A soul unlike any other, tutored in courage, never looking back, lifted from misery, and seeking to marvel at all things without malice or lamenting. I saw a graduate of the school of suffering. Allport’s theory declares that people are busy living their lives forward; they are oriented toward the future, and therefore, the psychologist cannot be correct if one is totally oriented entirely in the past. Yet, there is a sense of uniqueness at every stage of being. Allport’s theory stresses the importance of forward-learning orientation in life, which he called proactivity. People are not simply made up, like block towers, out of their past experiences. They have intentions, plans, goals, dreams, visions, faith, and hopes. In addition, because people are present or future oriented, their needs and motives change throughout their lives. Many motivations that were once important purely for survival may later still serve as motivators, but for different reasons. These motives that are not strictly for survival may later still serve as motivators, but for different reasons. Thee motives that are not strictly for survival become part of the individual’s self-concept and take on meaning through personal experiences and strivings. Such needs are reported to have a functional autonomy—an independent reason for being. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

Allport also talks about the mature personality as it must be an extension of self. It is evidenced by an ability to experience, enjoy, appreciate, and participate in a wide variety of activities and by a continual sense of planning and hoping. The individual with mature personality is comfortable with other people, emotionally secure, and self-accepting. He or she is reality oriented and has some sort of unifying philosophy of life. Basic to all else, the mature personality finds these experiences and feelings to be personally meaningful. It is very characteristic of seniors to seek a fourth stage of life which is called meaning, or liberation. The ultimate source of the courage to be is the God above God; this is the result of our demand to transcend theism. Only if the God of theism is transcended can the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness be taken into the courage to be. The God above God is the object of all mystical longing, but mysticism also must be transcended in order to reach him. Mysticism does not take seriously the concrete and the doubt concerning the concrete. It plunges directly into the ground of being and meaning, and leaves the concrete, the World of finite values and meanings, behind. Therefore, it does not solve the problem of meaningslessness. In terms of the present religious situation this means that Eastern mysticism is not the solution of the problems of Western Existentialism, although many people attempt this solution. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

The God above the God of theism is not the devaluation of the meanings which doubt has thrown into the abyss of meaninglessness; he is their potential restitution. Nevertheless, absolute faith agrees with the faith implied in mysticism in that both transcend the theistic objectivation of a God who is a being. For mysticism such a God is not more real than any finite being, for the courage to be such a God has disappeared in the abyss of meaninglessness with every other value. The God above the God of theism is present, although hidden, in every divine-human encounter. Biblical religion as well as Protestant theology are aware of the paradoxical character of this encounter. They are aware that if God encounters mortals, God is neither object nor subject and is therefore above the scheme into which theism has forced him. They are aware that personalism with respect to God is balanced by a transpersonal presence of the divine. They are aware that forgiveness can be accepted only if the power of acceptance is effective in mortals—biblically speaking, if the power of grace is effective in mortals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11

They are aware of the paradoxical character of every prayer, of speaking to somebody to whom you cannot speak because he is not “somebody,” of asking somebody of whom you cannot ask anything because he gives not before you ask, of saying “thou” to somebody who is nearer to the I than the I is to self. Each of these paradoxes drives the religious consciousness toward a God above the God of theism. The courage to be which is rooted in the experience of the God above the God of theism unites and transcends the courage to be as a part and the courage to be as oneself. It avoids both the loss of oneself by participation and the loss of one’s World by individualization. The acceptance of the God above the God of theism makes us a part of that which is not also a part but is the ground of the whole. Therefore, our self is not lost in the larger whole, which submerges it in the life of a limited group. If the self participates in the power of being-itself it receives itself back. For the power of being acts through the power of the individual selves. It does not swallow them as every limited whole, every collectivism, and every conformism does. This is why the Church, which stands for the power of being-itself or for the God who transcends the God of the religious, claims to be the mediator of the courage to be. A church which is based on the authority of the God of theism cannot make such a claim. It inescapably develops into a collectivist or semicollectivist system itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

However, a church which raises itself in its message and its devotion to the God above the God of theism without sacrificing its concrete symbols can mediate a courage which takes doubt and meaninglessness into itself. It is the Church under the Cross which alone can do this, the Church which preaches the Crucified who cried to God who remained one’s God after the God of confidence had left one in the darkness of doubt and meaninglessness. To be as a part in such a church is to receive a courage to be in which once cannot lose one’s self and in which one receives one’s World. Absolute faith, or the state of being grasped by the God beyond God, is not a state which appears beside other states of the mine. It never is something separated and definite, an event which could be isolated and described. It is always a movement in, with, and under other states of mine. It is the situation on the boundary of mortal’s possibilities. It is this boundary. Therefore, it is bot the courage of despair and the courage in and above every courage. It is not a place where one can live, it is without the safety of words and concepts, it is without a name, a church, a cult, a theology. However, it is moving in the depths of all of them. It is the power of being, in which they participate and of which they are fragmentary expressions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

One can become aware of it in the anxiety of fate and death when the traditional symbols, which enable mortals have lost their power. When providence has become a superstition and immortality something imaginary that which once was the power in these symbols can still be present and create the courage to be in spire of the experience of a chaotic World and a finite existence. The stoic courage returns but not as the faith in universal reason. It returns as the absolute faith which says Yes to being without seeing anything concrete which could conquer the nonbeing in fate and death. And one can become aware of the God above the God of theism in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation when the traditional symbols that enable mortals to withstand the anxiety of guilt and condemnation have lost their power. When divine judgment is interpreted as a psychological complex and forgiveness as a remnant of the father image, what once was the power in those symbols can still be present and create the courage to be in spite of the experience of an infinite gap between what we are and what we ought to be. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

The Lutheran courage returns but not supported by the faith in a judging and forgiving God. It returns in terms of the absolute faith in which says Yes although there is no special power that conquers guilt. The courage to take the anxiety of meaninglessness upon oneself is the boundary line up to which the courage to be can go. Beyond its mere non-being. Within it all forms of courage are re-established in the power of the God above the God of theism. The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. “And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise. Wherefore, if a person has faith one must need have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope,” reports Moroni 7.41-42. Basic to love relationship and life is trust. Fromm’s four-fold test of love assumes it: you must trust someone to know him or her and let that individual know you, to care and be cared for, to respect and be respected. And trust determines the quality of the responses made to another person. Yet trust is difficult to come by. We acquire it in varying degrees throughout our growth cycles. A reliance on some sort of order helps one to learn trust. The most important aspect is what is internalized. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

Those who experience reliability, dependability, constancy in the people and objects around them tend to perceive reality in those terms, and the perception generalizes to include personal behavior—they gradually come to trust themselves. Trust is a basic prerequisite for healthy, satisfying interpersonal relations. The truster is one who continues to believe in other people in general, even when individual people let one down, do one dirty, or even try to do one harm. One maintains a generalized good feeling about people, though one often develops a cautious attitude toward particular persons. One of the key concepts in the trust necessary for love relationships is openness. Love is the binding element par excellence. It is the bridge between being and becoming, and it binds fact and value together. Love, in short, is the original creative force now transmuted into power which is both inside and outside the person. We see that love have much in common with the concept of intentionality for it presupposes that mortals yearn toward uniting oneself with the object not only of one’s desires but one’s knowledge as well. And this very process implies that a mortal already participates to some extent in the knowledge one seeks and the person one loves. Love is also seen as the power which draws one towards God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

Love is the yearning for the mystic union which comes out in the religious experience of union with God, or in Dr. Freud’s oceanic experience. There is also an element in life which binds one to the love of one’s fate—amor fati. By fate I do not mean the specific or accidental misfortunes which befall us, but rather fate as the acceptance and affirmation of the finite state of mortals, limited as we are in intelligence and strength, faced everlasting with weakness and death. The myth of Sisyphus presents a man’s fate in as stark a form as could be imagined; yet Camus finds in that fate, for the mortal who has courage to accept the consciousness of it, something which call forth his eros, something to love: I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! This Universe without a master seems to him neither sterile nr futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a World. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a person heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Eros pushes toward self-fulfillment, but it is not all the ego-centric assertion of one’s subjective whims and wises on a passive World. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

The idea of mastering nature of reality would have horrified the Greeks and would promptly have been labelled hubris, or inordinate pride which is an affront to the gods and a sure invitation of a mortal’s doom. The Greeks always showed a respect which amounted to a reverence for the objective, given World. They delighted in their World—its beauty, it is from, its endless challenges to their curiosity, it is mysteries to be explored; and they were everlastingly attracted by this World. Not that they would have had any truck with the modern sentimental belief that life by itself is good or bad; it all depends on what mortals dedicate themselves to. Their tragic view itself enabled them to delight in life. One cannot outwit death anyway by progress or accumulating wealth; so why not accept your fate, choose values which are authentic, and let yourself delight and believe in the being you are and the Being you are part of? “Shall not loveliness be loved forever?” sings Euripides. The question is rhetorical, but the answer is not. Loveliness shall be loved because of infantile needs, or because it stands for the heart, or because it is intimacy, or because it assists adjustment or because it will make us happy—but simply because it is lovely. Loveliness exercises a pull on us; we are drawn to life by love. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

What does all this have to do with psychotherapy? I believe a great deal. When Socrates remarks, with a deceptive simplicity, “Human nature will not easily find a helper better than eros,” we can take his words as applying to the process of psychotherapy as well as the drive within a person toward psychic healthy. Socrates himself, as we see and listen to him in the Dialogues, is perhaps history’s greatest model of the psychotherapist. His prayer at the end of Phaedo could well be inscribed on the wall of every therapist’s office: Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward mortal be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry. Heavenly Father guides us and gives us the experiences we need based on our strengths, weaknesses, and choices so that we might bear good products. The Father chastens us when necessary because he loves us. It is Heavenly Father who sends both the influence and the gift of the Holy Ghost into our lives. Through the gift of the Holy Ghost, the glory-or intelligence, light, and power of the Father can dwell in us. If we will strive to increase in light and truth until our eyes become single to God’s glory, Heavenly Father will send us up unto eternal life and reveal His face unto us—either in this life or the next. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11