There are absolute truths and relative truths. There are many ideas advanced to the World that have been changed to meet the needs of the truth as it has been discovered. Relative truths change, but absolute truths remain the same yesterday, today, and forever—never changing. These absolute truths are not altered by the opinions of humans. Greater laws can overcome lesser ones, but that does not change their undeniable truth. We learn about these absolute truths by being taught by the Spirit. These truths are “independent” in their spiritual sphere and are to be discovered spiritually, though they may be confirmed by experience and intellect. “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 93.30. Yes, My humble friend, I will teach you some truth things, that is to say, what is right and pleasing to Me, if I may paraphrase the words of the beloved John in his Firs Letter (3.22). First, think of your sins with great displease and grief. Second, do not think that you will amount to something just because you have done a few good deeds. On the contrary, you are a sinner subjected to, and indeed smothered by, your many swarming passions. Third, left to your own devices, you always take a header. Fourth, at the first sign of trouble, you wobble, then you fall down. You get tied up into knots, then you melt away in tears. Fifth, you do not have a lot to boast about, but you do have a lot to bring yourself down, you are rather more infirm that you would like to admit. And who better to say it than I? #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

I see to have gotten off on the wrong foot, My dearest friend. Let Me start again with some quiet words of advice. Of all the thing you do, rank none above the other. Nothing sizable, nothing likeable, nothing pricey, nothing dicey, let none of these appear worthy of remark. Consider nothing exalted, laudable, desirable, except what has immortal trappings. Above all, let Eternal Truth be the only thing that gives you pleasure. And let nothing be so upsetting to you as your own cheapness. That is to say, may you fear, blame, flee nothing so much as your own vices and sins; they ought o be more distressing to you than all the insects of the World. Like Tobit, some people pretend they are sincere (3.5). Motivated by a certain curiosity and arrogance, they strut about in My presence trying to sniff out My secrets, only to snuff out God’s plans. Their time would be better spent, I think, tending their own spiritual lives and salvation. However, more often than I would like to admit, it is these very same people who put Me into an adversarial position. Is it any wonder, then, that, goaded on by a grizzly pride and curiosity, they have wandered into a forest of towering temptations?  The great prophet Jacob said that “the Spirit speaketh the truth. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be,” reports Jacob 4.13. We need to be taught in order to really understand life and who we really are. God, our Heavenly Father—Elohim—lives. That is an absolute truth. All 7.5 billion of the children of men on Earth might be ignorant of His powers, but he still lives. All the people on Earth might deny Him an disbelieve, but He lives in spite of them. “Fear the judgments of God,” said the Psalmist (119.120), and with good reason. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

People may have their own opinions, but God still lives, and His form, powers, and attributes do not change according to humans’ opinions. In short, opinion alone has no power in the matter of an absolute truth. He still lives. And Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Almighty, the Creator, the Master of the only true way of life—the gospel of Jesus Christ. The intellectual may rationalize Him out of existence and the unbeliever may scoff, but Christ still lives and guides the destines of His people. That is an absolute truth. Tremble at the wrath of the Omnipotent, as Second Maccabees has it (7.38)! Do not take the works of the Most High an scatter them all over the landscape. If humans are really humble, they will realize that they discover, but do not create, truth. Scrutinize the iniquities you have committed in quantity, and remember all the good works you could done in their place. Some of you carry your devotion in books, others in images; still others put their devotion in miracles and metaphors. “My name crosses their lips when they pray,” wrote the Prophet Isaiah, “but there is no room for Me in their hearts,” (29.13). Some have their intellects in hand and their affections under control, and at the same time they seem to pant for eternal things. They listen to the issues of this World with some seriousness, and they pay rather less attention to the necessities of nature. However, they do feel “the Spirit of Truth speaking within,” as Matthew put it in his Gospel (10.20). That is to say, the voice they hear within teaches them to despise the Terrestrials and love the Celestials, to pay no attention to the World, to desire Heaven night and day. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

The practice of hypnotism to help others psychologically or to heal the physically cannot be recommended indiscriminately. Just as there are dangers in the surrender of one’s body and will to an invisible spirit-entity in mediumistic passivity, so there are dangers in their surrender to a visible human entity in mesmerized passivity. It should not be practiced—if it is practiced at all—more than is sufficient to give a needed initial impulse to start the patient’s constructive energies. If one is subjected too long and too often to this controlling influence of another person while in this passive inert condition, one’s willpower can only get weaker and weaker until one is ruined. For if the mind has opened itself up to accept control and receive suggestions from one outside source, it will do so from other outside sources too. In the end its individuality will be destroyed and its capacity for self-protection lost. Although hypnotism is useful for some nervous illnesses, its “cures” are not reliable. When carefully and conscientiously used by the right person, it may be helpful; but it is also exceedingly dangerous in the hands of the wrong one. The Theosophical denunciation of hypnotism as a black art is too sweeping. Hypnotism can be good or evil. That depends partly upon the intentions with which it is practiced, the depth of knowledge of the operator, and partly upon the methods used. In the field of healing, it may offer useful although often merely temporary relief. The same is true of the field of psychological and more re-education. If the hypnotist is more than that, if one is also an advanced mystic, it is possible for the alleviations which one brings about to be of durable nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Thus vice of alcoholism can be and has been at times cured instantaneously. The changes are brought about by the impact of the hypnotist’s aura upon the patient. When this occurs and when the hypnotist places one’s will and mind upon the suggestion which one gives, there is a discharge of force dynamically into the patient’s aura. It is the force that brings about the change, provided the patient has been able to fall into a passive, sleepy condition. In the case of an advanced mystic, the various physical techniques which bring about this condition are not required. It is then enough if the patient has sufficient faith and is sufficiently relaxed. The mystic can then accomplish the discharge of force merely by gazing intently into the patient’s eyes. Hypnotism can bring one to a kind of peace but it will not the real one—only a copy. No one can learn the art of thorough self-control by putting one’s will under someone else’s control and one’s mind in a state of helplessness. Hypnotism, mesmerism, and suggestion may be useful as momentary helps or temporary palliatives but they do not solve the problem of attaining self-liberation. They may even be permanently useful when applied by a human to oneself but one who most needs their help least possesses the willpower needful to apply to them. Hypnosis should not be resorted to lightly, nor use ordinarily, but should be left to treat chronic cases. More than half the cases reported cured by hypnotic treatment were found by one investigator to have had their symptoms temporarily lulled only, the diseased condition or bad habit retuning in a worse form than before within a few weeks, a few months, or at least within one-and-a-half years. Thus the patient merely deceived oneself about being cured and unwittingly allowed the disease to continue its ravages unchecked by other treatment; hence its later aggravation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

It is true that with hypnosis, symptoms of deeper psychological maladjustments may be banished, but the psychological difficult will remain and may break out in a more serious form elsewhere. This is the greatest limitation on the therapeutic use of hypnosis. It is effectively applied in psychology, not as a cure, but as a bridge to the subconscious mind to locate causes of maladjustments and phobias for other types of therapy. If the hypnotist’s patient is given the suggestion to rely on oneself rather than on the hypnotist, this should overcome the objection to hypnotism as having a weakening effect on the will. The most exaggerated claims have been made on behalf of medical hypnotism. Dr. Alexander Cannon for years diagnosed ailments by using someone as a professional hypnotic subject, but the truth is that the subject will only give a diagnosis either of what the patient believes is wrong with oneself, or of what someone else present believes (many psychologist and psychiatrists have also used the same form of medical malpractice when they want to use mental health as a way to punish a person). The subject picks up the thought in the other person’s mind rather than penetrating into the true nature of the disease itself. Dr. Cannon also professed to read the past incarnations of people by the same means, and I once had amusing proof of the truth of this criticism. A lady whom I had met and who was exceedingly ambitious and conceited, who could only conceive of herself playing the most historic roles whether in the past, present, or future, once went to him for a reading. The hypnotized medium said that she had been Cleopatra in a past life. Later the lady told me this with great excitement as convincing proof of the fact that she had been Cleopatra and the Anne Rice book, The Queen of the Damned was based on her reign in Egypt 6,000 years ago. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Hypnotism has enough of a case to offer for scientific study without running into farcical extremes of fantastic assertions. Hypnotism is morally wrong because it is the imposition of one person’s will on another person. It is also practically ineffective because its results are mostly transient and the patient relapses later into one’s original or even a worse state. This is because it is an attempt to cheat karma and to sidestep evolution, but the Overself of the patient will not allow that to happen. Hence hypnotism’s failure, for it is an artificial attempt to do the patient’s own walking for one. Every human must in the end do it for oneself. The hypnotist who cures me of a drink habit leaves me jus as weak-willed afterwards as I was before, nay, even more so. However, if I develop my own willpower and thus cure myself of the habit, I get both a permanent cure and a stronger character. In other ways, too, ego-functioning enriches our lives. Many of us have held on to the lovely idea of being able to paint or sing, as an incentive for doing boring practice-chores. Or, if not naturally gifted in what our senses bring us or our muscles do for us, we may have been able to increase our enjoyment of the art by taking trouble to increase out understanding of brushwork in painting or voice production in singing—another triumph of ego-functioning. In much the same way, we can learn to extend our imaginative sympathy and empathy toward people of who we have been ignorant or shy, by learning to understand the way they live. An adult who can help a child with this confers a major benefit. At the most primitive level it is a question of making sure that the infant does not feel overwhelmed by distress. However, right from the start, the more fortunate infant has people talking to it, so that its World is made meaningful not only at the level of physical and emotional contentment but also at the level of things feeling right intellectually, cognitively one might say, in terms of the ego-functions. The mother transforms the child’s fragmentary beta-elements into meaningful integrated alpha-elements. The adult World organizes meanings for the child. Children of phobic parents are timid: they have had their World made meaningful in terms of the dangers it can hold. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

Children of parents who find food a comfort find food a comfort; children of parents who think that to be seen eating is only barely less disgusting than to be seen defecating will behave accordingly. Parents who enjoy explaining and making connections (in a spirit of enjoyment, exploration, and curiosity) have children who take an interest in how things work. Children of parents who habitually put words to feelings (in a kind way which does not make the child feel guilty or found out) will feel more at ease with their feelings. These are not conditioning processes; these are the normal processes by which parents organize or metabolize or transmute or pattern the child’s experiences and give them a particular meaning. Children of parents who are able to maintain their emotional balance while the child loses control of itself and lets fly, have children less frightening by what they may find at the back of their minds. This seems to me a prototype of how the balanced adult mind works (or at least, one kind). The feelings come and go, excited by various events, internal and external. We accept, recognize, understand, and thereby validate them. In the short run, we allow hem expression as we judge appropriate in the circumstances; in the longer run, we give them further thought. Rereading the previous sentences, let us say “child” where the text reads “feelings.” “The children come and go, excited by various events, internal and external. We accept, recognize, understand and thereby validate them. In short run we allow them expression as we judge appropriate in the circumstances; in the longer run we give them further thought.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

The adult here is in charge of the ego-functions. The need for achievement differs from a need for power, which is a desire to have an impact on or control over others. People with strong needs for power want their importance to be visible: They buy expensive possessions, wear, prestigious clothes, and exploit relationships. In some ways the pursuit of power and financial success is the dark side of the American dream. People whose main goal in life is to make a lot of money tend to be poorly adjusted and unhappy. Competition and achievement are highly valued in Western culture. Some of your friends are more interested than others in success, money, possessions, status, love, approval, grades, dominance, power, or belonging to groups All of these are social motives, or goals. We acquire social motives through socialization and cultural conditioning. The behaviour of outstanding artists, scientists, athletes, educators, and leaders is best understood in terms of such learned needs, particularly the need for achievement. Our good-parent adult ego-functioning regions accept, recognize, understand, and validate our feelings, and allow them appropriate expression but also reflect on the implications of it all, talking it over with the impulsive child (part of us) and co-operating in making sense of it all. Ego-functioning = adult; feelings = child. These equations also work nicely when applied to two almost infallible rules of thumb in relationships: Do not retaliate, and do not retreat. Retaliation punishes people for being themselves—the opposite of recognition, acceptance, and validation. On the other hand, retreat in the face of dangerous feelings leave them shapeless and unbounded when what they need is recognition and meaningful, acceptable, limited expression. Fortunate the child whose parents are on good terms with their feelings and their children. Even more fortunate the child whose parents can also use words intelligently, not only about feelings, but about other things which strengthen ego-functioning. Practically all speech, other than expletives, is ego-functioning. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

Thursday 12 August, 2021

Annie: Daddy?

Daddy: Yes Annie.

Annie: Do people tell the truth on television?

Daddy: Sometimes they do and sometimes they do not.

Annie: When do they tell the truth

Daddy: There is no way of knowing that for sure.

Annie: Do they tell the truth when it is The News?

Daddy: Sometimes they do and sometimes they do not.

Annie: Sometimes they tell lies and sometimes they just tell the truth?

Daddy: Yep.

#RandolphHarris 10 of 17

As the child grows up and becomes more able to converse, good parenting allows for a lot of talk. However, perhaps we should remind ourselves that parental help in ego-functioning will help to strengthen the child only to the extent that there is affection and pleasure in the adult’s recognition of the child (and later, in the adult’s recognition of one’s own nature). Here is the same vicious circle again, for we cannot usually take more pleasure and interest in feelings (and in children) than we ourselves received. As the child grows up, conversation with others also becomes an ever more important factor. Reading too. The rules of logic and evidence can be taught. Through all these channels the person becomes strengthened and more able to make sense of things and give meaning to the World. New connections throw new light on our nature and on the World around us. We can learn from others. We can seek to be taught. We can grow further. Why do some people pass up success? They do it because easy goals offer no satisfaction. They also avoid long shots because there is either no hope of success, or “winning” will be due to luck rather than skill. Need for Achievement (nAch) is an individual’s desire for significant accomplishment, mastering of skills, control, or high standards. Persons low in nAch select sure things or impossible goals. Either way, they do not have to take any responsibility for failure. Desires for achievement and calculated risk-taking lead to success in many situations. People high in nAch complete difficult tasks, they earn beter grades, and they tend to excel in their occupations. College students high in nAch attribute success to their own ability, and failure to insufficient effort. Thus, high nAch students are more likely to renew their efforts when they perform poorly. When the going get tough, high achievers get going. In college, a great deal of importance is placed on academic achievement. In light of this, it is understandable that students are sometimes tempted to buy self-help tapes, CD, digital lectures, of DVDs that promise to improve their motivation to study. Such materials are aggressively advertised and available in many campus bookstores. However, if you are ever temped any format of this material, you should ask a crucial question: Do they work? Although science has begun to note the facts of spiritual healing, it has not really begun to explain the facts. Nor will it ever, unless it becomes utterly humble before the great power of God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

It is conventional knowledge by now that the percentage of workers employed in manufacturing in “advanced” nations has declined over the past eighty years. (In the United States of America today only 12,800,000 people are involved in manufacturing.) And as this shrinkage of manufacturing has accelerated in the industrial World, more and more routine manufacturing has been farmed out to the so-called developing countries, from Algeria to Mexico and India to Thailand. Like second hand agricultural equipment, the most backward Second Wave industries are thus exported from the developed nations to the developing nations. For strategic as well as economic reasons, the rich nations cannot afford to surrender manufacturing altogether, and they will not become pure examples of “service societies” or “information economies.” The image of the rich World living off nonmaterial production while the rest of the World engages in the output of material goods is highly oversimplified. Instead, we will find the rich nations continuing to manufacture key goods—but needing fewer workers to do so. For we are transforming the very way goods are made. The essence of Second Wave manufacture was the long “run” of millions of identical, standardized products. By contrast, the essence of Third Wave manufacture is the short run of partially or completely customized products. The public still tends to think of manufacture in terms of long runs, and we do of course continue to turn out cigarettes by the billion, textiles by the millions of yards, light bulbs, matches, bricks, or spark plugs in astronomical quantities, and American cars and trucks have become a premium good. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

No doubt America will continue to manufacture some high-quality products for some time. Yet these are precisely the products of the more backward industries rather than the most advanced, and today they account for only about 5 percent of all manufactured goods. The future of manufacturing will rely on complete customization—the actual manufacture of one-of-a-kind products. And that is clearly the direction in which we are heading: products custom-cut for individual users. Currently, it is no harder to custom produce something than it is to mass produce. We are beyond the modularization stage where you make a lot of modules and plug them together and we are getting on to the stage of just plain custom production. Just like clothes. The shift toward customization is perhaps best symbolized by a computer-based laser gun introduced a few years ago. Before the Second Wave brough mass production, if a human wanted a piece of clothing made, they went to a tailor or a seamstress, or one’s wife sewed it. In any case, it was done on a handcraft basis, to one’s individual measure. All sewing was essentially custom tailoring. After the arrival of the Second Wave, we began to manufacture identical clothes on a mass-production basis. Under this system the worker placed one layer of cloth on top of another; one laid a pattern on top; then, with an electric cutting knife one cut around the edges of the pattern and produced multiple, identical processing and came out identical in size, shape, color, and so forth. The new laser machine operates on a radically different principle. In does not cut 10 or 50 or 100 or even 500 shirts or jackets at a time. It cuts one at a time. However, it actually cuts faster and cheaper than the mass-production methods employed until now. It reduces waste and eliminates the need for inventory. For these reasons, the laser machines can be programmed to fill an order for one garment economically. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

What that suggests is that some day even standard sizes may disappear. It may be possible to read one’s measurements into a telephone, or point a video camera at oneself, thus feeding data directly into a computer, which in turn will instruct the machine to produce a single garment, cut exactly to one’s personal, individualized dimensions. What we are looking at, in effect, is custom tailoring on a high-technology basis. It is the reinstatement of a system of production that flourished before the industrial revolution—but now built on the basis of the most advanced, sophisticated technology. Jus as we are de-massifying the media, we are de-massifying manufacture. In the 1980s and 1990s, we also saw overall suburbs becoming more diverse racially, and spillover was not the major pattern in the metropolitan areas having the largest African American populations, such as Washington, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. Here there appears to be more of a “leapfrog” effect. Also, the old classic model of the racial tipping point has less validity. Rather than invasion-succession, with one group totally supplanting another, the more common pattern is now one of stable multiracial neighborhoods. Research on patterns of neighborhood racial succession indicate, the succession model may be more limited than popularly believed. With a third of all metropolitan area African Americans now living in the suburbs, they are more welcoming and diverse. Although the classic invasion-succession model is still commonly accepted by much of the population (and some scholars), it largely ceased to have empirical validity as the major model of African American suburbanization by 1980. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Old beliefs die hard, however. The All African-American suburbs of today tend not to be poor but middle-class or even lace curtain affluence communities. Their racial makeup is a matter of deliberate choice by those moving in. The traditional southern version of the displacement model now is also largely history. It was the invasion-succession model in reverse. Rather than African Americans moving into previously all-European American areas, middle-class European Americans moved to outer areas and, by so doing, displaced low-income African Americans who were living in African American neighborhoods on the city fringe. As was noted earlier, it was a common residential pattern throughout much of this century for southern cities to have poorer African Americans residing in marginal areas on the urban periphery. Those living in such fringe areas often mixed from rural farming with urban wage labor. The data indicate that the older southern pattern of middle-class European Americans displacing poor African Americans has become less common. However, the trend of gentrification is growing now that older, less affluent neighborhoods are full of historical buildings and homes that are close to being authentic or need renovation. Yet, the southern pattern of movement of European Americans to African American suburban areas now appears to be part of history. Invasion-succession models of any form, although still widely used, are now largely outdated. It is necessary to acknowledge that all people are accountable for the laws, otherwise there will be an all powerful in the state and more powerful than the President. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

From the start, we must be able to have the ability and rely on the confidence of those in authority are respectable, and have come from a solid and sublime reason, which they alone know how to find and perceive. Whatever interest we may have in knowing ourselves, I do not know whether we do no have a better knowledge of everything that is not us. Provided by nature with organs uniquely destined for our preservation, we use them merely to receive impressions of external things; we seek merely to extend ourselves outward and to exist outside ourselves. Too much taken with multiplying the functions of our sense and with increasing the external range of our being, we rarely make use of that internal sense which reduces us to our true dimensions, and which separates us from all that is not us. Nevertheless, if we wish to know ourselves, this is the sense we must use. It is the only one by which we can judge ourselves. However, how can this sense be activated and given its full range? How can our soul, in which it resides, be rid of all the illusions of our mind? We have lost the habit of using it; it has remained unexercised in the midst of the tumult of our bodily sensations; it has been dried out by the fire of our passions; the heart, the mind, the senses, everything has worked against it. The brain must be sufficiently purified to understand deep doctrines. We call upon he Earth, our planet home, with its beautiful depths and soaring heights, is vitality and abundance of life, and together we ask that it: Teach us, and show us the way. We call upon the mountains, the Cascades and the Olympics, the high green valleys and meadows filled with wild flowers, the snows that never melt, the summits of intense silence, and we ask that they: Teach us, and show us the way. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

We call upon the waters that rim the Earth, horizon to horizon, that flow in our rivers and streams, that fall upon our gardens and fields, and we ask that they: Teach us, and show us the way. We call upon the land which grows our food, the nurturing sol, the fertile fields, the abundant gardens and orchards, as we asl that they: Teach us, and show us the way. We call upon the forests, the great trees reaching strongly to the sky with Earth in their roots and the Heavens in their branches, the fir and the pine and the cedar, and we asl them to: Teach us, and show us the way. We call upon the creatures of the fields and forests and the seas, our brothers and sisters the wolves and deer, the eagle and dove, the great whales and the dolphin, the beautiful Orca and salmon who share our Northwest home, and we ask them to: Teach us, and show us the way. We call upon all those who have lived on this Earth, our ancestors and our friends, who dreamed the best for future generations, and upon whose lives our lives are built, and with thanksgiving, we call upon them to: Teach us and show us the way. And lastly, we call upon all that we hold most sacred, the presence and power of the Great Spirit of love and truth which flows through all the Universe to be with us to: Teach us, and show us the way. Before the Words of God Supreme today are read, for this theme approbation will I seek these my sentences to speak; just two or three, while tremblingly on Him I meditate: the Pure, who doth bear the World for ever, His power who can relate? All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has paced it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mission, Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, and Contemporary Farmhouse.

Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District. https://cresleigh.com/