Home » Angelical (Page 22)
Category Archives: Angelical
Not with a Club the Heart is Broken, Nor with a Stone—I think that Earth Seems so to those in Heaven!
Oh, and it is the same old beat with you, Erich, you Devil, you want to do it, you want to, you want to see it, you greedy little beast, you cannot give her over to the Angels and you know they are waiting! You know the God who can sanctify her suffering has purified her an will forgive her last cries. Mental health is to be determined objectively and society has both a furthering and a distorting influence on mortals, contradicts not only the relativistic view, discussed in the past, but two other views which I want to discuss now. One, decidedly the most popular one today, wants to make us believe that contemporary Western society and more especially, the American way of life corresponds to the deepest needs of human nature and that adjustments to this way of life means mental health and maturity. Social psychology, instead of being a tool for the criticism of society, thus becomes the apologist for the status quo. The concept of maturity and mental health in this view, corresponds to the desirable attitude of a worker or employee in industry or business. Maturity is the ability to stick to a job, the capacity to give more on any job than is asked for, reliability, persistence to carry out a plan regardless of the difficulties, the ability to work with other people under organization and authority, the ability to make decisions, a will to life, flexibility, independence, and tolerance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
Maturity is the virtues of a good worker, employee or soldier in the big social organizations of our time; they are the qualities which are usually mentioned in advertisements for a junior executive. To one, and many others who think like one, maturity is the same as adjustment to our society, without ever raising the question whether this adjustment is to a healthy or a pathological way of conducting one’s life. “And now my beloved beings, I had said these things unto you that I might awaken you to a sense of your duty to God, that ye may walk blameless before him, that ye may walk after the holy order of God, after which you have been received,” reports Alma 7.22. If you remain true, you will get the sign that God is with you. When you come to your wits’ end and feel inclined to panic—do not! Stand true to God, and he will bring out his truth in a way that will make your life an expression of worship. Put into practice what you have learned. Make a determination to trust in God. “The house of the LORD God is to be here,” reports 1 Chronicles 22.1. If you have always prided yourself on your sensitivity to the needs of others, you may find resistance when you adopt toughness. Sometimes when people look at it, it is like someone turned on the Christmas lights, it makes them giddy and full of joy. Will you be accepted? #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
Maturity is the same as adjustment to our society, without ever raising the question whether this adjustment is to a healthy or a pathological way of conducting one’s life. However, in contrast to this view is the one which runs from Dr. Freud, and which assumes a basic and unalterable contradiction between human nature and society, a contradiction between human nature and society, a contradiction which follows from the alleged asocial nature of mortals. For Dr. Freud, mortals are driven by two biologically rooted impulses: the craving for sexual pleasure, and for destruction. The aim of one’s sexual desire is complete sexual freedom, that is, unlimited access to all women and men one might find desirable. Some mortals discovered by experience that sexual (genital) love affords them their greatest gratification, so that it becomes in affect the prototype of all happiness to him or her. These types of people must have been impelled to seek their happiness further along the path of sexual relations, to make genital erotism the central point of one’s life. Primitive humans have yet to cope with no, or exceedingly few restrictions to the satisfaction of those basic desires. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
Primitive mortals can give vent to their aggression, and there are few limitations to the satisfaction of one’s sexual impulses. In actual fact, most primitive mortals knew nothing of any restrictions on their instincts, some do not even “feel” that they have instincts. Civilized humans have exchanged some part of their changes of happiness for a measure of security. The happy savage’s aggressiveness has two sources: one, the innate striving for destruction (death instinct) and the other the frustration of one’s instinctual desires, imposed upon him or her by society. While mortals may channel part of one’s aggression against oneself, through the Super-Ego, and while a minority can sublimate their sexual desire into love of humanity, aggressiveness remains ineradicable. Mortals will always compete with, and attack each other, if not for material things, then for the prerogatives in sexual relationships, which must arouse the strongest rancor and most violent enmity among men and women who are otherwise equal. Let us suppose this were also to be removed by instituting complete liberty in sexual life, so that the family, the germ-cell of culture, ceased to exist; one could not, it is true, foresee the new paths on which cultural development might then proceed, but one thing one would be bound to expect and that the ineffable feature of human nature would follow wherever it led. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
Since for Dr. Freud love is in its essence sexual desire, he is compelled to assume a contradiction between love and social cohesion. Love, according to him, is by its very nature egotistical and antisocial, and the sense of solidarity and humanly love are not primary feelings rooted in mortal’s nature, but aim-inhibited sexual desires. One the basis of his concept of mortals, that of their inherent wish for unlimited sexual satisfaction, and of his destructiveness, Dr. Freud must arrive at a picture of the necessary conflict between civilization and mental health and happiness. Primitive mortals are healthy and happy because one is not frustrated in one’s basic instincts, but one lacks the blessings of culture. Civilized humans are more secure, enjoy art and science, but they are bound to be neurotic because of the continued frustration of one’s instincts, enforced by civilization. For Dr. Freud, social life and civilization are essentially in contrast to the needs of human nature as he sees it, and mortals are confronted with the tragic alternative between happiness based on the unrestricted satisfaction of one’s instincts, and security and cultural achievements based on instinctual frustration, hence conducive to neurosis and all other forms of mental sickness. Civilization, to Dr. Freud, is the product of instinctual frustration and thus the cause of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
Dr. Freud’s concept of human nature as being essentially competitive (and asocial) is the same as we find it in most authors who believe that the characteristics. Dr. Freud’s theory of the competitive struggles for survival. It can also be translated into the sphere of economy. There are basically two types of people, the homo sexual is and the homo economicus. One is after sex, the other is after money. Both the economic mortal and the sexual mortal are convenient fabrications whose alleged nature—isolated, asocial, greedy and competitive—makes Capitalism appear as the system which corresponds perfectly to human nature, and places it beyond the reach of criticism. The necessary conflict between human nature and society, imply the defense of contemporary society and they both are one-sided distortions. Furthermore, most ignore the fact that society is only in conflict with the asocial aspects of mortals, partly produced by itself, but often also with one’s most valuable human qualities, which is suppresses rather than furthers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
An objective examination of the relation between society and human nature must consider both the furthering and the inhibiting impact of society on humans, taking into account the nature of mortals and the needs stemming from it. The neglected pathogenic function of modern society needs to be highlighted. Many of the self-defeating behaviors are motivated by conscious needs. For instance, there appear to be people all around us who have a strong dislike for themselves. In each of us there may be a tinge of dislike for some aspect of our self: freckles, hair, teeth, vocabulary, color, accent. However,most of us manage to combine our dislike of parts of ourselves with very good feelings about the rest of the package. A few people, though, manage to reach a point where they entertain active hatred for their entire beings. They manage to pull off some of the greatest self-defeating stunts since the six hundred marched into the Valley of Death in the Crimean War! Some of these people do it with alcohol, using it precisely because they know it will put them into a state in which they will commit self-defeating or losing behavior. They drink to get courage or strength enough to hurt themselves. There are many who do the same with drugs of various kinds. Again, this is not to dispute the physiological factors of addiction or habituation. It is simply to emphasize that even before the physiological hook gets into some people, they hook themselves onto a drug or habit that will inevitably bring them down. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
An example of the conscious needs that motivate self-defeating behavior is dependency. Some people refuse to take their medicine because they like or need to be dependent on their doctors or they need their family’s concerns. Others get themselves in trouble with authorities because they need to keep themselves tied to their parents or spouses; they build a bond of trouble-rescue-restriction-release-trouble, a cycle that repeats itself week after month after year in some cases. Why? It is a bit too simple to say that the needs are always entirely conscious or even always entirely unconscious.Just as our physiques are three-dimensional, our complexities encompass behaviors that have horizontal, vertical, and depth dimensions as well. Add to this the dimensions that we call time and space and you have a model of human behavior that cannot be sketched on a flat piece of paper. Therefore, we must keep in mind the person, who will play more roles in one’s life, but—like an actor—the mortal is one person and all one’s roles are the individual, too. This multi-dimensioned person is each of us. Mixed in with all the motivations we have described as being universal are the ones that are unique to each of us. There is, therefore, no one answer to the “why?” of the behavior, whether it is the behavior of one or many. It may be instructive, but only instructive, to see what may cause actions in particular cases. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
If a mortal has a strong need to enter into complicated situations from which one cannot extricate oneself, we may uncover some of the reasons why, but only some of them. If you do something, even after an authority figure has told you to stop, changes are that among your individually unique needs is the need to engage in whatever destructive behavior you have been warned to stop, apparently this need is stronger than your need to stay out of danger. Some people engage in bad behavior because they feel a strong need to be punished. They feel that they can only be satisfied or happy when they are being pushed out or put into a situation where they are in some sort of danger of losing out. When these types of people win or achieve something, they feel and empty, hollow sort of triumph. Only when these individuals have guilt so ingrained in their being are punishing themselves or being punished can they admit to feelings of satisfaction. It is hard for guilt given people to admit this to friends. Not even their wives or husbands have ever heard them say these things, but their spouses notice over the years that they only seem completely happy and at ease when they are being pressured, when they are driving themselves to take on unnecessary extra work. It seemed to one woman that her husband was “trying to kill himself,” with his overly emotional and wild criminal behaviors. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
Dr. Freud thought we each have an instinctive death wish. We do not find the evidence for this to be either conclusive or impressive. However, we know that many people learn to deal with their guilt feelings or their negative self-concepts by punishing themselves or by being punished. Without using the term as a diagnosis, this behavior is often called masochism. A person who is still doing something dangerous, even after being warned not to, is a symbol of all the things one does that one has been told one should not do. One is almost totally absorbed by and concerned with guilt. The diagnosis of potential death and danger us almost like a priestly issue of penance: this is what one must undergo to purge oneself of one’s guilt. Some people are begging to be punished because they want to get their just desserts, which could even be death, for being the bad person they are. “No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing,” reports 1 Chronicles 21.24. This long example, we repeat, deals only with one person. It is not meant to explain all people who engage in risky behaviors or careers, all compulsive people, or to condemn all teachings about guilt. It is, however, instructive. Guilt, as experienced by most of us, is the feeling we have when we have let ourselves down, when we have not lived up to our own expectations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
As such, it is a good motivator: guilt enables us to shift our gears and try a different speed or direction in our behavior. We should feel guilt for committing certain social indiscretions or violations of necessary and expected behaviors. If I step on the foot a woman by accident, both my love for people and my social responsibility will produce guilt feelings. Hopefully, I will be a more careful walker in the future. However, if I tore up my feet, sold my shoes, and swore never to go near people again, I would probably be labeled neurotic—given to extreme guilt reactions. When anxiety and other strong emotions produce fears or self-defeating responses in us, we are experiencing a form of neurosis. This particular problem in living is quite common in the lives of most of us. Each of us at times, precisely because we view our many facets as separate, lets this imagined separateness become virtually real. As the gaps in our thinking about our selves grow, so the gaps and distortions really grow in our everyday behavior. It we imagine that we have a good self and a bad self, any attempt to emphasize the one we want or need to emphasize exaggerates our behaviors in that direction, almost as if we were to say: “See? That other part of me does not even exist!” #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
Of course it exists, It is just as real and as important apart of your total self as any other part. However, it is only a part. However,it is only a part. It is so interwoven and inextricably tied in with all the other facets that often you do not know which one is which. That in itself is not bad, either. Rather than trying to single out which part is which, one would be much better off simply accepting and living with the entire package. However, this is so simple to say and so difficult to do. We are encouraged by our society’s values, by its mores, by so many things, to live only partially. Some of the negative consequences of such splitting up are separateness, marginality, and alienation. “There is a God, and he created all things, both the Heavens and the Earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon,” reports 2 Nephi 2.14. As children of our Heavenly Father, we have been blessed with the gift of moral agency, the capacity and power of independent action. Endowed with agency, we are agents, and we primarily are to act and not merely be acted upon—especially as we seek learning by study and also by faith. As gospel learners, we should be doers of the word, and not just hearers only. Our hearts are open to the influence of the Holy Ghost as we properly exercise agency and act in accordance with correct principles—and we thereby invite God’s teachings and testifying power. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
At Such a Curious Earth Love is Supposed to be for the Souls of Sanity—I am Glad they Did Believe it!
Success without integrity is nothing. Productive love always implies a syndrome of attitude that care of, responsibility, respect and knowledge. If love, I care—that is, I am actively concerned with the other person’s growth and happiness; I am not a spectator. I am responsible, that is, I respond to the other individual’s needs, to those this person can express and more so to those one cannot or does not express. I respect the other individual, that is (according to the original meaning of re-spicere) I look at this person as if one is, objectively and not distorted by my wishes and fears. I know this individual, I have penetrated through this person’s surface to the more of this individual’s being and related myself to this being from my core, from the center, as against the periphery, of my being. Care of the soul asks us to observe its needs continually, to give them our wholehearted attention. Imagine advising someone with many signs of neglect of soul to build an annex on one’s house for soul work. It may seem strange or even unusual to do something so expensive and so external to deal with our psychological complaints. Yet it is obvious that soul is not going to be healed solely by means of one hour of interior retreat in the midst of an active modern life. Our retreat from the World may have to be more serious and more constantly present in out lives than a weekly counseling visit or an occasional day spa and massage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Today we find a radical situation occurring as women beg into discover that they are much more than they or the men in their lives have known or been willing to admit. Women’s role in life, in this country, has been drastically limited to a few portrayals or dimensions. However, in the past few years, a developing, revolutionary, self-emergence program is shaking the foundations of society and is certainly giving a lot of people reason to lose sleep. This country has been the inheritor of an Antiquated World attitude toward women. Even in the Bible, women were portrayed as having the very important roles of wife, mother, and homemaker, rarely anything else. Oh, there were always spots for dancing girls, servants, comfort women, slaves, and craftswomen. However, the life of the typical woman in the Old World was very clearly marked out for her. If she were fortunate, attractive, and/or from a wealthy family, a girl could look forward to getting married, raising children, building a household, and gaining respect by doing a creditable job in these limited areas. One of the classical descriptions of the ideal wife comes from the Old Testament of the Bible and has been used to shape the life of women ever since: A good wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and she will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm all the days of her life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
A productive wife seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. She like the ships of the merchant, she brings her food from afar. She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and tasks for her maidens. She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength and makes her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable. Her lamp does not go out at night. She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise he in the gates. God does not make us holy in the sense that he makes our character holy. He makes us holy in the sense that he has made us innocent before him. And then we have to turn that innocence into holy character through the moral choices we make. These choices are continually opposed and hostile to the things of our natural life which we have become so deeply entrenched. We can either turn back, making ourselves if no value to the kingdom of God, or we can determinedly demolish things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
That is a full-time and not unimportant job, living up to those expectations! In the Old World, it was probably all a woman could handle. However, in those times, there must have been occasions when the woman could have participated in decision-making and some of the other ongoing life of the town or country. Yet, there was no opportunity for her. Medicine, above all psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, often claims that healing anxiety is its task because all anxiety altogether, for anxiety is sickness, mostly in a psychosomatic, sometimes only in a psychological sense. All forms of anxiety can be healed, and since there is no ontological root of anxiety there is no existential anxiety. Medical insight and medical help—this is the conclusion—are the way to the courage to be; the medical profession is the only healing profession. Although this extreme position is taken by an ever-decreasing number of physicians and psychotherapists it remains important from the theoretical point of view. It includes a decision about the nature of mortals which must be made explicit, in spite of the positivistic resistance to ontology. The psychiatrist who asserts that anxiety is always pathological cannot deny the potentiality of illness in human nature, and one must account for the facts of finitude, doubt, and guilt in every human being; one must, in terms of one’s own presupposition, account for the universality of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
One cannot avoid the question of the human nature since in practicing one’s profession one cannot avoid the distinction between health and illness, existential and pathological anxiety. This is why more and more representatives of medicine generally and psychotherapy specifically ask for the cooperation with the philosophers and theologians. And it is why through this cooperation a practice of counseling has developed which is, like every attempted synthesis, dangerous as well as significant for the future. The medical faculty needs a doctrine of mortals in order to fulfill its theoretical task; and it cannot have a doctrine of mortal without the permanent cooperation of all those faculties whose central object is human beings. The medical profession has the purpose of helping mortal in some of their existential problems, those which usually are called diseases. However, it cannot help a person without the permanent cooperation of all other professions whose purpose is to help mortals as mortals. Both the doctrines about mortals and the help given to mortal are a matter of cooperation from many points of view. Only in this way is it possible to understand and to actualize mortal’s power of being, one’s essential self-affirmation, one’s courage to be. In our present day, women have been relieved of much of the drudgery of homemaking. It is still a very hard job and one filled with great responsibility, especially the role of mothering. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Productive love when directed toward equals may be called brotherly love. In motherly love the relationship between the two persons involved is one of inequality; the child is helpless and dependent on the mother. In order to grow, the baby must become more and ore independent, until the child does not need all of its support from the mother. Thus the mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother’s side, and yet this very love must help the child to grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent. It is easy for any mother to love her child before this process of separation has begun—but it is the task in which most fail, to love the child and at the same time to let it go—and to want to let it go. Many men, not understanding the intricacies of home economics, grumble and growl about their workaday World and tell their wives that homemaking is a snap! Yet, if they have to take over the chores fora day when their wives are sick or out of town, they frequently find out just how difficult it all is. However, what with modern appliances and good planning,many women are finding time left over after housework and child-care is done. Keeping busy and out of mischief by devotion to creative or domestic chores was the Old World solution to free hours. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and t work with your hands, just as you were told,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.11. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Women began discovering the fuller nature of their beings along time ago, but were more or less resigned to their limited existence until,with dramatic results, men began to put them to work outside of the home. The tragic story of labor’s abuses and the subsequent involvement of women in there form movements is but a short chapter in the history of womankind’s growing awareness of its greater potentials. In erotic love, another drive is involved:that for fusion and union with another person. While brotherly love refers to all mortals and motherly love to the child and all those who are in need of our help, erotic love is directed to one person, normally of the opposite gender, with whom fusion and oneness is desired. Erotic love begins with separateness, and ends in oneness. Motherly love begins with oneness, and leads to separateness. If the need for fusion were realized in motherly love, it would mean destruction of the child as an independent being, since the child needs to emerge from one’smother, rather than remained dependent on her. If erotic love lacks brotherly love and is only motivated by the wish for fusion, it is sexual desire without love, or the perversion of love as we find it in the sadistic and masochistic forms of love. “People that had been wrought upon by the Spirit of God, and had been healed; and they did show forth signs also and did some miracles among the people,” reports 3 Nephi 7.22. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Critics of women’s rights should remember that women have been very instrumental in bringing about social changes. Women played a significant part in protecting the abuses of drinking, and had much pressure brought to bear on the legislation for Prohibition. Not that this was necessarily the best legislation we could have had! Nevertheless, the economic and political power of women was felt. Then, in their insistence on equal treatment, women demanded the right to vote and today are very instrumental in legislation and their force is felt all across the World today. Also, in recent years, mothers have become an important force for peace. Women have demonstrated abilities in every field of endeavor formerly thought to be beyond their talents and capabilities.They can run congress, lathes, computer, the senate, be presidents of corporations and of countries; they write, edit, and publish books; they paint prize-winning paintings, drives buses and trucks, repair TV’s and telephone lines, perform surgery, pull teeth, preach, teach, practice law, and administer educational institutions. Without doubt, the high degree of skills demonstrated by many of them is destroying old concepts as effectively as it is damaging the egos of some males. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
However, do not be offended by this, but I do not think anyone can run a house as well as a woman. It takes a certainly kind of womanly love to cook, clean, do laundry, iron, organize, look good, sew, deal with business people and keep the house peaceful while standing sane. Reese Witherspoon’s Whiskey in a Tea Cup is a New York Times Best Seller and one of the most influential books to come to public attention in recent times. Without putting down the important dimensions of wife, mother, actress, business woman, singer, model and homemaker, Mrs. Witherspoon urges women to actualize their natural fourth dimensions: creative and productive talents. She also shares some personal stories, wives tales, recipes, and lets other women that the career can be just as important as her housewifely roles, which gives many women the incentive to declare themselves as full-fledged human beings. One understands fully mortal’s need to be related only if one considers the outcome of the failure of any kind of relatedness, if one appreciates the meaning of narcissism. The only reality the infant can experience is one’s own body and affection. The baby has not yet the experience of “I” as separate from “thou.” The precocious darling is still in a state of oneness with the World, but a oneness before the awakening of his or her sense of individual reality. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The World outside, for the baby, exists only as so much food, or so much warmth to be used for the satisfaction of one’s own needs, but not as something or somebody who is recognized realistically and objectively. This orientation has been named primary narcissism, and it is not a bad thing. In normal development, children are often treated as the are deities or prized possession, and this is important for their safety, security, and confidence. This state of narcissism is slowly overcome by a growing awareness of reality outside, and by a correspondingly growing sense of “I” as differentiated from “thou.”This change occurs at first on the level of sensory perception, when things and people are perceived as different and specific entities, a recognition which lays the foundation for the possibility of speech; to name things pre-supposes recognizing them as individual and separate entities. It takes much longer until the narcissistic state is overcome emotionally; for the child up to the age of seven or eight years, other people still exist mainly as means for the satisfaction of one’s needs. They are exchangeable inasmuch as they fulfill the function of satisfying these needs, and it is only around the ages between eight and nine years that another person is experienced in such a way that the child can begin to love, that is to say, to feel that the needs of another person are as important as their own. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
However, that may not necessarily be the full story. Babies smile at only a few weeks old to bond with their parents and make them happy, as they know how powerful being cute is because it will compel people to want to take care of them and love them. Many parents also have their pleasure of knowing that they are their child’s first real love, in a platonic sense, of course. The fact that utter failure to relate oneself to the World is insanity, points to the other fact: that some form of relatedness is the condition for any kind of sane living. However, among the various forms of relatedness, only the productive one, freedom and integrity while being, at the same time, untied with one’s fellow mortals. “Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again,” reports 3 Nephi 17.3. In the interpretation of human existence theology and medicine unavoidably joined philosophy, whether they were conscious of it our not. And in joining philosophy they joined each other even if their understanding of mortals went toward opposite directions. This is why theologians and ministers eagerly seek collaboration with medical professional, and many forms of occasional institutionalized cooperation result. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
One of the very first patients monitored was a woman 72 years of age who was in the coronary care unit because she had what is known as 2:1 heart block; that is, the upper portion of her heart (called the atrium) would begin the beat, but only every other beat would cause the remainder of her heart (the ventricles) to beat. During the pulse taking, a patient’s heart rate began to vary from its pattern of 2:1 block, changing back and forth from 2 degrees to 1 degree block. In essence, her heart began to change from 30 up to 60 beats per minute. During two other episodes of pulse taking and one episode of blood pressure measurement, very similar cardiac reactions occurred. While this patient was still in heart block, however, there was one other episode of pulse taking during which there were no heart rate or hearty rhythm changes. For three minutes prior to a sequence in which a nurse came to this patient’s bedside simply to give her a pill, the patient’s heart rate had been a regular 2:1 heart block rate of 35 beats per minute. However, during the entire one minute the nurse was at her bedside, the patient’s heart rate abruptly changed to a different mode of conduction and her heart rate was 70-75 beats per minute, only to change back abruptly to a rate of 35 beats per minute and 2:1 heart block for the three minutes after the nurse left the patient’s bedside. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
A similar reaction occurred when the nurse brought this patient lunch. Later that same day, the medicine (atropine) the cardiologist had prescribed took effect, and the patient was no longer in continuous 2:1 block. During this period we again monitored an episode of pulse taking. This time the beat-to-beat heart rate both before and after pulse taking was approximately 70-75 beats per minute, with only periodic episodes of heart block occurring. However, when the nurse took the patient’s pulse, the heart rate was slightly elevated, the beat became quite rhythmic,and the periodic pattern of heart block was completely abolished. In the light of the type of cardiac problems experienced by this patient and the medication she was given, it was not difficult for us to deduce the changes in the patient’s nervous system that were producing these reactions. Understanding those physiological mechanisms suggests that bedside matter of human compassion, medication and religious could be an effective three-fold method to help heal patients and keep them alive. Research indicates the prayer can extend a person’s life by four years. Evidence is causing more and more people to believe that there is metaphysical forces beyond science at work in the World and human beings are conduits of this spiritual power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Religious doctrines typically include prescriptions for taking care of one’s own body (e.g., your body is a temple), and support psychological traits that are associated with self-control, such as humility, patience, mindfulness, and compassion. In addition, religious doctrines offer behavioral techniques, including mediation and prayer, that can help people regulate their emotions and actions. When people are exposed to religious themes or call to mind their religious beliefs, they are better able to endure discomfort, delay gratification, and follow through on challenging tasks. Religious people learn through training to control their emotions, particularly the negative emotions of fear, anger, and hatred, as these can push them towards a darkness they do not want to access. These beings are mindful of their thoughts and intentions and meditate and pray about their choices. However, the physician must be fully aware of the treatment to make sure the patient is receiving adequate medical care. And as a minister, one may radiate healing power for mind and body and help to remove symptoms and neurotic anxiety. The anxiety of fate and death produces nonpathological strivings for security. Large sections of mortal’s civilization serve the purpose of giving people safety against the attacks of fate and death. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Mortals realize that no absolute and no final security is possible; mortals also realize that life demands again and again the courage to surrender some or even all security for the sake of full self-affirmation. Nevertheless,mortal reduce the power of fate and the threat of death as much as possible. Pathological anxiety about fate and death impels toward a security which is comparable to the security of a prison. One who lives in this prison is unable to leave the security given to one by one’s self-imposed limitations. However, these limitations are not based on a full awareness of reality. Therefore, they security of the neurotic is unrealistic. One fears what is not to be feared and one feels to be safe what is not safe. The anxiety which one is not able to take upon oneself produces images having no basis in reality, but it recedes in the face of things which should be feared. That is, one avoids particular dangers, although they are hardly real, and suppress the awareness of having to die although this is an ever-present reality. Misplaced fear is a consequence of the pathological form of the anxiety of fate and death. “And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise. And they arose from the Earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, my joy is full,” reports 3 Nephi 17.19-20. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
In the last two years, the Women’s Liberation Movement, Time’s Up, and the Daughters of Sappho have been actively promoting a campaign for women’s full rights. Many of their tactics are alarming to men, to say the least! Men refuse women their full rights for a number of reasons. Tradition is an important obstacle, and the simple fact that women have always played a more or less passive, subservient role to men still looms large in the forefront of the conflict. Some men do not know how to relate to a woman who does not conform to what they think is a man’s inherent right of dominance and leadership. Nearly all of our social custom and a large percentage of our speech phrases contain an unconscious assumption that women are secondary in importance to men—are subservient to them, are to be protected by them, are pitifully incapable of matching their mental powers. The man is always the head of the household, even though today it is the women who actually manages and cares for the ongoing activities of the typical American home. Interestingly enough, the history of the word man means human being and mind; the word woman is a combination of two words meaning wife of a human being. And in Mandarin Chinese woman means we. Little wonder that males and females raised by the same mental set: a woman is a being that evolves with times and culture and becomes fully accepted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Except for the definitely generic roles of fathering and mothering, the physical structure of men’s and women’s roles of fathering and mothering, the physical structure of men’s and women’s bodies plays very little part in determining fitness and aptitude for most jobs. There is nothing biologically determining in the roles of physician, surgeon, teacher, therapist, preacher, bookkeeper, computer programmer, or the thousands of other jobs in the nation today. Furthermore, biologist tell us that in terms of real endurance women are superior to men! Typically, men have larger skeletal and muscular structures, but that is really unimportant in terms of the stresses of modern living. Ananalogy can be drawn in terms of Sequoia sempervirens and a Syagrus romanzoffiana. Men are taught in most of the World, but especially America, to be strong and rugged, to use all stresses as building blocks against other stresses—as when an athlete strains and exercises one’s muscles in order to build stronger ones. Men are taught to compress their emotions into rigid anti-emotional-stress walls. Thus, internally and externally, men build themselves to withstand pressures, much like a Sequoia sempervirens. Women are typically taught to experience their emotions, to display them, to let them out, and even to utilize them to advantage. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Without pressure build-ups on the inside, they remain supple, and when tensions arise from outside come at them, women are able to be more flexible with stress and life situations, much like the Syagrus romanzoffiana. It is not the unyielding Sequoia sempervirens that stands after the hurricane has blown past; it is the flexible and resilient Syagrus romanzoffiana. However, you also notice, although men and women are similar, their brains are different. Men and women usually attack different types of attention. You do not usually have a bunch of females jealous of a man, and you do not usually have a bunch of men jealous of a woman, but with gender bending and confusion growing larger in society, men and women are going to have to learn how to deal with different kinds of stressors to weather the storms. Another factor that interfere with acceptance by men of the equal rights and qualities of women is fear, but most men will neither accept nor acknowledge this reason. Also a product of the conditioning process is men’s unwillingness to understand their own needs for competence and ego integrity. Yet it is a false competence and a phony integrity that cannot stand up to testing, and the real test in this case is the ability and willingness to share a place in the Sun with other. Not your place or his place or my place or her place, but our place. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The concept of sharing obviates the concept of competition between the genders and all of its conceits and manifestations. Yet, became we have grown up with the myth of male dominance, most of us (women included) are unprepared or unequipped to have it challenged. Women have demonstrated their capabilities in far too many ways for them to not be fully accepted as human beings; yet, as we have said many times, there are real lags between our intellectual understanding of reality and the changes in our institutions ordinary behavior that show our understanding. “If all pathways just led to now, then all I have been through was worth it somehow. For every treasure that is lost and found,through open doorways, when the lights have burned out, all I want is to be with you and feel like I am someone new. I could breathe if we just play down here tonight. All I want is to be with you. I feel you close in all I do. I can see; you light my way so clear tonight,” reports Tonight by Emma Hewitt and Cosmic Gate. And instead of being subject to death, when that last enemy shall be destroyed, and death be swallowed up in victory, through that atonement they can become the fathers and mothers of lives, and be capable of perpetual and eternal progression. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
A Precious Mouldering Pleasure it is to for the Soul to Select its Own Society
If they take you into their trust, tell you things that even most people do not know, there will be a bond, and maybe a bond that can somehow save us all. Many of us do not wish to settle for knowing just a little bit of other people, especially those we care about. So, we must find ways of opening up avenues of approach. By experimenting, we can invite these people to come out into the Sunlight and experience as much of life as possible. Why should we? If a person is happy being a Bluffer or an Expert or a Life of the Party, is it our business to take on the role of disturbing that individual? A fair question. First of all, it is not for anybody to say whether a person is truly happy or not. However, it is a peculiar and interesting fact that a self-actualizing person often attracts people who are only living partially. They may see the individual as a happy, effective, comfortable human being and come to that individual, associate with the person, in an effort to discover one’s secrets. Without ever admitting they want to be more than they are, they may show it or hint at it through their valuing or seeking after associations with certain people. Complementary and supplementary relationships are as common as male-female liaisons. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Often the more fully functioning partner blazes the trail.They shy and fumbling English person was often invited by the confident Zorbato jump in and play, or dance, or go after the woman: “Boss,” he said, “this is where I count on you. Now, don’t dishonor the male species! The god-devil sends you this choice morsel [a beautiful widow]. You’ve got teeth. All right, get ‘em into it. Stretch out your arm and take her! What did the Creator give us hands for?” “I don’t want any trouble!” I replied angrily. It is clear to see that the actualizer suggests, not to taunt or torment but to dare the other person to become more fully what he or she is. Often the half-person will come out and ask about oneself. Then the actualizer has some decisions to make. Will what he or she says make the person feel better or worse? If what must be said is hurtful, can the person take it? Will this interchange drastically affect the kind of relationship they have? Does one really want reality of is one asking for reassurance that one is likeable? If a person with insights into happier more effective living can communicate, the other person may be able to get the factual information one needs to begin working on oneself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
However, some people may not want to hear the truth about themselves, especially if it is painful. Anybody who has ever been asked to judge a friend’s work knows well the implication of that statement: If friendship or business relations are important to you, do not be negative. It is the rare individual who can objectively take criticism without some twinge of self-righteousness or resentment. Even well-meant, constructive criticism will wound creative people, who live with it and often because of it all their productive lives. A self-actualizing person generally has the peculiar knack of presenting criticism indirectly and one’s suggestions take on the nature of gifts, which tot he partially functioning individual they are. Some people like their coworkers,in the work place, to loosen up and play around sometimes to show that they are fully human. Yet, there are people who want to go to work, excel at their jobs and keep their person lives and business to themselves. It can make people uncomfortable when one of their employees or coworkers seems like a well adjusted superhuman. “I am not shrink, but I get the feeling you are embarrassed to let people see the…oh, the human side of you. Everybody sees Bud Jones, the super-efficient worker. No mistakes, no sloppiness, no margin for error.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Some people keep their human side to themselves because they have been taught people knowing too much about you and your family life can get you into trouble. “Bud, you are a guy who only let us see the perfect side. We are all human, Bud. It would make some of the newer people feel better about their chances if they could see that you really are flesh and blood. You are a nice and friendly guy, but it does not always show in public. More important than what it did for them, it would do them a lot of good. You do not always need to be person. Nobody expects as much as you do out of yourself. I would like to have you find out that being a human being can be enjoyable, too!” Some self-actualizing people have a trait called the older brother attitude. That is a healthy personality, which includes a high social interest. The older brother type cares about other people and want them to be fully human and to enjoy living rather than merely existing. Self-actualizing people are not running about with signs proclaiming their “Care for Sale,” but they are usually concerned about people and situations. They have enough good will in their beings to let it spill over and help people who really need it. And there are a lot more people living blindly, ignoring human needs, than there are those who care and can share that concern meaningfully and helpfully. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Though it is idealistic, one of the goals we have is the people,though discovering their own person significance, may want to help others discover theirs. Should this happen, a chain-reaction of fuller and more effective humanness might happen, too. If people got more out of living and took an interest in seeing to it that others got a chance to live more fully as well, we cannot help but feel that things might be a lot easier. The forward-going life instinct is stronger and increases in relative strength the more it grows. As it stands, human’s life is determined by the inescapable alternative between regression and progression, between return to a primal existence and arrival at human existence. Any attempt to return is painful, it inevitably leads to suffering and mental sickness, to death either physiologically or mentally (insanity). Every step forward is frightening and painful too, until a certain point has been reaches where fear and doubt have only minor proportions. Aside from the physiological nourished cravings (hunger, thirst, intimacy), all essential human cravings are determined by this polarity of the forward-going and the retrogressive impulse, which do not have the same biological strength. Humans have to solve a problem, one can never rest in the given situation of a passive adaption to nature. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Even the most complete satisfaction of all one’s instinctive needs does not solve one’s human problem; one’s most intensive passions and needs are not those rooted in one’s body, but those rooted in the very peculiarity of one’s existence. There lies also the key to humanistic psychoanalysis. As it turns out, the basic force which motivates human passions and desires are not the libido. As powerful as the sexual drive and all its derivations are, they are by no means the most powerful forces within humans and their frustration is not the cause of mental disturbance. The most powerful forces motivating human’s behavior stem from the condition of one’s existence, the human situation. Human cannot like statically because of their inner contradictions drive them to seek for an equilibrium, for a new harmony instead of the lost soul harmony with nature. After one has satisfied their basic needs, one is drive by the human needs. Human behavior is governed by a large number of types of motives, some that are physiological, but many more that are acquired and learned through social interaction, personal experience, and growth experiences. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
While our bodies tell humans what to eat and what to avoid—one conscious ought to tell one which needs to cultivate and satisfy, and which needs to let wither and starve out. However, hunger and appetite are functions of the body with which people are born—conscience, while potentially present,requires the guidance of people and principles which develop only during the growth of culture. All passions and strivings of humans are attempts to find an answer to one’s existence or, as we may also say, they are an attempt to avoid insanity. (It may be said in passing that the real problem of mental life is not why some people become insane, but rather why most avoid insanity.) Both the mentally healthy and the neurotic are driven by the need to find an answer, the only difference being that one answer corresponds more to the total needs of humans, and hence is more conducive to the unfolding of one’s powers and to one’s happiness than the other. All cultures provide for a patterned system in which certain solutions are predominant, hence certain strivings and satisfactions. Whether we deal with primitive religions, with theistic or non-theistic religions, they are all attempts to give an answer to human’s existential problem. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The finest, as well as the most barbaric cultures have the same function and that is to answer the human existential problem—the difference is only whether the answer given is better or worse. The deviate from the cultural pattern is just as much in search of an answer as one’s more well-adjusted brother. One’s answer may be better or worse than the one given by one’s culture—it is always another answer to the same fundamental question raised by human existence. In this sense all cultures are religious and every neurosis is a private form of religion, provided we mean religion an attempt to answer the problem of human existence. Indeed, the tremendous energy in the forces producing mental illness, as well as those behind art and religion, could never be understood as an outcome of frustrated or sublimated physiological needs; they are attempts to solve the problem of being born human. All people are idealist and cannot help being idealists, provided we mean by idealism the striving for the satisfaction of needs which are specifically human and transcend the physiological needs of the organism. The difference is only that one idealism is a good and adequate solution, the other a bad and destructive one. The decision as to what is good and bad has to be made on the basis of our knowledge of human’s nature and the laws which govern its growth. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The distinction of the three types of anxiety is supported by the history of Western civilization. We find that at the end of ancient civilization ontic anxiety is predominant, at the end of the Middle Ages moral anxiety, and at the end of the modern period spiritual anxiety. However, in spite of the predominance of one type the others are also present and effective. Enough has been said about the end of the ancient period and its anxiety of fate and death in connection with an analysis of Stoic courage. As Stoics, we learn to focus on what is in our power. We ask ourselves what can we do to create a good life,no matter the circumstances we find ourselves in and what is required of us as human beings and what prevents us from living out to our full potential? Consistent stoic practice increasing our resilience, contentment, joy, and gives us the boldness necessary to tackle the tasks presented to us in life. We believe that we all have the ability to live artfully, and that requires effort. Living naturally means to take actions that we allow us to flourish. We are looking for our best possible selves. Humans are rational, social being. Therefore, there nature is to use their rational mind for the benefit of oneself and their society. Virtuous life is fully sufficient for happiness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
The sociological background is well known: the conflict of the imperial powers, Alexander’s conquest of the East, the war between his follower, the conquest of West and East by republic Rome, the transformation of republican into imperial Rome through Caesar and Augusts, the tyranny of the post-Augustan emperors, the destruction of the independent city and nation states,the eradication of the former bearers of the aristocratic-democratic structure of society, the individual’s feeling of being in the hands of powers, natural as well as political, which are completely beyond his control and calculation—all this produced a tremendous anxiety and the quest for courage to meet the threat of fate and death. At the same time the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness made it impossible for many people, especially of the educated classes, to find a basis for such courage. Ancient Skepticism from its very beginning in the Sophists united scholarly and existential elements. Skepticism in its late ancient form was despair about the possibility of right acting as well as right thinking. It drove people into the desert where the necessity for decisions, theoretical and practical, is reduced to a minimum. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
However, most of those who experienced the anxiety of emptiness and the despair of meaninglessness tried to meet them with a cynical contempt of spiritual self-affirmation. Yet they could not hide the anxiety under skeptical arrogance. The anxiety of guilt and condemnation was effective in the groups who gathered in the mystery of cult with their rites of expiation and purification. Sociologically these circles of the initiated were rather indefinite. In most of them even slaves were admitted.In them, however, as in the whole non-Jewish ancient World more the tragic than the personal guilt was experiences. Guilt is the pollution of the soul by the material realm or by demonic powers. Therefore the anxiety of emptiness, within the dominating anxiety of fate and death. Only the impact of the Jewish-Christian message changed this situation, and so radically that toward the end of the Middle Ages the anxiety of guilt and condemnation was decisive.If one period deserves the name of the age of anxiety it is the pre-Reformation and Reformation. The anxiety of condemnation symbolized as the wrath of God and intensified by the imagery of hell and purgatory drove people of the late Middle Ages to try various means of assuaging their anxiety. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
To escape anxiety, people took pilgrimages to holy places,of possible to Rome; ascetic exercises, sometimes of an extreme character; devotion to relics, often brought together in mass collections; acceptance of ecclesiastical punishments and the desire for indulgences; exaggerated participation in masses and penance, increase in prayers and alms. In short they asked ceaselessly: How can I appease the wrath of God, how can I attain divine mercy, the forgives of sin? This predominant form of anxiety embraces the other two forms. The personified figure of death appeared in painting, poetry, and preaching. However, it was death and guilt together. Death and the devil were allied in the anxious imagination of the period. The anxiety of fate returned with the invasion of late antiquity. Fortuna became a preferred symbol in the art of the Renaissance, and even the Reformers were not free from astrological beliefs and fears. And the anxiety of fate was intensified by fear of demonic powers acting directly or through other human beings to cause illness, death, and all kinds of destruction. At the same time, fate was extended beyond death into the pre-ultimate state of purgatory and the ultimate state of Hell of Heaven. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The darkness of destiny could not be removed; not even the Reformers were able to remove it, as their doctrine of predestination shows. In all these expressions the anxiety of fate appears as an element within the all-embracing anxiety of guilt and in the permanent awareness of the threat of condemnation. The late Middle Ages was not a period of doubt; and the anxiety of emptiness and loss of meaning appeared only twice, both remarkable occasions,however, and important for the future. One was the Renaissance, when theoretical skepticism was renewed and the question of meaning haunted some of the most sensitive minds. In Michelangelo’s prophets and sibyls and in Shakespeare’s Hamlet there are indications of a potential anxiety of meaninglessness. The other was in the demonic assaults that Martin Luther experienced, which were neither temptations in the moral sense nor moments of despair about threatening condemnation, but moments when belief in his work and message disappeared and no meaning remained. Similar experiences of the desert or the night of the soul are frequent among mystics. It must be emphasized however that in all these cases the anxiety of guilt remained predominant, and that only after the victory of humanism and Enlightenment as the religious foundation of Western society could anxiety about spiritual nonbeing become dominant. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The sociological cause of the anxiety of guilt and condemnation that arose at the end of the Middle Ages is not difficult to identify. In general one can say it was the dissolution of the protective unit of the religiously guided medieval culture. More specifically there must be emphasized the rise of an educated middle class in the larger cities, people who tried to have as their own experience what had been merely an objective, hierarchically controlled system of doctrines and sacraments. In this attempt, however, they were driven to hidden or open conflict with the Church, whose authority they still acknowledged. There must be emphasized the concentration of political power in the princes and their bureaucratic-military administration, which eliminated the independence of those lower in the feudal system. There must be emphasized the state absolutism which transformed the masses in city and country into subjects whose only duty was to work and obey, without any power to resist the arbitrariness of the absolute rulers. There must be emphasized the economic catastrophes connected with early capitalism, such as the importation of gold from the New World, expropriation of the less affluent and so on. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
In all these often described changes it is the conflict between the appearance of independent tendencies in all groups of society, on the one and,and the rise of an absolutist concentration of power on the other that is largely responsible for the predominance of the anxiety of guilt. Their rational, commanding, absolute God of nominalism and the Reformation is partly shaped by the social, political, and spiritual absolutism of the period;and the anxiety created in turn by one’s image is partly an expression of the anxiety produced by the basic social conflict of the disintegrating Middle Ages. The breakdown of absolutism, the development of liberalism and democracy, the rise of a technical civilization with its victory over all enemies and its own beginning disintegration—these are the sociological presupposition for the third main period of anxiety. In this anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness is dominant. We are under the threat of spiritual nonbeing. The threats of moral and ontic nonbeing are, of course, present, but they are not independent and not controlling. This situation is so fundamental to the question raised in this book that it requires fuller analysis than the two earlier periods, and the analysis must be correlated with the constructive solution. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
It is significant that the three main periods of anxiety appear at the end of an era. The anxiety which, in its different forms, is potentially present in every individual becomes general if the accustomed structures of meaning, power, belief, and order disintegrate. These structures, as long as they are in force, keep anxiety bound within a protective system of courage by participation. The individual who participates in the institutions and ways of life of such a system is not liberated from one’s personal anxieties but one has means of overcoming them with well known methods no longer work. Conflict between the old, which tries to maintain itself, often with new means, and the new, which deprives the old, which tries to maintain itself, often with new means, and the new, which deprives the old of its intrinsic power, produce anxiety in all directions. Nonbeing, in such a situation, has a double face, resembling two types of nightmare (which are perhaps, expressions of an awareness of these two faces). The one type is the anxiety of annihilating narrowness, of the impossibility of escape and the horror of being trapped. The other is the anxiety of annihilating openness, of infinite, formless space into which one falls without a place to fall upon. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Social situation like those described have the character both of a trap without exist and of an empty, dark, and unknown void. Both faces of the same reality arouse the latent anxiety of every individual who looks at them. Today most of us do not look at them. “And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. And we, ourselves, also, though the infinite goodness of God, and the manifestations of his Spirit, have great views of that which is to come; and were it expedient, we could prophesy of all things. And it is the faith which we have had on the things which our king has spoken unto us that has brought us to this great knowledge, whereby we do rejoice with such exceedingly great joy,” Mosiah 5.2-4. Keep your eyes on God, not on people. “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,” reports Acts 1.7. Spiritual programs are filled with concerns for individual progress, acceptance by authorities, and the wish for sainthood or some other high position. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
I Years Had Been from Home and Now Before the Door I Dared Not Open—Lest a Face I Never Saw Before!
The gentlemen had risen to see me off. I murmured my superficial farewells, and only then did the secret grip release me. Nonebeingis dependent on the being it negates. Dependent means two things. It points first of all to the ontological priority of being over nonbeing. The term nonbeing itself indicates this, and it is logically necessary. There could be no negation if there were no preceding affirmation to be negated. Certainly one can describe being in terms of non-nonbeing; and one can justify such a description by pointing to the astonishing prerational fact that there is something and not nothing. One could say that being is the negation of the primordial night of nothingness. However, in doing so one must realize that such an aboriginal nothing would be neither nothing nor something, that it becomes nothing only in contrast to something; in other words, that the ontological status of nonbeing as nonbeing is dependent on being. Secondly, nonbeing is dependent on the special qualities of being. In itself nonbeing has no quality and no difference of qualities. However, it gets them in relation to being. The character of the negation of being is determined by that in being which is negated. This makes it possible to speak of qualities of nonbeing and, consequently,of types of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Up to now we have used the term nonbeing without differentiation, while in the discussion of courage several forms of self-affirmation were mentioned. They correspond to different forms of anxiety and are understandable only in correlation with them. I suggest that we distinguish three types of anxiety according to the three directions in which nonbeing threatens being. Nonbeing threatens human’s moral self-affirmation, relatively in terms of fate, absolutely in terms of death. It threatens human’s spiritual self-affirmation, relatively in terms of guilt, absolutely in terms of condemnation. The awareness of this threefold threat is anxiety appearing in three forms, that of fate and death (briefly, the anxiety of death), that of emptiness and loss of meaning (briefly, the anxiety of meaninglessness), that of guilt and condemnation (briefly, the anxiety of condemnation). In all three forms anxiety is existential in the sense that it belongs to existence as such and not to an abnormal state of mind as in neurotic (and psychotic) anxiety. The nature of neurotic anxiety and its relation to existential anxiety will be discussed in another chapter. We shall deal now with the three forms of existential anxiety, first their reality in the life of the individual, then with their social manifestations in special periods of Western history. However, it must be stated that the differences of types does not mean mutual exclusion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
We have seen for instance that the courage to be as it appears in the ancient times conquers not only the fear of death but also the threat of meaninglessness. Sometimes we find that in spite of the predominance of threat of meaninglessness, the anxiety of death and condemnation is passionately challenged. In all representatives of classical Christianity death and sin are seen as the allied adversaries against which the courage of faith has to fight. The three forms of anxiety (and of courage) are immanent in each other but normally under the dominance of one of them. However, nothing is more common than the idea that we, the people living in the Western World of the twenty first century,are eminently sane. Even the fact that a great number of individuals in our midst suffer from more or less severe forms of mental illness produces little doubt with respect to the general standard of our mental health. We are sure that by introducing better methods of mental hygiene we shall improve still further the state of mental health, and as far as individual mental disturbances are concerned, we look at them as strictly individual incidents,perhaps with some amazement that so many of these incidents should occur in a culture which is supposedly so sane. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Can we be so sure that we are not deceiving ourselves? Many an inmate of an insane asylum is convinced that everybody else is crazy, except oneself. Many a severe neurotic believes that one’s compulsive rituals or hysterical outbursts are normal reaction to somewhat abnormal circumstances. What about ourselves? Let us, in good psychiatric fashion, look at the facts. In the last one hundred and sixty-three years, in the Western World, have created a greater material wealth than any other society in the history of the human race. Everyone is looking with a mixture of confidence and apprehension to the World leaders of the various people, ready to heap all praise on them if the succeed in avoiding a war, and ignoring the fact that it is only these very World leaders who ever cause a war, usually not even through their bad intentions, but their unreasonable mismanagement of the affairs entrusted to them. In the last 3,000 years of history, no less than about eight thousand peace treaties were signed,each one supposed to secure permanent peace, and each one lasting on an average two years. Our direction of economic affairs is scarcely more encouraging. We live in an economic system in which a particularly good crop is often an economic disaster, and we restrict some of our agricultural productivity in order to stabilize the market, although there are millions of people who do not have the very things we restrict, and who need them badly. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Right now our economic system is function very well, because, among other reasons, we spend billions of dollars per year to produce armaments. Economists look with some apprehension to the time when we stop producing armaments, and the idea that the state should produce houses and other useful and needed things instead of weapons, easily provokes accusations of endangering freedom and individual initiative. We have a literacy above 90 percent of the population. We have radio, television, movies, a newspaper a day for everybody. However, instead of giving us the best of past and present literature and music, these media of communication, supplemented by advertising, fill the minds of people with the cheapest trash, lacking in any sense of reality, with sadistic phantasies which a halfway cultured person would be embarrassed to entertain even once in while. However, the mind of everybody, young and old, is thus poisoned, we go on blissfully to see to it that no immortality occurs on the screen. Any suggestion that the government should finance the production of movies and radio programs which would enlighten and improve the minds of our people would be met again with indignation and accusations in the name of freedom and idealism. “And now my children, see that ye take care of these sacred things, yea see that ye look to God and live. Go unto this people and declare the word, and be sober. My children, farewell,” reports Alma 37.44. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
I Cannot Tell You, but You Feel it—Who Ponders this Tremendous Faith which is the Experiment of Our Lord!
It is tempting to try to live without an underworld, without soul, and without concern for the mysterious elements that touch on the spiritual and the religious. Anxiety and fear have the same ontological root but they are not the same actuality. This is common knowledge, but it has been emphasized and overemphasized to such a degree that a reason against it may occur and wipe out not only the exaggerations but also the truth of the distinction. Fear, as opposed to anxiety has a definite object (as most authors agree), which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured. One can act upon it, and in acting upon it participate in it—even if in the form of struggle. In this way one can take it into one’s self-affirmation. Courage can meet every object of fear, because it is an object and makes participation possible. Courage can take the fear produced by a definite object into itself, because this object, however frightful it maybe, has a side with which it participates in us and we in it. One could say that as long as there is an object of fear, love in the sense of participation,can conquer fear. However, this is not so with anxiety, because anxiety has no object, or rather, in a paradoxical phase, its object is the negation of every object. Therefore participation, struggle, and love with respect to it are impossible.One who is in anxiety is, insofar as it is mere anxiety, delivered to it without help. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Helplessness in the state of anxiety can be observed in animals and humans alike. It expresses itself in loss of direction, inadequate actions, lack of intentionality (the being related to meaningful contents of knowledge or will). The reason for this sometimes striking behavior is the lack of an object on which the subject (in the state of anxiety) can concentrate.The only object is the threat is nothingness. Anxiety is a normal human emotion. Everyone experiences it. It is part of the opposition in all things,without which there would be no happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. As such, this emotion serves us well. It is part of our emotional alarm system.It motivates us to prepare for important events. It causes us to protect ourselves when we feel threatened. It enhances performance. Anxiety can always help us make thoughtful decisions, solve problems, and prepare for challenges.It reveals what we care about. However, one might ask whether this threatening nothing is not the unknown, the indefinite possibility of an actual threat? Does not anxiety cease in the moment in which a known object of fear appears? Anxiety then would be fear of the unknown. However, this is an insufficient explanation of anxiety. For there are innumerable realms of the unknown, different for each subject, and faced without any anxiety. It is the unknown of a special type which is met with anxiety. It is the unknown which by its very nature cannot be known, because it is nonbeing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
Fear and anxiety are distinguished but not separated. They are immanent within each other: The sting of fear is anxiety, and anxiety strives toward fear. Fear is being afraid of something, a pain, the rejection by a person or a group, the loss of something or somebody, the moment of dying.However, in the anticipation of the threat originating in these things, it is not the negativity itself which they will bring upon the subject that is frightening but the anxiety about the possible implications of this negativity.The outstanding example—and more than an example—is the fear of dying. Insofar as it is fear its object is the anticipated event of being killed by sickness or an accident and thereby suffering agony and the loss of everything. Insofar as it is anxiety its object is the absolutely unknown after death, the nonbeing which remains nonbeing even if it is filled with images of our present experience. The dreams in Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be,” which we may have after death and which make cowards of us all are frightful not because of their manifest content but because of their power to symbolize the threat of nothingness, in religious terms of eternal death. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
The symbols of hell created by Dante produce anxiety not because of their objective imagery but because they express the nothingness whose power is experienced in the Inferno could be met by courage on the basis of participation and love. However, of course the meaning is that this is impossible; in other words they are not real situations but symbols of the objectless, of nonbeing. The fear of death determines the element of anxiety in every fear. Anxiety, if not modified by the fear of an object, anxiety in its nakedness, is always the anxiety of ultimate nonbeing. Immediately seen, anxiety is the painful feeling of not being able to deal with the threat of a special situation. However, a more exact analysis sows that in the anxiety about any special situation anxiety about the human situation as is implied. It is the anxiety of not being able to preserve one’s own being which underlies every fear and is the frightening element in it. In the moment, therefore, in which naked anxiety lays hold of the mind, the previous object of fear cease to be definite objects. They appear as what they always were in part, symptoms of human’s basic anxiety. As such they are beyond the reach of even the most courageous attack upon them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
This situation drives the anxious subject to establish objects of fear. Anxiety strives to become fear, because fear can be met by courage. It is impossible for a finite being to stand naked anxiety for more than a flash of time. People who have experienced these moments, as for instance some mystics in their visions of the night soul, or Luther under the despair of the demonic assaults have told of the unimaginable horror of it. This horror is ordinarily avoided by the transformation of anxiety into fear of something, no matter what. The human mind is not only a permanent factory of idols, it is also a permanent factory of fears—the first in order to escape God who is really God means facing also the absolute of nonbeing. The naked absolute produces naked anxiety; for it is the extinction of every finite self-affirmation, and not a possible object of fear and courage. However, ultimately,the attempts to transform anxiety of a finite being about the threat of nonbeing,cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself. If we do not resolve the distorted thinking common to adulthood, we become the slaves rather than the masters of our high standards, and we become vulnerable to extreme anxiety.#RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Since we are social beings, we need other people for sheer survival from the beginning of life. Once the physiological needs are met, we cultivate needs that still involve other people. These social needs are secondary motives in the sense that they are learned, not inborn. However, secondary is not equivalent to unimportant or peripheral. Most of us are heavily involved in meeting our social needs. We need others for love experiences. Solitary people usually do not even love themselves. People who love themselves in a healthy fashion are people who also love others. In fact they are people who love widely and deeply because they have been loved—by others and then by themselves—and are in continual cycle of re-experiencing. True self-love is self-respect,self-appreciation, and self-knowledge. The self-love that grasps and demands and exploits others is a false love called narcissism. Real self-love enables us to involve ourselves with others, fully, deeply, real-ly, and satisfyingly for all concerned. We do not possess al the resources necessary to satisfy ourselves. For supplementation we have to go to another person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
It is the realization that we need other people for supplementation that makes social intercourse, and intimacy, possible. We often find ourselves in the situation of experiencing emptiness or shallowness. We may have been too long alone with our own thoughts or feelings. We may have had too limited a social situation, knowing and experiencing a too limited or small group of others. At times we find it necessary to replenish our supply of social feeling or social interest. It is at these times that we are strongly pushed or pulled toward other people, new people, or familiar people in differing or new circumstances. “Charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endures forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last say, it shall be well with him,” reports Moroni 7.47. At times professional people find the company of colleagues to be tiring or uninspiring and are refreshed or stimulated by enjoying a meal or conversation with persons from other disciplines and academic levels. For those who may view this as using otherpeople, we would clarify. We all use other people: we pick their minds, we ask their opinions, we ask them to appraise our work, our looks, our ideas; we curry their favor. They, in turn, use us for the same kinds of things. This is simply wholesome, cooperative interaction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
There is also abuse of other people. A synonym for it is exploitation: to take advantage, uncaringly, of another person. Slavery is an obvious example, but far more subtle examples occur every day whenever someone takes something for another and does not give much back. Think of the adulation a movie star may take from a fan, without really giving much back. Psychotherapists often take from their patients the good feelings they have to give, and often do not give the patient something in return. This does not happen often, but there are good cases in point. Many therapists feel pleasure at the Godlike role into which their patents put them, and a few succumb to this and allow the patients to literally worship their every word, their very being. Then the patient gets very little that is real in return. When the healthy, self-actualizing person goes to another person, it is because there is a strong need for the presence and fellowship of that person. If one gets something from the involvement, one usually gives as much as one gets back. No contract is signed, no concern that the dividends will be absolutely equal to the investment! Between two people in the love that friends or lovers have there is no worry or greed. It is a continual round of sharing. When this happens, re-creation of each person takes place. It is again like two complementary halves making up an integrated whole.#RandolphHarris 8 of 14
Love is a re-freshment. It is a time and opportunity for newness and re-birth. There is so much to be gained from giving in the shared love relationships, not the least of which is growth of selfhood and of social feeling. One good turn deserves another way of saying that when one has experienced the growth of wholeness that comes from the being deeply involved with another human being, one wants to repeat the experience, time and time again. This feeling has been reported by many people as a phenomenon of any wholesome,satisfying social interaction and certainly seems to demonstrate the necessity of frequent and rewarding social contacts. Simple contacts, like casual conversation with strangers, apparently have beneficial and growth-producing effect. How many people get deeply involved in conversations wit perfect strangers!Taxi drivers, fellow drinkers at bars, bartenders, waiters, newsstand dealers,door-to-door salespeople, are literally invited into the lives of lonely people. It appears that there is greater hunger for human companionship or listeners.A few years ago, a group of New York City bartenders asked a psychotherapist to give them lessons in simple counseling because they were so often put into the role of counselor by their customers. The therapist reasoned that there might be some therapeutic advantage in helping these people to be effective listeners. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
The social experience is rewarding and regenerating because we know—whether we fully acknowledge it or not—that there is a strong bond among all human beings. Rugged individualist, cynical loners, bitter hermits may deny it, but most of us are more than willing to acknowledge that we feel a sense of kinship with other people, a fellow-feeling with all humankind, which is more like saying that all Homo sapiens are in the same boat. Some individuals identify so strongly with others that they emphatically experience sorrow with those in dire circumstances and joy with their happier fellows. All of these experiences of empathy are growth-producing. Cultivating a strong feeling of kinship adds to a personal sense of fulfillment and worth. In German, the word is Gemeinschaftsgefuhl. It means feeling-sense of community,in a meager literal translation. Social interest or sense of community with others is based on feelings of worth and is assisted by growth-producing interactions with other people. It is a very productive and satisfying circle:From satisfying self-feeling to satisfying group-feeling back to satisfaction with one’s selfhood. Humans are a creature and creator of humans. Come into the World a mewling helpless little creature, driven by diffuse strivings of a peculiar body one is totally dependent on human warmth and care to survive and be. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
At once humans are enmeshed in social life, at once begins to learn and share in culture. Dualities and paradox pervade one’s life:instincts and culture, the separate being and the vital social bones, the truly felt and the way to be, uniqueness of oneself and the sameness with all humankind. We are vastly various and laughably alike. Helpless yet vastly powerful,driven by irrational passions yet open to gigantic rationality, able at Olympian detachment and prone as well to boundaryless immersion in depths of oceanic feeling, of oneness with the heard or with ineffable mysteries of the Universe—all of these are human. Bodily female or bodily male, a part of oneself is the other gender, or no gender at all. The World of others, one’s bonds with them, are ordered and chaotic both. Human beings become a human personality only through the joys and pains of human contact, care and giving and taking, and only through learning the ways of that small portion of humankind that is one’s tribe or community or nation at a particular time in history. Our need for others may at times be compulsive (where we are driven by needs or motives we can hardly control) or impulsive (as when a spur of the moment sensation allows or unleashed certain behaviors). #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
We may plan our social involvements or we may just enjoy them as happenings. The very fact that every culture ever studied has had to make a place for social intercourse give us some appreciation for just how universal this behavior must be. The hermit, the lone wolf, the isolate, the alienated: these are deviant humans. We must assume that some painful interaction has caused their solitary behavior to become a way of life. So we go out from our own centers of being to touch the beings of others, partly to reassure ourselves of our sameness, our bonds of likeness, and partly to restore some of the social feelings we lose in our work or play or states of fear. It takes a drastic or traumatic series of events to convince us that it is unsafe or unwise to seek out others. It seems unlikely that any one event could sever our bonds with the rest of humankind. No single trauma or hurt can drive us away from each other. It must require dozens of intensely painful and frightening experiences of rejection to develop a hermit or a social isolate.#RandolphHarris 12 of 14
In our social interaction, then, is a play element. We use the social experiences to re-create aspects of our selfhood that we have lost,or that have become fatigued, or which we doubt. We go to another person to gain validation of our own selfhood, whether in conversation, love, affection, argumentation, nurturance, punishment, or competition. We play games with these people, not just to structure our time or keep them away from intimate knowledge of us, but to get them to declare something about us. In challenging someone to a game of chess or tag or political discussion, we hope that they will see in us some element of worth or challenge to which they can respond. Their response is a statement that we are worthy of their rime and effort. It is a form of stroking, or social response. Stroking may be used as a general term for intimate physical contact; in practice it may take various forms. Some people literally stroke an infant others hug or pat it, while some pinch it playfully or flip it with a fingertip. These all have their analogue sin conversation, so that it seems one might predict how an individual would handle a baby by listening to the infant talk. By extension of meaning,stroking may be employed colloquially to denote any act implying recognition of another’s presence. Hence a stroke may be used as the fundamental unit of social action. An exchange of strokes constitutes a transaction, which is the unit of social intercourse. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Each time we are acknowledged or recognized by another person it is as though we are being patted or told “Yes, I know you are there and I acknowledge your being.” You may think this is overdrawn, but them you might recall times when some people literally looked right through you and how you felt then. You may have felt the eerie sensation of doubting that you were visible. You may have felt diminished as a person, no matter who the other person was. If person is ignored or looked through, it has the effect, whatever his ego strength, of making one feel smaller, less important, insignificant. That show important other people are to us. You know how effective silence or non-hearing of a person’s words can be in putting one down. If you agree or disagree with him, you have given him a stroke. You have at least acknowledged his presence. However, by not hearing him, you say, in effect, you are not even there! On the more optimistic side, we find that other people add to our dimensions of selfhood and in wholesome social intercourse this is a mutual, reciprocal event. We validate each other’s existences. Though this is not necessary all of the time, it seems to be important for all of us at some time. Healing best begins with sincere prayer asking our Father in Heaven for help. That use of our agency allows divine intervention. When we permit it, the love of the Savior will soften our hearts and break the cycle of abuse that can transform a victim into an aggressor. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Desire’s Perfect Goal Should Not Disenthrall Thy Soul—Here is a Star, there is a Star, Some Lose Their Way!
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned. Love would conquer all, of course, but one has to know when it is there first. Glaucus was a fisherman. One day he had drawn his nets to land and had taken a great many fishes of various kinds. So he emptied his nets and proceeded to sort the fishes on the grass. The place where he stood was a beautiful island in the river, a solitary spot, uninhabited, and not used for pasturage of cattle, not visited by anyone but himself. On a sudden, the fishes, which had been laid on the grass, began to revive and move their fins as if they were in the water; and while he looked on astonished, they one and all moved off to the water, plunged in, and swam away. He did not know what to make of this, whether some god had done it, or some secret power in the herbage. “What herb has such a power?” he exclaimed; and gathering some of it, he tasted it. Scarce had the juices of the plant reached his palate when he found himself agitated with a longing desire for the water. Glaucus could no longer restrain himself, but bidding farewell to Earth, he plunged into the stream. The gods of the water received him graciously and admitted hi to the honour of their society. They obtained the consent of Oceanus and Tethys, the sovereign of the sea, that all that was mortal in him should be washed away. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
A hundred rivers poured their waters over Glaucus and then he lost all sense of his former nature and all consciousness. When he recovered, he found himself changed in form and mind. His hair was sea-green, and trailed behind him on the water; his shoulders grew broad, and what had been thighs and legs assumed the form of a fish’s tail. The sea-gods complimented him on the change of his appearance, and Glaucus fancied himself rather a good-looking personage. One day, Glaucus saw a beautiful maiden Scylla, the favourite of the water-nymphs, rambling on the shore, and when she had found a sheltered nook, laving her limbs on the clear water, he fell in live with her. Glaucus showed himself on the surface, spoke to the maiden, saying such things as he thought most likely to win her to stay; for she turned to run immediately on sight of him, and ran till she had gained a cliff overlooking the sea. Here she stopped and turned round to see whether it was a god or s sea animal, and observed with wonder his shape and colour. Glaucus, partly emerging from the water and supporting himself against a rock, said, “Maiden, I am not monster, nor sea animal, but a god; and neither Proteus nor Triton ranks higher than I. Once I was a mortal, and followed the sea for a living; but now I belong wholly to it.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Then he told the story of his metamorphosis, and how he had been promoted to his present dignity, and added, “But what avails all this if it fails to move your heart?” Glaucus was going on in this strain, but the maiden, Scylla, turned and hastened away. Glaucus was in despair, but it occurred to him to consult the enchantress, Circe. Accordingly he repaired to her island. After mutual salutations, Glaucus said, “Goddess, I entreat your pity; you alone can relieve the pain I suffer. The power of the herbs I know as well as any one, for it is to them I owe my change of form. I love Scylla. I am ashamed to tell you how I have sued and promised to her, and how scornfully she has treated me. I beseech you to use your incantations, or potent herbs, if they are more prevailing, not to cure me of my love—for that I do not wish—but to make Scylla share it and yield me a like return.” To which Circe replied, for she was not insensible to the attractions of the sea-green deity, “You had better pursue a willing object; you are worthy to be sought, instead of having to seek in vain. Be not different, know your own worth. I protest to you that even I, goddess though I be, and learned in the virtue of plants and spells, should not know how to refuse you. If Scylla scorns you, scorn her; meet one who is ready to meet you half way, and thus make a due return to both at once.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
However, Glaucus replied, “Sooner shall trees grow at the bottom of the ocean, and seaweed on the top of the mountains, than I will cease to love Scylla, and her alone.” The goddess Circe was indignant, but she could not punish him, neither did she wish to do so, for she liked him too well; so she turned all her wrath against her rival, poor Scylla. She took her plants of poisonous powers and mixed them together, with incantations and charms. Then she passed through the crowd of gamboling beasts, the victims of her art, and proceeded to the coast of Sicily, where Scylla lived. There was a little bay on the shore to which Scylla used to resort, in the heat of the day, to breathe their air of the sea, and to bathe in its waters. Here the goddess poured her poisonous mixture, and muttered over it incantations of mighty power. Scylla came as usual and plunged into the water up to her waist. What was her horror to perceive a brood of serpents and barking monsters surrounding her! At first she could not imagine they were a part of herself, and tried to run from them and to drive them away; but as she ran she carried them with her, and when she tried to touch her limbs, she found her hands touch only the yawning jaws of monsters. Scylla remained rooted to the spot. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
Scylla’s temper grew as ugly as her form, and she took pleasure in devouring hapless mariners who came within her grasp. Thus she destroyed six of the companions of Ulysses, and tried to wreck the ships of Aeneas, till at least she was turned into a rock, and as such still continues to be a terror to mariners. Mistakes are a deliberately wrong choice in the contest between what is clearly good and what is clearly bad is sin. We all want a partner, but some want one to the point of it being a pathology. Many people knowingly or unknowingly force a relationship due to an addiction of love. If one is honest with oneself, and know that one has nothing in common with their focus of their intertest, such as different goals, different lifestyles, and different hobbies, and the person is not attracted to the individual pursing a relationship, this is a clear indication that they do not like you in a romantic way, much like how Scylla was not in the least bit interested in Glaucus. Yet, Glaucus could not take no for an answer and ended up running her like, and the rage she experienced ruined the lives of others. Absolutely imagine if you had people dragging you into things you did not want to be part of, and you will understand why this is not a healthy thing to do. It is never a healthy thing to do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
People who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistake than people who think intelligence is fixed. One major difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how one responds to mistake. When one makes a mistake, the best thing to do is to try to learn from it and figure it out. Conversely, some people who think they cannot gain intelligence will not take the opportunities to learn from their mistakes, and they usually employ defense mechanisms to justify their behaviour so they do not feel guilt or remourse. Defense mechanisms are psychological maneuvers that operate below the surface of one’s awareness (they are unconscious) to protect one from emotional pain or distress. The most familiar one is probably denial. Denial allows one to dismiss a painful reality so that one can go on acting as if a situation or event is not true—because one does not want to admit it is true. Transgression is different from being overtaken in a fault. Both sins and mistakes can hurt us and both require attention. People who try to force relations, often end up feeling insecure, hurt, and betrayed for no reason. Then these individuals start questioning themselves as to why they are never good enough for the person they are interested in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
There should be no license for sin, but mercy should go hand and hand with reproof. Though it may be hard to admit, there comes a time when one just needs to cut their losses and leave a person alone. The progression of a romantic relationship cannot be formed. It must evolve naturally, over time. Impatient, insecure, or damaged people try to force relationships. Mortal make these kinds of mistakes all the times. However, these things are on an essentially predetermined course. A fool is a person lacking judgment or prudence. The Saviour used the term fool to characterize the lesson in this parable about the rich man who built greater barns to store his abundant fruits and goods and then said to his soul, “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” reports Luke 12.19. The distinction between sins and mistakes is important to our actions. We have seen some very bitter finger pointing. All of us make mistakes, and some of us very serious ones. Any thoughtful person feels a kind of failure because one’s sins or moral failure. One does not get clean by rolling in the mire. One does not get clean and whole by brooding unduly over the past, although we can certainly learn from our mistake. There is no strength in weakness; there is no strength in sin; and we do not overcome our mistake and our sins by fighting them directly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
If people dwell upon them too much, they may succumb to their sins. The avoidance of guilt can be addictive, too. Guilt-avoidance has become a drug of choice for many people, because it is so pleasurable, almost intoxicating, to think of oneself as morally pure. Those who are addicted to guilt-avoidance are usually a bit inconsistent. They avoid the guilt themselves, but they do not mind imposing a bit of it—maybe even a lot of it—on others. It can be immensely pleasurable to notice the flaws of others while ignoring your own. However, that is a sin, too. All things considered, we are on a safer ground when we focus on our own sins, not those of others. At least this is how we process theologians see things. We believe that when we harm others, or fail to act in ways that prevent them from being harmed, we violated something deep within the nature of nature. We have violated an Eros toward life’s flourishing that is divine. In sinning against others, we sin against God. It takes courage to stand up. The freedom to be different. The freedom to take guilt and make something beautiful of it. Humans have the freedom to turn guilt into love. Few gifts are more desirable than a clear conscience—a soul at peace with itself. Only God can heal a troubled soul. However, if we want God to forgive us, we must follow the procedure he has given to us. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Confession is a necessary requirement for complete forgiveness. It is an indication of true Godly sorrow. It is part of the cleansing process—the starting anew requires a clean page in the diary of our conscience. Confessions should be made to the appropriate person who has been wronged by us and to the Lord also. In addition, the nature of our transgression may be serious enough to require a confession to God in prayer. “Therefore I say unto you, Go; and whoever transgressed against me, him shall you judge according to the sins which he or she has committed; and if he or she confess his or her sins before thee and me, and repents in the sincerity of one’s heart, that person one shall forgive, and I will also forgive that individual,” reports Mosiah 26.29. Remember, it is complete deliverance from the tortures of a guilt-ridden soul that we seek. Repentance is not easy. Godly sorrow brings one to the depth of humility. This is why the gift of forgiveness is so sweet and draws the transgressor so close to the Saviour with a special bond of affection. Full repentance liberates the individual with joy unspeakable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Any type of open and truthful disclosure reduces stress and helps individuals come to terms with their behaviour. It is not coincidental that some of the most powerful people or institutions in may cultures encourage people to confess their transgressions. And there is strong evidence that writing about upsetting experiences or dark secrets can benefit your mental and physical well-being. Similar to religious confessions, expressive writing encouraged individuals to explore their deepest thoughts and feelings about upsetting experiences. For such emotional purges to work, people must be completely honest with themselves. Putting emotional turmoil into words changes how we think about it. Giving concrete form to secret experiences can help categorize them in new ways. Talking or writing about a disturbing event helps us to understand it better. And things we do not understand cause greater anxiety. Once we are able to express our upheavals, we tend to ruminate about them less, freeing us up to focus on others thing. Dozens of studies have also shown that expression is linked to less stress and improved sleep and cardiovascular function. Also, better sleep is associated with enhanced immune function and better general health—which correlates with better mental health, too. Confession can help people get through difficult times. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
You Left Me a Heavenly Sweet Legacy of Love–Meet Me on Top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day
I have really hope you have found happiness, and if ever in need of something, like someone to love you, do not hesitate to call me. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears, but our intellect…must itself lack all those things which of its nature it understands. Since then it naturally understands all sensible and bodily things, it must be lacking in every bodily nature; just as the sense of sight, being able to know colour, lacks all colour. If sight itself had any particular colour, this colour would prevent it from seeing others colours, just as the tongue of a feverish person, being coated with bitter moisture, cannot taste anything sweet. The true genius shudders at incompleteness—imperfection—and usually prefers silence to saying the something which not everything should be said. Maybe there is something divine in the bliss we feel. Love aims at transcending human existence, at connecting it with the eternal and infinite, and thereby at achieving the only aspect of immortality that is open to us as human beings. Because many people want both height and depth, spirituality strengthens and develops love and transforms it into a desire for a higher level of understanding of the self, others, and the Universe. When our eyes fall upon the beauty of the Earth, our soul is able to remember true love and reverences as it enjoys the expression of the divine—of temperance, justice, and knowledge of the absolute. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
The human being is a spiritual being at the core. We are the soul and have an existence beyond the physical. Our personality has, in fact, many sub-personalities or different, often conflicting, aspects. Some of these aspects can be very troublesome and sabotage our efforts at success and happiness. Magically, if we can observe some aspect of ourselves with detachment, then we can change that aspect or somewhat control it. The idea of aspects of personality and observing them is now part of our daily language (largely do the work of Psychosynthesis). We regularly hear people say, “There is a part of me that wants marry Walter, but the other part of me is says Sam Baldwin is my destiny.” Psychosynthesis work sets up a dialogue with the different aspects of self to try to find a way of balance and integration of these, often, conflicting, parts. People tend to be dominated by love, will, and intelligent activity. Love deals with matters of the heart, compassion, emotion, and sensitivity. The will is one’s drive, need to achieve, power to remove and overcome come obstacles. Intelligent activity is the capacity to actively plan, organize, construct mental schemes and models of things. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Psychosynthesis tries to identify the basic type and then attempt to bring in balance if necessary. For example, the love type may need to develop the will to be less vulnerable and more effective. The will type may need to develop emotional sensibility so as to learn to love and be loved. In the 1993 film, Sleepless in Seattle is a classic fairy tale which involves a love struck, beautiful, enchanted princess Anne Reed, and sleepless, pragmatic, handsome prince Sam Baldwin. After the death of his wife, Sam moved to Seattle with his son and is convinced he will never find love again, and he just focuses on his work in architecture and never sleeps. His son, Jonah calls a talk-radio program hosted by a psychiatrist and Johan tells the World how concerned he is about his dad, and then the father gets on the phone and talks about what love means to him. The World falls madly in love with him, and many women want to meet him, but he is not interested. Anne Reed hears the call, and although she is already engaged, she feels he is her destiny. Anne bases he love life on the 1957 film An Affair to Remember. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Psychosynthesis would have helped Anne balance her need for love, and would have helped Sam develop a less will driven and emotional aspect of his personality, which is a form of conscious balance and choice. It lets people know where they are lacking balance in their lives, and as you see it is not always a chemical imbalance, but a lack of development or personal understanding. However, fate brings the lovers together in hopes they can balance each other out. There are usually three levels of satisfaction: Happiness, joy, and bliss. Happiness is the goal for most people’s lives it is the arrangement of life events to bring about the desired end. Problem, it can be fleeting and may not last for long. Joy is the constant states of soul, and is the surest sign of the presence of the soul. Bliss is the condition of the spirit beyond all material limitations. The intellect here serves as a bridge. Because of the refinement of the matter composing it, the intellect is well adapted as a medium of consciousness—it is like a translucent substance through which the soul can shine. However, it is only in conjunction with a soul that the intellect and the whole psychophysical organism can have experiences. The soul can gain release through discriminatory knowledge (viveka), that is, by realizing the essential distinction between itself and nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Contemplative techniques induce a stilling and purification of the mind in which the essential nature of the soul is reflected clearly. Thereby the soul learns to recognize the repression of the sublime, which tend to lead to unhappy and neurotic states that are the result of failure to understand and admit the spiritual aspects in ourselves and others. We cannot base on life on films like Sleepless in Seattle because taking such a risk could turn out to be more like Sleeping with the Enemy. Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1991 film in which a character called Laura Burney lives in a beautiful home by the beach on Cape Cod with her husband, Martin, a charming, handsome and wealthy investment counselor. In reality, Martin is not charming at all. He is volatile and charged with energy. Martin is extremely obsessive and has control issues. Martin is also physically and emotionally abusive toward his wife, Laura, throughout their marriage. He makes her keep the house crystal clean, makes her pretend to be happy, tells her what she is allowed to wear, selects the music she can listen to, and even controls her social activities. Therefore, we need to teach our kids that life is not all about finding love, but more about finding a career that allows one to support oneself and becoming aware of the external World, since mental and physical entities evolve on a parallel and mutually adapted lines; thus, it opens the way to a correspondence theory of perception. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
According to the theory of perception, external happenings imprint themselves via the sense and the sensus communis, or mind organ (manas), on the intellect. These images are then illuminated by the soul. The mind is, so to say, a screen containing pictures of the outer World, and the soul lights these up. However, the soul itself cannot be illuminated and this perceived introspectively; therefore, its existence is known only by inference (or by a special state of consciousness). This is why religion and talk therapy have become some popular. Doctors realize a lot of people do not have chemical imbalances, but they are experiencing situations and conditions that they are not equipped to handle and need guidance of someone who can help them recognize there is nothing wrong with them, but they may be in a situation that is not conductive to their development. By medicating people who do not have chemical imbalances, we could be doing more damage than good because we are using a drug to control them and forcing them to adapt to situations, which may be unsafe. Conversely, some people do need medication because there is something wrong with their brain. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
While we are on the subject of mental health, there was this interesting study about a mental who was schizophrenic, he was a witness to a crime, and was arrested. He mother did not want him on medication because she believed it was dangerous for him. He was being assaulted in jail because he was not normal. The investigators forced him to take a shot of an antipsychotic that would last a month so he could clear his head up enough to see lucid and testify. After taking the medication, he hanged himself because he suffered from depression, as his friends, the voices in his head were gone, and he was lonely. Therefore, not everyone needs therapy and not everyone needs medication. As a society, we just have to understand there are different types of people and not everyone is typical and we cannot force them to adhere to our standards. Of course, we can never understand what life is like for some people, who have mental or physical impairments, or who have been sheltered and do not understand the World, because we have never been in their shoes. So, it is not our job to sit back and judge people who have learned to adapt as best to life as they can. Sometimes people are living unimaginable lives. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you,” reports Matthew 7.1-2. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
A layperson’s most natural way of defending belief in induction is that it has worked in the past. Concealed in this reply, of course, is the assumption that what has already worked will continue to do so. However, there is a lack of clarity about what counts as success in using the rule. Our society has much neglected the need for the development of the capacity for expression of love and beauty. Love is a basic soul quality. When unfolded, it enables the person to love and accept the people they encounter and find the good in all people. We have to identify our infinity of living Worlds in endless pace with the infinity of God. Knowledge therefore must begin not with sense experience but with a rational search for units of divine life. The atoms of the physical World are carried in the ether, which is the universal medium of the divine life and power. The conquest of the self, in which the intellect achieves mastery over the passions of humans and drives out the beast is were all the traditional virtues of moderation and self-control have place, and at this level we appear to have the choice between good and evil. However, when we use this freedom as reason dictates, we become aware that we are simply following the urge of our nature toward union with the divine; and the rational person burns with the heroic fury of an intellectual love of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
The mind senses the presence of God in the whole of his creation. Beauty is everywhere. We live in the beauty, but in reality everything is beautiful. We place immense trust in the analogical power of reason as a means of empathy with the universal of life of things. In mathematical reasoning, we possess the standard for God’s own knowledge, and whatever we can prove mathematically we know as surely and as perfectly as God does. Thus in the genuinely scientific investigation of nature we possess a revelation equal in authority, though not in importance, to the revelation concerning human’s moral duties and destiny that is contained in the Holy Scripture. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise person who built his or her house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. However, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish person who built his or her house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with great crash,” reports Matthew 7.24- 27. That is why God wants us to apply his ways in our lives now. What we can take with us for all eternity is our love and concern with one another. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Give Your Faith to No One Undeserved
We desire to possess a beauty that is worthy pursuing, worth fighting for, a beauty that is core to who we truly are. We want beauty that can be see; beauty that can be felt; beauty that affects others; a beauty all our own to unveil. Egyptians worshipped God in all things, and they believed they possessed a profound magic by which they were able to draw down cosmic powers into the statues of their gods, and that they reflect the divine mind behind the Universe. The idea behind it was they could turn from thinking about God to addressing him, and that way they were able to communicate with the living God, as distinct from merely giving intellectual assent to the God of philosophers. Intelligent, loving devotion to God has always been important with through eternity, it will never become obsolete. Because of the way different cultures channel God, it becomes obvious why scholars have long maintained that each era has a unique spirit, a nature or climate that sets it apart from all other epochs. Another remarkable and apparently pleasant feature of the spiritual existence is the absence of the measure of time and space as we know it here on Earth. God sent his word to heal us, and there is no time or distance in their spirit. Divine love permeates every part of our lives because God is greatly concerned with the quality of character we are building. The future the Lord has planned for us will be built on the strength of character we forge by his grace. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
It is God’s intention that our lives should be a seamless manifestation of his Spirit. God’s qualities are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The Lord has made abundant provisions for his indwelling our lives here and now. A fundamental aspect in our caring for our souls is to understand that we are always in the presence of God and it is important to redirect our minds constantly to the Lord. God is the great longing focus of our souls, and we are privileged to walk in this profound reality. God provided for human freedom through a doctrine of self-creation: humans are free even in the act by which they come into existence, for God allows human to collaborate in their own creation. God makes available a distinctively authentic and free mode of existence to all humanity. Only through practice of virtue are we able to transcend the barriers that separate the mental life of one age from that of another. “If you fully obey the LORD, your God, and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, The Lord, your God, will set you high above all the nations of Earth. If you obey the Lord, all these blessings will come upon you and accompany you. You will be blessed in your city and blessed in your country. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you,” Reports Deuteronomy 28.1.1-3 and 6-7. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Most people experience a rush of pleasure the moment a puzzling solution comes to them. When God puts a promise in our hearts, we have to come to the place where we believe in that promise so strongly no one and no circumstance can move us. Beauty grows in us to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul’s beauty. As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As spiritual knowledge unfolds, it must be understood, valued, obeyed, remembered, and expanded. The greatest achievement humankind can make in this World is to become familiarized with the divine truth, so thoroughly, so perfectly, that the example or conduct of no living creature in the World can ever turn us away from the knowledge that we have obtained. Of all treasures of knowledge, the most vital is the knowledge of God. The role of obedience in gaining spiritual knowledge is crucial. The Lord gives us gifts. He will quicken our minds. God will give us a knowledge that is so deeply rooted in our souls that it can never be rooted out. All we have to do is seek for the light and the understanding which is promised to us, and which we can receive, as long as we are true and faithful to every covenant and obligation, will become a treasure we are allowed to possess. “We trust God will deliver us, and deliver us out of the hands of our enemies,” reports Alma 58.37. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The satisfaction of performing a benevolent action will certainly encourage acts of benevolence in someone who desires the advantage of society. We must acknowledge the place of God in our lives, as we are already under his government. Our discoveries in nature have already prepared us to accept the main claims of revelation about God as a creator and judge. I do not like to see things on purpose. I like them to soak in. A friend asked me to go to the top of the state capitol castle once, and I told him that he should not treat park as a sight—it is a feeling, an emotional experience. And the same with every place. When you slow down and have a moment to reflect on everything, it is very beautiful. Some people go to watch people, I enjoy looking at the nature and the architecture. When there are not many people around, you can get a sense of how majestic everything is. It is like sensing God. There is perhaps no better evidence of the psychological impact nature can make than to look at the landscape and just be at peace. It is a warmth so powerful that even the blue sky is barely perceptible through the all-consuming, healing, green atmosphere. It is as if, the trees, grace, flowers, the statues, and the architecture of the castle cols the atmosphere, like rain in a time of drought, or shade at an oasis in the desert. It can be a very spiritual experience to reflect on the living memorial. Happiness should be all one feels. Just like a sunny autumn day. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Profound spiritual truth cannot simply be poured from one mind and heart to another. It takes faith and diligent effort. Precious truth comes a small piece at a time through faith, with great exertion, and at times wrenching struggles. The Lord intends it to be that way so that we can mature and progress. As packets of knowledge unfold, they must be understood, valued, obeyed, remembered, and expanded. As each element of truth is encountered, we must carefully examine it in the light of prior knowledge to determine where it fits. Ponder it; inspect it inside out. Study it from every vantage point to discover hidden meanings. View it in perspective to confirm one has not jumped to false conclusions. Prayerful reflection yields further understanding. Such evaluation is particularly important when the truth comes as an impression of Spirit. This awareness of age had a halo of innocence around it, and it also enjoys a measure of nobility. Spiritually sensitive information should be kept in a sacred place that communicates to the Lord. That is how we are to treasure it. Gaining spiritual knowledge is not a mechanical process. It is a sacred privilege based upon spiritual law. We can receive inspired help, as long as we humbly ask our Eternal Father. We must also seek the divine light, exercise faith in the Savior, and strive to live righteous lives. God will bless us and lead us as we move through this wonderful World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Our Father in Heaven loves all of his children equally, perfectly, and infinitely. The Lord’s love is an advantage and brings out the flavours of the personality. The Lord’s love can carve out an interior space where wisdom can take up residence. Character strengths and virtues are brought into existence by God. We love virtue. It is always nice to have people in our lives who are good in some important way. Good people make us laugh, support us in hard times, and inspire us. Virtuous actions are better than ordinary behaviours because virtues integrate ethics and health, are embodied traits of character, are sources of human strengths and resilience, are embedded within a cultural context and community, contribute to a sense of meaningful life purpose, and are grounded in the cognitive capacity for wisdom. We are expected to wait calmly in the face of frustration, adversity, or suffering because we are connected to something bigger than the self and the present circumstances. As we endure, God will give us the gift of acceptance, which is unconditional. Given that charity or supernatural love is paramount in our spiritual life, it is clear why we have a high level of devotion to God. When we accurately reflect on ourselves, we realize the excellence of our natural gifts. There is no knowledge of self without knowledge of God. “It is the Lord, your God, you must follow, and him you must revere,” reports Deuteronomy 13. 4. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The human person recognizes an intimate unity of the body and mind and understands that they are held in unity by the spiritual soul (as secondary formal and efficient causes) and by God (as ultimate first, formal, efficient, and final causes). People who use both reason and will in finding the standard moral knowledge are guided by well-ordered love, which is associated with healthy physiological and psychological functioning. The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather, the human nature purified, freed from the limitations of the individual human. Our knowledge of God is our acknowledgment of his attitude toward us, especially his attitude of benevolence and love. The character strengths of this virtue include love, kindness, and social intelligence. Humanity relies on doing more than what is only fair—we must show generosity when an equitable exchange would suffice, kindness even if it cannot (or will not) be returned, and understanding even when punishment is due. “Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better World, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope comes of faith, makes an anchor to the souls of people, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God,” reports Ether 12.4. Intelligence exists and we interpret it. Justice, as a civic strength, is the underlying foundation of healthy community life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
We need to recognize the hard mortal realities in all of this and must use common sense and guidance by personal revelation. We need to remember that trials and temptations are an important part of our lives. When people are faced with adversity or affliction, we are advised not to criticize others for the way they choose to exercise their moral agency. “Pray for them that repentance may come unto them,” reports Moroni 8.28. We each also have the privilege to carefully and prayerfully seek the Lord’s will for regarding our individual challenges and dilemmas. Personal revelation is personal, indeed. It is not based on gender or position, but on worthiness. It comes in response to sincere inquiry. “And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and humbleness of heart and because of our meekness and humbleness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God,” reports Moroni 8.26. When our lives are in balance, before we realize it our lives will be full of spiritual understanding that will confirm that our Heavenly Father loves us and that his plan is fair and true and we should strive to understand and enjoy it. We should be worthy of trust, and always keep confidences. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Love is the Most Powerful Force in the Galaxy
Life is good—though not for the wicked one; returning to our Father in Heaven is good, because it will permit the soul to live an unhampered life. You can do so much good that it will astound you as you are changed and as you see other changed. The Lord wants you to have the greatest experiences as you make this journey on Earth. This can be a magnificent journey filled with literally thousands of tremendous experiences and spiritual confirmations if you will find your way through the many choices that will be yours along the way. When we harness the power of prayer, we wrap our wishes and dream with possibilities. Instead of limiting ourselves and cutting off our access to what we cannot necessarily anticipate, we maintain open minds and hearts. However, that is not always so easy, especially if the results you were hoping for are not forthcoming. Prayer is not about asking for certain results. Prayer helps us embrace the outcomes whether it is good or bad. We pray for strength, understanding, patience, and whatever else we need to pursue our dreams. Prayer clears away the debris that often prevent us from recognizing opportunities. The private conversations with God seem to underscore enduring faith in the World. The road given by our Father in Heaven is clearly marked, but the patterns and ways of the World can deceive you. Of all the paradoxes that help us detach from the ordinary plane of existence and connect with the spiritual plane, suffering that breeds a greater engagement in life is perhaps the most intriguing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Life is eternal. The World that we live in provides us with the journey that will guide us back to God’s presence in Heaven to live eternally. However, while on Earth we all experience pain. How on Earth can a profoundly hurtful experience make anyone live life more fully? That any pleasure, or good, can come from pain seems impossible for anyone to believe. Yet suffering can be redemptive for all of us. The ability to turn suffering to our own advantage, not just at work, but in life allows one to approach painful experiences with an open mind, to make the best of them, learn from them, and get beyond them. Suffering leaves us open to whatever gifts may be available to us as we endure the loss of something we cherish, be it an object, a person, a belief, or a dream. Our suffering is nothing compared to the glory that is coming. If we stay moldable, pliable, and willing to change, we will not be as this same place next year. God will take every irritation and turn it into a blessing. If we want to receive the true benefits of our life experience, we must empty ourselves of expectations. To be filled with the gifts of life, we must first make room for them. God never promised that life would be fair. God did, however, promise that if you stay in faith, he would take what is meant for your harm and use it to your advantage. Nothing that happens to you is a surprise to God. That is why he arranged a comeback for every setback, a vindication for every wrong, and a new beginning for every disappointment. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Few of us open ourselves to redemptive suffering before we reach maturity. The first half of life does not typically present us with the kinds of grave losses that provoke the profound suffering most of us must experience before we open ourselves to events beyond those we wish and plan for. At a certain point in our adulthood, however, the truth behind illusions such as “I am in control,” “If I work hard, I will succeed,” “Life is fair,” and “If I am a good person, nothing bad will happen to me,” confronts us very directly. As much as we would like to hold on to these beliefs, it becomes increasingly hard to do as we experience serious career disappointments, problems with our loved ones, financial difficulties, the deaths of people we love. Just as a raging forest fire can level everything that stands in its way, consistent deep inner suffering can obliterate the very illusions that fanned the flames of suffering in the first place. If you will get over it, God will still get you to where you are supposed to be. Stop reliving all the hurt, and move forward, then you will come to the new beginning God has in store. Through redemptive suffering, we can survive the loss of these illusions, discover important truths, even experience spiritual growth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Even one episode of deep suffering can destroy our damaging illusions. Fortunately, the deeper the pain, the greater the potential for growth. Changing the way we view suffering and learning to put its lessons to good use are two of the best ways to get the most our of our adult adventure. A true fall of humanity has never taken place. Actually, even when in a body, the soul still lives its original celestial life and remains unseparated from intelligence. Only we are not away of this hidden life of the soul; on other words, we are partly unconscious of what happens in our minds. What is true of the soul in relation to intelligence is even truer of the relation between our embodied selves and intelligence. Not even when present in us does intelligence discontinue its activity. With this knowledge and love, we can help transform hopes and dreams and help others find eternal truths and inward peace and security that it brings. To know the One means to become one with it, which the soul can accomplish only by becoming s simple or as along as the One. In the moment of such union the souls has become God or, rather, is God; the souls has reascended to its original source. This condition is described as ecstasy, simplicity, self-surrender, touching, and flight of the alone to the alone. This ecstasy is undoubtedly the climatic moment of a person’s life. It is not expressible in words; only one who has experienced it knows what it means to be ravished away and full of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
For this renascent one prepares oneself by acquisition of all the perfections (virtues, aretai). However, each of these perfections acquires different meanings according to the level on which one’s spiritual life takes place—thus, there is a social fairness, above it another kind of fairness, and so on. One prepares oneself by the exercise of dialectics. The preliminary stages of achievement is becoming Godlike. The truly infinite is a thing which has no limits imposed on it from without but only from within. We should obey the divine command and “Know thyself.” Our true happiness consists and of the concept of self-knowledge. Spiritual substances and material can interact because God represents both and connect them. Human perceptions are an effect of God’s real vision. Spiritual and material things are both real because God represents them; material things are real in a further sense, as phaenomena substantiata, in so far as God represents them as real. This divine representation is the cause of the real existence of things; but we perceive only an appearance of this real existence. The logical difficulties of the concept of infinity, that space and time cannot exist outside of human representation. The soul, properly nurtured and purified, may escape from the changing World of appearance to a higher World that is eternal and divine. The soul that departs early from the Earth does not become warped and cramped by the body but returns to the other World unimpaired. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
It is no secret what God can do. Here is the answer to one of life’s greatest questions, “Who am I?” I am a child of God with a spirit lineage to Heavenly parents. That parentage defines our eternal potential. That powerful idea is a potent antidepressant. It can strengthen each of us to make righteous choices and to seek the best that is within us. Establish in the mind of a young person the powerful idea that he or she is a child of God and you have given self-respect and motivation to move against the problems of life. When we understand our relationship to God, we also understand our relationship to one another. All men and women on this Earth are the offspring of God, spirit brothers and sisters. What a powerful truth! Love is the most powerful force in the World. Love is not just an ecstasy, not just an intense feeling. It is a driving force. It is something that carries us through our life of joyful duty. The idea of eternal progress is one of the most powerful ideas in our theology. It gives us hope that when we falter and challenge is when we soar. And we can pray to our Heavenly Father, and he will hear our prayers and help us in the way that is best for us. We can always be in touch with a powerful friend who loves us and helps us, in his own time and in his own way. Life on Earth is more good than evil. The human enjoys pleasures that outweigh one’s pains. The greatest pleasures come from intellectual pursuits and virtuous actions; a life so spent brings happiness in this World and leads to eternal felicity in the next. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
God is Up in His Ivory Shower!
When people are talking to people, it is important that one darn sure understands what is going on. Cultural legacies matter—they are powerful and pervasive and they persist, long after their original usefulness has passed. However, do not assume that legacies are an indelible part of who we are. “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but only that which is good and edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers,” reports Ephesians 4.29. If we are honest about where we come from and are willing to confront those aspects of our heritage that do not suit the professional World, we can change. We can and should participate in continuing civil dialogue, especially when we view the World from differing perspectives. When we understand what it really means to be a good person—when we understand how much culture and history and the World outside of the individual matter to professional success—then we do not have to throw up our hands in despair at other people when they make mistakes. We have a way to make success out of the unsuccessful. “A soft answer turns away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger,” reports Proverbs 15.1. Although it is important to be frank about a subject we would all too often rather ignore, a soft answer consists of a reasoned response—disciplined words from a humble heart. Words that may be firm in information can be soft in spirit. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Why are we so squeamish? Why is the fact that each of us comes from a culture with its own distinctive mix of strength and weaknesses, tendencies and predispositions, so difficult to acknowledge? Who we are cannot be separated from where we are from—and when we ignore that fact, accidents happen. You can imagine how frustrating it can be when people are all thinking furiously, trying to square their assumptions about a person or situation they know nothing about. There exists today a great need for people to cultivate respect for each other across wide distances of belief and behavior and across deep canyons of conflicting agendas. It is impossible to know all that informs our minds and hearts or even to fully understand the context for the trials and choices we each face. Even intelligent individuals have trouble with the group mentality trap. In order to avoid the hazards of hardheadedness and self-interest in a group setting where the issues at hand may appear to be impossible to solve, we need to understand a genuine dialogue that will free individuals to do their best thinking. When each person feels that his or her opinions and emotions are taken seriously, the intelligence of a group or community can move beyond the intelligence quotient of any of the individuals, into the collective genius. Learning to relate to the person behind the opinions by shifting to a more beneficial point of view is the most effective way of ending the conflict. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
When a person is trying to express to you what is going on, it is never a good idea to compare and contrast their situation with someone you think who has a more difficult time. Whatever the person talking to you is going through has nothing to do with comparing their situation to someone else’s. They are trying to explain what is going on with them and get some kind of empathy or advice. Sometimes we need to fully own the limits of our own imperfections and rough edges in communicating with others, and practice with tender regard for another’s experience what we are thinking. Hearing someone who has it harder does not and should not make us feel better. It would be like a struggling adult talking about their situation and someone saying, “Well, when your father was twenty-one he has a successful career, a house in the hills, and a brand-new car.” And it is like, that is nice, but there may be something someone is trying to express about their situation that has nothing to do with a comparison. They may be looking for help on how to deal with something they think is personal. Rising above our own feelings requires an unselfish generosity, the kind of generosity that contributes to happiness. Everyone has a different lifestyle and other people’s failures of successes have nothing to do with one’s situation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
It is sometimes like because people, even if they are older, get together in groups and because they have had a hard life, they want to take it out on someone who was rising above the doom and gloom and mistakes others made with their life. And when they finally bring that person down and that person is suffering, they want that individual to know that they have had a hard life and why should you have it any different. It is like seeing you suffer makes them feel better, and they want to blame you for their problems. Typically as we age, empathy for another person’s perspective comes easier than it does during earlier periods, but not always for some. Research on healthy adult development reveals that one key characteristic of maturity is the increased capacity to respect and even embrace another person’s point of view. Vast improvements in relationships are made when we can move beyond our rigid ideas and attempt to encounter others as people, not positions. Perhaps most exciting are the community—even global—implications of simply getting to know each other before we attempt to “solve” problems. “For the Lord sees not as people see; people look at the outside appearance, but God look at the heart,” reports 1 Samuel 16.7. It does not matter who is more right. What matters is listening to each other an understanding the other’s perspective. The willingness to see through each other’s eyes will transform corrupt communication in ministering grace. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Western communication has what linguists call a transmitter orientation—that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously. However, there is something beautiful in the subtlety of the exchange in Eastern culture, in the attention that each party must pay to the motivations and desires of the other. It is civilized, in the truest sense of that word: it does not permit insensitivity or insensitivity or indifference. However, high-power distance communication works only when the listener is capable of paying close attention, and it only works if the two parties in a conversation have the luxury of time, in order to unwind each other’s meanings. It does not work in high finance when time is an issue and people are exhausted and trying to get a situation taken care of before a deadline. Speaking through grace and compassionate language when the cultivated gift of the Holy Ghost pierces our hearts with empathy for the feelings and context of others. It enables us to transform hazardous situations into holy places. God looks upon our hearts and cares what we are thinking. It is also important to understand that sometimes people have had discussions in the past, and they only reason they may revisit them is because some third-party steps in with their opinions. So people who have had a discussion in the past understand what the other is saying and does not have to go into much detail. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
And, frankly, sometimes people just need to mind their own business and keep their opinions to themselves, especially if you start trying to power force in a situation that has nothing to do with you and there is clear evidence that your influence has made the situation much worse. No one asked for your opinion, no one asked for your help and if you had followed the law all the pain and suffer and decades of corrective action and millions of dollars would not have been spent trying to correct a problem you created by trying to force your influence over a situation that was under control. People are not here to have their faith questioned and challenged. We are here to remind ourselves that we are not alone, to reaffirm centuries-old traditions with like-minded souls from around the World. We are not brainwashed, we are not being forced, we are all confirmed, we are doing this on our own. The Church does not make mistakes. We are all sinners, we are not perfect, we cannot expect anyone to be perfect like God, but it is important to show respect and not try to force your situations or ways onto others, especially when they can have fatal and lifelong impacts. Sometimes when people are watching you, they cannot help but feel jealous because you believe in something; it is more than they can say. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
When you follow a leader, a code, a God, and it give your life meaning not by seeking to attain control of someone else’s narrative and reshaping, but through the opposite: by relinquishing it; we shall go one pursuing the path which the Lord has marked out before us. We have the right to influence who gets elected, what gets taught in schools, what gets sold in stores, and what rights we have in order to make decisions about our own bodies in lives. You cannot own a person and try to control their lives by using political forces. You cannot assume you know more than a person does about their products when you are not an expect. America is a law of lands and we have a capitalistic system because other systems can be very dangerous and deadly, as they do not respect human lives nor freedom of choice. America used to be a different World, where slavery was legal and everyone can see how deadly and dangerous it is when people do not have the freedom to make choices about their own lives, bodies, health and occupations. “Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand; of both in Heaven and in the Earth, and under the Earth; things which must shortly come to pass; thing which are at home; things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 88.78-80. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Randolph Harris II International Institute 