Believers and doers are what we need—faithful children of God who are humble in the eyes of the Lord. To be a child of God is one of the purest of all experiences. This awareness of a soul’s unique, even sacred nature, is what should be instilled in all beings. In our daily lives, offstage as it were, we also develop feeling for the parts we play; and along with the workaday props of the kitchen table or office restroom mirror we also use deep acting, emotion memory, and the sense of “as if this were true” in the course of trying to feel what we sense we ought to feel or want to feel. Usually we give this little thought, and we do not name the momentary acts involved. Only when our feeling does not fit the situation, and when we sense this as a problem, do we turn our attention to the inward, imagined mirror, and ask whether we are or should be acting. Consider, for example, the reaction of this young man to the unexpected news that a close friend has suffered from neurosis: I was shocked, yet for some reason I did not think my emotions accurately reflected the bad news. My roommate appeared much more shaken than I did. I thought that I should be more upset by the news than I was. Thinking about this conflict I realized that one reason for my emotions sate might have been the spatial distance separating me from my friend, who was in the hospital hundreds of miles away. I then tried to focus on his sate, and began to picture my friend as I thought he then existed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Sensing himself to be himself to be less affected than he should be, he tried to visualize his friend—perhaps in gray pajamas, being led by impassive attendants to the electric-shock room. After bringing such a vivid picture to mind, he might have gone on to recall smaller private breakdowns in his own life and thereby evoked feelings of sorrow and empathy. Without at all thinking of this as acting, in complete privacy, without audience or stage, the young man can pay, in the currency of deep acting, his emotional respects to a friend. Sometimes we try to stir up a feeling we wish we has, and at other times we try to block or weaken a feeling we wish we did not have. Consider this young woman’s report of her attempt to keep feelings of love in check. Last Summer I was going with a guy often, and I began to feel very strongly about him. I knew, though, that he had broken up with a girl a year ago because she had gotten too serious about him, so I was afraid to show any emotion. I also was afraid of being hurt, so I attempted to change my feelings. I talked myself into not caring about him…but I must admit it did no work for long. To sustain this feeling I had to invent bad things about him and concentrate on them or continue to tell myself he did not care. It was a hardening of emotions, I would say. It took a lot of work and was unpleasant because I had to concentrate on anything I could find that was irritating about him. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

In this struggle she hit upon some techniques of deep acting. “To invent bad things about him and concentrate on them” is to make up a World she could honestly respond to. She could tell herself, “If he is self-absorbed, then he is unlovable, and if he is unlovable, which at the moment I believe, then I do not love him.” She wavers between belief and doubt, but she nevertheless reaches for the inner token of feeling that it is her part to offer. She wavers between belief and doubt in her beloved’s “flaws.” However, her temporary effort to prevent herself from falling in love may serve the grander purpose of waiting for him to reciprocate. So in a way, her act of momentary restraint, as she might see it, was an offering to the future of their love. We also set a personal stage with personal props, not so much for its effect on our audience as for the help it gives us in believing in what we imagine. Serving almost as stage props, often, are fellow members of the cast—friends or acquaintances who prod our feelings in a desired direction. Thus, a young woman who was trying not to love a man used her supporting cast of friends like a Greek chorus: “I could only say horrible things about him. My friends thought he was horrible because of this and reinforced my feelings of dislike for him.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Sometimes the stage setting can be a dismayingly powerful determinant of feeling. Consider this young woman’s description of her ambivalent feelings about a priest forty years her senior: “I started trying to make myself like him and fit the whole situation. When I was with him I did not like him, but then I would go home and write in my journal how much I could not stand him. I kept changing my feelings.” What she felt while facing the priest amid the props of a living room and two cups of afternoon tea collapsed when she left that setting. At home with her diary, she felt free of her obligation to please her suitor by trying to be like him. There, she felt another obligation—to be honest to her diary. What changed between the tea party and the diary session was her sense of which feeling was real. Her sense of realness seemed to shift disconcertingly with the stage setting, as if her feeling of liking the priest gained or lost its status as “real” depending on its context. Sometimes the realness of a feeling wavers more through time. Once a love story is subject to doubt, the story is rewritten; falling in love comes to seem like the work of convincing each other that this has been true love. A nineteen-year-old Catholic college student recalled: “Since we both were somewhat in need of a close man-woman relationship and since we were thrown together so often (we lived next door to each other and it was Summertime), I think that we convinced ourselves that we loved each other. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

“I had to try to convince myself that I loved him in order to justify or somehow make “right” sleeping with him which I never really wanted to do. We ended up living together supposedly because we “loved” each other. However, I would say instead that we did if for other reasons which neither of us wanted to admit. What pretending that I loved him meant to me was having a secret episode of neurosis.” This double pretending—pretending to him and pretending to herself that she loved him—created two barriers to reflection and spontaneous feeling. First, she tried to feel herself in love—intimate, deeply enhanced, and exquisitely vulnerable—in the face of contrary evidence. Second, she tried not to feel irritation, boredom, and a desire to leave. By this effort to orchestrate feeling—to keep some feelings above consciousness and some below, and to counter inner resistances on a daily basis—she tried to suppress reality testing. She both nurtured an illusion about her lover and doubted the truth of it. It was the strain of this effort that led to her “secret episode of neurosis.” In the theater, the illusion that the actor creates is recognized beforehand as an illusion by actor and audience alike. However, in in real life we more often participate in the illusion. We take it into ourselves, where is struggles against the sense we ordinarily make of this. In life, illusions are subtle, changeable, and often hard to define with certainty, and they matter for more to our sanity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The other side of the matter is to live with a dropped illusion and yet want to sustain it. Once an illusion is clearly defined as an illusion, it becomes a lie. The work of sustaining it then becomes redefined as lying to oneself so that one becomes self-stigmatized as a liar. This dilemma was described by a desperate wife and mother of two: “I am desperately trying to change my feelings of being trapped [in marriage] into feelings of wanting to remain with my husband voluntarily. Sometimes I think I am succeeding—sometimes I know I have not. It means I have to lie to myself and know I am lying. It means I do not like myself very much. It also makes me wonder whether or not I am a bit of a masochist. I feel responsible for the children’s future and for my husband’s, and there is the old self-sacrificer syndrome. I know what I am doing. I just do not know how long I can hold out.” One stage, the actress doing Method acting tries to delude herself; the more voluntary, the more richly detailed the lie, the better. No one thinks she actually is Queen Akasha or even pretending to be. She is borrowing Queen Akasha’s reality or something from her own personal life that resembles it. She is trying to delude herself and create an illusion for the audience, who accept it as a gift. In everyday life there is also illusion, but how to define it is chronically unclear; the matter needs constant attention, continual questioning and testing. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

In acting, the illusion starts out as an illusion. In everyday life, that definition is always a possibility and never quite a certainty. On stage, the illusion leaves as it came, with the curtain. Off stage, the curtains close, too, but not at our bidding, not when we expect, and often to our dismay. On stage, illusion is a virtue. However, in real life, the lie to oneself is a sign of human weakness, of bad faith. It is far more unsettling to discover that we have fooled ourselves than to discover that we have been fooling others. This is because for the professional actor the illusion takes on meaning only in relation to a professional role whereas in real life the illusion takes on meaning with reference to living person. When in private life we recognize an illusion we have held, we form a different relation to what we have thought of as our self. We come to distrust our sense of what is true, as we know it though feeling. And if our feelings have lied to us, they cannot be part of our good, trustworthy, “true” self. To put it another way, we may recognize that we distort reality, that we deny or suppress truths, but we rely on an observing ego to comment on these unconscious processes in us and to try to find out what is going on despite them. At the same time, everyday life clearly requires us to do deep acting. We must dwell on what it is that we want to feel and on what we must do to induce the feeling. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

When we think about deep acting, consider, for example, this young man’s efforts to counter an apathy he dreaded: “I was a star halfback in high school. [But in my senior year] before games I did not feel the surge of adrenalin—in a word, I was not “psyched-up.” This was due to emotional difficulties I was experiencing at the time, and still experience. Also, I ad been an A student but my grades were dropping. Because in the past I had been fanatical, emotional, intense player—a “hitter,” recognized by coaches as a hard worker and a player with “desire”—this was very upsetting. I did everything I could to get myself “up.” I tried to be outwardly rah-rah, I tried to get myself scared of my opponents—anything to get the adrenalin flowing. I tried to look nervous and intense before games, so at least the coached would not catch on…when actually was mostly bored, or in any event, not “up.” Before one game I remember wishing I was in the sands watching my cousin play of his school.” This young man felt a slipping sense of realness; he was clear that he felt “basically” bored, not “really” up. What also seemed real to him was the sense that he should feel driven to win and that he wanted to feel that way. What also felt real to him in hindsight was his effort to seem to the coaches like a “hitter” (surface acting) and his effort to make himself fearful of his opponents (deep acting). #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

As we look back at the past, we may alternate between two understandings of “what really happened.” According to one, our feeling was genuine and spontaneous. According to other, it seemed genuine and spontaneous, but in fact it was covertly managed. In doubt about which understanding will ultimately make sense, we are led to ask about our present feelings: “Am I acting now? How do I know?” One basic appeal of the theater is that the stage decides that questions for us: we know for sure who is acting. What distinguished theater from life is not illusion, which both have, need, and use. What distinguishes them is the honor accorded to illusion, the ease in knowing when an illusion is an illusion, and the consequences of its use in making feeling. In the theater, the illusion ends when the curtain falls, as the audience knew it would. In private life, its consequences are unpredictable and possibly fateful: a love is terminated, a suitor rejected, another hospital bed filled. It may be noted that in the case of some statuses dramatization presents no problem, since some of the acts which are instrumentally essential for the completion of the core task of the status are at the same time wonderfully adapted, from the point of view of communication, as means of vividly conveying the qualities and attributes claimed by the performer. The roles of prizefighters, surgeons, violinists, and law enforcement are cases in point. These activities allow for so much dramatic self-expression that exemplary practitioners—whether real or fictional—become famous and are given a special place in the commercially organized fantasies of the nation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

In many cases, however, dramatization of one’s work does constitute a problem. An illustration of  this may be cited from a hospital study where the medical nursing staff is shown to have a problem that the surgical nursing staff does not have: The things which a nurse does for post-operative patients on the surgical floor are frequently of recognizable importance, even to patients who are strangers to hospital activities. For example, the patient sees one’s nurse changing bandages, swinging orthopedic frames into place, and can realize that these are purposeful activities. Even if she cannot be at his side, he can respect her purposeful activities. Medical nursing is also highly skilled work. The physician’s diagnosis must rest upon careful observation of symptoms over time where the surgeon’s are in larger part dependent on visible things. The lack of visibility creates problems on the medical. A patient will see one’s nurse stop at the next bed and chat for a moment or two with the patient there. One does not know that she is observing the shallowness of the breathing and color and tone of the skin. He thinks she is just visiting. So, alas, does his family who may thereupon decide that these nurses are not very impressive. If the nurse spends more time at the next bed than at his own, the patient may feel slighted. The nurses are “wasting time” unless they are darting about doing some visible thing such as administering hypodermics. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Similarly, the proprietor of a service establishment may find it difficult to dramatize what is actually being done for clients because the clients cannot “see” the overhead costs of the service rendered them. Undertakers must therefore charge a great deal for their highly visible product—a coffin that has been transformed into a casket—because many of the other costs of conducting a funeral are ones that cannot be readily dramatized. Merchants, too, find that they must charge high prices for things that look intrinsically expensive in order to compensate the establishment for expensive things like insurance, slack periods, and so forth, that never appear before the customers’ eyes. The problem of dramatizing one’s work involves more than merely making invisible cost visible. The work that must be done by those who fill certain statuses is often so poorly designed as an expression of a desired meaning, that if the incumbent would dramatize the character of one’s role, one must divert an appreciable amount of energy to do so. And this activity diverted to communication will often require different attributes from the ones which are being dramatized. Thus to furnish a house so that it will express simple, quiet, dignity, the householder may have to race to the auction sales, haggle with antique dealers, and strategically canvass all the local shops for proper wallpaper and curtain materials. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

To give a radio talk that will sound genuinely informal, spontaneous, and relaxed, the speaker may have to design one’s script with painstaking care, testing one phrase after another, in order to follow the content, language, rhythm, and pace of everyday talk. Similarly, a Vogue model, by her clothing, stance, and facial expression, is able expressively to portray a cultivated understanding of the book she poses in her hand; but those who trouble to express themselves so appropriately will have very little time life over for reading. The attentive pupil who wishes to be attentive, one’s eyes riveted on the teacher, one’s ears open wide, so exhausting oneself in playing the attentive role that one ends up by no longer hearing anything. And so individuals often find themselves with the dilemma of expression versus action. Those who have the time and talent to perform a task well may not, because of this, have the time or talent to make it apparent that they are performing well. It maybe said that some organizations resolve this dilemma by officially delegating the dramatic function to a specialist who will spend time expressing the meaning of the task and spend no time actually doing it. If we alter our frame of reference for a moment and turn from a particular performance to the individuals who present it, we can consider an interesting fact about the round of different routines which any group or class of individuals helps to perform. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

When a group or class is examined, one finds that the members of it tend to invest their egos primarily in certain routines, giving less stress to the other ones which they perform. Thus a professional being may be willing to take a very modest role in the street, in a shop, or in one’s home, but in the social sphere which encompasses one’s display of professional competency, one will be much concerned to make an effective showing. In mobilizing one’s behavior to make a showing, one will be concerned not so much with the full round of the different routines one performs but only with the one from which one’s occupational reputation derives. It is upon this issue that some writers have chosen to distinguish groups with aristocratic habits (whatever their social status) from those of middle-class character. The aristocratic habit, it has been said, is one that mobilizes all the minor activities of life which fall outside the serious specialties of other classes and injects into these activities an expression of character, power, and high rank. By what important accomplishments in the young nobleman instructed to support the dignity of one’s rank, and to render himself worthy of that superiority over one’s fellow citizens, to which the virtue of his ancestors has raised them: Is it by knowledge, by industry, by patience, by self-denial, or by virtue of any kind? #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

All one’s words, as all one’s motions are attended to, one learns a habitual regard to every circumstance of ordinary behavior, and studies to perform all those small duties with the most exact propriety. As one is conscious of ow much one is observed, and how much humankind are disposed to favor all one’s inclinations, one acts, upon the most indifferent occasions, with that freedom and elevation which the thought of this naturally inspires. One’s air, one’s manner, one’s deportment, all mark that elegant, and graceful sense of one’s own superiority, which those who are born to inferior stations can hardly arrive at. These are the arts by which one proposes to make humankind more easily submit to one’s authority, and to govern their inclinations according to one’s own pleasure: and in this one is seldom disappointed. These arts, supported by rank and preeminence, are upon ordinary occasions, sufficient to govern the World. If such virtuosi actually exist, they would provide a suitable group in which to study the techniques by which activity is transformed into a show. From several different sources a variety of suggestive influences play upon an individual’s mind and habits, influences which may be all very well for others but which may be harmful to one’s own individuality at one’s particular stage of spiritual progress. This is true not only of the trivial affairs of everyday living but also of the loftier affairs of aspirational living. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Optimistic truths and torturous falsehoods, cleverly combined half-truths and half-falsehoods are continually being presented to one’s consciousness. Not only one’s physical life, but also one’s mental life must become a process of careful acceptance and vigilant rejection. At a certain stage of this quest the seeker must be particularly careful to be on one’s guard against the skillfully suggested truths of others who mistake their own candle-glimmer for the Sun’s glory and the prejudices born of their own narrow experience for the wisdom born of insight. This caution is especially necessary in the sphere of spiritual experience. The wary seeker should be on one’s guard against those who offer pseudo-knowledge as well as those extremists who would lead one off balance. Those who take to this quest for the sake of satisfying personal ambition, will do better in the end to leave it alone. Travelling on this quest can be only another way of inflating their egos, increasing their price, and renewing their sectarianism. It is not easy, this quest. Some stumble along it and somehow manage to advance a little way, but others give up. Good intent or sincere motive cannot by itself be enough to protect the fool against one’s own gullibility, the uncritical against one’s own stupidity, and the uninformed against one’s own ignorance. All this is as true of the quest itself as part of is practice called intense prayer. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

However, there is an evil quest too, whose disciples seek to serve their lower nature rather than to conquer it, and whose masters show themselves by action or teaching to be monsters. Warnings must be given against possible pitfalls on the quester’s way. While Worldly beings strain their heads and knit their brows, the enlightened individual sits quietly or works unhurriedly, self-absent, unutterably wise in the Infinite. In a World half given over to despair, one dwells with an intrinsic power that all feel who contact one, or one moves radiating a calm strength to every environment. One is detached, watching the passing show go by, but not so detached as if one were far away. From one’s interest in the World’s affairs is vivid; one’s intelligence is active, seeing the interplay of cyclic impetus and spiritual results. One’s wonderful calmness does not make one utterly impervious to all the happenings of this era, nor callous to all the turns of national fortune or disaster. There is such a perfect harmony of one’s faculties that although each still continues to exist autonomously, all work together like a single faculty. There is profound power, there is ample security in this presence. The enlightened individual alone may dare to be oneself, may live unrelated to the fads and fashions around one. The goal is to make one’s acts tend toward harmony but not mistake uniformity for unity. Differences there will be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of bright minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. Good teaching is loving and listening, sharing and supporting It is being passionately human. That is the point at which a good teacher begins. One possesses the ability to produce peace within oneself and to radiate it outside oneself. One is sufficient, oneself and not anyone else, an original and not a copy, music and not echo—in short, a true individual. It is a fact that such a being these three passions—anger, lust, and hatred—are stilled forever. There is no temptation which can now have any power over one, no fear which can overcome one, no frustrations which can depress one. There will be an air of settled conviction, of inward assurance about one’s speech and writing. The aura of peace and wisdom and power that emanates from one’s person is the best testimonial to the value of one’s ideas. This superb poise is not an act, put on for the benefit of onlookers; it is real.  Now, right on the conscious surface of our World within is possessed some of our thoughts, feelings, intentions, and plans. These are the ones we are aware of. They may be fairly obvious to others as well as to ourselves. In terms of them we consciously approach our World and our actions within it. However, these surface aspects are also a good indication of the general nature of the unconscious spiritual depth within, of what sorts of things make it up. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

However, the thoughts, feelings, and intentions we are aware of are, after all, only a small part of the ones that are really there in our depths; and they often are not the ones most revealing of who we actually are and why we do what we do. What we really think, how we really feel, and what we really would do in circumstances foreseen and unforeseen may be totally unknown to ourselves or to others familiar with us. We may pass one another—even pass ourselves, if you can imagine that—like yachts in the night. We do it all the time. The hidden dimension of each human life is not visible to others, nor is it fully graspable even by ourselves. We usually know very little about the things that move in our own soul, the deepest level of our life, or what id driving it. Our within is astonishingly complex and subtle—even devious. It takes on a life of its own. Only God knows our depths, who we are, and what we would do Thus the psalmist cries out for God’s help in dealing within—oneself! Search me, O God. Let the prayers of my heart by acceptable to you. Renew in me right spirit. At a certain point my own beyond that is within (my heart) has been formed and I am then at its mercy. Only God can save me. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the coming solemnity of our redemption may both bestow upon us assistance for this present life, and also enrich us with the bliss of life eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Be Thou to us, O Lord, a crown of glory in the day when Thou shalt come to judge the World by fire; that Thou mayest graciously clothe us here with the robe of righteousness, and hereafter with the perfection of a glorious liberty; though Thy mercy. Come to deliver us, O Lord God of hosts; turn us again, and shew Thy face, and we shall be saved; so that being cleansed by Thy mercy with the gift of worthy repentance, we maybe enabled to stand before Thee in the judgment; through thy mercy. O Christ our God, Who wilt come to judge the World in the Humanhood which Thou has assumed, we pray Thee to sanctify us wholly, that in the day of Thy Coming our whole spirit, soul, and body may so revive to a fresh life in Thee, that we may live and reign with Thee forever. O Lord God, Father Almighty, purify the secrets of our hearts, and mercifully wash out all the stains of sin; and grant, O Lord, that being cleansed from our crimes by the benediction of Thy tenderness, we may without any terror await the fearful and terrible Coming of Jesus Christ our Lord. “But behold, my beloved beings, I judge that ye have faith in Christ because of your meekness; for if ye have not faith in him then ye are not fit to be numbered among the people of his church,” reports Moroni 7.39. I think we need the soul in the same way we need wilderness. Both are sanctuaries of a king. Both are storehouses of diversity. Book lovers will understand me, and they know too, that part of the pleasure of a library is possessed in its very existence, much like the soul. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH