The Book of Job tells us, “He who uncovers mysteries hidden in darkness; brings utter darkness into the light.” Will man’s unquenching need for discovery bring about his end? You are hogging the conversation, my Garrulous if Gracious Friend, the way I hog the fire in the Winter! Do let me get a word in edgeways. The Great Abraham again, in Genesis again (18.27): “Let me speak to My Lord when I am dust and ash!” If that is not just the perfect description of myself about to pray! Of course, I could puff myself up a little, but then You would get mad. You would stand against me, line up my iniquities, and use them as witnesses against me! How could I contradict them? You would have me then. However, what would happen to me? I would vilify myself and reduce myself to nothing. I would give up all claim to reputation. I would pestle myself to death, or at least into dust. All this, and still Your grace would favor me, Still Your light would illumine my heart. However, still all would not be well. Everything about me that seemed so good, You would drown like kittens. And in the very puddles made by my nothingness. That done, You would show me to myself, what I am, what I was, where I have arrived, because, as he Psalmist has said in the Latin Bible, “I am nothing, and I know nothing,” (72.22). If, however, You take even a quick look at me, a sidelong glance maybe, I take on new strength, new joy. Wow! Raised up, revived, embraced. A feather, yes, but also a dead weight. Lett me go, O Lord, and I will plummet to the Lowest Depths at my slowest speed. Your love does this, preventing me from falling and raising me up once I have fallen, guarding me from grave dangers and yet rescuing me from all scrapes. Love of self—that was the dagger that did me in. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

However, seeking You and loving You, I found not only You, but also myself. Then something happened. From that mutual love, I slid down the slippery slope again, bottoming out in the deepest wells. That is because You, O Sweetest Lord, You do for me far beyond what I could earn and above what I could ever dare hope or ask. Blessed are You, my God. That is the prayer of one who is all unworthy of Your blessings. Even to the ingrates and apostates Your infinite goodness never ceases doing good. Turn us around till we face You again, that again we may be thankful, dutiful, prayerful. What else can we say, except, with Isaiah, that “You are only salvation,” (33.2) and, with the Psalmist, our only “virtue and strength” (46.1). The Nature-religions merely reinforce that view of Nature which we spontaneously adopt in our moments of rude health and cheerful brutality; the anti-natural religions do the same for the view we take in moments of compassions, fastidiousness, or lassitude. The Christian doctrine does neither of these things. If any human approaches it with the idea that because Jahweh is the God of fertility our lasciviousness is going to be authorized or that the Selectiveness and Vicariousness of God’s method will excuse us for imitating (as “Heroes,” “Supermen” or social parasites) the lover Selectiveness and Vicariousness of Nature, one will be stunned and repelled by the inflexible Christian demand for chastity, humility, mercy and justice. On the other hand, if we come to it regarding the death which precedes every re-birth, or the fact of inequality, or our dependence on others and their dependence on us, as the mere odious necessities of an evil cosmos, and hoping to be delivered into transparent and “enlightened” spirituality where all these things just vanish, we shall be equally disappointed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

We shall be told that, in one sense, and despite enormous differences, it is “the same all the way up”; that hierarchical inequality, the need for self surrender, the willing sacrifice of self to others, and the thankful and loving (but unashamed) acceptance of others’ sacrifice to us, hold say in the realm beyond Nature. It is indeed only love that makes the difference: all those very same principles which are evil in the World of selfishness and necessity are good in the World of love and understanding. This, as we accept this doctrine of the higher World, we make new discoveries about the lower World. It is from that hill that we first really understand the landscape of this valley. Here, at last, we find (as we do not find either in the Nature-religions or in the religions that deny Nature) a real illumination: Nature is being lit up by a light from beyond Nature. Someone is speaking who knows more about her than can be known from inside her. Throughout this doctrine it is, of course, implied that Nature is infected with evil. Those great key-principles which exists as modes of goodness in the Divine Life, take on, in her operations, not merely a less perfect form (that we should, on any view, expect) but forms which I have been driven to describe as morbid or depraved. And this depravity could not be totally removed without the drastic re-making of Nature. Complete human virtue could indeed banish from human life all the evils that now arise in it from Vicariousness and Selectiveness and retain only the good: but the wastefulness and painfulness of non-human Nature would remain—and would, of course, continue to infect human life in the form of disease. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

And destiny which Christianity promises to man clearly involves a “redemption” or “re-making” of Nature which could not stop at Man, or even at this planet. We are told that “the whole creation” is in travail, and that Man’s re-birth will be the signal for hers. This gives rise to several problems, the discussion of which puts that whole doctrine of the Incarnation in a clearer light. In the first place, we ask how the Nature created by a good God comes to be in this condition? By which question we may mean either how she comes to be imperfect—to leave “room for improvement” as the schoolmaster says in their reports—or else, how she comes to be positively depraved. If we ask the question in the first sense, the Christian answer (I think) is that God, from the first, created her such as to reach her perfection by a process in time. He made an Earth at first “without form and void” and brought it by degrees to its perfection. In this, as elsewhere, we see the familiar pattern—descent from God to the formless Earth and re-ascent from the formless to the finished. In that sense a certain degree of “evolutionism” or “developmentalism” is inherent in Christianity. So much for Nature’s imperfection; her positive depravity calls for a very different explanation. According to the Christians this is all due to sin: the sin both of men and of powerful, non-human beings, supernatural but created. The unpopularity of this doctrine arises from the widespread Naturalism of our age—the belief that nothing but Nature exists and that if anything else did she is protected from it by a Maginot Line—and will disappear as this error is corrected. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

To be sure, the morbid inquisitiveness about such beings which led our ancestors to a pseudo-science of Demonology, is to be sternly discouraged: our attitude should be that of the sensible citizen in wartime who disbelieves nearly every particular story. We must limit ourselves to the general statement that beings in a different, and higher, “Nature” which is partially interlocked with ours have, like men, fallen and have tampered with things inside our frontier. The doctrine, besides proving itself fruitful of good in each humans’ spiritual life, helps to protect us from shallowly optimistic or pessimistic views of Nature. To call her either “good” or “evil” is boys’ philosophy. We find ourselves in a World of transporting pleasures, ravishing beauties, and tantalizing possibilities, but all constantly being destroyed, all coming to nothing. Nature has all the air of a good thing spoiled. The sin, both of men and angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will: this surrendering a portion of His omnipotence (it is again a deathlike or descending movement) because He saw that from a World of free creatures, even though they fell, He could work out (and this is the re-ascent) a deeper happiness and a fuller splendour than any World of automata would admit. And God said, it is very good. “Male and female He created them…God saw that he had made, and indeed, it was very good,” reports Genesis 1.27-28, 31. One of the toughest issues that Christians wrestle with is deciding how they should feel about their own sexuality. Perhaps they have absorbed the idea that Christianity is anti-sexual, that Jesus would not be pleased with their feelings dealing with pleasures of the flesh, that God is not eager for them to experience pleasure, that the Bible is a book of “thou shalt nots.” Believing such, yet also feeling heir pulsating urges of the flesh and bombarded with cultural models and messages advocating uninhibited expression of pleasures of the flesh, they may feel confused, tense, guilty, or frightened. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

What, then, is a Christian view of sexuality, and how does this compare with the view of sexuality found in academic and popular psychology?  Some Christians have indeed talked as if Christianity views pleasures of the flesh or desire or the body as bad—as something to be ashamed of. (In the Library of Congress’s classification of religious books, the subcategory of “sex” comes just after “sin.”) Actually, as we noted, Christianity affirms that body. The Bible teaches that the created material World is good, that human nature is a mind-body unity, and that some kind of body will be given us at the resurrection as an essential ingredient of our everlasting happiness. In the biblical utopia of Eden, man and woman were refreshingly accepting of their bodies: they “were both unclothed, and were not ashamed,” and delighted in cleaving to each other “as one flesh.” In the Old Testament, this attitude that pleasures of the flesh is a gift in which we can rejoice is celebrated in the Song of Solomon as the erotic longings of lovers for each other are reciprocated openly. “I am sick with Love…O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me!” declares the bride-to-be. “You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches,” replies her ardent lover. In this biblical view, the significance of intimacy dealing with pleasures of the flesh is not diminished but expanded. Play dealing with pleasures of the flesh is an adult recreational activity and much more. The mutual self-exposure and cleaving of activity involving pleasures of the flesh arise from and satisfy the married adult’s need for intimate communion with a loved one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

To have intercourse is, in the Hebrew language, “to know” one’s partner in an especially intimate way. Behaviour dealing with pleasures of the flesh is therefore for married adult humans a social behaviour for procreation. Seen in this light, the biblical laws against promiscuity and adultery are not prohibitions against pleasure. Rather, they point us toward deeper pleasures—the delicious pleasures of affection, playfulness, intimacy, and climax within the lifelong unity and security that we call marriage. The husband and wife should give themselves to each other, advised St. Paul: “Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again.” God therefore cautions us not against pleasure, but against pleasures that are too weak, too unsatisfying for God’s favourite creatures, or that dehumanize God’s creatures. If the Bible advises restraint of our appetites, it is not because God forbids the pleasures we were created to enjoy, but because God has better things in store for us—a more fully human sexuality. God beckons us not to trade or cheapen the life-uniting, love-renewing experience of committed sexual love for a lesser and more temporary pleasure. Donald Joy (an aptly named Christian writer on this subject) likens biblical moral teachings to an owner’s manual on the care and maintenance of the human machines, provided by its maker to help us fulfill its potential. Of this much we can be sure: God is for us. If the human benefits of any activity outweigh the costs, then God is for it. And enjoying pleasures of the flesh—genuine, self-giving, tender, joyful, caring love—is most assuredly something that God is for. It is ennobling experience, shaking out for a few minutes or hours all that is base in a human, all that is mean, small-hearted, and narrow-minded. However, perhaps even more marvellous than that is the enormous contentment with which it fills one. Desire dissolves, and wit them the frustration, the anxiety, the hopelessness, and the expectancy that accompany them when they remain unfulfilled. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

For a short time one loses oneself in this beautiful consciousness and lets go of the continual routine which makes up one’s usual day. One gains a healing rest in nerve, mind, feeling, and even body Such a glimpse comes of itself—“The wind bloweth where it listeth,” declared Jesus. These glimpses are encounters with divinity. There is a quality about them which separates them from all the other contacts and encounters of life. This Stillness is called, in the New Testament, “the peace which passeth understanding.” It is perhaps the chief feature of the glimpse. That memorable moment when one first opens the door of Consciousness will clear doubt, sanctify feeling, and balance the entire life. This new sense of being liberated from the confining measurements of one’s own ego, unimpeded by attachments and embroilments, carried beyond the vicious passions to inward equipoise, is unimaginably satisfying. In those moments of inward glory all one’s life expands. One’s intelligence advances and one’s goodness perceives new vistas of growth. Heaven opens out for a while in one’s emotional World. When one steps forth from the ego’s timed life the Overself’s liberating timelessness, the feeling of confinement falls away like a heavy cloak. One enjoys an unimagined exhilaration. Just as a blind person suddenly recovering one’s sight is carried away by a rush of joy, so the mystical neophyte suddenly recovering one’s spiritual consciousness is carried away by emotional ecstasy. However, just as in the course of time the former will become accustomed to the use of one’s sight and one’s joy will subside, so the latter will find one’s ecstasies subside and pass away. One’s endeavours to recapture them prove fruitless because it is in the nature of emotion that it should suffer a fall after it enjoys a rise. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

This wonderful and exquisite feeling is really within oneself, only one transfers it unconsciously to the scenes and persons outside oneself and thus perceives goodness and beauty everywhere. If it begins quietly and unassumingly, it ends deeply—with the sensation of having entered briefly and memorably a higher World of being. If the intercourse of a man and a woman is the most intimate act in the lives of both, the conscious contact of a human being with the Overself is even more intimate still. One’s consciousness is lifted up into another World of being; one’s little self is in communication with the Overself; one’s perception of truth is instantly translated into power to live that truth. It is as if one climbed to a high observation post and from there saw what was before utterly unexpected and incredible. The peace of these moments, whether achieved by prayer or received by grace, yields a rich satisfying happiness. Why? Because all those thoughts, desires, attachments, and aversions which compose the ego fade away and leave consciousness free. In this experience one loses consciousness of one’s own personal identity, a state which begins with a kind of daze but passes into a kind of ecstasy. These first experiences of feeling raised to transfiguring peaks should not be expected to reproduce themselves often. They are necessarily rare sensations. Nor, when they do repeat themselves, an they come in precisely the same form and with the same initial intensity. Something of the rapturous emotional reaction is lost by repetition of this experience, but nothing of the wonder and awe is ever lost. At such moments one is filled wit a flowing inspiration, a splendid hope, a vivid understanding. Psychological views of sexuality are mixed. To some extent, they are congenial with the Christian idea that pleasures of the flesh is a sign and seal of a life union. Several researchers have reported that cohabitation and the number of premarital sexual partners is correlated with later marital unhappiness and divorce. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Even better established is the finding that marriage is linked with health and happiness: married people, especially married men, tend to live longer and experience greater life satisfaction than do unmarried people. Of course, such correlations do not prove that premarital chastity predisposes a happier marriage or that marriage produces health and happiness. (Maybe healthy, happy people are more likely to marry.) However, Christians can feel reassured that the data are consistent with biblical affirmations regarding pleasures of the flesh and marriage Christians concerned about the ideas on pleasures of the flesh being taught on television, in R-rated slasher movies, and in hard-core adult films can find justification for their concerns in recent research. In addition to the well-known studies on the effects of television violence on aggressive behavior, there are now many other studies indication the: Television is an unreal fictional World—in which acts of assault outnumber acts of affection and pleasures of the flesh relationships occur mostly outside of marriage—affects people’s perceptions of the real Word. Exposure to sexual violence makes many men and women more likely to believe that many people enjoy being physically forced against their will into intercourse and the physically forcing someone against their will into intercourse is not a serious crime, more willing to say that they might actually commit a sexual assault if they knew it would go unpunished, and more willing actually to aggress against others, especially those who are vulnerable, in laboratory settings. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Exposure to nonviolent sexually explicit films also can make physically forcing someone into intercourse against their will seem like a more trivial crime or just part of a blind date, friendship, relationship or marital obligation. Moreover, viewers tend to become more accepting of promiscuity, extramarital pleasures of the flesh, and a vulnerable person’s submission. They also often become more dissatisfied with their own les sizzling experiences with pleasures of the flesh and with their partner. Thus, if we value interpersonal sensitivity and sound human relationships in which pleasures of the flesh is a vital part, if we care to see our partners as equals rather than as servants to our imaginations about pleasures of the flesh, adult films have demonstrable effect that are somewhat less wonderful. So, in some ways, especially in its gathering of evidence, psychology has reinforced Christian ideas and concerns about sexuality (despite potentially skewed results from the biased sample of people who may volunteer to participate in surveys involving pleasures of the flesh and experiments related to pleasures of the flesh). Psychology has also contributed to enrichment of pleasures of the flesh in ways that Christians and non-Christians alike can appreciate—by helping us better understand the nature of things that motivate pleasures of the flesh, by refuting myths about homosexuality, by developing new techniques for treating dysfunctions dealing with pleasures of the flesh. Sexuality is, however, one of those topics about which alert readers will be sensitive to psychologists’ values and assumptions. Sometimes the values of the psychologist are obvious, as when the rational-emotive therapist Albert Ellis encourages “self-gratification…with or without long-term responsibilities” and argues, “Unequivocal and eternal fidelity to any interpersonal commitment, especially marriage, leads to harmful consequences. “More often the assumed values are subtle expressed, as when people are urged not to repress or suppress their “natural” urges for pleasures of the flesh, or when textbook authors, therapists, and advice columnists simply assume that intimate dealing with pleasures of the flesh outside of marriage is normal and healthy. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

There is a concern that adolescents may interpret “value-free” sex education as meaning that sexual intercourse is for them a harmless recreational activity. Such a conclusion would be unfortunate because promiscuous recreational pleasures of the flesh pose certain psychological, social, health, and moral problems that must be faced realistically. Pleasures of the flesh are reserved for marriage. Chastity is sexual purity. Those who are caste are morally clean in their thoughts, words, and action. Chastity means not having any relations involving pleasures of the flesh before marriage. It also means complete fidelity to husband or wife during marriage. Physical intimate between husband and wife is beautiful and sacred. It is ordained of God for the creation of children and for the expression of love within marriage. In the World today, Satan has led many people to believe that pleasures of the flesh outside marriage is acceptable. However, in God’s sight, it is a serious sin. It is an abuse of the power He has given us to create life. The prophet Alma taught that sexual sins are more serious than any other sins expect murder and denying the Holy Ghost. “And this is not all, my son. Thou didst do that which was grievous unto me; for thou didst forsake the ministry, and did go over the land of Siron among the borders of the Lamanites, after the harlot Isabel. Yes, she did steal away the hearts of many; but this was no excuse for the hearts of many; but this was no excuse for thee, my son. Thou shouldest have tended to the ministry wherewith thou wast entrusted. Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins,” reports Alma 39.3-5. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

If participants love each other, sometimes they try to convince themselves that sexual relationships outside marriage are acceptable. This is not true. Breaking the law of chastity and encouraging someone else to do so is not an expression of love. People who love each other will never endanger one another’s happiness and safety in exchange for temporary personal pleasure. For years, man has tried to rush Nature’s process, but we must not or we risk being burned by the fires of creation. Labels describe behaviour, but they also subtly evaluate it. When sex researcher label sexually restrained individuals as “erotophobic” or having “high sex guilt,” they both describe and evaluate such tendencies. Whether we label sexual acts we do not practice as “perversions,” deviations,” or an “alternative sexual life style” says something about our underlying attitudes. The values of some psychologist can also be discerned form their reactions to the report of the Attorney General’s commission on pornography. The commission did not label “soft-core” magazines, such as Playboy, as pornographic, nor did it recommend outright censorship. However, not surprisingly, in view of the research on pornography’s effects, it did express strong concern about the growing availability of pornography and its effect on women’s vulnerability to sexual harassment and abuse. Although many feminist and religious leaders welcomes the report, the press preferred to quite contemptuous psychologists, such as Ted McIlvenna, president of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Sexuality: “Sexologist should universally view this report with disdain…It is totally an erotophoic report.” The problem, some of these psychologists complained, was that the commission took the psychological research on pornography too seriously—an interesting reversal from the more common complaint that government bodies have ignored research. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

So, in welcoming sexual advice and sex research, Christians should be critically alert to psychologists’ values. On the other hand, we should also counter the nonbiblical idea that sexual relations are bad or that passion is something to be ashamed of. In the final analysis, we Christians are not so much opposed to promiscuity and pornography as we are for the tense closeness and the pleasureful sense of union that occurs when lifelong partners express and renew their love. In such a relationship, sexuality has the potential to become all that the Bible envisions its being: procreational and deeply affectional. Let us therefore remember: our sexuality is a gift that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it, knowing that God said, it is very good. When people care for one another enough to keep the law of chastity, their love, trust, and commitment increase, resulting in greater happiness and unity. In contrast, relationships built on sexual immortality sour quickly. Those who engage in sexual immortality often feel fear, guilt, and shame. Bitterness, jealousy, and hatred soon replace any beneficial feelings that once existed in a relationship. Our Heavenly Father has given us the law of chastity for our protection. Obedience to this law is essential to personal peace and strength of character and to happiness in the home. Those who keep themselves sexually pure will avoid the spiritual and emotional damage that always comes from sharing physical intimacies with someone outside of marriage. “He that looketh on a woman to lust after her, or if any shall commit adultery in their hearts, they shall not have the Spirit, but shall deny the faith and shall fear,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 63.16. These warning apply to all people, whether they are married or single. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Those who keep themselves sexually pure will be sensitive to the Holy Ghost’s guidance, strength, comfort, and protection (that is why they always survive in horror movies), and will fulfill an important requirement for receiving a temple recommend and participating in temple ordinances. The nineteenth-century ideology of female domesticity suggested women were particularly physically and morally equipped to nurture. This is where the belief in the human being the “woman’s sphere came from,” and the result was a combination that gave moral support to mid-nineteenth-century middle-class suburbanization. Woman’s place was in the home, and that was ideally in the expanding suburbs. It was even reflected in the architecture. Building homes with kitchen windows that looked out into the backyard so woman could watch their children play as they cooked. Some homes even had walls of class along the dining room and living room, also as a way for women to watching their children while having Tupperware parties or afternoon tea and biscuits in the parlor while the darlings play in the backyard. On these story book house with a faceted tower and battened shutters, the crenellation parapet, projects and image of conjuring up archers and protecting the lord’s castle. For the home was to be a fortress and a refuge from the evils and vices of the city. These effervescent suburban dwellings were meant to evoke vernacular homes in western Europe, a nostalgia imported by American soldiers after World War I. The purpose of the architecture was to make one feel like one suddenly slipped into the Germanic forest of Sleeping Beauty, and are peeping at a quaint cottage in the clearing the side of a modest mansion. They were also a snapshot of an optimistic era when anything seemed possible, which no doubt appeals to people in these jaded times. Story book architect arose in the 16^th century, people were fascinated by the Middle Ages. For instance, Marie Antoinette’s famous “farm” at Versailles was her interpretation of a medieval countryside hamlet. The 1869 castle Neuschwanstein was designed to look much older than it is. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Nonetheless, the storybook architecture reminded people of the good old times, when things were made by hand, which allowed people to pretend they had stepped back in time. The home, under the practical and moral guidance of the mother, was to be a sacred places in which family values could be promoted around the fireside. A middle-landscape between city and country that had trees and greenery but was neither to wild nor too urban was the proper Currier and Ives family environment. Some communities were even nonautomobile streets and had mandatory front porches and picket fences, to consciously recreate the social patterns of a Victorian small town. While the city was reviled as the center of infamy and anonymity, the suburb, with its open lawns and clean air, was to provide a healthful, natural, and moral atmosphere in which to raise children and teach values. In an era when activities were divided between men’s and women’s sphere, the city was Gomorrah—a World of men, factories, crowding, and vice. The suburban home, by contrast, was sacred space in which under the wife’s tutelage, men would be encouraged to become more civilized and children would be raised in health and virtue. The rearing of children and management of homes were not simply domestic virtues, they were activities essential for the survival of the Republic. The new constituency of middle-class non-farm women was an expanding group whose major responsibility was management of the home. Unlike farm wives, they had no responsibility for working with their husbands as partners operating a farm, nor did they have to labour long hours in the expanding urban factories and sweatshops, as did working-class women. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

As a rebellion against the suggestion that women of the growing middle-class population had no real role, an ideology was designed that gave women a central place in national life. Surely it was a pernicious and mistaken idea, that the duties which tax a woman’s mind are petty, trivial, or unworthy of the highest grade of intellect and moral worth. Instead of allowing this feeling, every woman should imbibe from early youth, the impression, that she is training for the care of the most important, most difficult, and the most sacred and interesting duties that can possibly employ the highest intellect. Through their nurturing role, women can exercise an influence on national character that will transcend class and location. Would will provide the social order holding together American democracy. Proper management of the home and children is seen as the woman’s responsibility, and since this is so crucial, it makes her a fuller partner with her husband. Woman are neither men’s inferiors nor their equals, but their betters. Most men are still developing their strength and need o be guided and taught by women or their fathers, who are stronger. The suburban home, with its emphasis on shared domesticity, is the ideal setting in which to engage in this instruction. The nineteenth-century defining of the home’s interior as woman’s space has some very practical and beneficial consequences for home design. Kitchens, for example, were no longer simply basement rooms with open fireplaces. For the first time kitchens were designed taking into account efficiency, sanitary food preparation, and scientific housekeeping. Domestic engineering was to be utilized to create a professional and elevating influence for the housewives and servants who used the space. Clean surfaces, indoor plumbing, and proper light and ventilation were all part of the design. The result was a far more useful, comfortable, and rationally designed interior. This is not to say that most kitchens were poorly laid out and “obviously designed by a man. The nineteenth-century breakthrough was the acceptance of the view that kitchens were a specifically designed space. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Some people may need the kind of regression that is a relaxation of structures. Their central ego-functioning “coping” self is out of gear, else they would not be in therapy. The time may have come for them to relax and let go of their present personality—integration, so that a new arrangement may come about in which areas of their life may be integrated which have so far been denied a place. It is for this reason that therapists need to be careful to distinguish the circumstances in which it is right to focus on guilt-provoking emotions like rage or greed. Anyone in an authoritative or helping capacity is easily experienced as on the side of anti-libidinal forces. In the kind of regression and relaxation we are now considering, people need all the strength they can muster, in order to stay in touch and no evade their feelings of emptiness and desolation, and pain and terror, about which they already feel very guilty and ashamed. They must not be further weakened by having their moral and intellectual failings brought to their attention as a central issue. If, additionally, we consider that some people will need to recover these split-off regions where their bodily experiences and their (perhaps scant) memories of good times are mapped, the injunctions against promoting guilt and shame become even stronger. This is not the time to put people right—we have first to strengthen whatever strengths they already possess. Even the voice of another person can a times be disturbing. It appals me to think how much change I have prevented or delayed in patients in certain category by my personal need to interpret. If only we can wait, the patient arrives at understanding creatively and with immense joy, and I now enjoy this more than I used to enjoy the sense of having been clever. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

When faced with error or delusion, or distress or disintegration, it is important not to be in too much of a hurry. People come to therapy unready for a direct encounter with their deeper anxieties. If they had been ready, they would have faced them and contained them. When, encouraged by an unwise therapist or friend, they are made to drop the defences they need before they are strong enough to integrate new insights, they will awake the terror which has always surrounded this split-off part, a terror which includes the terror of disintegration altogether. They will then tighten up more than ever, yet feel obscurely shamed and weakened by a sense of having failed to perform as expected. Too stark a confrontation with the deepest anxieties, especially if encouraged by someone on who a person is very dependent for a sense of security and connectedness, encourages the formation of a False Self, in order to please the therapist. Much has been written about the dangers of coaxing a patient into what looks like a recovery—the so-called “transference cure.” However, disturbed people may also be frightened into what looks like recovery, taking their therapists’ “interpretations” as implicit advice and acting rigidly on it in order to contain their disintegration. The corrosive hidden sense of hollowness and badness cannot be reached in this way. A principle might be enunciated, that in the False Self area of our analytic practice we find we make more headway by recognition of the practice we find we make more headways by recognition of the patient’s non-existence than by a long-continued working with the patient on the basis of ego-defence mechanisms. The patient’s False Self can collaborate indefinitely with the analyst in the analysis of defences, being so to speak on the analyst’s side in the game. This unrewarding work is only cut short profitably when the analyst can point to and specify an absence. It is not the aim of analysis to confront the patient with a now supposedly fully uncovered drive…The deepest level to be reached is not the drive…but the experience of the absence of the life-sustaining matrix. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

To let people reach this terrifying level of experience in safety, therapists must allow themselves to a safe environment, facilitating, unobtrusive, unwounding. In general, it is a good thing when people are allowed space to make their own discoveries. However, if people are to make their own discoveries about what a thing can do or what it is good for, usually a period of hesitation and analyzation is necessary. It is an impingement when things are shoved at you before you know whether you want them and can use them. Those things feel alien—to turn away from them is a healthy reaction: to comply is the unhealthy response of the intimidated. So, we must allow for periods of hesitation which precede the moment when people start to make some new structure their own, truly theirs, not half the therapist’s. What is at issues here is how true new insight are to be integrated. They must not be integrated in a depersonalized form. “I-now” have to understand and hold and accept “me-then” and the situation as I experienced it then. If I am truly to feel “I discovered that,” “I made that,” “I did that,” even “I exist,” “I existed then,” “I am,” I have to be the first to be making the connections. When things are at their best, therapist and other arrive together at new meanings. Once there is a certain amount of strength—by which I mean at least the beginnings of a true-self core as an organizing principle—and once good rapport and understanding have been established, the many occasions on which such perfect timing does not happen may also serve a useful purpose. They enable people to start to come to terms with the fact that being perfectly understood (and the perfect capacity for always having perfect insight) never were and never will be their lot. The reality of other people, in all their goodness and badness and separateness is there by established, and hence also one’s own reality. And, if the experience of being held is ever to become a reality, this had to be established for it takes two for one to be held.  #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Ho. Wiyopeyata ouye power of the setting sun. We call on you. Please have pity on us that people may life. Wakinyan, thunder beings of the black west, we call on you. You are the source of both the power to live and of destruction, who ride the back of minne wichoni, the life-giving rains. For long years, the way of the people has been weak and there has been fear. Many have said that the red road would disappear and that the six powers of Wakan Tanka would turn their faces from us. It is true that many of the old ways have been lost. However, just as the life-giving rains restore the Earth after the drought, so your power will restore the Way and give it new life. We ask this not only for the red people but for all the people that they might live. In ignorance and carelessness, they have walked upon Ina Maka, our Mother. They did not understand that they are part of all beings, the four-legged, the winged, grandfather rock, the tree people, and our star brothers. Now the Earth and all our relations are crying out. They cry for the help of all people. A teaching which seeks the chief good for human beings, but ignores robust health and freedom from pain as a necessary part of the good, is an incomplete one. The old notion that mental healing is only useful to, and possible in, cases where the patient only imagines that one is sick, is outdated. A doctrine which denies the body’s existence while hypocritically trying to cure the body’s ailments, contradicts itself. In any case, the body remains there, a hard unavoidable fact which must be accepted in the end however much anyone believes one has thought it away. You upright who heard the voice of my song, may you merit to join this glorious throng; in Heavenly halls you shall meet them in time, if you hearken His Words, melodious, sublime. Exalted on high, for ever and ever, our Lord in glory and awe! We are His choice, then let us rejoice that He blessed us and gave us the Law. A true measure of a hero, is when one lays down one’s life, with the knowledge of those one saves, will never know. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Cresleigh Homes

The legend of happy suburban domesticity has its roots in the nineteenth-century romantization of suburban life.

It’s not a home until you make it your own! 🏡 The four bedrooms at the Brighton Station Residence 3 give you plenty of canvas for your imagination to run wild. 🎨 The en suite on the first floor is an added bonus! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/

A Cresleigh Home plays a vital role in life. Home is the place where we keep our families, where we feel safe, and where we enjoy complete freedom. And if you have a happy family, there’s no place like Cresleigh Home for complete comfort and peace of mind.

#CresleighHomes
#CresleighRanch