physiological needs are often called survival needs because they are vital for continuing physical existence. The primary motives or needs are for: Nutriment, liquid, oxygen, rest and sleep, elimination of body wastes, regulation of temperature extremes, and avoidance of pain. The next level of motivating factors includes those that are learned or acquired. Through learning, previously neutral stimuli seem to acquire the capacity to arouse motive states. Since these motives are probably not physiological in a direct sense, they are usually not included in any listening of needs related to survival. They are called secondary motives. Sometimes, because these needs involved other people to a greater degree than the primary needs do, they are also called social motives. Examples of secondary motives are the needs for affiliation, social approval, status, security, and achievement. We are probably much more driven by these motives than by primary needs, and they are far more complex. However, we are unable to find any way of separating the acquired motives from their grounding in the physiological make-up of the human being. At various periods of our lives we are primarily or predominantly motivated by different kinds of drives or forces. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

When we are kept at a level of satisfaction and need-reduction, it is more likely that one will become bored, fatigued, and resentful. Therefore, it is part of the biological nature of the person to seek continuing growth. There is a point in human development when the predominate motive for the human being is to discover, seek out, and test the relationships of affection and belonging. In other words, love comes to be a motive. Love is a pattern of response that takes time and effort. It is not inborn. When we are young, we can respond to love, and we need all that goes with it. However, the newborn infant is hardly capable of loving or giving it in the sense that we mean when we talk about mature love. At another stage in our development, the predominant motives of the individual are to find out about love. It is partly an intellectual search, since one is usually undergoing cognitive development. However, it is also an intense emotional experience, since it deals with an important part of one’s human life. An individual’s security now comes from finding out about the quality of one’s belonging, the depth of one’s affection and that of one’s significance to others. If we are wise, receive the truth, and take the Holy Spirit for our guide, we must learn to optimize the influence of higher processes in our actions. Otherwise, we lose our power of independent action. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

At each stage there seems to be a necessity for choice. In the choice between staying at the level of safety and going onto the level of loving, the easiest choice is for safety, because it has already been experienced and is known. Loving and belonging involve a lot of risk. They are involved in putting oneself on the line, out on the limb of initiative. And that is scary! To take the chance of trying to love takes courage and willingness to risk. The risk comes from the possibility of failure and rejection. Nobody seems to enjoy rejection. In another stage of live comes the predominant need for identity. Once we have learned to love and be loved, we are strongly impelled to discover who or what this loved and loving person actually is. A person wants to know is he or she loved because of who they are as an individual, or just because they do what they are told. One wants to know is one loved for being oneself or a reflection? As one evolves, a person now wants others to acknowledge their unique contributions. All of this can cause pain and embarrassment, but the rewards of selfhood more than make up for the pain and disadvantages. One of the major reasons why people cannot move up to a higher level of motivation is the lack of encouragement from the environment to do so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

In general, public education in the American society is geared toward conformity of behavior, not individuation, and pupils learn to prefer safety and security to risk-taking. There is, of course, much formal teaching about success, courage, and pride in accomplishment, but consistent urgings toward behaving or not rocking the boat indirectly encourage people to fit in and become a part of something else. Furthermore, the major educational emphasis—direct or authoritarian teaching, rote memorization—often work against the self-actualization of both student and teacher. Although many people believe that television serves as a method of control, which is true, it also serves to regulate behavior and remind people of what is normal and rational behavior. The new show on the CW network, called All American is a great show because it has a diverse cast and a normal storyline for how the average Americans experience life. It also reminds people that generally our communities and families are cohesive and harmonious, and although we do have some problems, it is not conflict habitual. Also, when people do not have family support, generally members of the community band together to form a family and look out for each other. The program reminds that every community does have problems, which are in normal tolerance ranges of behavior, but which can be resolved through communication. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

 When we reach middle adulthood, our motives for behavior are more cognitive, they based on seeking insight, information, knowledge, wisdom, and rational experiences. We spend a great deal of our childhood cultivating our intellectual and rational powers, and once we have worked through our self-actualizing needs and gotten them in order, we begin to explore the areas that require thought and insight. Many people in this period of life are involved in work that has become routine or patterned. So, they are no longer just creating a job or a vocation; now they can work on tuning it, perfecting it, making it into some sort of smooth-working operation. This is not to say that it becomes mechanical; that is the opposite of self-actualization in work. Rather, it means tat the job, whatever it is, is now established and the worker can perfect his or her own intellectual skills in regard to that job. In one’s marriage, a person attempts to make rational choices and decisions about one’s future and that of one’s family.  “Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord; and my heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and hear,” reports 2 Nephi 4.16. One is into the stage of planning and working out any issues of one’s whole life style For many it is a very fascinating period of life. For others, who are fixated at a lower level of motivation, it is a very frustrating period. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

Our degree of control varies between 0 and 100 percent. Some people have much more control than others. Within the same person, the degree of control also varies in different situations. However, loss of control has become a pervasive problem of the modern World. It may be observed in violence, drug addiction, alcoholism, sexual excesses and deviations, indolence, crime, neuroses, insanity, and myriads of other manifestations, most of which have been clearly described or condemned and foretold in the scriptures. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For people shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy. Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly people laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of truth,” reports 2 Timothy 3.1-7. Each of these excesses has is more moderate forms, and they are common among us—surprising as this many seem. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

Inhabitants of Victorian culture were dominated by the problem of overcontrol, whereas much of modern culture is plagued by under control, as we see every day in the deliberate manufacturing or falsehood by news media, schools, and streets. Under control may follow from cultural norms such as are found in some tribal customs and in the codes of slum street gangs. It may also arise from biological defects such as brain damage or hormonal disorders; it may emerge from a particularly traumatic childhood; or it may derive from the consistently bad choices made by otherwise normal individuals. The degree of personal responsibility for actions thus varies in terms of internal and external conditions impinging upon the person. The most obvious cases of loss of control are found among psychologically disturbed persons. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of psychopathology is that the person reports being out of control. The behavior is usually propelled by strong inner drives such as the need for affection, a feeling of dependency, or biological tension. This is an instance of powerful internal stimulation overwhelming the person’s conscious control and dominating one’s behavior. People are able to create their own reality, and psychotherapy is a way to clear that up so that a person can stand and still exist and distinguish between what is real and what is pseudo reality. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

In mature adults, the motives center on a need for order, symmetry, consistency, and cohesion. Many people meet this need through religion, others by pleasant memories of the past life. Some re-discover lost creative interests, especially when they are released from the day-to-day existence of occupations. In this period, people can see their lives as a complete pattern. Integrity comes from the root word from which we get “integer,” a whole number, and “integration,” completeness. It means congruence, a total combining of all aspects of the self into one united and fully accepted whole. Brain research has located at least five pleasure centers in the hypothalamus of the more primitive parts of the forebrain. Here, as far as contemporary neurological research knows, the beginnings of the perception of pleasure takes place. Apparently, then, any and all experiences of pleasure are communicated to our consciousness by the pleasure centers. This would include the good taste of a hot pizza when hungry, the delightful fragrance of a good perfume (or, by combinations of perceptual matters, the fragrance of even less expensive perfume on the right woman!), the comfortable feeling of stretching out in the soft folds of a reclining lounge chair, the soothing pleasures of basking in the Sun at the beach, the exhilarating pleasure of riding a roller coaster, or buying a brand new house or car. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

There are vastly different properties of the stimulus, and they are perceived as pleasurable and apparently are mediated by these same centers in the hypothalamus. If the experience of love is a pleasurable one, it too is a matter of hypothalamic responsiveness, although it is unlikely that in the popular mind the hypothalamus will every replace the “heart” as the supposed seat of love. We do not expect any hot-blooded young Hans (Jet Li) to declare to their Trish O’Day (Aaliyah) (Film, Romeo Must Die, 2000), “I love you with all hypothalamus!” “My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep. He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. He hath confounded mine enemies, unto the causing of them to quake before me,” reports 2 Nephi 4-20.22. Each person defines beauty, love, pleasure, pain and all the other experiences in a way that is singularly unique to the individual. An individual shares general interpretations and definitions with each person of one’s culture, but one narrows these down for specific situations. Even in one culture two people may choose entirely different-looking individuals to illustrate their personal definitions of beautiful or sexy. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Somehow, our personal and separate definitions of beautiful or sexy permit each of us to respond to properties of those two people and communicate these interpretations, with emotional components, to the various areas of the nervous system. The two different messages get to the hypothalamic pleasure centers and the two observers both experience the almost identical response we find described by the currently popular term “turned on.” However, Victorian reactions are still around, even in this enlightened day and age. Therefore, some people may not be as liberated and could still like to repress certain urges and desires, and forego pleasures of the flesh. Doing so could be spiritual and gratifying. Furthermore, did you know that if a person feels ashamed or guilty about physical pleasure, is scolded for eating too loudly, for example, with the result that he or she feels eating and enjoyment of food is bad, one can develop into a person who is ashamed of physical body functions and needs and has a difficult time experiencing any pleasures that might even be remotely connected with physical gratification. As an illustration, one woman of our acquaintance feels uncomfortable sitting before a nice, warming fire, enjoying friends, conversation, a drink, or the comfortable cushions! #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

That lady’s complex discomfort is directly related to being told too often in childhood that comfort and pleasure were luxuries: that life is hard, and hard work was what each person needed to do; that comfort and pleasure takes one away from the responsibility of life; that life is a cross we have to bear. Also, when people are told that to be a full adult, they have to have intercourse, they may not understand that that act is a sacred responsibility that should only be entrusted to someone you love. And if they engage in sexual activities because of peer pressure, the sexual experience may not be satisfying for either person involved. While a male may get the satisfaction of the orgasm: there may be little responsiveness from the poor, scared girl. She may not neither orgasm nor confirmation. She may have pain because the sexyal organ of the male might be frightening. She may have disgust because the seminal discharge is messy. And she may have fear because the male’s climax is loud and boisterous, and the emerging excitement and pleasure she felt were foreign and forbidden by her repressive background. She might even have disappointment because the aftermath did not leave her with the high, spiritual transcendence she has been led to expect. She may have shame because she had not remained chaste as her parents and religion had taught her. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

In addition, a personal not ready for sex, male or female, may have personal guilt because he or she had done something opposed to one’s own standards of conduct. They might experience anger because, instead of feeling more like an adult, he or she may feel less, feel like he or she has lost something of oneself. Add to this the anxiety and concern one feels as one worries that the act might lead to pregnancy, and a pretty tragic picture is added to the archives of sexual misunderstanding. Prior to the last half century, the relational demands of men were not that great; all they had to do—and I am not minimizing this—was bring home the bacon (pay check), keep a roof overhead, perhaps make a bit of manly conversation, not beat their wives, and keep the kids in line. However, having a healthy, fully functioning relationship is not a luxury nor something just for the few rare. It needs to become a reality for enough of us to significantly impact the majority. Do you want to see what you do not see about yourself? Do you want to discover and face what you have been keeping in the shadows? Do you want to wake up to who and what your truly are, without bypassing your raw humanity? To not remain mired in such relationship automaticity is a huge step in developing the capacity for real intimacy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

The Most important things in the World are family and love.