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See What a Big Heart I Have? God, See How Good I am? See How Much You Need Me?
Believe it or not, the focus on mental health has been around as long as human beings. It is not a new science, but an evolving science. In fact, in the Stone Age, doctors had methods for treating mental disorders. And before the American Revolution, only 10 percent of the 3,5000 doctors in the country had any formal training. Fewer than 5 percent had medical degrees. As of the year 2021, there are nearly 1 million physicians in the United States of American, and approximately 650,000 are active. If you think about it, that is a relatively small number. By the 1970s exorcism had all but disappeared from Western culture. Then in 1973, the enormously popular book and movie The Exorcist spurred an onslaught of books and movies on demonic possession, and public interest in this kind of intervention increased dramatically. Since then, numerous evangelical ministers and charismatics have declared themselves exorcists and performed exorcisms on people with behavioural disturbances. In most such instances, the person’s problems have failed to respond to a conventional intervention such as psychotherapy or drug therapy. Typically, the exorcist blesses the person who is thought to be possessed, recites passages from the Bible, and commands the evil spirits to leave the body. Often a support group is present to pray for the person while one cries out and perhaps even thrashes on the floor, regurgitates, or flails out. During the 1900s, the techniques used by some contemporary exorcists seemed to grow more extreme, at times dangerous. The media reported cases of death by exorcism; a New York mother accidentally smothered her teenage daughter during one such procedure and a Rhode Island man jammed steel crosses down his mother-in-law’s throat. In addition, a growing number of priests began to perform spiritual cleansing ceremonies not sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. By 2020, hundred of exorcists, from evangelical ministers and charismatics to unsanctioned priests, were performing a wide variety of exorcisms in the United State of America. Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto proesidium. Imperet Illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, princepes militioe coelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtue. In infernum detrude. Amen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
In order to regulate this growing field, both within and outside the church, and to ensure more acceptable procedures, the Roman Catholic church in the United States of America has become more actively involved in exorcisms during the past decade. The number of full-time exorcists formally appointed by the church increased from 1 in 1990 to 250 in 2020. Over the past several years, these officials have investigated and evaluated hundreds of cases in which individuals or their relatives or priests have sought exorcisms, determining in each case whether exorcism is appropriate. In 1999 the church issued a revised Catholic rite of exorcism for the first time since 1614, establishing rules to be followed in making such decisions and in the exorcisms themselves. For example, a church exorcism can take place only after the church-approved exorcist consults with physicians to rule out mental or physical disorders. Also church exorcism must be approved by a bishop. As a result of such rules and procedures, only a small number of potential cases actually result in church-approved exorcisms. Even a small number of exorcisms, however, is excessive in the eyes of many mental health professionals. They argue that one can never totally rule out and physical causes in cases of abnormal functioning and that exorcism—even those that are carefully selected and conducted—divert attention from more accurate explanations of abnormal behaviour and more appropriate interventions. Given its long history and deep roots, this debate is not likely to be settled in the near future. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Now, reflecting on the Middle Ages (from the 5th century to the late 15th century), when they drew to a close, demonology and its methods began to lose favour. Towns throughout Europe grew into cities, and municipal authorities gained more power and took over nonreligious activities. Among their other responsibilities, they began to run hospitals and direct the care of people suffering from mental disorders. Medical views of abnormality gained favour once again. When lunacy trials were heled in the late thirteenth-century England to determine the sanity of certain persons, it was not unusual for natural causes, such as a “blow to the head” or “fear of one’s father,” to be held responsibility for an individual’s unusual behaviour. During these same years, many people with psychological disturbances received treatment in medical hospitals. The Trinity Hospital in England, for example, was established to treat “madness,” among other kinds of illnesses, and keep the mad “safe until they are restored to reason.” During the early part of the Renaissance, a period of flourishing cultural and scientific activity (about 1400-1700), demonological views of abnormality continued to decline. The German physician Johann Weyer (151501588), the first physician to specialize in mental illness, believed that the mind was as susceptible to sickness as the body. He is now considered the founder of the modern study of psychopathology. The care of people with mental disorders continued to improve in this atmosphere. In England such individuals might be kept at home while their families were aided financially by the local parish. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Across Europe religious shrines were devoted to the humane and loving treatment of people with mental disorders. The best known of these shrines was actually established centuries earlier at Gheel in Belgium, but beginning in the fifteenth century, people came to it from all over the World for psychic healing. Local residents welcomed these pilgrims into their homes, and many stayed on to form the World’s first “colony” of mental patients. Gheel was the forerunner of today’s community mental healthy programs, and it continues to demonstrate the people with psychological disorders can respond to loving care and respectful treatment. Today patients are still welcome to live in foster homes in this town, interacting with other residents, until they recover. Unfortunately, these improvements in care began to fade by the mid-sixteenth century. By then municipal authorities had discovered that percentage of those with severe mental disorders and that medial hospitals were too few and too small. Increasingly, they converted hospitals and monasteries into asylums, institutions whose primary purpose was to care for people with mental illness. These institutions were founded with every intention of providing good care. Once the asylums started to overflow, however, they became virtual prisons where patients were held in filthy conditions and treated with unspeakable cruelty. The first asylum had been founded in Muslim Spain in the early fifteenth century, but the idea did not gain full momentum until the 1500s. In 1547, Bethlehem Hospital was given to the city of London by Henry VIII for the sole purpose of confining the mentally ill. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
In the Bethlehem Hospital asylum patients bound in chains cried out for all to hear. During certain phases of the moon in particular, they might be chained and whipped in order to prevent violence. The hospital even became a popular tourist attraction; people were eager to pay to loo at the howling and gibbering inmates. The hospital’s name, pronounced “Bedlam” by the local people, has come to mean a chaotic uproar. Similarly, in the Lunatics’ Tower in Vienna, patients were herded into narrow hallways by the outer walls so that tourist outside could look up and see them. In La Bicetre in Paris, patients were shackled to the walls of cold, dark, dirty cells with iron collars and given spoiled food that could be sold nowhere else. Outrageous devices and techniques, such as the “crib,” which was basically like a combination of a baby’s crib and a coffin, which was about six feet long, 12 inches off the ground, 12 inches deep, with bars on the side and a coffin top, were used in asylums, and some continued to be used during the reforms of the nineteenth century. However, for the most part, such asylums remained a popular form of “care” until the late 1700s. For most people with a personality disorder, the extent of their psychosocial problems often does not stop there. One could also say that many people with other psychosocial problems also have personality disorders. It is of interest that personality disorders are comorbid with other personality disorders. For example, one study estimated the comorbidity of HPD (histrionic personality disorder, a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking) and NPD (narcissistic personality disorder, an exaggerated sense of self-worth and entitlement, coupled with a nearly insatiable thirst for attention and acclaim) at 30.4. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The rates of personality disorders among people with major depression are astonishingly high. As many as 20-50 percent of inpatients and 50-85 percent of outpatients with major depressive disorder have a personality disorder. Chief among these are BPD (borderline personality disorder, which involves instability of interpersonal relationships, affect, and self-image; exhibiting intense and variable mood, ranging from irritability to euphoria to impulsive anger and even self-destructive behaviour) and HPD. This high rate of comorbidities (the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient) by appealing to common interpersonal issues. By definition, people with personality disorders have a rigid and otherwise problematic interpersonal style. This personality pathology can generate interpersonal stressors, leading to depression. In fact, researchers have identified interpersonal styles that play a role in stress generation in romantic contexts. These include a dependent style, which is submissive, fearful of abandonment, and reliant on others for self-esteem; and an obsessive-compulsive style, reflecting perfectionism, rigidity and distrust in others. These personality profiles are remarkably similar to those of DPD (a strong sense of interpersonal submission) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Personality disorders are also evident among those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. As many as 38 percent of patients with bipolar disorder meet the criteria for at least one personality disorder. At the time of hospital admission in one study, 30-45 percent of patients with schizophrenia were also found to have personality disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Problems as serious as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have a profound impact on interpersonal behaviour and relationships. In schizophrenia, depending upon the particular type, delusional thinking can prompt severely withdraw and avoidant behaviour, as well as conduct that reflect ambivalence about relationships with other people. Similarly, the fluctuating affect states of patients with bipolar disorder can produce interpersonal behaviour that ranges from withdrawn to grandiose, dramatic, and voraciously self-entitled. One thread that connects all of these disorders is maladaptive interpersonal behaviour. This behavior which is intrinsic to personality disorders, may then perpetuate and maintain symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder because of the often negative and harmful interpersonal consequences it produces. Alcoholism and other substance use problems are evident in as many as 66.3 percent of makes and 33.3 percent of females with ASPD (anti-social personality disorder a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of other persons’ rights). This particular personality disorder generally precedes substance use disorders, since it is defined in part by a pattern of behaviour that is evident before the age of 15 (id est, conduct disorder), whereas evidence of full-blown substance dependence is generally not evident until later in the teens or early 20s. Problems with socialization, generally at the hands of parents, appear to be key interpersonal antecedents to both problems. Ineffective parenting, modeling of antisocial behaviour, and modeling of substance use may dually predispose young children to develop both ASPD and drug or alcohol dependence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
In addition to being comorbid with depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other personality disorders, the incidence of personality disorders is also elevated among those with eating disorders, substance use disorders, and somatoform disorders. Problems, like depression and schizophrenia, share common interpersonal motifs with various personality disorders. In the case of eating disorders, there is no reason to suspect that the rigid and maladaptive interpersonal behaviour inherent in the personality disorders predisposes such individuals to developing these related psychosocial problems. Personality disorders are defined, in part, by inflexible and generally maladaptive modes of relation to other people. Although the personality disorders are not as well researched and understood as many other psychological problems, interpersonal relations appear to play a prominent role in both the origins and consequences of these sometimes enigmatic disorders. A number of hypotheses, some with attendant empirical support, suggest that early experiences in the family of origin may be crucial mechanisms in the pathogenesis of some personality disorders. Family interactions involving excessive admiration and attention, physical and sexual abuse, inconsistent reinforcement, and rejection are replete in descriptions of the early childhood experiences of people with personality disorders. Perhaps as a result of these pathological interpersonal experiences, people with personality disorders develop ways of relating to other people that are extremely maladaptive and unsuitable to the needs of those in their social environment. Consequently, the persistence of interpersonal problems and distress is almost guaranteed, making personality disorders particularly interactable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Our time here on Earth is so short. What a shame it would be to allow something that happened in the past—whether it was twenty years ago or twenty minutes ago—to ruin the rest one’s life or Earth. No matter how extravagantly Jesus Christ squandered His charity, it never seemed to lessen. No matter how recklessly He paid out the fruits of His propitiation, they never seemed to be exhausted. Every time we approach the Sacrament, we ought to spend some time recollecting our souls, and praying on the great Mystery of Salvation. Whether we celebrate the Sacrament or just heat the Mass, come afresh. That is to say, think of it as the very day that Christ descended into the womb of the Virgin and was made Man. Or very day that Christ hung on the cross, suffering and dying for the salvation of Humanity. That is how to turn an experience grown dull into a truly enormous, novel, joyful event. One must make up one’s mind to do one’s best to enjoy every single day. We all make mistakes; things may not always go the way one wants them to go. We may be disappointed at times, but think about that joy and freedom that comes from making a decision to live one’s life happy anyway. It is a great goal to not allow what does or does not happen to one steal one’s joy and keep one from God’s abundant life. Sometimes an individual may allow something that happens in the morning to disrupt one’s entire day. Getting stuck in traffic can be a real let down. Being an hour late to work can produce a lot of anxiety, which will cause fear and frustration. However, do not let that ruin your day because no matter how upset one gets, there is nothing one can do to change that event when it is already set in motion. Just enjoy the day and know God is in control. Next time just wake up an hour earlier. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Sure, words can hurt us all. However, just because someone offends you in the morning, understand they may be going through something and brush it off. Often times, people’s bad attitudes have nothing to do with the personal they are projecting on. They just want to release some frustration and hurt someone else to make themselves feel better. “Lead me, O Lord, in Your righteousness because of my enemies; make Your way level (straight and right) before my face. For there is nothing trustworthy or steadfast or truthful in their talk; their heart is destructive [or a destructive chasm, a yawning gulf]; their throat is an open sepulcher; they flatter and make smooth with their tongue. Hold them guilty, O God; et them fall by their own designs and counsels; cast them out because of the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against You. However, let all those who take refuge and put their trust in You rejoice; let them ever sing and shot for joy, because You make a covering over them and defend them; let those also who love Your name be joyful in You and be in high spirits. For You, Lord, will bless the [uncompromisingly] righteous [one who is upright and in right standing with You]; as with a shield You will surround one with goodwill (pleasure and favour),” reports Psalms 5.8-12. When you wake up in the morning, do not recall mistakes from the past. Instead wake up and pray, “Father, I thank You that this is going to be a great day. I thank You that I have discipline, self-control; that I make good decisions. I may not have what I could have yesterday, but that day is gone. I am going to get up and do well today.” Wake up every morning and receive God’s love and mercy. When one makes mistakes, be so critical. Ask God for forgiveness and then move on, confident that the moment you ask, God forgives you. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
God does not want His children to mope around defeated. He wants one to get up and prepare for success and to be kind and loving. Not only is God a loving and forgiving God, but He also chooses not to remember your mistakes. If someone keeps brining up negative incidents from your past, you know that is not God. One may have done some things one is not proud of, but when one asks God to forgive one, He washed those things away. Furthermore, God does not even keep a record of it. He is not going to flip back through His DVD player and say, “Oh, wait a minute. I found something on your record back there in 2001. I cannot bless you.” No, as far as God is concerned, you do not even have a past. It is forgiven and gone. You are ready for a great present and a bight future. God let go of the past. The question is: Will you let it go? Will you quit remembering what God has chosen to forget? Behold, we come to You, O Lord, that Your Gift will do us well. Also, we want to rejoice at the party “You have so thoughtfully prepared for the poor, O God”; that felicitous phrasing is the Psalmist’s (68.10). Behold, in You everything that we can and ought to desire. You are our Salvation and Redemption, our Hope and Fortitude, our Grace and Glory. Therefore today, “Make joyful the soul of Your servant, for we are turned to You, Lord Jesus Christ,” if we may paraphrase the Psalmist; “for today is the day I lift up my soul,” (86.4). Yes, Father, I accept Your forgiveness. Thank You for loving me even when I make mistakes, poor choices, or wrong decisions. Please Help me to live today free of the past. “I will give to the Lord the thanks due to His rightness and justice, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High,” reports Psalm 7.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
In the government one finds the intermediate forces whose relationships make up that of the whole to the whole or of the sovereign to the state. This last relationship can be represented as one between the extremes of a continuous proportion, whose proportional mean is the government. The government receives from the sovereign the orders it gives the people, and, for the state to be in good equilibrium, there must, all things considered, be an equality between the output or the power of the government, taken by itself, and the output or power of the citizens, who are sovereigns on the one hand and subjects on the other. Moreover, none of these three terms could be altered without the simultaneous destruction of the proportion. If the sovereign wishes to govern, or if the magistrate wishes to give laws, of if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder replaces rule, force and will no longer act in concert, and thus the state dissolves and falls into despotism or anarchy. Finally, since there is only one proportional mean between each relationship, there is only one good government possible for the state. However, since a thousand events can change the relationships of a people, not only can different governments be good for different peoples, but also for the same people at different times. In trying to provide an idea of the various relationships that can obtain between these two extremes, I will take as an example the number of people, since it is a more easily expressed relationship. Suppose the state is composed of ten thousand citizens. The sovereign can only be considered collectively and as a body. However, each private individual in one’s position as a subject is regarded as an individual. Thus the sovereign is to the subject as ten thousand is to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
In other words, each member of the state has as one’s share only one ten-thousandth of sovereign authority, even though one is totally in subjection to it. If the populace is made up of a hundred thousand humans, the condition of the subjects does not change, and each bears equally the entire dominion of the laws, while one’s vote, reduced to one hundred-thousandth, has ten times less influence in the drafting of them. In that case, since the subject always remains one, the ratio of the sovereign to the subject increases in proportion to the number of citizens. Whence it follows that the larger the state becomes, the less liberty there is. When I say that the ratio increases, I mean that it places a distance between itself and equality. Thus the greater the ratio is in the sense employed by geometricians, the less relationship there is in the everyday sense of the word. In the former sense, the ratio, seen in terms of quantity, is measured by the quotient; in the latter sense, ratio, seen in the terms of identity, is reckoned by similarity. Now the less relationship there is between private wills and the general will, that is, between mores and the laws, the more repressive force ought to increase. Therefore, in order to be good, the government must be relatively stronger in proportion as the populace is more numerous. One the other hand, as the growth of the state gives the trustees of the public authority more temptations and the means of abusing their power, the more the force the government must have in order to contain the people, the more the force the sovereign must have in order to contain the government. I am speaking here not of an absolute force but of the relative force of the various parts of the state. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
It follows from this twofold relationship that the continuous proportion between the sovereign, the prince and the people, is in no way an arbitrary idea, but a necessary consequence of the nature of the body of politic. It also follows that since one of the extremes, namely the people as subject, is fixed and represented by unity, whenever the doubled ratio increases or decreases, the simple ratio increases or decreases in like fashion, and that as a consequence the middle term is changed. This makes it clear that there is no unique and absolute constitution of government, but that there can be as many governments of differing natures as there are states of differing sizes. If, in ridiculing this system, someone were to say that in order to find this proportional mean and to form the body of the government, it is necessary merely, in my opinion, to derive the square root of the number of people, I would replay that here I am taking this number only as an example; that the relationships I am speaking of are not measure solely by the number of humans, but in general by the quantity of action, which is the combination of a multitude of causes; and that, in addition, if to express myself in fewer words I borrow for the moment the terminology of geometry, I nevertheless, am not unaware of the fact that geometrical precision has no place in moral quantities. The government is on a small scale what the body politic which contains it is on a large scale. It is a moral person endowed with certain faculties, active like the sovereign and passive like the state, and capable of being broken down into other similar relationships whence there arises according to the other of tribunals, until an indivisible middle term is reached; that is, a single leader or supreme magistrate, who can be represented in the midst of this progression as the unity between the series of fractions and that of the whole numbers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Without involving ourselves in the multiplication of terms, let us content ourselves with considering the government as a new body in the state, distinct from the people and sovereign, and intermediate between them. The essential difference between these two bodies is that the state exists by itself, while the government exists only through the sovereign. Thus the dominant will of the prince is not and should not be anything other than the general will of the law. One’s force is merely the public force concentrated in one. As soon as one wants to derive from oneself some absolute and independent act, the bond that links everything together begins to come loose. If it should finally happen that the prince had a private will more active that that of the sovereign, and that he had made use of some of the public force that is available to him in order to obey this private will, so that there would be, so to speak, two sovereigns—one de jure and the other de facto, at that moment the social union would vanish and the body politic would be dissolved. However, for the body of the government to have an existence, a real life that distinguishes it from the body of the state, and for all its members to be able to act in concert and to fulfill the purpose for which it is instituted, there must be a particular self, a sensibility common to all its members, a force or will of its own that tends toward its preservation. This particular existence presupposes assemblies, councils, a power to deliberate and decide, rights, titles and privileges that belong exclusively to the prince and that render the condition of the magistrate more honourable in proportion as it is more onerous. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The difficulties lie in the manner in which this subordinate whole is so organized within the whole, that in no way alters the general constitution by strengthening its own, that is always distinguishes its particular force, which is intended for its own preservation of the state, and that, in a word, it is always ready to sacrifice the government to the people and not the people to the government. In addition, although the artificial body of the government is the work of another artificial body and has, in a sense, only a borrowed and subordinate life, this does not prevent it from being capable of acting with more or less vigour or speed, or from enjoying, so to speak, more or less robust health. Finally, without departing directly from the purpose of its institution, it can deviate more or less from it, according to the manner in which it is constituted. From all these differences arise the diverse relationships that the government should have with the body of the state, according to the accidental and particular relationships by which the state itself is modified. For often the government that is best in itself will become the most vicious, if its relationships are not altered according to the defects of the body politic to which it belongs. It is possible that the much-bewailed decline of the Protestant work ethic is linked to this shift from production for others to production for self? Everywhere we see the decay of the industrial ethos that promoted hard work Western executive mutter darkly about this “English disease” which is supposed to reduce us all to penury if we do not cure it. “Only the Japanese will work hard,” they say. Matsuri Takahashi, a promising graduate of Japan’s top University, leapt to her death in December of 2015, leaving behind a trail of grievances over relentless days. She clocked more than 105 hours of overtime in October of 2015, before becoming depressed. Her death, deemed by the government to Karushi, or death by overwork. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
In many other cases, the very people who are supposedly unwilling to work hard on the job are often the same people who are, in fact, working hard off the job—laying bathroom tile, weaving carpets, building tables, creating computer programs, doing household chores, lending their time and talents to a political campaign, attending self-help meetings, sewing, growing vegetables in the garden, writing short stories, or remodeling the attic bedroom. Can it be that the driving motivation that powered the expansion of Sector B is now being channeled into Sector A—into prosuming? The Second Wave brought with it more than steam engines and mechanical looms. It brought with it an immense characterological change. Today we can still see this shift occurring among populations moving from First Wave to Second Wave societies—like the Koreans, for example, who are still busy expanding Sector B at the expense of Sector A. (In Sector A, people produce for their own use. In Sector B, they produce for trade or exchange.) By contrast, in the mature Second Wave societies reeling under the impact of the Third Wave—as production moves back to Sector A and the consumer is drawn back into the production process—another characterological shift begins. Later on we will explore this fascinating change. For now we need only bear in mind that the structure of personality itself is likely to be heavily influenced by the rise of presumption. Nowehere, however, are the changes wrought by the rise of the prosumer likely to be more explosive than in economics. Economists, instead of training all their guns on Sector B, will have to develop a new, more wholistic conception of an economy—will have to analyze what happens in Sector A as well and learn how the two parts relate to one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
As the Third Wave has begun to restructure the World economy, the economics profession has been savagely attacked for its inability to explain what is happening. It is most sophisticated tools, including computerized models and matrices, seem to tell us less and less about how the economy really works. Indeed, many economists themselves are concluding that conventional economic thought, both Western and Marxist, is out of touch with a fast-changing reality. One key reason may be that, more and more, changes of great significance lie outside Sector B—id est, outside the entire exchange process. To bring economics back in touch with reality Third Wave economists will need to develop new models, measures, and indices for describing processes in Sector A and will have to rethink many root assumptions in the light of the rise of the prosumer. Once we recognize that powerful relationships link the measured production (and productivity) in Sector B and the unmeasured production (and productivity) in Sector A, the invisible economy, we are compelled to redefine these terms. As early as the mid-1960’s, economist Victor Fuchs of the National Bureau of Economic Research sensed the problem, pointing out that the rise of services made traditional measures of productivity obsolete. Declared Fuchs: “The knowledge, experience, honesty, and motivation of the consumer affects service productivity.” However, even in these words the “productivity” of the consumer is still seen only in terms of Sector B—only as a contribution to production for exchange. There is no recognition as yet that actual production also takes place in Sector A—that goods and services produced for oneself are quite real, and that they may displace or substitute for good and services turned out in Sector B. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Conventional production figures, especially GNP (Gross National Product, which measures the scale of the economy by totting up the value of goods and services produced it in) figures, will make less and less sense until we explicitly expand them to include what happens in Sector A. An understanding of the rise of the prosumer also helps bring the concept of cost into sharper focus. Thus we gain powerful insights once we recognize that the effectiveness of the prosumer in Sector A can lead to higher or lower costs to companies or government agencies operating in Sector B. For example, high rates of alcoholism, absenteeism, psychosis and neurosis, dysfunctional behaviour, and psychological problems in the work force all add to the “cost of doing business” as measures conveniently in Sector B. (Alcoholism alone has been estimated to cost American industry $249 billion, or about $2.05 per drink, in production time a year.) To the degree that self-help groups alleviate such problems in the work force, they reduce these operating costs. The efficiency of presumption thus affects the efficiency of production. Subtler factors also influence the cost of production in business. How literate or articulate are the workers? Do they all speak the same language? Can they tell time? Are they culturally prepared for the job? Do the social skills learned in family life add to or detract from their competence? All these character traits, attitudes, values, skills, and motivations necessary for high productivity in Sector B, the exchange sector, are produced or, more accurately, prosumed in Sector A. The rise of the prosumer—the reintegration of the consumer into production—will force us to look far more closely at such interrelationships. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
The same powerful change will compel us to redefine efficiency. Today, in determining efficiency, economists compare alternative ways of producing the same product or service. They seldom compare the efficiency of producing it in Sector B as against that of prosuming it in Sector A. Yet this is precisely what millions of people—supposedly innocent of economic theory—are doing. They are finding that, once a certain level of money income is assured, it may be more profitable, economically as well as psychologically, to prosume than to earn more cash. Nor do economists or businessmen systematically track the negative effects of Sector B efficiency on Sector A—as for example when a company demands extremely high mobility of its executives and cause a wave of stress-related illness, family breakdown, or increased alcohol intake as a result. We may very well find that what appears to be inefficient in conventional Sector B terms is, in fact, tremendously efficient when we look at the whole economy and not just part of it. TO make sense, “efficiency” must refer to secondary, not merely first order, effects, and to both sectors of the economy, not just one. What about concepts like “income,” “welfare,” “poverty,” or “unemployment”? If a person lives half-in and half-out of the market system, which products, tangible or intangible, are to be regarded as part of one’s income? How meaningful are income figures at all in a society in which prosuming may account for much of what the average person has? How do we define welfare in such a system? Should welfare recipients work? If so, should all this work necessarily be in Sector B? Or should welfare recipients be encouraged to prosume? #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
What is the real meaning of unemployment? Is a laid-off auto science engineer who puts a new roof on his or her house, or overhauls his or her care, unemployed in the same sense as one who sits idly at home watching football on television? The rise of the prosumer forces us to question our entire way of looking at the twin problems of unemployment, on the one hand, and bureaucratic waste and featherbedding, on the other. Second Wave societies have attempted to cope with unemployment, for example, by resisting technology, closing off immigration, creating labour exchanges, increasing exports, decreasing imports, setting up public works programs, cutting back on work hours, attempting to increase labour mobility, deporting whole populations, and even waging war to stimulate the economy. Yet the problem becomes more complex and difficult every day. Can it be that the problems of labour supply—both gluts and shortages—can never be satisfactorily solved within the framework of a Second Wave society, whether capitalists of socialist? By looking at the economy as a whole, rather than focusing exclusively on one part of it, can we frame the problem in a new way that helps us solve it? If production occurs in both sectors, if people are busy producing goods and services for themselves in one sector and for others in a different sector, how does this affect the argument over a guaranteed minimum income for all? Typically, in Second Wave societies, income has been inextricably linked to work for the exchange economy. However, are not prosumers also “working,” even if they are not part of the market or are only partially in it? Should not a man or woman who stays at home and rears a child, thereby contributing to the productivity of Sector B through one’s efforts in Sector A, receive some income, even if one does not hold down a paid job in Sector B? #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
An income tax credit for housewives or househusbans would reduce single parent household, and welfare and would contribute to the stimulation of the economy. The rise of the prosumer will decisively alter all our economic thinking. It will also shift the basis of economic conflict. The competition between worker-producers and manager-producers will no doubt continue. However, it will shrink in importance as prosuming increases and we move father into Third Wave society. In its place, new social conflicts will arise. Battles will flare over which needs will be met by which sector of the economy. Struggles will sharpen, for example, over licensing, building codes, and the like, as Second Wave forces attempt to hold on to jobs and profits by preventing prosumers from moving in. Teachers’ unions typically fight to keep parents out of the classroom with all the zeal of building tradesmen fighting to preserve obsolete building codes. Yet just as a number of health problems (like those deriving from overeating, lack of exercise, or smoking, for example) cannot be solved by doctors alone but require instead the active participation of the patient, so a number of educational problems cannot be resolved without the parent. The rise of the prosumer changes the entire economic landscape. Thus all these effects will be intensified and the entire World economy changed by a massive historical facts now staring us in the face—which seems to have gone unnoticed by Second Wave economists and thinkers. This last towering fact sets into perspective all we have discussed in the past few weeks on the rise of the prosumer. Oh Great Spirit of the North, we come to you and ask for the strength and the power to bear what is cold and harsh in life. We come like the buffalo ready to receive the winds that truly can be overwhelming at times. Whatever is cold and uncertain in our life, we ask you to give us the strength to bear it. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Do not let the winter blow us away. Oh Spirit of Life and Spirit of the North, we ask you for strength and for love. Oh Great Spirit of the East, we turn to you where the sun comes up, from where the power of light and refreshment come. Everything that is born comes up in this direction—the birth of babies, the birth of the puppies, the birth of ideas, and the birth of friendship. Let there be light. Oh Spirit of the East, let the colour of fresh rising in our life be glory to you. Oh Great Spirit of the South, spirit of all that is warm and gentle and refreshing, we ask you to give us this spirit of growth, of fertility, of gentleness. Caress us with a cool breeze when the days are hot. Please gives us seeds that the flowers, trees and fruits of the Earth may grow. Please give us the warmth of good friendships. Oh Spirit of the South, please send the love and growth of your blessings. Oh Great Spirit of the West, where the sun goes down each day to come up the next, we turn to you in praise of sunsets and in thanksgiving for changes. You are the great coloured sunset of the red west which illuminates us. You are the powerful cycle which pulls us to transformation. We ask for the blessing of the sunset. Please keep us open to life’s changes. Oh Spirit of the Est, when it is time for us to go into the Earth, do not desert us, but receive us in the arms of our loved one. Art Father Who art in Heaven, Thy Kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. The Lord upholdeth al who fall, and raiseth up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look hopefully to Thee. And Thou givest them their food in due season. Thou openest Thy hand ad satisfiest every living thing with favour. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and gracious in all His works. The Lord is near unto all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that revere Him; He will also hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserveth all them that love Him; but all the wicked will He bring low. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord; let all human bless His holy name for ever and ever. We will bless the Lord from this time forth, and forevermore. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Mental health includes our emotional psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and makes choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. In the years from roughly 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, in the flourishing Greek and Roman civilizations, philosophers and physicians identified a number of mental disorders. Heading the list were melancholia, a condition marked by unshakable sadness; mania, a state of euphoria and frenzied activity; dementia, a general intellectual decline; hysteria, the presence of a physical ailment with no apparent physical cause; delusions, blatantly false beliefs; and hallucinations, the experience of imagined sights or sounds as if they were real. Although demonological interpretations of mental and physical illness were still widespread, philosophers and physicians began to offer alternative explanations during this period. Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), often called the father of modern medicine, taught that illness had natural causes. He saw abnormal behaviour as a disease arising from internal physical problems. Specifically, he believed that some form of brain pathology was the culprit and that it resulted—like all other forms of disease, in his view—from an imbalance of four fluids, or humours, that flowed through the body: yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. An excess of yellow bile, for example caused mania; and excess of black bile was the source of melancholia. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
To treat psychological dysfunctioning, Hippocrates sought to correct the underlying physical pathology. He believed, for instance, that the excess of black bile underlying melancholia could be reduced by a quiet life, a vegetable diet, temperance, exercise, celibacy, and even bleeding. Hippocrates’ focus on internal causes for abnormal behaviour was shared by the great Greek philosophers Plato (427-347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) and by influential Greek and Roman physicians. During the Middle Ages, there was, on average, one church for every 200 people. The enlightened views of Greek and Roman physicians and scholars did not prevent ordinary people from continuing to believe in demons. And with the decline of Roman, demonology enjoyed a strong resurgence, as a growing distrust of science spread throughout Europe. From A.D. 500 to 1350, the period known as the Middle Age, the power of the clergy increased greatly throughout Europe. In those days the church rejected scientific forms of investigation, and it controlled all education. Most of the patients in asylums, from all classes and circumstances, were women. Religious beliefs, which were highly superstitious and demonological at this time, came to dominate all aspects of life. Once again behaviour was usually interpreted as a conflict between good and evil, God and the devil. Deviant behaviour, particularly psychological dysfunctioning, was seen as evidence of Satan’s influence. Although some scientists and physicians still insisted on medical explanations and treatments, their views carried little weight in this atmosphere. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The Middle Ages were a time of great stress and anxiety, of war, urban uprisings, and plagues. People blamed the devil for these troubles and feared being possessed by him. The incidence of abnormal behaviour apparently increased dramatically during this period. In addition, there were outbreaks of mass madness, in which large numbers of people apparently shared delusions and hallucinations. In one such disorder, tarantism (also known as St. Vitus’s dance), groups of people would suddenly start to jump, dance, and go int convulsions. Some dressed oddly; others tore off their clothing. All were convinced that they had been bitten and possessed by a wolf spider, now called a tarantella. In anther form of madness, lycanthropy, people thought they were possessed by wolves or other animals They acted wolflike and imagined that fur was growing all over their bodies. Stories of lycanthropes, more popularly known as werewolves, have been passed down to us and continue to fire the imagination of writers, moviemakers, and their audiences. Not surprisingly, some of the earlier demonological treatments for psychological abnormality reemerged during the Middle Ages. Once again they key to cure was to rid the person’s body of the devil that possessed it. Exorcisms were revived, and clergymen, who generally were in charge of treatment during this period, would plead, chant, or pray to the devil or evil spirit. If these techniques did not work, they had others to try, some indistinguishable from of torture. They would administer holy water or bitter solutions, or even starve or stretch the bodies of the individuals in question. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
It was not until the Middle Ages drew to a close that the demonology and its methods began to lose favour. Towns throughout Europe grew into cities, and municipal authorities gained more power and took over nonreligious activities. Among their other responsibilities, they began to run hospitals and direct the care of people suffering from mental disorders. Doctors who treated people with mental disorders were called “mad-doctors.” Medical abnormality gained favour once again When lunacy trials were held in the late thirteenth-century England to determine the sanity of certain persons, it was not unusual for natural causes, such as a “blow to the head” or “fear of one’s father,” to be held responsible for an individual’s unusual behaviour. During these same years, many people with psychological disturbances received treatment in medical hospitals. The Trinity Hospital in England, for example, was established to treat “madness,” among other kinds of illness, and to keep the mad “safe until they are restored to reason.” If ASPD (anti-social personality disorder) can be located on the hostile-dominant quadrant of the interpersonal circumplex, dependent personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as DPD) is almost the polar opposite, located in the nurturant-submissive quadrant. Perhaps the chief feature of DPD is a strong sense of interpersonal submission. Individuals with this disorder have a strong need to be taken care of, couple with a strong fear of rejection. Additional symptoms include difficulty making decisions without support and reassurance from others, a need for others to assume responsibility for decisions about the self, difficulty expression disagreement due to fear of rejection, difficulty initiating independent activities and projects, going to excessive lengths to secure nurturance from others, feeling uncomfortable when alone, urgent seeking of another relationship for support when a close relationship ends, and preoccupation with fear of being left to take care of the self. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
People with DPD appear ill equipped to handle mature and independent roles in life, while displaying a naïve and gullible cognitive style. Because of their weak and fragile self-image, they entrust others with the responsibility for addressing major tasks and fulfilling their needs. Their delicate self-image suggest that they will not be competent or able to take on life’s tasks, and therefore need others to do these for them. If any, this excessive reliance on others appears to pay few dividends when it comes to establishing satisfactory personal relationships. People with DPD report low frequencies of positive social behaviours, reduced directness of communication with others, less positive interactions with close friends, and less helpfulness from friend than those with less dependent personalities. The interpersonal style of people with DPD (exempli gratia, acting weak, and submissive) is designed to pull for the complementary interpersonal response from others, particularly protection, nurturance, and control. Also the desperate search for acceptance and approval from others is especially pronounced during times of stress. Should there even be a hint of failure to secure nurturance and care from others, persons with DPD will catastrophize, seeing themselves as totally alone and dismissed by the World. Despite their suggestible and complaint tendencies, people with DPD report high degrees of loneliness. This calls into question the authenticity of the interpersonal connections that they establish. When their dependency need are not met, those with DPD may become demanding, and tis attention seeking may elicit interpersonal rejection from others, only further aggravating dependency needs. Consistent with this hypothesis, symptoms of DPD were negatively correlated with receiving social support, and positively correlated with conflict. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
It has been argued that parental overprotectiveness combined with authoritarians may serve to reinforce dependent behaviours in children, while simultaneously preventing the children from developing a sense of independence and autonomy. By catering to children’s every need, parents may inadvertently, or perhaps unconsciously, encourage dependency and inhibit the children’s natural tendencies to explore the environment and develop a sense of mastery and autonomy. Although the excessive control that is pursuant to overprotectiveness may be deployed with the best intentions, it interferes with children’s development of basic social competencies and a sense of security when separated from their caregivers. In fact, relative to healthy controls, those with DPD experience greater parental control in their families of origin. However, other examinations of physical and sexual abuse, maternal and paternal care, and maternal and paternal overprotection have found nothing unique in the family-of-origin background of those with DPD. It must be noted that the size of the group with DPD in each of these studies was small; thus these null findings must be interpreted with caution until they can be replicated. DPD (dependent personality disorder) involves a powerful need to be take care of, resulting in clinging and submissive behaviours, as well as fear of separation. Despite their strong desires for connection with and care taking from others, people with DPD experience less rewarding social interactions, less social support, and more loneliness than people without this disorder. A prominent interpersonal theory of DPD locates its origin in excessively overprotective parenting that fails to stimulate a sense of exploration and independence. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Thanks to You, Good Jesus, Eternal Pastor, for thinking us poor paupers and poopers worthy of refreshment by Your precious Body and Blood. Thanks also for Your personal invitation to come to a better understanding of the mysteries surrounding Communion; that is to say, when You said, “Come to me, all you who are lumbered and encumbered; I will find places for you to slumber.” We have all had negative thigs happen to us. Maybe recently, perhaps in the past, someone hurt us. And too often, instead of letting it go and giving it to God, we have held on to it. We have not forgiven, and that will sour the crystal-clear water of our souls and contaminate our lives. Furthermore, this contamination will produce a root of bitterness than will take hold of our hearts, minds, soul and body. And to make matter worse, after a while, we accept it. We make room in our hearts for that bitterness; we learn to live with it, and some even enjoy it. However, with all due respect, that is not how God intended us to be. God wants of to purge our lives of the bitter poison that is polluting our soul. Our souls were made to be crystal clear streams that connect us to God. God created us in His image. And the Lord wants us to be happy, healthy and have an abundance of pleasant things. God put us on this Earth to enjoy life, not to live with bitterness, sinister intentions, sarcasm, and resentment. If that becomes our nature, we have become polluted and we are contaminating everyone else with whom we have influence. However, even though our souls may be polluted right now, they do not have to stay that way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The more we read the Word of God and adopt Christian principles, and act out of love and kindness and use great discernment, the more we are able to filter the poison out of our lives and our environment, until our souls become crystal clear again. Then, we will begin to experience the joy, peace, and freedom God intended us to have. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way,” reports Psalm 139.23-24. We need to search our hearts and make sure we have not let any roots of bitterness take hold. It may not be a big thing that is polluting one’s soul. Maybe one’s spouse is not spending as much time with one as one would like, and one can feel oneself starting to get resentful. However, do not become sarcastic, cryptic, or unfriendly. That will intentionally make one harder to get along with, and that root of bitterness will contaminate one’s life. Keep your soul pure. Do not let your heart get polluted. The Christian Bible talks about being quick to forgive, and the longer we wait, the harder it is going to be. The longer we hold on to resentment, the deeper that root of bitterness grows. Sometimes, instead of forgiving quickly, letting go of the hurts and pains of the past, we quietly bury them deep down inside our hearts and minds. We do not want to talk about the issues. We do not want to think about it. We want to ignore it and hope that it will go away. It will not. That contamination will show up in one’s life, and it will be a mess. It will cause one even more pain and sorrow, and it could even kill you. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Deal with the poison in your soul today by forgiving anyone who has hurt you, and then choose to live today in freedom and freshness. As one does that, the joy of the Lord will burst forth within one like a freshness mountain spring. Lord, your great goodness and mercy have made me well again; nonetheless, I am sick as a dog. That is why I come to You, my Saviour, with empty mouth and dry tongue, to the Font of Life, a destitute in the Court of Heaven, a slave to the Lord, a creature to the Creator, a desolate to the Consolate. The remedy? The Sacrament. I have trouble with that; and so did Your Everlasting Luke (1.43). I should be going to You; instead, You are coming to me. Well, I am miffed again! You cannot come to my house. I am a sinner, and You should know what that means. I may not have been discovered in the same room as You. Yes, I confess my vilety. I acknowledge Your goodness. I praise You piety. I thank You for Your charity—it seems to know no bounds. Father, I want the streams of my life to flow pure, clean, and fresh. Please search my heart, O God, and help me to detect anything profane or unwelcome in Heaven. Please give me the courage to make the changes You are calling me to make. Of course, I realize that You are just doing this for Yourself. My meager merits have nothing to do with it. That is to say, it is just Your way of bringing my attention Your goodness, Your charity, Your humility. It pleases You to do so. However, at the same time, it teased me, my Divine Friend, this comely Comedown of Yours. “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with the songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods,” reports Psalm 95.2-3. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Would that the floor were not littered with my iniquities! O Sweetest, Gentle Jesus Christ, how much reverence and gratitude with praise unending I owe You when I receive Your Holy Body! No human alive can be found who can fully unfold the dignity of this act! However, what shall I think of this Communion? It gives me access to the Lord, whom I am unable to reverence devoutly enough and yet whom I devoutly wish to receive? What better, more salutary course of action can I take in Your presence, except perhaps humbling my poor self and exalting Your infinite goodness? I praise You, my God, and I exalt You forever. I despise myself and subject myself to You. Why? My vileness has yet to bottom out. Look at You, the Holy of Holies! And what am I? A Shittite among Shittites. Yes, I can see You across the crowded floor. I am looking right at You, in fact. However, are You gesturing me to come forward? There must be some mistake. I am not worthy to return to Your glance, let alone to meet Your gaze! Yes, it is awkward, but it gets worse! You are coming toward me. You actually want to be with me. you invite me to join you for a meal. You want to show me just how good the Divine Diet can be. Especially, Bread of Angels. That is how the Psalmist described it. (78.25). Which, of course, is none other than You Yourself, the Living Loaf, who descended from Heaven to give nourishment to the World; my reference here is John (6.33, 51). Some questions for You, my Eclectic if Encyclopedic Friend. Where does Love come from? What gives Largesse its glow? How many grateful acts of praise are due You for these two virtues? #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
However, before you answer, here are some exclamations. How helpful and practical Your counsel is! How pleasant and comfortable that dinner was when You Yourself were the food! How admirable Your operation, O Lord! How powerful Your Virtue! How ineffable Your Truth! Now, some conclusions. You just gave the command, and the World was created. You gave the command again, and the Sacrament was created. Apparently, everything went according to plan. Worthy of wonder, worthy of faith, worthy of warping the human intellect! You, my Lord God, True God and True Man, You are contained whole and entire in some modest species. The Bread is eaten and the Premium Cranberry Justice is drunk, but Your Body and Blood remain forever. O Lord and Tailor of the Universe, so far as I know, You do not keep a lost of wants and needs. Yet You have long wanted to dwell in us through Your Sacrament. Please help keep my body and soul sinless. Why? So that with a spotless yet sportive conscience I can celebrate the Mysteries—that is to say, receive the Sacrament—more frequently. For my perpetual salvation, then, please help me receive the Sacrament that You sanctioned and instituted as a special honour and perennial memorial to remind us of Yourself. Rejoice, my soul, and give thanks to God for the Sacrament, that noble gift and singular solace left behind for me in this valley of tears! Every time I receive the Body of Christ, it rekindles this Mystery. Every time I become a co-conspirator in all Your redemptive work, O Christ, as well as a co-participant in all Your merits. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
What we re ordinarily conscious of are the thoughts and feelings of the ego, but there is much more in us than that. There is the true self, of which the ego is only a miserable caricature. If we could penetrate to this, the fundamental element of our selfhood, we would never again be satisfied with a wholly egoistic life—the call of the Quest would come again and again in our ears. And indeed it is through such rare glimpses, such exalted moments, when they become conscious of a presence, higher and more blessed than their ordinary state, that humans are drawn to the Quest in the effort to recapture those moments and those moods. The recapturing is done, not by taking possession of something but by allowing oneself to be possessed, not by a positive and affirmative movement of the will, but by a yielding to, and acceptance of, the gentlest and most delicate thing in humans’ psyche—the intuition. Another purpose of these glimpses is to show one how ignorant of truth one really is, and, having so shown, to stimulate one’s effort to get rid of this ignorance. For they will light up the fanciful or opinionative nature of so much that one hitherto took to be true. The bestowal of a glimpse is not merely for one’s pleasure and satisfaction: there are certain self-cleansing duties and self-improving obligations which follow in its train. The light it throws into one is thrown on one’s sins and weaknesses too. One sees them more plainly for what they are, as well as the amendment one must make. However, one sees also the forgiveness which grace grants. The glimpse affords its own proof, supplies its own evidence, certifies by itself the truths it yields. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
However, if its experiencer falls back into one’s ego and lets its prejudice, opinion, and expectation intrude into those truths, that is one’s own fault, not the Glimpse’s. A single glimpse will offer all the evidence one’s reason needs, all the proof one’s judgement demands that there is a kingdom of Heaven, and that it is the best of all things to search for. One of the first consequences of the glimpse ought to be—if it is properly received and sufficiently understood—a resolve to improve oneself, to be more truthful and less excitable, for instance. The effect of a Glimpse upon character may show itself as a passing feeling but it is the business of a quester to show it as a habit of life. Intellectually, the actualizing Christian is committed to the principle that to experience, or to be, the feeling of strength is commendable and is not an expression of conceit. The person therefore enjoys and even savours feelings of security, adequacy, and worth. The peaceful sense of strength and self-confidence that emerges from being aware of one’s own worth and uniqueness is vital for effective living. Jensen is a Christian who is struggling to understand the real meaning of personal strength. He strove desperately, especially with peers where he works, to prove to everyone how adequate he was. He tried to do more work in less time than anyone else. His real motives tended to surface during the lunch hour, when everyone paused for a quick volleyball game. Jensen’s mood for the rest of the day depended upon whether or not his team won the game. If they won, his ego was bolstered and he felt exuberant. If they lost, he became irritable and depressed. On days that he lost, his wife and child noticed he was less involved in family time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
What Jensen has learned through participating in a church growth group is that there is a deeper, more reliable source of personal worth and adequacy available to him. It is the love of God, the love and respect that others have for him, and his own ability to value himself beneficially. As this sinks in more and more, Jensen is becoming increasingly consistent in feeling adequate and worthy throughout the day—regardless of how much work is done or whether his volleyball tram wins or loses. He is becoming freer to approach both his work and his relationships in a creative rather than a competitive way. This is the actualizing expression of the strength polarity. Jensen is learning to transform striving and achieving into contributing and cooperating. Emotionally, the actualizing person is committed to the expression of inner strength, not as an attempt to experience power over others, but rather as an expression of the potency of one’s own being. The person who knows how to experience and express strength in an actualizing way is a real asset to any relationship of which one is a part. For instance, in friendship, marriage, work or community life, this person can be relied upon to be fresh and original. Because the person is not bound by false modesty, there will be a continual flow of creative contributions that come from deep within. These qualities make the person inwardly attractive and interesting. This reflects both how the person experiences life and how other people tend to experience the person who is realistically in good contact with the strength polarity of personality. A key to the healthy expression of strength for the actualizing person is that the personal power that is experienced is used not only in behalf of one’s own well-being, but also as a service to facilitate the well-being and happiness of others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Thus the power of the actualizing Christian is used to edify or build up others, rather than to dominate, intimidate, or exploit them. It is a power made gentle by Christ’s love and insulated by the virtue of humility. Bodily, the strength dimension is experienced by a sense of being able to stand on one’s own two feet and by the ability to reach out and ask for what one wants. We have found that people who are out of touch with the strength polarity can to some extent begin to discover it by stamping their feet firmly into the ground until one feels the muscle strain in calves and thighs, one’s feet will seem to become firmly planted in the ground, like the root of a tree. This helps one feel a sense of strength and self-support. A second exercise, helpful for developing strong resistance to manipulation from one’s environment is to lie on a bed with both knees up and to pound the bed with both fists and say, “I will not give up! I can do it!” Both movements and voice should express conviction. Some practical ways that one’s strengths might be expressed in everyday living are as follows” participating equally in conversations, taking initiative in greeting or meeting others, giving and receiving genuine compliments, giving and receiving constructive criticism, speaking up and negotiating for your reasonable rights, speaking out for the reasonable rights of others, using expressive talk to show feelings, being able to say yes or no when necessary, being willing to confront and handle stressful situations. This may seem like a formidable list for people who are not used to experiencing or expressing their strength. However, it is important to have these behaviours as part of one’s total repertoire of possibilities for interacting with others. #RandolphHaris 15 of 21
These self-actualizing Christian skills can be learned with patience and practice. A great part of courage is having done the thing before. One further characteristic of strength is that it enables us to become active participants in life. When we are in touch with our strength, we do not sit around and gripe, complain, or whine. We do something. We take responsibility for shaping our own lives and the World around us. We may pray with St. Francis of Assisi: “Lord, please help me to accept the things I cannot change, and change the things that I can. And please give me wisdom to know the difference.” “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker [in reverent praise and supplication]. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts as at Meribah and as at Massah in the day of temptation in the wilderness. When your fathers tried My patience and tested Me, proved Me, and saw My work [of judgment]. Forty years long was I grieved and disgusted with that generation, and I said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, and they do not approve, acknowledge, or regard My ways. Wherefore I swore in My wrath that they would not enter My rest [the land of promise],” reports Psalm 95.6-11. Let us look at another passage of Scripture where Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray: And it came to pass, that, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, one of his disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples,” reports Luke 11.1. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Notice that the disciple did not say, “Teach us how to heal the sick or how to cast out demons.” Neither did he ask to be taught how long to pray or when to pray, but he recognized that the power behind Jesus’ ministry was the fact that He knew how to pray accurately. Knowing how to pray accurately is one of the keys to victorious living. The story is told of a missionary walking down a jungle trail in African when suddenly a huge lion appeared in the trail. Being the man of prayer that he was, the missionary fell to his knees and prayed, “Father, I pray that this will be a good Christian lion.” The lion immediately fell to the ground, put his paws together, and said, “Father, I thank You for this food. Now bless it to my body.” The missionary’s payer was answered, but he was still in trouble because it did not bring deliverance. Learn to be specific and accurate in prayer. The disciple asked, Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus Answered: When ye pray, say Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. They kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in Heaven, so in Earth. Give us day by day or daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Notice that Jesus is asking a question here.To help you understand clearly what Jesus is saying, I want to ask you the same question: Would you have a friend like that? If you went to him at midnight and said, “Company came in unexpectedly and I need a loaf of bread. Would you lend me one?” would he say, “No, you ugly thing, you ought to have come by before I went to bed. I cannot give you any bread now”? Would you have a friend like that? Would you want a friend like that? No, of course not. With friends like that, you would not need any enemies. Now you can see what Jesus is saying. Notice He is talking about a friend. There is no relationship, no kinship here at all. He is just a friend. He wants to know if you would have a friend like that. I am sure you have already answered it in your own mind None of us would want a friend like that. “For a friend of mine in his journey has come unto me and I have not what I shall set before him.” Now you can recognize this as a faith statement. He does not have it or see it yet, but he says, “I will set it before him.” Now the Word of God says, “Come boldly unto the throng of grace that we may obtain,” reports Hebrews 4.16. We are to come boldly before the throne of grace—not to beg, plead or hope that something will happen but we should come to obtain! This fellow came to obtain. He did not say, “I hope you will loan me some bread.” He said, “I do not have what I shall set before him.” He did not have it yet, but he was taking faith. It was already in his mouth. “I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give hi, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Now let us find out what the word importunity means. Much has been said about this word, and most of it has been commentary. We need to watch many of the paraphrased editions, for so much of the is the translators’ and editors’ own interpretation. We need to check the Greek and other references to make sure the meaning we have has not been added by man. Some say the work importunity means “persistence.” To just keep on and on. I had a fellow tell e one time: “Now that man just kept beating on the door. He just kept knocking on that door until the man came to give him bread. That is what Jesus is teaching us to do. We are to just keep asking.” That idea is not present in this passage of scripture. In fact, it is exactly opposite of what Jesus is teaching here. This is where we have missed it. This religious thinking has heled people in bondage. This line of thinking has taught us that we receive from God by beating and knocking on the same door until finally we wake up God and eventually talk Him into it. Importunity comes from two Greek words: aneu which means “without” and aidos which means “bashfulness.” Therefore, a literal meaning would be “without bashfulness.” It means bare faceness or boldness (without shame). Because of his boldness he came even at midnight. He had faith that, even if he came at that late hour, he would receive bread. He said, “I have not what I shall set before him.” Jesus said that man will get up and give him all that he needs. Notice that Jesus did not say that his actually happened. He asked us the question: “Would you have a friend like that?” We get the idea that this actually happened, but it did not. Jesus is only using this as an illustration. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Jesus said, “Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” Now hold onto the word friend because it is another key to understanding this scripture. Jesus then says, “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh recieveth; and one that seeketh findeth; and to one that knocketh it shall be opened. The Amplified Bible reads: “Ask and keep on asking’ with a footnote that says, “This is the present imperative and often repeated.” It might be often repeated; but, in this instance, it is not because that would be contrary to other scriptures concerning prayer. (See Mark 11.24; John 15.7,8; 1 John 5.14, 15.) If you take that commentary to be the true meaning of this scripture, it is already distorted in your mind Most people never read the footnote anyway, so they are left with a false impression that will defeat them in their prayer life. When you run into a situation like this, study it carefully and see if it compares to the other teachings of Jesus. Here the translator said that it could have meant that, but it did not because it would refute other things Jesus taught concerning prayer. Those who wished to invigorate themselves quickly should practice prayer. Goals of prayer include: to reduce the number of wandering thoughts; to stop wandering thoughts completely; potential production of a glimpse; lengthening of a glimpse, if obtained; and brining about a glimpse if lost. Draw the Force of God into every pore of your skin until it pervades your whole body. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
At this moment and very fateful hour, I place all Heaven with its power, and the sun with its brightness, and the snow with its whiteness, and fire with all the strength it has, and lightning with its rapid wrath, and the winds with their swiftness along the path, and the sea with its deepness, and the rocks with their steepness, and the Earth with its starkness; all these I place by God’s almighty help and grace, between myself and the powers of Darkness. I arise today though a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness of the Creator of Creation. I arise today through the strength of Heaven; light of sun, radiance of moon, splendour of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of Earth, firmness of rock. I arise today, through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness of the Creator of Creation. Happy are they that dwell in Thy house; they will ever praise Thee. Happy is the people who thus fare; yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. I will extol Thee, my God, O King, and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Three, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts. On the majestic glory of Thy splendour, and on Thy wonderous deeds will I meditate. And humans shall proclaim the might of Thy tremendous acts, and I will recount Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy great goodness, and shall exult in they righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, long forbearing, and abundant in kindness. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Old, and Thy faithful ones shall bless Thee. They shall declare the glory of Thy kingdom, and talk of Thy might; to make known to the sons of humans His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Tell Me What to Do. I’m Sorry. Protect Me. I Can’t. Pray for Me. Help. It’s No Use Anyway.
So much for what you know, My dear Devout. Now let me tell you some things you may not know. When you receive this Sacramento, Spiritual Grace is conferred, and Virtue dimmed is restored to its original beauty. Once covered with soot and sin, the pallid soul will soon blush into a full palette of colours. Sometimes this grace is so great and devotion so great and devotion so pent that they burst, coursing through not just the mind, but the body, replacing weakness with strength. Yet, our own tepidity and negligence cause a great deal of pain, even misery. We should be drawn to receive You, O Christ, with greater affection, but we are not. How is this possible since You are the Total Hope, Total Merit, of those who will be saved? You are our Sanctification and Redemption, are you not? Consolation of us poor wayfarers, and the Eternal Fruition of the Saints? And so it is that Jesus Christ Grieves—and grieves again—that so many turn so little to this Salutary Mystery, which praises Heaven and supports the World! Alas, how blind, how hard, the human heart is! We should develop more devotion to the Ineffable Gift we receive every Sunday. If our devotion takes a dip, as for the rest of these days of the week, then we should do something about it. In any given year as many as 30 percent of the adults and 20 percent of the children and adolescents in the United States of America display serious psychological disturbances and are in need of clinical treatment. It is estimated that up to 25 percent of adults have a significant anxiety disorder (in flexible and maladaptive personality traits), 1 percent has schizophrenia (loses touch with reality for an extended period of time), 1 experiences the brain deterioration of Alzheimer’s disease, and 11 percent abuse alcohol or other drugs. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Add to these figures as many as 600,000 suicide attempts, 500,000 sexual assaults by physical force, and 3 million cases of child abuse each year, and it becomes apparent that abnormal psychological functioning is a pervasive problem in this country. The numbers and rates in other countries are similarly high. Furthermore, most people go through periods of extreme tension, demoralization, or other forms of psychological discomfort in their lives and at such times experience at least some of the distress associated with psychological disorders. It is tempting to conclude that unique characteristics of the modern World are responsible for these numerous emotional problems—perhaps rapid technological change, the growing threats of terrorism, or a decline in religious, family, or other support systems. Although the special pressures of modern life probably do contribute to psychological dysfunctioing, they are hardly its primary cause. Historical records demonstrate every society, past and present has witnessed psychological abnormality. Perhaps, then, the proper place to begin our examination of abnormal behavior and treatment is in the past. As we look back, we can see how each society has struggled to understand and treat psychological problems, and we can observe that many present-day ideas and treatments have roots in the past. A look backward makes it clear that progress in the understanding and treatment of mental disorders has already been a steady movement forward. In fact, many of the inadequacies and controversies that mark the clinical field today parallel those of the past. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
At the same time, looking back can help us to appreciate the significance of recent breakthroughs and the importance of the journey that lies ahead. Most of our knowledge of prehistoric societies has been acquired indirectly and is based on inferences made from archaeological discoveries. Historians scrutinize the unearthed bones, artwork, and other remnants of ancient societies to find clues to people’s customs and beliefs. Any conclusions are at the best tentative and are always subject to revision in the face of new discoveries. Thus our knowledge of how ancient societies viewed and treated people with mental disturbances is limited. Most historians believe that prehistoric societies regarded abnormal behaviour as the work of evil spirits. These early societies apparently explained all phenomena as resulting from the actions of magical, sometimes sinister beings who controlled the World. In particular, they viewed the human body and mind as a battle ground between external forces of good and evil. Abnormal behaviour was typically interpreted as a victory by evil spirits, and the cure for such behaviour was to force the demons from a victim’s body. This supernatural view of abnormality may have begun as far back as the Stone Age, a half-million years ago. Some skulls from that period recovered in Europe and South America show evidence of an operation called trephination, in which a stone instrument, or trephine, was used to cut away a circular section of the skull. Historians surmise that this operation was performed as a treatment for severe abnormal behaviour—either hallucinations, which people saw or heard things not actually present, or melancholia, characterized by extreme sadness and immobility. The purpose of opening the skull was to release the evil spirits that were supposedly causing the problem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In recent decades, some historians have questioned whether Stone Age people actually believe that evil spirits caused abnormal behaviour. Trephination may instead have been used to remove bone splinters or blood clots caused by stone weapons during tribal warfare. Either way, later societies clearly did attribute abnormal behaviour to possession by demons. Egyptian, Chinese, and Hebrew writings all account for psychological deviance this way. The Christian Bible, for example, describes how an evil spirit from the Lord affected King Saul and how David feigned madness in order to convince his enemies that he was visited by divine forces. However, did anyone else find it odd that when King David’s newborn baby was dreadfully sick near death, David prayed night and day, believing that God could heal his child. He would not eat or drink; he did not shave or shower. He did not attend to any business. He would not do anything but pray, crying out to God. Despite David’s passionate prayers, on the seventh day the child died. David’s servants worried how they were going to tell the king that his baby was dead. They thought he would be so devastated, so distraught that he could not handle it. However, when David finally figured out what had happened, he surprised them all. He got up off the floor, washed his face, and put on some fresh clothes. Then he asked his servants to bring him some food, and he sat down and ate a meal. His servants were confused. They said, “David, when your child was alive, you fasted and prayed. But now that he is gone, you act as though nothing is wrong.” David answered, “Yes, I fasted and prayed when my son was sick, thinking that God might heal him. But now that he is gone, I cannot bring him back. He will not return to me, but I will go to be with him.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
“But now that he is gone, I cannot bring him back. He will not return to me, but I will go to be with him.” Notice David’s attitude. He did not get bitter. He did not question God. He could have snarled, “God, I thought You loved me. Why didn’t You answer my prayers?” David did not do that. He dared to trust God in the midst of his disappointment. He washed his face and moved on with his life. The treatment for abnormality in these early societies was often exorcism. The idea was to coax the evil spirits to leave or to make the person’s body an uncomfortable place in which to live. A shaman, or priest, might recite prayers, plead with the evil spirits, insult them, perform magic, make loud noises, or have the person drink bitter potions. If these techniques failed, the shaman performed a more extreme form of exorcism, such as whipping or starving the person. The key feature of antisocial personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as ASPD) is a pervasive pattern od disregard for and violation of other persons’ rights. This pattern is manifested in failure to conform to social norms, deceitfulness, lying, impulsivity, aggressiveness, disregard for the safety of others, irresponsibility, and lack of remorse for wrongdoing to others. The pattern is evidenced by age 18 and is foreshadowed by conduct disorder before the age of 15. People with ASPD behave as if the rules and norms of society do not apply to them. Of all the personality disorders, ASPD is characterized by the greatest hostility. Also, not that the terms psychopathy and sociopathy have often been used to descried ASPD. They argue that the distinction between the two lies in the origins of the disorder: Psychopathy arises from a constitutional disposition, whereas sociopathy results from poor socialization, typically defective parenting. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Like all other personality disorders, ASPD is associated with numerous and serious interpersonal implications. In a unique comparative study, it was found that adolescents who went on to develop ASPD as young adults were typified by trouble with the law, a poor work record, and early cohabitation. In contrast, those who developed other personality disorders were characterized more by social isolation and other types of problematic interpersonal relations. People with symptoms of ASPD tend to endorse a ludus (game-playing) love style, and score low on the eros (pleasures of the flesh) love style. The ludus love styles appears to fit well with ASPD in that it is not an intimate means of relating to another person, and may well be seen as irritating by a large percentage of the population. This irritation and displeasure in others are obviously of little concern to a person with ASPD. On the contrary, the manipulations and “mind games” played upon others may be sources of satisfaction and amusement for such a person. The family-of-origin backgrounds of people with ASPD are expectedly troublesome. Poor relations with parents and a history of physical abuse have been tired to symptoms of ASPD. Gross neglect, to the point of abuse, is also fairly common in the family backgrounds of those with ASPD. Parental absence is equally prevalent in these families, especially through separation, divorce, death, or incarceration. A provocative hypothesis that may link these dysfunctional family-of-origin experiences with adult ASPD centers around a breakdown in the normal development of empathy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
During childhood, those who will later develop ASPD learn to recode vicarious fear as excitement and their victims’ suffering as something akin to righteous punishment. One must entertain the possibility that this inverted emotional reaction was learned from the parents of future adults with ASPD may model an emotional indifference to their children’s suffering—an indifference that the children eventually internalize, and with which they then treat others. It would be a gross oversimplification to asset that parental neglect and abuse lead to ASPD. Parental abuse may be an adequate explanation for the aggressiveness and hostility of those with ASPD, but it does not explain their resistance to control and conformity with social norms. The combination of parental neglect and abuse with sporadic and harsh discipline is what leads more specifically to ASPD. The parents of future adults with ASPD, who perhaps have psychosocial problems of their own, may oscillate between excessive permissiveness due to their absence, and stern discipline driven by unchecked impulse. This accordingly makes these children resent any intrusion, while placing a high premium on independence and a lack of interference from others. Like empathy breakdown hypothesis, this formulation has considerable intuitive appeal, but has yet to be fully tested and supported empirically. People with ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) appear to lack a social conscience. They shamelessly exploit, manipulate, and aggress against others, with no apparent remorse. They often run afoul of the law and have difficulties in their work and personal relationships. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
People with ASPD have an orientation toward romantic relationship that has more to do with playing games than establishing a mutually meaningful connection. One often finds considerable dysfunction in the family backgrounds of those with ASPD, replete with the attendant physical abuse and neglect. Sporadic and harsh parental discipline may also figure into the etiology of this personality disorder. These disordered family processes may contribute to ASPD through modeling the replacement of vicarious fear with excitement, and by creating hostility and fierce independence as a result of stern but sporadic discipline. To live in the present moment, making the most of this day, we must forgive those people who have hurt us in the past. “Now we recognize and know that the Law is good if anyone uses it lawfully [for the purpose for which it was designed], knowing and understanding this: that the Law is not enacted for the righteous (the upright and just, who are in right standing with God), but for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinful, for the irreverent and profane, for those who strike and beat and [even] murder fathers and strike and [beat and [even] murder mothers, for manslayers, [for] impure and immoral persons, those who abuse themselves with humans, kidnapers, liars, perjurers—and whatever else is opposed to wholesome teaching and sound doctrine,” reports I Timothy 2.8-10. Too often, we try to collect our debts from other people. When somebody hurts us, we feel like they owe us. Somebody should pay for that pain we have suffered! That is what happen when one is trapped in the past. One is always trying to collect those debts. One will take it out on other people even thought they were not even involved. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Moreover, one should not drag something that happened in the past into one’s relationships today. Do not punish one’s spouse, children, pets, friends, neighbours, nor coworker for something that happened to one when one was growing up. Instead, turn it over to God. Keep your heart free from bitterness and resentment, and do not try to collect a debt that only God can pay. Start each day afresh and anew, especially in your family relationship. Do not let little things build up. Do not harbour unforgiveness and resentment. Do not allow the attitude of entitlement to overcome you. If one is not careful, even though vengeful snubs may seem insignificant to one, but over time that bitter attitude will build up, and it will end up causing one major problems. “Holding fast to faith (that leaning of the entire human personality on God in absolute trust and confidence) and having a good (clear) conscience. By rejecting and thrusting from them [their conscience], some individuals have made shipwreck of their faith,” reports I Timothy 1.19. If one is poisoned with unforgiveness, bitterness, or resentment on the inside, one has got to do one’s best to keep one’s own heart free and clean, because it will eventually show up on the outside. One cannot keep it buried. It will come out and begin to affect one’s personality. One will be hard to get alone with, easily offended, uptight, and negative. “You are to deliver this human over to Satan for physical discipline [to destroy carnal lusts which prompted one to incest], that [one’s] spirit may [yet] one saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ,” reports I Corinthians 5.5. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
That is why the Scripture instructs us to put on a fresh new attitude every morning. Each morning, forgive the people who hurt you. Every morning, let go of your disappointments and setbacks. Each new morning, receive God’s mercy and forgiveness for the mistakes one has made, and forgive others for the hurts they have inflicted on one. Today focus on one’s possibilities; focus on what one can change rather than what one cannot change. What is done is done. If somebody offended, disappointed, or mistreated one yesterday, either one can get bitter or one can forgive them and move on. Remember, if one refuses to forgive others, God will not forgive one. If one lost one’s temper (went off) yesterday, quit dwelling on it. One cannot undo that. One needs to ask for forgiveness and then do better today. Was your boss, Dr. Blake, rude to you and jumped down your throat? Let it go. Maybe she sees great potential in you and expects you to put in 110 percent so you can excel. Do not go to work tomorrow with a chip on your shoulder. It is a new day. If things did not workout in a situation the way you thought they would, that is okay, God has something better for you. Press on and know that all things work out for the best for those who love God. However, do not take the easy way out and evade responsibility for your words or actions. If you have done wrong, offended someone or hurt somebody, you should seek that person’s forgiveness. However, if you are trying to fix something that you know there is no way to fix, and you have done everything you can do, you must simply leave that up to God. Receive His mercy and go out to live a successful life now. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
In obedience to the revelation commanding the New York Saints to move to Ohio, all those living in New York who belonged to the church prepared to leave as soon as spring arrived. Early in the spring of 1831 many gathered at a house on the Erie Canal, which had been rented by Joseph’s father, Joseph Smith, Sr. The Erie Canal crossed the state of New York and was actually only a large ditch. It was scarcely wider than a present-day city street, and the water in it was about four feet deep. The boats were pulled along the canal by horses which walked along a pathway at the edge of the canal. It was quite expensive to travel by canal, but the Saints considered this the best way to travel with their women and children. They rented a boat to save expenses. This boat would take them by canal to Buffalo, and there they would take a lake boat on Lake Erie to a point near Kirtland. The prospects of traveling so far caused much excitement among the people, for most of the had not been farther than a few miles from their homes. About eighty of them gathered together. Each brought one’s personal belongings and as much food as was considered necessary for the trip. A friend gave Joseph’s mother, Lucy Smith, seventeen dollars (2021 adjusted for inflation $540.46), which she later used to buy food for those who had not brought enough. One day while they were traveling on the canal, there was a breakdown and they had to wait until the canal was repaired. That evening some of the men preached to a large number of people who gathered. These people asked them to return and preach again the next night, but they breakdown had been repaired and by morning the Saints were on their way again. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
They were met at Buffalo by another group of Saints who were going to Ohio. They all were anxious to be on their way to Kirtland, but there was four feet of ice on the lake and boats could leave. Food and money were so limited that the Saints were faced with the problem of where to stay. Mother Smith remembered that her brother’s former partner was now a lack-boat captain, and she had no trouble finding him. When she explained their trouble, he suggested that she and all her friends come on board his ship to wait until the ice broke so they could sail. After boarding the boat the little band of pilgrims knelt in prayer on the deck to thank God this this pressing problem had been solved. Almost immediately the ice broke, opened up a channel, and they were able to sail. The ice closed behind them and it was three weeks before another boat left the port. The trip was long and stormy. The boat was reported lost and their Kirtland friends feared they might never see them again. At last, weary with the storms, the boatload of Saints landed about eleven miles from Kirtland. Two young men walked to Kirtland, and soon the Kirtland Saints were taking them home. The reunion was a happy one and everyone enjoyed the breakfast at the Edward Partridge Home. For many of them it was the first real meal they had eaten in weeks. In the Early months of 1831 Orson Pratt walked from New York to Kirtland (about three hundred miles) preaching as he traveled. His missionary efforts were very successful and he baptized many people. Lyman Wight traveled about six hundred miles through Ohio and Pennsylvania, preaching as he went. He baptized 393 people. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Many of these newly baptized Saints obeyed God’s instructions to father to Kirtland. As summer neared practically all those who belonged to the church, with the exception of the little band in Missouri, were living in Kirtland. It was a strain on the small community to care for so many people. Some were very poor. Others were families of missionaries who were away preaching, and were thus unable to earn a livelihood for their families. All who came to Kirtland needed homes, and many were without sufficient food and clothing. God wished His people to be equal and to have their need supplied. To help the Saints know how to care for so many people, a revelation was given through Joseph Smith in May 1831, in which Edward Partridge was given the responsibility of organizing the people. Instructions given at the time have formed the basis for the law of the church which teaches people to be unselfish and to have consideration one for another. God instructed His Saints to build a storehouse. All things, both money and food which were more than was needful for the want of the people, were to be brought to the storehouse to be kept in the hands of the bishop. Those who were in need could then go to the storehouse and receive their needs. According to this law they were to be given help in accordance with the size of their families and the amount of help they required. In this revelation a promise was given to those who would be obedient to this law and contribute to the storehouse: “Behold, this shall be an example unto my servant Edward Partridge, in other places, in all churches. And whoso is found a faithful, a just, and a wise steward, shall enter into the joy of one’s Lord, and shall inherit eternal life.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
A General Conference was held at Kirtland on June 6, 1831. All the elders who could attend were there, for Joseph had written them telling them God had instructed all who possibly could to attend this Conference. By revelation God commanded Joseph and Oliver Cowdery to ordain each other to the office of the high priest. They then ordained sixteen other men to this same office. The office of high priest is the highest office in the Melchisedec priesthood. It is the office held by Jesus Christ, the Son of God. During this conference a revelation was given through Joseph Smith, Jr., which indicated the future location of Zion: “I, the Lord, will make known unto you what I will that ye shall do from this time until the next Conference, which shall be held in Missouri, upon the land which I will consecrate unto my people.” This caused much excitement because Missouri was far away on the edge of the Indian country. Father, I dare to forgive others, because I know You have forgiven me. Help me each day to be tenderhearted, to forgive those people who have hurt me, used me, or otherwise brought pain into my life. Prayer tries to imitate the death of cry of dying creatures, the vocal expression of their fear of death. Such an imitation of the physical side of dying should being with it, momentarily, the associated death fear whose gravity and importance naturally swallow up all lesser fears. If this exercise is done twice daily, these lesser fears gradually become weaker, while the fear of death is itself overcome. If the Kingdom of Heaven is atmospheric, then why should we trouble to become unselfish, disciplined, and intelligent? Why bother to improve our character at all? No! the wise student does not think like this. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The power of good behaviour and payer augment the body’s energy. A heavy weight which one could hardly lift ordinarily can be lifted much more easily if a deep, long prayer is first taken. A long forward leap or a high jump can be more successfully achieved by following the same method. Health and strength are restored to an extend as long as one believes. When a faithful prayer is united to keen thought, and when the fused result is driven upwards physically to the brain and mentally in lofty aspirations to the Soul, the visitant will know by a beautiful change of consciousness that it is welcome. The importance of prayer is not only a physical one, because prayer enables us to get the full manifestation of the lifeforce in the body, but also because it allows for a fuller and freer manifestation of the mind. The danger of developing the skills of prayer for the sake of developing personal powers is that if the powers are finally gained, the spiritual path may be lost. You know we have sung that song, “When we all get to Heaven, we will sing and shout the victory.” We have to put victory off until then; but if we would learn to act on the Word, we could shout the victory here on Earth. Jesus said we are to pray, Thy will be done in Earth, as it is in Heaven. It is God’s will that we have victory here and that we shout it here on Earth. However, this does not come overnight. I drive a car, but I did not learn to drive a car in one day. It took me months (or years because I am still learning) of study and practice. The first few lessons I thought I would never learn, but each time it became easier. The first I saw one of those big BMW’s, I wanted to drive it, but was nervous. I thought it is so beautiful. I will have to learn how to drive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
If you say, “Well, I believe in prayer, then prayer ought to work for me,” in the same way you could say, “I believe in driving, therefore I ought to be able to drive.” Just because you believe in driving does not mean you can get in that BMW M760Li XDrive sedan and drive it. You might not know how to operate it. You might push the wrong button! Well, what makes us think the Word of God is any different? If we are going to operate in the Word accurately, we will have to spend time learning. It is the same with the law of electricity. If you do not understand the laws that govern electricity, you are liable to get into trouble. If you violate the laws that govern it, the same power that will wash your clothes and cook your food and heat your house will kill you. The Word of God is no less powerful. It operates on laws that will work when applied by whosoever will. If I got in an airplane and said, “Well, I know that the book says if you are going to climb over a 50-foot obstacle in 1200 feet, you must use 20-degree flaps, but I just do not feel like it. It looks to me like it ought to clear the hanger without flaps.” It does not matter how I feel or how it looks, I better go by what the book says or I am going to be in trouble. So are our prayers in trouble when we do not use God’s rulebook. When you do thing accurately according to the Word of God, you have all Heaven behind you and the Word will work for you. God’s Word is the Answer. We could sum it up by saying that prayer is not telling God the problem. Whatever you desire is what you should pray, not the problems. Turn loose of the problem. Take hold of the answer and make it your prayer and your confession of faith. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
As an example, let us say you have a financial need. You would pray: Father, in the name of Jesus, Your Word says that You will supply all my need according to Your riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Your Word says that whatsoever things I desire when I pray to believe that I received them. Therefore I believe that my needs are supplied according to Your riches in glory by Christ Jesus. I have given; therefore, it is given to me—good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. I have abundance and there is no lack. I sow bountifully; therefore, I reap bountifully. Father, You make all grace abound toward me and I, having all sufficiency in all things, do abound to every good work. For the Lord is my Shepherd and I do not want. The Word of God is the answer. Pray the Word—it works! Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. You have been given a glimpse of the goal. Now you must strive to attain that goal. The glimpse itself has enabled you to understand the consciousness and the characteristics to strive for. Both are so subtle that words merely hint at them and may be meaningless. In receiving an experience beyond words, you have therefore been so fortunate as to be favoured with the Overself’s Grace. Merely to enjoy such a glimpse is not enough. It must be turned to use, made into a standard for thought and living, applied to every situation in which one finds oneself. One must let its beneficent memory shed peace, goodwill, and kindliness on all around. The illuminatory experience may come to one who is without previous preparation, seeking, effort, or self-discipline. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
However, if it comes so unexpectedly it leaves just as unexpectedly. The visitant is transient. The effects are permanent. If it be asked why it should come to such a person, who neither desired nor strove for it, when others are unable to secure it despite years of seeking it, the answer must be that one worked for it in earlier lives. One has forgotten oneself for an interval but the illumination recalls one to the quest even though it passes away: hence the permanency of its moral and mystical results. What one see in that sudden flash is to be slowly worked out in one’s character and conduct during the hours and months of subsequent years. Indeed, every minute offers the chance to transform oneself by the smallest of degrees. What one feels during those moments one has to become during the years that follow. All one’s life has to converge upon this divine focus, all one’s experience has to draw its supreme significance from it. Jonah the Old Testament prophet had the same problem of many modern-day Christians: he ran away from his own great calling. The nonactualizing Christian may not be swallowed by a whale, but probably God will arrange some modern kind of encounter that will awaken us to our greatness and unique mission in life. Jesus showed the ability to jar people into an awareness of their potential for fulfillment. According to the Gospel narratives, Jesus moved fancy women and men, tax collectors, religious workers, fishermen, shepherds, soldiers—anyone. Ironically, in surrendering to personal encounter with Jesus, they discovered how valuable and great they themselves were! #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Yet in the church today, there are often messages given to people that say: “Do not think too highly of yourself”; “There is nothing great about you; only God is great”; “Pride goes before the fall.” This can lead to a false sense of humility or even a self-hatred. The individual who has difficulty accepting one’s genuine and God-given strengths often discounts compliments instead of graciously receiving and appreciating them. One probably has difficulty complimenting or praising others too. The Scriptures present a different picture of the believer. Just as God gives his glory to Christ, Jesus gives His glory to the Christian (John 17.22). The actualizing Christian discovers this and feels gratitude, strength, and joy. One can vernalize one’s feelings by such phrases as “I am adequate,” “I am capable,” “I am strong,” and “I am powerful.”” The awareness of one’s strengths, gifts, and talents is an important part of healthy self-love and self-esteem. The actualizing alternative to an overbearing strength is personal power. When one does not need to use absolute control over others or oneself, but rather feels that one is a vessel through which the power of the Holy Spirit is expressed, then one can say with Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” reports Galatians 2.20. When this happens, relationships cease to be authoritarian, controlling, or manipulative, but rather emphasize cooperation and give maximum space to be. Sensing one’s strengths is reflected in an unpretentious kind of self-confidence. Because the actualizing Christian’s strength is rooted in the grace of God, one shares in God’s serenity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Psalmist expressed it this way: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers,” reports Psalm 1.3. This is not the manipulative form of strength that we saw in the past; the striving Christian was rigid, tense, and compulsive. Rather, this genuine type of strength is a quiet, relaxed flow of power from the presence of the Holy Spirit in one’s life. The actualizing Christian can do great things in the World, but the way that these things are done does not come across to others as arrogant, self-conscious, or forced. The actualizing Christian experiences firsthand the biblical principle, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord,” reports Zechariah 4.6. O our Father, thy Sky, hear us and please make us strong. O our Mother the Earth, please hear us and give us support. O spirit of the East, send us your Wisdom. O Spirit of the South, may we tread your path of life. O Spirit of the West, may we always be ready for the long journey. O Spirit of the North, please purify us with your cleansing winds. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily yea, soon; and ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted be honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yes, us beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life for us and for all America; and say ye, Amen. May He who establisheth peace in the Heavens, grant peace unto us and unto all America; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Nothing Ever Turns Out Right! Somebody Take Care of Me! God, Why Not Make Everything O.K.?
Such great devotion was in vogue in the days the Ark of God was being built, as was remembrance of divine praise at the Ark of the Covenant. However, that was then, and this is now. Should I not, and indeed the rest of the Christian population, have more reverence, more devotion, in the presence of the Mystery and in the reception of Sacrament? Every year, any number of Christians go to great pains to visit as many shrines as they can, there to ay respects to the relics of the Saints and to hear of the wonders worked through the Saints’ intercession. Of course, the pilgrims reverence with their lips the holy bones resting on silk and cased in gold, but they also gawk at the sumptuousness of the churches housing the shrines. You know what is wrong with this picture? Right in front of one, on this very altar, without one’s having to lift a finger, let alone a foot, God is alive and well. That is to say, God, Holy of Holies, Creator of Humankind, and Lord of Angels. However, if I wonder what the dearest Lord and Friend has against pilgrimage? Perhaps this flurry of activity seems holy at first, but in reality it is a curiosity that plagues all Humankind. That is to say, there is a certain freshness that comes with hithering and thithering, with seeing new things in toxic places. However, when people tally up the expense of pilgrimaging, they have paid too much for too little. That is to say, the fruit of a pilgrimage is conversion, reform of life. However, that seems to have taken a back seat in their minds, if not their souls; they have preferred happy times in holy places to the True Contrition they could find at home, at the Winchester, the shrine where their soul resides. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Here and now, in the Sacrament of the Altar, He is totally present, Jesus, Man and Christ. Right here, within one’s grasp, Eternal Salvation awaits, to be harvested just as often one undertake Communion with dignity and devotion. Pilgrims, beware! The paths to this shrine are rocky, and slippery are the pavers marked Levity, Curiosity, and Sensuality; for true cobbles, rely only on Firm Faith, Devout Hope, and Sincere Charity. O God, Invisible Creator of the World, how wondrously You treat us! How sweetly and graciously You carry on with Your chosen—these are the people You have invited to join you in Your Sacrament! Yes, I know You low opinion of Us Devouts, but I just have to say that the Sacrament has a special appeal to our hearts. We are truly faithful friends of Yours, and we have planned our whole lives around reformation of soul. As a result, we frequently receive this Most Worthy Sacrament, and from it we derive the great grace of devotion and the love of virtue. O admirable yet hidden grace of the Sacramento, only the faithful of Christ have known it well! The faithless and the sinful, however, have no experience to match it. Every relation is based either on quantity, a double and half; or on action and passion, as the doer and the deed, the father and the son, the master and the servant, and the like. Now as there is no quantity in God, for He is great without quantity, as Augustine says (De Trin. I, !) it follows that a real relation in God can be based only on action. Such relations are not based on the actions of God according to any extrinsic procession, forasmuch as the relations in God can be understood only in regard to those actions according to which there are internal, and not external, processions in God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
These processions are two only, as above explained, one derived from the action of the intellect, the procession of the Word; and the other from the action of the will, the procession of love. In respect of each of these processions two opposite relations arise; one of which is the relation of the person proceeding from the principle; the other is the relation of the principle Himself. The procession of the Word is called generation in the proper sense of the term, whereby it is applied to living things. Now the relation of the principle of generation in perfect living beings is called paternity; and the relation of the one proceeding from the principle is called filiation. However, the procession of Love has no proper name of its own; and so neither have the ensuing relations a proper name of their own. The relation of the principle of this procession is called spiration; and the relation of the person proceeding is called procession: although these two names belong to the processions or origins themselves, and not to the relations. In those things in which there is a difference between the intellect and its object, and the will and its object, there can be a real relation, both of science to its object, and of the willer to the object willed. In God, however, the intellect and its object are one and the same; because by understanding Himself, God understands all other things; and the same applies to His will and the object that He wills. Hence, it follows that in God these kinds of relations are not real; as neither is the relation of a thing to itself. Nevertheless, the relation to the word is a real relation; because the word is understood as proceeding by an intelligible action; and not as a thing understood. For when we understand a stone; that which the intellect conceives from the thing understood, is called the word. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Intelligible relations in ourselves are infinitely multiplied, because a human understands a stone by one act, and by another act understands that one understands the stone, and again by another, understands that one understands this; thus the acts of understanding are infinitely multiplied, and consequently also the relations understood. This does not apply to God, inasmuch as He understand all things by one act alone. Ideal relations exist as understood by God. Hence it does not follow from their plurality that there are many relations in God; but that God knows these many relations. Equality and similitude in God are not real relations; but are only logical relations. The way from one term to another and conversely in the same; nevertheless the mutual relations are not the same. Hence, we cannot conclude that the relation of the father to the son is the same as that of the son to the father; but we conclude this of something absolute, if there were such between them. “Let one gives one’s cheek to the One Who smites one [even through His human agents]; let one be filled [full] with [men’s] reproach [in meekness]. For the Lord will not cast off forever!,” reports Lamentations 3.30-31. What are the signs whereby one shall know that this is an authentic glimpse of reality? First, it is and shall remain ever present. There is no future in it and no past. Second, the pure spiritual experience comes without excitement, is reported without exaggeration, and needs no external authority to authenticate it. The glimpse also does in part for a human what initiation did in some ancient mystical institutions. It sets one on the road of a new life, a life more earnestly and more consciously devoted to the quest of Overself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The glimpse silently bids one dedicate, or rededicate anew, the remainder of one’s life on Earth to this undertaking. It is a baptism with inner light more far-reaching than the baptism with physical water. The motives and reactions of a spiritually intuitive human will necessarily be on a higher level than those of a human driven by animal and Worldly compulsions only. And once you are reborn in the heart, life will become what it should be—the realization that you are outworking a higher destiny than the merely personal one. Another noteworthy mark of the true glimpse is its purificatory effect. This is usually temporary but in a few cases it has been permanent. When one has this first unprecedented experience, when one knows and feels that one is a part of divine being, one is born “in Christ.” However, it is not for one to stand at street corners and announce to the multitude that one has had this glimpse. The sustained consciousness of the Overself puts its mark upon a human’s face. They are humans with “the shine” on their faces, like the one who descended from Sinai. One emerges from the old human that one was, from the ego-ridden nature, as a snake emerges from its old skin. The old self which one has left behind and which once so occupied one’s interest now seems ugly, bad, and dull. So great is the change in one that it also seems like a stranger, not entitled to bear one’s name. However synical and blasé may have been one’s attitude in earlier days, it will yield to and melt in the sunny light of this second birth. Those who have experienced a glimpse of this blessed Reality or, better, established themselves in it, may share its atmosphere with others in silent communion. However, on a lesser level, they may also share with the in phrased speech the thoughts it provokes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The more one becomes familiar with this experience, the easier one can describe it. One who has been touched by the goodness comes out of one’s sleep, says the Old World wisdom. For one has a knowledge which appears as a special and unusual kind of awareness that escapes most other people. There comes a time when out of the silence within oneself there comes the spiritual guidance which one needs for one’s further course. It comes sometimes as a delicate feeling, sometimes as a strong one, sometimes in a clearly formulated message, and sometimes out of the circumstances and happenings themselves. Not only does it tell one and teach one, but sometimes it does the same for others. Such is the effect of the Divine Life now working increasingly within one. You are saved the moment this divine power takes possession of you, but not otherwise. The dictionary defines an eccentric as a person who deviates from common behaviour patterns or displays odd or whimsical behaviour. However, how can we separate a psychologically healthy person who has unusual habits from a person whose oddness is a symptom of psychopathology? For years, little research was done on eccentrics, but some recent studies and reviews seem to have started the ball rolling. For example, the researcher David Weeks studied 1,000 eccentrics over a 10-year period and was able to pin-point 15 characteristic common to them. Altogether, he estimates that as many as 1 in 5,000 persons may be “classic, full-time eccentrics.” Men and women seem equally prone to such patterns. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Weeks suggests that eccentrics do not typically suffer from mental disorders. Whereas the unusual behaviour of persons with mental disorders is thrust upon them and usually causes them suffering, eccentricity is chosen freely and provides pleasure. In short, eccentrics know they are different and glory in it. Similarly, the thought process of eccentrics are not severely disrupted, and they do not leave the person dysfunctional. In fact, it was also discovered the eccentrics actually had fewer emotional problems than the general population. Perhaps being an “original” is good for mental health. The eccentrics in his study also seemed physically healthier than others, visiting a doctor only once every eight years on average. Weeks concludes that most eccentrics, despite their deviant behaviour—perhaps even because of it—are happy, well-adjusted, and joyful people. According to Weeks, the following 15 qualities (in descending order of importance) are characteristic of eccentrics. The first 5 are the most definitive, but possessing any 10 may qualify a person as an eccentric: Nonconforming, creative, strongly curious, idealistic, happily obsessed with a hobby (often more than one), aware from early childhood of being different from others, intelligence, opinionated and outspoken, noncompetitive, unusual eating or living habits, not interested in the opinions or company of others, mischievous sense of humour, single, eldest or only child, bad speller. Are you eccentric? #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Once clinicians decide that a person is indeed suffering from some form of psychological abnormality, they seek to treat it. Treatment, or therapy is a procedure designed to change abnormal behaviour into more normal behaviour; it, too, requires careful definition. For clinical scientists, the problem is closely related to defining abnormality. Therapy has three essential features: A sufferer who seeks relief from the healer. A trained, socially accepted healer, whose expertise is accepted by sufferer and one’s social group. A series of contact between the healer and the sufferer, through which the healer, often with the assistance of a group, tries to produce certain changes in the sufferer’s emotional state, and behaviour. Some clinicians view abnormality as an illness and so consider therapy a procedure that helps cure the illness. Others see abnormality as a problem in living and therapists as teachers of more functional behavior and thought. Clinicians even differ on what to call the person undergoing therapy: those who see abnormality as an illness speak of the “patient,” while those who view it as a problem in living refer to the “client.” Because both terms are so common, many use them interchangeably. Despite their differences, most clinicians do agree that large numbers of people need therapy of one kind or another. People with histrionic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as HPD) exhibit a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking. Their social interactions are characterized by inappropriately seductive or provocative behaviour, rapidly shifting and shallow emotions, excessively impressionistic speech that is lacking in detail, and self-dramatization. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Persons with HPD tend to use physical appearances to draw attention to themselves, consider relationships to be more intimate than they really are, and are rather easily influenced by other people. These persons are resistant to being pushed into the background, and want to be made to feel special, with a tendency toward anger and jealousy when not acknowledged. Using a Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour, it has been discovered that people with HPD wish for active love and protection while harbouring a fear of being ignored by others. Unquestionably, the interpersonal theatrics of these people are cries for attention, and most of their symptoms are in the service of this primary goal. A distinctive quality of HPD is its inherent interpersonal quality: Interaction with others is required for expression of the disorder. Obviously something is seriously awry on the interpersonal terrain of persons with HPD. Although such people are often judged to be more physically attractive than their nondisordered peers, this physical attractiveness is associated with a greater reliance on immature defense mechanisms, such as projection and regression. These findings suggest a pattern of superficial relations based on gaining attention through physical attractiveness, in the absence of any well-developed interpersonal coping and problem-solving skills. Compared to healthy controls, persons with HPD score lower in assertiveness involving pleasures of the flesh despite their flirtations, and exhibit more phobic attitudes toward pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Expectedly, the subjects with HPD in this study also reported lower martial satisfactions than controls. These same respondents indicated relatively high levels of preoccupation with pleasures of the flesh, along with boredom and dysfunction with pleasures of the flesh. In a unique study with gay men, Johnson et al. (2000) found that symptoms of HPD were negatively correlated with receiving social support, and positively correlated with interpersonal conflict and loneliness. In an epidemiological study, it would found that the prevalence rate of HPD was about five times higher in divorced and separated persons than in people who were married. Looking back at the early interpersonal experiences of people with HPD, one sees a pattern of turmoil. For example, sexual abuse is often evident in the early home environments of such individuals. In a similar study, people with Cluster B (dramatic-emotional”) personality disorders (id est, antisocial personality disorder, BPD, HPD, and NDP) indicated that they experienced a pattern of parental overprotection coupled with lower parental care. Although parental overprotection and sexual abuse may appear antithetical at first glance, each is indicative of poor boundary regulation. Other family-of-origin processes that are related to HPD include high achievement orientation, an intellectual/cultural orientation, and high levels of parental control. What cases HPD? Undoubtedly this disorder, like other personality disorders, grows out of an amalgamation of temperament (which comes from genetic predisposition) and character (which is the developing aspect of one’s personality that is shaped by experience). #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The character of people with HPD may be strongly tied to interpersonal interactions. Experts believe that this disorder is often preceded by rare parental punishment and unpredictable parental rewarding, resulting in the creation of behaviours that are directed toward securing rewards, developing a sense of personal competence, and seeking approval for approval’s sake. In developing this social learning hypothesis, it has been noted that when parents offer approval on a variable schedule, the child who will later develop HPD becomes frustrated, and learns to exaggerate one’s behaviours in the service of obtaining compliments and affection. Unless the parents recognize this conduct for what it is worthy, a vicious cycle is established in which the child performs increasingly dramatic and caricatured behaviours to secure positive responses from one’s parents. Like other old habits the die heard, this pattern of conduct is carried over beyond the childhood home to adult interpersonal relations. Psychodynamic theories of HPD originally characterized the disorder as hysterical personality. It was believed that the symptoms are the results of childhood sexual abuse. Traumatic memories of the abuse were assumed to be repressed. The strong tendencies toward repression were thought to explain the vague and shallow cognitive pattern that is so characteristic of people with HPD. From the psychodynamic perspective, the sexualization of social interactions in HPD is a defense against the fear of sexual aggression and victimization. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
By summoning that which is feared, persons with HPD may develop a sense of mastery over this fear by replacing it with attraction. This psychodynamic perspective, notwithstanding its dubious falsifiability, clearly locates the origin and consequences of the disorder in interpersonal experiences. Somewhere in between the social learning and psychodynamic hypothesis, is the pathogenic hypothesis, based on the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour. There are three identifiable early interpersonal experiences that figure prominently in the pathogenesis of HPD. First, these people were often loved for their good looks and entertainment value as children. Second, as children, these people quickly learned that physical appearance and charm were functional for getting what they wanted from others. Finally, their early family environments were unpredictable and chaotic. However, it was this very chaos that kindled a sense of drama in their families, in which these children could play a role. People with HPD conduct their lives in a frantic search for attention, trapped between the exploitation of sexuality and flirtation to gain this attention, and fear of its eventuality. Their interpersonal theatrics, emotional flightiness, and shallow cognitive style may have their origins in early family experiences. Proponents of both social learning and psychodynamic hypotheses converge on the belief that family dynamics such as parental boundary violation (manifested in sexual abuse and overportectivness) and inconsistent parental reinforcement set in motion the patterns of emotion, cognition, and social behaviour that are characteristic of HPD. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
People become more psychologically healthy (fully functioning, self-actualizing), they become more tolerant of “opposites” within themselves, and become more able to accept others with all their uniqueness. Others may have mistreated you, somebody may have walked out on you, or maybe you prayed fervently, yet God did not answer your prayer the way you had anticipated. That is over and done. You cannot change the past; there is nothing you can do about it now. However, you must make a decision. Are you going to relive all those painful memories, or are you going to stay in an attitude of faith? You must walk out of any emotional bondage in which you have been living. Nobody can do it for you. You must rise up out of those ashes. You must forgive the people who have hurt you. You have to release all those hurts and pains. Leave the past behind. When you go through situations you do not understand, do not become bitter. Do not question God. Learn to just wash your face, keep a good attitude, and move on. Get ready for the new things God has in store for you. If you will stay in an attitude of faith and success, God has promised that He will turn those emotional wounds around. He will use them to your advantage, and you will come out better than you would have had they not happened to you. Humans alone, of all the creatures of the Earth, can change their own pattern. Humans alone are the architect of their destiny. The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Christians often think in terms of opposites—right/wrong, good/bad, sinful/goodness—instead of the principle of transcendence of opposites. The actualizing Christian learns to transcend these opposites. Openness to experience all that one is can be expressed as follows: I am neither good nor bad, I am both. I am neither spiritual nor sensual, I am both. I am neither generous nor selfish, I am both. I am neither honest nor dishonest, I am both. I am neither a saint nor a sinner, I am both. However, God accepts me, forgives me, and loves me just as I am. And I can accept, forgive, and love myself and others. The testimony of the actualizing Christian is not that one is perfect, but rather that one is being perfected by the healing love and power of God. The process of being made whole involves gradual transformation of one’s entire being. Every polarity has both manipulative and actualizing alternatives. To be consistently actualizing, a person must learn to transform manipulative behaviours into actualizing counterparts. On the strength polarity, the egocentric manipulative tactics of striving and achieving need to be transformed into interpersonal qualities of cooperating and contributing. The latter two actualizing qualities have a respect and sensitivity that the manipulative forms do not possess. Cooperating with others in a sharing way allows us to express our own strengths while at the same time seeking the common good. Contributing is not something that is grasped at or forced, but rather is a reflection of our true capabilities. Our attitude becomes cooperative rather than competitive. We give up the attempt to be omniscient and omnipotent. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
When we function in this way, we do not feel threatened by someone else’s contributions or accomplishments. We are also quick to admit our deficiencies and to integrate our strengths with the contributions of others. This is the basis for the virtue of courage or realistic self-confidence. On the weakness polarity, withdrawing and avoiding need to be transformed into feeling vulnerable and empathizing. The actualizing Christian learns that one can honestly share feelings of inadequacy, fear, or helplessness. In sharing feelings of vulnerability, a person becomes more accepting and tolerant of others, and hence more empathetic. Herein lies the virtue of humility. Some years ago, my great grandmother went back home to Sweden for the first time in thirty years. Late one night we received a concerned phone call from her during which she said that the Gripsholm, the boat she was supposed to return on, had collided in New York Harbor with the Andrea Dorea, an Italian ship. We discussed her alternatives, and it seemed the only things she could do would be to take her first airplane trip. This may not seem like a large accomplishment these days, but for my mother, who was over seventy years old, this was a fearful and difficult task. The next day she bravely climbed the steps of the huge 707, turned the corner, and sat down in her seat—which happened to be next to Eleanor Roosevelt! Eleanor Roosevelt was an empathetic woman who herself had suffered much in her life. So immediately her empathy expressed itself to my great grandmother, who obviously was somewhat shaken at being on her first plane trip. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The Worldly, yet gentle woman pulled a rose from the bouquet the Swedish government had given her on departure—and gave it to my great grandmother. Great grandmother was deeply moved by this gesture and immediately felt vulnerable and open to this beautifully warm woman. During the next five hours on their journey to America, the two of the chattered together like neighbours over the back fence, as my great grandmother often did with her friends in Rockford, Illinois. Elanor Roosevelt is an example of a truly humble person. Since she was genuinely away of her own feelings of vulnerability, she could reach out to others, including my mother, with a special warmth and sensitivity. On the love polarity, the manipulative patterns of pleasing and placating are transformed into the actualizing traits of affirming and caring. There is a freedom to praise and nurture both oneself and others. Built into the combination of affirming and caring the firmness and warmth. From these qualities emerge the virtue of compassion, a sure mark of the actualizing Christian. From the anger polarity arise asserting and expressing, the actualizing counterparts of blaming and attacking. The person who expressed anger graciously and diplomatically exhibits the virtue of confrontation with caring, or “speaking the truth in love.” There is a real wisdom built into the warp and woof of human nature. It is as though God intended a sensitive set of checks and balances in order to create a reliable source of guidance and inspiration within each person. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Love that is expressed fully bring qualities of tenderness, caring, and nurturing into the World. However, to find its finest balance, love must be offset with a certain firmness and power that is captured in the feeling of anger. Anger provides the energy for confronting the World in a caring way. Likewise, the feelings of strength and weakness both balance and check each other. From strength a person derives a certain air of confidence, boldness, and dignity. However, with the balancing effect of weakness, the virtue of humility is added; so one can express strength in gentle and humble ways. It is our belief that as one becomes more balanced in expressing these behavioural opposites, one will experience a connectedness to others and to God in a warmhearted, open and sharing way. Connectedness if the key to understanding others and growing with them in mutually supportive ways. Heavenly Father, I admit that sometimes I am more surprised when You do answer my prayers than when You do not. I know that I do not deserve Your kindness, that like Prince Lestat, I have made some bad decisions, done wrong, and deserve nothing. However, thank You for loving me even through my mistakes, failures, and wrong choices. Please help me, Father, to trust You through my disappointments. The practice of prayer, when done as an exercise can harmonize cosmic energies, so that the will of God will manifest in your life naturally. While praying for good things and thanking God, mentally direct the energy towards your general surrounding so you can mentally connect it with the cosmic life-force. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Remember that the purpose of this lengthened prayer is not only to empty your temple of negative energy, but also to empty your environmental of bad energy. It will help to empty the mind of its tumult and the nerves of their agitation, and focus on your prayer as deeply as possible. Until you learn to build your faith, you may want to repeat your prayer, in different ways, until you learn how to expand your conversations with God and Jesus. Imagine a steam of golden-white energy being drawn from the Holy Trinity and radiated throughout the body. This enables one to better receive cosmic current of life-force. It also strengthens the power of self-control, of disciplining the body. “Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; for consider how great are the things He has done for you. However, if you still do wickedly, both you and your king shall be swept away,” reports 1 Samuel 12.24-25. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” reports Matthew 6.13. Most people believe that the Lord sends the trials, tests, and temptations of life. If the trails and temptations come from God, I wonder why Jesus said to pray that you enter not into? If God knows everything and we know the Word says God has all knowledge, then I wonder why God would have to try and test us to find out what we would do in a certain situation. The Word also says that Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. (Hebrews 12.2.) Now since Jesus has authored our faith, God does not need to try it. He knows it will work. The enemy is the one trying our faith. Jesus said, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
What evil is Jesus Christ talking about? The evil and trials and temptations. We can rise to a new level of faith when we realize that it is the thief that steals, kills and destroys. It is Jesus that gives life abundantly. When you draw the battle line, you will have 50 percent of the battle won. This will set you at liberty in your prayer life. You can use your faith shield to quench every fiery dart of the adversary. However, if God put it on you, until you determine the cause, you cannot use your faith. You cannot believe the thing will go away. The enemy suggests that God might be using this to perfect you. It sounds logical, but it is stronghold of the adversary. Now let me refresh your memory in this area. In the 8th chapter of Luke, verse 22, Jesus said to the disciples, Let us go over unto the other side, then He fell asleep in the back of the ship. A storm of wind arouse on the lake and waves were lapping into the boat. The disciples began to say, Master, we perish. Jesus Christ arose and rebuked the wind and the sea. Then He asked them, “Where is your faith?” Was that storm sent of God to try their faith? No. That storm was designed by the adversary to get the Word out of them and it worked well. “The ones alone the path are those who have the Word sown [in their hearts], but when they hear, the adversary comes at once and [by force] takes away the message which is sown in them,” reports Mark 4.15. They told Jesus what the devil said. The devil had told them that they would all drown. However, Jesus said, “We are going to the other side.” His Words did not abide in them. In 1 John 3.8, we find that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. If the storm was of God, then Jesus came to undo everything that the enemy was doing. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Jesus Christ rebuked the wind because the storm had been caused by the enemy. He has perverted nature and used the atmosphere to bring floods, storms and tornadoes. However, headlines proclaim, God Visited Our City Last Night With a Tornado. No greater lie has ever been told! When lightning struck a certain plant in Arkansas, it blew up, killing several people and injuring many others. The newspapers called it an act of God. No bigger lie has ever been told. Those things are perversions of nature. The Enemy has perverted the things God created for good. Genesis 1.31 says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Lightning was what killed Job’s cattle. The King James calls it “fire from Heaven.” One translation says “lightning.” In other words, the enemy used the elements of the Earth and atmosphere to destroy Job’s cattle. However, Job said The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, which is actually recorded in the Bible. However, Job was not under the anointing when he said it. He was deceived. He thought it was God but you can plainly read in Job, chapter 1, that it was the adversary who had caused Job’s problems. If you believe that God brings these things on you, you cannot use your faith to get rid of them. There is no place in the Bible where it says, “Take the shield of faith and quench all the fiery darts of God!” You would not dare pray for deliverance from something God is using to perfect you. However, when you get the battle line drawn and see that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy and that Jesus came to give us abundant life, then you can use your faith. You will be able to pray accurately. You can come against the evil forces and prevail. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked (Ephesians 6.16). #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
When we have financial problems, most of the time it is the enemy’s work. Sometimes it is our own fault. It is not God, trying to teach us something! When we have problems in areas of the physical body, it is an attack of the enemy, because Jesus said for us to pray, Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. God’s will is that we walk in health on this Earth and that is the way we should pray. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as they soul prospereth (3 John 2). O Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the World, hear me! I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy—myself. Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me besides the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake. Ye, though I walk through the Sacramento valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Humans in twenty-first century have been cut adrift in a rudderless yacht on an uncharted sea. Abnormal psychological functioning is deviant, but deviant from what? Sometimes people’s behaviours, thoughts, and emotions are different from those that are considered normal in our place and time. We do not expect people to cry themselves to sleep each night, wish themselves dead, or obey voices that no one else hears. In short, behaviour, thoughts, and emotions are deemed abnormal when they violated a society’s ideas about proper functioning. Each society established norms—explicit and implicit rules for proper conduct. Behaviour that violates legal norms is called criminal. Behaviour, thoughts, and emotions that violate norms of psychological functioning are called abnormal. Judgments of abnormality vary from society to society. A society’s norms grow from its particular culture—its history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts. A society that values competition and assertiveness may accept aggressive behaviour, whereas one that emphasizes cooperation and gentleness may consider aggressive behaviour unacceptable and even abnormal. A society’s values may also change over time, causing its views of what is psychologically abnormal to change as well. In Western society, for example, a woman’s participation in the business World was widely considered inappropriate and strange one hundred and twenty years ago. Today the same behaviour is valued. Judgements of abnormality depend on specific circumstances as well as on cultural norms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Many painful human experiences produce intense reactions—largescale catastrophes and disasters, assaults, child abuse, war, terminal illness, chronic pain. Is there an “appropriate” way to react to such things? Should we ever call reactions to them abnormal? Even functioning that is considered unusual does not necessarily qualify as abnormal. According to many clinical theorists, behaviour, ideas, or emotions usually have to cause distress before they can be labeled abnormal. Should we consider that feelings of distress must always be present before a person’s functioning can be considered abnormal? Not necessarily. Some people who function abnormally maintain a beneficial frame of mind. Abnormal behaviour tends to be dysfunctional; that is, it interferes with daily functioning. It so upsets, distracts, or confuses people that they cannot care for themselves properly, participate in ordinary social interactions, or work productively. Some people have to quit their jobs, leave their families, and are prepared to withdraw from the productive lives they once lead. Here again one’s culture plays a role in the definition of abnormality. Our society hold that it is important to carry out daily activities in an effective, self-enhanced manner. The behaviour of some people is considered abnormal and undesirable, whereas others, who continue to perform well in their jobs and enjoy fulfilling relationships, would probably be considered simply unusual. Then again, dysfunction alone does not necessarily indicate psychological abnormality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Some people fast or in other ways deprive themselves of things they need as a means of protesting social injustice. Far from receiving a clinical label of some kind, they are widely viewed as admirable people—caring, sacrificing, even heroic. Perhaps the ultimate in psychological dysfunctioning is behaviour that becomes dangerous to oneself or others. Individuals whose behaviour is consistently careless, hostile, or confused may be placing themselves or those around them at risk. Although danger is often cited as a feature of abnormal psychological functioning, research suggests that it is actually the exception rather than the rule. Despite popular misconceptions, most people struggling with anxiety, depression, and even bizarre thinking pose no immediate danger to themselves or to anyone else. If the concept of abnormality depends so heavily on social norms and values, it is no wonder that efforts to define psychological abnormality typically raise as many questions as they answer. Ultimately, each society selects general criteria for defining abnormality and then uses those criteria to judge particular cases. Noting society’s role in the process, the whole concept of mental illness may be considered invalid, a myth of sorts. The deviations that society calls abnormal are simply “problems in living,” not signs of something wrong within the person. Societies invent the concept of mental illness so that they can better control or change people whose unusual patterns of functioning upset or threaten the social order. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Even if we assume that psychological abnormality is a valid concept and that it can indeed be defined, we may be unable to apply our definition consistently. If a behaviour—excessive use of alcohol among college students, says—is familiar enough, the society may fail to recognize that it is deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous. Thousands of college students throughout the United States of America are so dependent on alcohol that it interferes with their personal and academic lives, causes them great discomfort, jeopardizes their health, and often endangers them and the people around them. Yet their problem often goes unnoticed, certainly undiagnosed, by college administrators, others students, and health professionals. Alcohol is so much a part of the college subculture that it is easy to overlook drinking behaviour that has become abnormal. Conversely, a society may have trouble distinguishing between an abnormality that requires intervention and an eccentricity, or marked individuality, with which others have no right to interfere. From time to time we see or hear about people who behave in ways we consider strange, such as a man who lives alone with two dozen cats and rarely talks to other people. The behaviour of such people is deviant, and it may well be distressful and dysfunctional, yet many professionals think of it as eccentric rather than abnormal. In short, while we may agree to define psychological abnormalities as patterns of functioning that are deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and sometimes dangerous, we should be clear that these criteria are often vague and subjective. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When is a pattern of behaviour deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous enough to be considered abnormal? The question may be impossible to answer. Few of the current categories of abnormality that we will deal with are as clear-cut as they may seem, and most continue to be debated by clinicians. Furthermore, the term “mental illness” has been out of fashion since the late nineteenth century, the more politically correct term is “dysfunctional.” The term mental illness for a lot of people is scary. Some people fear that if they admit they have some dysfunctional aspect of their behaviour that they will be locked up in a lunatic asylum and that medical history will follow them all their lives and stigmatize them, making it impossible to have gainful employment. However, “It is not just people who cannot find a job, or cannot fit in society that struggle with depression sometimes,” says Jared Padalecki. It is significant that Communist leaders like Lenin despised all schools of spiritual thought, denounced religion, and scored metaphysical reflection. This is now the nominal inheritance of half the World, most particularly the so-called workers’ class. If social justice means that every human, however deprived one’s background, should have a chance to develop oneself and to better one’s standards of living, then it is certainly a good thing. However, if it means the forced regimentation of everyone, the compulsory equalization of everything, the denial of individuality and the destruction of freedom, then it is surely a bad thing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
If we only pause to consider that half the entire human race has fallen under the enforced leadership and tyrannical domination of those who would limit humans to their ego and reality to matter, we may see how urgently necessary is an arrest to this downward trend. The World is in a state of a spiritual crisis. Where the physical body is cherished as the sole reality and made the sole basis for social and political reform, where hate-driven humans advocate physical violence as the sole means of effecting progress, be sure of the presence of evil forces, dangers to society, ignorant opponents of truth, and enemies of the Light. It is very meaningful that the filthy abuse which some tyrants put into their writings against idealists is no longer living psychologist and philosophers in the utter blindness which was left to them. More and more they begin to question the nature of consciousness as well as its relationship to the external World, more and more they investigate borderland experiences like telepathy and hypnotism. On the question of consciousness’ relationship to the brain they are now arguing quite widely, but, for obvious reasons, they remain unable to come to definitive conclusions on which all could agree. They are not satisfied with the completely materialistic answer and yet dare not venture into the purely mentalistic one. Meanwhile they go on debating, and so long as this continues, it is spiritually much healthier than their state of sixty years ago. Problems are being stated and solutions are being discussed. If people with an unenlightened inheritance overshadows it all, that cannot be helped in a totalitarian Communist country. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
At the present stage of history the truth must be left out in such a land, but it cannot be left out forever. Out of all their mental and verbal activity, the people will have to draw a little nearer to it intellectually. What is happening on a deeper plane is outside their knowledge. No materialistic organization of society can prevent the appearance and development of spirituality in the individual, but it can create the conditions which will obstruct the appearance or hinder the development of spirituality. Narcissistic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as NPD) has to be one of the most interpersonally obnoxious of the personality disorder. People with NPD have an exaggerate sense of self-worth and entitlement, coupled with a nearly insatiable thirst for attention and acclaim. Symptoms include a grandiose sense of self-importance, preoccupations with fantasies of success and power, a belief that the self is special and should only be associated with other high-status and powerful people, a need for excessive admiration, a voracious sense of entitlement, exploiting others for personal benefit, lack of empathy, envy of others, or a belief that others envy the self, and arrogance. The negative effects of this behaviour on others, as well as the wrongfulness of exploiting others for personal gain, are obscured by the arrogance of the individual. On a psychosocial level, the person with NPD wishes for active love and protection, while simultaneously fearing blame, being ignored, or being controlled by others. The constitution of NPD dramatically interferes with the development and maintenance of intimate interpersonal relationships. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Based on clinical observations, several destructive interpersonal motifs have been noted to be expressed by people with NPD. One of these is a pursuit of metamorphosis—that is, a fantasy that association and intimacy with powerful others will bring transformation and evolution from inferiority and insecurity. In the core of every narcissistic personality there exists, more or less pronounced, experience of insecurity and inferiority. A second motif is selective interpersonal repulsion, or a loathing and systematic persecution of those on whom persons with NPD project their own conflicts. When such a person recognizes some unacceptable aspect of one’s own self in another individual, this individual must be cast off and put down. Finally, the pathological intolerance of criticism is a result of the doubly noxious nature of criticism for a person with NPD. Criticism serves to threaten the person’s sense of grandiosity, and intensify the person’s internal experience of inferiority and insecurity. Consequently, the person will respond to criticism with aggression and rage. It scarcely bears mentioning that those with NPD rarely develop satisfying and close personal relationships. Part of this problem stems from these individuals’ hostility and devaluation of others. This constitutes the so-called “narcissist’s dilemma”: holding other in contempt while simultaneously relying on them for positive regard and affirmation. Symptoms of NPD are negatively associated with receiving social support from others, and positively associated with loneliness and conflict with others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Nevertheless, individuals with NPD may feel that there are a lot of people available who think very highly of them. Among married people, NPD is associated with domestic violence, and interest in extramarital relations. Among the important components of the interpersonal troubles experienced by those with NPD are the negative reactions of others to their conduct. When subjects in two studies viewed a person with NPD presented on DVD, they reacted with rejection and a negative mood. These findings are reminiscent of those in the literature on depression indicating that depressed people irritate others and elicits rejection from them. Although people with NPD are probably rejected for different reasons, the end results are similar to those experienced by depressed persons: loneliness, a lack of social support, and conflictual interactions with others. Rejection from others may cause great aggravation for some persons with NPD, while being of virtually no concern to others. NPD exists on a continuum ranging from an oblivious subtype to a hypervigilant subtype. Whereas a person with the oblivious subtype has no awareness at all of one’s impact on other people, the individual with the hypervigilant subtype is on the lookout for any sign of criticism or put-down from others. The interpersonal rejection that often follows in the wake of interpersonal interactions must surely contribute to substantial aggravation for the person with the hypervigilant NPD. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Perhaps the most scientifically plausible account of the etiology of NPD is based on social learning theory; it places origins of the disorder in excessive and unconditional parental valuation and attention to the point of worship. In such an interpersonal context, the parents are viewed as devoting themselves so fully to caring for their child and making one feel special that they sublimate their own needs to those of the child. Consequently, the child fails to develop an awareness or appreciation for the needs of other people. Years of living in such an environment also result in an unjustified sense of self-worth that must constantly be reinforced and polished in the face of any potential failure. This social learning phenomenon is identified by a combination of selfless, noncontingent love and adoration from the family; parental deference to the child; and an ever-present threat of al fall from grace in the pathogenesis of NPD. This account has considerable face validity for explaining the sense of grandiosity and lack of empathy that characterize this disorder. Although a social learning account of NPD enjoys some popularity and acceptance, psychodynamic accounts of the disorder are especially prevalent, and also point to early interpersonal experiences in its etiology. Within this literature there exists something of a controversy. Accordingly, self-psychological perspective, NPD is a manifestation of arrested development. An egocentric sense of grandiosity is seen as a normal part of early development. At this point in time, the child expects total nurturance and caring from parents, and develops selfobjects, which are images of other people as they relate to the self. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Eventually, the infant begins to feel vulnerable upon becoming aware of the parents’ shortcomings. The child then defensively idealizes the parents and returns to a sense of self-grandiosity. These are sources of strength for the child when dealing with an uncertain World. Normally, this narcissism gives way to empathy and more realistic appraisals of the self and others. However, when maternal empathy and confirmation are defective, the grandiose self perseveres as a defense against the vulnerabilities inherent in life. NPD may also be a compensation for early emotional deprivation and unempathic mothering. This causes the child to feel unloved, resulting in rage being projected onto one’s parents. As a defense, the child develops a grandiose self by combining aspects of the self that are admired by the parents, a fantasized version of the self, and an idealized version of the parents. There is also a focus on simultaneous feelings of inferiority and grandiosity in NPD. There may additionally be some oral rage, a powerful aggression originally directed at caregivers who did not provide unconditional love and approval, as a casual agent in NPD. One may need to focus more on pathological psychosocial development in the etiology of NPD, and conclude arrested development to fully understand the condition. NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) involves a grandiose sense of self, interpersonal arrogance and exploitation, a desire for excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy. The interactions of a person with NPD are marked by the quest for metamorphosis (rising above inferiority via association with powerful others), selective interpersonal repulsion, and pathological reactions to even the slightest criticism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Obviously these traits and qualities render intimate interpersonal relationships nearly impossible. People with NPD are trapped between a need for other people to give them attention and admiration, and contempt for others. Their interpersonal lives are marked by conflict, loneliness, and rejection from others. A social learning hypothesis holds that this personality disorder is the result of excessive parental adoration and attention. Psychodynamic accounts of NPD also stress early parent-child relations, focusing on arrested or pathological development of the self image in relation to others. If one is serious about being well, if one really wants to be made physically and emotionally whole one must get up and get moving with one’s life. Do not lay around feeling sorry for one’s self. Do not make excuses; do not blame other people or circumstances that disappointed one. Instead, start forgiving the people who hurt one. Trust God, get up, and step into the great future He has for you. Today can be a turning point in your life, a season of new beginnings. Refuse to in a state of victimhood. Thing happen to us and we may never know why. However, do not use that as an excuse to sulk and be full of doom and gloom. Just because we do not know the answers does not mean that they do not exist. One has simply not discovered them yet. Trust God to workout the things one does not understand. God has your best interests at heart. That is faith, and that is the attitude that God honours. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If you want to live your best life and become a success, you have to work hard and have faith in God. In God’s salutary presence no indecent thought, no unhealthy distraction, shall ever rear its ugly head. Why? Because one is about to welcome into one’s heart and hearth, however humble it may be, not an Angel, but the Lord of Angels. What a difference a distance makes! There is a World of distance between the Ark of the Covenant and its holy contents; between God’s unstainable Body and its unspeakable Virtue; between a sacrifice required by the Old Law and the Sacrifice of sacrifices required by the New Law; that is to say, the one prefigures the other, and the new bread that is host to God’s body completes the sacrifice. Every free action has two causes that come together to produce it. The one is moral, namely the will that determines the act; the other is physical, namely the power that executes it. When I walk toward an object, I must first want to go there. Second, my feet must take me there. A paralyzed mand who want to walk or an agile man who does not want to walk will both remain where they are. The body politic has the same moving causes. The same distinction can be made between the force and the will; the one under the name legislative power and the other under the name executive power. Nothing is done and ought to be done without their concurrence. We have seen that legislative power belongs to the people and can belong to it alone. On the contrary, it is easy to see, by the principles established above, that executive power cannot belong to the people at large in its role as legislator or sovereign, since this power consists solely of particular acts that are not within the province of the law, nor consequently of the sovereign, none of whose acts can avoid being laws. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Therefore the public force must have an agent of its own that unifies it and gets it working in accordance with the directions of the general will, that serves as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, and that accomplishes in humans. This is the reason for having a government in the state, something often badly confused with the sovereign, of which it is merely the minister. What then is the government? An intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with the execution of the laws and the preservation of liberty, both civil and political. The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say, governors, and the entire body bears the name prince. Therefore those who claim that the act by which a people submit itself to leaders is not a contract are quite correct. It is absolutely nothing but a commission, an employment in which the leaders, as simple officials of the sovereign exercise in its own name the power with which it has entrusted them. The sovereign can limit, modify, or appropriate this power as it pleases, since the alienation of such a right is incompatible with the nature of the social body and contrary to the purpose of the association. Therefore, I call government or supreme administration the legitimate exercise of executive power; I call prince or magistrate the human or the body charged with that administration. The willing seduction of the consumer into production has staggering implications. To understand why, it helps to remember that the market is premised on precisely the split between producer and consumer that is now being blurred. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
An elaborate market was not necessary when most people consumed what they themselves produced. It only became necessary when the task of consumption was separated from that of production. Conventional writers define the market narrowly as a capitalist, money-based phenomenon. Yet the market is merely another word for an exchange network, and there have been (and still are) many different kinds of exchange networks. In the West the most familiar to us is the profit-based, capitalist market. However, there are also socialist markets—exchange networks through which the goods or services produced by Ivan Ivanovich in Smolensk are traded for goods or services turned out by Johann Schmidt in East Berlin. There are markets based on money—but also markets based on barter. The market is neither capitalist nor socialist. It is a direct, inescapable consequence of the divorce of producer from consumer. Whenever this divorce occurs the market arises. And wherever the gap between consumer and producer narrows, the entire function, role, and power of the market is brought into question. The rise of presuming today, therefore, begins to change the role of the market in our lives. It is too early to know where this subtle but significant thrust is taking us. Certainly the market is not going to go away. We are not going to go back to premarket economies. What I have called Sector B—the exchange sector—is not going to shrivel up and vanish. We will, for a long time to come, continue to be heavily dependent upon the market. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Nevertheless, the rise of presuming points strongly toward a fundamental change in the relationships between Sector A and Sector B—a set of relationships that Second Wave economist have until now virtually ignored. For presuming involves the “de-marketization” of at least certain activities and therefore a sharply altered role for the market in society. It suggests an economy of the future unlike any we have known—an economy that is no longer lopsidedly weighted in favour of either Sector A or Sector B. It points to the emergence of an economy that will resemble the First Wave nor Second Wave economics, but will, instead, fuse the characteristics of both into a new historic synthesis. The rise of the prosumer, powered by the soaring cost of many paid services, by the break down of Second Wave service bureaucracies, by the availability of Third Wave technologies, by the problems of structural unemployment, and by the many other converging factors, lead to a work-styles and life arrangements. If we permit ourselves to speculate, bearing in mind some of the shifts described earlier—such as the move toward de-synchronization and part-time paid work, the possible emergence of the electronic cottage, or the changed structure of family life—we can begin to discern some of these lifestyle changes. Thus we are moving toward a future economy in which very large numbers never hold full-time paid jobs, or in which “full-time” is redefined, as it has been in recent years, to mean a shorter and shorter workweek or work year. (In Sweden, where a law guaranteed all workers five weeks of paid vacation regardless of age or length of service, a normal work year was considered to be 1840 hours. In fact, absenteeism has run so high that a more realistic average per worker is 1600 hours per year.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Large numbers of workers already do paid work for what averages out to only three of four says a week, or they take six months or a year off to pursue educational or recreational goals. This pattern may well grow stronger as two-paycheck households multiply. More people in the paid labour market-higher “labour participation rates,” as the economist put it—may very well go with reduced hours per worker. This casts the whole question of leisure into a new light. Once we recognize that much of our so-called leisure time is, in fact, spent producing goods and services for our own use—prosuming—then the old distinction between work and leisure falls apart. The question is not work versus leisure, but paid work for Sector B versus unpaid, self-directed, and self-monitored work for Sector A. In the Third Wave context new lifestyles based half on production exchange, half on production for use, become practical. Such lifestyles were, in fact, common in the early days of the industrial revolution among farm populations who were slowly being absorbed into the urban proletariat. For a long transitional period millions of people worked part-time in factories and part-time on the land, growing their own food, buying some of their necessities, making the rest. This pattern—but with twenty-first century technology for goods and food production, as well as immensely enhanced self-help methods for the production of many services. Instead of a dress pattern, for example, tomorrow’s prosumer might well buy a computer program the powers a “smart” electronic sewing machine. Even the clumsiest househusband, with such a computer program, could make his own custom-fitted shirts. Mechanically inclined tinkers could do more than tune up their autos. They could actually half-build them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
It is always possible for the customer to program one’s own specifications into the auto manufacturing process via computer and telephone and have the car delivered to one’s house without even going to the dealership. One can also easily picture a generation brought up on part-time paid work as the norm, eager to use their own hands, equipped with many inexpensive mini-technologies in the home, forming a sizeable segment of the population. This is already happening in China. They are replicating and creating electronics and selling them to Americans for a much more affordable price. Some of these machines are made for China so they instructions are in Chinses are well as the settings on the machine, but when you are getting them at a discounted price, it is worth your time to do the research and figure out what the machine is saying. Half in the marker, half out, working intermittently rather than all year round, taking a year off now and then, they might well earn less—but compensate by supplying their own labour for many tasks that now cost money, thus mitigating the effects of inflation. American’s Mormons offer another clue to possible future lifestyles. Many Mormon stakes—a stake corresponds to, say, a Catholic diocese—own and operate their own farms. Members of the sake, including urban members, spend some of their free time as volunteer farmers growing food. Most of the produce is not sold but stored for emergency use or distributed to Mormons in need. There are central canning plants, bottling facilities, and grain elevators. Some Mormons grow their own food and take it to the cannery. Others actually buy fresh vegetables at the supermarket, then take them to the local cannery. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Says a Salt Lake City Mormon, “My mother will buy tomatoes and can them. Her relief ‘society,’ the women’s auxiliary society, will have a day and they all go and can tomatoes for their own use.” Similarly, many Mormons not only contribute money to their church but actually perform volunteer labour—construction work, for example. None of this is to suggest that we are all going to become members of the Mormon church, or that it will be possible in the future to re-crate on a wide scale the social and community bonds one finds in this highly participatory yet theologically autocratic group. However, the principle of production for self-use, either by individuals or by organized groups, is likely to spread farther. Given home computers, given seeds genetically designed for urban or even apartment agriculture, even cheap home tools for working plastic, given new materials, adhesives, and membranes, and given free technical advice available over the Internet, mobile phones, telephone lines, with instructions flickering on the TV or computer screen, it has become possible to create lifestyles that are more rounded and varied, less monotonous, more creatively satisfying, and less market-intensive than those that typified Second Wave civilization. It is still too early to know how far this shift of activity from exchange in Sector B to presumption in Sector A will go, how the balance between these sectors will vary from country to country, and which particular lifestyles will actually emerge from it. What is certain, however, is that any significant change in the balance between production for use and production for exchange will set off depth charges under our economic system and our values as well. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Whoever was the first to make the analogy between caterpillars and butterflies and death and resurrection—old life and new life—must have had a “butterfly experience.” Knots being untied; tight jar libs being loosened—it is freedom. It is freeing. It is the slow motion experience of leaping through a meadow with arms and legs in tune with rhythm of life. However, somehow the butterfly says it best, become of the cocoon experience. People seem to have more than one go-round with the cocoon. How did it start for me this time? Why did it start? I was happy as a caterpillar. Just a bit confined, that is all. I viewed myself, and others did, as fuzzy-wuzzy, problem free, happily married, financially secure, basking in the love of God…but I was content. I did not know myself. Actually, I did not even know that I did not know myself. And certainly did not own my feelings. I had to move away from all those who unknowingly kept me as a pet caterpillar to learn the true situation. And what is why I ended up here in the New World. Things have happened fast, which I like. However, becoming a new nation has been a difficult, thrilling, labourious, joyous, arduous, and climatic year. There have been so many significant encounters. Every century and generation I have learned so much. However, several things were of major importance. Almost a passing comment by Dr. James McCune Smith tuned a trickle into a flood last fall when he said, “American, I sensed a lot of tension in you the first time we met.” I could hardly believe it. Everybody knew I was the land of opportunity, where one could achieve anything, they put their mind to, no matter who they are. I was not tense…how could he say that? #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
I was building colonies, hosting thanksgiving, emancipating human being with religious freedom and human rights, establishing child labour laws, building free centers of public education, creating factories that raised the standard of living, producing crops, fostering livestock, and giving constant attention to the beings of my land by providing them with some of the best weather in the World. Tense…tense! How true! I had to face it. And so began a whole chain of discoveries. I thought I was relaxed and learned myself I was tense. I thought I was well-adjusted and learned that I did not even know myself. I thought I was loving and learned that I was often indifferent. I thought I was social and learned that I was withdraw. On an optimistic note, I thought I was dumb and learned I was intelligent. At an earlier point in my Christian life, it would have seemed unspiritual to consider these things. However, somewhere bear the beginning of this century, I experience a glorious assurance that God was in fact the One who led me to this point—and He was the one leading me through! For some reason, it seems that it is almost over. Or maybe it is the beginning of a new era building on what I have learned. I do know that I am more excited about life. I love my land and its inhabitants more than ever before. And I am more open to forming friendships with new pilgrims. Most of all, I feel more comfortable being myself. In these centuries of growth I have come in touch with my own worth and potential. Simply becoming aware was a great part of the answer. Perhaps that is because I wanted the change. I really do want to be a transparent nation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
For now all I can say is that something deep is happening within me—and I love what is happening. Rather than focusing on why certain things happen to me or to those I love, I choose to focus on You, Father, who You are, and what You have promised to do in my life as I trust You. I want to be better; I want to be healed from anything that would keep me locked in the past. Today, I will step into that great future You have for me. I pelage my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. To all that is brief and fragile, superficial, unstable, to all that lacks foundation argument or principles; to all that is light, fleeting, changing, finite to smoke spirals, wand roses, to sea foam, and mists of oblivion…to all that is light in weight for itinerants on this transient Earth, somber, raving, with transitory words, and premium cranberry juice, I toast. May God be mindful of the souls of all our brothers, departed members of the house of America who sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of the Holy Name and the honour of America. Please grant that their heroism and self-sacrificing devotion find response in our hearts and the purity of their souls be reflected in our lives. Many their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life, an everlasting blessing among us. Amen. O merciful God who dwellest on high and art full of compassion, please grant perfect rest beneath the shelter of Thy divine presence among the holy and pure who shine as the brightness of the firmament, to our dear departed who have gone to their eternal home. May their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Grant that their memories ever inspire us to noble and consecrated living. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Life is Not Just a Rose Garden—It Can be a Crown of Thorns as Well!
Mental health needs a great deal of attention. It is the final taboo and it needs to be faced and dealt with. A healthy mental state will help one leverage one’s everyday power to achieve the success one seeks and live a purposeful life. A personality disorder is an enduring and stable pattern of behaviour and cognition that deviates from normative standards and expectations in one’s culture. This pattern of behaviour and experience has its onset during adolescence or early adulthood, and leads to tangible distress and impairment. Most people who exhibit personality disorders by definition have interpersonal problems. The criteria for a personality disorder includes: manifestation of stable and enduring problematic behaviours and experiences in at least two of the following domains: cognition, affectivity, interpersonal functioning, and impulse control. The enduring pattern must be pervasive and inflexible across a variety of social situations, and it must lead to impairment or distress in social or occupational areas of functioning. The concept of functional inflexibility implies that the individua relates to others, expressed feelings, and resolves conflicts in a rigid fashion, with tactics that are often ill suited for the situation at hand. However, estimates of the prevalence of personality disorders in the general population are sometimes scarce as it is still considered a new science. It is estimated that the prevalence of historical personality disorder in the general populations is at 2.2 percent. In a college student population, the prevalence of histrionic personality disorder may be as high as 6 percent. Considering the fact that there are over a dozen personality disorders, it is clear that personality disorders collectively are common in the general population, with lifetime prevalence estimates on the order of 10-13 percent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Like many other psychological problems, most personality disorders are associated with problematic interpersonal relationships, virtually by definition. Some of the most striking evidence of interpersonal disruption appears in the domain of family-of-origin experiences. Themes of parental abuse, insecure attachment, excessive parental attention, parental overinvolvement, and family chaos are rampant in the literature on personality disorders. Some have theorized that these early interpersonal experiences play a significant role in the pathogenesis of these disorders. Existing research indicates that when these persons do marry or form stable romantic relationships, their relationships are characterized by distress and dissatisfaction. Interpersonal problems are not just confined to the various family relationships, but also extended into the domain of general personal relationships. Many people with personality disorders have stormy and unstable personal relationship. They often elicit interpersonal rejection, and experience conflict with others and loneliness. In the area of interpersonal communication, there is a tendency for people with certain types of personality disorders to use communication with others for the function of seeking attention. A powerfully complicating factor in the personality disorder is their high comorbidity with other psychosocial problems. Research studies have revealed alarmingly high rates of such problems as depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and somatoform disorders among people with personality disorders. Currently, 10 different personality disorders (plus the residual category of personality disorders not otherwise specified) are formally recognized. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
One useful way to organize, describe, and map the personality disorders is with an interpersonal circumplex, using the dimensions of dominant-submissive and hostile-nurturant. For example, those with dependent personality disorder are situated in the dominant and hostile quadrant. The majority of the personality disorders fall into the hostile half of the circumplex. Although personality disorders have interpersonal implications and ramification, the disorders projected toward the outer edge of the circumplex, such as dependent, narcissistic, and histrionic, have more evident interpersonal implications. It may be unwise to think about something like histrionic personality disorder as a disease entity, in the same way that one thinks about Parkinson’s disease or bulimia nervosa. Rather a personality disorder may be more like high blood pressure—an exaggerated version of a normal phenomenon, with little more than an arbitrary “cutoff point” at which normal becomes viewed as pathological. Borderline personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as BPD) is the most frequently diagnosed of the personality disorder. Approximately 15-25 percent of psychiatric inpatients and outpatients carry this diagnosis. Its principal features involve instability of interpersonal relationships, affect, and self-image. People with BPD exhibit intense and variable mood, ranging from irritability to euphoria to impulsive anger and even self-destructive behaviour. This moodiness is combined with more generally aberrant and aloof behaviour, a dissociated self-image, frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, impulsivity, suicidal behaviour and threats, feelings of emptiness, problems with anger control, and occasional paranoid ideation. There is a morbid fear of abandonment and a wish for protective nurturance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The characteristic desire of a person with BPD to fuse with another person for emotional support is a sign of ego weakness and identity disturbance. It is not surprising that BPD is highly comorbid with depression. It is tautological to assert that this disorder has negative interpersonal implications and consequences. Many borderline symptoms are seen as arising primarily within the context of a relationship, where the involvement of another person is the arena in which an essential component of the patient’s psychopathology emerges. Indeed, research on BPD indicates a pervasive pattern of interpersonal problems in both adulthood and childhood. It should be obvious to even the casual observer that people with BPD have a long history of interpersonal problems both professionally and socially, and close relationships that may best be characterized as stormy. Symptoms of BPD are absolutely associated with social conflict and feelings of loneliness. Symptoms of the disorder are also associated with endorsing a ludus (game-playing) and mania (manic, possessive) love style. Accordingly, persons with BPD are less likely to find themselves in loving relationships. Individuals with BPD experience a great deal of interpersonal problems and distress. These individuals have excessive interpersonal dependency needs, which make them particularly vulnerable to interpersonal losses. On the other hand, they employ manipulative tactics that often result in agitation and rejection from others. Thus person with BPD tend to sabotage the very relationships that they so badly need. This phenomenon may be a consequence of their problems with distance regulations. According to this hypothesis, whenever patients with BPD move close to or away from other people, they receive negative feedback. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Consequently, these patients oscillate between attachment and avoidance. Sadly, people with BPD rarely learn from their interpersonal experiences and often recreate their problems as they move from one relationship to another. A major component in the interpersonal distress produced and experienced by persons with BPD is emotion dysregulation. As noted above, anxiety about abandonment, excessive anger, and a reactive mood are all problems associated with this disorder. When compared to people with bipolar disorder and unipolar depression, those with BPD indicated substantially more hostility in their past and resent relationships—in terms of both sending and receiving hostility. In a unique study of facial expression recognition, people with BPD performed as well as healthy controls and controls with a history of sexual abuse, with the exception of a tendency to overidentify fearful expressions. This suggests that BPD is associated with a hypersensitivity or readiness to identify fear in others, which could increase these individuals’ own experience of fear in interpersonal context. Like those with any of several other mental health problems, people with BPD elicit interpersonal rejection from others. To give an idea of how potent this rejection effect is, it was compared to interpersonal reactions to BPD and narcissistic personality disorder—an intensely annoying syndrome. Other people felt that the subjects with BPD were more unstable of the two groups. It was concluded that the interpersonal consequences of BPD are even more negative than those associated with narcissistic personality disorder. Given the preponderance of interpersonal conflict, emotional lability, and oscillation between attachment and avoidance, it is little wonder that those with BPD create such negative interpersonal impressions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Experiences in the family of origin have been a focal point in the interpersonal research of BPD. Poor maternal and paternal caring, to the point of neglect, in the family or origin are common themes among those with BPD. This lack of parental caring is coupled with a greater overprotectiveness, similar to that reported by other psychiatric groups. Another family-of-origin phenomenon is the perception by the patients with BPD that their mothers were autonomous and hostile toward them. This perceived hostility also spills over to perceptions of current relationships with, for example, other patients and hospital staff A similar theme is evident. Patients with BPD also rated their fathers and mothers as attacking and rejecting. However, these patients also indicated that they too were attacking and rejecting toward their parents. This illustrates how the antecedent to conflictual adult personal relationships clearly have their origins in adolescent, if not preadolescent relationships. Themes of separation and loss in the family or origin are common in BPD. Predisposition to BPD is especially pronounced when this loss is due to the separation or divorce rather than to death of a parent. Of course, parental conflict would also be exaggerated in such cases, and itself may contribute to the development of symptoms. In any event, such early losses predispose a child to insecure attachment, and explain the clinging attachment and fear of abandonment that are so evident in adults with BPD. Evidence of sexual abuse in the history of many individuals with BPD indicates noxious boundary violations in the family or origin. A history of incest was evident in 19 percent and 35 percent of the cases in two samples of patients with BPD. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
However, the broader category of “childhood sexual abuse” is estimated to have occurred in about 70 percent of all patients with BPD. The impact of such traumatic interpersonal behaviour in a more general context appears to play some role in the disorder. Where there is sexual abuse in the family context, significant family dysfunction almost surely coexists with the behaviour. However, some wonder whether it is the abuse per se that contributes to the disorder or the malevolent family environment that tolerates and perhaps even encourages such conduct. Findings such as these have led to the hypothesis that those with BPD tend to internalize abandoning, neglectful, and abusive childhood relationships in such a way as to promote self-abandonment and attack in adulthood. The parents of people with BPD appear to have psychosocial disturbances of their own that interfere with effective parenting. It is often the case that these problems are evident in both parents—a phenomenon characterized as “biparental failure.” In a study of 30 women with BPD and their 60 parents, both patents had an Axis I or Axis II diagnosis in 73 percent of the families. Even 60 percent of their grandparents had psychiatric disorders, particularly substance use or mood disorders. A similar analysis of first-degree relatives of patients with BPD revealed that 18 percent of these relatives had BPD, 10 percent had antisocial personality disorder, 25 percent had a mood disorder, and about 25 percent had a substance use disorder. These staggering rates of parental psychopathology are consistent with the hypothesis that links disturbed and ineffective parenting to the development of BPD. At the same time, these findings could be interpreted as support for a genetic component in the parental transmission of the disorder. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The exact and relative contributions from genes and family environment remain to be established by future research. For the time being, it is apparent that mental health is far more likely to be impaired among parents of individuals with BPD than among parents in the general population. Undoubtedly, this at least has the potential to interfere with effective parenting and care. There are four family-of-origin processes that lead to the development of BPD. The first is family chaos, involving fights, affairs, intoxication, trouble with the law, and suicide attempts. This family dynamic creates a dramatic, soap-opera quality in the family or origin. Second, traumatic abandonment is common in these families. Children who later develop BPD are often left alone without adequate care and supervision, during which sexual abuse by others may be perpetrated. The children may interpret this abandonment as resulting from their bad behaviour. Third, the families of those who develop BPD tend to shun autonomy and promote dependency. These children are socialized to believe that they are flawed, and that their families, miserable as they may be, are their only salvation. Finally, these families only offer nurturance in response to misery. These families reinforce displays of helplessness and agony by offering nurturant care in response to such displays, and at no other time. Collectively, these family-of-origin processes are thought to promote the identity disturbance, emotional liability, fear of abandonment, and suicidal gestures that are typical of BPD. The interpersonal backgrounds of people with BPD are particularly remarkable. Themselves of loneliness, conflict, and fear of abandonment are prevalent. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
As it is for people with depression, interpersonal rejection is a notable problem for those with BPD. This may be the result of the tendency in BPD to oscillate between clinging attachment and avoidance—a pattern that is repulsive to even the most tolerant friend or family member. Experiences in the family or origin are commonly devoid of stability and nurturance. Rather, one finds a lack of care, frequent abuse, rejection, and psychiatric symptoms emanating from the parents of those who later develop BPD. It is when parental overinvolvement is combined with neglect and abuse that symptoms of BPD are especially likely to appear. This toxic combination of parenting behaviours set the stage for the later interpersonal attachment-avoidance conflict that characterizes BPD (borderline personality disorder). “Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,” reports Hebrews 12.1. Many people wonder why they are not happy. Often, it is because they are dragging around all sorts of baggage from the past. Someone offended them last week, so they have packed that pain in their bag. Someone’s car looks better than theirs, so they are offended and have packed that pain in their bag. Someone has a new hair style and they think it looks better than theirs, so they pack that offense in their bag. A month ago they lost their temper, said some things they should not have, and they have that stuffed in their bag, too. Ten years ago, their boyfriend cheated on them, and they just do not understand why. They have got all that anger, jealousy, and doubt stashed in still another bag. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Growing up, they were not treated right. They have got that suitcase full of junk, too. They have been carrying these heavy bags for years; they are loaded down by their collection of burdens, and then they wonder why they cannot live a rich, full life! Worse yet, they drag their baggage with them everywhere they go. Not only do they hold on to their baggage, but they like to unpack it every once in a while, just to make sure it is all still there. They take some things out and look at them, and relive all that hurt and pain. Then they pack it up again and drag and drop it someplace else! Bethany (not her real name) went through a failed relationship in her marriage many years ago, and she lost her house and car. She prayed that God would bring somebody new into her life. Sure enough, she met a fine gentleman, a very godly, successful man, and she was excited about their friendship. However, she made the mistake of dragging her borderline personality disorder (baggage) into that new relationship. When they were together, she talked constantly about all she had been through, how she was emotionally drained, and how mistreated she had been. That gentlemen told me later that Bethany was so focused on her past, so caught up in what she had been through, he just could not deal with it anymore. He finally stopped calling her, and just moved on. Unfortunately, something like that happens all too often. If you hold on to the hurts and pains of the past, they will poison you wherever you go. You may think that other people are the problem, but I want to encourage you to examine your own heart. Look on the inside, because you may very well find out that you are the problem. Maybe you have been a baggage dragger. And you cannot drag around baggage from the past and expect to have good, healthy relationships. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
God did not create us to carry around all the baggage from the past. “Exercise foresight and be on the watch to look [after one another], to see that no one falls back from and fails to secure God’s grace (His unmerited favour and spiritual blessing), in order that no root of resentment (rancor, bitterness, or hatred) shoots forth and causes trouble and bitter torment, and the many become contaminated and defiled by it,” reports Hebrews 12.15. One does not have to live depressed and discouraged because of what one has gone through. Maybe one has been holding on to painful memories or attitudes that has been keeping one bitter, discouraged, emotionally worn out, physically run down, depleted of energy and enthusiasm, and living in self-pity. Sadly, one’s situation will not change until you put your foot down and make a decision to do or say something about it. “Strive to live in peace with everybody and pursue that consecration and holiness without which no one will [ever] see the Lord,” reports Hebrews 12.14. If you develop that kind of attitude, God will give you a new beginning. You will see things improve. If someone hurt you, give that to God and He will pay you back, He will make it up to you. Quit dwelling on your disappointments. Quit mourning over something that is over and done. DO not make the mistake of dragging the pains of yesterday over into today. Stop sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. If you continue to wallow in despair, not only will you stay stuck in the past, but you will sink deeper and deeper. God will invite the likes of you—that is to say, the pocketless and the pauperous—to the Communion of His Most Holy Body. However, who are we that we should presume to approach God? #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Look, the Heaven of heavens cannot contain God—if I may echo the Author of the First Book of Kings (8.27)—and yet God says to me, a leaky sieve, what He said to the others in His lifetime on Earth. “Come, all those of you who break your backs and bust your butts, and I will pour you a draft.” Is that not how the great Matthew put it. We than cannot find a spot of good in ourselves to save our souls, how are we to introduce ourselves when we first meet Jesus Christ face to face, we whose malign conduct we have continually thrown in Jesus Christ’s benign face? Surrounded by such Heavenly heavyweights—Angels and Archangels, holy people from the Old and New Testaments—Jesus still have the nerve to say, “Come to Me, one and all?” That is outrageous! No one else would make such an invitation. Who would believe it? Nobody would give such a command. Who would pay any attention? However, let us not get stalled on comings and goings. “Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [reckon up and consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds. You have not yet struggled and fought agonizingly against sin, nor have you yet resisted and withstood to the point of pouring out your [own] blood. And have you [completely] forgotten the divine word of appeal and encouragement in which you are reasoned with and addressed as sons? #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“My son, do not think lightly or scorn to submit to the correction and discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage and give up and faint when you are reporved or corrected by Him; for the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes. You must submit to and endure [correction] for discipline; God is dealing with you as with sons. For what son is there who one’s father does not [thus] train and correct and discipline? Now if you are exempt from correction and left without discipline in which all [of God’s children] share, then you are illegitimate offspring and not true sons,” reports Hebrews 12.2-8. These points must be well taken from our Friend and Founder of all Law, Giver of All life. We, lawless creatures that we are, have the gall to receive God without having to break a sweat? God is bigger than the past. He is bigger than all one’s disappointments and problems. Some may have made a lot of mistakes, but God can turn those things all around. People may have hurt you and done you wrong, but if you will leave it up to God, He will pay your back. God will make your wrongs right. Get rid of that baggage and start focusing on your possibilities. Let hope fill your heart. Your future can start today. No matter what you have been through, no matter how difficult it was, God is saying there are great days ahead for you. He still has good things in store. Knowing God’s will is a key to answered prayer. So often people spend a lot of time trying to figure out if it is God’s will for them to be healed or if it is God’s will for them to be prosperous. Jesus said, “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed by Thy name. Thy kingdom come. They will be done in Earth, as it is in Heaven,” reports Matthew 6.9-10. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Let us ask ourselves what is it like in Heaven: Is there any poverty in Heaven? No. Is there any disease in Heaven? No. Jesus told His disciples to pray that the will of God be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. Then He must be saying to pray that there be no disease on this Earth and that there by no poverty here. Now if Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray this way, do you not know that it is the will of God? His will is that it be on this Earth as it is in Heaven. When the enemy is put in the bottomless pit and shut up for a thousand years, there will be no sickness or disease. Now that ought to tell us where it comes from. Sometimes people get the idea that God is testing and perfecting us with sickness and disease. They say that the trail of your faith perfect it. However, that is not what the Word says. James says that the trying of your faith works patience. (James 1.3.) How many of us have not had any trials and tests in life? If it were true that God uses trials and tests to perfect our faith, then everyone of us would be perfect. The trails of life are a design of the adversary to destroy you, not to perfect you. The trying of your faith works patience. Patience is a spiritual force that comes into play to undergird your faith and to hold it up like a pier under a long span of a bridge. If the bride did not have piers to support it, it would collapse. That is what happens to many people’s faith. It causes you to be consistent through the trial and test that the enemy brings against you. So often we have thought it was God sending us the trails and tests. No, thank God, it is not my Father sending them—it is the enemy. Jesus said, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” reports John 10.10. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Is there going to be any sickness and disease in Heave? No Is there going to be any poverty there? No. There is abundance in that place. It is a healthy place. Do you know any poverty-stricken folk on Earth who have their driveway paved with gold? The streets of that city are not only paved with gold, they are pure gold. The whole street is gold! God’s will is that this Earth be conformed to the spirit World that spawned it. This Universe is a creation of God and it was designed to be prosperous. However, the adversary entered into it and fouled it up by distorting God’s creation and His Word. In the process of actualizing, one expressed oneself less on the character and manipulative levels and moves more into the actualizing expression of each polarity. For instance, one the strength polarity, one may express oneself once in awhile in rigid manner. Occasionally, one may employ manipulative tactics of striving and achieving. However, mostly one learns to express strength in actualizing manner, by being powerful, strong, capable, or adequate as it is appropriate. If one were actualized, one would express only the actualizing level. However, we are in a process and this is why we need to be aware that our manipulative tendencies can by only gradually neutralized. The best model for understanding the actualizing life is Jesus Himself, Jesus possessed a quality of being that awed people wherever He went. In His encounters with others, He would leave healing, change, and renewal. He lived form His core and was able to express the intensity of emotion required for every situation. He could be living enough to restore and free a woman caught in the act of adultery when her accusers wanted to stone her to death. #RadolphHarris 15 of 20
Jesus could be weak enough to surrender to being put to death on a cross and buried in another man’s tomb. He could be strong enough to rise from the grave a victor over death itself. Knowing that God participates with one in the quest for authenticity and meaningful involvement in the World brings courage to trust the subtle promptings of one’s inner feelings or to be open to the wisdom of one’s gut reactions. The actualizing Christian values the still, quiet voice within that often reflects the gentle guidance of the Holy Spirit in the core of one’s personality. Inputs from God and other flow readily through the permeable bounty of the self and on into the core. We can describe the process as dynamic and continuous. Persons who live this way are being maximally sensitive to themselves and others. They function transparently: what originates deep within is what is expressed honestly to others. They are also moved emotionally by the feelings that other people share. Thus we could say these persons are congruent and empathetic. An important aspect of growth is having the courage to accept out losses up to now. A woman once shared in a counseling session with Jensen how tragic she though it was that certain insights had come so late in life. He reassured her that it was a blessing that the insights had come at all. Now the insight was to take the insight and build on them. The fact is that life is not just a rose garden—it can be a crown of thorns are well. So we must learn to accept our looses and defeats and get on with the adventure of living. In giving up our radical defenses and bags of tricks, we are reborn. We become like babes, loveable to behold. We experience the freshness, purity, and genuineness that are truly Christlike. However, we do not become naïve and simplistic. Rather, we grow to be as Jesus said, “wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” reports Matthew 10.16. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
As we gibe in to spontaneous expression from our core along the primary polarities, integration gradually takes place and inner harmony is experienced. This process takes time, just as building up a pattern of repressing feelings took time. The actualizing response must be made again and again before it becomes an automatic expression of our core being. Also, the transformation from manipulating into actualizing involves a fundamental change of attitude toward self and others. Notice people who are healed and holistic have expressions of the self, rather than with the ulterior motives of impressing others or repressing one’s feeling. One chooses to approach and encounter others—even when the going gets rough—rather than reproach or avoid them. Further, the people look inward. The Holy Spirit flow into the depths of the Christian just as it did for Christ. This is important to know, because it assures us that our whole being—physical, emotional, and psychological—is the ground out of which emerges the unfolding will of God in our lives, as it did in Jesus’ life. All the essential elements for an actualizing lifestyle are already in the personality. Nothing needs to be added or taken away. We simply work with God’s help, to restore the inner balance so that we can live with more integrity. With awareness, patience, and gentle discipline, the patterns of characters styles become stages of growth—like the bud that eventually gives way to the blossoming of the flower. Gentleness is an important concept here. If someone impatiently tried to tear the covering of the bud away, the flower inside would be destroyed. In the same way, we need to be respectful of slow and gradual transformation of the constricted personality into the fully alive and expressive one. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
With courage the actualizing Christian recognizes within oneself the possibility for deterioration into psychosis, or growth into Spirit-led actualization. It is this potentiality for psychosis or actualizing that makes each day a creative act of personal surrender to the miracle of God’s abiding grace. The transformation from neurosis to personality health is indeed a wonderful process. The person rises on the force of hope out of the depths of one’s despair. One’s cowardice is replaced by courage. The rigid bonds of one’s selfishness are broken down by a taste of gratification of unselfishness. Joy wells up and streams over one’s pain. And love comes into the human’s life to vanquish one’s loneliness. One has at last found oneself—and found one’s fellow humans and one’s place in the Universe. Such is the transformation from neurosis to personality health. And such is what it means, likewise, to experience religion. The Christian Bible is clear that the kingdom of God need not begin only when one goes to Heaven. Rather, the kingdom of God has already burst into time and space and history. The more we live from our cores, the more we experience the gracious powers of the kingdom of God—here and now. So the actualizing Christian has hope not only for a blessed eternity but also for substantial healing, meaning, and fulfillment in this life. Many Christians are not sufficiently aware of this exciting prospect. An example is a marine sergeant who was recently talking to Jared. He confided sincerely that he was afraid to make a deep commitment to Christ because he felt he could not handle the new obligation to straighten out his life and give up some bad habits he enjoyed. “If I surrender to God, He will judge me and send me to some remote corner of the Earth,” he said. Jared suggested that the whole meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ was that God loves each one of us perfectly. So why would a loving God want to make Crowley miserable? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
God sent Jesus into the World to liberate people, not to condemn and frustrate them. Crowley had never seen that side of it, but had rather assumed that God was the kind of gruff and stern Being with whom one ought not to get too intimate—a punitive God. However, this is simply not true. God is for us, not against us! Given the balance of desire to be all that we are called by God to be, courage to be ourselves here and now, and openness to grow day by day, we cannot help making the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. For proof that the glimpse is a genuine fact and not a hallucinatory one, not only ought the experience itself to be analyzed but the after-condition ought to be studied and the subsequent behaviour ought to be noted. Does it show less attachment to the ego and more devotion to the Overself, less emotional disturbance and more mental tranquility? If it is a genuine glimpse, its effect will be seen in one’s face, one’s gait, one’s talk, while the influence, and some of the aftermath, lasts. For one’s face will be transfigured, one’s gait will be slowed down, one’s talk will be restrained and wise. The Glimpse is in very truth a magic spell cast over a person’s whole being so that one neither feels nor reacts like one did before. For a short time one is born again, a new person. All the annals of the vanished past and all the experiences of the living present inform us that whoever enters into it feels one’s natural egotism subside, one’s fierce passions assuaged, one’s restless thoughts stilled, one’s troubled emotions pacified, one’s habitual World-view spiritualized, and one’s whole person caught up into a beatific supernal power. Did one ever have this kind of consciousness? One’s words and deeds, one’s personal presence and psychological self-betrayal should proclaim with a united voice what one is. No human who habitually enters such a blessed state could ever bring oneself to hate or injure a fellow human being. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Dear Lord in Heaven, I am dropping my baggage from the past right here. I am letting go of it and giving it to You. I do not want to drag it along with me any longer. Thank You for taking this heavy load off my heart. God, please be with us Violence, destruction, receive our homage. Please help us to bring darkness into the light, to lift out the pain, the anger, where it can be seen for what it is—the balance-wheel for our vulnerable, aching love. Within the act of creation, crude power that forges a balance between hate and love. Helps us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit. Who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light, nothing flowers. Beat the roots in mind, You the dark one, God, awesome power. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my beloved husband whom I affectionately recall in this solemn hour. May his soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life and his memory ever be for a blessing. O Heavenly Father, remember the sold of my beloved wife whom I affectionately recall in this solemn hour. May her soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life and may her memory ever be for a blessing. O heavenly Father, remember the soul of my beloved son whom I loving recall in this solemn hour. His memory is enshrined in my heart. May his soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Amen. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my beloved daughter whom I loving recall in this solemn hour. Her memory is enshrined in my heart. May her soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Amen. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my grandparents whom I affectionately recall in this solemn hour. As I remember the hours we spent together in happy fellowship, may I ever keep sacred the memory of grandfather’s loyalty and love. May grandmother and grandfather’s soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Amen. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
We’ve noticed something interesting since moving to Brighton Station Residence 2…laundry isn’t such a chore. 👕
Is it the extra cabinet space? The long folding countertop? Who knows, but we’re here for it! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-2/
Be welcomed by the grand foyer showcasing a beautiful open-concept great room, kitchen and casual dining room as well a gorgeous backyard.
There Was Terror in His Eyes as Not Often Seen in a Human Being!
Twenty-first century humans, in spite of all their scientific and technological advances, are baffled by unexplained forces existent in the Universe. The naturalistic philosophy of the previous generations has been unable to account for all of the mysterious phenomena which have been observed. Many scientists believe that living beings may inhabit other galaxies, and highly educated humans are seriously studying reports of those who insist they have received communications from the dead. Humans of science no longer scoff at the accounts of strange occurrences associated with witchcraft and occultic practices. Although they do not necessarily accept them as proof of the supernatural, many will admit they are manifestations of some kind of power they do not yet understand. Christian theologians and scientists are not perplexed by such reports. They know that both God and Satan are very much alive. Though readily conceding that they cannot explain fully all the mysteries of life, they affirm with confidence the existence of God and an invisible host of intelligent supernatural beings. They are convinced that when one accepts the teachings of the Bible, one begins to understand many of the puzzling facts of existence. For example, the Bible tells of holy angels who dwell in Heaven (Matthew 18.10). It also mentions “angels that sinned” (2 Peter 2.4), rebellious spirit begins who have been cast out of Heaven and now dwell in the atmosphere that surrounds the Earth. We know this because Paul declared that Satan is “the prince of the power of the air,” reports Ephesians 2.2, and the Greek word translated “air” was used to speak of the gaseous envelop that encircles our planet. These wicked beings apparently have unlimited access to Earther, and actively influence every area of human endeavour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Because they do not possess physical bodies, we cannot typically detect them through our senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. We do have evidence of their presence, however, for the Word of God gives us information regarding their identification, their nature and their function. Various terms are used in the Christian Bible to denote the evil spirit beings who followed Satan in this initial act of rebellion against God. It refers to “angels that sinned” 2 Peter 2.4 and “angels who kept not their first estate” Jude 6, and many times mentions “spirits” and “demons.” Some scholars believe that these demons must be distinguished from the “angels that sinned” and the “angels who kept not their first estate.” They contend that the Heavenly beings who joined Satan in his revolt against God are fallen angels, but that demons are disembodies spirits of physical and moral creatures who once lived upon the Earth. However, these Bible students disagree regarding an exact identification of the demons. Some say they are the spirits of pre-Adamic beings similar to man, while others identify them as the spirits of the “giants” who were destroyed in the great flood of Noah’s day. If one thinks that demons are the spirits of man-like beings who lived before Adam, then one will no doubt interpret Genesis 1.2 as a declaration that the original Earth, inhabited by the creatures, was cataclysmically destroyed. Genesis 1.2 is then translated as follows: “And the Earth became without form and void…” This theory, while attractive in that it permits a literal interpretation of the days in Genesis 1, must be acknowledged as only a hypothesis. Most Hebrew scholars reject this interpretation because Genesis 1.2 begins with a grammatical construction which makes it highly unlikely that Genesis 1.1 and 1.2 are separated by millions of years. Then, too, the verb translated “became” almost always has the meaning “was.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
However, even if we accept this theory, and believe that a race of man-like beings inhabited the prehistoric Earth, we would have no basis for thinking that their spirits are now free to roam about as the enemies of humankind. Other Bible scholars maintain that demons are the spirits of the “giants” who lived upon the Earth in the days of Noah. They refer to Genesis 6, contending that these “giants” were produced when fallen angels, called the “sons of God,” married the “daughters of men.” “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the Earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all whom they chose. There were giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown,” reports Genesis 6.1, 2, 4. It is necessary for proponents of this theory to believe that fallen angels became male human beings who married women, produced a mongrel offspring, and took over the role of father in the family. They theorize that Satan hoped thereby to frustrate God’s redemptive plan. The Lord had promised salvation through Christ to human beings only—not for angels or mixed half-human and half-angelic race. Christ could not have been born to offspring of these corrupted creates or provide redemptions for them. Thus God’s plan of redemption would have been thwarted. In addition, both Jude and Peter in their epistles refer to a sin committed by angels, and their words can be blended very nicely into this concept. Jude writes, “And the angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,” reports Jude 6, 7. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The words “in like manner” (verse 7) are taken to mean that the sin of the angels in having pleasures of the flesh with women was an unnatural act, comparable to sodomy. Peter tells of angels assigned to Tartaros, the nether World of the Greeks considered to be lower than Hades. “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell [GK Tartaros], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,” reports 2 Peter 2.4. Again, it does not take a great deal of imagination to see how these words of Peter may be applied to the wicked angels who committed the monstrous sin of attempting to make mongrels of the human race. Many Bible students, however, reject this interpretation of Genesis 6. Since angels are non-material beings, it would be necessary for them to create physical bodies for themselves capable of impregnating a female member of the human race. This would require nothing less than a creative miracle, and the Bible indicates that this power belongs only to God. In addition, it is not necessary to interpret the statements in Jude and 2 Peter as a reference to sin involving pleasures of the flesh on the part of the fallen angels. Jude’s use of the expression “going after strange flesh” may be figurative language representing spiritual fornication. The prophets often depicted Israel’s unfaithfulness to God in this manner. Peter’s statement that the angels who sinned have been assigned to Tartaros may be a simple declaration that all sinning angels have been designated to this place, and that they are even now under chains of moral and spiritual darkness. The Bible gives little information regarding the origin of demons. We can state with absolute certainty only that they are fallen spirit beings who have committed themselves to Satan and that they hate God and seek to harm His people. No clear distinction can be made between fallen angels and demons, for they are all evil spirits. Some of our questions must remain unanswered, but the Lord has given ample revelation to warn us that these invisible enemies are far too great and powerful for us to defeat in our own strength, and that we can successfully wage war against them only as we live in continual dependence upon the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
In one respect the case of Dame Alice Kyteler stands alone in the history of magical dealings in Ireland prior to the seventeenth century. We have of the entire proceedings an invaluable and contemporary account, or at latest one compiled within a very few years after the death of Petronilla of Meath; while the excitement produced by the affair is shown by the more or less lengthy allusions to it in early writings, such as The Book of Howth (Carew MSS.), the Annals by Fariar Clyn, the Chartularies of S. Mary’s Abbey (vol. ii), &c. It is also rendered more valuable by the fact that those who are best qualified to give their opinion on the matter have assured the writer that to the best of their belief no entries with respect to trials for sorcery or witchcraft can be found in the various old Rolls preserved in the Dublin Record Office. However, when the story is considered with reference to the following facts it takes on a different signification. On the 29th of September 1317 (Wright says 1320), Bishop de Ledrede held his first Synod, at which several canons were passed, one of which seems in some degree introductory to the events detailed in last week’s report. In it he speaks of “a certain new and pestilential sect in our parts, differing from all the faith in the World, filled with a devilish spirit, more inhuman than heathens…who pursue the priests and bishops of the Most High God equally in life and death, by spoiling and rending the patrimony of Christ in the diocese of Ossory, and who utter grievous threats against the bishops and their ministers exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and (by various means) attempt to hinder the correction of sins and the salvation of souls, in contempt of God and the Church.” From this it would seem that heresy and unorthodoxy had already made its appearance in the diocese. In 1324 the Kyteler case occurred, one of the participants being burnt at the stake while other incriminate persons were subsequently followed up, some of whom shared the fate of Petronilla of Meath. In 1327 Adam Dubh, of the Leinster tribe of O’Toole, was burnt alive on College Green for denying the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, as well as for rejecting the authority of the Holy See. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
In 1335 Pope Benedict XII wrote a letter to King Edward III, in which occurs the following passage: “It has come to our knowledge that while our venerable brother, Richard, Bishop of Ossory, was visiting his diocese, there appeared in the midst of his catholic people men who were heretics together with their abettors, some of whom asserted that Jesus Christ was a mere man and a sinner, and was justly crucified for His own sins; others after having done homage and offered sacrifice to demons, thought otherwise of the sacrament of the Body of Christ than the Catholic Church teaches, saying that the same venerable sacrament is by no means to be worshipped; and also asserting that they are not bound to obey or believe the decrees, decretals, and apostolic mandates; in the meantime, consulting demons according to the rites of those sects among the Gentiles and Pagans, they despise the sacraments of the Catholic Church, and draw the faithful of Christ after them by their superstitions.” Unlike apocryphal and rabbinical literature, the Biblical description of evil spirits avoids the unusual and grotesque. The Bible does, however, present us with a clear picture of their activity and tells us how to resist them effectively. In the first place, it declares that demons or fallen angels are non-material beings. They do not possess bodies like humans, and therefore are repeatedly called “spirits.” Matthew, for example, says, “When the evening was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick,” reports Matthew 8.16. Jesus started that the Creator is not made up of physical substance when He said, “God is a Spirit,” reports John 4.24. Later, when His frightened disciples thought He was a ghost, He told them their fears were groundless, for “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have,” reports Luke 24.39. Paul had in mind the non-physical nature of Satan and his army of evil spirits when he said that our warfare is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. Satan’s demonic hordes are spirit beings, and therefore more dangerous than the “flesh and blood” enemies we may encounter in our daily lives. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Second, the Bible portrays demons as highly intelligent creatures. They recognize Christ when He was here upon the Earth, and knew they could not have fellowship with Him. Luke tells us about an evil spirit who is an example of this. “When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God, most high? I beseech thee, torment me not,” reports Luke 8.28. The fallen spirits are also aware of their ultimate defeat, for James declared, “Them demons also believe, and tremble,” reports James 2.19. They are, of course, finite creatures, even Satan is limited in knowledge. He has myriads of evil spirit followers, however, and they are able to give him information on almost any person and circumstance in which he is interested. In this manner he can find out much what he wants to know. Truly, believers in Christ can never successfully cope with Satan and his hosts without special help from the Lord. Therefore, we must humbly look to God for wisdom and strength to resist the attacks of our invisible enemies. Third, the World of evil spirits is cruel. These creatures hate God and all who have placed their trust in Him. They seem to find delight in causing human grief and pain. For example, Matthew tells us that a man who was both blind and dumb suffered these afflictions because a demon had entered his body. “Then was brought unto him one possessed with a demon, blind, and dumb; and He healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spoke and saw,” reports Matthew 12.22. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of two demented men who lived in the country of the Gerasenes, and indicate that their insanity was the result of demonic invasion of their personalities. Luke, the beloved physicians, writes of a woman who was bent over with some crippling disease, saying that she had “a spirit of infirmity.” He adds that Jesus said she had been bound by Satan. “And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And, behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no way lift herself up. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
“And he laid his hands on her; and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which humans ought to work; in them, therefore, come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or her ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, who Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bound on the sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him,” reports Luke 13.10-17. While the gospel writers make it clear that not all illness is the work of Satan and demons, they do point out that much human suffering is the result of demonic activity. Finally, the Bible tells us that all fallen angels or evil spirits are confirmed in their wickedness. Though they “believe and tremble,” they will never repent, never seek forgiveness, and never pray for holiness or purity. Though they know that Jesus is the Christ, they never really worship Him. They must acknowledge that He is stronger than they, and may occasionally render Him token submission, but inwardly they hate Him and keenly resent His authority over them. In fact, their nature is so totally evil that the term “unclean” often is applied to them. (See Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelations 16.13.) They apparently delight in sin, find great pleasure in leading humans to commit evil deeds, and possess no feelings of guilt nor desire for deliverance. Michael Scot, reputed a wizard of such potency that—when in Salamanca’s cave he listed his magic want to wave and the bells would ring in Notre Dame. Scot has studied successively at Oxford and Paris (where he acquired the title of “mathematicus”); he then passed to Bologna, thence to Palermo, and subsequently continued his studies in Toledo. His refusal of the See of Cashel was an intellectual loss to the Irish Church, for he was so widely renowned for his varied and extensive learning that he was credited with supernatural powers; a number of legends grew up around his name which hid his real merit, and transformed the man of science into a magician. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
In the Border country traditions of his magical power are common. Boccaccio alludes to “a great master in necromancy, called Michael Scot,” while Dante places him in the eighteen circle of Hell. The next, who is so slender in the flanks, was Michael Scot, who of a verity of magical illusion knew the game. Another man to whom magical powers were attributed solely on account of his learning was Gerald, the fourth Earl of Desmond, styled the Poet, who died rather mysteriously in 1398. The Four Masters in their Annals describe him as “a nobleman of wonderful bounty, mirth, cheerfulness of conversation, charitable in his deeds, easy of access, a witty and ingenious composer of Irish poetry, a learned and profound chronicler.” No legends are extant of his magical deeds. King James I of Scotland, whose severities against his nobles had around their bitter resentment, was barbarously assassinated at Perth in 1437 by some of their supports, who were aided and abetted by the ages Duke of Atholl. From a contemporary account of this we learn that the monarch’s fate was predicted to him by an Irish prophetess or witch; has he given ear to her message he might have escaped with his life. We modernize the somewhat difficult spelling, but retain the quaint language of the original. “The king, suddenly advised, made a solemn feast of the Christmas at Perth, which is clept Saint John’s Town, which is from Edinburg on the other side of the Scottish sea, the which is vulgarly celpt the water of Lethe. In the midst of the way there arose a woman of Ireland, the clept herself as a soothsayer. The which anon as she saw the king she cried with a loud voice, saying thus: ‘My lord king, and you pass this water you shall never turn again alive.’ The king hearing this was astonied of her words; for but a little before he had read in a prophecy that in the self same year the king of Scots should be slain; and therewithal the king, as he rode, cleped to him one of his knights, and gave him in commandment to turn again to speak with that woman, and ask of her what she would, and what thing she meant with her loud crying. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
“And she began, and told him as ye have heard of the King of Scots if he passed that water. As now the king asked her, how she knew that. And she said, that Huthart told her so. ‘Sire,’ quoth he, ‘men may “calant” yet take to heed of yon woman’s words, for she is but a drunken fool, and wot not what she saith’; and so with his folk passed the water celpt the Scottish sea, towards Saint John’s town.” The narrator states some dreams ominous of James’s murder, and afterwards proceeds thus: Both afore supper, and long after into quarter of the night, in the which the Earl of Atholl (Athetelles) and Robert Steward were about the king, where they were occupied at the playing of chess, at the tables, in reading of romances, in singing and piping, in harping, and in other honest solaces of great pleasance and disport. Therewith came the said woman of Ireland, that celpt herself a divineress, and entered the king’s court, till that she came straight to the king’s chamber-door, where she stood, till at the last the usher opened the door, marvelling of that woman’s being there that time of night, and asking her what she would. ‘Let me in, sir’ quoth she, ‘for I have somewhat to say, and to tell unto the king; for I am the same woman that not long ago desired to have spoken with him at the Leith, when he should pass the Scottish sea.’ The usher went in and told him of this woman. ‘Yea,’ quoth the king, ‘let her come tomorrow’; because the he was occupied with such disports at that time he let not to hear her as then. The usher came again to the chamber-door to the said woman, and there he told her that the king was busy in playing, and bid her come soon again upon the morrow. ‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘it shall repent you all that ye will not let me speak now with the king.’ Thereat the usher laughed, and held her but a fool, charging her to go her way, and therewithal she went thence. Her informant “Huthart” was evidently a familiar spirit who was in attendance on her. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Considering the barrenness of Irish records on the subject of sorcery and witchcraft it affords us no small satisfaction to find the following statement in the Statute Rolls of the Parliament for the year 1447. It consists of a most indignantly-worded remonstrance from the Lords and Commons, which was drawn forth by the fact that some high-placed personage had been accused of practising sorcery with the intent to do grievous harm to one’s enemy. When making it the remonstrants appear to have forgotten, or perhaps, like Members of Parliament in other ages, found it convenient to forget the nonce the Kyteler incident of the pervious century. There was an Act of Parliament which was intended to put a stop to a certain lucrative form of witchcraft. It is gravely stated by the writer of a little book entitled Beware the Cat (and by Giraldus Camrensis before him), that Irish witches could turn wisps of hay, straw &c. into red-coloured pigs, which they dishonestly sold in the market, but which resumed their proper shape when crossing running water. To prevent this it is stated that the Irish Parliament passed an Act forbidding the purchase of red swine. We regret to say, however, that no such interesting Act is to be found in the Statues books. The belief in the power of witches to inflict harm on others was also a powerful belief in Victorian times. When reflecting on history, one can see that consulting someone with supernatural powers was no different than talking to a friend about one’s life. It was very common. Also, many of these accounts turned out to have some truth to them or evidence of supernatural power. Perhaps this is because people were more in tune with their inner spirit and the planet back then. Many people thought Sarah Winchester was mentally ill or deranged for consulting a medium about how she should deal with the evil spirits that were haunting her, they thought she was even more insane for building the World’s most beautiful and unique mansion. However, what better way could there be to spend your money than by creating something you and the World can enjoy for many centuries and creating a living memorial for your family? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Perhaps what Mrs. Winchester did was very rational and sane. In contrast, most others express their pain and suffering by becoming destructive and hurting others, and people usually idolize them for that. Mrs. Winchester gradually developed her skill in building, just as she had done with music and language in her youth. She often used the most current innovations in her home. Some historical sources say that Mrs. Winchester was the first to use wool for insulation. Carbide gas lights in the house were fed by the estate’s own gas manufacturing plant, which used a new process. The gas lights were operated by pushing an electric button. A specially designed window catch was patterned after a Winchester rifle trigger and trip hammer, amongst other state of the art designs. I met a man in the Winchester Mansion one day that I knew very well, as I thought, though I had not seen him for years. Without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle questions, we walked together to the Blue Séance Room, and there we shook hands. Just then there came a vague vibration in the Earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. Next morning, I spoke of this meeting to a mutual friend, and then I learnt, for the first time, that the man had died six months before. The natural inference was that I had mistaken one man for another, an error that, not having a good memory for faces, I frequently fall into. What was remarkable about the matter, however, was that throughout our walk I had conversed with the man under the impression that he was that other dead man, and, whether by coincidence or not, his replies had never once suggested to me my mistake. As soon as I finished speaking to Jared, who had been listening very thoughtfully, asked me if I believed in spiritualism “to its fullest extent.” “That is a rather large question,” I answered. “What do you mean by ‘spiritualism to its fullest extent’?” “Well, do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the power of revisiting this Earth at their will, but that, when here, they have the power of action, or rather, of exciting to action. Let me put a definite case. A spiritualist friend of mine, a sensible and by no means imaginative man, once told me that a table, through the medium of which the spirit of a friend had been in the habit of communicating with him, came slowly across the room towards him, of its own accord, one night as he sat alone in the Winchester Mansion, and pinioned him against the wall. Now can any of you believe that, or can you not?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
I could believe it. It seems that the difference between what we call the natural and supernatural is merely the difference between frequency and rarity of occurrence. Suppose a person died with the dearest wish of one’s heart unfulfilled, do you believe that one’s spirit might have power to return to Earth and complete the interrupted work? The Winchester Mansion is supposed to be enchanted. According to the legend, William Winchester was a very potent magician, and usually resided in a castle. To this he brought his bride, a beautiful young lady, Sarah Lockwood Pardee, who he loved, and he prevailed upon her her every desire, but with fatal results. One day she presented herself in the chamber in which her husband exercised his forbidden art, and begged him to show her the wonders of the evil science. With the greatest reluctance he consented, but warned her that she must prepare herself to witness a series of most frightful phenomena, which, once commenced, could neither be abridged nor mitigated, while if she spoke a single word during the proceedings the castle and all it contained would sink. Urged on by curiosity she gave the required promised, and he commenced. Muttering a spell as he stood before her, feathers sprouted thickly over him, his face became contracted and hooked, a corpse-like smell filled the air, and winnowing the air with beats of its heavy wings a gigantic vulture rose in his stead, and swept round and round the room as if on the point of pouncing upon her. The lady controlled herself though this trial, and another began. The bird alighted near the door, and in less than a minute changed, she saw not how, into a horribly deformed and dwarfish hag, who, with yellow skin hanging about her face, and cavernous eyes, swung herself on crutches towards the lady, her mouth foaming with fury, and her grimaces and contortions becoming more and more hideous every moment, till she rolled with a fearful yell on the floor in a horrible convulsion at the lady’s feet, and then changed into a huge serpent, which came sweeping and arching towards her with crest erect and quivering tongue. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Suddenly, as it seemed on the point of darting at her, she saw her husband in its stead, standing pale before her, and with his finger on his lips enforcing the continued necessity of silence. He then placed himself at the full length on the floor and began to stretch himself at full length on the floor and began to stretch himself out, longer and longer, until his head nearly reached to one end of the vast room and his feet to the other. This utterly unnerved her. She gave a wild scream of horror, whereupon the castle shook and the nine-story tower of what is now known as the Winchester Mansion came tumbling down. Mr. Winchester is said to have been dead and never lived in the Winchester Mansion, but perhaps his spirit did? Once every seven years, the great William Wirt Winchester would rise, and rides by on his white horse round Llanada Villa. The steed is shod with gold shoes, and when these are worn out the spell that holds Mr. Winchester will be broken, and he will regain possession of his vast estates and semi-regal power. In the closing years of the nineteenth-century there was a living man named Gilbert Plutchik who claimed to have seen Mr. Winchester. Gilbert was a blacksmith, and his forge stood on back of the estate, near a lonely part of the road. One night when there was a bright moon, he was working very late and quite alone. In one of the pauses of his work he heard the ring of many hoofs ascending the steep road that passed his forge, and, standing in his doorway, he saw a gentleman on a white horse, who was dressed in a fashion the like of which he had never seen before. This man was accompanied by a mounted retinue, in similar dress. They seemed to be riding up to the mansion, but the pace slackened as they drew near, and the rider of the white horse, who seemed from his haughty air to be a man of rank, drew bridle, and came to a halt before the smith’s door. He did not speak, and all his train were silent, but he beckoned to the smith, and pointed down at one of the horse’s hoofs. Gilbert stopped and raised it, and held it just long enough to see that it was shod with a gold shoe, which in one place was worn as thing as a shilling. Instantly his situation was made apparent to him by this sign, and he recoiled with a terrified prayer. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The lordly rider, with a look of pain and fury, struck him suddenly with something that whistled in the air like a whip; an icy streak seemed to traverse his body, and at the same time he saw the whole cavalcade break into a gallop, and disappear down the hill. It is generally supposed that for the purpose of putting an end to his period of enchantment Mr. Winchester endeavours to lead someone on to first break the silence and speak to him; but what, in the event of his succeeding, would be the result, or would befall the person thus ensnared, no one knows. If one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this World at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as this, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing-room tricks. There was once a great wrong done to the Winchester Mansion. A man stole something priceless from the estate. After that, he felt like he was being followed. However, the course was the whole World, and the stakes his life. It was sixteen hours before he was going to abscond. Passing the estate once more, he asks, “How long since the carriage passed this way, with a tall, fair man inside?” “Such a one passed this morning, Monsieur. The man was ridden by Fear as he looked, and saw before him the door to the Winchester Manion opened, and passing in, knelt down and prayed. He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch eagerly at the straws of faith. He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs from him, facing him, knelt Mr. Winchester praying also. However, Mr. Winchester’s prayer, being a thanksgiving merely, was short, so that when the thief raised his eyes, he saw the face of Mr. Winchester gazing at him across the chair tops, with a mocking smile upon it. He made no attempt to rise, but remained kneeling, fascinated by the look of joy that shone out of Mr. Winchester’s eyes. And Mr. Winchester moved the high-back chairs one by one, and came toward him softly. Then, just as Mr. Winchester stood beside the thief who had wronged him, full of gladness that his opportunity had come, there burst from the bell town a sudden clash of bells, and Mr. Winchester vanished. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Then the thief who had done the wrong rose up and passed out praising God. What became of the body of Mr. Winchester is not known. There was none to identify. Years passed away, and the survivour in the tragedy became a worthy and useful citizen, and a noted man of science. He was employed by Mrs. Winchester and even had a laboratory on the estate were many objects necessary to him in his researches, and prominent among them, stood in a certain corner, a human skeleton. It was a very old and much-mended skeleton, and one day the long-expected end arrived, and it tumbled to pieces. Thus it became necessary to purchase another. The man of science visited a dealer he well knew, and the dealer said he would send a well-proportioned “study” to his laboratory that very afternoon. The dealer was as good as his word. When Monsieur entered his laboratory that evening, the thing was in its place. Monsieur seated himself in his high-backed chair, and tried to collect his thoughts. However, his thoughts were unruly, and inclined to wander, and to wander always in one direction. He opened a large volume and commenced to read. He read of a man who had wronged another and feld from him, the other man following. Finding himself reading this, he closed the book angrily, and went and stood by the window and looked out. He saw before him the sun-pierced nave of East wing of the Winchester Mansion, and on the stones lay a dead man with a mocking smile upon his face. Cursing himself for a fool, he turned away with a laugh. However, his laugh was short-lived, for it seemed to him that something else in the room was laughing also. Struck suddenly still, with his feet glued to the ground, he stood listening for awhile: then sought with starting eyes at the corner from where the sound had seemed to come. However, the white thing standing there was only grinning. Monsieur wiped the damp sweat from his head and hands, and stole out. For a couple of days he did not enter the room again. One the third, telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl, he opened the door and went in. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand, and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined it. A set of bones bought for a thousand dollars. Was he a child, to be scared by such a bogey! He held his lamp up in front of the thing’s grinning head. The flame of the lamp flickered as though a faint breath had passed over it. The man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house were old and cracked, and that the wind might creep in anywhere. He repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room, walking backwards, with his eyes fixed on the thing. When he reached his desk, he sat down and gripped the arms of his chair till his fingers turned white. He tried to work, but the empty sockets in that grinning head seemed to be drawing him towards them. He rose and battled with his inclination to fly screaming from the room. Glancing fearfully about him, his eyes fell upon a high screen, standing before the door. He dragged it forward, and placed it between himself and the thing, so that he could not see it—nor it see him. Then he sat down again to his work. For a while he forced himself to look at the book in front of him, but at last, unable to control himself any longer, he suffered his eyes to follow their own beat. It may have been an hallucination. He may have accidentally placed the screen so as to favour such an illusion. However, what he saw was a bony hand coming round the corner of the screen, and, with a cry, he fell to the floor in a swoon. John Hansen and other people of the house came running in, and lifting him up, carried him out, and laid him upon his bed. As soon as he recovered, his first question was, where had they found the thing—where was it when they entered the room? And when they told him they had seen it standing where is always stood, and had gone down into the room to look again, because of his frenzied entreaties, and returned trying to hide their smiles, he listened to their talk about overwork, and the necessity for change and rest, and said they might do with him as they would. So for many months the laboratory door remined locked, and many of the innovative technologies produced by the Winchester Estate came to a halt. Then there cam a chill winter evening when the man of science opened it again, closed the door behind him. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
He lighted his lamp, and gathered his instruments and books around him, and sat down by the fire before them in his high-backed chair. And the old terror returned to him. He was sitting there when he heard a cry. He held his lamp above his head, and saw figures in the distance, and wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. He listened for a moment to the wind in the valley, it sounded unnatural. Standing at the door was a specter. The man of science sat down partly to collect his thoughts again, partly because it had turned him faint. He heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in the parlor. This time the man of science wished to conquer himself. His nerves were stronger now, and his brain clearer; he would fight his unreasoning fear. He crossed the door and locked himself in, and flung the key to the other end of the room, where it fell among beakers and Bunsen Burners with an echoing clatter. Later on, the housekeeper, Angus, going her final round tapped at the door and wished him good night, as was her custom. She received no response, at first, and growing nervous, tapped louder and called again; and at length an answering “good night” came back to her. She thought little about it at the time, but afterwards she remembered that the voice that had replied to her had been strangely grating and mechanical. Trying to describe it, she likened it to such a voice as she would imagine coming from a statue. Next morning the door to the laboratory remained still locked. It was no unusual thing for him to work all night, and far into the next day, so no one thought surprised. When, however, evening came, and yet he did not appear, the servants gathered outside the room and whispered, remembering what had happened before. They listened, but could hear no sound. They shook the door and called to him, then beat with their fists upon the mahogany panels. However, there was still no sound. Becoming alarmed, they decided to burst open the door, and, after many blows, it gave way and flew back, and they crowded in. He sat bolt upright in his high-backed chair. They thought at first he had died in his sleep. However, when they drew nearer and the light fell upon him, they saw the livid marks of bony fingers round his throat; and in his eyers there was such a terror as is not often seen in human eyes. Next evening was a lovely evening, and Mrs. Winchester walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when she traversed the field-path near where the nine-story tower once stood. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Winchester Mystery House
Saturdays are for the boilers 😉 Do you know where this is in the house?
🎟 Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
This is Not a Fairytale—Accept the Kingdom of God, You Idiot!
Mental health plays an important role in the way we deal with stress, how we relate to others and decisions we make in our daily lives. Without sound mental health, it would almost be impossible for one to realize one’s full potential, work productively, make a meaningful contribution to one’s community, or handle the stress that comes with life. Bipolar disorder is active and exacerbated, at least in part, by interpersonal stressors. When asked for their opinions of what caused their bipolar disorder, 74 percent of patients in one study pointed to interpersonal factors. There is some evidence linking vulnerability to particular interpersonal stressors with severity in bipolar disorder. In particular, sociotrophy-autonomy marks a particular predisposition predictive of negative symptomatological reactions to particular classes of stressors. People who score high on sociotrophy define their self-worth and efficacy in terms of interactions and relations with other people. Conversely, people who score high on autonomy derive their self-worth and efficacy from independent and autonomous achievements. Theoretically, people who are more sociotropic would be expected to be more vulnerable to interpersonal stressors. After assessing their sociotrophy-autonomy and their experience of stressful events, a group of patients with bipolar disorder were followed over a period of 18 months. Symptoms of bipolar disorder were exacerbated as a function of experiencing interpersonally oriented stressors, and of being more sociotrophic. Even if they experienced low levels of interpersonal events, whereas people who scored low on sociotrophy only experienced heightened symptoms in response to high levels of stressful interpersonal events, sociotrophy appeared to place subjects at risk for heightened symptoms. However, researchers did not find this sociotrophy-interpersonal stress-vulnerability effect, although it was evident among patients with unipolar depression. This suggest that the match between interpersonal stressful events and interpersonal vulnerabilities may be more import in unipolar than in bipolar depression. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
A related study also found that subjects with unipolar depression were more likely than those with bipolar depression to actually generate interpersonally oriented stressful events, such as conflicts. In this study, the subjects with bipolar depression did not differ significantly from medically or healthy controls in terms of experiencing interpersonal stressful event. Although symptoms of bipolar disorder may be triggered by interpersonal stressors, particularly when a patient has a predisposition to define one’s own self-worth in interpersonal terms, patients with bipolar disorder are not as likely to actually generate interpersonal stressors as are people with unipolar depression. Social support is believed to mitigate the ill effects of stressful events. Among patients with bipolar disorder, higher levels of social support are predictive of symptom-free “survival time.” However, social support has proven to protect against depressive episodes but not manic episodes. When people are feeling depressed, social support from others may involve tangible assistance with the source of the problem, cognitive restructuring or reframing so that the problem is no longer viewed as catastrophic, and distraction to take the depressed person’s mind off the problem temporarily. Each of these may be effective, at least in the short run, in alleviating some of the dysphoria felt by people who are depressed. It is interesting however, that many of these same tactics have little or no value for altering the mood of someone in a manic episode. To the extent that stressors exacerbate symptoms of bipolar disorder, social support may be helpful for minimizing some of the symptoms (depressive) but not others (manic). People with bipolar disorder have relatively high rates of the Cluster B, or “dramatic-emotional,” personality disorders (id est, antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline). In some sample of patients with bipolar disorder, 45 percent had at least one personality disorder, and many had several personality disorders. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
A study of personality disorder rates in outpatients with bipolar disorder compared to controls yielded estimates of 48 percent and 15 percent, respectively. The connection between bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder represents a mixture of impulsive self-damaging behaviour and unstable mood with agitated depressive features, unstable and ambivalent interpersonal relationships, suicidal threats or attempts, intense inappropriate displays of anger, and transient stress-related paranoid or disorganized symptoms. In some ways it is like bipolar disorder except that the two phases are mixed and more reactive to interpersonal problems. Symptoms of bipolar disorder can be triggered and exacerbated by interpersonal stressors, much like symptoms of borderline personality disorder. In both disorders, interpersonal relationships are turbulent, perhaps as both a result and a cause of the disorder’s symptoms. Bipolar disorder shares some significant features with schizophrenia. It is sometimes a challenge to distinguish the two. From an interpersonal perspective, perhaps the most striking similarity is the evidence for CD (communication deviance) and negative AS (affective style) in family interactions. It is tempting to speculate that these family interaction processes may create a vulnerability to, and/or be responsive to, nonspecific psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. In terms of social styme, people with bipolar disorder, like those with schizophrenia, often communicate with other people in way that are dramatic, odd, or grandiose. At the level of psychological and interpersonal symptoms, there is substantial overlap between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, suggesting that the two problems occupy neighbouring positions on the continuum from gross psychosocial disturbance to normal psychosocial functioning. In addition to being highly comorbid with personality disorders, and to some extent with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder tends to cooccur with eating disorders and substance use disorders. Obviously, these problems have been linked to some of the same interpersonal issues that are evident in bipolar disorder, particularly marital and family-of-origin difficulties. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The discovery of a genetic component in bipolar disorder, along with the documented efficacy of pharmacological agents for its treatment, has made biological explanations of bipolar disorder very fashionable. Attributions to biological origins are also very face-saving for patients and their families. However, these biological vulnerabilities are the backdrop, in front of which interpersonal stressors and disturbances in family relations profoundly influence the course of the disorder. Social and environmental factors may evoke or protect against biological, genetic, or cognitive vulnerabilities to bipolar disorder. Because the symptoms of bipolar disorder may be biologically caused, clearly leads to interpersonal impairment (exempli gratia, divorce, rejection from others), which further exacerbates the condition’s severity and chronicity. Unlike their counterparts with unipolar depression, people with bipolar disorder (at least during manic episodes) are prone to excessive talkativeness, exhibiting pressured speech, and grandiose ideas, loose associations, disorganized trains of thought, and ease of distractibility. Their excessive gregariousness may be amusing and even charming at times. However, the sheer chaos in their interpersonal communication, driven in part by thought disorder, undoubtedly interferes with competent social interaction. Other people may be annoyed, confused, and even frightened by the social behaviour of these patients. There is some suggestion that patients with bipolar disorder may manipulate others, presumably in the service of fulfilling their own dependency needs. Family problems may stress a patient, contributing to one’s symptoms. From a family systems perspective, these problems would be interpreted as both causes and effects of the disorder. Like people with unipolar depression, patients with bipolar disorder have difficulty establishing and maintaining romantic and marital relationships. When they do, considerable conflict, longing for intimacy, and disruption of pleasures of the flesh ensue. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
These patients appear almost oblivious to the burden they place on their spouses. Spousal EE (expressed emotions) have also proven to affect the course of the disorder. The positive symptoms profile of bipolar disorder may provide a modicum of relief from marital distress, due to the external attribution that spouses make from such symptoms. In their role as parents, patients with bipolar disorder tend to raise children with psychological and behavioural problems of their own. These children are especially vulnerable to the ill effects of stress, and their symptoms appear yoked to those of their ill parents. Symptoms of bipolar disorder are responsive to interpersonal stressors. Such stressors commonly precipitate episodes of the illness. Whereas social support from others has proven to suppress depressive episodes, it does not appear effective at preventing mania. Like two closely related mental healthy problems, depression and schizophrenia, bipolar disorder profoundly affects and is affected by interpersonal phenomena. Disturbed family dynamics and problems with close relationships figure prominently in the phenomenology of this severe and debilitating problem. Though biological agents have been implicated in the distal cause of this disorder, its maintenance and course are responsive to the many interpersonal problems experienced by patients with bipolar disorder. “Now He Who has fashioned us [preparing and making us fit] for this very thing is God, Who also has given us the [Holy] Spirit as a guarantee [of the fulfillment of His promise]. So then, we are always full of good and hopeful and confident courage; we know that while we are at home in the body, we are abroad from the home with the Lord [that is promised us]. For we walk by faith [we regulate our lives and conduct ourselves by our conviction or belief respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, with trust and holy fervour; thus we walk] not by sight or appearance. [Yes] we have confident and hopeful courage and are pleased rather to be away from home out of the body and be at home with the Lord. Therefore, whether we are at home [on Earth away from Him] or away from home [and with Him], we are constantly ambitions and strive earnestly to be pleasing to Him,” reports II Corinthians 5.5-9. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
When we keep reliving the painful memories of the past, we negate God’s desire to bring healing. Just as we are about to heal, we start talking about our painful experiences again. We bring it up to our friends. We start reliving it, seeing it in our imagination. All of a sudden, we can feel those same emotions all over again, as though we were tearing open the old wound. It will never properly heal until we learn to leave it alone. When one dwells on painful experiences in one’s past, one’s emotions go right back there with you, and you feel the pain in the present. You can relive something in your mind and feel it today just as vividly as when it happened twenty years ago. One must do something regarding the painful experiences from the past. Refuse to go back there emotionally; refuse to dredge up negative emotional memories. They will do one no good; in fact, strongly felt negative emotions hold the potential to severely stifle one’s progress. Think of it like this: Every person has two main files in one’s memory system. The first is a file filled with all the good things that have happened to us. It is full of our victories and accomplishment, all the things that have brought us joy and happiness through the years. The second file is just the opposite. It is filled with the hurts and pains of the past, all the negative things that have happened to us. It is full of our defeats and failures, things that brought us sadness and sorrow. Throughout or life, we can choose which file we will access. Some people repeatedly return to file number two and relive the painful things that have happened to them. They are always thinking about the times somebody did them wrong, the time they were hurt or suffered awful pain. They practically wear out file number two. They are so preoccupied with the negative things, they never get around to exploring file number one. They hardly think about the good things that have happened to them. If one wants to be free, if one wants to overcome self-pity, throw away the key to file number two. Do not go back there anymore. Keep your mind focused on the good things God has done in your life. To nurture an awareness of this perfect love may have different connotations for the Christians as opposed to the non-Christians. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
The Christian who goes through life becoming increasingly aware of the pure and intimate love that God has for one, has faith that the process of sanctification or growing in Christlikeness is inevitable. The Christian would probably think of this in terms of new fruits continually being born in one’s personality and relationships. In Galatians, Paul lists these fruits as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,” reports Galatians 5.22-23. For the non-Christian, mist the same process may be unfolding although one is not really aware of growing also by the grace of God. In one’s openness to the truth about one’s life, one can experience a clarification of one’s life situation, a deep trust in one’s own being, and a growing sense of relatedness to the Universe. The healing love God has for humankind, and the love that people can experience for one another, is the spiritual birthright of every human being. Being affirmed by love at the core of one’s being, the actualizing person does not need to waste energy proving, defending, controlling, or abusing oneself. One is set free to be oneself in a caring and respectful way, and to express oneself to others and to God in ways that are spontaneous, sincere, and creative. Being grounded in the fertile soil of God’s love, one is free to grow. God’s loving us perfectly does not guarantee that we will always feel loved. The sun always shines on the Earth, but sometimes a cloud blocks out the warmth that the Earth receives. So it is with the growing Christian. There are times of ecstatic awareness of God’s presence, and there are times when one’s prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling. However, for the actualizing Christian, even pain, frustration, confusion, and struggle are inspired tutors. In one’s heart, one learns to say with Christ, “Not my will, but thine be done,” and with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” So the actualizing life is based on the courage to know the truth about oneself and one’s destiny. This is why faith is at the heart of the Christian lifestyle. Only faith can be open to God’s sovereignty whatever the circumstances may be. Faith can penetrate the mystery of God’s love even when human understanding is darkened. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
To change from manipulating to actualizing does not require that one become something different from what one is. It simply means living more and more from one’s core being, which is infused in the most intimate way with God’s creative Spirit. To actualize is to unfold in our core being like a flower in bloom. The petals are like the four primary polarities described throughout this essay. If we are open to it, the process occurs in God’s good time. When on the actualizing pathway, a person moves into an ever-expanding sphere of meaningful and intimate relationships. This can happen as we receive more and more of the nourishment of God’s healing love. As life progresses, we become more vibrant, feeling-ful, and alive. The inner core is constantly enlarged throughout our being. Our sense of connectedness to God, nature, and humankind increases throughout life. The glimpse gives us new life and assists in the process of redemption, of what is called salvation in religious circles, but what happens when it is lost again? Well, something is left over, obviously the memory of it, but something more, difficult to describe, because it is in the subconscious. It is to these glimpses that one must return again and again, or rather to the memory of them, so they will give one support and will help one in one’s hour of need. One must love them and live by them in their light and not let them get lost in the limbo of utter forgetfulness. Uncertainties and fears beset the ordinary human. They come up in spite of oneself, whether they refer to one’s fortunes or one’s health, one’s business or one’s relationships. In such a situation whatever peace of mind one finds does not last long and cannot unless one has looked for and found, at least from time to time, a measure of communion with the Overself. Even a glimpse, a single glimpse, which may happen only once during several years, gives one a measure of support whatever thoughts appear and disappear during the interval of years. The glimpse goes, but it remains in one’s mind as a point of reference, a criterion for the future, something with which he can compare one’s ordinary existence and one’s ordinary attitudes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The simple discovery of what one really is leads to large implications. One sees one’s aims in life, one’s goals and ambitions, one’s desires and attitudes, under a different light. The glimpse itself passes but the memory remains and the effect upon them is disturbing. One begins to feel a new unease with them. The Truth itself is a cleansing agent, although its work on the emotions and thoughts and tendencies may be quite slow in many cases, because it is on a deep level. In some cases its effect is sudden, dynamic. At the very least the glimpse leaves a beautiful memory, at the most a divine inspiration. In our best moments, we discover that we are not really alone, for with them comes our best self. It is our guide and comforter. The experience may seem to happen by chance, its duration may be little more than momentary, but the impression left may last a lifetime. The glimpse is also a therapeutic experience. How can anyone who has gained entry into this sublime state ever again fall into the error of materialism? It has not even the value of a dream but only that of the memory of a dream! The experience is devastating toward one’s concept of reality. When the Overself takes full possession of one, it will change one’s personality and outlook completely. The dynamic inspiration imported by this experience will continue long after the experience itself has ceased. Life will be very different for humans, when at long last, one recovers the sense of one’s own divinity. When humans are touched by the power of God, one is called a “Son of God” or “Daughter of God.” Nothing can hold the experience. It evades one’s mental grasp, eludes one’s emotional hold. The Glimpse falls away and cannot be retained. However, the minutes or hours during which one was exposed to it will long be associated in memory with a great joy, a grave stillness, and an acute understanding. One longs to renew the glimpse but finds it beyond one’s power to do so; without it, the days seem futile. There is this value of these glimpses at least, that forever after the human possesses their standard by which to judge all other experiences in life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
The Overself, like the horizon, receded each time one came nearer and claimed it, but gave one sufficient tokens to lure one onward still again. The more one tastes these delightful unions, the less one will be able to endure these inevitable separations. These glimpses are received with holy joy and in later years, remembered with sweet nostalgia. The years will follow each other and one’s impressions of this divine day will blur. However, it is tremendous meaning will never blur. In this supreme moment one feels that so much of life which mattered greatly now matters little, so many desires, aims, ambitions, and values now fall in the scale of things. The mood passes, one’s feet descend to Earth, but one finds that at the back of one’s mind one is a little suspicious of them, a little sceptical of their promise. A few minutes of the glimpse compensates fully for the lengthened years of dull mediocrity and triviality, reconciles one to the past’s sufferings. The heartbreaks of life may be compensated by these glimpses. Out of the inner quietude have come the great decisions, the miraculous healings, the memorable awakenings, and the end of sorrows. When all else is forgotten, it is an experience one shall remember. One who is uplifted by this power will understand where others only condemn. The memory of this lovely foretaste will haunt imagination and taught desire. One will long to recapture the experience but will suffer under the feeling of its elusiveness and remoteness. Who can forget one’s first experience of the Glimpse? What a memory of gentleness, beauty, wonderment, and deeper understanding it leaves behind! The glimpse sustains ideals, nurtures hope, and supports faith. This balmy and relaxed experience may nevertheless have drastic and dramatic consequences. For it may drive the human to repudiate one’s former way of life and to initiate a reorientation of thought, habit, and conduct. To lock awareness to one of these glimpses even for a minute, without wilting, unmoved, is the highest form of concentration. It yields new power for one’s future life, and leaves an unforgettable stamp on one’s past life. The glimpse gives one the confidence that one is walking the right road thwarts one’s ego and weakens one’s lusts. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
A Glimpse gives one the confidence that one is walking the right road and encourages one to go forward. Even a little glimpse may lead to momentous decision. For it is the quality of consciousness which is important. With each glimpse, one will see life differently. When one finds, as all aspirants do, that one cannot keep this feeling or even recover it whenever one wants to, one may become wistfully nostalgic for it or even sadly mournful. The ordinary attitudes toward life suddenly desert one and no longer exist. New and strange ones just as suddenly arise within one. It leaves a firm and ineffaceable imprint on memory. Sometimes experienced, always remembered, the glimpse has marked one for life with some beneficial and benign signs. These glimpses serve several purposes. First, they uplift the aspirant’s heart. It is as if one has turned into another human, someone who still is but no longer seems oneself. Most seekers get experiences of mystic illumination at some time or other, but these are not essential. They are transient and they pass. They are intended to entice seekers away from too much materialism and then they vanish. Accept the historic fact that you had these experiences and glimpses—dozens of them—which revealed the Soul. What of worth life has given still stays in the mind, can still be found there again. Such is the magic of that passing-over to the higher consciousness, that the most sinful character or the most sorrowful life is transformed overnight. Virtue redeems the one; serenity heals the other. Even if the glimpse does not heighten the feeling that here is a signal from something real, one’s own further or deeper study and the testimony of historic figures will show one that one is on the right track. Such is the magic of that passing-over to the higher consciousness, that the most sinful character of the most sorrowful life is transformed overnight. Virtue redeems the one; serenity heals the other. The nostalgia which keeps on calling us back to those lovely moments is worth heeding. Humans cannot live in memories alone. One will soon or late feel the need to become that glory which one remembers so well. It will not let one forget, whatever pleasurable or painful experiences one passes through. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Jesus Christ’s saying on the subject of Holy Communion, as recorded by His Evangelists, “Come to Me, all you who labour and lumber, and I will take up your load, wrote Matthew 11.28. “The bread I give you is My flesh—there is enough to nourish the World,” wrote John 6.57. “Take it and eat it—this is My Body. Do it again, whenever you think of me; it is in remembrance of My part of the Original Deal.” Matthew recorded that too (26.26), and so did Paul in First Corinthians (11.24-25). “Whoever communicated Me in this way—that is to say, who commemorates Me by eating My Flesh and drinking My Blood—one will take up residence with Me, and I with one,” reports John 5.64. “These words I have spoken to you—breathe them and live,” reports John too 6.63. Yes, yes, O Christ, Eternal Truth. Yes, I have read these sayings, and what is more, I have copied them. And I cannot help but notice they are not all from the same place; they were not set down at the same time; they did not appear all in one passage or indeed scattered about on any one page. However, that is the copyist in me! They are Your words, no doubt about that, and, as such, I welcome them with open heart and open soul. And now they are my words also—favourite sayings, all—because You uttered them for my salvation. They flew from Your mouth, like seeds from a sower’s hand, coming to rest on the topmost soil of my soul. So full of piety and promise, they arouse me, but, alas, my sins drowse me off again. You will want me to approach the Great Mystery, but the very thought of it, when I do think of it, makes my conscience cringe, my bones creak. I still want to break bread with You but, as the Evangelist John might have asked (13.8), do You still want me to approach the Holy table? However, my feet are stuck to the ground. I must take one act of faith at a time, and that will get me to the Holy Table in plenty of time. I still want to obtain Eternal Life and Glory. Thank You, Father, that my past is forgiven, and I can live today fresh and clean because of what You have done for me. Please help me to focus on the great future that You have for me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
If you have a note due in January for $80,000, do not wait until December 29th to ask God to meet that need or to confess that your need is met according to His riches in glory. You have waited too late. That would take a miracle and we are not talking about miracles at this point. You need to start by putting the seed in the ground and proclaiming that your need is met. The law of sowing and reaping is a law of God and it words. Here is what has happened in many cases. “People have started saying, “Oh, Lord, it loos worse. There is a recession and I will not have the money by the end of the year. I will never be able to meet the payment. We will never be able to do it.” They confessed that for six months. Then when the note came due, they did not have the money, but they were very pleased that they were able to prophesy it six months ahead of time. The law of sowing and reaping was set in motion and produced failure. They spoke unbelief in prayer and they got what they said. Then they wondered why it worked out that way. The very principle that God have us to put us over, we have used in reverse. It will work just as fast in reverse gear as it will in forward. I have heard people say, “I prayed, but I believe it is getting worse.” “I have prayed but I am afraid it is not working out.” Well, I am not afraid. I know it is not working out because you are not releasing faith in God. You are releasing faith in the adversary. Fear is the reverse gear of faith. Fear brings the adversary on the scene. Fear releases the ability of the enemy against you. Faith releases the ability of God on your behalf. So when you pray, believe right then that it is settled. Believe when you pray, and the manifestation will come. This is not a fairytale. The Word of God is true and it works. It is spiritual law. The Word is your contract with God the Father. You need to read your contract and know what is in it. Many times we stop at verse 24 in Mark 11, but let us go on to verses 25 and 26. Have you ever noticed that every time Jesus Christ taught on prayer, He mentioned forgiveness? If my prayers were not being answered, the first question I would ask myself would be, “Am I holding something against someone?” or “Have I forgiven those who have done me wrong?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Jesus Christ said, And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any; that your Father also which is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses. However, if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in Heaven forgive your trespasses. I was meditating on this verse one day and decided that this may be the reason so many people kneel to pray. Jesus said, When ye stand praying, forgive. Maybe they think if they kneel, they do not have to forgive! If I was having troubles with my prayer life, I would check to be sure I was walking in forgiveness. Unforgiveness will stop your faith from working. Unforgiveness is a thief of life and a thief of faith. We can experience God’s love in a very direct and intimate way. This comes about through a spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ, and through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the gift that Jesus asked God to give us. As Jesus said to his disciples, “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the World cannot receive, because it neither sees one nor know one; you know Him; for He dwells with you, and will be in you,” reports John 14.16-18. The Holy Spirit bears witness that we are the sons and daughters of God (Romans 8.16). The Spirit is the Comforter, the counselor. We may seem too far away from Christ to have a personal relationship with Him, but the Holy Spirit can bring us together with Him. The gift of the Holy Spirit is that which helps us to know, in an intimate way, God’s love. We realize that this concept of the Holy Spirit may not have much meaning for some of you who are oriented primarily to psychology rather than religion. Consider with us the possibility that the Holy Spirit—this mysterious energy that may be difficult to understand—is the personal Presence and source of inspiration for growth and fulfillment among human beings. Even some of our Christian readers my have difficulty accepting this premise, because the Holy Spirit has sometimes been viewed as the vague third member of the Holy Spirit who is spoken of in the Apostles’ Creed but not experienced directly in daily life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
However, the Holy Spirit can give us the comfort and the power to live life openly in love, not in a fearful hiding place. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,” II Timothy 1.7. The Holy Spirit can be understood to come from within the personality much as a seed is placed within fertile soil. It is like a mustard seed that grows gradually from within, as opposed to a mustard-plaster which is slapped on from without. We like the understanding that the theologian Theodore Runyon brings to this issue: Because God values and respects our human freedom, the presence of His Spirit may be ignored or overlooked or buried beneath years of insensitivity and indifference. Jesus never imposes oneself on anyone. One meticulously honours the right of people to turn away from one as well as toward one, because one’s reign is not something that can be imposed but must be freely willed by anyone who can be His follower. Thus, the first step of the person who would know Christ is simply to become aware that one is already “closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.” Second, the person must surrender to one’s will for one’s life, learning daily to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit that enables one to fulfill one’s will. Some Christians believe that wholeness will happen automatically as soon as they come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We wish to point out that one of the mysteries of the Christian faith is that while one has the peace of Jesus’ being close at hand, one is still in a creative tension. This is because we are in a process of growing. That is, Christianity affirms that the kingdom of God is at hand; yet at the same time it has not yet fully come. The Holy Spirit is in the World and in the personality of the Christian; yet the Christian is still not a perfectly loving and wise being. Being born again does not mean that we will never have any problems. This is not true, but we do have Someone to help us face our problems. The Christian life is not a way “out” but a way “through” life. The Holy Spirit wants to form in and through our lives a unique expression of our Christlikeness. That expression takes into account every dimension of our lives—genetic and physical makeup, metabolic and hormonal systems, emotionality, experiences in the environment, place in culture and history, special calling and destiny, and our unique relationship with Jesus Christ in this life and in life eternal. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
It is striking in this context to note that the Greek word used in the New Testament to characterize the activity of the Holy Spirit in the human personality is dynamis. This probably looks familiar to the reader because it is the root word out of which our words for dynamo and dynamite have evolved. So when Christ tells us his disciples (Acts 1.8) that they shall receive power (dynamis) when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, he is saying that a dynamic new presence of energy will flow into their lives. The process of an outward flow of vitality and energy from the depths of the personality is the very opposite dynamic of the kind of collapsing inward of the personality that we have called deterioration. The actualizing Christian is moved in one’s core being by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Instead of tending toward spiritual and psychological deadness, one is continually animated and inspired by the Holy Spirit. The ironclad chains of fear are broken, and the Spirit guides one along the wisest pathway for one’s life. At the core level a profound experience occurs again and again in the life of the growing Christian. The Holy Spirit moves rhythmically and reliably back and forth within one’s day-to-day awareness. Just as the ocean tides move in and out, so does the Holy Spirit move now into the foreground of awareness, not into the background, but always near at hand. The result is that through all the experience of life, the person still feels loved in one’s core. The power of live is that it heals our fears and inspires our greatness. We have simply to come out of our hiding places, surrender to the love of God, and receive His gift of the Holy Spirit to guide out lives. Soul of Earth, sanctify me. Body of Earth, save me. Blood of Earth, fill me with love. Water from Earth’s side, wash me. Passion of Earth, strengthen me. Resurrection of Earth, empower me. Good earth, hear me. Within your wounds, hide me. Never let me be separated from you. From the power of evil, protect me. At the hour of my death, call me that with your living ones, I may thank you for all eternity Amen. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Father of mercy, in whose hand are the souls of the living and the dead, may Thy consolation cheer us as we remember our beloved and honoured kinsfolk who have gone to their eternal rest. May we be loyal to the memory of all our brethren, who in every generation scarified their lives to sanctify Thy name. We beseech Thee, O Lord, grant us strength to be faithful to charge while the breath of life is within us. May their souls repose in the land of the living, beholding Thy glory an delighting in Thy goodness. O good and beneficent God, turn this day in lovingkindness and tender mercy to the prayers of those who serve Thee and plead wholeheartedly before Thee. Verily we know that our strength is frail, and that Thou hast made our days as hand-breadths. Help us, O God of our salvation, to bear ourselves faithfully and blamelessly during the years of our pilgrimage. Strengthen us with steadfast faith in Thee and Thy Torah. Let Thy grace be with us, that we may rear our children to keep Thy commandments and to fulfill Thy will all the days of their life. Give us sustenance and let us not be in need of the gifts of others. Remove from us care and sorrow, distress and fear, shame and contempt. O God, take us not hence in the midst of our days. Let us complete in peace the number of our years. And when our end draws nigh and we depart this World, be Thou with us, and may our souls be bound up in the bond of life with the souls of all the righteous who are ever with Thee. Amen and Amen. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my dear father whom I recall in this solemn hour. I remember with esteem the affection and kindness with which he counselled and guided me. May I ever uphold the noble heritage he has transmitted unto me so that through me, his aspirations shall be fulfilled. May his soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life and his memory ever be for a blessing. Amen. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my beloved mothers whom I recall in this solemn hour. I remember with deep reverence and affection the solicitude with which she tended and watched over me, ever mindful of my welfare, ever anxious for my happiness. Many were the sacrifices she made in order to ennoble my heart and instruct my mind. May her soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life and her memory ever be for a blessing. Amen. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Cresleigh Homes
Ahh…it’s the time of year when all the holiday china gets a chance to show its stuff! 🍽️
Just wait…the eat-in island will be dressed to impress for Thanksgiving guests this year! One of our favorite parts about the Meadows 1 model – we get so many seating options! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
Don’t You Dare Make a Mistake! It is Your Fault!
Millions of adults today are still suffering as a result of the negative words of their parents spoke over them as children. However, mental health problems do not define who you are. They are something you experience. I can relate to your pain. Trust me. At times, many of us feel trapped in situation we cannot bear, and are stuck around people we would rather never seen, but I have seen people go from the darkest moments in their lives to living a happy life. Change what you can, manage what you cannot. Your present circumstances do not determine where you can go. A series of retrospective studies tested hypotheses about early family-of-origin experiences in bipolar disorder, with mixed findings. Interviews with adult bipolar patients, corroborated by family informants, about their childhood experiences revealed some potentially pathogenic family experiences. During their early childhood, the majority of patients in this study occupied special family positions, such as the first-born or youngest child, the “favourite” child, or the child assigned special responsibilities. As children these patients were also pressured for achievements, which were rewarded when accomplished. Not surprisingly, the children were also high achievers in the school setting. These children left homes as perfectionist without the skills to succeed on their own. For most, symptoms emerged concurrently with their departure from their families. This pattern was more or less unique to early-onset cases, and thus may represent just one possible interpersonal path to bipolar disorder. In some studies, patients with bipolar disorder have described their childhood experiences as similar to those of healthy controls. For example, such patients were indistinguishable from medical controls on reports of parental bonding. They also described their family environments while growing up as similar to those of healthy controls on dimensions such as expressiveness, conflict, independence, cohesion, and control. There are no differences between patients with remitted bipolar disorder and normal controls in the reports of parental rejection or overprotectiveness, although the patients reported less emotional warmth from their parents. From a sample that consisted mostly of women with bipolar disorder, it was discovered that 53 percent reported a history of abuse. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
However, a related study showed equally pronounced histories of abuse in patients with borderline personality disorder, but rates lower than 5 percent among a comparisons sample of psychiatric controls, which included patients with bipolar disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder. It is debatable whether early experiences in the family of origin are etiological in bipolar disorder. Early-onset cases may experience a particular patten of special attention and demand for achievement, which sets up excessive needs for dependency and attention. Such experiences can lead to envy from others, competition, and ultimately loneliness. These conflicts are thought to explain the extreme moods swings in bipolar disorder: “The oscillation in mood correspond to internalization and externalization of the conflict; during the phase of depression all interest in the external environment is lost with symptoms of guilt and apathy, whereas in the manic phase the obverse is true. This argument notwithstanding, many of the standard family environment variables that have been implicated in the origins of other mental health problems have not emerged as significant discriminators between patients with bipolar disorder and other members of the population. Consequently, the early childhood experiences of these patients are generally unremarkable. Many adult psychiatric patients can be found still residing with their parents. Such individuals remain in the family of origin in lieu of developing a separate family of orientation. Social relationships and communication in this context are powerful predictors of the course of bipolar disorder. One such predictive variable is EE (expressed emotions), which is evident in attitudes and behaviours reflective of criticism and overinvolvement. These are expressed during a standardized interview between a parent and researcher, and are implicitly assumed to be manifested in family interactions and relations. When patients with bipolar disorder were followed over a period of 9 months after hospital discharge, those who returned to high-EE families were 5.5 times more likely to relapse than patients discharged to low-EE family environments. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
In a related study, families of patients with mania were as likely to be high-EE as were families of patients with schizophrenia. In this study, 90 percent of the patients with mania who resided with high-EE relatives had poor clinical outcomes over the course of a 9-month follow-up period, in contrast to 54 percent of the patients who lived inlow-EE families. Another study by this term indicated a relapse rate of 92 percent over the course of 2 years for patient with bipolar disorder who returned to high-EE households, compared to only 39 percent among those who returned to low-EE households. The mean duration to relapse was similarly suggestive: 34 weeks for those who lived in low-EE environments. A unique aspect of this study was the inclusion of both high-EE parents and high-EE spouses. Comparisons reveled that parents scored considerably higher than spouses on the EE dimensions of overinvolvement and criticism, suggesting that EE may be especially problematic when patients reside with their families of origin as opposed to their families of orientation. EE may reflect a parent’s tendency to react negatively to disturbances presented by the psychiatric patient upon one’s return to the home. This criticism and overinvolvement are likely to be taxing for the patient, thus precipitating an exacerbation of symptoms and relapse. It is assumed that EE, as assessed in a private interview with a family member, manifests itself in the family’s actual social interactions. However, this expectation has not always been borne out empirically. Family EE may also interfere with effective treatment of patients with bipolar disorder, especially in cases where family members might otherwise be able to play a role in the treatment process. Research findings on bipolar disorder and EE are remarkably similar to those on schizophrenia and EE; in both cases, EE appears to be a strong predictor of relapse. Perhaps something in the nature of these two disorders simultaneously engenders attitudes of hostility and overinvolvement in parents, and extreme sensitivity to this among patients. Regardless of the explanation for the similarity, the parallel findings on family EE and relapse for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder again illustrate how these two problems occupy neighbouring positions on the continuum from extreme disturbances to complete normality. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The behavioural counterpart of EE in family interactions is AS (affective style). Where as EE is coded from an interview with a family member in the absence of the patient, AS is coded from actual family problem-solving discussions. Families are categorized as negative, mixed, or benign in their AS. Families a negative-AS profile are profile are prone to making harshly critical, guilt-inducing, and intrusive “mind-reading” statements during family problem-solving discussions. In the study mentioned above, 91 percent of patients with bipolar disorder discharged to negative-AS families had poor clinical outcomes over a 9-month observation period, compared with 55 percent from benign-AS families. On the other hand, the patients who returned to benign-AS families actually showed steady improvements in their social adjustment. As might be expected, negative AS is evident not only through relatives’ verbal behaviours, but in their nonverbal behaviours as well. Negative-AS parents of patients with bipolar disorder engage in fewer affiliative nonverbal communication behaviour such as smiling, head nodding, forward leaning, and illustrator gestures during family discussions, when contrasted with benign-AS parents. These are behaviours that people look for to feel supported and accepted by others. Collectively, these findings anew that the harsh and rejecting behaviours of key relatives, as manifested in AS, are associated with a poor prognosis in bipolar disorder. Both EE and AS may be overt signs of family stress and distress. If one adopts a systems perspective, it makes little sense to ask whether EE and AS are responses to a patient’s illness or causes of it. In systems theory, all parts and their processes are related to all other parts and processes in the system. Although it has been argued that many family characteristics in cases of bipolar disorder are consequences of the patients’ illness, and indeed many may be, family dynamics such as EE and AS have been documented to predict subsequent changes in patients’ symptomatology, indicating that patients’ symptoms are influenced by their family interactions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Furthermore, empirical evidence indicates that patients find their parents’ negative-AS behaviour to be stressful. At the same time, it should be obvious that parents’ social interaction behaviours are not entirely independent of and unresponsive to their children’s distress and communication problems. In fact, in bipolar disorder, a patient’s affective attitude toward a parent is predictive of the parent’s AS. In schizophrenia, the parent’s AS. Thus, in bipolar disorder, there are reciprocal interpersonal patterns that may maintain the disorder. What makes EE and AS so stressful for recovering patients? For most people, their parents are the last line of defense against an otherwise cruel World. When there is no solace to be found in other interpersonal relationships, most expect to find at least some support from family-of-origin members. These are relationships of obligation, and during hard times, they may represent the only refuge available. When these family relationships turn hostile, overinvolved, and emotionally reactive, what was once shelter from the stresses of life becomes a stressor itself. What makes the stressor particularly caustic is the fact that it is a powerful violation of expectations and may signal the end of any available social support, leaving a patient with feelings of total rejection and alienation. CD (communication deviance) involves the use of odd, idiosyncratic, amorphous, and fragmented language during social interaction. Parents of patients with schizophrenia are prone to exhibit CD; however, problems with CD may not be specific to these parents. In fact, parents of patients with mania are indistinguishable from those of patients with schizophrenia in overall level of CD. Certain types of CD, such as odd word usage (using words in odd way, leaving words out of utterances, uttering words out of order, use of unnecessary words—exempli gratia, “There were a number of different distinct times down the entire road when she could not get that act together”) and tangential responses (failure to acknowledge others’ statements—exempli gratia, Patient: “When are we going to leave?” Parents: “That is a beautiful painting”), are actually more prevalent among parents of patients with mania. These patients exhibited CD patterns similar to those of their parents. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
The coding scheme used to assess CD overlaps considerably with the TDI (thought disorder index) as used in an investigation. CD is undoubtedly a manifestation of thought disorder through communication with other people. An obvious conclusion might be that parent-child similarities in CD represent genetic transmission of thought disorder. However, a social learning account would also predict a parent-child association in CD, whereby the parent models bizarre communication behaviour that is then incorporated into the child’s discourse. Like many other behaviours acquired through observational learning, children may just assume that if their parents engage in the behaviour, it is the right thing to do. Simply interacting with a parent exhibiting CD, or observing an interaction with another family member, may lead a child to believe that “this is the appropriate way to talk to other people.” In either case, parents of bipolar patients exhibit problems with CD that are of the same magnitude as the problems of parents of schizophrenia patients. In both disorders, this deviant communication pattern can also be detected in the patients themselves. Bipolar disorder is associated with additional family relationship problems. The family interactions of patients with bipolar disorder are marked by a high percentage of control attempts by both patients and parents. This battle for control is more pronounced than in families of patients with schizophrenia. The majority of family members who care for patients with bipolar disorder report at least moderate burden, especially due to the patients’ mister, irritability, and withdrawal. These family relationship problems can also affect the course of the disorder. For example, 67 percent of patients undergoing treatment for bipolar disorder who indicated that they had good relations with their extended families had no major recurrences over a 4-year follow-up period, compared to only 20 percent of those patients who had poor relations with their extended families. The scientist who foresees a happy abundant future for humankind (because of technological advance) while so many of one’s colleagues are preparing the weapons to wipe out the species itself, is either insane or incapable of non-specialized thinking. If the scientific gropers-in-the-dark were allowed fully to explore, and their political masters to exploit, the atom until all its energy were released, our Earth would either blow up into pieces and all humankind with it, or else have its atmosphere so poisoned by radioactivity as to make any life within it impossible. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
However, it is not in the World-Mind’s World-Idea that this shall be allowed. The so-called progress of humans in this direction will be arrested. They will be allowed to injure themselves, since they insist on playing with these dangerous forces, but not to destroy oneself. This one event has dominated the intelligent human mind in the twenty-first century more than any other. This release of the atom’s energy has forced a rethinking of the human position in politics, society, health, and economics. The social, economic, and political problems which have developed with the development of science, and its use in industry, have reached their ultimate in the hydrogen bomb. In one does not soon renounce all nuclear weapons, this is the Frankenstein monster which will destroy its master. The worth to humankind of an invention or a discovery depends on the uses made of it. If these are warlike and destructive to an appalling degree, then it might have been better for humankind to have continued in ignorance. The World has moved too far from the quest of religious values to the quest of Earthly ones; it is passing too quickly from faith in the legends to faith in the machine. Many have been forced to stop and think about the failure of science to improve humans despite its success in improving their tools. For the nineteenth-century naivete about “progress” which had believed one would inevitably lead to the other, has been exposed for the foolish thing it is. Progression forwards, which is what we have witnessed in this scientific age, is not the same as progress. Then end of all one-sided growth is usually catastrophic. This is true of the outer World of science as of the inner World of humans themselves. If the wonderful achievements of the science in controlling physical energies have now become highly dangerous to humans, this is simply because they are unbalanced by equal knowledge of one’s own nature and equal achievements in controlling it. The greater the pressure produced by this machine age, the greater is the revolt against it. Foolish materialists call this revolt escapism. Whether it appears as a turning to the arts or to mysticism, it is the cry of the human soul seeking to remember again that it is a soul. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
If every invention which has benefited the human species has also introduced evils or disadvantages not presented before, too often that has been due to human misuse or greed, materialism or ignorance. I know there is some belief that not only has human capacity been extended by modern scientific knowledge but also that human character has been improved by modern civilization and culture. I doubt that this is so. As modern technological civilization increased in power, the size of its problems increases too. Even without a war the mere belief that they have to go on improving their nuclear knowledge by experiments and nuclear weapons by tests is leading to a disastrous result—the poisoning of the entire human race and the damaging of its organs, or its children’s organs, and the deforming of its next generation. If they are all to be lost again in the vast humanmade calamity, of what use are all these vaunted conquests over Nature? Control of mind by electronic machines is being actively sought by researcher without conscience, devoid of ethics, sorcerers using twenty-first century science. Humans’ success in using their knowledge of the working of the external World can come only if it is linked with the knowledge of the working of one’s own psycho-physical mechanism and function. For if the first leads one into self-destruction, as it is now doing, the second can control and safeguard one against such an ill destiny. To believe that the old past was quite barbaric, that the new present is quite civilized, as do those who pin all their faith to the “progress” brought about by science, shows definite ignorance of the past and lack of insight into the present. Moreover it also shows a dangerous lack of humility; dangerous because the first need of humanity to so be humble, is to confess its failure and admit its weakness. Technological triumph, if held in equilibrium by spiritual intuition, can lead to a glorious civilization, but without such intuition, it can lead to humankinds’ destruction. It is not enough for our civilization to express the discoveries arising out of scientific knowledge. It must also express the ethics arising out of spiritual knowledge. The manipulative pattern of being a Complaint Christian begins when the child learns that one can win the approval of parents or others by pleasing and placating. The child mistakes getting their approval for being love. So we can say that one becomes stuck on the love polarity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
The problem is that in getting the approval of others, one makes everyone else the judge and master. Therefore, one must constantly repress feelings of strength or anger, and instead feel only love and weakness. One fears that if one expresses rights, strength, or power, others will withdraw their approval and retaliate with rejection or abandonment. What one does not see is that in living up to everyone else’s expectations and demands, one sacrifices one’s own individuality and originality. Without the rhythms of anger and strengths, the complaint Christians is easily taken advantage of by others. Of course, one allows this to happen over and over again because of the fear of expressing anger or irritation. This person is like a “crying doormat,” who invites people to step over one—then feels miserable and abused when they do! Because Complaint Christians are unable to stand up to others, or even to day no or disagree with them, their love loses its genuineness. The love that they could have degenerates into a sticky, parasitic dependence. The body type reflects dependence, as the muscles are underdeveloped and flaccid. The price of constantly living the “nice guy” or “nice girl” role is fatigue, resentment, and inner emptiness. Also, in living one’s life to gain other people’s approval, one’s God-given identity remains undeveloped. The payoff for such a lifestyle is the occasional crumb of approval or pat on the head that one receives for being so nice to others. At the character level, the pleasing and placating pattern degenerates to overt dependence. Now the person denies all personal power and responsibility for shaping one’s life and becomes a clinging vine around someone else’s life. One constantly looks to the other person for what to feel, what to say, where to go, what to believe, and infinitum. This person feels that if the other person dies or leaves one will be completely lost and helpless. Many popular songs reflect this misguided approach to love with such lyrics as “without you I would nothing.” Unfortunately, this exaggerated sense of dependence might be true, but it certainly is not a virtuous trait. It means that one is neurotically dependent and incapable of feeling, thinking, and choosing for oneself. Many unhappy marriages are made by one partner’s being overly dominant and the other’s becoming excessively compliant and dependent. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Because of our cultural standards, Christian women especially seem to fall into the compliant trap. They are taught as little girls that their sole mission in life is to grow up, have a family, and take care of a husband and children. What the are not given is a healthy dose of self-esteem so that they are deeply attuned to their own wants, needs, desires, talents, and gifts. So life becomes slavery as they become frantically busy, self-sacrificing, and often desperately lonely. The fallacy of the complaint syndrome is that one erases oneself in order to “love” others. However, the Bible—as well as good psychology—says clearly to love others as ourselves; that is, to be as concerned about our own growth and well-being as we are about theirs. It also means developing a healthy interdependence in relationships as opposed to the desperate dependence of the complaint person. In its psychotic form, the complaint lifestyle gives way to depression. Somehow it creeps into the awareness of the person that one is nothing but an empty hull. All the beliefs, values, feelings, and opinions that one has belong to someone else. One has completely lost touch with one’s inner being. Psychotic depression is the result of years of constricting the inner rhythm of feelings. The final result is immobility and paralysis. The depression reflects the psychological reality of always being pressed down by the demands, desires, and expectations of others. The person finally loses hope and becomes numb. Even the body takes on a sagging and down-in-the-mouth appearance over the years. The face may feign a smile on the surface, but the evidence that deep sorrow and loneliness are underneath is shown by the wrinkled in the brown, eyes, and at the corner of the mouth. Since the Compliant Christian long ago lost touch with one’s own dignity, anger, and power, the years of being everyone’s slave have now taken their toll. The psyche collapses under the one last demand that is finally too much. The ultimate, tragic expression of psychotic depression is suicide. Bethany is a middle-aged housewife, and she underwent two years of therapy. The settings ranged from an in-patient psychiatric unit to a growth-oriented church group. During these two years, Bethany made excellent progress in moving from apathy and self-hate to a position of active and caring involvement in life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Although Bethany made three suicide attempts during the two years, a combination of prayer and effective psychotherapy finally enabled her to learn to stand on her own feet, take responsibility for her own life, tell others how she really felt about things, and regain faith for living an interesting and fulfilling life. Bethany has now reentered family, church, and community life with far more awareness and skills for coping than she had ever thought possible. Bethany’s life shows once again that it is possible to reverse even the most vicious patterns of self-destruction. Of course, it is always best to discover destructive patterns in one’s life ling before they bear bitter fruit. Perhaps the reader will be able to apply insights gained in the study of this report to enjoy greater self-awareness and understanding of others. In the center of the Process of Deterioration is fear. It is sometimes quite sobering to realize that, whatever else hell is, it is certainly the brutal process of dehumanization that eventually leaves a person numb, rigid, alone, disoriented, and shut up. In the deterioration to various levels of manipulation, character disorder, and psychosis, we see a separation from one’s God-given invitation to actualization and a descent into the abyss of hell. Everyone is a mixture of manipulative styles and character types. We live within the context of a fallen and twisted reality. The “mystery of iniquity” is passed on from generation to generation. It contaminates culture, education, politics, economics, religion, and the sophisticated social systems of this World. Defenses are learned strategies; we are not born with them. Once we discover how we make ourselves tense, rigid, and controlled in our posture toward life, we can begin to reverse the process. That is at once the burden of responsibility and the potential for joy for all human beings. There is light at the end of the tunnel! There is hope for the troubled, entangled, and imprisoned individual. Our faith in the creative grace that will lead us to wholeness is warranted. However, the process of growing out of our psychological ruts is not without risk and pain. We may have to experience the real travail of owning our feelings and leaning to express them honestly to others before we begin to enjoy the celebration of restored meaning in our lives. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Every way of being stuck can be understood as an overt or subtle distortion of humans’ existential calling: to love oneself, others, and God wholeheartedly. This is where it becomes important to realize that praying about our life situation must be combined with the courage to do something about it. Otherwise our “prayers” are only a form of avoidance—a flight into fantasy and magical thinking. God may truly inspire us along the wisest pathway for our lives, but we must take the responsibility for doing the walking or we will never get anywhere. And if we take a wrong turn, we must have courage to back up and try a new pathway. A strong feeling of fear, anxiety, hostility, guilt, or depression may be a signpost that indicates that one has gotten off the track. If one becomes aware of these feelings, and exercises the courage to look for new and different options, then growth can be restored and one is back on the path of healthy living again. The fruits of that direction will also be felt in the personality as peace, joy, and excitement. No one has escaped developing certain nonactualizing or manipulative patterns. However, an awareness of how these patterns are being acted out in one’s life creates the possibility of experimentation with new alternatives, growth, and change. This possibility is the hope of the actualizing Christian. It is the invitation of Christ to each individual, and the joy of a God who delights in giving good things to those who seek Him. It is also the finest meaning of salvation, redemption, and the grace of God. Most parents want the best for their children, yet too often, many slip into being harsh and critical with their children, constantly finding fault in something one’s children are doing. Negative words will cause children to lose the sense of value God has placed within them. As parent, one has a responsibility before God and society to train one’s children, to discipline them when they discovery, to lovingly correct them when they make wrong choices. However, one should not constantly micromanage one’s children. If one continually speaks words that discourage and dishearten, before long you will destroy your child’s self-image. And with your negative words, you will open a door, allowing the enemy to bring all kinds of insecurity and inferiority into one’s child’s life. Some many people are still living in pain, as adult, due to hurtful words their guardians used with them when they were children. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
If you speak negative words over your children, you are cursing their future. Moreover, God will hold your responsible for destroying their destiny. With authority comes responsibility, and you have the responsibility as the spiritual authority over your child to make sure that one feels loves, accepted, and approved. Beyond that, most children get their concepts of who God is and what He is like from their parents. If the parents are mean, evil, spiteful, bitter, trifling, and harsh, inevitably the children with grow up with a distorted view of God and humanity. If the parents are loving, kind, compassionate, forgiving, accepting, and righteous, the children will better understand God’s character. It is your responsibility, while you have the opportunity, to speak God’s blessing in your children’s lives. And know that your words will impact them long after they are grown. What you are passing down to the next generation is really something you should think about. O Lord, how would You characterize my trust in this life? Let me put it another way. What is the greatest solace I can have under the big sky? Is it not You, my Lord God, whose mercy is without end? Where else would I do so well but sitting alongside You on Your throne? When can anything be bad if You are around me? I prefer to be a pauper because of You. I would choose rather to vagabond around the World with You than to travel Heaven without You. Where You are, there Heaven is. Where You are not, there Death and Hell are. Heavenly Father, please help me to speak words of blessing into the lives of my family and friends and the community, as well as to others You all to grace my life. Today, and always I choose to see the good, the beneficial things in those around me, rather than the negative, and I will reinforce and encourage those things that honour You. God, you are my desire, and so I feel I have to sigh after You, cry out and implore You. When all is said and done, there is no one I can fully confide in; no one who will give me the help I will need when I am pinched by the unforgiveness of life. No one, that is to say, except You alone, my Lord God. You are my hope, my trust, the consoler of my soul, and the best friend I could ever have. “Everyone looks for a way to get ahead,” reports Philippians 2.21. You, offering me salvation and spiritual progress, give me an edge. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Even if You expose me to various temptations and adversities, You manage to turn the whole thing to my advantage. You have, my dearest Lord and Friend, this well-known habit of tempting the daylights out of Your friends! One of the keys to answered prayer is to believe you receive when you pray. What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them,” reports Mark 11.24. The faith principle of Mark 11.23 states that you can have what you say. It is a faith principle which you can employ everyday be speaking right words. Another key to answered prayer is to speak in agreement with your prayers daily. Control the words that come out of your mouth. For example, one day I was having a problem with a tractor. It had given me trouble a couple of times and I wanted to say, “That thing comes apart everytime I take it to the field.” I knew better than to say it, but it just rose up within me and it wanted to come out so bad. I told my wife I would just love to make a bad confession here, but I did not dare do it. I have trained myself to believe that what I say will come to pass. My mind is renewed to God’s Word. Jesus went on to say in verse 24 that it will also work in prayer. You can use the same principle in prayer. He shall have whatsoever he saith. He did not have it then, but he shall have it. Many Christians cancel their prayer with unwise words. Mark 11, verse 23, is a faith principle. It is not a prayer scripture. Verse 24 says, Therefore (or because of this faith principle) I say unto you, What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them. Whatsoever things—whatsoever things you desire. He did not say, “If it is God’s will for you have it.” He said Whatsoever things you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them. Now when are you going to believe that you receive them? You are not going to believe it when you see it, if you go by the Word of God. You must believe it when you pray. He said, “When you pray, believe.” What is the evidence that I received when I prayed? Faith is the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11.1). If I believed that I received this morning when I prayed, I would not dare get up tomorrow morning and pray the same prayer. That would be proof that I had not believed. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Somebody says, “But it has not manifested yet.” It does not say, “believe when it is manifested.” When ye pray, believe, that ye receive them, and ye shall not have them. It does not say you have them, but you shall have them. They are not manifest yet, but you have received God’s Word. Therefore you have received them in your spirit. How can you receive something that is not manifest yet? You receive it in your spirit. Your spirit human receives it as done. When you are praying, you are operating in the spirit realm, not in the intellect. You are tapping the spiritual resources of God. You need to realize, in doing this, that you do not have the same physical evidence that you do when you are operating in the natural realm. Things may look worse after you have prayed. In fact, some have told me, “You know, after we agreed in prayer, it got worse.” Do not get excited about that. Did you believe when you prayed? Did you believe when we agreed you received it? The thing that will determine whether you believed it or not is: When the circumstances look worse, do you still believe what we agreed? For instance, you are needing a certain amount of money and you pray believing you receive. When you get up the next morning, you find the heater will not turn on and it is freezing outside and your neighbour has the key to your mailbox and has been stealing your mail. Are you still believing that you received your financial needs met? Most people would not. They will say, “Oh, dear Lord, just I figured, it did not work out.” There is such a thing as prayer just to be praying. We might even call it religious praying. It is praying just because it seems like the thing to do—not believing anything, just praying. Evidently, this was the case in the 12th chapter of Acts. James had been killed and Herod proceeded to take Peter also. Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him. You find that the whole church was praying; but it must have been religious praying for, when the angel let Peter out, he went to the house of John Mark’s mother where many were praying: And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda. And when she knew Peter’s voice, she opened not the gate for gladness, but ran in, and told how Peter stood before the gate. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Up until now, everything seems to be rather normal, but listen to the confession of those that were praying: And they said unto her, Thou art mad. However, she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel. However, Peter continued knocking: and when they had opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. Sensuous during life, do not deny me in death! Wash me with scent of apple blossom. Anoint me the essence of lilac. Fill my veins with honeysuckle nectar. Sprinkle me with perfume of purple violets. Envelop me in shroud saturated with fragrance of freshly mown meadow hay. Rest me in moss velvet Earth. Cover me with soil exuding flavour of maple and oak leaves. Command a white birch to stand guard! O Lord, what is human, that Thou art mindful of them? And the son of man that Thou considerest one? Yet Thou hast made one but little less than divine, and hast crowed one with glory and honour. Yea, Thou hast implanted in humans the faith to overcome disillusionment and despair, the power to resist evil, the wisdom to use one’s gifts nobly, and the will to transform chaos and misery into harmony and happiness. When we loose the bands of wickedness, free the oppressed, feed the hungry, clothe those without garments, bring cheer into the lives of those in distress, when we strive for justice and the coming of Thy Kingdom, we invest our life with high significance. Physically we are like unto a breath but spiritually we can attain divine heights. Our God and God of our fathers, in this hour scared to memory, when the past and the future merge, we thank Thee for the blessings that we have come to us through the love and devotion of our dear ones. For many of us, this hour recalls the memory of beloved parents whom Thou hast removed from their Earthly tasks and called unto Thyself. We are ever mindful of the devotion with which they tended and guided us, the sacrifices they made, the joys and comforts they brought us, the teachings and traditions they sought to impart unto us. They are forever bound to us by undying love. There are those among us who call to mind a departed husband or wife. They recall the affectionate bonds formed in Thy presence, the faith and understanding, the struggles and hopes, the trials and griefs, the fears and joys they shared together. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
Now Selling!
Now selling! 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!
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Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Why are You So Stupid?! Be Perfect Like Me and God!
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
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 