I dreamed while I was still awake. It was the most pleasant dream I have ever had. I knew I was in Heaven. I knew I was safe. Out of this awareness of value as a person, the child develops feelings of self-acceptance, just as feelings of self-hate tend to grow out of feelings of worthlessness. As a matter of fact, the terms “love of one’s self” is entirely appropriate in describing these attitudes of self-acceptance, if we can strip away all the unfortunate connotations that have been mistakenly associated with the idea of “self-love.” One of the effects of the child’s feeling of worth and the resulting self-acceptance is that one will not have the need to deny feelings within oneself. There will be a tendency to have an operational feeling, which, if it could be put into words, might go something like this: “Since I am a person of worth, I am not suddenly ‘bad’ or ‘dirty’ if I become aware of feelings of anger or sexual feelings. They are part of me too.” When the child does not expend one’s emotional resources attempting to suppress and repress unacceptable feelings, then one is freed to discover ways to use and enjoy one’s emotional responses to people. Thus a child can learn that one can express one’s anger when others try to take advantage of one and that one does not have to let people walk over one. One can also learn that it is ultimately destructive to oneself if in one’s anger one becomes destructive toward others or their property. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

Again, it is well to remind ourselves that we are speaking in relative terms. Everyone experiences some feelings of rejection, and thus some feeling of self-hate. However, the person who is fortunate enough to have had parent who were largely accepting in their attitudes is likely to become relatively self-accepting. And this person will have relatively little need to escape from feelings of self-hate. One will not, for example, have to be falsely confident about oneself. One will be able to be realistic about one’s self, accepting the fact that one is not, and need not be, perfect, so one will not have to be constantly on the defensive. Such a child will tend to be open and genuine in one’s relationships with other people. Because of this openness one will generally meet with favorable responses from others and since one has been relatively emotionally honest, one will not be likely to mistrust these favorable reactions because one will not feel that one has seduced other into liking one. These generally favorable responses the child experiences begin with the family and spread out in ever-widening circles as one encounters more and more people in one’s adventuring into the World. And each such favorable response reinforces one’s feelings of worth and self-acceptance. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

 This a cycle occurs. Feelings of acceptance by parents, feelings of worth as a person, self-acceptance (Love of one’s self), little need to escape (Ability to be genuine and open with people), further feelings of acceptance (A generally favorable response from others), and more feelings of one’s worth as a person. It is inevitable, of course, that the growing child will not always receive accepting responses as one makes one’s creative thrusts into the World around one. One will encounter people who are incapable of accepting others. One will probably, for example, have at least one emotionally unhealthy teacher during one’s early school years. One will meet people who will criticize him, some who will treat one unjustly, some who will bull one. However, when one encounters these inevitable sporadic rebuffs and hurts one will have sufficient self-acceptance and confidence that one’s general sense of well-being as a person will not be shattered. And one will be more able than a less self-accepting child to deal realistically with situations that arise. If, for example, a teacher criticizes one’s work, one will be less apt to take it as a complete damning of oneself as a person. And since one does not have to see oneself as perfect, one can afford to listen to the teacher’s comments and profit from them if they seem valid or ignore them if they seem unimportant or incorrect. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

If they should occur, even the sever traumas that we would hope our children might be spared will be far less damaging. Suppose, for example, that a seven-year old child is accosted by an adult man who escapes unnoticed by any third party, the child will probably be able to understand when it is explained to one that the man who accosted one has problems that caused one to approach one as he did. So the experience will probably not cause the individual to have any permanent reaction against mortals in general. One has too good a foundation of acceptance of one’s self and one’s feelings. It is worth noticing that the cycle of acceptance is also the process, described earlier, by which a child moves from dependency toward increasing independence, which in turn makes deeply meaningful relationships more possible. One aspect of this is particularly relevant here. As the child becomes more and more self-accepting as a result of one’s experiences of feeling accepted, one becomes less and less dependent on the responses of others as a measure of one’s self-worth. One becomes increasingly able to stand on one’s own feet, think one’s own thoughts, and act in self-affirming ways without the likelihood that disapproval or discouragement will shatter one’s feeling of self-worth. While the effort is being made to avoid the hazards of outlining techniques of child-rearing, it may nevertheless be helpful to attempt to state some general principles about family life that are corollary to the cycle of acceptance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

The love of power amounts to a desire to establish order among the mortals and things around oneself, either on a large or small scale, and this desire for order is the result of a sense of beauty. In this case, as in the case of luxury, the question is one of forcing a certain circle into a pattern suggestive of universal beauty; this circle is limited, but the hope of increasing it indefinitely may often be present. This unsatisfied appetite, the desire to keep on increasing, is due precisely to a desire for contact with universal beauty, even though the circle we are organizing is not the Universe. It is not the Universe and it hides it. Our immediate Universe is likely the scenery in a theater. Art is an attempt to transport into a limited quantity of matter, modeled by mortals, an image of the infinite beauty of the entire Universe. If the attempt succeeds, this portion of matter should not hide the Universe, but on the contrary it should reveal its reality to all around. Works of art that are neither pure and true reflections of the beauty of the World nor openings onto this beauty are not strictly speaking beautiful; their authors may be very talented but they lack real genius. That is true of a great many works of art which are among the most celebrated and the most highly praised. Every true artist has had real, direct, and immediate contact with the beauty of the World, contact this is of the nature of a sacrament.#RandolphHarris 5 of 13

 God has inspired every first-rate work of art, though its subject may be utterly and entirely secular; he has not inspired any of the others. Indeed the luster of beauty that distinguishes some of those others may quite well be a diabolical luster. Science has as its object the study and the theoretical reconstruction of the order of the World—the order of the World in relation to the mental, psychic, and bodily structure of mortals. Contrary to the naïve illusions of certain scholars, neither the use of telescopes and microscopes, nor the employment of most unusual algebraical formulae, nor even a contempt for the principle of noncontradiction will allow it to get beyond the limits of this structure. Moreover it is not desirable that is should. The object of science is the presence of Wisdom in the Universe, Wisdom of which we are the brothers, the presence of Christ, expressed through matter which constitutes the World. We reconstruct for ourselves the order of the World in an image, starting from limited, countable, and strictly defined data. We work out a system for ourselves, establishing connections and conceiving of relationships between terms that are abstract and for that reason possible for us to deal with. This in an image, an image of which the very existence hangs upon an act of our attention, we can contemplate the necessity which is the substance of the Universe but which, as such, only manifests itself to us by the blows it deals. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

We cannot contemplate without a certain love. The contemplation if this image of the order of the World constitutes a certain contact with the beauty of the World. The beauty of the World is the order of the World that is loved. Physical work is a specific contact with the beauty of the World, and can even be, in its best moments, a contact so full that no equivalent can be found elsewhere. The artist, the scholar, the philosopher, the contemplative should really admire the World and pierce through the film of unreality that veils it and makes of it, for nearly all mortals at nearly every moment of their lives, a dream or stage set. They ought to do this but more often than not they cannot manage it. One who is aching in every limb, worn out by the effort of a day of work, that is to say a day when one has been subject to matter, bears the reality of the Universe in one’s flesh like a thorn. The difficulty for one is to look and to love. If one succeeds, one loves the Real. That is the immense privilege God has reserved for his less affluent. However, they scarcely ever know it. No one tells them. Excessive fatigue, harassing money worries, and the lack of true culture prevent them from noticing it. A slight change in these conditions would be enough to open the door to a treasure. It is heart-rending to see how easy it would be in many cases for mortals to procure a treasure for their fellows and how they allow centuries to pass without taking the trouble to do so. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

At the time when there was a people’s civilization, of which we are today collecting the crumbs as museum pieces under the name of folklore, the people doubtless had access to the treasure. Mythology too, which is very closely related to folklore, testifies to it, if we can decipher the poetry it contains. Carnal love in all its forms, from the highest, that is to say true marriage or platonic love, down to the worst, down to debauchery, has the beauty of the World as an object. The love we feel for the splendor of the Heavens, the plains, the sea, and the mountains, for the silence of nature which is borne in upon us by thousands of tiny sounds, for the breath of the winds or the warmth of the Sun, this love of which every human beings has at least an inkling, is an incomplete, painful love, because it is felt for things incapable of responding, that is to say for matter. Mortals want to turn this same love toward a being who is like themselves and capable of answering to their love, of saying yes, of surrendering. When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is makes possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. However, it is all the beauty of the World, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn. This kind of transference is what all love literature expresses, from the most ancient and well-worn metaphors and comparisons to the subtle analyses of Proust. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

The longing to love the beauty of the World in a human being is essentially the longing for the Incarnation. It is mistaken if it thinks it is anything else. The Incarnation alone can satisfy it. It is therefore wrong to reproach the mystics, as has been done sometimes, because they use love’s language. It is theirs by right. Others only borrow it. If carnal love on all levels goes more or less directly toward beauty—and the exceptions are perhaps only apparent—it is because beauty in a human being enables the imagination to see in one something like an equivalent of the order of the World. That is why sins in this realm are serious. They constitute an offense against God from the very fact that the soul is unconsciously engaged in searching for God. Moreover they all come back to one thing and that is the more or less complete determination to dispense with consent. To be completely determined to dispense with consent. To be completely determined to dispense with it is perhaps the most frightful of all crimes. What can be more horrible than not to respect the consent of a being in whom one is seeking, though unconsciously, for an equivalent of God? It is still a crime, though a less serious one, to be content with consent issuing from a low or superficial region of the soul. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

Whether there is physical union or not, the exchange of love is unlawful if, on both sides, the consent does not come from that central point in the soul where the yes can be nothing less than eternal. The obligation of marriage which is so often regarded as a simple social convention today, is implanted in the nature of human thought through the affinity between carnal love and beauty. Everything that is related to beauty should be unaffected by the passage of time. Beauty is eternity here below. It is not surprising that in temptation mortals so often have the feeling of something absolute, which infinitely surpasses them, which they cannot resist. The absolute, which infinitely surpasses them, which they cannot resist. The absolute is indeed there. However, we are mistaken when we think that is dwells in pleasure. The mistake is the effect of this imaginary transference which is the principal mechanism of human thought. Job speaks of a person who is enslaved who in death will cease to hear the voice of one’s master and who thinks that this voice harms one. It is but too true. The voice does one only too much harm. Yet one is mistaken. The voice is not harmful in itself. If one were not a slave it would not hurt one at all. However, because one is slave, the pain and the brutality of the blows of the whip enter one’s soul by the sense of hearing, at the same time as the voice, and penetrate to its very depths. There is no barrier by which one can protect oneself. Affliction has forged this link. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

In the same way the mortal who thinks one is in the power of pleasure is really in the power of the absolute which he has transferred to it. This absolute is to pleasure what blows of the whip are to the master’s voice; but the association is not the result of affliction here; it is the result of an original crime, the crime of idolatry. Saint Paul has emphasized the kinship between vice and idolatry. One who has located the absolute outside pleasure possess the perfection of temperance. The different kinds of vice, the use of drugs, in the literal or metaphorical sense of the word, all such things constitute the search for a state where the beauty of the World will be tangible. The mistake lies precisely in the search for a special state. False mysticism is another form of the error. If the error is thrust deeply enough into the soul, mortals cannot but succumb to it. A woman of twenty-two came to me so that I could refer her to a therapist. Her problem was that she could never fight the right job. Se was intelligent and open, a person who, one would think, would be a success in the business World. She had had a good job as an executive secretary with interesting people in an organization she liked and believed in, and she did the work well. However, for some reason she could not understand, she hated this job, and her hatred took a great toll in nervous anguish. She quit the job, enrolled in a college, but was bored with studying and dropped out. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

It turned out that her father was a successful executive, and at home he had been exceedingly authoritarian, blustering about the house and debating with her mother about news and politics. The bind in which the would-be patient is caught and which radically curtails her freedom is that her father was the only image of strength she had, and in spite of her strong dislike for him, she also identified with him. The dilemma, then, is that she identifies with the person she feels she strongly dislikes, and how could she then escape hating her executive job? However, no other job would be interesting to her either, in as much as she identifies success, achievement, strength, and zest in life with her father. The upshot was that her freedom to do anything at all was blocked. When a person loses one’s freedom, there develops in one an apathy, as in the people enslaved in the United States, or neurosis or psychosis as in twenty first-century people. Thus, their effectiveness in relating to their fellow mortals and also to their own natures is proportionally reduced. We can define neurosis and psychosis as lack of communicativeness, shut-up-ness, inability to participate in the feelings and thoughts of others or to share oneself with others. Thus, blind to one’s own destiny, the person’s freedom is also truncated. These states of psychological disturbance demonstrate by their very existence the essential quality of freedom for the human being—if you take it away, you get radical disintegration on the part of the victim. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

Neurotic symptoms, such as the psychosomatic paralysis of the leg which one of Dr. Freud’s early patients developed when she could do nothing about being in love with her sister’s husband, are ways of renouncing freedom. Symptoms are ways of shrinking the periphery of the World with which one has to deal to a size with which one can cope. These symptoms may be temporary, as when one gets a could and takes several days off from the office, thus temporarily reducing the World that one has to confront. Or the symptoms may be so deeply set in early experiences that, if unattended, they block off a great portion of the person’s possibilities throughout all the person’s life. The symptoms indicate a breakdown in the interplay of one’s freedom and one’s destiny. We do not understand the depths of our own being, the mystery in which it is grounded. I speak for humankind in general, not for those few great ones who have banished illusion and ignorance. What amid the noise of the World is the hidden purpose of life, what kind of beings are we ultimately meant to be? It is the business of great prophets to answer these questions. I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and mature, to make your first and chief concern for the highest welfare of your inner selves. What grander ideal could a mortal have than to live continuously in the higher part of one’s being? #RandolphHarris 13 of 13