As long as you are curious, you defeat age. Experience is what enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. Out everything into final perspective. You live and work in this century, but the judgment, Final Appraisal, of who you truly are will come at the end of time. Yes, you will stand before the Judge of Judges, as Paul promised the Romans (14.10), you and everyone else who has lived on the face of the Earth. Look smart. This judge cannot be hoodwinked—that is what Job found out (31.14). He cannot be softened up with a bribe. He knows a bad alibi when He hears one. All He has to do is render a just verdict, and He can do that in no time flat. O thrice miserable and thoroughly insipid sinner, just what do you think you are doing? What will you respond to the God who knows no tremble, but all of your evil? You will turn jelly, that is what you will do. Why now, you start to shiver and to shake when someone just makes a face at you! On the Day of Judgment, you will need to bring papers, proof of all the stuff you did. Why? Well, you will have to defend yourself; no defense counsel here. Each defendant will be presented with a detailed indictment. Examine it closely. Not an error on the list! All that is the indefinite future. Today your labour can bear fruit, plums and pomegranates. Your spiritual pain can bear fruit too, elephant tears, waterfalls of sorrows. Fortunately, they can be considered purgative and, happily, in an amount equal to your guilt. Purgatory is a lot like the life of a patient self-actualized person on Earth. One bears up under the terrible weight of injustice. One worries more about the human who hit one in the mush than the bloody nose one sustained. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

One prays for the contrarians who always seem to be buzzing about. One indulges the bad behaviour of others; and yet one is slow to seek indulgence for one’s own shortcomings. One is quicker o pardon a mugger than the mugger to pummel one. Such violence as one may engage in is directed only toward oneself as one vainly tries to whip one’s flesh into spiritual submission. Purge your sins, exercise your vices—that is the message of Purgatory. And better now than later, in the hairy hands of another. One more thing, and I wish it were not so, but in all of this there is just one continuing and complicating factor. It is that flaming love we have for the flesh! What else will that Fire of fires devour but your sins? As for now, you make a serious mistake when you spare yourself the spiritual rigors. Follow the flesh, an easier path now, but it is the harder one down the line. In fact, keep going as you are, and you will just be piling up the kindling for your own pyre. However, fire is not the only grief. Each sin has its own particular punishment. The Lazy will be pricked with pointy tips. The Gluttonous will be choked with the glutinous. The Lustful will burn like pitch and stink like sulfur. And for their own particular grief, the Envious will be set to how like rabid dogs at midnight. In Hell ever vice will have its own excruciating punishment. For example, the Prideful will be flustered with confusion. The Greedy will be bent over like famine victims. One hour in this hellhole will produce more pain than a hundred years of penitential practice. There, there is no rest for the Wicked, no consolation for the Condemned. At least here on Earth, there is some respite from the spiritual rigors—one does not have to fast forever—and some consolation from one’s spiritual friends. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

The Day of Judgment is approaching at a gallop. So now is the time to look to your life. Do daily sorrow for your sins, and the Blessed above will greet you at the terminus of time. As the Great Solomon said in his book of Wisdom, “The just will stand in great constancy against those who pinned them down” and oppressed them (5.1). At the Final Bar you who subject yourselves to the judgments of Humankind will be able to stand up and look the Final Judge in the eye. Then the Poor and the Humble will come into new boldness, and the Proud will face fear for the first time. In Heaven everything will be turned upside down. The one who gave up everything to follow Christ—a dreadful mistake in the eyes of the World, as Paul found out, to his own discomfort, and passed the word on in his First Letter to the Corinthians (4.10)—will be considered wise. The one who endured every trail and tribulation will be pleasantly surprised when one is called patient. As the Psalmist has sung, “Every iniquity will be nailed to the wall once and for all” (107.42). Every religious person will rejoice, and every irreligious person will recoil. The cheeks of those who have never shown cheek to others will have a Heavenly glow. Modest designs will become the rage, and designer raiment will be left on the rack. The pauper’s hovel will attract visitors while weeds will overrun the magnate’s manse. Patience will overpower Force. Obedience will outwit Cunning. In Heaven there will be many rewards. Clear conscience will rejoice over Learned Philosophy. Contempt of Riches will weigh in over Earthly Goods. Devout Prayer will be more consoling than Delicious Food. Guarded Silence will out-talk Excessive Conversation. Holy Works will have more value than Pretty Words. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

Strict Life and Hard Penance will be more than a match for Silkness and Softness. School yourself in how to suffer a little now so that you will know how to suffer a lot later on. Practice now what you will have to put into practice then. If you can sustain so little pain in your regular spiritual regiment now, how will you be able to suffer eternal torments then? If just a handful of penitential practices gives you the hives now, what will Gehenna do? Face up to it. You just cannot have two joys. Either regale yourself in this World, or rule with Christ in the next. Pick one. Suppose you lived every day up to your hip, up to you lip even, in honors and pleasures. If you dropped dead this instant, what good would they do you? Not a whit! That is why I say, everything is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone. However, what good do love and service do? Well, you who love God from your whole heart have nothing to fear, neither death nor punishment nor judgment nor Hell. That is why perfect love makes so much sense; that is to say, it makes access to God a sure thing. Summing it up, then, love alone should be enough to call you back from the brink of spiritual disaster; but if it is not, then fear of Gehenna should do the trick. What is the trick? To stay good for as long as you can. Sad to say, whoever postpones one’s commitment to God will not have the strength to stay god for very long. What then? No matter which way the traipses through the forest, or so Paul wrote in his First Letter to Timothy (6.9), one will not be able to outstep the Devi’s outlandish snares. The principle of agriculture was known long before its practice was established, and it is hardly possible that humans, constantly preoccupied with deriving their subsistence from trees and plants, did not rather quickly get the idea of the methods used by nature to grow plant life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

However, their industry probably did not turn in that direction until very late either because trees, which, along with hunting and fishing, provided their nourishment, had no need of their care; or for want of the means of preventing others from appropriating the fruits of their labor. Having become more industrious, it is believable that, with shape stones and pointed stick, they began by cultivating some vegetables or roots around their huts long before they knew how to prepare wheat and had the tools necessary for large-scale cultivation. Moreover, to devote oneself to that occupation and to sow the lands, one must be resolved to lose something at first in order to gain a great deal later: a precaution quite far removed from the mind of the savage human, who, as I had said, finds it quite difficult to give thought in the morning to what one will need at night. The invention of the other arts was therefore necessary to force the human race to apply itself to that of agriculture. Once humans were needed in order to smelt and forge the iron, other humans were needed in order to feed them. The more the number of workers increased, the fewer hands there were to obtain food for the common subsistence, without there being fewer mouths to consumer it; and since some needed foodstuffs in exchange for their iron, the others finally found the secret of using iron to multiply foodstuffs. From this there arouse farming and agriculture on the one hand, and the art of working metals and multiplying their uses, on the other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

From the cultivation of land, there necessarily followed the division of land; and from property once recognized, the first rules of justice. For in order to render everyone what is ones, it is necessary that everyone can have something. Moreover, as humans began to look toward the future and as they say that they all had goods to lose, there was not one of them who did not have to fear reprisals against oneself for wrongs one might do to another. This origin is all the more natural as it is impossible to conceive of the idea of property arising from anything but manual labor, for it is not clear what humans can add, beyond their own labor, in order to appropriate things one has not made. It is labor alone that, in giving the cultivator a right to the product of the soil one has tilled, consequently gives one this right, at least until the harvest, and thus from year to year. With his right, at least until the harvest, and thus from year to year. With this possession continuing uninterrupted, it is easily transformed into property. When the ancients, says Grotius, gave Ceres the epithet of legislatrix, gave the name Thesmophories to a festival celebrated in her honour, they thereby made it apparent that the division of lands has produced a new kind of right: namely, the right of property, different from that which results from the natural law. If talents had been equal, and if the use of iron and consumption of foodstuffs had already been in precise balance, things in this state could have remained equal. However, this proportion, which was not maintained by anything, was soon broken. The strongest did the most work; the most adroit turned theirs to better advantage; the most ingenious found ways to shorten their labor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

The farmer had a greater need for iron, or the blacksmith had a greater deal while the other barely had enough to live. Thus inequality occasioned by the socialization process. Thus it is that the differences among humans, developed by those of circumstances, make themselves more noticeable, more permanent in heir effects, and begin to influence the fate of private individuals in the same proportion. With things having reached this point, it is easy to imagine the rest. I will not stop to describe the successive invention of the arts, the progress of languages, the testing and use of talents, the inequality of fortunes, the use or abuse of wealth, nor all the details that follow these and that everyone can easily supply. I will limit myself exclusively to taking a look at the human race placed in this new order of things. Thus we find here all our faculties developed, memory and imagination in play, egocentrism looking out for its interests, reason rendered active, and the mind having nearly reached the limit of the perfection of which it is capable. We find here all the natural qualities put into action, the rank and fate of each human established not only on the basis of the quantity of goods and the power to serve or harm, but also on the basis of mind, beauty, strength or skill, on the basis of merit or talent. And since these qualities were the only ones that could attract consideration, one was soon forced to have or affect them. It was necessary, for one’s advantage, to show oneself to be something became two completely different things; and from this distinction there arose grand ostentation, deceptive cunning, and all the vices that follow in their wake.  On the other hand, although humans had previously been free and independent, we find them, so to speak, subject, by virtue of multitude of fresh needs, to all of nature and particularly to one’s fellow humans, whose salve in a sense one becomes even in becoming their master; rich, one needs their service; poor, one needs their help; and being midway between wealth and poverty dose not put one in a position to get along without them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

It is therefore necessary for one to seek incessantly to interest them in one’s fate and to make them find their own profit, in fact or in appearance, in working for one’s. This makes one two-faced and crooked with some, imperious and harsh with others, and puts one in the position of having to abuse everyone one needs when one cannot make them fear them and does not find in it one’s interests to be of useful service to them. Finally, consuming ambition, the zeal of raising the relative level of one’s fortune, less out of real need than in order to put oneself above others, inspires in all humans a wicked tendency to hard one another, a secret jealousy all the more dangerous because, in order to strike its blow in greater safety, it often wears the mask of benevolence; in short, competition and rivalry on the one hand, opposition of interest[s] on the other, and always the hidden desire to profit at the expense of someone else. All these ills are the first effect of property and the inseparable offshoot of incipient inequality. Both secure and insecure people may be tormented, sad, full of doubt and anguish and uncertainties. This is not what distinguishes ontologically secure people from others. Being secure does not mean being happy, only being secure. There are three kinds of danger which characteristically beset the insecure. First the danger of engulfment—I may be taken over and swept away by someone of something. Second the danger of implosion—I may be invaded and impinged upon and totally filled with whatever they put into me when I am empty. In reaction to these dangers, I may withdraw, which leads to the third danger, which is the danger of depersonalization—I may feel that nothing and no one is real anymore: “This is not happening to the ‘me’ that matters.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

I may begin to thing of my “real” self as inviolable—no one can reach it. I may tell myself that whatever I am being forced to do, whatever roles they feel I must play, this is not happening to my real self. And indeed this is so—ontologically insecure people are not consenting to what they are saying or doing. Their true self is hidden away. Their behaviour and their bodies are being coerced, but somewhere is a “me” that is not involving itself. This is the “unembodied self.” It I as though the person said, “I must keep in mind that this is not happening to me, only to my body; it does not touch the real me.” Instead of being the core of his or her true self, the body is felt as the core of a false self which a detached, disembodies “inner,” “true” self looks on at with tenderness, amusement of hatred as the case may be. However, this divorce of role from self destroys the integrity of the personality. We shall suggest that it was on the basis of one’s exquisite vulnerability that the unreal human became so adept at self-concealment. One learnt to cry when one was amused, and to smile when one was sad. One frowned one’s approval, and applauded one’s displeasure. “All that you see is not me” one says to oneself. However, only in and through all that we do see can one be anyone (in reality). If these actions are not one’s real self, one is irreal: wholly symbolical and equivocal. One is a purely virtual, potential, imaginary person, a “mythical” human, nothing “really.” If, then, one stops pretending to be what one is not, and steps out as the person one has come to be, one emerges as Christ, or as a ghost, but not as a human: by existing with no body, one is no-body. “Here are people constantly reminding themselves “This is not happened to the essential me,” “This does not touch the real me,” “What they say and do to me does not really matter,” “This is a dream.” What is happening to that part of the person which the person does experience as “me”? What does “touch me”? The answer is, nothing from the senses touches “me”. That part of the person has retreated from the World of ideas. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

However, the sense of self started with body-imagery, which, if all goes well, is refined and structured and in various ways continually confirmed by messages from the sensory World. If, now, there is a constant inhibition of messages from the sense which would confirm that the World exists, then the body-image, the self-image, and they very self are inevitably weakened. The experience of being connected with the body will be weakened and confused. However, the body-imagery has been connected with the sense of well-being from the early days on, when all well-being was physical, and so the sense of well-being is dissipated. Moreover, even when good things are happening (regular breathing, good digestion, regular heartbreak, the soft touch of clothes, the good taste of food), the effect does not enhance well-being as it would do in a less divided self. As the science of medicine becomes more reverent, it will bring the spirit to the healing of the body in addition to its medicine. Life on Earth is so short, so beset by dangers of many kinds, so exposed to our own ignorance and Nature’s indifference, that we cannot afford to turn our eyes away as to the Christian Scientists from the discoveries and knowledge of humans who have devoted their years to patient sacrifice and research for the alleviation of human sickness. It is usually wise to consult a physician, wiser still to consult a specialist. Why reject the knowledge they have accumulated, the experience they have gained? However, blindly to follow their advice is quite another matter. Here a critical judgment is needed, for medicine is immensely far from being the perfect science that mathematic is. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

So long as orthodox medicine fails to recognize the mental or emotional origin of so many cases of sickness, so long will its cures be temporary and incomplete. Ever drawing us toward Itself, Its power to attract block by the layers of thoughts, emotions, desires, and passions which compose the personal self, much time and many lives are needed to unblock a passage to the soul. Follow the self’s track within, not slipping down into its muddy bogs but ascending up to its diviner sources. Is it possible to recapture these wonderful sensations? Long intervals of aridity may inspire a negative answer to this question, but adequate knowledge of the laws at work and the mental process involved inspire a beneficial one. Know Consciousness without its objects—and you are free! If one is willing to take the training of one’s mind seriously in hand one can, either during or at the end of one’s course, live again in such experiences. In that condition of passive emotions and paralysed thoughts, consciousness can receive That which otherwise shuts it out. When one retreats to one’s center, one has retreated to the point where the Glimpse of truth may be had. An event, a book or a person, a piece of music or a piece of landscape may bring the mind to brief spiritual consciousness. The evanescence of all these glimpses is saddening to most of us, but the causes once understood, the remedy is at hand. It is harder to find amid the din of city streets, and when found, easier to lose in the press of thronging crowds. Believe in the higher Self and look up to it. Sometimes one word may flash a light into one’s mind which goes far and wide. At other times a short phrase may do the same work for one. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

One realizes that one has had an important experience which will be followed at intervals by others, when one stands on the fringe of cosmic consciousness. Through proper metaphysical study, meditation practice, and philosophic action, it will not be difficult for one to come into the awareness of one’s own Overself to some extent, although it is difficult to acquire full consciousness in the present age, when the opposition of a materialistic society is so strong and intense. However, even to enjoy a fraction of this wider consciousness is to transform one’s life in every way. Look back into imagination upon those wonderful glimpses and try to recapture the feeling they produced. Just as the lotus flower opens its buds bit by bit, so should one open one’s mind to this great truth. It becoming conscious of the not-thinking hinterground of my personality, I attain true being. When its thinking faculty is put out of gear in the proper way, what peace fills the mind! What ever-remembered moments of illumination this happening produce! Eating food of a special kind or sitting in an isolated cave cannot of itself make anyone spiritually minded. However, it can lessen the number of obstacles in the way of anyone who seeks to become spiritually minded. The sensitive and humane person who does not pause to consider one’s guilt in life’s matters have let oneself take the easy conscience-drowning way, partly because it is the popular way and partly because one is duped by a science and religion which are blindly playing the ego’s game. The road to truth ought to be persuasive education, and not vehement propaganda. The cause for it ought to be presented temperately and prudently, not aggressively and fanatically. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

Here we are, God—a planet at prayer. Please attuned our spirits that we may hear your harmonies and bow before your creative power, that we may face out violent discords and join with your Energy to make heard in every heart your hymn of peace. Here we are, God—a militarized planet. Transformed our fears that we may transform our war fields into wheatfields, arms into handshakes, missiles into messengers of peace. Here we are, God—a polluted planet. Please purify our vision that we may perceive ways to purify our beloved lands, cleanse our precious waters, de-smog our life-giving air. Here we are God—an exploited Planet. Please heal our hearts, that we may respect our resources, hold priceless our people, and provide for our starving children an abundance of daily bread. May the Father of compassion have mercy upon a people who He lovingly tended. May He remember the covenant with the patriarchs; may He deliver us from evil times, curb the evil inclinations in the people whom He has tenderly protected, and graciously grant us enduring deliverance. May He abundantly fulfill out desires and grant us salvation and mercy. May His Kingdom soon be revealed and made visible unto us, and may He be gracious unto our remnant and unto the remnant of His people, the house of America, granting them grace, kindness, mercy and favour; and let us say, Amen. Let us all ascribe greatness unto our God, and render honour to the Scriptures. Blessed be He who is His holiness gave the Scriptures to His people America. And you who cleave unto the Lord your God, are alive everyone of you this day. Bless the Lord who is to be praised. Praised be the Lord who is blessed for all eternity. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13

CRESLEIGH RIVERSIDE AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA |

Now Selling!

Cresleigh Riverside Model Home is OPEN! Nestled at the southern end of Plumas Lake, bordering an orchard to the west, Cresleigh Riverside is home to the largest home sites in the three Plumas Ranch communities. Its executive-style residences feature space and amenities that are well beyond the norm – many on country lots that back up to the Ranch’s adjacent fruit orchards. With four floor plans available, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.

Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Additional game rooms, bedroom space and three-car garages provide other custom possibilities.

Gain the freedom of large home sites and the extra space and flexibility with Cresleigh Riverside. Homeowners will love the convenient commuter access to nearly Sacramento and Yuba City.

Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Go. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/

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