It is very peaceful to be able to live for your work alone. The self-denial, the sacrifices that our work demands are all compensated for by that lovely serenity of giving yourself up to dance. People also need to understand their existential freedom and their responsibility in exercising that freedom. One must develop the chance to experience one’s self as an entity separate from one’s environment, with the capacity to respond to one’s own initiative rather than merely reacting. Does emotion have a presence r identity independent of the person it is “in”? We talk as if it did. We commonly speak of expression, storing, getting in touch with, or even spreading and emotion. We speak of guilt as something that haunts us, or fear as something the grips, strikes, betrays, paralyzes, or overwhelms us. Fear, as we talk about is, is something that can lurk, hide, creep, look up, or attack. Love is something we fall into or out of. Anger is something that overtakes or overwhelms us. In this way of talking we use the fiction of some independent, outside agency in order to describe a contrasting inner state. It is important for a person to understand the sociohistorical precedence for the present attitudes one felt victim to. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Whether one’s experience is valid in an objective sense is irrelevant. It is irrelevant because the sociohistorical context already provides for the possibility of the pervasiveness of these unjust attitudes one feels one is forced to deal with. However, it is equally important for individuals to realize their own responsibility in exercising their freedom to transcend the negative confines f the sociohistorical context. What many people need to confront ultimately is not inferiority and self-doubt imposed from without but inferiority that emerges from within when the choice is made to abandon, not only responsibility, but also the ability to respond. Often times, they veil of inferiority and self-doubt is lifted when one begins experiencing one’s self as a person apart of their race or gender; that is, as one who is free to choose, to act, and to be. While race and gender can be a source of identity, that which is invalid racial-cultural heritage and gender (id est, nonbeing, inferiority), and that which is valid immediate experience (id est, freedom, meaning, being) are reconciled in an existential encounter that encompasses the sociohistorical context. To dismiss the influence of the past or present social context would be delusional. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

However, freedom comes with awareness that one’s personal and collective history does not determine present choice but rather acknowledges the past in order that one may fruitfully move beyond it to facilitate the cycle of freedom. One’s journey toward freedom begins with one’s recognition that the choices one has made in the past could be made meaningful in the present when one recognizes one’s responsibility for those choices. Moreover, personal acknowledgment of one’s ability to respond opens one up to heretofore unrecognized potentialities. Some people disparage themselves. Lacking their own cultural yardstick, one squeezes into the yardstick of the majority and distances themselves from that which is dynamic in their soul. Becoming increasingly depersonalized, many will start to lose interest in their responsibilities and duties. Commonly we find ourselves speaking of emotion as if it had a location or residence. When we speak of love as residing in the heart and envy in the bible, the heart and the bile are put in place of the person. The speaker personifies an organ or portrays emotion as a substance or quantity of energy of a certain kind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

We also speak of emotions as having some sort of continuous identity, as when we say an emotion is “stored” or “accumulated,” we when we refer to an “old” emotion. Metaphors that suggest agency, residence, and continuity through time often convey with uncanny precision just what it feels like to experience an emotion; they enjoy a poetic accuracy. However, they can get in the way of understanding how emotion works. A second idea that impedes our understanding of emotion is that the inner state of emotion is always associated with outer action that is irrational. This is sometimes the case and sometimes not. A person who feels fear at the sight of a rattlesnake moving toward one may run to safety. One may act rationally Were one not afraid, one might not run, which in the absence of other forms of protection, would be irrational. Again, a mother may, with the feeling of love, reach out to hug her child. Here, too, the feeling and act seem consonant and “rational” in the sense that what a person does, under the influence of feeling, gets people where they want to go as much if not more than what a person would do if not under the influence of feeling. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

The only reason I pose these obvious examples is that when people talk about “acting emotionally,” it is often not these examples they cite. That is, we tend to associate the idea of emotion more with irrational or unwise actions than with rational or wise actions. This tendency result more from our cultural policy toward emotional life (“watch out for it, manage it”) than it results from observing the relation between feeling and action in all the common but inconspicuous instances in which they are related. One must be careful not to choke off their developmental promise. Some people may become depressed and periodically grandiose—to counter their empty spirit. To break this debilitating cycle, one must pause over one’s expansive and conservative fears, clarify them, and learn to become response-able toward them, turning the, to one’s advantage. Until individuals are both ready and capable of change, experiential inquiry is fruitless. It is highly important, therefore, to clear the space for such experiential inquiry by addressing the crises that prevent it. One has to be aware of that fact that by keeping oneself from full presence sets one up for dysfunction. However, there are ways to demystify the obstacles in our lives and learn how to empower our lives and be able to productively respond to adverse conditions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

Emotion is mainly a biological process. We know that a feeling tone, an affective quality, is always present as a part of our stream of experience, conscious or unconscious. One must ultimately respond to, and take responsibility for one’s own destiny. It is a profound point, really. If, indeed, we rush in to act without giving pause, then we are simply instruments in a great chain of cause and effect and are ourselves hardly free to actualize our own potential in any way. Indeed, we may define compulsivity quite simply as the failure to pause between stimulus and response. And sometimes professionals are not able to help us because it is all too easy for rational, articulate professionals to theorize and discuss endlessly without truly or deeply understanding, and an individual may experience the hazards of well-practiced chatter. A dog is not reckoned good because it barks well, and a human is not reckoned wise because one speaks skillfully. Let us slow down, then, and pause. The self can never be apprehended with certainty. We may become aware of our themes and those of other people—indeed we may act on these themes—but the themes are never static or fixed, never resolved in any absolute way. Still—this is the important point—one cannot escape one’s life theme. This, quite simply, is destiny. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

If one travels down the wrong path, one does not find fulfillment. External reward and validation, perhaps; fulfillment, no. Every human should behave according to one’s rung. If one does not, if one seizes the rung of a fellow being and abandons one’s own, one will actualize neither the one nor the other. We have already seen that external stimuli are not necessary for central processes to be active. As networks of assemblies and phase-cycles are activated and continue their processes in semi-independence of further incoming information, we get something like “looking ahead.” The pattern of impulses formed within the structure of connexions will function as an apparatus of orientation by representing both the actual state of the environment and the changes to be expected. Here we are back to the process of expectancy. Our expectations of what will happen are already on the map. Either a similar sequence of events has happened in the past and for that reason may be expected again in the future; or high-order processes have formed an image of what can happen, on the basis of whatever information is available about what has happened in the past. Thus behaviour now is guided and directed by an expectation, just as the concept t (for triangle) could direct and guide the eye to look for angles. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

The representation or model of the environment will thus constantly tend to run ahead of the actual situation. This representation of the possible results following from the existing position will of course be constantly checked and corrected by the newly arriving sensory signals which record actual developments in the environment. The representations of the external environment which will guide behaviour will thus be not only representations of the actually existing environment, but also representation of the changes to be expected in that environment. We must therefore conceive of the model as constantly trying out possible developments and determining action in the light of the consequences which, from the representations of such actions, would appear to follow from it. One the map are good places, and paths to good places—goals, we might say, and steps to those goals. The model is the active part of the map which shows at any moment where we are in relation to the good places on our map (and in relation to the painful places as well). The map enables us to look ahead to some extent, that is to have expectations of what can happen next. What can happen next may lead to good places eventually or to painful places. Expectations can turn into preferred or dreaded outcomes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

The image on the map which already has good feelings attached to it may be kept in mind by the processes of reverberation. It is thereby likely to steer the organism to respond selectively to further information, according to the messages’ congruity with a good path. The part of the map associated with good feelings, which hold our preferences, can this act as gyroscopes, bringing the organism back on course towards good things when it has deviated. Parts of the map associated with bad feelings may of course operate in a similar way. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. Indeed, this tension is played out in other aspects of one’s interpersonal life, such that—although the individual is rarely aware of it—extant relationship fail to assuage one’s chronic existential loneliness. One may be ever afraid to move further out into life, which one might find circumstances more rewarding. There is also related to these theme’s the individual’s spiritual void, a thoroughly modern dilemma. People often speak of needing to find meaning in life, a desire that life should matter. From becoming an individual, no one at all is excluded, expect one who excludes oneself by becoming a coward. What does your conscience say? – “You shall become who you are.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

Irrespective of the external rewards that may accrue, the individual is unable, in one’s avoidance of oneself, to experience a genuine sense of peace with either oneself or the World. For example, unless a little animal is severely frightened, it moves, in strange surroundings, only step by step, whiskering right and left all the time and following a path that is anything but straight. Its course is determined by a hundred fortuitous factors when it walks that way for the first time. However, after a few repetitions, it is evident that the shrew recognizes the locality in which it finds itself and that it repeats, with the utmost exactitude, the movements which it performed the previous time. At the same time, it is noticeable that the animal moves along much faster whenever it is repeating what is has already learned. When placed on a path which is has already traversed a few times, the shrew starts on its way slowly, carefully whiskering. Suddenly it finds known bearings, and now rushes forward a short distance, repeating exactly every step and turn which it executed on the last occasion. Then when it comes to a spot where it ceases to know its way by heart, it is reduced to whiskering again and to feeling its way step by step. Soon, another bursts of speed follows and the same thing is repeated, bursts of speed alternating with very slow progress. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

In the beginning of this process of learning their way, the shrews move along a an extremely slow average rate and their little bursts of speed are few and far between. However, gradually the little laps of the course which have been learnt by heart and which can be covered quickly begin to increase in length as well as in number until they fuse and the whole course can be completed in a fast-unbroken rush. Often, when such a path-habit is almost completely formed, there still remains one particularly difficult pace where the shrew always loses its bearings and has to resort to its sense of small and touch, sniffing and whiskering vigorously to find out there the next reach of its path “joins on.” Once the shrew is well settled in its path-habits it is as strictly bound to them as a railway engine to its tracks and as unable to deviate from them by even a few centimeters. What happened with the little shrew? Short sequences which had often happened in the past (its path-habits) have been mapped and guide its behaviour now. Path-habits are expectancies. Whenever it encounters an expected path, it knows where it is and rushes forward for a short distance.  Being only a simple shrew, these more enduring neural path-habits are established with some difficulty, and so it often has to rely on further sensory input, sniffing and whiskering vigorously. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

The sensory input gets the reverberations going again so as t reinforce its fading purposes. The shrew is searching and attending selectively in environment, and incidentally providing us with a nice example of central reinforcement of a sensory process. The shrew, it is commonly assumed, runs through its paths because of rewards (good feelings) which are associated on its map with the end of the run. That is what established the feedback process. INPUT: “I want water” and “Here is a blade of grass.” TEST: “Does my map show this blade of grass to be on the path to nice water?”, that is, “Is the model (of this blade of grass being on the right path for water) congruent with the map?” If the answer is yes—if there is no incongruity—OPERATION: carry on. If no (that is, there is incongruity)—OPERATION: quarter the area sniffing and whiskering, repeating the INPUT: “Here is the blade of grass”, and TEST: “Does this blade of grass have the right place on my map?”, “Or this one?”, “Or this one?” until one of them does. This is also how we find the path to success or failure. It all depends on your motivation. If success is you object, you keep sniffing and whiskering until you find it because it feels good. However, to some people deviant behaviour feels good and is rewarding and they keep sniffing and whiskering until they find it.  #RandolphHarris 12 of  22

The only thing is deviant behaviour, even if it is rewarding and feels good, leads to punishment. This is a form of resistance to conformity. Resistance has many dimensions and refers at its deepest level to the all-too-human tendency toward self-betrayal, the maneuvering by which one avoids oneself. Perhaps the most tragic thing about the human situation is that a person may try to supplant oneself, that is, to falsify one’s life. The most common lie is the lie we tell to ourselves. Beneath a veneer of bravado, many people often harbour deep-seated feelings of insecurity and a concomitant resentment of authority. Clashes with the law and its enforcers, ambivalence about a rigid moral code that the individual has inherited but not chosen, and oftentimes judgmental and supercilious attitude toward loved one’s all related to unresolved themes revolving around an overly constricted World. One’s authentic confrontation with these themes can come about only through a corrective relationship, one based on presence and genuine empathy. Sometimes this chance might involve needing to find a new career, by acknowledging what truly interests an individual, and this will allow one to move forward in embracing existential freedom. Being more willing to live in the moment, accepting the inevitable pangs of life and death anxiety will lead, yet again, to further change. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

The mental apparatus is made up of a number of complex systems organized in a loosely hierarchical way with a highly complex network of communication between them. These systems are controlling and evaluative in function, though the controlling and evaluative roles are played by feelings: sensations, emotions, preferences, and so on. These systems act as instructions or programmes, words which help to remind us that they are not static but dynamic. They are images and plans, maps and models. They act on feedback principles, so that deviations from the desired state bring warning feelings, often of anxiety, whose effect is to correct the course of action to a more desired direction. Anxiety, no longer circumvented, is now accepted as the way of life—indeed, as normal. The struggle is significantly internal. The more one realizes that, the more one becomes self-accepting (of doubt, of passion, of the daimonic) and better able to accept others. Life is hard, but one is getting to the next step. The emphasis is not on self and genuine relationship, not on external validation. Imagine something like a hierarchical structure, with, at the center or at the top (depending on how you draw it), one or more principal systems of this evaluating and controlling kind. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

One of the conveniences of this way of thinking is that it allows us to imagine different personality-structures, which is what different organizations of principal system would be. The little shrew was guided by the congruity between the information it already had (on its map) and the information which it was currently acquiring (its model). Whenever it moved, it acquired more information, on the basis of which it made its next move, which brought it yet more information. The sensory order is both a result and a cause of the motor activities of the body. Behaviour has to be seen in a double role: it is both input and output of the activities of the higher nervous centers. The actions which take place independently of the higher centers help to create order of the sensory impulses arriving at that center, while the actions directed from that center are determined by that order. Map and model together steer the organism. The evaluation of sensory impulse arriving at the highest centers maybe compared to the appreciation of events on the road observed by a person who is being driven in a car, or to the judgments of the pilot of an aeroplane which is being steered by an automatic pilot. In these instances, different observed events will lead the passenger of the car, or the pilot of the plane, to expect certain responses of the car or plane, and those events will come to mean particular kinds of responses of the vehicle, just as certain kinds of stimuli mean certain spontaneous responses of the body. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

The sight of an oncoming car will come to mean the sensation of the car in which the person rides drawing to the side, and the sight of a red traffic light will mean the feeling of the car slowing down. Very soon what will actually be noticed will no longer ne that normal response, but only its absence if it fails to occur. To mean = to stand for = to symbolize. We have arrived at the idea that the motivation for an action is implied in the meaning of the whole situation. In simple human terms, the alarm clock rings, and that means it is seven o’clock; seven o’ clock means it is time to get up, which means tottering toward the coffee-machine, and so on. Thus, within a general framework of meaning, subsystems have autonomy, provided that they do not act incongruously in relation to the more comprehensive systems to which they contribute. So when we compare how the World works as an organism to our self-image, whatever frustrations now ensure, they are, at least, a consequence of choosing our own life rather than soul muting experiences. This is genuine freedom, one that encompasses destiny. In relationships, one may still struggle with feelings of uneasiness and inconsistency. Here, too, however, there will be signs of real growth as the individual has become far less defensive and more open to others than was once the case. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

The psychotherapeutic process has separated the individual further from anonymous and everyday relationships while heightening an existential loneliness as one searches for others to whom one can deeply relate. That is, perhaps, the price one pays for authentication of one’s existence. The individual now seeks authentic relationships, hardly something that can be ordered up at all. Also, when this is done at early stages of life, one can foresee a future for one’s self that is open and full of possibility. One may not even know what happened. One will just simply know that from experience one can expect certain things can happen if they were handled rightly and if their psyche and personality can be influenced for the better along certain lines. The individual will be able to see further into one’s life as one embraces the joys and burdens of freedom. One is no longer a wheelhorse. The result, I am convinced, will be a more fulfilled existence, one in which one does not flinch from life or death, nor from one’s particular way. And that is life: it does not resemble a picaresque novel in which from one chapter to the net the hero is continually being surprised by new events that have no common denominator. It resembles a composition that musicians call a theme with variations. Who can say more? #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

To cultivate this aliveness, one has to be offered a genuine relationship. One needs someone willing to be present with them, with as little pretense as possible. There has to even be a sprinkling of humour in the relationship, and some candid sharing of emotions. Also, prayer has a way of uniting people. Prayer is not just a private matter. Sometimes a group will be draw together by circumstances—anything from a funeral to a seasonal celebration—and they will want to pray together. The most important rationale for a set prayers, however, is a phenomenon I call “deepening.” The more often a prayer is said, the deeper in sinks into your consciousness. Eventually, it sinks into your unconscious mind. When this happens, it can be said that they prayer prays you. It becomes part of who you are. It changes you in a way that would not have been possible with a prayer said once and forgotten. God’s grace is sufficient for both our unworthiness and our inadequacy. We are what we are by the grace of God. Our success is a result of God’s unmerited favour shown to us and as a result of God’s enabling power to work in us. We need God’s grace to become like Him, and we are neither worthy nor adequate. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

A school board interviewing men and women for the position of school principal should look for evidence of sterling character (worthiness) and professional competence (adequacy). Some candidates might be worthy but not competent; others competent, but not worthy. The school board must insist on both. However, God insists on neither. Instead He glories in calling into His service people who are neither worthy nor adequate. He makes them worthy in Christ alone, never in themselves. Then He makes them adequate through the might working of His spirit within them. Listen to how Paul expressed this thought in Colossians 1.28-29: “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labour, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” Paul found his worthiness in the worthiness of Christ and his adequacy in the power of Christ. In 2 Corinthians 2.14-17, Paul spoke of his ministry of the gospel, which in its eventual effect leads either to life or death. To those who believe, it leads to life; but to those who reject it, it leads to death. The eternal consequences of proclaiming such a gospel led Paul to explain, “And who is equal to such a task?” (verse 16).  “And behold, now it came to pass that those Lamanites were more angry because they had slain their brethren; therefore they swore vengeance upon the Nephites; and they did no more attempt to play the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi at that time. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

“However, they took their armies and went over into the borders of the land of Zarahemla, and fell upon the people who were in the land of Ammnihah and destroyed them. And after that, they had many battles with the Nephites, in the which they were driven and slain. And among the Lamanites who were slain were almost all the seed of Amulon and his brethren, who were the priests of Noah, and they were slain by the hands of the Nephites; and the remainder, having fled into the east wilderness, and having usurped the power and authority over the Lamanites, caused that many of the Lamanites should perish by fire because of their belief—for many of them, after having suffered much loss and so many afflictions, began to be stirred up in remembrance of the words which Aaron and his brethren had preached to them in their land; therefore they began to disbelieve the traditions of their fathers, and to believe in the Lord, and that He gave great power unto the Nephites; and this there were many of them converted in the wilderness. And it came to pass that those rulers who were the remnant of the children of Amulon caused that they should be put to death, yea, all those that believed in these things. Now this martyrdom caused that many of their brethren should be stirred up to anger. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

“And there began to be contention in the wilderness; and the Lamanites began to hunt the seed of Amulon and his brethren and began to slay them; and they fled into the east wilderness. And behold they are hunted at this day by the Lamanites. Thus the words of Abinadi were brought to pass, which he said concerning the seed of the priests who caused that he should suffer death by fire. For he said unto them: What ye shall do unto me shall be a type of things to come. And now Abinadi was the first that suffered death by fire because of his belief in God; now this is what he meant, that many should suffer death by fire, accord as he had suffered. And he said unto the priests of Noah that their seed should cause many to be put to death, in the like manner as he was, and that they should be scattered abroad and slain, even as a sheep having no shepherd is driven and slain by wild beasts; and now behold, these words were verified, for they were driven by the Lamanites, and they were hunted, and they were smitten. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that they could not overpower the Nephites they returned again to their own land; and many of them came over to dwell in the land of Ishmael and the land of Nephi, and did join themselves to the people of God, who were the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

“And they did also bury their weapons of war, according as their brethren had, and they began to be a righteous people; and they did walk in the ways of the Lord, and did observe to keep his commandments and his statutes. Yea, and they did keep the law of Moses; for it was expedient that they should keep the law of Moses as yet, for it was not all fulfilled. However, notwithstanding the law of Moses, they did look forward to the coming of Christ, considering that the law of Moses was a type of his coming, and believing that they must keep those outward performances until the time that he should be revealed unto them. Now they did not supposed that salvation came by the law of Moses; but the law of Moses did serve to strengthen their faith in Christ; and thus they did retain a hope through faith, unto eternal salvation, relying upon the spirit of prophecy, which spake of those things to come. And now behold, Ammon, and Aaron, and Omner, and Himni, and their brethren did rejoice exceedingly, for success which they had among the Lamanites, seeing that the Lord had granted unto them according to their prayers, and that he had also verified his word unto them in every particular way,” reports Alma 25-1-17. May the almighty and merciful God hear our call, we beseech Thee in Thy boundless love, in order that as the entrance to the source of our humiliation be healed, according to your deign to us. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

Almighty and merciful God, Who art pleased to use the ministry of priests for the rendering of service and prayer to Thee; we implore Thy boundless mercy, that whatever we now visit Thou wouldest visit, whatever we bless Thou wouldest bless, and that at Thy humble servants’ entrance evil spirits may flee away, and the Angel of peace may come in; through Jesus Christ our Lord may this be. #CresleighHomes