Sometimes inspiring words from people who deeply understand mental health, or have been through a psychological health crisis of their own can be helpful in one’s own mental journey. In fact, 82 percent of people now believe that mental health is just as important as physical health. And having a mental illness does not mean that one cannot achieve a state of emotional or psychological well-being. Bipolar dis orders are a family of mental health problems whose essential feature involves oscillation between manic (or hypomanic) and depressive states. People who are manic tend to be extremely excited, hyperactive, or irritable. Originally, these problems were referred to as manic-depressive illness or manic-depression. A manic episode involves the experience of inflation self-esteem or grandiosity, minimal sleep, excessive and pressured speech, flight of ideas, inability to focus attention, distractibility, psychomotor agitation, and poor judgment (which often takes the form of risky behaviours such as gambling, promiscuous pleasures of the flesh behaviour, and lavish spending). A hypomanic episode is a milder version of a manic episode. On the other hand, a depressive episode entails the symptoms of major depression, such as depressed mood, anhedonia, insomnia, or hypersomnia, psychomotor delay, fatigue, feeling hopeless and worthless, difficulty concentrating, and suicidal ideation. Serious problems with school, occupational functioning, and marital and other family relationships are indicated as associated features of all bipolar disorders. Interpersonal aspects of both mania and depression are pervasive, usually profound. Fluctuating levels of sociability, impulsivity, dependency, hostility, and sexuality are part and parcel of manic-depressive illness. There can also be profound psychological disturbances in the form of psychotic symptoms. Completed suicide occurs in 10-15 percent of the cases of bipolar disorders, and attempts occur in over 40 percent of cases. The 1-year prevalence of any bipolar disorder is 1.2 percent and the lifetime risk for experiencing a manic episode has been estimated at 1.6 percent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Bipolar disorder may be as closely related to schizophrenia as it is to depression, if not more so. Although unipolar (a persistent feeling of sadness or a lack of interest in outside stimuli) and bipolar depressive episodes are both mood disturbances, bipolar manic episodes and schizophrenia both belong to the class of more serious psychotic disturbances. Psychotic symptoms are also far more common in bipolar depression than in unipolar depression. In the area of interpersonal communication, research shows that people with bipolar disorder exhibit behaviour indicative of social skills deficits. Although no definitive early childhood experiences have been consistently linked with bipolar disorder, several family-of-origin experiences have been identified in the families of adults with bipolar disorder. Unlike their counterparts with unipolar depression, patients with bipolar disorder exhibit social skills and styles ranging from withdrawn to obnoxiously gregarious and talkative. The features of interpersonal communication that most clearly distinguished these patients from those with unipolar depression are those associated with manic episodes. When it comes to mania and interpersonal relations, patients with mania are characterized as alienating, manipulative, and persuasive. There are five themes evident in the behaviour of people with bipolar disorder, particularly during the manic phase: manipulation of others’ self-esteem, exploiting others’ vulnerabilities and conflicts, projection of responsibility onto others, progressive limit testing, and alienating family members. Each of these social-interactional styles helps to fulfill a patient’s need to be taken care of. By exploiting others’ vulnerabilities, projecting responsibility, and manipulating other’s self-esteem, the patient with mania aims to bolster and enhance one’s on self-esteem and feelings of power and strength. As a way of maintaining self-esteem, and feelings of power and strength, the manic [patient] instigates a situation in which one is able to control and manipulate those people on whom one must rely. These manipulative tactics are thought to allow the individual to be taken care of by others, while still maintaining one’s self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Unlike people with unipolar depression, patients with bipolar disorder have a communication style that is more outgoing, grandiose, and dominant. In social interactions, they show excesses of such behaviour as questions, as well as comments about their own life experiences. The accelerated speech rate and unrestrained commingling of ideas in their speech sometimes resemble the communication style of patients with schizophrenia. When patients were interviewed who suffered from either mania or schizophrenia and their behaviour was measured with the Thought Disorder Index (TDI), which codes for the presence of variables such as excessive qualification, flippant responses, vagueness, idiosyncratic symbolism, fragmentation, and incoherence, it was found that the TDI scores of the patients with mania tend to be indistinguishable from those of patients with schizophrenia, but both groups clearly scored higher than normal controls did. On some dimensions of the TDI, such as combinatory thinking (incongruous combinations of ideas, playful confabulation, flippant response, impossible/bizarre combinations), the patients with mania actually scored high than people with schizophrenia. In the verbal response of a patient with mania, in reaction to a question about why a Rorschach image looked like a crab, one responded: “’Cause I’m Cancer the crab maybe. My sign is Cancer. My horoscope. And I’m thinking a lot about cancer, too. God forbid if anyone is dying of cancer…I wish it was me.” This speech style is reminiscent of the communication deviance (CD) findings from family interactions of patients with schizophrenia. In conversation, people with mania will talk a lot (hyperverbosity); however, they often get derailed, seemingly interrupting themselves before finishing a train of thought. This is a manifestation of their thought disorder that tends to make their discourse difficult to follow and figure out. A comparative study of speech in various groups of psychiatric patients showed that depressive speech was the most predictable and that schizophrenia speech was the least, with manic speech falling in between the two. #RandolpHarris 3 of 18

In some areas of social skills, patients with bipolar disorder are as functional as (and in some cases more functional than) healthy controls. Male patients with bipolar disorder were as extraverted as health controls, and both groups were significantly more extraverted than patients with unipolar depression. However, the patients in this same bipolar group were less likely than subjects in either the unipolar or control group to be married, and were equal to the patients with unipolar depression in lack of social self-confidence and assertion. On a measure of overall social adjustment, patients with bipolar disorder appeared similar to healthy controls, but reported more problems specifically in the area of family relations. Patients with bipolar disorder perform even better than healthy controls at interpreting other people’s nonverbal behaviour. This effect may result from the hyperalertness of these patients during manic phases. In an inpatient setting, patients with bipolar disorder were more likely than those with unipolar depression to see the staff and other patients as submissive to them. Although the tendency to view the self as socially dominant is similar in people with bipolar disorder and healthy subjects, people with unipolar depression do not exhibit this belief. This suggests that the social style characteristic of bipolar disorder is more dominant and controlling than the submissive and inhibited style common in unipolar depression. The research of social skills and styles of people with bipolar disorder presents an interesting mixture of function and dysfunction. If one focuses on the sheer quantity of communication behaviours, they appear quite functional: These patients are talkative, extraverted, and socially perceptive. However, sometimes these communication behaviours are taken to the point of being interpersonally intolerable. The social skills and style of patients with bipolar disorder also reflect disordered thinking: Their discourse is often laced with bizarre, idiosyncratic, and poorly formed ideas. In this regard, their interpersonal communication resembles that of patients with schizophrenia and their family members. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Despite the fact that patients with bipolar disorder may possess a cunning ability to get their way with other people, they still have social adjustment problems, particularly in the areas of conflict and damage to other people’s self-esteem. Whereas unipolar depression is associated with an avoidant, aloof, and socially withdrawn style of interaction, bipolar disorder appears to be manifested in an excessive, manipulative, and odd style of social interaction that may contribute to interpersonal conflicts. The Critical Christian in the depths of one’s being is a frightened child. In order to grow, one must discover the pain, confusion, and anxiety that one has tried to cover up with arbitrary rightness and blustering about. One will have to risk venturing out into relationships less armed and armoured; to experience and accept the vulnerability of showing one’s Achilles’ heel and baring one’s heartfelt tenderness to others; and to give up one’s tense demandingness about how one thinks everyone should be and accept them more as they are. This person will have to forgive those who have harmed one in the past, and move on to live out the rest of life in an optimistic and fulfilling way. If the Critical Christian does not experience a change of heart in order to grow out of one’s manipulative rut, then one will probably deteriorate further into the character and perhaps psychotic levels of that same rut. At the character level, the manipulative tactics of blaming and attacking become frozen into a lifestyle based upon punishing self or others. In psychological terms, we would call such a condition either masochistic (self-punishing) or sadistic (punishing others). Sometimes these terms have been presented only in connection with sexual relationships, but that is not our intention here. Rather, the style of punishing self or others describes critical people’s total orientation to life—they live to make themselves and others miserable in every conceivable way. Because such people have not tasted the joy of open and intimate friendships, they unconsciously crave stimulation of some kind. And, usually by accident, they discover somewhere in their development that feeling or irritation, hostility, and misery provide enough stimulation to bring some meaning, however distorted, to their lives. We might say they become addicted to negative feelings in order to fill the vacuum of having seldom or never experienced the beneficial feelings of peace, love, and joy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

This is very similar to a situation in which a young child feels ignored or neglected and then, by accident, does something disruptive that results in a spanking. The child does not mind the spanking, though, because at least one now has captured the attention of those around. So it becomes easy and rewarding for the child to develop a lifestyle based on making others miserable: the child will at least continually receive the stimulation that comes from being the center of attention. In this case, the child is willing to accept the threats, shouting, or spanking. What makes it all worthwhile is the captive audience. At least one feels significant, if not loved. The lifestyle described above is more sadistic in that the person unconsciously derives pleasure from other people’s discomfort and misery. One becomes the kind of individual who delights in destroying other people’s joy and can always find something about which to complain. This individual avoids close interpersonal relationships, and even sabotages them by general pessimism and fault-finding. The masochistic style of punishing is more directed toward one’s self. The person feels frustrated and angry about life, probably from having been abused or exploited by someone. However, instead of expressing anger directly at the person or persons who did the exploiting, one tends to “beat oneself up.” An example is Albert, a construction worker, who was ignored often during childhood. The main feedback he received from his parents was discounting and critical. Now as an adult, Albert tends to feel guilty and unworthy even though he conscientiously trues to live the Christian life. One feels that God is always finding fault with him. Albert demands of himself that he perform exacting and painful rituals in order to please God and prove himself worthy of God’s love. At times he will fast for days, or lie prostrate before an altar praying for hours. However, none of this helps. It just provides the stimulation that he is used to experiencing in life: feeling miserable, wretched, and short-changed is all he has ever known. So he contaminates his present relationships with the Lord and others with his need to be a suffering martyr. The masochistic Christian gladly bears the crosses of life—even invents extra crosses to carry—in order to unconsciously inflict self-punishment. It is the only life one knows. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

At the psychotic level, the repressed spitefulness of the punitive person builds up painfully, takes an opposite turn, and explodes against the World. One has practiced for years the art of self-torture and frustration. Now the psychotic critical person finally unloads one’s reservouir of resentment, spite, and rage. The explosion will inevitably be destructive to self and others, maybe even to the extent of homicide. This is because the critical person has been stuck for so long on the anger polarity of feeling that one has not cultivated feelings of love and tenderness toward others. Without empathy, the person must express anger without any kind of sensitivity. One has never learned to experience and express the many different levels of anger in an actualizing way, and to balance these feelings with feelings of love and esteem for others. So there is no way one can monitor the final, desperate outburst of destructive rage that one has set oneself up to have. Negative words can destroy a person. You cannot speak negatively about someone on one hand, then turn around and expect that person to be blessed. If you want your child to be productive and successful, it is important to start declaring words of life over your offspring, rather than predictions of lack and limitation. “Out of the same mouth come forth blessings and cursing. These things ought not be,” reports James 3.10. In the Old Testament, the people clearly understood the power of the blessing. As the family patriarch approached senility or death, the oldest sons gathered alongside their father. The father would then lay his hands on each son’s head and speak loving, faith-filled words over them about their future. These pronouncements comprised what was known ever after as “the blessing.” The family realized that these were more than Dad’s dying wishes; these words carried spiritual authority and had the ability to bring success, prosperity, and health into their future. Many time, children even fought over the father’s blessing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Imagine that, these parents were so admired by their children that they did not fight over money that they might inherit, they were no quarrelling over the family business. They were fight over who had the right to receive his faith-filled blessing. These children realized that if the received the father’s faith-filled blessing, that wealth, health, and success would be a natural by-product. Beyond that, they deeply desired the blessing from someone they loved and respected. Whether we realize it or not, our words affect out children’s future for either good or evil. We must speak loving words of approval and acceptance, words that encourage, inspire, and motivate our family members to reach for new heights. When we do that, we are speaking blessings into their lives, and they will indeed be blessed.  A prayer accurately formed and stated from the Word of God will absolutely move Heaven, Earth, and the things under the Earth in your behalf. We put faith in humans to the point that we will work for a human a well, two weeks, or a mother just because one said, “I will pay you so much at the end of the week or month.” We never doubt one’s word. We never check into one’s finances or have one checked out to see if one is capable of paying. We just believe one will because one said one would. However, when it comes to God’s Word, sometimes we say, “Well, I do not know. You never know what God will do.” However, when you know what God will do, He will do it (1 John 5.15). I realize some have prayed ten years about the same thing and never seen it manifested. While I was praying one morning, the Spirit of God spoke to me saying, “Do not ever pray for anything you cannot believe. It will destroy your faith.” Many have overloaded their faith. Go to the Word of God and find out what the Word says about your situation. Whatever it is—if it is physical matters, finances, healing for the body—go to the Word of God and study to find out what God says about it. Determine God’s will concerning the matter from His Word. Then when you find it, accurately form your prayer from the Word of God. Then petition the Father with it according to Hos Word, in faith, believing that you receive when you pray. Help me to understand, Father, the tremendous value in blessing others—my family members, coworkers, and others with whom I have an influence. Then please help me to speak words of blessing concerning their lives, words that open doors of opportunity rather than shutting them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Humans looked into the mysteries of the atom when they were too selfish to use in rightly, too ignorant of the higher laws to use it wisely—that is, when one was unworthy and unready. One is in such danger today that many regret one ever did so. However, one could not help it, could not have done otherwise. The mind wants to know; this is its essential nature; it was inevitable that what began as simple childish curiosity should end up as rigorous scientific investigation. Nothing could stop this process in the past. This was the warning of Greek, European, and American history. It is now the warning of the rest of the Old World, where seemingly static civilizations become more dynamic. When science serves politics only, and both are unguided by knowledge of the higher laws governing humankind, then both, in this age of nuclear weapons, put humankind in danger of nuclear annihilation. Where the nineteenth-century Westerner displaced religion by science, the twenty-first century Westerner is increasingly being faced, through the unexpected results of nuclear science, with having to refind interest in religion, recover the truth in religious teaching, and regain the peace in religious experience. The scientists conceived the atomic bomb, the heads of government financed it, and the military used it. This was the triple combination which brought humanity to its present plight. Admittedly, they did this with the best intentions and under the stress of seeming outer necessity. However, this fact still remains that it was they who created the danger for all of us and it is they who now seem unable to free us from it. It is necessary for humans to be reminded of one’s comparative nothingness when one’s intellect swells into dangerous arrogance. With the triumphs of atomic research and the gadgets of mechanical civilization, one has reached such a point. One will not have to wait long to see that the failure to balance them with moral and spiritual advance will bring its own punishment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

The attributing of anything to another involves the attribution likewise of whatever is contained in it. So when “man” is attributed to anyone, a rational nature is likewise attributed to one. The idea of relation, however, necessarily means regard of one to another, according as one is relatively opposed to another. So as in God there is a real relation, there must also be a real opposition. They very nature of relative opposition includes distinction. Hence, there must be real distinction in God, not, indeed, according to that which is absolute—namely, essence, wherein there is supreme unity and simplicity—but according to that which is relative.Whatever things are identified with the same thing are identified with each other, if the identity be real and logical; as, for instance, a tunic and a garment; but not if they differ logically. Hence in the same place one says that although action is the same as motion, and likewise passion; still it does not follow that action and passion are the same; because action implies reference as of something “from which” there is motion in the thing moved; whereas passion implies reference as of something “from which” there is motion in the thing moved; whereas passion implies reference as of something “which is from” another. Likewise, although paternity, just as filiation, is really the same as the divine essence; nevertheless these two in their own proper idea and definitions import opposite respects. Hence, they are distinguished from each other. Power and goodness do not important any opposition in their respective natures; and hence there is no parallel argument. Although relations, properly speaking, do not arise or proceed from each other, nevertheless they are considered as opposed according to the procession of one from another. My dear friend, beware of public disputations on matters that are beyond your humble intellect. And you will be well advised not to pry into what is behind the judgments of God. Same reason; that is to say, they are Divine Judgments, not human ones. For example, why one human has lost out, and another has lucked into a verdict in one’s favour. Or why one person has had the book thrown at one, and yet another has gotten off with a slap on the wrist. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Instances of justice such as these exceed the capacity of each and every human faculty. All of which is another way of saying, no rationalization or disputation can delve the niceties of Divine Judgment. Next time, therefore, the Enemy—or worse, the Schoolman from the University—suggests a nice topic like the Saints for public disputation, you respond with the prophetic words of the Psalmist (119.37): “You are just, O Lord, and Your judgment is right.” And again, “The judgments of the Lord are true, and need no further human justification than that,” (19.9). Well, I must say, God’s judgments are meant to scare us to death, not to be debated to death by us. That is how His Paul put it in the Romans (11.33). Why? Need it be said once again? They are incomprehensible to the human intellect. Also there is no real call to make philosophical inquiry into the merits of the Saints. That is to say, “My patron saint is holier than yours!” “Your patron saint is lower in Heaven then mine.” That sort of thing. Such animaversions quickly lead to animosities that eventually lead nowhere. Whence comes pride, whence vanity, whence jealousy, whence dissension, whence riot! Cannot you just hear it? One person proclaims that one’s patron Saint as the all-time all-star best; another shouts out that that Saint was a fake, a myth, that one never really existed, and bleats out one’s own nomination for the Saint of All Saints. Then they come to blows. Such delvings rarely bear fruit, and in applied sense they displease, even embarrass, the Saints themselves. And another thing. I want to se the record straight. God is not the God of dissension—God is the God of peace, the sort of peace that consists in True Humility, not in pompous self-postulation. That is how Paul described God in his First Letter to the Corinthians (14.33). Just what is the attraction of the Saints? Some are drawn to them with the zeal of love; others, with more ample affection than they realize. However, that is the human way of looking at hagiology, not the divine. Do not forget, God is the One who invented Saints in the first place. God gave them grace; God set them up in glory; God knew the merits of each; God prepared their way with sweet pavers. That is how God’s Psalmist saw it (2.13). #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

God foresaw that He would love them before creation; Paul put that in his Letter to the Romans (8.29). God chose them personally after creation—they certainly did not preselect God; John got His words right in his Gospel (15.16 and 19). God called them with grace as His trumpet, as Paul could have said to the Galatians (1.15). God attracted them through mercy; God held their hands through how many temptations. God showed them with magnificent consolations; God gave them perseverance; God crowned them with patience. God knows the very first Saint and the very latest Saint. God encompasses them all in one humongous hug. God is prepared to be praised in all His saints, blessed above all things, and honorued in each and every Saint, who He magnified so gloriously and predestined before they had had the chance to earn a merit on their own. One thing I would like to convey to you My dear, if sometimes unenlightened devouts. To condemn one of the least of God’s Saints, and He has got a lot of them, is not the same thing as honoruing a great Saint, of which God has all too few. The reference here is to Matthew (18.10). And God loves them all, from the silly to the sincere. Another thing. Derogate just one Saint, and you derogate God, and all the rest of the Saints to boot! The many and varied Saints are all one, linked with the silken cord of Charity. They have the same thoughts, the same wishes, and they love each other as they love themselves. Up to this point, however, the Saints love God more than themselves or their merits. Drawn out of their own personal love, they sail on, totally in love with God, in whom they fruitfully rest. There is nothing that can turn them away from God or depress them about God. You know why? The Devouts who are full of Eternal Truth burn with Charity’s eternal flame. Along this line the sensualist and the secularist at the University do not have a great deal to say. Rather, they think it supremely important to distinguish the many and varied levels of Sainthood. However, how could they do that when they do not know anything about the subject of love, expect perhaps what their own petty toys and joys may teach them? Such Schoolman from the University just do not know their thesis from their arsis. That is to say, you would think they would rather distinguish a thousand shades of gray! #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

In many of you there is a certain ignorance. That is to say, not all that expert in the spiritual life yourselves, you rarely know how to love someone with a perfect spiritual love. You find attractive this one or that one; the first instance is natural affection; the second, human friendship. Then you make the ghastly assumption that the way love is expressed here on Earth is the way it is going to be in Heaven. Sad to say, there is an incomparable distance between those Obscurati who see as through a glass darkly and those Illuminati who look as through a pane clearly. Beware, therefore, My dear friend, of being drawn into public disputations about topics like these. Why? They are just too much for your small head. Instead, try to figure out how you can be discovered the least in the Kingdom of God. And if anyone wants to know who is holier than who or who is greater than who in the Kingdom of Heaven, then one should ask God. What will God tell one? That such a piece of knowledge has market value, no street value. Recognizing this as fact, you should humble yourself in God’s presence, and when you rise, you will be praising God’s name all the more. This is how you will learn something about the magnitude of your sins and the parvitude of your virtues. You may even learn just how far you yourself are from the perfection of the Saints. Then and only then can you move up a few places in the line of God. That is in sharp contrast to the bloke who insists on arguing heatedly, perhaps even elegantly, that some Saints are highbrow and others lowbrow. It is not all that bad, delving the secrets of the Saints with the frail instruments of Philosophy and Theology. However, it is quite a bit better invoking these very same Saints with devout prayers and pious tears, imploring their glorious intercessions with humble mind. The Saints are contented beyond contentment. If only you knew how to be this content, you would stopple your logorrhea. The Saints are so flooded with love of divinity and joy that it is hard to find glory, a felicity, they do not have. All Saints, the higher they are in glory, the humbler they are in themselves, and the nearer and closer they are to God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

And so you have this single and indeed singular scripture, int the Last Book of the Scriptures (4.10), to the effect that the Saints laid down their crowns before God, fell on their faces before the Lamb, “and adored the Living God for ever and ever.” Many of you, like the Disciples in Matthew’s Gospel (18.1), spend too much time asking who is the greatest in the Kingdom of God. Rather, you should devote all the time to computing how to reserve even the farthest seat at the farthest table in that Holy Hall. It is a great thing to be a small Saint in Heaven, where all the saints are great by definition. That is because all have received the call to be, and indeed have become, the children of God. The reference is to John’s First Letter (3.1). “The least in Heaven will be as s thousand humans on Earth”; the calculation was the Prophet Isaiah’s (60.22). “And the sinner who has lived to a ripe old age will still have to die”; Isaiah again (65.20). When a couple of the Apostles asked which of them would be the greater in the Kingdom of Heaven, they got a response they did not expect; as it was recorded by the Great Matthew (18.3-4): “You have got to change your life. You have got to become like tots and tykes; otherwise you will not be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The adult who is able to recover one’s childhood innocence will become one of the greater Saints in Heaven.” Woe to those who think it beneath their dignity trying to recapture their spiritual childhood! Yes, the door to the Heavenly Kingdom is low, and nom getting down on all fours will not help them through. Woe also to the rich, having their consolations in their money bags! I tucked this among My Beatitudes, and Luke put it in his Gospel (6.24). Fat cats that they are, they will be the first ones sobbing and fobbing outside the tiny portal as the paupers parade into the Kingdom of God. Paupers all rejoice! Yours in the Kingdom of God! Luke again (6.20). All you have to do is walk in the truths! John’s Third Letter (v. 4). Either ecstasy or quietude may pervade the glimpse; either insight or intuition may follow it. The glimpse has several results: it awakens sleeping minds, it encourages questing minds, it inspires earnest minds, and it quickens growing minds. The feeling that time can wait is rare these days but it does come when the glimpse comes. Then the realization comes that it is foolish to hurry to appointments, datelines, work, or shopping and better to move more leisurely toward them or even loiter on the way. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Those few tranced moments of beatific calm will nourish one for many a month, perhaps even for some years. If it will help them recover the first radiant excitement of the glimpse, the overwhelming greatness of that brief intensified existence, some are willing to take up the discipline. One important effect of the glimpse is to show one how wonderful life could be if there were frequent and easy access to this diviner region. For this spurs one to seek ways and means to bring about its recurrence. Even if it happens only once or twice in a lifetime, such a glimpse acts as a catalyst which pushes the human into making changes. The glimpse will always be an incandescent memory in one’s life, a token of grace to prove that reality does dwell somewhere behind the seeming fatuity and illusoriness of the World’s life. The glimpse brings release from doubts, burdens, fears, depressions, and other negative conditions which may best the ego. This is most welcome. However, only seldom does it last long. It is a momentary or temporary condition. It is never totally or permanently lost; there is usually some kind of residue, if only in memory. Henceforth, either prominent in one’s everyday consciousness or hidden in one’s half-buried subconsciousness, there is the ever-present aspiration to renew this wonderful experience. The human who enters this state while still a heathen will abandon crime after coming out of it. The glimpse will fill one’s heart with a beautiful peace, one’s head with a larger understanding; but it will end and pass away, for it is only a glimpse gained for a few minutes’ space. Nevertheless, memory will hold for years its wonderful afterglow. One has introduced a new principle into one’s life, one which is going to bear fruitful consequences in several different directions. One may have to weep for a mere glimpse of the soul. However, this got, one will certainly weep again for its return. For one knows now by unshakeable conviction and by this vivid demonstration that the durable realization of the Soul is what one is here on Earth for. These lovely gleams, which gave one such joy and dignity, will flicker out and the spiritual night in which most human live will once again close in upon one. Nevertheless, they have added a new kind of experience to one’s stock and revealed a new hope for one’s comfort. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

However, when the years have passed and middle life falls upon one, one will remember those early flashes of something grandly exalted above the daily round, and, remembering, may seek out ways and means of recovering them. If one enquires into precisely wherein the greatest good of all consists, which should be the purpose of every system of legislation, one will find that it boils down to the two principal objects, liberty and equality. Liberty, because all particular dependence is that much force taken from the body of the state; equality, because liberty cannot subsist without it. I have already said what liberty is. Regarding equality, we need not mean by this word that degrees of power and wealth are to be absolutely the same, but rather that, with regard to power, it should transcend all violence and never be exercised except by virtue of rank and laws; and, with regard to wealth, no citizen should be so rich as to be capable of buying a citizen, and none so poor that one is forced to sell oneself. This presupposes moderation in good and credit on the part of the great, and moderation in avarice and covetousness no the part of the lowly. Do you therefore want to give constancy to the State? Bring the extremes as close together as possible. Tolerate neither rich people nor beggars. These two estates, which are naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good. From the one come the fomenters of tyranny, and from the other the tyrants. It is always between them that public liberty becomes a matter of commerce. The one buys its and the other sells it. This equality is said to be a speculative fiction that cannot exist in practice. However, if abuse is inevitable, does it follow that it should not at least be regulated? It is precisely because the force of legislation should always tend to maintain it. This equality is said to be a speculative fiction that cannot exist in practice. However, if abuse is inevitable, does it follow that it should not at least be regulated? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of legislation should always tend to maintain it. However, these general objects of every good institution should be modified in each country in accordance with the relationships that arise as much from the local situation as from the temperament of the inhabitants. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

And it is on the basis of these relationships that each people must be assigned a particular institutional system that is the best, not perhaps in itself, but for the state for which it is destined. For example, is the soil barren and unproductive, or the country too confining for its inhabitants? Turn to industry and crafts, whose products you will exchange for the foodstuffs you lack. On the other hand, do you live in rich plains and fertile slops? Do you lack inhabitants on a good terrain? Put all your effort into agriculture, which increases the number of humans, and chase out the crafts that seems only to achieve the depopulation of the country by grouping in a few sectors what few inhabitants there are. Any branch of foreign trade creates hardly anything more than a false utility for a kingdom in general. It can enrich some private individuals, even some towns, but the nation as a whole, gains nothing and the populace is none the better for it. Do you occupy long, convenient coastlines? Cover the sea with vessels; cultivate commerce and navigation. You will have a brilliant and brief existence. Does the sea wash against nothing on your coasts but virtually inaccessible rocks? Remain barbarous and fish-eating. You will live in greater tranquility, better perhaps and certainly happily. In a word, aside from the maxims common to all, each people has within itself some cause that organizes them in a particular way and renders its legislation proper for it alone. Thus it was that long ago the Hebrews and recently the Arabs have religion as their main object; the Athenians had letters; Carthage and Tyre, commerce; Rhodes, seafaring; Sparta, war; and Rome, virtue. The author of The Spirit of the Laws has shown with a large array of examples the art by which the legislator directs the institution toward each of its objects. What makes the constitution of a state truly solid and lasting is that proprieties are observed with such fidelity that the natural relations and the laws are always in agreement on the same points, and that the latter serve only to assure, accompany and rectify them. However, if the legislator is mistaken about one’s object and takes a principle different from the one arising from the nature of things (whether the one tends toward servitude and the other toward liberty; the one toward riches, the other toward increased population; the one toward peace, the other toward conquests), and the laws will weaken imperceptibly, the constitution will be altered, and the state will not cease being agitated until it is destroyed or changed, and invincible nature has regained her empire. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The beneficial dynamic effects of deeply praying are well known. This is because purposeful prayer sets the mind absolutely and affirmatively on God; it is then taking advantage of the natural fact that the person’s life-force in being communicated with and drawn upon. This is the universal life force, when expressed in oneself, it acts as a link with the universal spirit and demands physical existence. In other words, through prayer, we acknowledge the higher consciousness of humanity, and bridge that to our present reality. The bridge is there, but one must take advantage of it and many do not. If during these prayers, one turned one’s mind to focus on one’s true being, one would find it easier than at other times; or if one did the same thing after having had an unexpected glimpse, one could retain the uplift of the glimpse for a longer period. “Let peoples serve you and nations bow down to you; be master over your brothers, and let your mother’s sons bow down to you. Let everyone be cursed who curses you and favoured with blessings who blesses you,” reports Genesis 27.29. Only the winds of spring can open the anemone wrote Pliny. Windflower, mayflower, nimbleweed, anemone quinquefolia the wind-god’s name in spring. Five white petals, three-part leaves—the ancients picked them chanting prayers. Help us to protect these waters, these wild lands you open on instill in us the powers to contain the ooze of mines, the excrement of need. Protect these aquifers and springs of highland rock, the breath of winds we blossom by. Lord, what are humans, that Thou hast regard for them? Or the son of man, that Thou takest account of him? Man is like a breath, his days are as fleeting shadow. In the morning he flourishes and grows up like grass. In the evening one is cut down and withers. So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom. Mark the human of integrity, and behold the upright, for there is a future of the human of peace. In this solemn hour consecrated to our beloved dead, we ponder over the flight of time, the frailty and uncertainty of human life. We ask ourselves: What are we? What is our life? To what purpose our wisdom and knowledge? Wherein is our strength, our power, or fame? Alas, humans seem born to trouble, and one’s years are few and full of travail. However, our great teachers have taught us to penetrate beneath appearances and see the higher worth, the deeper meaning, and the abiding glory of human life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

Cresleigh Homes

Just might get out the twinkle lights for those fiddle leaf figs! ✨ No better way to get the office in a festive mood for work from home this holiday season.

Leave it to #Havenwood to have the best options for guest suites and multiple offices; it’s the perfect way to customize your home for YOUR lifestyle.

 Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.  Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!

Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included! 

#CresleighHomes