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We Mortals Cross the Ocean of this World Each in One’s Average Cabin of Life!

January 31, 2020 2:04 am

A smile confuses an approaching frown. Mirth can be a major tool for insight, changing “ha ha” to “aha.” The illuminate prefers to pull strings from behind the curtain of obscurity. One does not want to impose oneself where one may not be wanted. One does not want to intrude on the mental privacy of others. It is this quality of remoteness in one which baffles some people, provokes others, antagonizes many, but attracts a few. It makes one profoundly different from the average being, foreign to one and hard to understand. The self-actualized is built too high for ordinary beings to appreciate one and too remote for them to understand one. it is inevitable that one should dwell isolated and aloof from all except those whose great aims justify the contact. One will descend into the arena of this World only by the direct order of God. One dwells apart in solitude. Why? “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me leadeth me beside the still waters,” reports Psalms 23.1. The World cannot grant the existence of one’s tremendous modesty, one’s perfect poise, one’s freedom from chatter, one’s vast self-restraint, and so, failing to understand, it would misunderstand. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them,” reports Genesis 1.27. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The self-actualized prefers to remain anonymous, but if the mission requires it, one submits to publicity’s glare. Restrained in speech, withdrawn in self, one comes out of one’s inner World to meet one’s fellows only so far, and therefrom will not further descend. For it is a lofty World. If, in their discretion, they suppress their true beliefs and hide their inmost mind from the masses as behind a veil, it must be granted that both history and psychology justify this caution. They are reluctant to tell others about their inmost experiences; if the questioner is unsympathetic or uncomprehending, some even refuse absolutely to admit they have had such experiences. One’s rare experience, one’s precious wisdom, one’s special knowledge of life’s higher laws are not put on parade to impress others. Rather does one have among them as if one were, had, knew nothing exceptional. The other strong influence on late nineteenth-century culture was eating and the home-economics movement. Well-educated, middle-class, nonimmigrant women not only created a profession of their own, but also sought to Americanize urban slum dwellers. Home economists and social workers tried to teach immigrant women about nutrition and tried to wean them away from the “hot,” spicy cuisine of their homelands. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The favourite foods of the home economics movement were gelatin salads and boiled dressings. A blanket of white sauce covering a slab of boneless protein was the ideal dish. Salads were orderly, encased, cool, and controllable rather than hot, sloppy, and sensuous. Jello, after all, is a Victorian product invented during the 1890s by the Genesee Pure Food Company of Leroy, New York, and was usually served in the dining room, as the dappled light of Gothic stained glass fell across the table. The elegance and refinement of manners in the dining room were, in fact, brand new, developed in the previous forty years. Nonetheless, this change in cuisine was not all one-way bullying. Cookbooks like Fannie Farmer’s and Mrs. Beeton’s, as well as manners books like Emily Post’s, were eagerly bought by immigrant women who wanted to fit into American culture. These books gave advice on food, eating, and household management to Europeans who wanted to know how things were “done” in American. Silver-plate manufacturers were constantly on the lookout for new objects and new shapes to send to market, such as the bell and Adirondack style stand was popular. Although transfer-printed chinaware existed before the Industrial Revolution, it was the establishment of transportation networks that made large-scale factories possible. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The decoration of the parlor and the choice and arrangement of the furniture reflect the changing role of women in the nineteenth century. Woman as the embodiment of purity and high moral virtue was a theme which nineteenth-century popular culture adopted with obsessive fevour. Before the middle of the century the image of woman was what it has been since the Middle Ages. She was the daughter of Eve, the embodiment of wantonness. Before the Industrial Revolution, misogynic literature always pictured woman as less than human beings, closer to animals, and less able to control their lusts by exercise of their intellect or moral powers, but some say this is more applicable to the average male than a female. By the 1880s, the myth of the pure Victorian woman was fully formed, and the transformation of woman’s image was complete. Late nineteenth-century reformers wrote that women hard no libido; that, in fact, it was replaced by a “maternal instinct,” and that women only consented to pleasures of the flesh to please their husbands and to have children. Women were also said to be the kinder, gentler gender with higher moral standards and greater self-control. Men were thought of as smarter and more competent but more lustful and “primitive” with less ability to control their passions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Two dramatic changes took place in gender roles in the middle of the nineteenth century. Not only did men and women trade places as the moral force in society; but also the accepted roles of men and women grew further apart and took distinctly different paths. Imagine life in American in the 1830s and ‘40s. Most people lived on farms. While there were areas of market economy farming like cotton, tobacco, and wheat, the majority of people still grew most of their own food. There were some cities in America, but they were small commercial cities at harbours and along rivers. Men, women, and children had separate and unequal roles in the family, but the family was still an economic unit that worked together. The “little commonwealth” of the family needed each member to survive. It is true that the growing of the major crop was the “man’s job,” along with his children’s labour, while the growing of vegetables, fowl, and livestock; preserving food; and maintaining clothing was the “woman’s job.” However, no one would survive without both contributions. The garden, the chickens, and the food preservation ensured the family’s survival as much, if not more, than the cash crop. “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,” reports Psalms 19.14. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Life in the 1830s and ’40 was limited in scope for everyone. Individuals were known by all their neighbours and restricted by the mores of the culture. Men and women were very unequal under law but were more alike in real life. Society was not under great pressure; men and women had a much more even balance of power than they were to have fifty years later. The 1830s saw Watt’s improvement of the steam engine which made the railroads and steamboats possible. The completion of the Erie canal in the 1820s opened the near Midwest and the Great Lakes to commerce and settlement. The 1850s saw the discovery of coal and iron together in Pennsylvania, which permitted the cast-iron and steel industries to produce factories in cities and to produce railroads to ship their raw materials and manufactured goods. The Civil War caused the railroads to boom and heavy industry to flourish. As a result, everything changed in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. American became urbanized. The 1870 census revealed that, for the first time, most Americans lived in cities. In a small town or a farm village, everyone knew each other, and behaviour was controlled by the neighbours. In a big city each person was anonymous, and standards for behaviour had to be internalized and enforced by the individual. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

For most of history right and wrong were external rules; now personal morality had to prevail. The ideal of “self-control” for modern people became widespread in the late nineteenth century. At the same time, the family as an economic unit, a “little commonwealth,” disappeared. It was replaced by the modern cash economy where each person is an individual. By the turn of the century in American, most people worked in manufacturing or in offices. The new middle class worked in skyscrapers and took a commuter railroad or “el” (elevated railroad) or trolley to work. “Home” was an apartment or flat of row house. Rococo Revival chairs by Henry Belter represented the Victorian ideal—modern high technology in historic costume. Belter developed a process for gluing mahogany veneers in a curved mould, creating fancy plywood. He then carved them into caricature of eighteenth-century, French Rococo chairs, much stronger and more elaborate than the originals. This was a new class of people. They were not the gentry of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century who made their living from owning land that others farmed or from shipping. They were not the “yeoman farmers” who grew their food with their own hands. They were clerks and office workers whose work was not manual and who saw themselves as newly arrived gentry. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s drove millions of immigrants to America, including the paternal ancestors of actress Tia and Tamera Mowry, while revolutions and repressions pushed millions out of Eastern Europe in the 1850s through the ‘80s. Thus, labour was cheap. Even clerical, white-collar workers could have several servants, either live-in maids or daily cleaning ladies who returned to their (newly invented) tenements at night. In the Victorian estates, the parlor was the heart of the home and the piano the heart of the parlor. “Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly; “’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.” –“The Spider and the Fly,” Mary Howitt (1799-1888). Perhaps this poem holds a clue as to significance to the spiderweb pattern, which is a common feature on windows and fireplaces in the Winchester mansion. The kaleidoscope of home designs paralleled changes effected by the Industrial Revolution: mass production; railroad, telegraph, and telephone connecting East Coast to West; the development of water and sewer systems, and the progression of lighting from kerosene to gas to electricity. All these changes, and their resulting social ramifications, were reflected in the ways the Victorians lived. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

By the end of the century, an agrarian society had moved into the cities and created new communities called suburbs. People began vigorously consuming the natural resources around them and outputting new, consumer goods. Family-oriented households turned outward to involvement in social movements and to work outside the home, for money to buy consumer goods. When the Victorian era ended, electric light had turned night into day, forever disrupting nature’s rhythms. Some have divided the era of 1837-1901 into a Romanic and a Victorian period, separated by the Civil War, calling Victorian only those houses with flamboyant styles made possible by balloon framing and technology that eliminated the need for the handcraftsmanship of timber frame building. However, most writers and scholars of that era merely ascribe a romantic aspect to the beginning of the period, adding the moniker “The Gilded Age,” coined by Mark Twain, to aptly describe the heyday of the Victorians, 1870 through the end of the century. When the words “Victorian house” are uttered, an image instantly springs to mind, though in truth, there is no architectural category by the name “Victorian.” The fanciful gingerbread clapboard dwelling, with its dizzy array of towers, gables, spindles, and porches is but one of many architectural genres, or combinations of genres, that existed during that era. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Since the Victorian period began in 1837 and lasted until 1901, it is impossible that any one style of architecture could have dominated for that long. What was a predominant feature of that era was how classical British and European architectural models were adapted to suit North American tastes, raw materials, and technology. The advent of new technologies such as the balloon framed houses, where standardized pieces of machine-cut lumber, uniformly spaced, and held together by machine-made nails, replaced the hand-hewn post and beam structures of the past, meant that more people could own homes. House plans by mail, at the end of the 1840s, when readers of Godey’s Lady’s Book could order any one of 450 house styles, followed by mail order catalogs of houses themselves, after the Civil War, also played a part in the evolution and proliferation of house styles. The millennium will be at hand when everyone agrees that beauty and human scale are as important as efficiency in anything designed for human consumption. By painting Victorian houses with extraordinary attention to details and in every colour that hand, mind, and eye can conceive, San Francisco’s Colourist Movement is bringing that new age closer house by house. Why did the Colourist Movement arise in San Francisco? #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

San Francisco is a unique architectural museum. Its 16,000 redwood Victorians constitute one of the World’s architectural treasures. Brilliant Sunshine and crystal clarity are the natural medium of this hill-filled, fog-washed Baghdad-by-the-Bay. The warmth of these houses reflects as it enhances the city’s great natural beauty. There once were some 48,000 Victorian houses built in San Francisco during the 65 years between the Gold Rush and the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. Nearly all sumptuous palaces on Nob and Rincon Hills were destroyed by the 1906 Earthquake and fire. The smaller mansions, town houses, row houses, and mass-produced Victorians that remained, in sections west and south of the burned-out downtown area, survived. Since the early 1970s, San Francisco’s Victorian houses have been shining forth in blazing colors. The city is a haven for people who can appreciate as well as create Painted Ladies. In American architecture, the painted ladies are enchanting, three-story, Queen Anne Victorian houses, which were built in the late 1880s. They are a row of multimillion dollar, colourful Victorian houses located at 710-720 Steiner Street in San Francisco, California. Each house usually has three vibrant colours and are famous Worldwide. If you like Victorian architecture, consider studying Trigonometry. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

To people feeling increasingly like helpless victims of big corporations, big government, and jobs which are means not ends, painting their homes is a satisfying form of self-expression. Nothing in San Francisco has been as effective in making people take pride in their homes, streets, neighbourhoods, and city as paint applied with imagination. (And if that gives the bureaucrats any ideas on urban renewal, and increasing unemployment, so be it!) The Colourist Movement developed spontaneously but haltingly in the 1960s. Isolated beacons of colour painted by a few courageous souls cropped up and immediately aroused the ire Pained Ladies still do on the grounds of tradition and aesthetics. Nevertheless, the momentum of the movement accelerates, spurred by the creative tension of beauty and money. Thanks to the passion and creativity of painters, colorists, and homeowners, the Painted Ladies will not only survive the evils of modernization but are now more beautiful than ever. Tradition is not only preserved but enriched with a fresh eye and bright coat of paint. The Painted Ladies are exquisite examples of how an American tradition worth preserving can be revitalized and made meaningful to a new generation. Because they are a breathtakingly beautiful lesson in renewing a tradition and a city, they have additional significance for this and future generations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Yet even these dazzling damsels cannot be taken for granted. San Francisco has not been granted immunity from the inevitable Earthquake. The right of these Victorians to exist must also be balanced against the need for adequate housing for all income levels, a reality which the success of the Colourist Movement has paradoxically made more difficult to achieve by rapidly escalating the cost of a house. The immortalized Painted Ladies must be seen in person to really appreciate them. Nothing can match the experience of encountering three stories of bright colours against a clear blue San Francisco sky. And few urban delights equal wandering around the town’s Painted Ladies on a sunny day. If you are still wondering what makes San Francisco so special, all you have to do is go look. The combined effect of colour and scale is, like inhaling pure oxygen, irresistibly exhilarating. To come upon one of these houses unexpectedly is to experience a sudden rush of pleasures. As you stroll along a street like Fair Oaks in the Mission District, your eyes develop greater sensitivity to felicities of colour and design. You sense how one house being painted led to another, creating an endless series of gems in the variegated necklace of Victorian San Francisco. However, do not wait. Colours face the same need for protection and artistic expression which inspired homeowners to paint these Victorians will inspire them again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

By the time you see these houses, some will be repainted. Painted Ladies only captures a moment in time. Painted Ladies is a collection of the best houses, details, and rows of houses our search uncovered. The aim in selecting was that each house be unique in color and architecture. Some are stronger on colour, others on architecture, but most are a happy marriage of both. “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased because Christ hath ascended into Heaven, and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of humans? For he hath answered the ends of the law, and he claimeth all those who have faith in him; and they have faith in him will cleave unto every good thing; wherefore he advocateth the cause of the children of humans; and he dwelleth eternally in the Heavens. And because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have Angels ceased to minister unto the children of humans. For behold, they are subject unto him, to minister according to the word of his command, showing themselves unto them of strong faith and a firm mind in every form of Godliness,” reports Moroni 7.27-30. The self-actualized enlightenment, like the being, eludes the unenlightened observer, who cannot comprehend this kind of being, and so usually ends by misunderstanding one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Wisdom is called mobile by way of similitude, according as it diffuses its likeness even to the outermost of things; for nothing can exist which does not proceed from the divine wisdom by way of some kind of imitation, as from the first effective and formal principle; as also works of art proceed from the wisdom of the artist. And so in the same way, inasmuch as the similitude of the divine wisdom proceeds in degree from the highest things, which participate more fully of its likeness, to the lowest things which participate of it in a lesser degree, there is said to be a kind of procession and movement of the divine wisdom to things; as when we say that the sum proceeds to the Earth, inasmuch as the ray of light touches the Earth. Every procession of the divine manifestation comes to us from the movement of the Father of light. These things are said of God in Scriptures metaphorically. For as the Sun is said to enter a house, or to go out, according as its rays reach the house, so God is said to approach to us, or to recede from us, when we receive the influx of His goodness, or decline from Him. “And the office of their ministry is to call humans unto repentance, and to fulfill and to do the work of the covenants of the Father, which he hath made unto the children of humans, to prepare the way among the children of humans, by declaring the word of Christ unto the children of humans, by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord, that they may bear testimony of him,” Moroni 7.31. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Lost persons, in Christian terms, are precisely the ones who mistake their own person for God. They falsely identify, and cannot recognize, what is closet to them—themselves. Then, as we have noted, everything becomes delusional. Such a one really does think one is in charge of one’s life—though, admittedly, to manage it “successfully,” one may have to bow outwardly to this or that person or power. However, one is in charge (one believes), and one has no confidence in the one who really is God. As we have seen, such ones “do not see fit to center their knowledge upon God.” Their god, as Paul elsewhere wrote, is their “belly” (Philippians 3.19), the feeling center of the self. They are willing slaves of their feelings or appetites (Romans 16.18). They “want what they want when they want it,” as the song says, and that is the ultimate fact about them. If they do not get it, they become angry and depressed, and are a danger to themselves and others. The philosophy of living with an underlying motive of doing everything for one’s own personal peace and comfort rapidly colours everything that might formerly have come under the headings of right and wrong. This new way of thinking adds entirely new shades, often in blurring brushstrokes of paint that wipe out the existence of standards or cast them into a shadow that pushes them out of sight. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

If one’s peace, comfort, way of life, convenience, reputation, opportunities, job, happiness, or even ease is threatened, “Just abort it.” Abort what? Abort another life that is not yet born. Yes, but also abort the afflictions connected with having a disabled child, and abort the burdens connected with caring for the old or invalid. Added swiftly are the now supposedly thinkable attitudes of aborting a child’s early security in one’s rights to have two parents and a family life; aborting a wife’s need for having her husband be someone to trust and lean upon; aborting the husband’s need for having a companion and friend as well as a feminine mate; aborting any responsibility to carry through a job started. Thus self-idolatry rearranges the entire spiritual and moral landscape. It sees the whole Universe with different eyes. If it is not abortion that is at the center, it will be something else; but the fundamental pride of putting oneself at the center of the Universe is the hinge upon which the entire World of the ruined self turns. The surest source of destruction to humans is to obey themselves. Yet, self-obedience seems the only reasonable path for nearly everyone. So blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that every one thinks one has a good reason for exalting oneself and despising all others in comparison. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Whereas the primal relationship of human to human is giving one, in the state of sin it is purely demanding. Every person exists in a state of complete voluntary isolation; each being lives one’s own life, instead of all living the same God-life. Well, of course. Each is a god unto oneself. “And by so doing, the Lord God prepareth the way that the residue of beings may have faith in Christ, that the Holy Ghost may have place in their hearts, according to the power thereof; and after this manner bringeth to pass the Father, the covenants which one hath made unto the children of humans. And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me. And he hath said: Repent all ye ends of the Earth, and come unto me, and be baptized in my name, and have faith in me, that ye may be saved,” reports Moroni 7.32-34. O God, Who gavest the Holy Spirit to Thine Apostles, vouchsafe a good effect to Thy people’s devout prayer; that as Thou hast given them faith, Thou mayest also bestow on them peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the Holy Spirit enkindle in us that fire which our Lord Jesus Christ sent upon the Earth, and ardently desired to see enkindled, Who with thee will allow of to see deeply into the hidden meaning of life for ye are the best qualified to guide us in matters of conduct and motive. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

My Father, enlarge my heart, warm my affections, open my lips, supply words that proclaim “Love lusters at Calvary.” There grace removes my burdens and heaps them on thy Son, made a transgressor, a curse, and sin for me; there the sword of thy justice smote the man, thy fellow; there thy infinite attributes were magnified, and infinite atonement was made; there infinite punishment was due, and infinite punishment was endured. Christ was all anguish that I might be all joy, cast off that I might be brought in, trodden down as an enemy that I might be welcomed as a friend, surrendered to hell’s worst that I might attain Heaven’s best, stripped that I might be clothed, wounded that I might be healed, athirst that I might drink, tormented that I might be comforted, made a shame that I might inherit glory, entered darkness that I might have eternal light. My Saviour wept that all tears might be wiped from my eyes, groaned that I might have unfading healthy, bore a thorny crown that I might have a glory-diadem, bowed his head that I might uplift mine, experienced reproach that I might receive welcome, closed his eyes in death that I might gaze on unclouded brightness, expired that I might for ever live. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

O Father, who spared not thine only Son that thou mightiest spare me, all this transfer thy love designed and accomplished; help me to adore thee by lips and life. O that my every breath might be ecstatic praise, my every step buoyant with delight, as I see my enemies crushed, Satan baffled, defeated, destroyed, sin buried in the ocean of reconciling blood, hell’s gates closed, Heaven’s portal open. Go forth, O conquering God, and show me the cross, might to subdue, comfort and save. The Lord wants us to bring our children up with tenderness, discipline, and instruction. The words “bring them up” mean “to nourish or feed.” Bring them up also means to let them be kindly cherished, and to speak to one’s children with gentleness and friendliness. When I was a teenager, my best friend’s father was a man’s man. He had spent thirty-two years in the Coast Guard as a noncommissioned officer, a chief bosun’s mate. He was a big man, and in his prime he had put on the gloves with Joe Louis. When he walked down the street, officers greeted him first. He could be rough and tumble. However, do you know what he called his 165-pound son? “Dear Ken.” I was “Mr. Randy,” and I did not mind at all. In fact, it made me feel great. He was not hung up on “Real men do not show affection.” In fact, he still hugs his grown son—a man’s man himself. We are to be tender. Men are never manlier than when they are tender with their children—whether holding a baby in their arms, loving their grade-schooler, or hugging their teenager or adult children. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

A child needs also to know that one’s father and one’s mother are happily married, and supportive of their children. A child who comes from a happy home is more likely to be stable. Tenderness—verbal and physical—comes naturally to a father living under God’s Word. Men, how do we measure up? Next there is training. This is a strong word which means discipline, even by punishment. Discipline certainly includes corporal discipline as needed. However, it encompasses everything necessary to help train a child in the way one should go. The tragedy is that so many men have left this to their children’s mothers. Not only is this unfair to the mother, but it robs the child of the security and self-esteem which come from being disciplined by the father. Men, do you leave the discipline of your sons and daughters to your wives? If so, that is a sad breach of domestic responsibility. You are not living under God’s Word! O God, the Enlightener and the Life of believers, the ineffable greatness of Whose gifts is celebrated by the testimony of this day’s festival; grant unto Thy people to apprehend in their understandings what they have learned by a miracle, that Thine adopted children, whom the Holy Spirit has called together, may love Thee without any lukewarmness, and confess Thy Faith without any dissension; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Better is a Dinner of Herbs Where Love is, than a Stalled Ox and Hatred therewith!

January 30, 2020 1:38 am

Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I am not there, I go to work. “With God all things are possible,” reports St. Matthew 19.26. The sciences which deal with behaviour are in an infant state. This cluster of scientific disciplines is usually thought of as including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and biology, though sometimes the other social sciences such as economics and political science are included, and mathematics and statistics are very much involved as instrumental disciplines. Though they are all at work trying to understand the behaviour of beings, and though research in these fields is growing by leaps and bounds, it is still an area in which there is undoubtedly more confusion than solid knowledge. Thoughtful workers in these fields tend to stress the enormity of our scientific ignorance regarding behaviour, and the paucity of general laws which have been discovered. They tend to compare the state of this field of scientific endeavour with that of physics, and seeing the relative precision of measurement accuracy of prediction, and elegance and simplicity of the discovered lawfulness in this latter field, are vividly aware of the newness, the infancy, the immaturity, of the behavioural science field. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Without in any way denying the truthfulness of this picture, I believe it is sometimes stressed to the point where the general public may fail to recognize the other side of the coin. Behavioural science, even though in its infancy, has made mighty strides towards becoming an “if—then” science. By this I mean that it has made striking progress in discerning and discovering lawful relationships such that is certain conditions exist, then certain behaviours will predictably follow. I believe that too few people are aware of the extent, the breadth, and the dept of the advances which have still been made in recent decades in the behavioural sciences. Still fewer seem to be aware of the profound social, educational, political, economic, ethical, and philosophical problems posed by these advances. Each general statement I shall makes is supported by reasonably adequate research, though like all scientific findings each statement is an expression of a given degree of probability, not of some absolute truth. Furthermore each statement is open to modification and correction or even refutation through more exact or more imaginative studies of the future. In behavioural sciences there is an element of prediction which is prominent. The pattern of each of these can be generalized as follows: If an individual possesses measurable characteristics a, b, and c, then we can predict that there is a high probability that one will exhibit behaviours x, y, and z. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Thus, we know how to predict, with considerable accuracy, which individuals will be successful college students, successful industrial executives, successful insurance agents, and the like. I will not attempt to document this statement, simply because the documentation would be so extensive. He whole field of aptitude testing of vocation testing, of personnel selection is involved. Although the specialists in these fields are rightly concerned with the degree of inaccuracy in their predictions, the fact remains that here is a wide area in which the work of the behavioural sciences is accepted by multitudes of hardheaded industries, universities and other organizations. We have come to accept the fact that out of an unknown group the behavioural scientist can select (with a certain margin of error) those persons who will be successful typists, practice teachers, filing clerks, or physicists. This field is continually expanding. Efforts are being made to determine the characteristics of the creative chemist, for example, as over against the merely successful chemist, and, though without outstanding success, efforts have been and are being made to determine the characteristics which will identify the potentially successful psychiatrist and clinical psychologist. Science is moving steadily forward in its ability to say whether or not you possess the measurable characteristics which are associated with a certain type of occupational activity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

We know how to predict success in schools for military officer candidates, and in combat performance. To select one study in this field, Williams and Leavitt (31) found that they could make satisfactory predictions regarding a Marine’s probably success in Officer Candidates School (OCS) and in later combat performance by obtaining ratings from one’s “buddies.” They also found that in this instance the human’s fellow soldiers were better psychological instruments than were the objective tests they used. There is illustrated here not only the use of certain measures to predict behaviour, but a willingness to use those measures, whether conventional or unconventional, which are demonstrated to have predictive power. We can predict how radical or conservative a potential business executive will be. Whyte (30), in his recent book cites this as one of many examples of tests that are in regular use in industrial corporations. Thus in a group of young executives up for promotion, top management can select those who will exhibit (within a margin of error) whatever degree of conservatism or radicalism is calculated to be for the best welfare of the company. They can also base their selection on knowledge of the degree to which each person has a latent hostility to society, or latent homosexuality, or psychotic tendencies. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Testing giving (or purporting to give) such measures are in use by many corporations both for screening purposes in selection of new management personnel, and also for purposes of evaluation of beings already in management position, in order to choose those who will be given greater responsibilities. We know how to predict which members of an organization will be troublemakers and/or delinquent. A promising young psychologist (10) has devised a short, simple pencil and paper test which has shown a high degree of accuracy in predicting which of the employees hired by a department store will be unreliable, dishonest, or otherwise difficult. He states that it is quite possible to identify, with considerable precision, the potential troublemakers in any organized group. This ability to identify those who will make trouble is, so far as the technical issues are concerned, simply an extension of the knowledge we have of prediction in other fields. From the scientific point of view it is no different from predicting who will be a good typesetter. We know that a competent clerical worker, using a combination of test scores and actuarial tables, can give a better predictive picture of a person’s personality and behaviour, than can an experienced clinician. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Paul Meehl (18) has shown that we are sufficiently advanced in our development of personality tests, and in information accumulated through these tests, that intuitive skill and broad knowledge, experience, and training, are quite unnecessary in producing accurate personality descriptions. He has shown that in many situations in which personality diagnoses are being made—mental hygiene clinics, veteran’s hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and the like, it is wasteful to use well-trained professional personnel to make personality diagnoses through the giving of tests, interviewing the person and the like. He has shown that a clerk can do it better, with only a minimum and impersonal contact with the patient. First a number of tests would be administered and scored. Then the profile of scores would be looked up in actuarial tables prepared on the basis of those measurement, appraisal and evaluation of human characteristics, and the prediction of certain behaviour patterns on the basis of those measurements. Indeed, there is no reason why Meehl’s clerk could not also be eliminated. With proper coded instruction there is no reason why an electronic computer could not score the tests, analyze the profiles and come up with an even more accurate picture of the person and his predicted behaviour than a human clerk. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

We have all seen it—and perhaps done it! The father walks in the door after a pressured day, preoccupied, with brow furrowed. His three-year-old comes running to him, but Dad is busy unburdening himself to his wife. “Just a moment, Leo.” Leo tugs at his father’s britches—no response. He tugs again! His father explodes, picks him up, and taps his little legs for being “rude.” The Lord knows how many children “lose heart” because their fathers have “hard days.” Life is sometimes like the cartoon where the boss is grouchy toward a worker; his employee, in turn, comes home and is irritable with the children; his son then kicks the dog; the dog runs down the street and bites the first person he sees—the boss! We fathers must never let our pressures drive us into this unhappy cycle. The costs are too high. Some say you treat your fellow humans on the level. However, when you are home with the wife and kids, are you as mean as the Devil? Your kids know. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves,” reports St. Matthew 7.15. Few things will exasperate a child more than inconsistency. Pity the horse that has a rider who gives it mixed signals, digging his heels into its side and pulling the reins at the same time. Pity the child even more who has the rules changed by a capricious father, and who is always exasperated because of the conflicting messages one receives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Fathers, you may forgive yourself by saying, “I am so busy…Memory is not my thing…I am just a spontaneous person!” However, your children will not. Be consistent. Never ever make a promise to your children you do not keep! Do any unfulfilled promises come to mind? Horseback riding that never happened? Trips to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop, Winchell’s Donut, New Lai Wah Chinese food, of Giant Burgers, or to watch a Golden State Warrior’s Game on an A’s baseball game? You may forget, but you have a little boy or a girl who will remember it eighty years from now. One of the most exasperating and damning sins a father can commit against his children is favourtism. I say this despite being the last one who would suggest you should treat all your children alike. Some children need more discipline, some need more independence. Some need more structure, some need less. Some need more holding than others. Some need more encouragement. However, no child should be favoured over another. Favouritism was the damning sin of Isaac, who favoured Esau over Jacob. Ironically, it was also the damning sin of Jacob, who favoured Joseph over his brothers. Like favouring father, like rejected son! How crushing, how disheartening to know that you are less favoured—less loved. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Men, the great “do not” of fatherhood is, “Do not exasperate your children”—and life tells us what the resulting “do nots” of this are: Do not be critical, do not be over strict, do not be irritable, do not be inconsistent, do not show favouritism. God has created our children with their hearts turned toward ours. Our power is awesome! We must take God’s Word to heart. We can select those persons who are easily persuaded, who will conform to group pressures, or those who will not yield. Two separate but compatible studies (15, 16) show that individuals who exhibit certain dependency themes in their responses to the pictures of the Thematic Apperception Test, or who, on another test, show evidence of feelings of social inadequacy, inhibition of aggression, and depressive tendencies, will be easily persuaded, or will yield to group pressures. These small studies are by no means definitive, but there is every reason to suppose that their basic hypothesis is correct and that these or other more refined measures will accurately predict which member of a group will be easily persuaded, and which will be unyielding even to fairly strong group pressures. We can predict, from the way individual perceive the movement of a spot of light in a dark room, whether they tend to be prejudiced or unprejudiced. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

There has been much study of ethnocentrism, the tendency toward a pervasive and rigid distinction between ingroups and outgroups, with hostility toward outgroups, and a submissive attitude toward, and belief in the rightness of, ingroups. One of the theories which has developed is that the more ethnocentric person is unable to tolerate ambiguity or uncertainty in a situation. Operating on this theory Block and Block (5) has subjects report on the degree of movement they perceived in a dim spot of light in a completely dark room. (Actually no movement occurs, but almost all individuals perceive movement in this situation.) They also gave these same subjects a test of ethnocentrism. It was found, as predicted, that those who, in successive trials, quickly established a norm or the amount of movement they perceived, tended to e more ethnocentric than those whose estimates of movement continued to show variety. This study was repeated, with slight variation, in Australia (28), and the findings were confirmed and enlarged. It was found that the more ethnocentric individuals were less able to tolerate ambiguity, and saw less movement than the unprejudiced. They also were more dependent on others and when making their estimates in the company of another person, tended to conform to the judgment of that person. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Hence it is not too much to ay that by studying the way the individual perceives the movement of a dim light in a dark room, we can tell a good deal about the degree to which one is a rigid, prejudiced, ethnocentric person. This hodgepodge of illustrations of the ability of the behavioural sciences to predict behaviour,and hence to select individuals who will exhibit certain behaviours, may be seen simply as the burgeoning applications of a growing field of science. However, what these illustrations suggest can also cause a cold chill of apprehension. The thoughtful person cannot help but recognize that these developments I have described are but the beginning. One cannot fail to see that if more highly developed tools were in the hands of an individual or group, together with the power to use them, the social and philosophical implications are awesome. One can begin to see why a scientist like von Bertalanffy warns, “Besides the menace of physical technology, the dangers of psychological technology are often overlooked.” Why then do we not experience more of this endless supply of God’s grace? Why do we do often seem to live in spiritual poverty instead of experiencing life to the full as Jesus promised (John 10.10)? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

There are several reasons that may or may not apply to a particular believer, but for the purposes of our study on grace, I would like to look at two that probably apply to most of us. First, is our frequent misperception of God as the divine equivalent of Ebeneezer Scrooge; the God who demands the last ounce of work out of His people and then pays them poorly. That may sound like an overstatement of our perception of God, but I believe it is a fairly accurate representation of how many Christians think. Consider the following words from one of John Newton’s hymns: Come, my soul, thy suit prepare: Jesus loves to answer prayer; he himself has bid thee pray, therefore will not say thee nay. Thou art coming to a King, Large petitions with thee bring; for his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much. How many Christians really believe those words? How many of us really believe Jesus loves to answer prayer? How many of us believe His grace and power are such that we can never ask too much? Rather, we tend in the direction of believing God is reluctant to answer prayers and His grace and power are not sufficient to fulfill our needs, let along our requests. We should not forget that Satan’s very first temptation of humankind was based on questioning the goodness and generosity of God (see Genesis 3.1-5). #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

And this vicious attack on the patriarch Job was designed to cause Job to question God’s goodness so that he would then curse God (see Job 1.16-11). Satan has not changed his strategy today. This perception of God as the reluctant giver comes right from Satan and must be resisted by us if we are to experience the fullness of God grace. “Remember this. Talk to God. No matter how you are feeling, no matter what you are facing, no matter what happens to hurt you or disappoint you or confuse you. Talk to God. And never stop talking to Him. You understand me? Talk to Him. Realize that because things go bad in this World, because they go well, because they come easy or they come with difficulty, well, it does not mean that He is not here. I do not mean here in this chapel. I mean here everywhere. Talk to Him. No mater how many years pass, no matter what happens, always talk to Him. Would you try to remember to do that? Anytime you want. You start now with or without words, and you just keep talking and you never never let anything come between you and talking to God,” Page 27, Of Love and Evil by Anne Rice. Many believers do not comprehend the superabundance of God’s grace and generosity, we ask Him for paltry blessings, when we could be drawing on the abundance of His riches. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

The apostle Paul told us that God “has blessed us in the Heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ,” and “[He] will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” reports Ephesians 1.3, Philippians 4.19. Within the scope of these two scriptures, God promises to meet every one of our needs, both spiritual and temporal. The God who was gracious to Adam and Eve both before and after the Fall, who rejoiced in doing good to the Jewish nation in captivity, who was the “God of all grace” to Peter, is the same gracious and generous God today. Grace is part of the very nature of God, and He cannot change. He is indeed the generous landowner of the parable, continually going to the marketplace of life to find those in need of “a day’s wages” so that He can bring them into His vineyard and then reward them out of all proportion to their labors. Perhaps the larger reason why we do not experience more of God’s grace is our misconception that, having been saved by grace, we must now, at least to some degree, “pay our own way” and earn God’s blessings in our daily lives. An accepted maxim among people today, “there is no such thing as a free lunch” (which may be true in our society), is carried by us into our relationship with God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

In fact this misconception that we must pay our own way is more than a mistaken theological notion. It actually springs from the perverse disposition of our hearts—the disposition of pride. Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We do not want to live by a Heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there. When considering the subject of the grace of God in salvation, the problem of pride described is applicable to living the Christian life. Not only do we think we must pay our own way, at least to some degree, we subtly insist on paying our own way. Grace is for other people—for beggars, but not for us. Let me illustrate from my own experience. After the death of my first wife, Eleanor, God very soon brought into my life another charming and Godly lady whom Eleanor and I had known for a number of years. Just over a year Eleanor’s death, Jane and I were married. A few months later I began to realize I was experiencing a vague sense of guilt despite confidence that God had guided in our marriage. One day I realized my sense of guilt was due to the feeling that I had not “paid my dues” in long months of grief and loneliness unlike some of my friends who have lost their spouses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

I felt I did not “deserve” such a tremendous blessing from God so soon after Eleanor’s death. In fact, I discovered I was unconsciously not allowing myself to enjoy the full riches of the blessing God had so obviously given me. I had lapsed into the World’s way of thinking that we somehow must earn God’s blessings through our suffering or sacrifice or hard work. It can be humbling, sometimes humiliating, to realize we have not paid our own way. Think of the workers in the parable who worked only one hour. How did they feel when they realized they had received as much pay as those who had worked twelve long hours through the heat of the day? Did they feel grateful for the generous gift they had received, or guilty that they had not earned their pay? If they were living by a philosophy of works as we so often do, they would have felt guilty. They would have experienced the gracious generosity of the landowner, but they would not have enjoyed it. You and I actually experience the grace of God in our lives far more than we realize. However, all too often we do not enjoy His grace because we are trying to live by merit, not by grace. In looking for our own goodness by which we hope to earn the blessing of God, we fail to see the superabundance of the goodness and grace of God in our lives. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
O God, Who wast pleased to send Thy disciples the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, in the burning fire of Thy love, grant to Thy people to be fervent in the unity of faith; that evermore abiding in Thee, they may be found both stedfast in faith and active in work; through Jesus Christ our Lord. May the Spirit, the Paraclete, O Lord, Who proceedeth from Thee, illuminate our minds, and, as Thy Son hath promised, lead us into all truth; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ. May the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, O Lord, cleanse our hearts, and make them fruitful with its plenteous dew; through our Lord Jesus Christ. “And God also declared unto prophets, by his own mouth, that Christ should come. And behold, there were divers ways that he did manifest things unto the children of humans, which were good; and al things which are good cometh of Christ; otherwise humans were fallen, and there could no good thing come unto them. Wherefore, by the ministering of Angels, and by every word which proceeded forth out of the mouth of God, humans began to exercise faith in Christ; and thus by faith, they did lay hold upon every good thing; and thus it was until the coming of Christ,” reports Moroni 7.23-25. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Blessed Lord Jesus, before thy cross I kneel and see the heinousness of my sin, my iniquity that caused thee to be “made a curse,” the evil that excites the severity of divine wrath. Show me the enormity of my guilt by the crowns of thorns, the pierced hands and feet, the bruised body, the dying cries. Thy blood is the blood of incarnate God, its worth infinite, its value beyond all thought. Infinite must be the evil and guilt that demands such a price. Sin is my malady, my monster, my foe, my viper, born in my birth, alive in my life, strong in my character, dominating my faculties, following me as a shadow, intermingling with my every thought, my chain that holds me captive in the empire of my soul. Sinner that I am, why should the Sun give me light, the air supply breath, the Earth bear my tread, its fruits nourish me, its creatures subserve my ends? Yet thy compassions yearn over me, thy heart hastens to my rescue, thy love endured my curse, thy mercy bore my deserved stripes. Let me walk humbly in the lowest depths of humiliation, bathed in thy blood, tender of conscience, triumphing gloriously as an heir of salvation. “And after that he came humans also were saved by faith in his name; and by faith, they become the sons of God. And as surely as Christ liveth he spake these words unto our fathers, saying: Whatsoever thing ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is good, in faith believing that ye shall receive, behold, it shall be done unto you,” reports Moroni 7.26. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

The readiness with which one once plunged into other people’s affairs to help the, as one believed, will dissolve and disappears. One knows now that their real troubles remain unaffected by this surface acid, that meddling in their problems is not the right way. One is surrounded by an aura which makes one a crowd of fawning disciples and flattering admirers. However, one could not accept such a role because one knows that they will refuse to let one be oneself and will expect one to be different from what one really is. One does not care to face an attitude which is hostile or indifferent; one does not even need to talk to beings who begin by disbelieving one. No self-actualized person looks down on others from one’s pedestal, but that does not alter the distancer that extends from their ignorance to one’s knowledge. One does not require idolatrous homage from them and indeed shrinks from it. One unaffected nature renders one desirous of being treated no better than others. One passes among others a hidden existence, a secret inner life. The conventional World is so tied to, and therefore so deceived by appearances, that it is only a tiny handful of people who meet such a being with the understanding and sympathy one deserves. It is not personal desire which makes one refrain from communicating oneself to others, but public circumstances. In this one obeys the Greek verse, “When to be wise is all in vain, be not wise at all.” Why should one communicate the oracles of Heaven to those whose minds run only to trivialities? #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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My Heart is a Lonely Hunter that Hunts on a Lonely Hill!

January 29, 2020 3:27 am

The workers have nothing to lose but their chairs. They have a World to gain. Worrying is like a rocking chair—it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself,” reports St. Matthew 6.34. There are many insights laid out by Paul which asks of the Christian that they be watchful. He strong being is strong only if one watches one’s strength, aware of the fact that there is weakness in one’s strength. There is a non-Christian in every Christian. There is a weak being in every strong one. There is cowardice in every courage, and unbelief in every faith, and hostility in every love. Watchfulness means that the Christian never can rest on one’s being a Christian, that one who is strong can never rely on one’s strength. One can be strong by subjecting oneself to a strong discipline. By suppressing much in oneself one may become powerful in relation to others. It is often this type that is called a strong personality. And, certainly, strength without the ability to direct oneself is no strength. However, those who have this ability and are admired as strong personalities should be watchful: they should watch whether their strength has weakness at its basis, whether it excludes elements of life that constitute the richness and the glory of life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

If they do not watch their hidden weakness, it may flow forth as hatred for those who affirm the abundance of life. This abundance they cannot endure, because it reveals the weakness on which their strength is built. In order to reassure themselves, they force upon others the same restrictions they have imposed on their life. Their domineering strength creates weakness in others. There is a profound ambiguity about the strong Christian personality: Christianity could not live, society could not go on, without them. However, many other Christians, many persons, who perhaps could have become strong themselves, are destroyed or reduced to mental weakness and often illness by them. They are the bearers of Christianity and society; but their victims among Christians and non-Christians, beginning with their children, their wives or their husbands, are numerous. Be watchful when you are considered, or consider yourself, strong. Be watchful, and do not demand of those around you to be what you are, and what they are not. You will destroy them by your strength. Those who are considered strong usually have a strong conviction. They seem to do what Paul asks them to—namely, to “stand in the faith.” Everybody needs place to stand upon. Without a foundation no strength is possible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

In the physical Universe it is a place on the well-grounded Earth, as the Greeks said; no experience seems more disturbing, even for the strongest mins, than the shaking of the ground in an Earthquake. In the social Universe it is the home—the home town country on which we stand; and from earliest times those who lost their homeland were considered weakest and most unprotected. What about the spiritual Universe? Language is the place we stand on in the spiritual Universe. For out of the word by which we grasp our World and our own being all other spiritual creations grow: knowledge and the arts, social traditions and philosophical beliefs. The word gives beings the strength to build a World above the given World. It makes one the ruler of nature, as in the paradise story: one becomes the ruler over other living beings by giving them names. One who is strong in the spiritual Universe is strong in the power of the word. A profound insight into human strength and human weakness is expressed in the story of the tower of Babel. Humankind was strong as long as it was united in one language. Its strength impelled it to enter the Heavenly sphere. However, when God wanted to destroy human’s self-elevation and reveal one’s weakness, one confused the one language so that people no longer understood each other. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

We are in a similar situation today. Our period is weak, because we can no longer speak to each other. Each one has one’s own language, and the word has lost its power. It has become shallow and confused. We have experienced Earthquake and exile in the spiritual World. Paul asks the Corinthians to stand on something that is deeper than the physical and social and spiritual Universe, something that cannot be shaken, because all levels of the Universe rest upon it, their divine Ground. To stand on this Ground is, in Paul’s words, to stand in the faith. One, of course, thinks of the faith in the form in which one has brought it to the Corinthians. However, in this faith, faith itself is present—namely, the standing on the ultimate Ground below any shaking and changing ground. Breaking the way to this Ground is the meaning of the appearance of the Christ. “Stand firm in your faith” means—do not give up that faith that alone can make your ultimately strong, because it gives you the ultimate Ground on which to stand. Standing firm in one’s faith does not mean adhering to a set of beliefs; it does not require us to suppress doubts about Christian or other doctrines, but points to something which is possessed beyond doubt in the depth in which human’s being and all being is rooted. To be aware of this Ground, to live in it and out of it is ultimate strength. “Be strong” and “stand in the faith” are one and the same command. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

However, remembering now the word “be,” some may reply—“Then the demand to be strong is not for us, because we do not stand in any faith. Doubt or unbelief is our destiny, not faith. We know you are right, there is no strength where there is no faith. However, we have neither. And if there is some strength in us, it is the strength of honesty, the unwillingness to submit to a faith that is not ours, either for conventional reasons, or because of our longing for strength, or because of being taken in by our contemporary emotion-arousing evangelists. Our strength is to resist and to reject strength that is born of dishonesty. Some of the best minds of our time would speak thus. To them I answer—Your honesty proves your faith and therefore your honesty is your strength! You may not believe in anything that can be stated in doctrines or symbols. However, you stand on the ultimate Ground, you stand firm in your faith as long as you sand in honesty and take your doubt and your unbelief seriously without restriction. Become aware of the faith that you have, and you will find words for it, perhaps even Christian words. However, with or without words, be strong; for you are strong. Strength, according to Paul’s words, includes courage. For human strength is built on human anxiety. Insecurity takes many forms. One of the most dangerous is the experience of being split within ourselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

One who is united with oneself is invincibly strong. However, who is? We are all dominated by forces that conquer parts of our being and split our personality. We have not merely lost the power of the word; we also have lost the strength that is given with a united, centered personality. We are disrupted by compulsions, known formerly as demonic powers. And who can command a split personality—“Be strong!” To which side of the personality can such a command be addressed? Yet, there is the possibility of something else. Healing power, coming ultimately from the Ground on which we stand in the faith, can enter the personality and unite it in an act of courage. It is the courage that takes upon itself the anxiety of our disruptions. This courage is the innermost center of faith. It dares to affirm our being, while simultaneously rejecting it. Out of this courage the greatest strength emerges. It is the strength that overcomes the powers splitting World and soul. Be courageous! Say Yes to yourselves in spite of the anxiety of the No. So Paul finishes his description of the strong personality: a courageous, watchful hero, firm in faith, worthy of great praise. However, that is just what Paul has in mind is based on something beyond courage and faith and watchfulness. It is not the strength of a hero. It is the strength of one who surrenders the praise one could receive as a hero to the humility of love. They may be friendly and be willing to help. This they demand of themselves. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

However, everything they demand of themselves they also demand of others. They use the word “be” without hesitation. They become tyrants through personal strength. Without love one who is strong becomes a law for the weak. And the law makes those who are weak even weaker. It drives them into despair, or rebellion, or indifference. Strength without love destroys, first others, then itself. For love is not something that may or may not be added to strength in its fullest sense; it is an element of strength. One cannot be strong without love. For love is not an irrelevant emotion; it is the blood of life, the power of reunion of the separated. Strength without love leads to separation, to judgment, to control of the weak. Love reunites what is separated; it accepts what is judged; it participates in what is weak, as God participates in our weakness and gives us strength by His participation. “When he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in Heaven about the space of half an hour,” reports Revelations of St. John. If you are a thoughtful and observant person you will probably recognize in this description the usual course of human affairs—thank God for any exceptions there may be! And if you find yourself substantially exempted from this picture, you can say thankfully, “There, but for the grace of God, go I. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Paul, at least, was not hopeful that things would get better as human history moved along. He was not a believer in “progress” as it has been humanly understood. In what seems to have been his last letter, perhaps the very last thing he wrote, he warned Timothy that “in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of Godliness, although they have denied its power,” reports 2 Timothy 3.1-5. One could be forgiven for thinking that this certainly looks like “now.” Who does not recognize in these words the prevailing tone and texture of contemporary life? Who does not know that such behaviour, if not approved outright, is excused or even justified by clever psychological, legal, and moral maneuvers, often reciting elevated “principles.” In fact this has been the end stage f every successful human society that has arisen on Earth. Invariably, such a society begins to believe it is responsible for its success and prosperity and begins to worship itself and rebel against the understandings and practices that allowed it, under God, to be successful in the first place. “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked,” the prophetic analysis states Deuteronomy 32.15. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

The human decline into what was expressed in the words of Paul to Timothy is inevitable. However, underneath it all is the radical evil of the human heart—a heart that would make me God in place of God. The prophetic clarity still stands for all to read and test. Our human “righteousness” is like “filthy rags” reports Isaiah 64.6. And over against this we hear intoned: “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to given to each being according to one’s ways, according to the results of one’s deeds,” reports Jeremiah 17.10. Some fathers exasperate their children by being overly strict and controlling. They need to remember that rearing children is like holding a wet bar of soap—too firm a grasp and it shoots from your hand, too loose a grip and it slides away. A gentle but firm hold keeps you in control. We cannot begin to estimate the ravages of overstrictness on the evangelical Christian community over the years. I have had occasions in my ministry to bury people who lived virtually all of their seventy years in reaction to the harsh legalism of their upbringing—lost bars no one could manage to pick up. Others were not so tragic. They came to renounce legalism Biblically and theologically, but still wrestled with it emotionally for the rest of their lives. Why are some fathers overly strict? Many because they are trying to protect their children from an increasingly Philistine culture—and smothering rules seem the best way to accomplish that. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

Others are simply controlling personalities who use rules, money, friendship, or clout to rule their children’s lives. The Bible, read through their controlling grid, becomes a license to own and dominate. Still others wrongly understand their faith in terms of Law rather than grace. Some men are overly strict because they are concerned about what others will think. “If my child goes to this place or wears this clothing, or is heard listening to that music, what will they think?” Not a few preacher’s kids have been catapulted into rebellion because their fathers squeezed their lives to fit their parishioners’ expectations. What a massive sin against one’s children! Rather, we ought to begin our fatherhood by holding the tiny helpless bar snugly, but as it grows, gradually and wisely loosen our grip. As conscientious fathers we have to say “no” to many things. Thus we should try to say “yes” to as much as possible, and save our no’s for the really important situations. We must be Biblical in regard to our no’s—and as our children grow, be prepared to discuss the rules Biblically and principally. We must learn to trust God with our children, realizing they must learn to make decision for themselves. Fathers, do not exasperate your children by being overly strict. Learn to hold their lives with God’s pressure and to mold it with His love. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

Seeking the Master: Great possibilities attach themselves to the first interview between the student earnestly seeking direction, needing guidance, or requesting counsel, and the illuminate who has established communion with God. These possibilities do not depend upon the length of time it takes nor upon what is said during the actual conversation itself. They depend upon the attitude which a student silently brings with one and upon the power which the illuminate silently expresses. In other words, they depend upon invisible and telepathic factors. Only when one is finally ready for a master will one find a true one. However, to be ready the aspirant must bring his character to its highest possibility. When that is done then even at the first meeting the power of attraction will speak silently yet eloquently. Both will know, before that first meeting ends, that the other is the right one; there will be no doubts, no hesitations; they can exist only when judgement is wrong. One will know an affinity of soul that can and has previously been experienced with no one else. Affinity has its own clear language. It will put both people at perfect ease. When a sensitive heart, a receptive mind, and a strong yearning for spiritual perfection meet a being who embodies such perfection to a large degree, there is or should be some recognition, some brief purification, some intellectual clarification, some emotional exaltation, amounting in all to a miniature mystical experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

When the predestined disciple meets the master for the first time, one may feel either that one has known the individual before or else that one has known one always. Sometimes we have the feeling on meeting a stranger for the first time, one may feel either that one has known one before or else that one has known one always. Sometimes we have the feeling on meeting a stranger for the first time, that we have known one long and known one well. The feeling on first meeting the destined master is much the same but greatly expanded and deeply intensified. The feeling which is aroused on this contact—whether affinity or antipathy—must be one’s first guide to the choice of a master. One may feel the force of a real attraction when first meeting one’s master, in most cases, but it is just possible one may not. The human in whose presence your character rises to its best and your faith to its highest, is the being who can help you spiritually. Without this inward affinity it is of not much use to attach yourself to a guide, however reputed one may be. “And now, my brethren, how is it possible that ye can lay hold upon every good thing? And now I come to that faith, of which I said I would speak; and I will tell you the way whereby ye may lay hold on every good thing. For behold, God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting, behold, he sent Angels to minister unto the children of humans, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ; and in Christ there should come every good thing,” reports Moroni 7.20-22. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the splendour of Thy brightness may shine upon us, and the light of Thy Light confirm with the illumination of the Holy Spirit the hearts of those who have been born again through Thy grace: for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who celebrate the solemnity of the gift of the Holy Ghost, may be kindled with Heavenly desires, and thirst for the fountain of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Everlasting Creator-Father, I have destroyed myself, my nature is defiled, the powers of my soul are degraded; I am vile, miserable, strengthless, but my hope is in thee. If ever I am saved it will be by goodness undeserved and astonishing not by mercy alone but by abundant mercy, not by grace but by exceeding riches of grace; and such thou hast revealed, promised, exemplified in thoughts of peace, not of evil. Thou hast devised means to rescue me from sin’s perdition, to restore me to happiness, honour, safety. I bless thee for the everlasting covenant, for the appointment of a mediator. I rejoice that he failed not, nor was discouraged, but accomplished the work thou gavest him to do; and said on the cross, “It is finished.” I exult in the thought that thy justice is satisfied, thy trust established, thy la magnified, and a foundation is laid for my hope. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

I look to a present and personal interest in Christ and say, surely he has borne my griefs, carried my sorrows, won my peace, healed my soul. Justified by his blood I am saved by his life, glorying in his cross I bow to his scepter, having his Spirit I possess his mind. Lord, grant that my religion may not be occasional and partial, but Universal, influential, effective, and may I always continue in thy words as well as thy works, so that I may reach my end in peace. Almighty and everlasting God, Who in the fulness of this day’s mystery hast completed the secret work of the Paschal solemnity; grant, we beseech Thee, that we who have been made Thine adopted sons may obtain that peace which our Lord Jesus Christ left unto us when He came to Thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the Holy Spirit prepare our minds by Divine mysteries, forasmuch as He Himself is the remission of all sins; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the power of the Holy Spirit be present with us, that it may both mercifully cleanse our hearts, and protect us from all adversities; through our Lord Jesus Christ. O God, Who by the mystery of this day’s festival dost sanctify Thy Universal Church in every race and nation, shed abroad throughout the whole World the gift of the Holy Spirit; that the work wrought by Divine goodness at the first preaching of the Gospel may now also be extended among believing hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

With these sobering vistas of the human heart and soul before us, we need now to rethink for our time what it means to be lost. For a ruined soul is a lost sou. What is a lost soul? Just someone God is mad at? When is a person lost? And is anyone lost today? Considerable confusion on this topic has resulted from trying to think of being lost in terms of its outcome. Theologically, that outcome is Hell—a most uncomfortable notion. Certainly, if you are lost in any sense there is a little likelihood of your arriving where you want to be. However, the condition of lostness is not the same as the outcome to which it leads. We are not lost because we are going to wind up in the wrong place. We are going to wind up in the wrong place because we are lost. TO be lost means to be out of place, to be omitted. “Gehenna,” the term often used in the New Testament for the place of the lost, may usefully be thought of as the cosmic dumb for the irretrievably useless. Think of what it would mean to find you have become irretrievably useless. Something that is lost is something that is not where it is supposed to be, and therefore it is not integrated into the life of the one to whom it belongs and to who it is lost. Think of what it means when the keys to your house or are lost. They are useless to you, no matter how much you need them and desire to have them and no matter what fine keys they may be. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

And when we are lost to God, we are not where we are supposed to be in his World and hence are not caught up into his life. We are not “partakers of the divine nature,” have not “escaped the corruption that is in the World” through lust reports 2 Peter 1.4. We are our own god, and our god does not amount to much. When we are lost to God, we are also lost to ourselves: we do not know where we are or how to get where we want to go. We may know we are lost or we may not. Many a driver is lost long before one knows one his—though rarely before one’s wife knows it. Many are lost before God but do not know it. They sincerely believe that they know where they are, where they are going, and how to get there; but in fact they do not, and they often find out too late. Disorientation to moral, personal, and divine reality, as well as to the physical, sometimes leads us across lines that cannot be recrossed. This is part of the tragic meaning of human time and action. Almighty and everlasting God, Who in the fulness of this day’s mystery hast completed the secret work of the Paschal solemnity; grant, we beseech Thee, that we who have been made Thine adopted sons may obtain that peace which our Lord Jesus Christ left unto us when He came to Thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the Holy Spirit prepare our minds by Divine mysteries, forasmuch as He Himself is the remission of all sins; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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Each Person is an Architect of One’s Own Fate!

January 20, 2020 3:41 am

I am as sober as a judge. Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of. Societies of beings are just like individuals, in that both at any given moment offer ambiguous potentialities of development. Whether a young man enters business or the ministry may depend on a decision which has to be made before a certain day. He takes the place offered in the counting-house, and is committed. Little by little, the habits, the knowledges, of the other career, which once lay so near, cease to be reckoned even among his possibilities. At first, he may sometimes doubt whether the self he murdered in that decisive hour might not have been the better of the two; but with the years such questions themselves expire, and the old alternative ego, once so vivid, fades into something less substantial than a dream. It is no otherwise with nations. They may be committed by kinds and ministers to peace or war, by generals to victory or defeat, by prophets to this religion or to that, by various geniuses to fame in art, science, or industry. A war is a true point of bifurcation of future possibilities. Whether it fail or succeed, its declaration must be the starting-point of new policies. Just so does a revolution, or any great civic precedent, become a deflecting influence, whose operations widen with the course of time. Communities obey their ideals; and an accidental success fixes an ideal, as an accidental failure blights it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

The fermentative influences of geniuses must be admitted as, at any rate, one factor in the changes that constitute social evolution. The community may evolve in many ways. The accidental presence of this or that ferment decides in which way it shall evolve. Why the very birds of the forest, the parrot, the mino, have the power of human speech, but never develop it of themselves; some one must be there to teach them. So with us individuals. Rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with darkness, Wagner to enjoy the peculiar musical effects; Dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality, Artemus Ward to our humor; Emerson kindles a new moral light within us. But it is like Columbus’s egg. “All can raise the flowers now, for all have got the seed.” But if this be true of the individuals in the community, how can it be false of the community as a whole? If shown a certain way, a community may take it; if not, it will never find it. And the ways are to a large extent indeterminate in advance. A nation may obey either of many alternative impulses given by different people of genius, and still live and be prosperous, just as a being may enter either of many businesses. Only, the prosperities may differ in their type. Sometimes when you think about all the bad things that you read in the newspaper and then you walk inside a classroom and see this you realize that there are so many good things in the World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

Few, if any, of us ever realize the far-reaching effects of our existence. The consequences of our choices and actions spread out into the World like ripples of water, affecting many people in ways we could never imagine. Your influence is etched in the lives of those who have been fortunate to be in your presence. Therefore, never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. A community is a living thing. It is the peculiarity of living things not merely that they change under the influence of surrounding circumstances, but that any change which takes place in them is not lost but retained, and as it were built into the organism to serve as the foundation for future actions. If you cause any distortion in the growth of a tree and make it crooked, whatever you may do afterwards to make the tree straight the mark of your distortion is there; it is absolutely indelible; it has become part of the tree’s nature…Suppose, however, that you take a lump of gold, melt it, and let it cool…No one can tell by examining a piece of gold how often it has been melted and cooled in geologic ages, or even in the last year by the hand of beings. Any one who cuts down an oak can tell by the rings in its trunk how may times Winter have frozen it into widowhood, and how many times Summer has warmed it into life. A living being must always contain within itself the history, not merely of its own existence, but of all its ancestors. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. Many wonder, where do we find great people? The question has two conceivable answers: one’s origin is supernatural, or it is natural. Is one’s origin supernatural? Then one is a deputy god, and we have theocracy once removed—or, rather, not removed at all…Is this an unacceptable solution? Before one can remake one’s society, one’s society must make one. All those changes of which one is the proximate initiator have their chief causes in the generations one descended from. Of there is to be anything like a real explanation of those changes, it must be sought in that aggregate of conditions out of which both one and they have arisen. If anything is humanly certain it is that the great person’s society, properly so called, does not make one before one can remake it. Physiological forces, with which the social, political, geographical, and to a great extent anthropological conditions have just as much and just as little to do as the condition of the crater of Vesuvius has to do with the flickering of this gas by which I write, and what make one. Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better. Do your duty, and leave the rest to the gods. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

The differences between one nation and another, whether in intellect, commerce, art, morals, or general temperament, ultimately depend, not upon any mysterious properties of race, nationality, or any other unknown and unintelligible abstractions, but simply and solely upon the physical circumstances to which they are exposed. No geographical environment can produce a given type of mind. It can only foster and further certain types fortuitously produced, and thwart and frustrate others. Once again, its function is simply selective, and determines what shall actually be only by destroying what is absolutely incompatible. An Arctic environment is incompatible with improvident habits in its denizens; but whether the inhabitants of such a region shall unite with their thrift the peacefulness of the Eskimo or pugnacity of the Norseman is, so far as the climate is concerned, an accident. Evolutionists should not forget that we all have five fingers not because four or six would not do just as well, but merely because the first vertebrate above the fishes happened to have that number. One owed one’s prodigious success in founding a life of descent to some entirely other quality—we know not which—but the inessential five fingers were taken in tow and preserved to the present day. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

So of most social peculiarities. Which of them shall be taken in tow by the few qualities which the environment necessarily exacts is matter of what physiological accident shall happen among individuals. The illiterate of the future will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Simply because no individuals were born there with patriotism and ability enough to inflame their country’s people with national pride, ambition, and thirst for independent life does not mean that patriotism cannot appeal or inspire one’s mental attitude of faith in devotion towards their nation. Some people gain this devotion towards their country, together with obedience to their nation by drawing inner help and inspiration telepathically from others. Thus they create for themselves a mental relationship which, to that extent, is not different from what would have come into being as part of the regular instruction that their ancestors received. Youth need also to be reminded that even after instruction on why national pride is import, they must also be sufficiently sensitive to have the capacity to feel this patriotism within themselves and display that power in the things they produce, and always engage in the work of self-improvement. The best wood-pile will not blaze till a torch is applied, and the appropriate torches seem to have been wanting. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

Sporadic great people come everywhere. However, for a community to get vibrating through and through with intensely active life, many geniuses coming together and in rapid succession are required. This is why great epochs are so rare—why the sudden bloom of Egypt, Greece, an early Rome, a Renaissance, Victorian America, is such a mystery. Blow must follow blow so fast that no cooling can occur in the intervals. Then the mass of the nation grows incandescent, and many continue to glow by pure inertia long after the originators of its internal movement have passed away. We often hear surprise expressed that in these high tides of human affairs not only the people should be filled with stronger life, but that individual geniuses should seem to exceptionally abundant. This mystery is just about as deep as the time-honored conundrum as to why great rivers flow by great towns. All mental progress must result from a series of adaptive changes, in the sense already defined of that word. We know what a vast part of our mental furniture consists of purely remembered, not reasoned, experience. It is one of the tritest of truisms that human intelligences of a simple order are very literal. Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it. People have to live with themselves, and they should see to it that they always have good company. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Many are slaves of habit, doing what they have been taught without variation; dry, prosaic, and matter-of-fact in their remarks; devoid of humor, except of coarse physical kind which rejoices in practical joke; taking the World for granted; and possessing in their faithfulness and honesty the single gift by which they are sometimes able to warm us into admiration. However, even this faithfulness seems to have a sort of inorganic ring, and to remind us more of the immutable properties of a piece of inanimate matter than of the steadfastness of a human will capable of alternative choice. When we descend to the brutes, all these peculiarities are intensified. And every notice of their ways must receive a deep impression of the fatally literal character of the few, simple, and treadmill-like operations of their minds. However, turn to the highest order of minds, and what a change! Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard of combinations of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy; in a word, we seem suddenly introduced into a seething caldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity, where partnerships can be joined or loosened in an instant, treadmill routine in unknown, and the unexpected seems the only law. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

Always do right. That will gratify some people and astonish the rest. We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. According to the idiosyncrasy of the individual, the scintillations will have one character or another. They will be sallies of wit and humor; they will be flashes of poetry and eloquence; they will be constructions of dramatic fiction or of mechanical device, logical or philosophic abstractions, business projects, or scientific hypotheses, with trains of experimental consequences based thereon; they will be musical sounds, or images of plastic beauty or picturesqueness, or visions of moral harmony. However, whatever their differences may be, they will all agree in this—that their genesis is sudden and, as it were, spontaneous. That is to say, the same premises would not, in the mind of another individual, have engendered just that conclusion; although, when the conclusion is offered to the other individual, one may thoroughly accept and enjoy it, and envy the brilliancy of one to whom it first occurred. Genius flashes out of one brain, and no other, because the instability of that brain is such as to tip and upset itself in just that particular direction. However, the important thing to notice is that the good flashes and the bad flashes, the triumphant hypotheses and the absurd conceits, are on an exact equality in respect of their origin. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

Aristotle’s absurd Physics and his immortal Logic flow from one source: the forces that produce the one produce the other. When walking along the street, thinking of the blue sky or the fine spring weather, I may either smile at some grotesque whim which occurs to me, or I may suddenly catch an intuition of the solution of a long-unsolved problem, which at that moment was far from my thoughts. Both notions are shaken out of the same reservoir—the reservoir of a brain in which the reproduction of images in the relations of their outward persistence or frequency has long ceased to be the dominant law. However, to the thought, when it is once engendered, the consecration of agreement with outward relations may come. The conceit perishes in a moment, and is forgotten. The scientific hypothesis arouses in me a fever of desire for verification. I read, write, experiment, consult experts. Everything corroborates my notion, which being then published in a book spreads from review to review and from mouth to mouth, till at last there is no doubt I am enshrined in the Pantheon of great diviners of nature’s ways. The environment preserves the conception which it was unable to produce in any brain less idiosyncratic than my own. Originally, machines, instruments, preservative power of the social environment and all other institutions were flashes of genius in an individual head, of which the outer environment showed no sign. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

Adopted by the race and become its heritage, they then supply instigations to new geniuses whom they environ to make new inventions and discoveries; and so the ball of progress rolls. However, take out the geniuses, or alter their idiosyncrasies, and what increasing uniformities will increasing uniformities will the environment show? Over and over again the Bible portrays God as gracious and generous, blessing His people freely without regard to their demerits, rather than because of their merits. (I use the word gracious not in its commonly accepted meaning of kindness and courtesy, but in the biblical sense of one disposed to deal with others on the basis of grace.) We see God’s gracious disposition even before the Fall in the Garden of Eden when as yet there were no merits or demerits. The Scripture says, “And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food,” reports Genesis 2.9. It was not just the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was good for food and pleasing to the eye (see 3.6). God did not place only one desirable tree in the garden with a “look but do not eat,” sign hung on it just to tempt Adam and Eve. Rather He placed all kinds of trees in the garden that were delightful to see and to eat from. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

I enjoy fresh fruit, and I like to go to the supermarket in the Summer when all the peaches, plums, pears, strawberries, and cantaloupes are on display. I am dazzled. I want some of all of them. Think what it must have been like for Adam to have all kinds of trees that not only produced delectable food but were also beautiful to behold. If I am dazzled today, think of what Adam’s reaction must have been. However, God did still more for Adam. God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him,” report Genesis 2.18. God knew Adam needed a companion, and He graciously met that need, because it is His disposition to be generous. God anticipated and provided for every need Adam could possibly have. Then Adam sinned. What would happen now to the gracious and generous disposition of God? Would God cease to be gracious? Would God say, “I was generous to you, giving you everything you needed, and yet you disobeyed Me. From now on you are on your own. Fend for yourself”? God did not say that. Instead He dealt mercifully and graciously with Adam and Eve. Yes, today we are still living with the eternally cataclysmic consequences that came out of the Fall; God did judge Adam as He has said He would. However, in the midst of all that God did one more thing: “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them,” reports Genesis 3.21. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

Right in the midst of fulfilling His role as Judge, God took note of Adam and Eve’s need for clothes, and for a little while, He assumed the role of a tailor. Why, in the midst of all the weighty and eternal issues, did God take time to make clothes for two people who had just flagrantly disobeyed Him, and who through that had brought sin and misery upon the whole human race? God did it because it is His nature to be gracious and to meet our needs without regard to our deserts. Neither Adam’s innocence nor his sin were the cause of God’s grace. God was gracious because it is part of His eternal nature to be so. Fear of God, however, is the beginning of wisdom. Although not the end or outcome of wisdom, to be sure, it is the indispensable beginning, I believe, and the principle part. One begins to get smart when he or she fears being crosswise of God: fear of not doing what one wants and not being as one requires. Fear is the anticipation of harm. The intelligent person recognizes that his or her well-being is possessed in being in harmony with God and what God is doing in the Kingdom. God is not mean, but he is dangerous. It is the same with other great forces he has placed in reality. Electricity and nuclear power, for example, are not mean, but they are dangerous. One who does no, in a certain sense, “worry” about God, simply is not smart. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

Meditation does not mean surrender. Nor does it mean building walls where bridges are needed. My growing inclination toward the old Church and her solutions of the problems of God and the World, state and Church, were nourished by the overwhelming impression made upon me by early Christian art in Italy. What no amount of study of Church history has brought about was accomplished by the mosaics in ancient Roman basilicas. What was once the life-substance and inheritance of us all and what we have lost, and a deep yearning awakens in us for the departed youth of our culture. The result of this tension was either a decision against the one or the other side, or a general scepticism or a split-consciousness which drove one to attempt to overcome the conflict constructively. The latter way, the way of synthesis, was my own way. Nevertheless, I was and I am a theologian, because the existential question of our ultimate concern and the existential answer of the Christian message are and always have been predominant in my spiritual life. We beseech Thee, O Lord, be pleased by the Paschal remedies to grant unto us that we may learn to scorn Earthly desires, and to long after things Heavenly; though Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O merciful God, that in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we may indeed have our portion; through the same our Lord who will remove all obstructions and bless us with eternal life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

Lord Jesus Christ, fill me with thy Spirit that I may be occupied with hid presence. I am blind—send him to make me see; dark—let him say, “Let there be light!” May God give me faith to behold my name engraven in thy hand, my soul and body redeemed by thy blood, my sinfulness covered by the life of pure obedience. Replenish me by his revealing grace, that I may realise my indissoluble union with thee; that I may know thou hast espoused me to thyself for ever, in righteousness, love, mercy, faithfulness; that I am one with thee, as a branch with its stock, as a building with its foundation. May his comforts cheer me in my sorrows, his strength sustain me in my trails, his blessings revive me in my weariness, his presence render me a fruitful tree of holiness, his might establish me and peace and joy, his incitements make me ceaseless in prayer, his animation kindle un me undying devotion. Send him as the searcher of my heart, to show me more of my corruptions and helplessness that I may flee to thee, cling to thee, rest on thee, as the beginning and end of my salvation. May I never vex him by my indifference and waywardness, grieve him by my cold welcome, resist him by my hard rebellion. Answer my prayers, O Lord, for thy great name’s sake. “I remember the word of God which saith by their works ye shall know them; for if their works be good, then they are good also,” reports Moroni 7.5. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

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And Grace Always Gives Far More than We Have “Earned.”

January 16, 2020 5:11 am

Traveling is almost like talking with people of other centuries. There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated. Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out! Our great weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. It is quite noticeable that our clients tend in the direction of permitting each member of the family to have one’s own feelings and to be a separate person. This may seem like a strange statement, but it is actually a most radical step. Many of us are perhaps unaware of the tremendous pressure we tend to put on our wives, our husbands, our children, to have the same feelings we do. It is often as we said, “If you want me to love you, then you must have the same feelings I do. If I feel your behavior is bad, you must feel so too. If I feel a certain goal is desirable, you must feel so too.” Now the tendency which we see in our clients is the opposite of this. There is a willingness for the other person to have different feelings, different values, differ goals. In short, there is a willingness for one to be a separate person. It is my belief that this tendency develops as the person discovers that one can trust one’s own feelings and reactions—that one’s own deep impulses are not destructive or catastrophic, and that one need not be guarded, but can meet life on a real basis. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

As one learns that one can trust oneself, with one’s own uniqueness, one becomes more able to trust one’s wife, or one’s child, and to accept the unique feelings and values which exist in this other person. One woman wrote a letter explaining something she had experienced in her family. “I realized that I had not sown my 14-year-old son Phil any real love in a long time, because I was so resentful of standards that I have always thought were important. Since I have stopped taking most of the responsibility for his goals, and responded to him as a person, as I always have to Sarah, for instance, it is surprising what changes have appeared in his attitudes. Not Earth-shaking—but a heartwarming beginning. We no longer heckle him about his school work, and the other day he volunteered that he had gotten an S—satisfactory grade on Mrs. Swanson’s trigonometry exam the first time this year.” A few months later I heard from her husband. “You would not recognize Phil….While he is hardly garrulous, he is not nearly the sphinx that he was, and he is doing much better in school, although we do not expect him to be graduated cum laude. You should take a great deal of credit for his improvement, because he began to blossom when I finally began to trust him to be himself, and ceased trying to mold him into the glorified image of his father at a similar age. Oh to undo our past errors!” #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

This concept of trusting the individual to be oneself has some to have a great deal of meaning to me. I sometimes fantasy about what it would mean if a child were treated in this fashion from the first. Suppose a child were permitted to have one’s own unique feelings—supposed one never had to disown one’s feelings in order to be loved. Suppose one’s parents were free to have and express their own unique feelings, which often would be different from one’s, and often would be different between themselves. I like to think of all the meanings that such an experience would have. It would mean that a child would grow up respect oneself as a unique person. It would mean that even when one’s behavior had to be thwarted, one could remain open “ownership” of one’s feelings. It would mean that one’s behavior would be a realistic balance, taking into account one’s own feelings and the known and open feelings of others. One would, I believe, be a responsible and self-directing individual, who would never need to conceal one’s feelings from oneself, who would never need to live behind a façade. One would be relatively free of the maladjustments which cripple so many of us. If I have been able correctly to discern the trends in the experience of our clients, then client-centered therapy seems to have a number of implications for family life. Let me attempt to restate these in somewhat more general form. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

It appears that an individual finds it satisfying in the long run to express any strong or persistent emotional attitudes in the situation in which they arise, to the person with whom they are concerned, and to the depth to which they exist. This is more satisfying than refusing to admit that such feelings exist, or permitting them to pile up to an explosive degree, or directing them toward some situation other than the one in which they arose. It seems that the individual discovers that it is more satisfying in the long run to live a given family relationship on the basis of the real interpersonal feelings which exist, rather than living the relationship on the basis of pretense. A part of this discovery is that the fear that the relationship will be destroyed if the true feelings are admitted, is usually unfounded, particularly when the feelings are expressed as belonging to oneself, not as stating something about the other person. Our clients find that as they express themselves more freely, as the surface character of the relationship matches more closely the fluctuating attitudes which underlie it, they can lay aside dome of their defenses and truly listen to the other person. Often for the first time they begin to understand how the other person feels, and why one feels that way. Thus mutual understanding begins to pervade the interpersonal interactions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Finally, there is an increasing willingness for the other person to be oneself. As I am more willing to be myself, I find I am more ready to permit you to be yourself, with all that implies. This means that the family circle tends in the direction of becoming a number of separate and unique persons with individual goals and values, but bound together by the real feelings—beneficial and disadvantageous—which exist between them, and by the satisfying bond of mutual understandings of at least portion of each other’s private Worlds. It is in these ways, I believe, that therapy which results in the individual becoming more fully and more deeply oneself, results also in one’s finding greater satisfaction in realistic family relationships which likewise promote the same end—that of facilitating each member of the family in the process of discovering, and becoming, oneself. If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would all be millionaires. Next is the discipline of communication. Recently the readers of a popular women’s magazine were asked the question, “If you could change your husband, what would you change?” The overwhelming consensus was they would like them to communicate better. They indicated that even more, they would like their husbands to listen. All that can be said is that, the two people happened to hit on the same thought—and Shakespeare made use of it first, that is all. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

The stereotype is the husband buried in the morning newspaper at breakfast, preferring to read a news agency report of the latest scandal in a European government, the scores of yesterday’s athletic contests, and the opinions of a couple of columnists whom one will never meet rather than listen to the voice of the person who has just shared his bed, poured his coffee, and fried his eggs, even though listening to that live voice promises love and hope, emotional depth and intellectual exploration far in excess of what he can gather informationally from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor put together. Men, the discipline of communication demands that you set aside regular time to talk—and that you really do talk, and that you communicate more than facts, that you communicate feelings—that you learn to talk in metaphors and similes with phrases that begin, “I feel like…” And it means that you listen. It is recommended that 65 percent of an executive’s time should be spent listening. How much more so the wise husband. The Biblical, prophetic illumination of the human soul in its lostness is empathic, starkly clear, and repeated over and over, from Moses and Samuel to Jesus, Paul, and John. The only path of spiritual transformation today is still possessed through this illumination. It must be gratefully and humbly accepted and applied, to oneself above all. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

When the prophet Jeremiah, for example, says, “The heart is more deceitful than all these and is desperately sick: Who wan understand it?” we have to recognize from our heart that we are the ones spoken of, that, indeed, I am the one described. Only then is a foundation laid for spiritual formation into Christlikeness. The initial move toward Christlikeness cannot be toward self-esteem, because of confusion about what self-esteem means, and because, realistically, I am not okay and you are not okay. We are all in serious trouble. That must be our starting point. Self-esteem in such a situation will only breed self-deception and frustration—as is now increasingly recognized, by the way. For the realities of our soul will still be what they are and will still have the consequences for evil that they naturally do—regardless of what we or others may say to “pump ourselves up” and really, to conceal and deny who we ae. A high opinion of ourselves will only make those consequences more difficult to deal with. Denial—usually in some form of rationalization—is the primary device that humans use to deal with their own wrongness. It was the first thing out of the mouths of Adam and Eve after they sinned, and it continues up to the latest edition of the newspaper. The prophetic witness from God must throw itself against the massive weight of group and individual denial, often institutionalized and subtly built into our customary ways of speaking and interacting. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Jesus addressed leaders of his day in language that may see harsh and pitiless to us, but that was the only possible way he could be of help to them, strongly self-defended as they were; and perhaps the same is true of us as well. “You Pharisees clean the outside of the dish, but your insides are full of greed and filth. How foolish of you! Is not God as interested in your insides as your outside?” reports Luke 11.39. And, “If you wash a dish well on the inside, will not the outside come clean in the process?” reports Matthew 23.26. Jesus proceeds to point out how they love and vie for public recognition of “approval” (Luke 11.43) and how in doing so they are like graves, all nice prettied up on the outside, but full of disgusting rot inside (verse 44; compare Matthew 23.27-28). They were unable to believe in Jesus because they sought to be honored by each other (John 5.44). They desired to be exalted. Spiritual transformation does not lie in this direction, for them or for us. In the financial World, an investment that doubles itself in a few years is considered an excellent investment. Yet that is only a hundred percent gain. Jesus promises us not one hundred but ten thousand percent return. Why does Jesus use such an astonishing amount as ten thousand percent? He is telling us that God’s reward is out of all proportion to our service and sacrifice. He is telling us that in the Kingdom of Heaven God’s reward system is based not on merit but on grace. And grace always gives far more than we have “earned.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

The generosity and the magnanimity of God are so great that he accepts nothing from us without rewarding it beyond all computation. The vast disproportion existing between our work and God’s reward of it already displays his boundless grace, to say nothing of the gift of salvation which is made before we have even begun to do any work. God calls us to service Him, not because He needs us, but because we need Him. Then His reward for our service is always for our service is always out of proportion to our efforts—as Jesus said to Peter, “a hundred times as much,” reports Matthew 19.29. The ontology of love leads to the basic assertion that love is one. This contradicts the main trend in the recent discussions of the nature of love. They were useful in so far as they directed the attention to the different qualities of love. However, they were and are misleading in so far as they consider the differences of qualities as differences of types. The error was not that one distinguished the qualities of love—on the contrary, more distinctions should have been made in what was often comprehended under the name eros. The error was that one did not start with an understanding of love as one. Such an understanding, of course, would have led to an ontological analysis. For only the relation of love to being as such can reveal its fundamental character. If love in all its forms is the drive towards the reunion of the separated, the different qualities of the one nature of love become understandable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Traditionally epithymia (desire) is considered the lowest quality of love. It is identified with the desire to sensual self-fulfillment. There is a strong interest on the part of philosophical and theological moralists in establishing a complete gap between this quality and those which are supposed to be higher and essentially different. On the other hand, there is a tendency on the naturalist side to reduce all the other qualities of love to the epithymia quality. A solution of this problem is only possible in the light of the ontological interpretation of love. First of all it must be said that libido—to use the Latin word—is misunderstood if it is defined as the desire for pleasure. This hedonistic definition is, like hedonism generally, based on a wrong psychology which itself is the consequence of a wrong ontology. Humans strive to reunite themselves with that to which they belong and from which one is separated. And this is true not only of humans but of all living beings. They desire food, movement, growth, participation in group, intimacy, and so forth. The fulfilment of these desires is accompanied by pleasure. However, it is not the pleasure such which is desired, but the union with that which fulfils the desire. Certainly, fulfilled desire is pleasure, and unfulfilled desire is pain. However, if one derives from these facts the pain-pleasure principle in the sense that life essentially consists of feeling from pain and striving for pleasure, it is a distortion of the actual process of life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Whenever this happens life is corrupted. Only a perverted life follows the pain-pleasure principle. Unperverted life strives for that of which it is in want, it strives for union with that which is separated from it, though it belongs to it. This analysis should remove the prejudice towards libido, and it can give criteria for the partial acceptance, partial rejection of Dr. Freud’s libido theory. In so far as Dr. Freud descries libido as the desire of the individual to get rid of his tensions, he has described the perverted form of libido. And he has acknowledged this implicitly (though not intentionally) be deriving the death-instinct from the infinite, never fulfilled libido. Dr. Freud describes human’s libido in its perverted, self-estranged stage. However, his description, in which he joins many Puritans (old and new ones who would be embarrassed by this alliance) mises the meaning of libido as the normal drive towards vital self-fulfillment. In the light of this analysis it is justified to say that epithymia is a quality which is not lacking in any love relation. To this extent the naturalists are right. However, they are wrong if they interpret libido or epithymia as the striving for pleasure for the sake of pleasure. The attempts to establish an absolute contrast between agape and eros usually presuppose an identification of eros and epithymia. Certainly, there is epithymia in every eros. However, eros transcends epithymmia. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Eros strives for a union with that which is a bearer of values because of the values it embodies. This refers to the beauty we find in nature, to the beautiful and the true in culture, and to the mystical union with that which is the source of the beautiful and the true. Love drives towards union with the forms of nature and culture and with the divine sources of both. This eros is untied with epithymia if epithymia is the desire for vital self-fulfillment and not for the pleasure resulting from this union. This valuation of eros is attacked from two sides. Love as eros is depreciated by those theologians who depreciate culture and by those who deny a mystical element in human’s relation to God. However, it is a rather self-defying attitude if somebody depreciates culture and does it in terms of culture, if one, for instances, uses millennia of linguistic culture in order to express one’s rejection of culture. Without eros towards truth, theology would not exist, and without the eros towards the beautiful no ritual expression would exist. Even more serious is the rejection of the eros quality of love with respect to God. The consequence of this rejection is that love towards God becomes an impossible concept to be replaced by obedience to God. However, obedience is not love. It can be the opposite of love. Without the desire of humans to be reunited with their origin, the love towards God becomes a meaningless word. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

It is important to look at history, but at the same time look beyond history to the ultimate power and meaning and majesty of being. There are two orders of being: the human, political, historical order, and the divine, eternal order. If we know these two orders, we can speak, moving continually between the depth of human nothingness and the great height of divine creativity. The human order, the order of history, is primarily the order of growing and dying. “Surely the people is grass.” Human’s experience of melancholy, awakened by fading and perishing nature, is symbolic of their transitoriness. Generations after generations grow up, struggle, suffer, enjoy and disappear. Should we talk all this seriously? Should we take it more seriously than the growing and fading of the grass? The prophet, when one was asked to speak to one’s nations raised the questions: Why speak to them? They are grass. We could continue: Why write and work and struggle for them? They are grass. What matter, when after a few years all those for who we wrote and spoke and struggled will have vanished? They were grass, the grass withered, the flowers faded. That is the order of history. However, the other order appears at the horizon: The word of God shall stand forever! #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Second, the order of history is an order of sin and punishment. The exile, following the destruction of Jerusalem, was, as all the prophets said, the punishment of the people for their sins. We do not like words such as sin and punishment. They seem to us archaic, barbaric, and invalid in the light of modern psychology. However, whenever I have met exiles of high moral standards and insights, I have discovered that they feel responsible for what has happened within their own countries. And very often I have met citizens of democratic countries, citizens of this country, who have expressed a feeling of guilt for the situation of the World today. They were right, and the exiles were right: they are responsible, as are you and I. Whether or not we call it sin, whether or nor we call it punishment, we are beaten by the consequences of our own failures. That is the order of history. However, at the horizon the other order appears, saying that our struggles are not in vain, that our iniquity is pardoned. There is a third element in the order of history, uniting finiteness and sin: the tragic law which controls the historical process, the law which ordains that human greatness utterly fall. There is human greatness in history. There are great and conquering nations empires; there are even nations and empress which manifest a certain righteousness. There are princes and even good princes; there are judges and even just judges. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

There are states and constitutions and even states and constitutions which provide a certain amount of freedom; there are social orders and even some which provide a certain amount of equality. There are creative spirits and even some which have the power of knowledge and understanding. However, just in being great and powerful and righteous they touch the divine sphere, and they become arrogant, and they are brought to nothing. They are without roots; they wither; the divine storm blows over them, and they vanish. That is the subject of Greek tragedy. That is the message of the prophet to the nations of the World. They are all subject to the law of tragic self-destruction—the bad and the good, individuals and nations, the weak and the heroic. And again the other order, the order beyond history and tragedy, appears at the horizon: He gives power to the faint and their strength is renewed, so that they shall mount up with wings as eagles. The order beyond the order of history is the divine order. And it is paradoxical: humans are like grass, but the word of God spoken to them shall stand forever. Humans stand under the law of sin and punishment, but the divine order breaks through it and brings forgiveness. Humans faint, falling from the height of their moral goodness and youthful power, and just when they have fallen and are weakest, they run without weariness and rise up with wings as eagles. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

God acts beyond all human assumptions and valuations. He acts surprisingly, unexpectedly, paradoxically. The negative character of the historical order is the absolute order of the divine order. The weak and despairing, the sinful and tragic in the historical order are the strong and victorious in the divine order. The prophet also speaks of the paradoxical destiny of the servant, the elected nation. Described as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, it is despised and rejected in the human order. Who does not think, hearing these words, of the exiles not only of Israel but of all nations of the World? However, the divine order appears. The exiled nation, or (as the Christians later, historically wrong, spiritually right, interpreted it) the Man on the Cross, represents another order, an order in which the weakest is the strongest, the most humiliated, the most victorious. This historical, human order is overcome by the suffering servant, the crucified Saviour. If we doubt this paradox, if we despair about our situation, if our exile is without hope or meaning for us, the prophet should fill us with shame for the arrogance of our rationalism and the narrowness of our moralism. He points to the creation of the World, of humankind, of history. He asks, “Who has directed the Spirit of God? With whom took He counsel and who instructed Him and taught Him the path of justice?” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

We always wish to teach God the path of justice. We tell God that He must punish the bad and reward the good, especially in relation to ourselves. However, God accepts no counsel concerning the course of history, as He took no counsel concerning the structure of the World, with all its natural destruction, cruelty, and transitoriness. The divine order cannot be judged according to the measures of the historical order, the measures of human comfort and morality, democracy and civilization. That was the answer Job received from God when he struggled with Him about the unintelligible injustice of his historical fate. God did not justify Himself in moral categories; He triumphantly pointed to the unexplorable greatness of nature which cannot be measures according to the measure of human righteousness. However, if the divine order and the historical order have nothing to do with each other, how can the divine order concern us at all? How can eternity and forgiveness and divine help concern us if we are in the other order, the historical order, standing under the law of finiteness and weakness and punishment? How can the divine order comfort us in our misery? How can we listen to the words of the prophets which tell us of the end of our warfare? There are three answers to this question. First, the divine order is not the historical order; and we should not confuse these two orders. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

No life is able to overcome finiteness, sin, and tragedy. The illusions of our period have been that modern civilization and conquer then, and that we can achieve security in our own existence. Progress seemed to have conquered tragedy; the divine order seemed to be embodied in the progressive, historical order. However, for nearly six decades our generation has received blow after blow, destroying that illusion, and driving to despair and cynicism those who wanted to transform, and thought they could transform, the historical order into a divine order. Let us learn from the catastrophe of our time at least the fact that no life and no period are able to overcome finiteness, sin, and tragedy. The second answer is that there is another order to which we, as human beings, belong, an order which makes humans always dissatisfied with what is given to one. Humans transcend everything in the historical order, all the heights and depths of one’s own existence. They pass, as no other being is able to pass, beyond the limits of their given World. Humans participates in something infinite, in an order which is not transitory, not self-destructive, not tragic, but eternal, holy, and blessed. Therefore, when one listens to the prophetic word, when one hears of the everlasting God and of the greatness of His power and the mystery of His acts, a response is awakened in the depth of the human soul; the infinite within one is touched. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Every being knows, that in some depth of their soul that greatness of God is true. Our despair itself, our inability to escape ourselves in life and in death, witnesses to our infinity. The third answer is that the two orders, the historical and the eternal, although they can never become the same, are within each other. The historical order is not separated from the eternal order. What is new in the prophets and in Christianity, beyond all paganism, old and new, is that the eternal order reveals itself in the historical order. The suffering servant of God and the enemies because of whim one suffers, the Man on the Cross and those who fainted under the Cross, the exiled and persecuted in all periods of history, have all transformed history. The strong in history fall; the strength of each of us is take from us. However, those who seem weak in history finally shape history, because they are bound to the eternal order. We are not a lost generation because we are a suffering, destroyed generation. Each of us belongs to the eternal order, and the prophet speaks to all of us: Comfort ye, comfort yet, my people! “And they were strict to observe that there should be no iniquity among them; and whoso was found to commit iniquity, and three witnesses of the church did condemn them before the elders, and if they repented not, and confessed not, their names were blotted out, and they were not numbered among the people of Christ. However, as they oft as they repented and sought forgiveness, with real intent, they were forgiven,” report Moroni 6. 7-8. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

The time has come that we have longed for; what greater or better work can be found than to proclaim that might of our Risen Lord? Bursting open the doors of the grave, He has displayed to us the glorious banner of His Resurrection. Through Him the sons of light are born to life eternal; the courts of the kingdom of Heaven are opened to believers; and by the law of a blessed intercourse, Earthly and Heavenly things are interchanged. For by the Cross of Christ we have all been redeemed from death, and by His Resurrection the life of us all has risen again. While He has assume our mortal nature, we acknowledge Him as the God of majesty; and in the glory of the Godhead we confess Him God and Man: Who by dying destroyed our death, and by rising again restored out life—even Jesus Christ our Lord. O Son of God and Son of Man, Thou wast incarnate, didst suffer, rise, ascend for my sake; Thy departure was not a token of separation but a pledge of return; Thy word, promises, sacraments, show thy death until thou come again. That day is no horror to me, for thy death has redeemed me, thy Spirit fills me, thy word governs me. I have trusted thee and thou hast not betrayed my trust; waited for thee, and not waited in vain. Thou wilt come to raise my body from the dust, and re-unite it to my soul, by a wonderful work of infinite power and love, greater than that which bounds the oceans’ waters, ebbs and flows the tides, keep the stars in their courses, and gives life to all creatures. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

This corruptible shall put on incorruption, this moral, immortality, this natural body, a spiritual body, this dishonoured body, a glorious body, this weak body, a body of power. I triumph now in thy promises as I shall do in their performance, for the head cannot live if the members are dead; beyond the grace is resurrection, judgment, acquittal, domination. Every event and circumstance of my life will be dealt with—the sins of my youth, my secret sins, the sins of abusing thee, of disobeying thy words, the sins of neglecting ministers’ admonitions, the sins of violating my conscience—all will be judged; and after judgment, peace and rest, life and service, employment and enjoyment, for thine elect. O God, keep me in this faith, and ever looking for Christ’s return. I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of people that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. Anything we can conceive, through God we can achieve. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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A Well-Written Life is Almost as Rare as a Well-Spent One!

January 10, 2020 4:52 am

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I Used to think Love was Something I Could Take or Leave Alone but Now I Could Not do without My Supply!

January 5, 2020 4:28 am

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new end. We should be lenient in our judgment, because often the mistakes of others would have been ours had we had the opportunity to make them. What is food to one being is bitter poison to others. Every negative development in a person is to be understood as the result of damaging influences in early childhood. This has led sometimes to irrational self-accusation on the part of parents who feel guilty for every undesirable or pathological trait that appears in a child after birth, and to a tendency of people in analysis to put the blame for all their trouble on their parents, and to avoid confronting themselves with the problem of their own responsibility. Good intentions mean noting if they cover up the unconscious intentions; “honest” dishonesty demonstrates that it is not enough to have “meant” well consciously. Forces operate in beings of which one is not aware and rationalization protects one from awareness; unconscious forces are integrated in a system to which we call character. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Character syndromes are rooted and nourished in the particular forms of relatedness of the individual to the outside World and oneself; furthermore, inasmuch as the social group shares a common character structure (“social character”) the socioeconomic conditions shared by all members of a group mold the social character. That is where the saying, “birds of a feather flock together” comes from. Love, tenderness, sadism, masochism, ambition, curiosity, anxiety, rivalry—these and many other drives are no longer each attributed to a special instinct, but to the influence of the environment (essentially the significant persons in early childhood) via the psyche. The description given thus far suggest that character determines, the character trait, whether loving or destroying, drives a person to behave in a certain way, and the person is acting according to one’s character feels satisfied. Indeed, the character traits tells us how a person would like to behave. However, we must add an important qualification: if one could. The conflict between what we would like to do and the demands of self-interest remains crucial. We cannot always behave as we are driven to by our passions, because we have to modify our behavior to some extent in order to remain alive. The average person tries to find a compromise between what one’s character would make one want to do and what one must do in order not to suffer more or less harmful consequences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The degree to which a person follows the dictates of self-preservation (ego interest) varies, of course. At one extreme the weight of the ego interest is zero; this holds true for the martyr and a certain type person who targets and terminates prominent people. At the other extreme is the opportunist for who self-interest includes everything that could make one more successful, popular, or comfortable. Between these two extremes all people can be arranged, characterized by a specific blend of self-interest and character-rooted passions. How much a person represses one’s passionate desires depends not only on factors within oneself but on the situations; if the situation changes, repressed desires become conscious and are acted out. This holds true, for instance, for the person with a sadistic-masochistic character. Everybody knows the type of person who is submissive to one’s boss and sadistically domineering to one’s wife and children. Another case in point is the change that occurs in character when the total social situation changes. The sadistic character who may have posed as a meek or even friendly individual may become a fiend in a terroristic society in which sadism is valued rather than deplored. Another may suppress sadistic behavior in all visible actions, while showing it in a subtle expression of the face or in seemingly harmless and marginal remarks. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Repression of character traits also occurs with regard to the most noble impulses. In spite of the fact that the teachings of Jesus are still part of our moral ideology, a being acting in accordance with them is generally considered a fool or a neurotic; hence many people still rationalize their generous impulses as being motivated by self-interests. These considerations show that the motivating power of character traits is influenced by self-interest in varying degrees. They imply that character constitutes the main motivation of human behavior, but restricted and modified by the demands of self-interest under varying conditions. Here is possessed the fundamental difference between behaviorism and psychoanalytic characterology. Conditioning works through its appeal to self-interest, such as the desire for food, security, praise, avoidance of pain. In animals, self-interest proves to be so strong that by repeated and optimally spaced reinforcements that interest for self-preservation proves to be stronger than other instincts like pleasures of the flesh or aggression. Humans of course also behave in accordance with one’s self-interest; but not always, and not necessarily so. One often acts according to one’s passions, one’s meanest and one’s noblest, and is often willing—and able—to risk one’s self-interest, one’s fortune, one’s freedom, and one’s life in the pursuit of love, truth, and integrity—or for hate, greed, sadism, and destructiveness. In this very difference is possessed the reason conditioning cannot be a sufficient explanation for human behavior. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

The discovery of unconscious processes and of the dynamic concept of character were radical because they went to the roots of human behavior; they were disquieting because nobody can hide any longer behind one’s good intentions; they were dangerous, because if everybody were to know what one could know about oneself and others, society would be shaken to its very foundations. Psychoanalysts is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one’s subjective needs and expectations (transference), of character, and of conflicts between passionate strivings embodied in character traits and the demands for self-preservation. Thus far, feelings of inferiority have nothing to do with any factual inferiority, but have been discussed only as the effects of a tendency to recoil from competition. Do they then have nothing to do with existing shortcomings, with a realization of actual flaws? They are in fact the result of both actual and imagined inadequacies: feelings of inferiority are a combination of anxiety-motivated belittling tendencies and a realization of existing defects. As I have emphasized several times, we cannot ultimately fool ourselves, though we may be successful in shutting certain impulses out of awareness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

And therefore a neurotic person of the character we have been discussing will know, deep down, that one has anti-social tendencies which one must conceal, that one is far from genuine in one’s attitudes, that one’s pretenses are quite different from the undercurrents below the surface. One’s registering of all these discrepancies is an important cause for one’s feelings of inferiority, even though one never recognizes clearly the source of the discrepancies because they arise from repressed drives. Not recognizing their source, one gives to oneself reasons for feeling inferior which are rarely the real reasons, but only a renationalization. There is another reason why one feels that one’s inferiority feelings are the direct expression of an existing deficiency. On the basis of one’s ambition one has built up fantastic notions of one’s own value and importance. One cannot help measuring one’s realistic accomplishments against one’s notions of being a genius or a perfect human being, and in this comparison one’s real acts or one’s real possibilities appear inferior. The total result of all these recoiling tendencies is that the neurotic incurs real failures, or at most does not get on as well as one should, considering one’s opportunities and one’s gifts. Others who started with one get ahead of one, have better careers, greater success. This lagging behind does not concern only external success. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The older one becomes the more one feels the discrepancy between one’s potentialities and one’s achievements. One feels keenly that one’s gifts, whatever they may be, are going to waste, that one is blocked in the development of one’s personality, that one does not mature as time goes on. The problem of persons around the age of forty is that they become blocked in their development. However, one has not recognized the conditions leading up to such a situation, and therefore has not found any satisfactory solution. And one reacts to the realization of this discrepancy with a vague discontent, a discontent which is not masochistic but real and proportionate. A discrepancy between potentialities and achievement may be due, as I have already pointed out, to external circumstances. However, the discrepancy which develops in a neurotic person, and which is a never-failing character of neuroses, is due to one’s internal conflicts. One’s actual failures and the consequent increasing discrepancy between potentialities and achievements inevitably give even greater force to one’s existing inferiority feelings. Thus one not only believes oneself to be, but actually is inferior to what one might be. The impact of this development is all the greater since it puts the inferiority feelings on a realistic basis. Meanwhile the other discrepancy which I have mentioned—that between high-flown ambitions and the comparatively poor reality—becomes so unbearable that it demands a remedy. As such a remedy fantasy offer itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

More and more the neurotic substitutes grandiose ideas for attainable goals. The value they have for one is obvious: they cover up one’s unendurable feelings of nothingness; they allow one to feel important without entering into any competition and thus without incurring the risk of failure or success; they allow one to build up a fiction of grandeur far beyond attainable goal. It is this blind-alley value of grandiose fantasies that makes them dangerous, because the blind alley has a definite advantage for the neurotic when compared with the straightforward road. These neurotic ideas of grandeur should be distinguished from those of the normal person and those of the psychotic. Even the normal person will at times think oneself wonderful, attribute undue importance to what one is doing, or indulge in fantasies of what one might do. However, these fantasies and ideas remain decorative arabesques and one does not take them too seriously. They psychotic person with ideas of grandeur is at the other end of the line. One is convinced that one is a genius, the Emperor of Japan, Napoleon, Christ, and will reject all evidence of reality which tends to disprove one’s conviction; one will be wholly unable to comprehend any reminder that one is actually a less affluent doorman, or patient in an asylum or the object of disrespect and ridicule. If one become aware of the discrepancy at all one will decide in favor of one’s grandiose ideas, and will believe that the others do not know any better, or that they are deliberately treating one with disrespect in order to hurt one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

However, if therapy enables the individual to reorient one’s pattern of life and to reduce the tension and anxiety one feels regarding one’s personal problems, then the reactions of one’s automatic nervous system in, for example, a situation of stress, should also be altered. Essentially, if a change in life pattern and in internal tension occurred in therapy, this should show up in organismic changes in autonomic functioning, an area over which the individual has no conscious control. Individual who have experienced therapy develop a higher frustration threshold during their series of therapeutic contacts, and are able to recover their homeostatic balance more rapidly following frustration. After therapy, the individual is able to meet, with more tolerance and less disturbance, situations of emotional stress and frustration or stress was never considered in therapy; the more effective meeting of frustration is not a surface phenomenon but is evident in autonomic reactions which the individual cannot consciously control and of which one is completely unaware. Thus, it is predicted that if therapy enabled the individual to better handle stress at the psychological level, then this should be evident also in one’s autonomic functioning. Therefore, do not major in the minors. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. Remember to breathe not weak, snatched gasps, but deep riveting drafts. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Another point in which the impossibility of the theory of addition of love and justice becomes visible is the relation of love and justice to the concrete situation. Justice is expressed in principles and laws none of which can ever reach the uniqueness of the concrete situation. Every decision which is based on the abstract formulation of justice alone is essentially and inescapably unjust. Justice can be reached only if both the demand of the universal law and the demand of the particular situation are accepted and made effective for the concrete situation. However, it is love which created participation in the concrete situation. It would be completely wrong to say that love must be added to justice if the uniqueness of the situation is to be reached. For this would mean that justice as such is impossible. Actually the situation shows that justice is just because of the love which is implicit in it. However, this can e understood fully only in the context of an ontological analysis of the root meanings of both love and justice. The weight of the problems and the dangerous character of the confusions is equally obvious when we finally confront power and justice. It is in this realm of problems that the relation of law and order to justice and of all of them to power is discussed and more often confused than illuminated. The first questions is: Who gives the law in which justice is supposed to be expressed? #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

To give a law is the basic manifestation of power. However, if a group which has power gives laws, how are they related to justice? Are they not simply the expression of the will to power of this group? The Marxist theory of the State asserts that the laws of the State are tools which give social control to a ruling group. The origin of its power may be military invasion or it may be socioeconomic stratification. In both cases justice is possible only if the State has withered away and has been replaced by an administration without political power. The justice of the ruling class is injustice and, if defended, ideology. The laws it gives preserve a social order, and as long as there is no alternative social order, the laws of the ruling classes are better than chaos. The more cynical representatives of this theory interpret justice exclusively as a function of power and in no way as its judge. They accept the Marxist analysis without the Marxist expectation, and reduce justice completely to a function of power. In reaction against this removal of justice as an ultimate principle a theory has been developed which tries to separate justice from power and completely and to establish it as a self-contained system of valid judgements. Justice is an absolute, without any relation to structures of power. The absolute law, derived from the principles of the natural or rational law, does not express wat is, but it demands what should be. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Irrespective of power it commands and expects obedience because of its intrinsic validity. It does not express but it judges power. The contrast of these two theories about the relation of power to justice reveals the difficulty of the problem and the necessity of an ontological research into the rot meanings of power and justice. As announced before, I have led you into a jungle of problems and confusions, and, at every point, I have indicated the way out; namely, the ontological analysis of love, power, and justice. When the God we love chose to reveal Himself, He did so in creation itself and in more specific, special ways—most importantly, in the Scriptures and Jesus Christ. When we affirm that the Bible is a revelation from God, we do not simply assert that God as a person is known in and through it. We also mean that God has revealed understandable, objectively true propositions. The Lord’s Word is not only practically useful, it is also theoretically true (John 17.17). God has revealed truth to us and not just Himself. This truth is addressed to our minds and requires an intellectual grasp to understand and then apply. Because of the Bible’s nature, serious study is needed to grasp what it says. Of course, the Scripture contains easily grasped portions that are fairly straightforward. However, some of it is very difficult, intellectually speaking. In fact, Peter one said that some of Paul’s writings were intellectually challenging, hard to understand, and easily distorted (that is, uneducated in Christian theology) and unstable people (2 Peter 3.16). #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

The more a person develops the mind and the understanding of hermeneutics (the science of interpreting the Scriptures), the more one will be able to understand the meaning and significance of the Scriptures. Unfortunately, many today apparently think that hard intellectual work is not needed to understand God’s propositional revelation to us. Instead, they believe that the Holy spirit will simply make know the meaning of a text if it is implored to do so. Tragically, this represents a misunderstanding of the Spirit’s role in understanding the Scriptures. In my view, the Spirit does not help the believer understand the meaning of Scripture. Rather, He speaks to the believer’s soul, convicting, comforting, opening up applications of His truths through His promptings. On the evening Christ gave Himself up for us, John 17 tells us, He prayed in succession for Himself, for His twelve disciples, and for all of us who would later believe. When He finished praying for His future bride, He went to the cross. Then came Hos death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His enthronement at the right hand of the Father, where He constantly makes intercession for us. Thus we understand that giving ourselves for our brides involves prayerful intercession. Men, do you pray for your wives with something more than, “Bless good Meghan in all she does”? If not, you are sinning against her and against God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Most Christian men who claim to love their wives never offer more than a perfunctory nod to their wives’ needs before God. Men, you ought to have a list of her needs, spoken and unspoken, which you passionately hold up to God out of love for her. Praying is the material work of a Christian husband! The most basic command is, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave up himself for her.” Men, we are divinely called to die for our brides, to take on her sufferings as our own, and to make intercession for her. You are supposed to be her ride or die man. When it is said that the readiness of the seeker determines the appearance of the master, this applies to the first fundamental initiation of one’s spiritual life. It does not mean that a master will come into one’s own town and seek one out, but that one will come into one’s life. And this may be brought about in various ways—as by the seeker oneself being led, either by Worldly circumstances or by one’s own seeking, out of one’s own town to the town or country where the master is living. The location of one’s spiritual guide will in part be the accident of one’s own geographical situation, for one will obviously be limited in one’s selection to possibilities and reputations in one’s own country or nation or race. The sheer physical and financial difficulties of traveling throughout the World—not to mention the obstacles of personal circumstance, family obligations, and ignorance of where to search and whom to approach in foreign lands, combine to set this limitation upon one’s inquiry and hence upon one’s opportunity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

It is foolish to seek holiness geographically or holy beings in particular places. I have found that one being may live in a Himalayan abode and be a scoundrel and another being may live in a Bowery slum and be a saint. Wherever the live, people always carry their own thoughts and their own selves with them. The Soul, which is the object of our quest, is within us. The Master, who is to guide us upon our quest, will appear whenever we are ready for one and wherever we happen to live—or else we will be led to one. There are beings in the New World and the Old World, not less wise and noble than each other. If we have not met them, “the fault, Dear Brutus is…in ourselves,” primarily in our unworthiness, and secondarily in our incapacity to recognize what is beneath the surface. All speculation upon the motives and the methods of the illuminate will avail little. The light by which one works is denied to ordinary beings. We should not try to bind one down to qualities which fit only those who grope in the dark or move in twilight. We should trust where we cannot see and wait patiently for the day of revilement, when we will find all made clear and all riddle solved to our satisfaction. It is an old truism in the Old World that it takes an adept to understand an adept, but the New World will have to learn this truth by bitter experiences with pseudo-adepts. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

There are many signs of one’s spiritual status in the dignity and composure of one’s bearing, the deliberateness and truthfulness of one’s speech, and the impressiveness of one’s tension-free face. Helter Skelter is a phrase taken from a song performed by a well-known rock music group. Charles Manson used it to characterize that state of confusion in which he kept his followers, and himself as well. In the state of helter-skelter nothing makes sense, and everything makes as much sense as anything else. Manson was able to use this ideology to brainwash his followers and make them believe they were not responsible for their actions and they were not doing anything wrong when the ended the life of an individual. He taught them they if harm came to a person by means of his follower’s hands, then it was meant to be, it was in divine order and they did no really harm the individual and the individual was still alive on a different plane of existence. Aldous Huxley, in one of his retrospective writings, commented on how, among the associates of his youth, the endless talk of meaninglessness—the meaninglessness of life and therefore of everything in it—was merely an excuse to permit them to do whatever they wanted. Their life was organized (or, more properly, disorganized) around their feelings and wayward thoughts, with their will in two. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

However, resolute action for the good requires that things make sense. You would not want someone caught up in helter-skelter to work on your lawn mower, do your gastrointestinal examination, nor work on your computer. Life makes sense only if you understand its basic components and how they interrelate to form the whole. Evil, on the other hand, thrives on confusion. God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14.33). Frankly, our visible Christian World is not too far from helter-skelter with reference to its understanding of the makeup of the person and therefore of the spiritual life and spiritual formation. We need to access the fullness of biblical teachings on these matters. We suffer far too much from the influence of a surrounding culture that thrives on confusions. (And therefore its denial that human beings have a nature.) This may seem like a harsh thing to say about our “Christian World,” and I am sorry to day it; but the issues here are too important to mince words. Accordingly, much of what we do in Christian circles with very good intentions—hoping, we say, to see steady, significant growth in Christlikeness—simply makes no sense and lead nowhere so far as substantive spiritual formation is concerned. What a brutal thing to say! However, we need to recognize this, or show why it is not the case. I hope we have taken significant first steps toward a clarity that can serve as a foundation for the effectual practice of Christian spiritual formation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. “As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgression from us,” reports Psalm 103.12. How far is the East from the West? If you start due north at any point on Earth, you would eventually cross over the North Pole and start going south, but that is not true when you go East or West. If you start West and continue in that direction you will always be going West. North and South meet at the North Pole, but East and West never meet. In a sense, they are an infinite distance apart. So when God says He removes our transgressions from us as far as the East is from the West, He is saying they have been removed an infinite distance from us. However, how can we get a handle on this rather abstract truth in such a way that it becomes meaningful in our lives? When God uses this metaphorical expression describing the extent of His forgiveness of our sin, He is saying His forgiveness is total, complete, and unconditional. God is saying He is not keeping score with regard to our sins. “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities,” reports Psalm 103.10. Yes, God actually says that! I know it seems too good to be true. I confess I almost hesitate to write those words because they are so foreign to our innate concepts of reward and punishment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

However, those gracious words are right in the Bible, and they are God’s words. How can God possibly do this? How can He so completely disregard our transgressions as to say He removes them an infinite distance from us? The answer is by His grace through Jesus Christ. God laid our sins on Christ and He bore the penalty we should have borne. Because of Christ’s death in our place, God’s justice is now completely satisfied. God can now, without violating His justice or His moral law, forgive us freely, completely and absolutely. He can now extend His grace to us; He can show favor to those who, in themselves, deserve only wrath. O Loving Wisdom of the living God, O living everlasting Word and everlasting Power of God the eternal Father—for everlasting is Thy birth, Who art the everlasting Son of God the everlasting Father, and art God; without Whom is nothing, by Whom are all things; in Whom consisteth whatever is; Who art God above us, and Man for our sakes; for Thou hast willed for us to be what we are: grant us what Thou hast promised; give to us, although unworthy, what Thou hast offered to all alike; that is, that Thy Passion may be our deliverance, and Thy Death our life, and Thy cross our redemption, and Thy Wound our healing; that being crucified with Thee, we may by Thy gift be lifted up on high to Thy Father, with Whom in bliss Thou livest and reignest. “And it is by faith that my fathers have obtained the promise that these things should come unto their brethren through the Gentiles; therefore the Lord hath commanded me, yea, even Jesus Christ,” reports Ether 12.22. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

O Source of All Good, what shall I render to three for the gift of gifts, then own dear Son, begotten, not created, my redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute, his self-emptying incomprehensible, his infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp. Herein is wonder of wonders: he came below to rise me above, was born like me that I might become like him. Herein is love; when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace, to raise me to himself. Herein is power; when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart he untied them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created. Herein is wisdom; when I was undone, with no will to return to him, and no intellect to devise recovery, he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost as man to die my death, to shed satisfying blood on my behalf, to work out a perfect righteousness for me. O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, and enlarge my mind; let me hear good tidings of great joy, and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore, my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose, my eyes uplifted to reconcile Father; place me with ox, mule, camel, goat, to look with them upon my redeemer’s face, and in him account myself delivered from sin; let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart, embrace him with undying faith, exulting that he is mine and I am his. In him thou hast given me so much that Heaven can give no more. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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But I Never Forget Dear Your Sweet Memory—If You Really Love Me be Honest with Me!

December 25, 2019 2:13 am

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. However, if you must be without one, be without the strategy. Patience is a virtue that carries a lot of wait. Therefore, be bold in what you stand for and careful in what you fall for. The need for superiority in the case of he detached person has certain superiority in the case of the detached person has certain specific features. Abhorring competitive struggle, one does not want to excel realistically through consistent effort. One feels rather that the treasures withing one should be recognized without any effort on one’s part; one hidden greatness should be felt without one’s having to make a move. In one’s dreams, for instance, one may picture stores of treasure hidden away in some remote village which connoisseurs come from far to see. Like all notions of superiority this contains an element of reality. The hidden treasure symbolizes one’s intellectual and emotional life which one guards within the magic circle. Another way one’s sense of superiority express itself is in one’s feeling of one’s own uniqueness. This is a direct outgrowth of one’s wanting to feel separate and distinct from others. One may liken oneself to a tree standing alone on a hilltop, while the trees in the forest below are stunted by those about them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Where the compliant type looks at one’s fellow humans with the silent question, “Will he or she like me?”—and the aggressive type wants to know, “How strong an adversary is he or she?” or “Can one be useful to me?”—the detached person’s first concern is, “Will he or she interfere with me?” Will one want to influence me or will one leave me alone?” The scene in which Peer Gynt meets the buttonmolder is a perfect symbolic representation of the terror the detached person feels at being thrown with others. One’s own room in hell would be all right, but to be tossed into a melting pot, to be molded or adapted to others, is a horrifying thought. One feels oneself akin to a rare Persian rug, unique in its pattern and combination of colors, forever unalterable. One takes extraordinary pride in having kept free of the leveling influences of environment and is determined to keep on doing so. In cherishing one’s unchangeableness one raises the rigidity inherent in all neuroses to the dignity of a sacred principle. Willing and even eager to elaborate one’s own pattern, to give it greater purity and lucidity, one insists that nothing extrinsic be injected. In all its simplicity and inadequacy the Peer Gynt maxim stands: “To thyself be enough.” The emotional life of the detached person does not follow as strict a patter as that of the other types detached. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Individual variations are greater in one’s case, chiefly because in contradistinction to the other two, whose predominant trends are directed toward beneficial goals—affection, intimacy, love in the one; survival, domination, success in the other—one’s goals are negative: one wants not to be involved, not to need anybody, not to allow others to intrude on or influence one. Hence the emotional picture would be dependent on the particular desires that have developed or been allowed to stay alive within this negative framework, and only a limited number of tendencies intrinsic to detachment as such can be formulated. There is a general tendency to suppress all feeling, even to deny its existence. I should like to quote here a passage from an unpublished novel of the poet Anna Maria Armi, because it succinctly expresses not only this tendency but also other typical attitudes of the detached person. The main character, reminiscing about one’s adolescence, says: “I could visualize a strong physical tie (as I had with my father) and a strong spiritual tie (as I had with my heroes), but I could not see where or how feeling came into it; feelings simply did not exist—people lied about that as about so many other things. B. was horrified. ‘But how do you explain sacrifice?’ she said. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

“For a moment I was astounded by the truth in her remark; then I decided that sacrifice was just another of lies, and when it was not a lie it was either a physical or spiritual act. I dreamed at that time of living alone, of never marrying, of becoming strong and peaceful without talking too much, without asking for help. I wanted to work on myself, to be freer and freer, to give up dreams in order to see and live clearly. I thought morals had no meaning; being good or bad made no difference as long as you were absolutely true. The great sin was to look for sympathy or to expect help. Souls seemed to me temples that had to be guarded, and inside them there were always strange ceremonies going on, known only to their priests, their custodians.” The rejection of feeling pertains primarily to feelings toward other people and applies to both love and hate. It is a logical consequence of the need to keep at an emotional distance from others, in that strong love or hate, consciously experienced, would bring one either close to others or into conflict with them. The term, distance machinery, is appropriate here. It does not necessarily follow that feeling will be suppressed in areas outside human relationships and become active in the realm of books, animals, nature, art, food, and so on. However, there is considerable danger in this. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

For a person capable of deep and passionate emotion it may be impossible to suppress only one sector of one’s feelings—and that the most crucial—without going the whole length of suppressing feeling altogether. This is speculative reasoning, but certainly the following is true. Artists of the detached type, who have demonstrated in their creative periods that they can not only feel deeply but also give expression to it, have often gone through periods, usually in adolescence, of either complete emotional numbness or of vigorous denial of all feeling—as in the passage quoted. The creative periods seem to occur when, following some disastrous attempts at close relationships, they have either deliberately or spontaneously adapted their lives to detachment—that is, when they have consciously or unconsciously determined to keep at a distance from others, or have become resigned to a kind of isolated living. The fact that now, at a safe distance from others, they can release and express a host of feelings not directly connected with human relationships permits the interpretation that early denial of all feelings was necessary to the achievement of their detachment. Another reason why the suppression of feeling may go beyond the sphere of human relationships has already been suggested in our discussion of self-sufficiency. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Any desire, interest, or enjoyment that might make the detached person dependent upon others is viewed as treachery from within and may be checked on that account. It is as if every situation had to be carefully tested from the standpoint of a possible loss of freedom before feeling could be allowed full play. Any threat of dependence will cause one to withdraw emotionally. However, when one finds a situation quite safe in this regard one can enjoy it to the full. Profound emotional experience is possible under these conditions. The lurking fear of either becoming too attached to a pleasure or of its infringing upon one’s freedom indirectly will sometimes make one verge on the ascetic. However, it is an asceticism of its own kind—not oriented toward self-denial or self-torture. We might rather call it a self-discipline which—accepting the premises—is not lacking in wisdom. It is of great important to physic balance that there be areas accessible to spontaneous emotional experience. Creative abilities, for instance, may be a kind of salvation. If their expression has been inhibited, and if then through analysis or some other experience it is liberated, the beneficent effect upon the detached person can be so great as to make it look like a miraculous cure. Caution is in order in evaluating such cures. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

In the first place it would be a mistake to make any generalization about their occurrence: what may mean salvation foe a detached person will not necessarily have any such meaning for others. And even for one it is not strictly a “cure” in the sense of a radical change in neurotic fundamentals. It merely allows one a more satisfactory and less disturbed way of living. The more the emotions are checked, the more likely it is that emphasis will be placed upon intelligence. The expectation then will be that everything can be solved by sheer power of reasoning, as if mere knowledge of one’s own problems would be sufficient to cure them. Or as if reasoning alone could cure all the troubles of the World! Acceptant of the person by loving individuals as a unique being rather than as an object, the more the individual will come to perceive oneself as a person of value rather than a material object to be used. The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour. In greater matters people show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small matters, as they are. Nearly all people can stand adversity, but if you want to test a person’s character, give one power. The foundations of character are built not by lecture, but by bricks of good example, laid day by day. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

In reviewing one’s own moral career, the stigmatized individual may single out and retrospectively elaborate experiences which serve for one to account for one’s coming to the beliefs and practices that one now has regarding one’s own kind and normals. A life event can thus have a double bearing on moral career, first as immediate objective grounds for an actual turning point, and later (and easier to demonstrate) as a means of accounting for a position currently taken. One experience often selected for this latter purpose is that through which the newly stigmatized individual learns that full-fledged members of the group are quite like ordinary human beings. A physically disabled man provides a statement: “If I had to choose one group of experiences that finally convinced me of the importance of this problem [of self-image] and that I had to fight my own battles of identification, it would be the incidents that made me realize with my heart that people who have physical limitations can be identified with characteristics other than their physical disability. I managed to see that people who have a physical disability could be comely, charming, well-built, masculine, neatly dressed, beautiful, ugly, lovely, stupid, brilliant—just like all other people, and I discovered that I was able to hate or love someone with a physical limitation in spite of one’s disability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

It may be added that in looking back to the occasion of discovering that persons with one’s stigma are human beings like everyone else, the individual may bring to bear a later occasion when one’s pre-stigma friends imputed un-humanness to those one had by then learned to see as full-fledged persons like oneself. Thus, in reviewing one’s experience as a circus worker, a young girl sees first that she had learned her fellow-workers are not freaks, and send that her pre-circus friends fear for her having to travel in a bus along with other members of the troupe. Another turning point—retrospectively if not originally—is the isolating, incapacitating experience, often a period of hospitalization, which comes later to be seen as the time when the individual was able to think through one’s problem, learn about oneself, sort out one’s situation, and arrive at a new understanding of what is important and work seeking in life. It should be added that not only are personal experiences retrospectively identified as turning points, but experiences once removed may be employed in this way. It should be added that not only are personal experiences retrospectively identified as turning points, but experiences once removed may be employed in this way. Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it piece by piece—by thought, choice, courage, and determination. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

There is nothing ambiguous about “abundance” and “superfluity,” even though there is little difference in their root meanings. “Abundance” comes to us from the Latin word una (wave), which English still retains in its basic meaning in words like “undulate” and “undulant.” Abundance, too, means an “overflowing,” yet it has acquired an altogether beneficial meaning in our language. An abundant land provides us with more than just the basic necessities. It is a land of plenty what the Old Testament describes as “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Or suppose you have been to a party where there was no scarcity of refreshments. You might say, “The wine flowed in abundance,” and you would mean something beneficial by that. There was no shortage of good things, no rationing, no need to worry about overdoing today and going without tomorrow. However, if we want to suggest the negative aspects of an “overflowing,” the word that some to mind is “superfluous.” That word, like “affluent,” goes back to the Latin verb fluere, and a superfluity is therefore a “super-flowing.” Here, however, the overflow is seen in a strictly negative light. It is pointless, wasteful. If you say to someone, “Your presence here is superfluous,” you are really saying, “Why do you not go away?” You are not saying, “How nice that you are here,” which is what you do mean, more of less, if you speak of wine being present in abundance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

So whenever we speak of affluence, we have to ask ourselves whether we mean a beneficial, enlivening abundance or a negative, deadening superfluity. Turning now to “ennui,” we find that its basic meaning is stronger than our current definition of boredom or a feeling of dissatisfaction and weariness. Ennui and the English word “annoy” both derive from the Latin inodiare, “to make loathsome or hateful.” We might ask ourselves now, taking our clues from these words we have just examined, whether superfluity does not lead to boredom, disgust, and hatred. If so, then we should ask ourselves some hard questions about our affluent society. By “we” I mean modern industrial society as it has developed in the United States of America, Canada, and Western Europe. Do we live in affluence? Who in our society lives in affluence, and what kind of affluence is it, an affluence of abundance or an affluence of superfluity? To put the question more simply yet: Is it good affluence or bad affluence? Does affluence necessarily produce ennui? And what would a good, abundant, ebullient kind of affluence look like, and affluence that does not produce ennui? There are two possibilities, two approaches to the psychological study of the human psyche. At the moment academic psychology studies human beings primarily from the standpoint of behaviorism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Behaviorism is limited exclusively to what can be directly seen and observed, to what is visible and what can therefore be measured and weighed, for whatever cannot be directly seen and observed cannot be measures or weighted either, at least not with sufficient precision. Depth psychology, the psychoanalytical method, proceeds differently. It has different goals. It does not limit its study of human actions and behavior solely to what can be seen. It inquires instead into the nature of behavior, into the motives underlying behavior. You can describe, for instance, a person’s smile. That is an action that can be photographed, that can be described in terms of the musculature of the face, and so on. However, you know very well, that there are differences among the smile of a salesgirl in a shop, the smile of someone who is antagonistic toward you but wants to hide one’s antagonism, and the smile of a friend who is happy to see you. You are able to distinguish among hundreds of kinds of smiles that take rise from different psychic states. They are all smiles, but the things they express can be Worlds apart. No machine can measure or even perceive those differences. Only a human being who is not a machine—you, for example—can do that. You observe not only with your mind but also, if I may be allowed such an old-fashioned expression, with your heart. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Your whole being comprehends what transpires before it. You can sense what kind of smile you are seeing. And if you cannot sense things like that, then you will be in for a lot of disappointments in your life. Or take a very different kind of behavior: the way someone eats. All right, so someone eats. However, how does one eat? One person wolfs one’s food down. Another person’s manner at table reveals that one is pedantic and attaches great importance to doing things in an orderly fashion and cleaning up one’s plate. Still another eats without haste, without greediness. One enjoys one’s food. One simply eats and takes pleasure in eating. Or take still another example. Someone bellows and turns red in the face. You conclude one is angry. Surely one is angry. However, then you take a little closer look at one and ask yourself what it is the person is feeling (perhaps you know one fairly well), and suddenly you realize that he or she is afraid. One is frightened, and one’s rage is simply a reaction to one’s own fear. And then you may look even deeper still and realize that this is a human being who feels thoroughly helpless and powerless, someone who is afraid of everything, of life itself. So you have made three observations: that one is angry, that one is afraid, and that one feels a profound sense of helplessness. All three observations are correct. However, they relate to different levels of one’s psychic structure. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

The observation that takes on one’s sense of powerlessness is the one that registers most profoundly what is going on inside one. The observation that takes in nothing but rage is the most superficial. In other words, if you react by flying into a rage as well and see nothing but an angry person in the other individual, then you have failed to see one at all. However, if you can look being the façade of the angry person and see the frightened one, the one who feels helpless, then you will approach one differently, and it may happen that one’s anger will subside because one no longer feels threatened. From a psychoanalytical point of view, what interests us is not human behavior viewed from the outside but rather what motivates a person has, what one’s intentions are, whether one is conscious of them or not. We are interested in the quality of one’s behavior. The analyst listens with a third ear. Or, one reads between the lines. One sees not only what is offered one directly but perceives something more in what is offered and observable. One sees into the heart of the personality whose every action is merely an expression, a manifestation, yet one that is always colored by the entire personality. Every last bit of behavior is a gesture originating in one specific human individual and in no other, and that is why there are no two human actions that are identical, any more than there are two identical human beings. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

They may resemble each other; they may be related; but they are never the same. There are no two people who raise a hand in exactly the same way, who walk the same way, who tilt their heads in the same way. That is why you can sometimes recognize a person by one’s gait even though you have not seen one’s face. A gait can be as characteristic for a person as one’s face, sometimes even more so, for it is more difficult to alter a gait than the expression of the face. We can lie with our faces. That is a capability we have that animals do not. It is more difficult to lie with one’s body, though that too can be learned. It is not that some of us become sinful because of an unfortunate childhood environment, while others are blessed with a highly moral upbringing. Rather we are all born sinners with a corrupt nature, a natural inclination to go out own way. As David wrote, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me,” reports Psalm 51.5. Here is an amazing statement from David that he was sinful while still in his mother’s womb, even during the period of pregnancy when as yet he had performed no actions, either good or bad. Because of Adam’s rebellion, we are all born with a sinful perverse nature, an inclination to go our own way. Whether it is the way of the decent individual or the way of the obvious transgressor, it makes no difference. We were all born in a state of rebellion against God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

The Bible says we have all sinned, and almost everyone would agree with the statement. Descriptive synonyms for sin—rebellion, despising, defying—and God takes a far more serious view of sin than the being on the street or even most Christians. Sin, in the final analysis, is rebellion against the sovereign Creator, Ruler, and Judge of the Universe. It resists the rightful prerogative of a sovereign Ruler to command obedience from His subjects. It says to an absolutely holy and righteous God that His moral laws, which are a reflection of His own nature, are not worthy of our wholehearted obedience. Sin is not only a series of actions, it is also an attitude that ignores the law of God. However, it is even more than a rebellious attitude. Sin is a state of heart, a condition of our inmost being. It is a state of corruption, of vileness, yes, even of filthiness in God’s sight. This view of sin as corrupt, vileness, and filth is symbolically when Joshua the high priest—the person holding the highest religious office in Israel is shown dressed in filthy clothes, a pictorial representation of both his sins and the sins of the people he represented as high priest. The filthiness of his garments depicts not the guilt of his sin but its pollution. Like Joshua, all of us are, in a spiritual sense, dressed in filthy clothes. We are not justly guilty before God; we are also corrupted in our natures, polluted and vile before Him. We need forgiveness and cleansing. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

For this reason the Bible never speaks of God’s grace as simply making up our deficiencies—as if salvation consists in so much good works (even a variable amount) plus so much of God’s grace. Rather the Bible speaks of “a God who justifies the wicked,” who is found by those who do not seek Him, who reveals Himself to those who do not ask for Him, reports Romans 4.5, 10.20. However, the seeker should resolve to appeal directly by constant aspiration and prayer to one’s own higher self, in the knowledge that it alone can help one if one is to work without a teacher. On the other hand, if one’s soul has decreed that one is to have a guide, God will bring before one the mental image or intuitive thought of the Master. If this happens, one will not need to seek out the Master’s physical person; the inner picture brings results. Cicero wrote nearly two thousand years ago that the ideally perfect person is nowhere to be found at all. Who, except wishful thinkers and pious sentimentalists, can gainsay him? Those who seek absolute perfection, whether in someone else or for themselves, seek what is unattainable in this World. It is not possible to find human perfection. Travel, contact, and experience with them reveal that not one is always infallible, not one failed to commit errors of judgment. We do not just need God’s grace to make up for our deficiencies; we need His grace to provide a remedy for our guilt, a cleansing for out pollution. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

We need God’s grace to provide a satisfaction of His justice, to cancel a debt we cannot pay. It may seem that I am belaboring the point of our guilt and vileness before God. However, we can never rightly understand God’s grace until we understand our plight as those who need His grace. The first and possibly most fundamental characteristic of divine grace is that it presupposes sin and guilt. Grace has meaning only when beings are seen as fallen, unworthy of salvation, and liable to eternal wrath. Grace does not contemplate sinners merely as undeserving but as ill-deserving. It is not simply that we do not deserve hell. The discipline of the mind is, of course, the greatest of challenges. And Scripture regularly presents its discipline as a discipline of the eyes. Humans, if you are a television-watching, fake news consuming couch bacon cheese burger with medium fries and a diet coke and a slice of cherry pie, it is impossible for you to maintain a pure mind. In one week you will watch more murders, adulteries, and perversions than our grandfathers read about in their entire lives. Things are getting so bad that people are even acting out scripts in their daily lives because they have become slaves to sin and inequity. “Can a human scoop fire into one’s lap without one’s clothes being burned?” reports Proverbs 6.27. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

This also means treating all women with dignity—looking at them respectfully. If their dress or demeanor is distracting, look them in the eyes, and nowhere else, and get away as quickly as you can! The mind also encompasses the tongue. “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,” reports Matthew 12.34. “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immortality, or any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving,” reports Ephesians 5.3. There must be no sexual humor, urbane vulgarities, and coarseness, as so many Christians are so prone to do to prove they are not “slow” or “out of it.” The human self requires rootedness in others. This is primarily an ontological matter—a matter of being what we are. It is not just a moral matter, a matter of what ought to be. And the moral aspect of it grows out of the ontological. The most fundamental “other” for the human is, of course, God himself. God is the ultimate social fact for the human being. That is why people in general think more often about God than about any other thing, even pleasures of the flesh and death. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

However, because all are to be rooted in God—and really are, whether they want it or not—our ties to one another cannot be isolated from our shared relationship to God, nor our relationship to him from our ties to one another. Our relations to others cannot be right unless we see those others in their relation to God. Though others God comes to us and we only really find others when we see them in God. When scripture speaks of God’s arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely operative power. Hence, it is plain that nothing false can ever underlie the literal sense of Holy Writ. Appetite is the power of receiving and giving. The appetite that is in all things to receive and to give part of God’s plan. Things receive what is attractive and reject what is repugnant, and the preference of the receiver determines the action of the giver. Giving and receiving, furthermore, are motions the one motion affecting preservation and the other multiplication. Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. O God, beneath Whose eyes every heart trembles, and all consciences are afraid; be merciful to the groanings of all, and heal the wounds of all; that as not one of us is free from fault, so not one may be shut out from pardon; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. He hath confounded mine enemies, unto the causing of them to quake before me,” reports 2 Nephi 4.21-22. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Almighty and merciful God, Who willest not the souls of sinners to perish, but their faults; restrain the anger which we deserve, and pour our upon us the clemency which we entreat, that through Thy mercy we may pass from mourning into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O fountain of all good, destroy in me every lofty thought, break pride to pieces and scatter it to the winds, annihilate each clinging shred of self-righteousness, implant in me true lowliness of spirit, abase me to self-loathing and self-abhorrence, open in me a fount of penitential tears, break me, then bind me up; thus will my heart be a prepared dwelling for my God; then can the Father take up his abode in me, then can the blessed Jesus come with healing in his touch, then can the Holy Spirit descend in sanctifying grace; O Holy Trinity, three Persons and one God, inhabit me, a temple consecrated to thy glory. When thou art present, evil cannot abide; in thy fellowship is fullness of joy, beneath thy smile is peace of conscience, by thy side no fears disturb, no apprehensions banish rest of mind, with thee my heart shall bloom with fragrance; make me meet, through repentance, for thine indwelling. Nothing is too great for thee to do, nothing is too good for thee to give. Infinite is thy might, boundless thy love, limitless thy grace, glorious thy saving name. Let Angels sing for sinners repenting, prodigals restored backsliders reclaimed, Satan’s captives released, blind eyes opened, broken hearts bound up, the despondent cheered, the self-righteous stripped, the formalist driven from a refuge of lies, the ignorant enlightened, and saints built up in their holy faith. I ask great things of a great God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Rancho Cordova, CA |

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One Must be Able to Turn to the Soul with Clear Confidence that there they Can Freely Seek the Whole Unvarnished and Uncompromised Truth!

November 25, 2019 10:02 pm

Anything short of God is not rational, anything more than God is not possible. If the human mind be in truth the triadic structure of impression, reflection, and reaction, we think the outset of this dynamic has allowed access to the spirit of God, which is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the creations that purport to link humanity with the divine, the soul stands virtually alone in accomplishing this mission. We always knew humans tried to achieve the impossible, that one was a proud, confused, and stubborn being and because of that got themselves into mischief. Humans want above all to endure and prosper, to achieve immortality in some way. Because humans know they are mortal, the things they want most to deny is their mortality. Mortality is connected to the natural, terrestrial side of existence; and so beings reach beyond and away from that side. So much so that people try to deny finitude completely. However, humans not only have a fear of death, but also a fear of life. There are called twin fears. Still humans do not actually live stretched openly on a rack of cowardice and terror; if they did, they could not continue on with such apparent equanimity and thoughtlessness. Human’s fears are buried deeply by repression, which gives to everyday life its tranquil façade; only occasionally does the desperation show through, and only for some people. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. It is repression, then, that great discovery of psychoanalysis, that explains how well people can hide their basic motives even from themselves. However, people also live in a dimension of carefreeness, trust, hope, and joy which gives them a buoyancy beyond that which repression alone could give. In a general way, all educated people know what reflex action means. It means that the acts we perform are always the result of outward discharged from the nervous centres, and that these outward discharges are themselves the result of impression from the external World, carried in along one or another of our sensory nerves. The symbolic engineering of culture gives beings a new and durable life beyond that of the body. The dynamic of human misery on this planet all stems from humans trying to be other than one is, trying to deny their terrestrial nature. This is the cause of all psychic illness, sadism, and war. The mean of rational opinion, the centre of gravity of all attempts to solve the riddle of life—some falling below it by defect, some flying above it by excess, itself alone satisfying every mental need in strictly normal measure. Our gain will thus in the first instance be psychological. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

God may be called the normal object of the mind’s belief. Whether over and above this he be really the living truth is another question. If he is, it will show the structure of our mind to be in accordance with the nature of reality. Whether it be or not in such accordance is, it seems to me, one of those questions that belong to the province of personal faith to decide. Each one of us is entitled to either to doubt r to believe in the harmony between one’s faculties either to doubt or to believe in the harmony between one’s faculties and truth; and that, whether one doubt or believe, one does alike on one’s personal responsibility and risk. People so willingly give over their destiny to the state and a great leader because tit is the politician who promises to engineer the World, to raise beings above their natural destiny, and so beings put their whole true in them. The central power promised to give them unlimited immunities and prosperities. Humans have tried to avoid the natural plagues of existence by giving themselves over to structures which embody immunity power, but they only have succeeded in laying waste to themselves with the new plagues unleased by their obedience to the politicians. We describe politicians as political plague-mongers. They are the ones who lie to the people about the real possibility and launch humankind on impossible dream which take impossible tolls of real life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

The conceiving or theorizing faculty—the mind’s middle department—functions exclusively for the sake of ends that do not exist at all in the World of impression we receive by way of our senses, but are set by our emotional and practical subjectivity altogether. It is a transformer of the World of our impressions into a totally different World—the World of our conception: and the transformation is effected in the interest of our volitional nature, the definite subjective purposes, preferences, fondness for certain effects forms, orders, and not the slightest motive would remain for the brute order of our experience to be remodeled at all. But, as we have the elaborate volitional constitution we do have, the remodeling must be effected; there is no escape. The World’s contents are given to each of us in an order so foreign to our subjective interests that we can hardly by an effort of the imagination picture to ourselves what it is like. We have to break that order altogether—and by picking out from it the items which concern us, and connecting them with others far away, which we say “belong” with them, we are able to make out definite threads of sequence and tendency; to foresee particular liabilities and get ready for them; and to enjoy simplicity and harmony in place of what was chaos. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

However, once you base your whole life-striving on a desperate lie and try to implement that lie, try to make the World just the opposite of what it is, then you instrument your own undoing. You are spoiling everything for yourself, contaminating your purity and brining disease and weakness into your vitality. Then you have a mandate to launch a political campaign to make the World pure. Hardly anyone knows the names of the real benefactors of humankind, whereas every child knows that name of the generals of the political plague. Natural science is constantly drilling into human’s consciousness that fundamentally one is a lower than a worm’s belly in the Universe. The political plague-monger is constantly harping on chaos and destruction, but has no ideas how to make life easier on the people. This is thrusting people into the shadow World. The shadow is the other side. It is the expression of our own imperfection and Earthliness, the negative which is incompatible with the absolute values. The shadow becomes a dark thing in one’s own psyche, an inferiority which none the less really exists even though dimly suspected. The person wants to get away from this inferiority, naturally; one wants to jump over one’s own shadow. The most direct way of doing this is by looking for everything dark, inferior, and culpable in others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Humans are not comfortable with guilt, it strangles them, literally is the shadow that falls over their existence. The guilt-feeling is attributable to the apperception of the shadow. This guilt-feeling based on the existence of the shadow is discharged from the system in the same way both by the individual and the collective—that is to say, by the phenomenon of the projection of the shadow. The shadow, which is in conflict with the acknowledged values [for instance, the cultural façade over terrestrial being] cannot be accepted as a negative part of one’s own psyche and is therefore projected—that is, it is transferred to the outside World and experienced as an outside object. It is combated, punished, and exterminated as the alien out there instead of being dealt with as one’s own inner problem. We have the dynamic for the classic and age-old expedient for discharging the negative forces of the psyche and the guilt: scapegoating. It is precisely the split-off sense of inferiority and immoral which is projected onto the scapegoat and then destroyed symbolically with one. When people stigmatize others or hurt others for no reason all the many reasons adduced, there is one reason that goes right into the heart of mind of each person, and that is the projection of the shadow. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

The principal and indeed the only thing that is wrong with the World is humans. Given what both the stigmatized and the normal introduce into mixed social situations, it is understandable that all will not go smoothly. We are likely to attempt to carry on as though in fact one is wholly fitted one of the types of persons naturally available to us in the situation, whether this means treating one as someone better than we feel one might be or someone worse than we feel one probably is. If neither of these tacks is possible, then people may try to act as if the individual were a non-person, and not present at all as someone of whom ritual notice is to be take. One, may in turn, is likely to go along with these strategies, at least initially. In consequence, attention is furtively withdrawn from its obligatory targets, and self-consciousness and other-consciousness occurs, expressed in the pathology of interaction—uneasiness. In social situations with an individual known or perceived to have stigma, we are likely, then, to employ categorizations that do not fit, and we and the stigmatized individual is likely to become the more adept at managing them. One who always wears the mask of a friendly being must at last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which the expression itself of friendliness is not to be gained—and finally friendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over one—one is benevolent. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

We all do a certain amount of acting. However, we may act in two ways. In the first way, we try to change how we outwardly appear. The action is the body language, the put-on sneer, the posed shrug, the controlled sigh. This is surface acting. The other way is deep acting. Here, display is a natural result of working on feeling; the actor does not try to seem happy or sad but rather expresses spontaneously a real feeling that has been self-induced. In deep acting and surface acting, feelings do not erupt spontaneously or automatically. In both cases the actor has learned to intervene—either in creating the inner shape of a feeling or in shaping the outward appearance of one. In surface acting, the expression on my face or the posture of my body feels put on. It is not part of me. In deep acting, my conscious mental work—the effort to imagine a tall surgeon looming over me, for example—keeps the feeling that I conjure up from being part of myself. Thus in either method, an actor may separate what it takes to act from the idea of a central self. However, whether the separation between “me” and my face or between “me” and my feeling counts as estrangement depends on something else—the outer context. In the World of the theater, it is an honorable art to make maximum use of the resources of memory and feeling in stage performance. In private life, the same resources can be used to advantage, though to a lesser extent. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

However, when we enter the World of profit-and-loss statements, when the psychological costs of emotional labor are not acknowledged by the company, it is then that we look at these otherwise helpful separations of “me” from my face and my feeling as potentially estranging. In surface acting the actor does not really experience the World from an imperial viewpoint, but one works at seeming to. What is on the actor’s mind? The audience, which is the nearest mirror to one’s own surface. This type of art is less profound than beautiful. It is more immediately effective than truly powerful; [its] form is more interesting than its content. It acts more on your sense of sound and sight than on your soul. Consequently it is more likely to delight than to move you. You can receive great impressions through this art. But they will neither warm your soul nor penetrate deeply into it. Their effect is harp but not lasting. Your astonishment rather than your faith is aroused. Only what can be accomplished through surprising theatrical beauty or picturesque pathos lies within the bounds of this art. However, delicate and deep human feelings are not subject to such technique. They call for natural emotions at the very moment in which they appear before you in the flesh. They call for the direct cooperation of nature itself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

There are two ways of doing deep acting. One is by directly exhorting feeling, the other by making indirect use of a trained imagination. Only the second is true Method acting. However, in either case the acting of passions grows out of living in them. People sometimes talk as much about their efforts to feel (even if these efforts fail) as they do not about having feelings. In the flow of experience, there are occasional common but curious shades of will—will to evoke, will to suppress, and will to somehow allow a feeling, as in “I finally let myself feel sad about it.” Sometimes there is only a social custom in mind—as when a person wishes to feel sad at a funeral. However, other times there is a desperate inner desire to avoid pain. Some people fight against love, they fight against grief, they fight against anger. All of these emotions are linked. One man’s effort to prevent himself from feeling love made him remind himself when he touched, moved, overwhelmed by the sights and smell of her, or a sight and smell which recalled her, or passing their old house or eating their foods, or walking on their streets; do not do this, do not feel. First he succeeded in removing her from the struggle. He lost his love. He lost his anger. She became a limited idea, like a newspaper death notice. He did not lose her entirely, but chipped away at it: do not, do not, do not, he would remind himself in the middle of the night; do not feel; and then dream what he could. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

There are almost like orders to a contrary horse (whoa, giddyup, steady now), attempts to exhort feelings as if feeling can listen when it is talked to. It also presupposes an aspiration to feel. The being who fought against love wanted to feel the same about his former wife as he thought she felt about him; if he was a limited idea to her, he wanted her to be that for him. A country lover in twelfth-century France or a fourteen-year-old American female rock fan might have been more disposed to aspire to one-sided love, to want it that way. Deep acting comes with its social stories about what we aspire to feel. Coaching our emotions only addresses the capacity to duck a signal, to turn away from what evokes feeling. It does not move to the home of the imagery, to that which gives power to a sight, a sound, or a smell. It does not involve the deeper work of retraining the imagination. Ultimately, direct prods to feeling are not based on a deep look into how feeling works, and for this reason people are not under any circumstances use action which is directed immediately at the arousing of feeling for its own sake. The man who wanted to fight off love for his former wide might have approached the situation differently. First, it may have been more effective to use emotion memory: he might consider remembering the times he had felt furious at his wife’s thoughtlessness or cruelty. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

It might have helped the man forget his feelings for his wife if he focused on one most exasperating instance of this, reevoking all the circumstances. Perhaps she had forgotten his birthday, had made no effort to remember, and failed to feel badly about it afterwards. Then he would use the “if” supposition and say to himself: “How would I feel about her if this is what she really was like?” He would not prompt himself not to feel love; rather he would keep alive the cruel episode of the forgotten birthday and substation the “if.” He would not, then, fall naturally out of love. He would actively conduct himself out of love through deep acting. To store a wealth of emotion memories, the actor must remember experiences emotively. However, to remember experiences emotively, one must first experience them in that way too, perhaps with an eye to using the feelings later. The mind acts as a magnet to reusable feeling. So the conceiving of emotion memory as a noun, as something one has, brings with it a conceiving of memory and of spontaneous experience itself as also having the qualities of a useable, nounlike thing. Feeling—whether at the time, or as it is recalled, or as it is later evoked in acting—is an object. It may be a valuable object in a worthy pursuit, but it is an object nonetheless. Some feelings are more valuable object than others, for they are more richly associated with other memorable events: a terrifying train ride may recall a childhood fall or nightmare. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

However, memory is not enough. The memory, like any image drawn to mind, must seem real now. The actor must believe that an imagined happening really is happening now. To do this, the actor makes up an “as if,” a supposition. One actively suspends the usual reality testing, as a child does at play, and allows a make-believe situation to seem real. Often the actor can manage only a precarious belief in all of an illusion, and so one breaks it up into sturdier small details, which take one by one are easier to believe: “if I ere in a terrible storm” is chopped up into “if my eyebrows were wet and if my shoes were soaked.” The big if is broken into many little ones. The furnishings of the physical stage—a straight horse-hair chair, a pointer leaning against the wall—are used to support the actor’s if. Their purpose is not to influence the audience, as in surface acting, but to help convince the person doing deep acting that the if events are really happening. You have got to get to the stage of life where going for it is more important than winning or losing. It appears that the goal the individual most wishes to achieve, the end which one knowingly and unknowingly pursues, is to become oneself. When people are facing troubles because of their unique combination of difficulties, it is important to make them feel free and safe. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

To help others, we have to understand the way one feels in one’s own inner World, to accept one as he or she is, to create an atmosphere of freedom in which one can move in one’s thinking and feeling and being, in any direction one desires. How does the individual use this freedom? It is my experience that one uses it to become more and more oneself. One begins to drop the false fronts, or the masks, or the roles, with which one has a faced life. One appears to be trying to discover something more basic, something more truly oneself. At first one lays aside mask which one is to some degree aware of using. We can use our relationships to explore, to examine the various aspect of our own experience, to recognize and face up to the deep contradictions which one often discovers. One learns how much of this behavior even how much of the feeling one experiences, is not real, is not something which flows from the genuine reactions of one’s organism, but is a façade, a front, behind which one has been hiding. One discovers how much of one’s life is guided by what one thinks one should be, not by what one is. Often one discovers that one exists only in response to the demands of others, that one seems to have no self of one’s own, that one is only trying to think, and feel, and behave in the way that others believe one ought to think, and feel and behave. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

The dilemma of the individual, the most common despair is to be in despair at not choosing, or willing, to be oneself; but that the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself. On the other hand to will to be that self which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair, and this choice is the deepest responsibility of humans. Exploring the reality of self is often a painful and troubling search. This exploration becomes even more disturbing when one finds oneself involved in removing the false faces which one had not known were false faces. One begins to engage in the frightening task of exploring the turbulent and sometimes violent feelings with in oneself. To remove a mask which one has thought was part of one’s real self can be a deeply disturbing experience, yet when there is freedom to think and feel and be, the individual moves toward such a goal. Many people who put up a false front, if the wall, the damn, is not maintained, then everything will be swept away in violence of the feelings that one discovers pent-up in one’s private World. Yet it also illustrates the compelling necessity which the individual feels to search for and become oneself. It also begins to indicate the way in which the individual determines the reality in oneself—that when one fully experiences the feelings which at an organize level one is, as one experiences self-pity, hatred, and love, then one feels an assurance that one is being a part of one’s real self. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

We cannot simply repair people for more bad use of themselves. Every time a timid husband or a hardworking wife is helped to fuller functioning and changed ways, a tiny sector of society has been changed. Every time a son is released from morbid dependency upon his parents or slavish conformity to his father’s orders, a victory in the struggle for political freedom has been gained. If the father or mother can be enlightened, so much better. In such cases, the tyrannical government exists in the home; but the home is a microcosm of society at large. The purpose for which the society came into being is freedom, albeit responsible freedom. Whilst there are parts of our nature which remain still undeveloped, we are not complete humans. It is the wholeness of one’s bodily, mental, and spiritual being that humans must develop. Results will best prove the soundness of the integrated path, the effectiveness of the integrated personality. Humans are a many-sided being. One’s development must accordingly be correlated with this fact. The whole psyche of humans must get into this task of self-spiritualization. Feeling alone cannot do it, will alone cannot do it, thinking alone cannot do it, and initiating alone cannot do it. Every element must contribute to it and be shaped by it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Let us have faith that right makes right; and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. O God, who by the light of Thy Word scatterest away the darkness of ignorance, increase in our hearts the power of faith which Thou hast given; that no temptations may avail to quench the fire which Thy grace hath caused to be enkindled; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy loving kindness, to pour Thy holy light into out souls; that we may ever be devoted to Thee, by Whose wisdom we were created, and by Whose providence we are governed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let our prayer, O Lord, come before Thee in the morning. Thou didst take upon Thee our feeble and suffering nature; grant us to pass this day in gladness; and peace, without stumbling and without stain; that reaching the eventide without any temptation, we may praise Thee the eternal King: though Thy mercy, O our God, Who art blessed, and dost live, and govern all things, World without end. In the evening, and mourning, and noonday, we praise Thee, we bless Thee, we thank Thee, and pray Thee, Master of all, to direct our prayers as incense before Thee; and let not our hearts turn away to words of thoughts of wickedness, but rescue us from all thing that hunt our souls. For to Thee, Lord, Lord our eyes look up, and our hope is Thee. Confound us not, O our God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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Mills Station at Cresleigh Ranch | Residence 3

This week, follow Abbie Johnson on a tour of #MillsStationResidence 3 at #CresleighRanch! This home is highly customizable, with 3-4 bedrooms, 3 & 1/2 bath, covered patio, extendable living space, and more! Visit our website to use the interactive blueprint tool, or schedule a tour with us to see this home for yourself! Link: https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-3/

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The Soul Can Become a Big Factor in Raising the Level of Intelligence in the World and in Developing Leaders!

November 22, 2019 1:37 am

I was taken with your earnestness, your passion. You were not jaded or cynical. There was an immediacy to your feelings for these happenings, these creatures, those question. You make well ask, “But why does a person who is seeking help change for the better when one is involved, over a period of time, in a relationship with a therapist which contains conditions without a “front” or façade, openly being the feeling and attitudes which at the moment are flowing in one?” Few people think about the noble role that the soul plays. Our ability to collect, organize, and preserve the voice and observations we have is critical to our continued survival as a species. The more genuine and congruent the therapist in the relations is, the more probability there is that change in personality in the client will occur. As one find someone who is willing to listen acceptantly to one’s feelings, one little by little become sable to listen to oneself. One begins to receive the communications from within oneself—to realize that one is angry, to recognize when one is frightened, even to realize when one is feeling courageous. As one becomes more open to what is going on within one, one becomes able to listen to feelings which one has always denied and repressed. One can listen to feelings which have seemed to one so terrible, or so disorganizing, or so abnormal, or so shameful, that one has never been able to recognize their existence in one’s self. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

While one is listen to their soul, one also becomes more acceptant of one’s self. As an individual expresses more and more of the hidden and awful aspects one oneself, one finds that the therapist showing a consistent and unconditional beneficial regard for one and one’s feelings. Slowly one moves towards taking the same attitude toward oneself, accepting oneself as one is, and therefore ready to move forward in the process of becoming. In being a sincere person, we learn that we cannot say one thing and believe in another. Take the fact of your sincerity and enthusiasm as testimony to the value of the techniques of emotion and management. It is precisely by such a technique of emotion management that sincerity itself is achieved. And so, through this hall of mirrors in the soul, when learn that when we become angry, our bodies become tense. Our heart races. We breathe more quickly and get less oxygen. Our adrenaline gets higher. When some people get angry, they cuss, want to hit someone, yell in a bucket, cry, eat, smoke a cigarette, talk to themselves. However, these responses carry a risk of offending someone, and could possibly make an individual seem less attractive or dangerous. So we need to consider some ways of how to alleviate angry toward an irate person. There is no celestial witch-doctor, no angelic magician coming to change their character overnight. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

When I deal with an irate person, I pretend something traumatic has happened in their lives. Once I had an irate that was complaining about me, cursing at me, threatening to get my name and report me to the company. I later found out his son had just died. Now when I meet an irate, I think of that man. If you think about the other person and why they are so upset, you have taken attention off of yourself and your own frustration. And you will not feel so angry. If anger erupts despite these presentative tactics, then deep breathing, talking to yourself, reminding yourself that “you do not have to go home with that individual” are offered as ways to manage emotions. Using these, the worker become less prone to cuss, hit, cry, or smoke. The goal is to keep the focus on your response and on ways to prevent an angry repose through anger-desensitization. And sometimes you have to realize people are mentally disturbed, maybe they cannot afford their medication, and that may help you to not let them upset you so much, but it may allow you to feel more compassion for them. Imagine how hard it must be for mentally ill people to live with themselves and not seek help. Many theorists have seen emotion as a sealed biological event, something that external stimuli can bring on, as cold weather brings on a cold. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

Furthermore, once emotion—which we call a biological response syndrome is operating, the individual passively undergoes it. This is an organismic conception. However, it seems to me a limited view. For if we conceive of emotion as only this, what are we to make of the many ways in which people taught to attend to stimuli and manage emotion, ways that can actually change feeling? It we conceive of feeling not as a periodic abdication to biology but as something we do by attending to inner sensation in a given way, by defining situations in a given way, by managing in given ways, then it becomes plainer just how plastic and susceptible to reshaping techniques a feeling can be. The very act of managing emotion can be seen as part of what the emotion becomes. However, if we assume, as the organismic theorists do, that how we manage or express feeling is extrinsic to emotion, this idea gets lost. The organismic theorists want to explain how emotion is motored by instinct, and so they by-pass the question of how we come to assess, label, and manage emotion. Emotion is a bodily orientation to an imaginary act. As such, it has a signal function; it warns of where we stand vis-à-vis outer or inner events. Feeling as it spontaneously emerges acts for better or worse as a clue. It filters out evidence about the self-relevance of what we see, recall, or fantasize. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

The exact point at which we feel injured or insulted, complimented or enhanced, varies. Seeing and hearing is a way of knowing about the World. It is a way of testing reality. Anxiety has a signal function. It signals danger from inside, as when we fear an overload of rage, or from outside, as when an insult threatens to humiliate us beyond endurance. However, it is important to heed your feelings and sometimes turn back, it may protect you from danger. Every emotion has a signal function. No every emotion signals danger. However, every emotion does signal the “me” I put into seeing “you.: It signals the often unconscious perspective we apply when we go about seeing. Feeling signals that inner perspective. Thus, by using helpful techniques for changing feeling—in the service of avoiding stress on ourselves and making life pleasanter for those around us—we can intervene in the signal function of feeling. This simple point is obscured whenever we apply the belief that emotion is dangerous in the first place because it distorts perception and leads people to act irrationally—which means that all ways of reducing emotion are automatically good. Of course, a person gripped by fear may make mistake, may find reflection difficult, and may not (as we say) be able to think. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

However, a persona totally without emotion has no warning system, no guidelines to the self-relevance of a sight, a memory, or a fantasy. Like one who cannot feel and touches fire, an emotionless person suffers a sense of arbitrariness, which from the point of view of his or her self-interests is irrational. In fact, emotion is a potential avenue to the reasonable view. We may misinterpret an event, feel accordingly, and then draw false conclusions from what we feel. (We sometimes call this neurosis.) We can handle this by applying a secondary framework that corrects habits of feeling and inference, as when we say, “I know I have a tendency to interpret certain gestures as rejections.” However, feeling is the essential clue that a certain viewpoint, even though it may need frequent adjustment, is alive and well. Furthermore, it can tell us about a way of telling us about a way of seeing. A less affluent person may see the deprivations of the ghetto more accurately, more rationally, through indignation and anger than through obedience or resigned realism. One will focus clearly on the police officer’s smoking gun, the landlord’s Cadillac, the look of disapproval on the employment agent’s affluent face. Outside of anger, these images become like boulders on a mountainside, minuscule parts of the landscape. Likewise, a chronically morose person who falls in love may suddenly see the World as happier people do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

Emotion locates the position in the viewer. It uncovers an often unconscious perspective, a comparison. “You look tall” may mean “From where I lie on the floor, you look tall.” “I feel awe” may mean “compared with what I do or think I could do, he is awesome.” Awe, love, anger, and envy tell of a self vis-à-vis a situation. When we reflect on feeling we reflect on this sense of “from where I am.” The word objective means “free from personal feeling.: Yet ironically, we need feeling in order to reflect on the external or “objective” World. Taking feelings into account as clues and then correcting for them may be our best shot at objectivity. Like hearing or seeing, feeling provides a useful set of clues in figuring out what is real. A show of feeling by someone else is interesting to us precisely because it may reflect a buried perspective and may offer a clue as to how that person may act. In public life, expressions of feeling often make for news. For example, a TV sports newscaster noted: “Reese Witherspoon has passed the stage of trying to survive in a commercial sport. We are beyond that now. The women’s tennis teams, too. The woman are really serious players. They get really mad if the hit a net ball. They get even madder than the guys, I would say.” He had seen Reese Witherspoon miss a shot (it was a new ball), redden in the face, stamp her foot, and spank the net with her racket. From this her inferred that women “really wants to win.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

Wanting to win, she is a “serious” player—a pro. Being a pro, she can be expected to see the tennis match as something on which her professional reputation and financial future depend. Further, from the way she broke an ordinary field of calm with a brief display of anger, she was really serious. He also inferred that she really meant it—she was “serious.” He also inferred what she must have wanted and expected just before the net ball and what the newly grasped reality—a miss—must have felt like. He tried to pick out what part of her went into seeing the ball. A miss, if you really want to win, is maddening. From the commentator’s words and tone, TV viewers could infer his point of view. He assessed the woman’s anger in relation to a prior expectation about how pros in general see, feel, and act and about how women in general act. Women tennis pros, he implied, do not laugh apologetically at a miss, as a nonprofessional woman player might. They feel, he said, in a way that is appropriate to the role of a professional player. In fact, as newcomers they overconform. “They get even madder than the guys.” Thus the view can ferret out the sportscaster’s mental set and the role of women in it. In the same way that we infer other people’s view points from how they display feeling, we decide what we ourselves are really like by reflecting on how we feel about ordinary events. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

Consider this example, a statement from a young man of nineteen: I had agreed to give a party with a young woman who was an old friend. Ad the time approached, it became apparent to me that, while I liked her, I did not want the [social] identification with her that such an action [the jointly sponsored party] would bring. I tried explaining this to her without success, and at first I resolved to do the socially acceptable thing—go through with it. But the day before the party, I knew I simply could not do it, so I canceled out. My friend did not understand and was places in a very embarrassing position. I cannot feel ashamed no matter how hard I try. All I felt then was relief, and this is still my dominant response. I acted selfishly, but fully consciously. I imagine that my friendship could not have meant that much. The young man reached his conclusion by reasoning back from his absence of guilt or shame, from the feeling of relief he experienced. (He might also have concluded: “I have show myself to be the sort of fellow who can feel square with himself in the cases of unmet obligation. I can withstand the guilt. It is enough for me that I tried to feel shame.”) For the sportscaster and the young man, feeling was taken as a signal. To observer and actor alike it was a clue to an underlying truth, a truth that had to be dug out or inferred, a truth about the self vis-à-vis a situation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

The sportscaster took the anger of the women tennis player as a clue to how seriously Reese took the game of tennis. The young man who backed out on his friend took his sense of relief and absence of guilt feelings as a clue to the absence of seriousness in his “old friendship.” Feeling can be used to give a clue to the operating truth, but in private life as well as on the job, two complications can arise. The first one lies between the clue of feeling and the interpretation of it. We are capable of disguising what we feel, of pretending to feel what we do not—of doing surface acting. The box of clues is hidden, but it is not changed. The second complication emerges in a more fundamental relation between stimulus and response, between a net ball and feeling frustration, between letting someone down and feeling guilty, between being called names by an “irate” and getting angry back. Here the clues can be dissolved by deep acting, which from one point of view involves deceiving oneself as much as deceiving others. In surface acting we deceive others about what we really feel, but we do not deceive ourselves. Diplomats and actors do this best, and very small children do it worst (it is part of their charm). In deep acting we make feigning easy by making it unnecessary. When we are more successfully at emotional control, the techniques of deep acting are joined to the principles of social engineering. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

Can a person suppress one’s anger at a person who insults one? People can be taught how—if one is qualified by a demonstrably friendly disposition to start with. Ne may have most for a while the sense of what one would have felt has one not been trying so hard to feel something else. By taking over the levers of feeling production, by pretending deeply, one alters oneself. Deep acting has always had the edge over simple pretending in its power to convince. In jobs that require dealing with the public, employers are wise to want workers to be sincere, to go well beyond the smile that is “just painted on.” Always be honest. Behind the most effective display is the feeling that fits it, and that feeling can be managed. As workers, the more seriously social engineering affects our behavior and our feelings, the more intensely we must address a new ambiguity about who is directing them (is this me or the company talking?). As customers, the greater our awareness of social engineering, the more effort we put into distinguishing between gestures of real personal feelings and gestures of company policy. We have practical knowledge of the commercial takeover of the signal function of feeling. In a routine way, we make up for it; at either end, as worker or customer, we try to correct for the social engineering of feeling. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

We mentally subtract feeling with commercial purpose to it from the total pattern of display that we sense to be sincerely felt. In interpreting a smile, we try to take out what social engineering put in, pocketing only what seems meant just for us. We say, “It is her job to be friendly,” or “They have to believe in their product like that in order to sell it.” In the end, it seems, we make up an idea of our “real self,” an inner jewel that remains our unique possession no matter whose billboard is on our back or whose smile is on our face. We push this “real self” further inside, making it more inaccessible. Subtracting credibility from the parts of our emotional machinery that are in commercial hands, we turn to what is left to find out who we “really are.” And around the surface of our human character, where once we were vulnerable, we don a cloak to protect us against the commercial elements. And finally as one listens more accurately to the feelings within, and become less evaluative and more acceptant toward oneself, one also moves towards greater congruence. One finds it possible to move out from behind the facades one has used, to drop one’s defensive behaviors, and more openly to be what one truly is. As these changes occur, as one becomes more self-aware, more self-acceptant, less defensive and more open, one finds that one is free to change and grow in the directions natural to the human organism. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

In regard to feelings and personal meanings, one moves away from a state in which feelings are unrecognized, unowned, unexpressed. One moves toward a flow in which ever-changing feelings are experiences in the moment, knowingly and acceptantly, and may be accurately expressed. The process involves a change in the manner of one’s experience. Initially one is remote from one’s experiencing. An example would be the intellectualizing person who talks about oneself and one’s feelings in abstractions, leaving you wondering what is actually going on within him or her. From such remoteness one moves toward an immediacy of experiencing in which one lives openly in one’s experiencing, and knows that one can turn to it to discover its current meanings. The process involves a loosening of the cognitive maps of experience. From construing experience in rigid ways, which are perceived as external facts, the client moves toward developing changing, loosely held construings of meaning in experience, constructs which are modifiable by each new experience. In general, the evidence shows that the process moves away from fixity, remoteness from feelings and experience, rigidity of self-concept, remoteness from people, impersonality of functioning. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

It moves toward fluidity, changingness, immediacy of feelings and experience, acceptance of feelings and experience, tentativeness of constructs, discovery of a changing self in one’s changing experience, realness and closeness of relationship, a unity and integration of functioning. We are continually learning more about this process by which change comes about, and I am not sure that this very brief summary conveys much of the richness of our findings. LORD our God, great, eternal, wonderful in glory, Who keepest covenant and promises for those that love Thee with their whole heart; Who art the Life of all, the Help of those that flee unto Thee, the Hope of those who cry unto Thee; cleanse us from our sins, secret and open, and from every thought displeasing to Thy goodness,–cleanse our bodies and souls, our hearts and consciences, that with a pure heart and a clear soul, with perfect love and calm hope, we may venture confidently and fearlessly to pray Thee. LORD, we beseech Thee, let thy favour be present to Thy people who supplicate Thee; that what by Thy inspiration they faithfully ask, by the speedy bounty they may obtain; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to look upon Thy servants, whom Thou hast enabled to put their trust in Thee; and grant them both to ask such things as shall please Thee, and also to obtain what they ask: through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

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Randolph Harris II International Institute

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