I have traveled the World twice over, met the famous; saints and sinners, poets and artists, kings and queens, old stars and hopeful beginners, I have been where no-one’s been before, learned secrets from writers and cooks, and one frequently finds, people who lower their voices and raise their minds are the one’s who organize the Universe of knowledge into some systematic order. Community cooperation in the creation of goods and services and a framework of complete social and economic security are in themselves great advances over forms of society which sanction gross and unfair relations among beings and which deprive some people of the minimum prerequisites for a decent living. A modern philosophy of life, however, cannot content itself with equality and security alone. Our generation, perhaps, more than all others, has witnessed the creation of chains of bondage and horror in the name of equality and economic security. The soul acquires what we cannot afford, retain what we prize and adore, restore the worn, ignores fashion, and repulses prejudice. There are both gender patterns and class patterns to the civic and commercial use of human feeling. That is the social point. However, there is also a personal point, too. There is a cost to emotion work: it affects the degree to which we listen to feeling and sometimes our very capacity to feel. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Managing feelings is an art fundamental to civilized living, and I assume that in broad terms the cost is usually worth the fundamental benefit. Enjoyable as the instinct for pleasures of the flesh is, we are wise in the long run to give up some gratification of it. However, when the transmutation of private use of feeling is successfully accomplished—when we succeed in lending our feelings to the organizational engineers of worker-customer relations—we may pay a cost in how we hear our feelings and a cost in what, for better or worse, they tell us about ourselves. When a speed-up of the human assembly line makes genuine personal service harder to deliver, the worker may withdraw emotional labor and offer instead a thin crust of display. Then the cost shifts: the penalty becomes a sense of being phony or insincere. In short, when the transmutation works, the worker risks losing the signal function of feeling. When it does not work, the risk is losing the signal function of display. Certain social conditions have increased the cost of feeling management. One is an overall unpredictability about our social World. Ordinary people nowadays move through many social Worlds and get the gist of dozens of social roles. As a result, we moderns spend more mental time on the question “What, in this situation, should I be feeling?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Because of our socially constructed reality may not jive with our soul, we ask ourselves, “Who am I?” as if the question permitted a single neat answer. We still search for a solid, predictable core of self even though the conditions for the existence of such a self have long since vanished. In the face of these two conditions, people turn to feelings in order to locate themselves or at least to see what their own reactions are to a given event. That is, in the absence of unquestioned external guidelines, the signal function of emotion becomes more important, and the commercial distortion become more important, and the commercial distortion of the managed heart becomes all the more important as a human cost. We may well be seeing a response to all this in the rising approval of the unmanaged heart, the greater virtue now attached to what is “natural” or spontaneous. The high regard for “natural feeling,” then, may coincide with the culturally imposed need to develop the precise opposite—and instrumental stance toward feeling. We treat spontaneous feeling, for this reason, as if it were scarce and precious; we raise it up as a virtue. It may not be too much to suggest that we are witnessing a call for the conversation of inner resources, a call to save another wilderness from corporate use and keep it forever wild. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

With growing celebration of spontaneity have come the robot jokes. Robot humor plays wit the tension between being human—that is to say, having feeling—and being a cog in a socioeconomic machines. The charm of the little robot R2-D2, in the film Star Wars, is that he seems so human. Films like this bring us the familiar in reverse: every day, outside the movie house, we see human beings whose show of feeling has a robot quality. The ambiguities are funny now. Many people turn into robot humans because they do not want to be exploited or stigmatized. However, sometimes the trials that we suffer are a blessing in disguise, especially because of what it is felt that suffering can teach one about life and people. When one evaluates what one has learned, it is clear that it is not only suffering: it is also learning through suffering. The awareness of others can be deepened and increased, and those around one can count on one to turn all one’s mind and heart and attention to their problems. That is something that cannot be learned by dashing all over the shopping mall. Correspondingly, one can come to re-assess the limitations of normals. Both healthy minds and healthy bodies may be crippled. The fact the normal people can get around, can see, can hear, does not mean that they are seeing or hearing. They can be very visually impaired to the things that spoil their happiness, or suffer extreme hearing impairments that make them unable to recognize the pleas of others for kindness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

When I think of people who are living in lack and limitation and cannot make use of their God given functions because they are unaware or chose to ignore their soul, it makes one realized how blessed one is not to be like them, even if you are not physically or mentally perfect—at least you are not ignorant. Perhaps in some small way, those of us who are defective can be the means of opening their eyes and ears to the beauties around us: things like a warm handclasp, a voice that is anxious to cheer, a spring breeze, music to listen to, a friendly nod. These people, even if they are not aware of their impact on others, are still important, and we can help them. In this light, we can perceive, for instance, that some inadequacy like the inability to accept human love can effectively diminish satisfaction of living almost to the vanishing point, but it is unusual for the being who suffers from such a malady even to know he or she has it and self-pity is, therefore, impossible for one. I believe that we can no longer afford to ignore the effect of the experimenter on the experience and behavior of the subject. We can no longer afford to divert nice, tender-hearted humanitarians into clinical work and leave the research for hard-nosed, hardhearted impersonal folk. If an experimental psychologist is unpleasant and threatening in the eyes of others, it might be better to confine one to the calculating room or else let one contact human subjects only when the design for the experiment calls for an impersonal investigator. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

If a person has gone into psychology to get away from people, let one design experiments, build equipment, analyze data, run computers, and so on. We need all the versatility we can get in psychology. How strange that good animal psychologists view their animal subjects like individual persons, worthy of respect, while experimental psychologist frequently treat their human subjects as if they were anonymous animal objects! It is already known that gentled tame animals show different behavioral and physiological characteristic from nongentled or wild ones (wild means, here, defensive and hostile in the presence of humans). Yet many of our subjects are assumed to be tame and trusting when, in fact they are wild. Genuine dialogue may prove to be the appropriate context for research in human (free) beings. I believe each of us working in the field of human relationships has a similar problem in knowing how to use such research knowledge. We cannot slavishly follow such findings in a mechanical way or we destroy the personal qualities which these very studies show to be valuable. It seems to me that we have to use these studies, testing them against our own experience and forming new and further personal hypotheses to use and test in our own further personal relationships. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

There are somethings we need to figure out such as: Can I be in some way which will be perceived by the other person as trustworthy, as dependable or consistent in some deep sense? I used to feel that if I fulfilled all the outer conditions of trustworthiness—keeping appointments, respecting the confidential nature of the interviews, and so forth—and if I acted consistently the same during meetings with people, then this condition would be fulfilled. However, the experience drove home the fact that to act consistently acceptant, for example, if in fact I was feeling annoyed or skeptical or some other non-accepted feeling, was certain in the long run to be perceived as inconsistent or untrustworthy. I have come to recognize that being trust worthy does not demand that I be rigidly consistent but that I be dependably real. The term “congruent” is one that I used to describe the way I would like to be. By this I mean that whatever feeling or attitude I am experiencing would be matched by my awareness of that attitude. When this is true, then I am a unified or integrated person in that moment, and hence I can be whatever I deeply am. This is a reality which I find others experience as dependable. A very closely related question is this: Can I be expressive enough as a person that what I am will be communicated unambiguously? I believe that most of my failures to achieve a helping relationship can be traced to unsatisfactory answers to these two questions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

When I am experiencing an attitude of annoyance toward another person but am unaware of it, then my communication contains contradictory messages. My words are giving one message, but I am also in subtle ways communicating the annoyance I feel and this confuses the other person and makes one distrustful, though one too may be unaware of what is causing the difficulty. When as a parent or a therapist or a teacher or an administrator I fail to listen to what is going on in me, fail because my own defensiveness to sense my own feelings, then this kind f failure seems to result. It has made it seem to me that the most basic learning for anyone who hopes to establish any kind helping relationship is that it is safe to be transparently real. If in a given relationship I am reasonably congruent, if no feelings relevant to the relationship are hidden either to me or the person, then I can be almost sure that the relationship will be a helpful one. One way of putting this which may seem strange to you is that if I cam form a helping relationship to myself—if I be sensitively aware of and acceptant toward my own feelings—then the likelihood is great that I can for a helping relationship toward another. Now, acceptantly to be what I am, in this sense, and to permit this to show through to the other person, is the most difficult task I know and one I never fully achieve. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

However, to realize that I must be acceptant towards other people is my task and it has been most rewarding because it has helped me to find what has gone wrong with interpersonal relationships which have become snarled and to put them on a constructive track again. It has meant that if I am to facilitate the personal growth of others in relations to me, then I must grow, and while this is often painful it is also enriching. Another questions: Can I let myself experiences optimistic attitudes toward this other person—attitudes of warmth, caring, liking, interest, respect? It is not easy. I find in myself, and feel that I often see in others, a certain amount of fear of these feelings. We are afraid that if we let ourselves freely experience these beneficial feelings toward another we may be trapped by them. They may lead to demands on us or we may be disappointed in our trust, and these outcomes we fear. So as a reaction we tend to build up distance between ourselves and others—aloofness, a professional attitude, an impersonal relationship. I feel quite strongly that one of the important reasons for the professionalization of every field is that it helps to keep this distance. In the clinical areas we develop elaborate diagnostic formulations, seeing the person as an object. In teaching and in administration we develop all kinds of evaluative procedures, so that again the person is perceived as an object. In these ways, I believe, we can help ourselves from experiencing the caring which would exist if we recognized the relationship as one between two persons. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

When we can learn, even in certain relationships or at certain times in those relationships, that it is safe to care, that it is safe to relate to the other as a person for whom we have beneficial feelings, the relationship is a real achievement. Another question the importance of which I have learned in my own experience is: Can I be strong enough as a person to be separate from the others? Can I be a sturdy respecter of my own feelings, my own needs, as well as his or hers? Can I own and, if need be, express my own feelings as something belonging to me and separate from one’s feelings? Am I strong enough in my own separateness that I will not be downcast by one’s depression, frightened by one’s fear, nor engulfed by one’s dependency? Is my inner self hardy enough to realize that I am not destroyed by one’s anger, take over by one’s need for dependence, nor enslaved by one’s love, but that I exist separate from one with feelings and rights of my own? When I can freely feel this strength of being a separate person, then I find that I can let myself go much more deeply in understanding and accepting one because I am not fearful of losing myself. While in the presence of others, the individual typically infuses one’s activity with signs which dramatically highlight and portray confirmatory facts that might otherwise remain unapparent or obscure. For if the individual’s activity is to become significant to others, one must mobilize one’s activity so that it will express during the interaction what one wishes to convey. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

In fact, the performer may be required not only to express one’s claimed capacities during the interaction but also to do so during the split second in the interaction. Thus, if a baseball umpire is to give the impression that he or she is sure of one’s judgment, one must forgo the moment of thought which might make one sure of one’s judgment; one must give an instantaneous decision so that the audience will be sure that one is sure of one’s judgment. The next question is closely related. Am I secure enough within myself to permit him or her his or her separateness? Can I permit one to be what one is—honest or deceitful, infantile or adult, despairing or over-confident? Can I give one the freedom to be? Or do I feel that one should follow my advice, or remain somewhat dependent on me, or mold oneself after me? In this connection I think of the interesting study that found that the less well adjusted and less competent counselor tends to induce conformity to oneself, to have clients who model themselves after one. On the other hand, the better adjusted and more competent counselor can interaction with a client through many interviews without interfering with freedom of the client to develop a personality quite separate from that of one’s therapist. I should prefer to be in this latter class, whether as a parent or supervisor or counselor. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

There are test, dangers, and pitfalls at various stages of self-actualization. The momentary glimpse of God provides the real beginning of one’s quest. The uninterrupted realization of it provides the final ending. Another question I can ask myself is: Can I let myself enter fully into the World of one’s feelings and personal meanings and see these as one does? Can I step into one’s private World so completely that I lose all desire to evaluate or judge it? Can I enter it so sensitively that I can catch not only the meanings of which are only implicit, which one sees only dimly or as confusion? Can I extend this understanding without limit? I think of the client who said, “Whenever I find someone who understands a part of me at the time, then it never fails that a point is reached where I know they are not understanding me again. What I have looked for so hard is for someone to understand.” For myself I find it easier to feel this kind of understanding, and to communicate it, to individual clients than to students in a class or staff members in group in which I am involved. There is a strong temptation to set students “straight,” or to point out to a staff member the errors in one’s thinking. Yet when I can permit myself to understand in these situations, it is mutually rewarding. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

And with clients in therapy, I am often impressed with the fact that even a minimal amount of empathic understanding—a bumbling and faulty attempt to catch the confused complexity of the client’s meaning—is helpful, though there is no doubt that it is most helpful when I can see and formulate clearly the meanings in one’s experience which for one have been unclear and tangled. Still another issue is whether I can be acceptant of each facet of this other person which one presents to me. Can I receive one as one is? Can I communicate this attitude? Or can I only receive one conditionally, acceptant of some aspect of one’s feelings and silently or openly disapproving of other aspects? It has been my experience that when my attitude is conditional, then one cannot change or grow in these respects in which I cannot fully receive one. And when—afterward and sometimes too late—I try to discovery why I have been unable to accept one in every respect, I usually discover that is because I have been frightened or threatened in myself by some aspect of one’s feelings. If I am to be more helpful, then I must myself grow and accept myself in these respects. First, one has a vague feeling of being attracted towards God. Then one bestows more attention upon God, thinks of him frequently; at length attention grows into concentration and this, in turn, culminates in absorption. In the end, one can say, “I live not in myself, only in God. Last night I loved. This morning I am Love.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

A specific aspect of the preceding question but an important one is: Can I free one from the threat of external evaluation? In almost every phase of our lives—at home, at school, at work—we find ourselves under the rewards and punishments of external judgments. “That is good”; “that is naughty”; “that is poor counseling.” Such judgments are a part of our lives from infancy to old age. I believe they have a certain social usefulness to institutions and organizations such as schools and professions. Like everyone else I find myself all too often making such evaluations. However, n my experience, they do not make for personal growth and hence I do not believe that they are a part of a helping relationship. Curiously enough the beneficial evaluation is as threatening in the long run as a negative one, since to inform someone that one is good implies that you also have the right to tell one he or she is bad. So I have come to understand that the more I can keep a relationship free of judgment and evaluation, the more this will permit the other person to reach the point where one recognizes that the locus of evaluation, the center of responsibility, is possessed within oneself. The meaning and value of one’s experience is in the last analysis something which is up to one, and no amount of external judgment can alter this. So I should like to work toward a relationship in which I am not, even in my own feelings, evaluating one. This I believe can set one free to be a self-responsible person. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The stages in philosophic training usually begin with gaining a theoretical knowledge of the teachings. When this is well established, it grows in time into an aspiration for self-improvement and into an effort to mold character and conduct in conformity with the philosophical ideal. Such a maturation period is often long and a difficult one. In the third stage the glimpse of enlightenment begins to be experienced. The first glimpse has a far-reaching effect and is likely to be associated with the first contact with an inspired spiritual guide, or with the writings of such a being. In the case of some persons there is a different series of steps. The glimpse comes first, the theoretical study next, the striving to express through living comes last. Sometimes we wonder: Can I meet this other individual as a person who is in process of becoming, or will I be bound by one’s past and by my past? If, in my encounter with one, I am dealing with one as an immature child, an ignorant student, a neurotic personality, or a psychopath, each of these concepts of mine limits what one can be in the relationship. We must confirm the other. Confirming means accepting the whole potentiality of the other. I can recognize in one, know in one, the person one has been crated to become. I confirm one in myself, and then in one, in relation to this potentiality that can now be developed, can evolve. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

One has to make oneself ready for the illumination, then only will one get it. As a consequence of all these efforts and aspirations, one will begin to grow out of oneself. Wisdom comes with the end of a long probation. If I see a relationship as only an opportunity to reinforce certain types of words or opinions in the other, then I tend to confirm one as an object—a basically mechanical, manipulable object. And if I see this as one’s potentiality, one tends to act in ways which support this hypothesis. If, on the other hand, I see a relationship as an opportunity to reinforce all that one is, the person tat one is with all one’s existent potentialities, then one tends to act in ways which support this hypothesis. I have then confirmed one as a living person, capable of creative inner development. Personally I prefer this second type of hypothesis. The optimal helping relationship is the kind of relationship created by a person who is psychologically mature. Or to put it another way, the degree to which I can crate relationships which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself. In some respects this is a disturbing thought, but it is also a promising or challenging one. It would indicate that if I am interested in creating helping relationships I have a fascinating lifetime job ahead of me, stretching and developing my potentialities in the direction of growth. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

All of us who are working in the field of human relationships and trying to understand the basic orderliness of that field are engaged in the most crucial enterprise in today’s World. If we are thoughtfully trying to understand our tasks as administrators, teachers, educational counselors, vocational counselors, therapist, then we are working on the problem which will determine the future of this planet. For it is not upon the physical sciences that the future will depend. It is upon us who are trying to understand and deal with the interations between human beings—who are trying to create helping relationships. So I hope that the questions I ask of myself will be of some use to you in gaining understanding and perspective as you endeavor, in your way, to facilitate growth in your relationship. People would like to live quiet, tumult-free lives, without the feeling of being continuously uprooted on one pretext or another. Every normal person yearns for the luxury of anonymity at some time or another, and has some part of oneself which one does not choose to reveal to others, desires to make one’s own decisions in certain spheres of life, and need some time to spend alone with oneself in whatever form one chooses. If people do not have enough room to satisfy their own individual needs within the collective framework, they leave or else build up sublimated pressures within the community, which it sometimes cannot withstand. The system thus makes it possible for some people to live a parasitic life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The higher stage is pure philosophy, for it re-educates one’s outlook and hence one’s high consciousness. It demands close, concentrated study, however, and therefore few care for it. It is based on reasoning, not on mystic intuitions, and will be the logical development of modern science if it keeps on probing. Reason is not to be confused with logic, either; the latter is limited and cannot yield truth. The soul is always helpful and often almost absurdly knowledgeable. Its skills are probably very underestimated and largely underemployed.  Anyone who has a soul and a garden wants for nothing. We find God’s language. O God the Father of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, Lord, Whose Name is great, Whose nature is blissful, Whose goodness is inexhaustible, Thou God and Master of all things, Who art blessed for ever; Who Sittest on the Cherubim, and art glorified by the Seraphim; before Whom stand thousands of thousands and tens of thousands times ten thousand, the host of holy Angles and Archangels; sanctify, O Lord, our souls and bodies and spirits, and touch our apprehensions and search out or consciences, and cost out of us every evil thought, every base desire, all envy, and pride, and hypocrisy, all falsehood, all deceit, and all Worldly anxiety, all covetousness, vainglory, and sloth, all malice, all wrath, all anger, all remembrance of injuries, all blasphemy, and every motion of the flesh and spirit that is contrary to Thy holy will. And grant us, O Lord, the Lover of humans, with freedom, without condemnation, with a pure heart and a contrite soul, without confusion of face and with sanctified lips, boldly to call upon Thee, or holy God and Father Who art in Heaven. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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