To my thinking, great souls must have a clear head, a strong hand, and above all, a great heart; and I am inclined to think that many of us can achieve this. However, we often fear our greatness as well as our lowliness, and this is precisely the core dilemma, from the existential-integrative standpoint. The fears of both constriction and expansion (or their clinically useful synonyms, smallness and greatness) haunt the entire spectrum of existential freedoms. They are the keys, moreover, to a full existential restoration. The human psyche (consciousness) is characterized by a constrictive-expansive continuum, only degrees of which are conscious. For the purpose of our existential-integrative framework, we consider six positions along this continuum: the physiological, the environment, the cognitive, the psychosexual, the interpersonal, and the experiential (being). Whereas physiological, environmental, and cognitive positions along the continuum are dominated by conscious processing, psychosexual, interpersonal, and experiential modalities are accented by pre- and sub-conscious mediation. It is not necessary to be living always near a spiritual leader in a monastery as so many seem to think. Death is silent; education is noisy. Every person, regardless of the disguise, knows what he or she it not. One must learn what one can be. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

What is really necessary to meet one on this physical plane is to connection with your soul, even if just for five minutes a day. After that one’s help can be received inwardly and mentally. This is because the real knowledge is not in the body, but part of one’s inner being, the Mind behind the body, and it is that inner being with which the seeker must try to come into relation. Such a relation one builds up oneself by one’s own mental attitude, by one’s faith and devotion and obedience to the way that is show. Dread of the constrictive or expansive polarities promotes dysfunction, extremism, or polarization, the degree and frequency of which is generally proportional to the degree and frequency of one’s dread. Put another way, one will do everything one can, including becoming extreme and destructive oneself, to avoid he constrictive or expansive polarity that one dreads. The dread of physiological expansion (arousal), for example, can promote extreme or dysfunctional measures to constrict (tranquilize) oneself. The conditioned fear of enclosures (constriction) can foster excessive efforts to enlarge or expand one’s surroundings. The dread of catastrophic (expansive) cognitions can associate with narrow, regimented cognitions. The revulsion for a constricted puritanical upbringing can correlate with an indulgent, expansive adulthood. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

The horror of a directionless, rootless upbringing, on the other hand, can generate absolutist and fundamentalist tendencies later in life. The terror of being ontologically and cosmically dismissed (obliterated), finally, can lead to desperate psychophysiological efforts to manifest ontologically, to be all-important (which too often, tragically, leads back again to the impoverished position because aspirations of the former magnitude cannot be borne for long. Let us look at some psychiatric disorders and their associated dreads. When we consider hyperconstrictive dysfunctions and the dread of ultimate expansion (greatness, chaos), there are some things that stand out. With depression people usually dread assertion, stimulation, ambition, standing out, possibility. With dependency dreaded is autonomy, venturing out on one’s own, unmanageable responsibility. Anxiety produces certain dreads such as in dealing with potency and its associated risks, responsibilities, and strains. Also foolishness, spontaneity, and unpredictability. In cases of agoraphobia (fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness, or embarrassment, which is an anxiety disorder that often develops after one or more panic attacks), what these people suffering with this condition tend to dread is open places, conflict and confusion. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

 With obsessive-compulsiveness people dread experimentations, surprise, confusion and complexity, disarray, and recklessness. In cases of paranoia individuals usually dread trusting, reaching out, the confusion, complexity, and brutality of relationships. However, in cases dealing with people who suffer from depressant substance abuse, these individuals usually dread all of the symptoms associated with hyperconstrictive dysfunctions. When looking at hyperexpansive dysfunctions and the dread of ultimate constriction (smallness, and obliteration), those who are dealing with mania (extremely elevated and excitable mood usually associated with bipolar disorder), these individuals dread confinement, limitation, delay of impulses, devitalization. In case of anti-social personality disorder, people usually dread vulnerability, weakness, and victimization. When individual suffer from hysteria, and they have a dread of rejection and insignificance. Those dealing with narcissism typically dread inadequacy, unworthiness, and impotence. In people experiencing impulsiveness, many tend to dread regimentation, routine, and emptiness. Seen in some suffering from claustrophobia, many dread entrapment, tight or closed places. Yet, in people dealing with stimulant abuse, they are frequently noted to dread all of the conditions associated with each hyperexpansive dysfunction. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

Increasing our understanding of mental illness helps us reach out with love and compassion to those who are suffering. Some hyerconstrictive/expansion blends of dysfunctions and the dead experienced are important to consider. People who are passive-aggressive usually dread belittlement, on the one hand, and, on the other, the rage of fury that results from that dread. (The combination produces such blunted aggression as sarcasm and dawdling.) In those experiencing borderline personality disorder (a mental disorder characterized by emotional instability, feelings of worthlessness, insecurity, impulsivity, and impaired social relationships), these people usually dread extreme belittlement, insignificance combined with extreme rage, fury (which leads to both fusion, tyranny and isolation, and withdrawal). In cases of manic depression, we often see dread associated with confinement, limitation, and delay on the one hand, and assertion, stimulation, and ambition on the other. In people who suffer from schizophrenia, which is a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation, these people usually dread vaporizing (which may lead to disorganized, omnipotence-striving states) and exploding (which may foster obsessive, catatonic-like qualities). Schizophrenia associates with constrictive and expansive dreads in their most radical forms. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

Although dread of (and compensation for) constrictive/expansive polarities can be seen at every existential level and is integral to the respective liberation of every level, its genesis is far from uniform. Constrictive or expansive dread can arise in a wide variety of spatial, temporal, and dispositional contexts. Acute trauma is the perception of an event as immediately contrary and shocking. It is an existential jolt that produces extreme fear. When a child falls ill, for example, a profound alteration in mobility may be experiences. If this alteration is powerful enough, it can alarm the child, not merely at the level of physiology (pleasure-pain) but at the higher levels of one’s groundedness in the World. It may be associated with mortal fears of diminishment, minimization, imperceptibility, and perhaps even dissolution. The intensity of the child’s fear is a function of many factors, including (but not limited to) one’s original psychophysiological disposition (for instance, one’s hardiness level), the severity of one’s illness, the cultural and familial context in which one contracts the illness, and so on. Discrepancy is the key here. The greater one experiences a discrepancy between one’s original disposition and subsequent events, the greater is the likelihood that one will deny those subsequent events and hence become experientially debilitated. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

Such debilitation is likely to manifest itself initially in the form of excessive efforts to expand (for example, cry out, refuse, defy) one’s condition of growing immobilization. If these protestations prove comparatively viable, one will be able to maintain one’s denial of smallness and live out one’s life in a variety of compensatory fashions. Depending on the severity and subsequent handling of one’s trauma, accordingly, one is likely to exhibit a range of expansionist traits, from exuberance and feistiness to outright belligerence and imperiousness. If, on the other hand, the child’s attempts to deny one’s illness are repeatedly and unabatingly rebuffed, then another traumatic cycle may develop—the cycle of chronic trauma. Whereas acute trauma focuses on the original dread of constructing (for example, of becoming immobilized), chronic trauma centers on the counteraction of that dread (fruitless and repeated efforts to become mobilized, expand). The result of this shift is a complete reversal of the original situation. Instead of denying and overcompensating for psychophysiological smallness, the client now does everything one can to render oneself small and to avoid psychophysiological greatness. There is yet a third scenario for developing constrictive or expansive trauma. This is the subtler cycle of intergenerational, or implicit trauma. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

Implicit trauma is the indirect, vicariously transmitted trauma of family and caretakers. Unlike acute and chronic trauma, implicit trauma is never directly experienced by the affected individuals but is learned, accepted, and stored in their memories. While the basis for implicit trauma is relatively obscure, both initial dispositions and modeling appear to play instrumental roles. The implicit-trauma sequence goes something like this: A family member, say our hypothetical client, experiences acute or chronic trauma. One’s trauma (for instance, one’s fear of immobility) leads, in turn, to compensatory behavior (such as overachieving) designed to thwart the precipitating injury. As this cycle solidifies in our client’s personal life, it also begins to filter into one’s relationship with one’s children. It is at this point, predictably, that one’s children develop a risk for implicit trauma. For this to occur, however, two basic conditions must be met: the children must idealize, and thereby strive to emulate, their mother’s excesses, and they must display inherent dispositions (for instance, ambitiousness) that comfortably conform to these excesses. Given these prime conditions, accordingly, immobility and smallness can prove far-ranging intergenerational enemies, unwittingly internalized and unknowingly transmitted. Only the broken-hearted causalities, such as those who are not superachievers, can begin to unravel the contagion.  #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

The operation of the above traumas, it may be evident by now, is confined neither to period nor place, type of polarization (for instance, constrictive/expansive), nor existential level (for instance, physiological). Although childhood, because of its comparative vulnerability, is more susceptible to traumatic impacts, such impacts are not restricted to childhood. Trauma originates, not in relation to parents, peers, any other stimulus per se, but in relation to being, to the groundlessness that is our condition. Hence it is not so much the specific content of the abuse or pain that unnerves us so, but the implications of that content for our being in the World, for our relationship to the Universe. It is in this sense that physical and emotional shock, parents, family myths, and so on symbolize wider networks of alarm—our smallness or greatness before creation itself. The third principle that has emerged from our existential-integrative formulation is that the confrontation with or integration of constrictive/expansive polarities promotes healing, vitality, and health. This principle also operates at various levels of freedom and can best be understood in terms of these levels. For example, constricting lethargy can be dealt with by nutritional regimens designed to release and expand energy. Expansive criminality can be environmentally modified to constrict via aversive and alternative reinforcements. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

Constrictive timidity, conversely, can be environmentally conditioned to expand (for instance, by confronting the object of dread). Rigid belief systems can be rationally restricted into expansive, adaptive belief systems. Sexually expansive adult behavior can be explained on the basis of sexually constrictive (or expansive) childhood behavior and thus rechanneled. Compulsive isolation (and constricting) can be explained and transcended through emotionally corrective bonding (and expanding). By facing and experiencing one’s frailty, finally, one can learn to understand and transform one’s pomposity. Through these means, then, choice and the capacity for genuine self-encounter broaden while denial and overcompensation shrink. Far from associating with injuries, moreover, smallness and greatness begin associating with growth opportunities. For example, humility can replace docility, discipline can replace obsessiveness, and zest can replace inflation. Though medical science has made marvelous progress in the past century in solving some of the mysteries of the brain, the truth is that knowledge in this complex area is still in its infancy. We still do not know exactly how the brain works nor exactly how and why parts of it malfunction. One thing is certain, however: no individual, family, nor group is immune from the effects of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

Wherever you go, you will get instruction from the experiences of life. Any book or person seen or art production which reminds a being of one’s diviner self, is to that extent one’s teacher. Any happening or event or experience which alienates one from such remembrance, whether it be regarded by the World as good or as evil, likewise is one’s teacher. Even one’s own unworthy actions will, because of the consequences to which they must infallibly lead, also be one’s teachers. Those whose inner development or outer circumstances or personal destiny have prepared them for the truth will come to it anyway: they may need a little prodding or a lot of reflection, but in the end they will recognize it for what it is. However, they confound this recognition with the relation of discipleship to some guru. If they are to be correctly understood, the two things need to be separated. Teaching is always available in some way or some form, for Life, through varied situations, takes care of its own; but a Teacher in one’s physical form may not be available just at the necessary point in time. In that case, one may be met through one’s writings. If this does not happen, one may come into the mental life during a great anguish or an enforced inactivity or an unusual relaxation or, finally, though or during prayer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

The secret teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you learned this afternoon. On the way to the truth, many find two guides: the spiritual preceptors and God. To the preceptors one may take a bow, but know that God keeps your heart. Happiness depends on our understanding of life, understanding depends upon the penetration of insight, insight depends upon right instructions received from a competent teacher. The inspirational and moral, the intellectual and prayer helps which a competent guide can give to a worthy disciple are valuable. If such a worthy, honourable, selfless, experienced, and expert guide can be found—and this may be counted exceptionally good fortune—the disciple should certainly submit to one’s tutelage and surrender to one’s influence. We absorb our lessons, and then time and experience help kinit them together. Thought is a process, not an event. The need of a saviour arises from the fact that the ego cannot lift itself by its own bootstraps, cannot rise out of its own dimensions into a higher one, and will not willingly encompass its own destruction. Yet its spiritual career arrives eventually at a point where is finds and sees that it has done what it could, that further efforts are futile, and that only some power outside itself can bring about the next forward move. However, it may not without self-deception declare this point to be reached when in fact it ought to continue with its strivings; it may not cease prematurely from its struggles. If it does so, then it would be equally futile to seek a master’s grace. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

Moments of movements is an important concept and when it appears, is when change actually occurs. Spiritual formation is often understood today as entirely a human matter. The beyond that is within is thought to be a human dimension or power that, if we only manage it rightly, will transform our life into divine life. Or at least it will deliver us from the chaos and brokenness of human existence—at a minimum, perhaps, from life-destroying addictions, such as to alcohol, work, pleasures of the flesh, or violence. We are engulfed by books, programs, and seminars that rest upon this assumption. Thus, for example, one now hears spirituality described as our relationship to whatever is most important in our life. Or perhaps as the process of becoming a beneficial and creative person. These are words taken from contemporary writings, and they represent deep currents of human thought and culture. “They were once a delightsome people, and they had Christ for their shepherd; yea, they were led even by God the Father,” reports Mormon 5.17. O God, Who makest us glad with the yearly expectation of our redemption, grant that as joyfully receive Thine Only-begotten Son as our Redeemer, we may also see Him without fear when He cometh as our Judge; even our Lord, who with Thee. Grant, O merciful God, that for the reception of the transcendent mystery of Thy Son’s Nativity, the minds of believers may be prepared, and also the hearts of unbelievers subdued; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13

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