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The Soul Exists Beyond Our Personal Circumstances and Conceptions
The soul exists beyond our personal circumstances and conceptions. There is a dimension to human dialogue that is more subtle and often quite difficult to recognize. For if dialogue can grow, it can also deteriorate, slowly and subtly, to the point where an individual can be trapped in a totally impoverished relationship without even being able to recognize what happened or why. The process is very similar to the way the body grows and ages, on a day-to-day basis, without any visible change. The very fact that a person can tolerate deteriorated dialogue and sometimes even encourage it is something that we would often prefer to deny, for reflecting on the implications is not pleasant. In situations where there is an erosion or dissolution, there is only one kind of success: the ability to draw others to us rather than drive them away. Dependency has its own rules of conduct and its own route to mastery. Under the pressure of this necessity, many people change more deeply than ever before in their lives. Since dialogue involves reciprocal sharing with other human beings, its deterioration must also be reciprocal, and each person must share part of the responsibility. An individual can only receive to the extent that one gives, and, in that sense, dialogue is mirror of this personality. Exposing vulnerability is a reflexive process: the more of ourselves we reveal to others, the more of ourselves we reveal to others, the more others tend to reveal of themselves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Some people come off with a very authoritarian style of behavior and that can be so hurtful that it will wear out the good will of one’s associates. Understanding the life-threatening nature of the lack of dialogue makes it easier to comprehend the radical, often aggressive manner in which many people flee from situations of deteriorated dialogue. Sometimes individuals who have been married for years suddenly up and leave without warning, to live with another person. However, our personality styles are not as frozen as we might think. When an individual drops their hard façade after he or she finds out that one has pushed one’s situation to the limit and are left with no other means of fending off abandonment, their worst dread. Treating our friends and family and spouses with courtesy and respect will serve as a lifeline and could later strike an individual as a revelation. Our faults tend to get worse before they can get better. If self-centered people do not change as they get older, the result is an increasing sense of vulnerability that transforms the normal losses and changes of aging into insults, outrages, and terrors. Some people may that being with a self-centered person is a lot like being choked to death in their current environment, that their very existence is being threatened. Dialogue had deteriorated below a certain critical threshold, until one of the partners can no longer tolerate the isolation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Through the ravages of dependency, many emerge transformed because they have no other choice. They reach the point where they are both appalled by themselves and afraid that they will be left alone. There are only two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or the other undesirable affections. One is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop—so we drop down, give up, and do not care any longer. Out of this emptiness, we derive a readiness for the arrival of a new self. The exhaustion of the lower and the entrance of the higher emotions are often simultaneous. Some people may not be doing anything else but pour out all their grievances, endlessly repeated. They may not make confessions about their injustices of which they have been a victim, but of the things for which he or she blames oneself. We may feel overwhelmed. As we listen, an immense tenderness may invade our hearts because we see the person who has been going through turmoil visibly transform. Their crabbed features may gradually unbend, lighting up, becoming beautiful. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Conversations are accelerated by conversations, a combination of speaking and being heard, expression and reception. Humility in the conversation is one’s frank acceptance of all experiences, just as love in the relationship is simply the sense of beauty that reveals to the World its body and its soul. Attending a Roman Catholic Mass, people are often struck by the translation of ancient prayers they know well from the antiquated days, when the Mass was sung in Latin. “Lord, only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” We no longer make a distinction between soul and self. It could be tempting to place the idea of care of the soul in the category of self-improvement. However, the soul has an infinite depth of a person and of a society, compromising all the many mysterious aspects that go together to make up our identity. Sometimes when we listen to an individual and say very little, it allows the other person’s presence and tender response that would not have known what it is to be perceived as beautiful. Whether through prayer or a human-to-human exchange, we turn painful discoveries into new growth when our efforts are witnessed and appreciated, rather than expended in isolation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Our souls, the mystery we glimpse when we look deeply into ourselves, is part of a larger soul, the soul of the World. This World and soul affects each individual thing, whether natural or human-made. You have a soul, the trees in the forest have a soul, and even our cars have a soul. Most unsettled by deterioration or an erosion of independence are those who have spent their adulthood shunning close relationships. Maturation mandates contact with others, often in physically intimate ways and with a frequency that permits little concealment. When such people are forced to depend on others for their survival, they are thrust into the very aspect of life that once brought them their greatest hurt and disappointment. By revisiting early sources of pain, we finally allow for their revision. Overwhelmingly negative attitudes toward other people and life can be corrected only be reconsidering the situation n which the faulty interpretation was made. People generally do not attempt this kind of reexamination without some social pressure or without finding that they have no other options. They may be drained financially; often they are cut off from their own children and their social circle; their careers are placed in jeopardy and sometimes ruined; material possessions that they have slaved for years are quickly cast aside. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
People often wake up to reality when they are sick because the central threat is to the individual’s very existence, their humanity. Life is dialogue, and when the idea of being left alone crashes over the individual like a tidal wave, it is a major threat to life, as is readily verified in health statistics. People hate being so weak. When an individual cannot lift a laundry basket without getting chest pain, they realize they need intimate relationships. They want people to bring them pies and kid around with them. A world of needs exists in addition to our own. Many people cannot give credence to the needs and sufferings of others until they have been helpless themselves. Those who are cold and indifferent to the sufferings of others may nevertheless learn that it is in their best interest to be of assistance to others, if only because they realize that someday they may need such help themselves. The shell of some have built around their emotions melts, and their defenses—a wall built of humor, acerbity, and cynicism—falls before a welling of emotion that is a total departure from one’s usual state of mind. Sharpe edges of themselves become porous and weak. People can reach into their soul more easily, and they, in turn, become more compassionate. After enlightenment, people do not set hard borders around their identity; they are suffused with a kind of peacefulness, almost a sense of joy. It may all seem very strange. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
To the modern person who may think of the psyche as a chemical apparatus, the body as a machine, and the manufactured World as a marvel of human brainpower and technology, the idea of the soul might seem strange indeed. The best some forms of psychology can do with our occasional intuitive sensation that all things are alive is to explain the phenomenon as projections, the unconscious endowment of human fantasy onto an inanimate object. After losing both of his parents at a young age, a young man suppressed his own needs in order to devote himself to caring for his younger siblings. He then maintained this self-containment long into his adult life. It was not until he had a vulnerable moment so many years later he allowed other people to take care of himself and see into him. It is quite a different approach for individuals who are used to being strong and independent to allow things themselves to have vitality and personality. In this sense, care of the soul is a step outside the paradigm of modernism, into something entirely different. Our own position changes when we grant the World its soul. Then, as the things of the World present themselves vividly, we watch and listen. We respect them because we are not their creator and controller. They have as much personality and independence as we do. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
After we spend our lives focusing on externals, and regard anything else as idle daydreaming our perspectives change as we mature. When externals are applied to the stretch of life that lays ahead of us when we are aging, in old age, facing serious ailments which we may not recover from, the possibility of dying and the possible World beyond leaves us absolutely nothing. The inner landscape, once it is really discovered and lived in, is aglow. When we discuss concerns that we never have verbalized during our active business careers: feelings of vulnerability and fear, and questions about the value of what we have done with our lives it offers hope. Gradually, we can become dedicated to helping others make the shift from external to internal reverence. The thing that happens when we pray aright is simple. We create an attitude of complete acceptance in our own minds. When we do this, the Law of God, which is all powerful, begins to operate on this acceptance and begins to rearrange all the facts and activities of our lives in such a way that we have accepted will actually transpire in our experience. How wonderful to realize that at last we have located the divine presence at the only place we could recognize it—within ourselves, within everything. And how wonderful it is to know that at least we have reached our goal. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Trust God and Feel Secure in His Loving Care
One feels a threat to the soul in a runaway spirit, but real harm can be done by a fearful hanging on to a soaring spirit and weighing it down too much with a heavy sense of Earthly responsibility. Part of preparing spirit for marriage with soul is to let spirit fly and find its airborne pleasures. As along as we desire to fulfill the will of God and have any hankering after eternity and God, we have to let the spirit find its own level. What does it mean to stand as a witness of God? It means we will not bow down or give in or be persuaded to do anything contrary to God’s will. It means we will speak up when our knees are shaking. It means we will listen and follow their still, small but powerful voice of the Holy Ghost. Everything should flow along with a calm and delightful expectation of wonderful things that are going to happen. When we know him, we can be a witness for God and trust him and feel secure in his loving care. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
There are no new nor easy ways we earn a relationship. It is the antiquated, the tried-and-true-always works ways: scripture study, prayer, and living those things we learn through our study and prayers. As we read the scriptures, we become acquainted with what our Father in Heaven wants for his children and how God continually reaches out to sustain and bless and forgive us. “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord, your God is giving you (Exodus 20.12).” Acceptance of our parents tends to culminate when we mature, when our circumstances are most humbling and our view of ourselves encompasses the full import of our past. For many people, as their physical powers decline, many of their adaptions and concessions are not visible to others. One by one, they exchange their standards of dignity for necessary security, but those who assist them may have no idea of their inner sacrifices the compromises they make entail. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
On the surface, their actions may appear to be foolish or obstinate, especially as we they resist sensible offers of help and hold back as long as they can from each successive loss of autonomy. Much of what seemed unreasonable at the time that we took care of our parents may suddenly make sense when they get closer to the end of their lives. The spirit is so charged with the desire to flee the complexity of the labyrinth of material life that our parents pass away twice: first while they are overcome by their ailment and we know they have a limited amount of time on Earth, and again when the moment comes that they actually pass away into Heaven. During and after this process, we lie in bed alone, and the past rises like a white squall, rocking and socking our ship, over and over, drenching us with memories we cannot handle. As we watch our parent pas away, we recount detailed memories of their last days. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Specific scenes and conversations come back to us with extraordinary vividness, triggered by our own experience of helplessness that there was nothing we can do to prolong their lives. We may recall favors we were too tired to perform, favourite foods we may have enjoyed together, and the kind moments we shared with them. Many have no idea what loneliness really is, until they experience this. Once their power slips, we understand how raw life can get. We realize how deeply even our misdirected efforts must have been appreciated, and what a large difference our small acts of kindness must have made. People who are passing away say they feel like their body could self-destruct at any second and there is nothing they can do about it. They feel helpless, cheated, and terrified, even if they have made peace with life. As hard as it is on the dying parent, it can also be hard on the children who had no idea their parent was silently suffering and near passing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
And when we get sick, we relive the period during which our parents were in the same position, but the difference is we know we will recover and this is probably what helps us heal and inspires us to recover. When one attains an acceptance of one’s own and only life cycle and a new differ lobe of one’s parents, free of the wish that they should have been different, full spiritual health arises. We also realize how our parents must have been yearning to participate in our young lives. Anyone can turn to religion or spiritual practices as a way out of the twists and turns of ordinary living. We feel the confinement, the humdrum of the everyday, and we hope for a way to transcend it all. We want some of that open sky for ourselves, some relief from trials and tribulations on Earth. The vertical movement of the spiritual life is not only freeing, it is also inspiring and, of course, inflating. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
The feeling of superiority it gives seems worth most of the Worldly deprivations required. We might get a glimpse of wondrous sights hidden to ordinary vision, but we will also be changed by good fortune. Faith is a gift of spirit that allows the soul to remain attached to its own unfolding. When faith is soulful, it is always planted in the soil of wonder and questioning. It is not a defensive and anxious holding on to certain objects of belief, because doubt, as its shadow, can be brought into a faith that is fully mature. Imagine a trust in yourself, or in another person, or in life itself, that does not need to be proved and demonstrated, that is able to contain uncertainty. People sometimes put their trust in a spiritual leader and are terribly betrayed if that person then fails to live up to ideals. However, a real trust of faith would be to decide whether to trust someone, knowing that betrayal is inevitable because life and personality are never without shadow. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The vulnerability that faith demands could then be marched by an equal trust in oneself, the feeling that one can survive the pain of betrayal. When we pray for personal guidance, our Father in Heaven knows what it in our heart, but he wants us to tell him of our hopes and dreams and needs. Only when we speak with certainty that, indeed, we do want to be a witness will we know what we are going to about it. We have to let God speak to us and let the sacrament take on deeper meaning. Here these familiar words: “And witness unto thee, God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given them (D&C 20.77).” We can verbalize our faith for a lifetime, but it is incomplete without a response. (The word response, by the way, is related to a Greek word that means “to pout a liberation to God.”) To respond trustingly to the challenges of life and to the stirring of the soul’s waters is to bring faith to completion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Standing as a witness means that we know with certainty that we want to do what is right and to let the consequence follow. To stand means we remain firm and immovable, even when (or especially when) we are the smallest or the youngest or the last one standing. We may be the means for holding up others. We have to be strong! Witnessing is showing by our behavior what we believe, and that can start in our own families. We can be confident and powerful as a witness of God. Do not compromise. We cannot compromise. Pay attention to those around you who give you courage and strength. Everyone is in partnership with life, with love, with God, with truth, and with beauty. To rear a family without some spiritual concept that is adequate, whatever religious form it may take, is going to contrary to the first Law of our being, which is that we are all rooted in the divine spirit, in perfect life. We are all children of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
God is Looking for People Who Have Faith that is Demonstrated
No one lives without accumulating stories. Many things in life offer useful guidance toward finding spiritual values in the World. The spirituality of a place might be marked with a well or drawing on the ground, or a monument, like a castle or mansion. When we place markers on historical battlefields or on houses where our ancestors were born, or where significant historical figures lives, we are performing a genuine spiritual act. We are honoring the special spirit that is attached to a particular place. Family is also a source and focus of spirituality. In many traditions a home shrine and special photographs honor family members. Rites of family gatherings, visits, storytelling, photographs albums, keepsakes, and even tapes of elderly relatives recording their recollections can be spiritual acts that nourish the soul. “The final state of the soul is to dwell with God or be cast out (1 Nephi 15.35).” The opportunity to voice memories to a person who both cares and understands is the most satisfying kind of completion. Story-telling is therefore far more valuable than it may seem. Realizing that such stories allow us to make an ending and find worth in the past elevates remembering and listening to their actual stature. We widen our solitudes by esteeming our memories and making use of them, instead of guarding them in a secret chess, disregarding them, or keeping them to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Action and speech are indeed the two activities whose end result will always be a story with enough coherence to be told. The most important and challenging way to honor our ancestors is to fulfill our personal and potential life’s purpose here on Earth. It can take a lifetime to know our parents in their full humanness. As we get older, our respect for our parents’ achievements increases, as does our sympathy for their disappointments and letdowns. The more our own lives twist in unexpected and humbling directions, the more we realize that our parents had been similarly buffeted. We become our parents’ retrospective peers, seeing more of them as we attain each decade. To be fully understood, vulnerability has to be lived rather than merely witnessed. It is not easy to imagine that one’s own body, which is so fresh and often so full of pleasant feelings could slow down, become tired, and may not be as agile as it once was. One cannot imagine it and, in the end, one does not want to. Many of the realizations that rush upon us as we mature are simply not attainable earlier in life. When our parents need our help prior to passing into Heaven, the period after they pass away, and the time of life when we ourselves are weak and near passing, changes our perspective on life and what we scrutinize. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Indeed, it is this period of the relationship that is perhaps the most difficult and, at the same time, the most significant. However, knowing that there is a God who strongly protects against intrusion and violation might help nurture that spirit in our own lives and honor it in others. We may discover that there are ways to be spiritual that do not counter the soul’s needs for body, individuality, imagination, and exploration. Eventually, we might find that all emotions, all human activities, and all spheres of life have deep roots in the mysteries of the soul, and therefore are holy. As children, the chief illusion we project upon our parents are that they know what they are doing and that they have control over what happens. It does not occur to us that what appears to be inflexibility may actually be a cover for confusion, or what comes out of anger may stem from stress, or what seems to be neglect and a lack of concern may be the consequence of depression. If we allow them to account for themselves and to acknowledge the extent to which their actions stemmed from their own weaknesses, all of this can make sense later. The more hurtfully our parents treated us as children, the more crucial it is for us to try to ascertain the wounds of their upbringing. Otherwise, their weaknesses become holes into which we pointlessly pour or resentment. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Everyone of their failures has a story behind it, a history which has been carried forward and re-expressed rising out of a collective need for stronger union between the human and the divine. Exploring the implications of the soul allows us to learn our parents’ history and to see them as people, rather than to react blindly against them and risk replicating their hurts in our own lives. Turing the furor of our reactions into a reasonable quest for understanding is made easier when we are granted full access to our parents’ histories. Formal teachings, rites, and stories of religions provide an inexhaustible source of reflection on the mysteries of the soul. While listening to our mother or father, we might find ourselves standing in the powerful, streaming currents of time and fate. This may represent the stream of events and persons in which the individual finds one’s place. No one lives without making mistakes and incurring regrets, yet we all hope to be worthy of regard in the end. We learn from these formal sources how to understand and deal with the soul in special circumstances, and also how to understand similar images when they appear in dreams. We all hope that our parents survive into extended old age. Many cultures maintain that we each have a unique destiny to fulfill. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
It is nice to have many generations in families being alive at the same time, leading to new opportunities for reworking and repairing relations between parents and children. This will also further the collective growth and maturation in the spirit realms. We are all children of parents, yet the ability to picture our parents as children can easily elude us. Like nothing else, such glimpses across generations permits us to comprehend those who shaped us and ultimately ourselves. We must find our soul’s purpose as an ethical and loving person. The ancestors are seen as allies in this process of remembering and a reservoir of power and backing to help us embody our potential in this lifetime. Conversely, when we have lost touch with a sense of greater purpose, if we are fortunate, the ancestors may bring about life changes aimed to guide us into greater contact with our soul’s longing and increased awareness of the agreements made before our birth. This may be an inspiring metaphor of the willingness to step courageously into the river of existence, instead of finding ways to remain safe, dry, and unaffected. The notion of reciprocity, of being helped and then helping in return, appeals to our basic requirement for balance and order. When children watch their parents take time out of their bust lives to help their parents, they learn that devotion can persist. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Children should realize that if they regret the longevity of their parents, they will actually be regretting their own future longevity. As we get to know our parents better, we have new opportunities for correcting old misconceptions. One young man was shocked by something his father did. His father never let anyone near his checkbook. However, he got a really bad trimmer in his hand, but still insisted on paying all his bills himself. One day, out of the blue, he called his son up and asked him to come over to help him write out checks. The son could not believe it. He was incredibly nervous when he sat down next to him to do it. Although he handles million-dollar budgets for his company, his hand also started to shake because he was so honored to help his father with his precious checkbook, as it was a bonding experience. In a way, the father was allowing his son to participate in the ritual of becoming the man of the house. His father’s trust was sweeter to this son than his achievement in the corporate World. Also, the father had the opportunity to see how important he was in his son’s life, despite his son’s having garnered every external success. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Extending leniency to our parents gives us hope that someone will do the same for us when we reach this position of physical need and spiritual reckoning. Even fumbled efforts at helpfulness and reconciliation are significant reckoning. Even fumbled efforts at helpfulness and reconciliation are significant for the hope that they instill and the example they set. People feel blessed to have their parents live so long and that hope is the essence of the commandment to honor our parents, making the prospect of living a long life less frightening. Whatever helps us to become more ethical, on even kilt, and open-hearted is one of the most powerful and sincere offerings we can make to our ancestors. An individual must take time every day to remind oneself that we are also spirits, that we are one with God, and to try to being about a deep realization that there is a power greater than oneself sustaining us; a wise counselor guiding us; a generous provider who is ready and willing to meet the needs of everyday life. We do not deny either the body or the mind, but we do affirm the spirit as the supreme presence and the superior principle of all life. We do come from this thing that we call life, or God, and we are fundamentally spiritual beings even while in the flesh. Therefore, in order to be whole, we must establish a right relationship within this trinity of our being, which is thought, feeling and action. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Have Faith in the Future
Challenges are intended to be opportunities of growth. Developing a philosophy for motivation is a great way to learn to overcome hardships. One has to seek new interest within their remaining abilities. Living requires courage under all circumstances, but especially when old age or disability is something an individual is dealing with. We have to exert a deliberate effort daily to make life as good as the body allows. Our will to live a circumscribed life arises directly from our realizing the value of each ability we have retained and each new capacity we have required. It is like maintaining neatness in a household that is always on the verge of becoming unorganized: there can be no slackening of attention, or discouragement rushes in. People who find themselves in a state of decline feel like they are cut off from what was once a self. They face frustrating disruptions in their routines of writing, gardening, and seeing friends. Gradually, however, people start to look at things from another perspective. Ascension is possible when all that has to be given up can be gladly given up—because other things have become more important. Slowing down and watching the light changing on the porch, rather than hastening to get things done, accords both with the rhythms of exhaustion and the need for repose. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Faith and character are intimately related. Being thankful for the things we are still able to do allows individual to awaken and feel overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude; it is like a sixth sense, like waking to the scent of fresh laundry or to the sounds of a baby singing as the sunrises in the sky. It is a humbling feeling. It is impossible to leave God out of anything, for do we not realize that God means the very intelligence by which we understand this law, the very consciousness by which we it? God is not left out. The very inspiration which cases us to inquire into this law is the ever-present spirit of God forever seeking self-expression through us. Unless our use of this law is impulse by love and unity, we shall be automatically shut out from the most effective use of it. Let us once more remind ourselves that the Universe is foolproof and that the Holy of Holies is entered only through the sanctuary of the heart, purified by love, directed by reason. The more feeling we put into our conviction, and the more faith we have in divine givingness, the more perfectly we shall be complying with the law; hence we shall have greater power over it. Historically, legends and ritual are in tandem. A people tells its stories of creation and of its deities, and then it worships these deities and celebrates its creation in rites. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
While legends are a way of telling stories about felt experience of faith and culture, rituals are actions that speak to the mind and the heart. We should return, then, to our central theme with renewed hope and increased vigor, and most certainly with an exuberant enthusiasm; with something of the spirit of an adventurer or explorer who goes out to discover new countries. The untold good which the creative spirit has placed at our disposal awaits the magic touch of our consciousness to spring into expression for us, filling the cup of our desire with its manifold of gifts. Who does not wish to be well, happy, and prosperous? Is there any normal person who desires to be inactive, impoverished, and in pain? Of course not! And there is not a voice within each of us forever proclaiming and insisting upon this divine potentiality? This urge to express is natural. Feeling unexpressed is frustration, but energy converted into action is accomplished, and we can be certain that the eternal is with us and never against us when we are never against anyone else. Moreover, we can be certain that the prayer of faith will lift up the chalice of expectancy for the outpouring of the spirit, that one may receiver from it all that one’s soul can contain. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
In many respects, however, adult dignity makes us lonely. Children express their hurts and readily seek comfort from others, while we guard ourselves against our sorrows and pass the years with our most vulnerable feelings shielded from view. People know us by our defenses, by the social masks we wear when we expect to be scrutinized. As we mature, we cry less. We learn better and better how to inhibit our feelings, show self-control, how not to weep. However, many of us cry inside. That makes it harder. Our tears are dry. Tears that are not shed go away slowly and return frequently. Such suffering, many of us cannot adequately describe. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that many people in this World cry dry tears much of the time. Pain, psychological or physical, can pull us out of adult solitude, to our embarrassment and our relief. We each retain the sensitivity of a seasoned adult, but it takes a catastrophe—pain or sheer helplessness—for us to express ourselves directly as a youngster might. Many adults do not want the full extent of their suffering to be exposed. We eventually progress to a further kind of dignity, but not without first relinquishing several layers of privacy. Faith in the power of obedience to the commandments of God will forge strength of character available to us in times of urgent need. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Vulnerability evokes powerful feelings in both the susceptible and the strong. We do not have to understand these feelings as much as we need to respond to them. Through our responses, we learn about the aspects of ourselves and our relationships that may have been concealed for years. We return to the yearnings of our youth. Ritual maintains the World’s holiness. Knowing that everything we do, no matter how simple, has a halo of imagination around it and can serve the soul enriches life and makes the things around us more precious, more worthy of our protection, and care. In a life that is animated with ritual, there are no insignificant things. When traditional cultures carve elaborate faces and figures on their structures, they are acknowledging the soul in ordinary things, as well as the fact that simple work is also ritual. Tradition is an important part of ritual because the soul is so much greater in scope than an individual’s consciousness. The body must be properly care for, and we should come to understand that body-mind relationships. We must also never forget that people are primarily spiritual beings with a mind and body. It is only wen these three are brought together that we can hope to have health, happiness, and success. Exercise in faith in true principles builds character; fortified character expands our capacity to exercise more faith. As a result, our capacity and confidence to conquer the trials of life is enhanced. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Intellectual acknowledgment of one’s ultimate fragility is no match for the yield of lived experience. We are always aware that we are vulnerable to illness, but we do not quite believe in its likelihood until it actually happens to us. If many of our physical troubles come from an inward sense of uncertainty and insecurity, it follows that we must find a security greater than that insecurity which comes from a sense of being isolated from the Universe, separated from the cause of our being, or apart from God. A consistent, righteous life produces an inner power and strength that can be permanently resistant to the eroding influence of sin and transgression. When faith is properly understood and used, it has dramatically far-reaching effects. Such faith can transform an individual’s life from maudlin, common everyday activities to a symphony of joy and happiness. The exercise of faith is vital to Father in Heaven’s plan of happiness. We must have faith in the capacity to discover hidden characteristics and traits that can transform life. Truly, faith in the Savior is a principle of action and power. Faith is a foundation building block of creation. God created the most remote galaxies as well as composed quarks, and the smallest elements of matter we know today. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Our Memories of the Family are a Significant Part of the Mythology
We have lost a certain depth in the way we understand our experiences, using language that is often doubletalk and shallow in order to describe complex and profound aspects of life. Resentment is a reliable gauge of when assistants are doing more than they should. The problem with heeding this measure is that there are ongoing pressures to deny its validity. Dedicated assistants insist that they are doing fine. At all costs, they want to avoid evoking in the person that they are assisting fear of abandonment and to keep from revealing that the care has become taxing. They conceal their feelings and strive to maintain a contented exterior. Eventually, their pretense isolates them from the person who needs their assistance, and any previous intimacy become veiled by this effort to hide the truth. A myth is a sacred story set in a time and place outside history, describing in fictional form the fundamental truths of nature and human life. Mythology gives to the invisible and eternal factors that are always part of life but do not appear in a literal, factual story. Most of the time, when we tell a story about our lives, we couch it in purely human terms. When was the last time you talked about monsters, angels, or demons when you were describing some strongly felt experience? Myth reaches beyond the personal to express an imagery reflective of archetypal issues that shape every human life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
When we are trying to understand our problems and our suffering, we look for a story that will be revealing. Our surface explanations usually show their shortcomings; they do not satisfy. And so we turn to family themes. Unacknowledged weariness puts a barrier between the ill people and those who assist them. However, the feelings leak through in subtle ways. My son says he likes fixing me dinner every night, but he looks so tense when he is here. He comes right over from work, and his wife holds dinner at their house until he gets home. He smiles, makes chitchat, but I know he is racing against times. Sometimes he looks like he is going to explode, his face is so tight, but he keeps on smiling. I wish he could just say it is too much for him. I would be disappointed, do not get me wrong, but TV dinners would not kill me. People can see beneath cheerful demeanor that their child is suffering, but do not want to initiate their release from the obligation. Many are afraid, not of TV dinners, but of the loneliness that would await them on a nightly basis if they spoke up and urged their child to only visit them on weekends. The worst consequence of silence, however, is the gap it leaves between them. When you notice your child can no longer speak to you beyond chitchat, it is clear that one has become an unmentionable problem in their life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Our memories of the family are a significant part of the mythology by which we live. We can learn things like the notion of exchange. For example, trading frequency for quality, guilty silence for relieving honesty. Dependent people and their helpers can release each other from guilt, but gestures must be mutual if they are to be effective. The reward for recognizing resentment as a limit is enjoying the elderly or disabled person’s company again. To feel that one can give pleasure and to receive small acts of sweetness is a fair exchange for new hours’ wait. A spiral of good feeling is set in motion between parent and child, which will replace the negative snowball that has been evolving between family members as the child becomes more and more weary of the care. If given the chance, few people would choose being waited on over being enjoyed. When we analyze what the prayer of faith means we discover that it is a statement of belief in some power which is able, ready, and willing to do the healing. At first, this may seem like a rather cold-blooded analysis, for to pick a prayer of faith apart seems to rob it of its sentimentality. Nevertheless, if we would arrive at a state of consciousness that heals we must be willing to analyze some of those things which seem so intimate and so holy that we that we dislike even to mention them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Some of those who are calling out for help are the honest in heart who are earnestly seeking the truth, but they do not know where to find it. The prayer of faith may be thought of as a petition, as a beseeching, or as an agonizing cry of the soul for deliverance, but whatever we term it and from whatever viewpoint we look at it, we discover that it still is an attitude of thought, a way of thinking, a movement in consciousness. If the prayer is one of faith, then this mental movement is one of acceptance, for faith is an acceptance unqualified by denial. Complete faith is absolute and beneficial. Faith is the attitude of one who makes a complete mental surrender. It can arise only through a consciousness of complete abandonment. To the consciousness of faith there are no longer any arguments against its conviction. Faith has no opposites; it is an uncompromising mental attitude, and this is exactly what the prayer of faith is. It is a prayer, a petition, or a beseeching stated in come form of mental acceptance, unqualified belief, unquestioned trust. While the burden of petition and the necessity of faith rests on the one making the petition or having the faith, the response to this petition and this faith is made by some creative agency which has the power and the willingness to perform the act. It is God who raises us up. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
We make some strong claims in faith. We do not apologize for that. We have that responsibility. We have the truth. We are proclaiming the truth. When we consider how we help others, give it careful, prayerful thought. Some of those who are calling out for help are confused and disturbed by this complex, somewhat contradictory World in which we live, a World that has many crosswinds and crosscurrents, and even some whirlpools that can entrap and destroy. Let us remember that. Many of these people are yearning for the inner peace and joy that really can come only through love of God and love of family and from keeping God’s commandments. If from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek hum with all they heart and with all thy soul, we shall know the truth, and the truth shall make us free. That implies that there is a truth which, known, automatically becomes demonstrated. Civilizations may come and go, empires may flourish and decay, time may pass, and change may deface all previous experience, but law is eternal. Thus, the scientist learns to depend on law. As we are able to perfect our lives, the blessings we have become more meaningful, and we experience that inner joy and peace for which there is no substitute. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
What You Believe is Greater than What is in Your Bank Account
If you believe, you can fulfill your God-given destiny. There is incredible power in what we believe. There can be misperceptions about personal pain and people can have problems conveying their feelings, as they try to find a balance point in the center of chaotic emotions and unpredictable circumstances. To a greater or lesser degree, we are always dependent on others but these contacts are usually voluntary. According to our inclinations, we can approach or avoid other people. However, we can no longer get our own groceries, prepare our own meals, or take care of other necessities on our own, we enter into a period of life that is distinct from all the others. The chief consequence of dependency is that we are forced to count on the kindness of others. The vulnerability aroused by this situation awakens the basic questions of our lives: Am I worthy of love and loyalty? Are people capable of true generosity, or do they live mostly for themselves? Accident or illness can, at any moment, remove anyone’s capacity to function independently. Illness and disability can be a wasteland of degradation. We see only the loss of the freedoms and satisfactions that make life bearable, and we expect disappointing answers to these questions, which is not only a threat to spirituality as such, but also deprives the soul of valuable symbolic and reflective experience. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Sometimes people feel angry and helpless in response to dependency, making the transition from an active life to confinement, handling thoughts and reflections about the past, noticing shifts in key relationships, realizing that time it sunning out and options are shrinking, and finding ways to live well in spite of all these changes. Often times, individuals may feel so degraded by the idea of being beholden to helpers that they conceal their disabilities and risk injuring themselves in order to avoid asking for help or appearing to be in need. Through surrender or concealment, they sacrifice much of what formerly made their lives worthwhile. Illness and disability alter our lives in basic ways. As soon as our mobility becomes impaired, changes occur in our we spend our times and conduct our relationships. Self-esteem often erodes along with one’s physical capacities, and we may be further hurt with degrading reactions that others have to our frailty. Regret for wasted time and unfulfilled dreams may nag at us, causing us to question the priorities around which we had previously organized our lives. To be starved for motion and exercise is yet another depletion. Some people’s bodies hurt, and they will just not go and even going to a doctor’s appointment on somedays might be extremely difficult. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
When physical problems enclose us in daily life in which everything has been mastered and repeated, the pull to keep returning to bed becomes more and more compelling. Life starts to echo the stasis of the body. When we feel we have nothing to say, we tend to shun the company of others. With little going on in our lives beyond eating and sleeping, we fear that other people’s contrasting vitality would shame us even as it momentarily revived us. When company leaves, we expect to be left emptier for having been so briefly filled. The more dependent we are on the mercy of others, the more waiting we have to endure. Dependence and waiting eventually become synonymous. We cannot cancel arrangements to secure the necessities of life. Waiting emphasizes the inferior status of the person who is being helped. Each minute of waiting that accumulates speaks this inferiority more loudly. These disparate conditions can evoke bitterness in the most loving relationships. Anyone who has ever endured an incapacitating illness knows that the feelings evoked by days of waiting can be harder to bear than the aliment itself. We wish to be self-sustained. We somehow hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something of degrading dependence in living by it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The freedom to come and go as we please, the wish to be self-sustained, is as fundamental to most of us as breathing. When this part of our human endowment is frustrated, a subterranean anger is stirred. The longer an illness or incapacity lasts, the harder it becomes for us to maintain faith in our others. We begin to imagine the possibility of abandonment. Days of waiting can crack the confidence of the most secure people, given enough time and the wearing effects of doubt. In situations of dependence, we are asked to believe that we have accumulated vast stores of good will from our own acts of generosity in the past. In truth, most of us carry reservoirs of guilt from the many occasions when we failed to be as generous as we could have been. To then depend upon those whom we once disappointed opens up fears of retribution. We begin to wonder, “Is my life really worth all of this stress?” The answer lies in realms that are invisible to those who still retain control over their own progress in life. You go because you have to, because you want to be in charge of your own life. Walking can be viewed as a major metaphor, representing a continued ability to live independently, to control events, and to be active. “Otherwise, I would be sitting in the lobby straight ahead like all those other people in my building. They look like they died ten years ago. If I stayed in there, I would start looking like them.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present. We live too fast and coarsely, just as we eat too fast and do not know the true savor of our food. People who are able to live well in spite of illness are those who allow divine leisure to crowd their physical hardships out of center stage. Turning the nothing of empty time into the essence of good days is the alchemy of successful frailty. At first, having too much time on our hands can feel like a daily humiliation in our making so little of it. Waiting for help emphasizes all the dignities and freedoms that have been ripped away from us. Gradually, if we do not become hardened in out disappointment, we can turn the insults of illness into privileges of being. Care of the soul might include a recovery of formal religion in a way that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying. One obvious potential source of spiritual renewal is the religious traditions in which we were brought up. Some people are fortunate in that their childhood tradition is still relevant and likely to them, but others have to search. We must be careful to avoid thinking that we are unimportant in the scheme of things. We are the most important persons living, as far as we are concerned. This is not a statement of conceit; it is a simple statement of the conviction that each one of us is rooted in the living spirit, that we have access to the mind of God and the love and the power and the peace of the spirit. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
It is a simple conviction that no matter how humble our walk in life may appear to be, it must of necessity influence its own environment. We may not be important to people, but we certainly are necessary to God. Placing our entire trust, our complete faith, our whole conviction in this simple thought, we should walk in confidence and speak our spiritual convictions with complete assurance, knowing that there is a presence and power with us and for us and operating through us—a presence and power that knows no defeat. Sometimes people prey on the sick, elderly, and vulnerable, and that can make them feel devalued. However, at the center of every person’s being there is an absolutely perfect life, a complete wholeness, and an eternal and immortal principle. Our work is to mentally uncover this ever-present reality, this changeless and eternal perfection. We must remove every obstruction of thought which denies God’s presence. Spiritual mind healing is a revelation even though we go through a process to arrive at it. Each person must work at our own method and pursue our own logic. If this method and logic lead us to the right conclusion, we will be rewarded by an affirmative answer. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Take Steps of Faith and God Will Create New Opportunities
We are a healthy people and have a faith that God can see. Put actions behind what you believe. The care of the soul concentrates on the everyday conditions of life. The home is a sacred space, a place for our soul work where we can paint the walls, write our dreams, think our thoughts, enjoy our members, record our visions and look forward to the bright future. If an emotional problem presents itself, the real issues may not be some single trauma or troubled relationship. Maybe the issue is a life set up in such a way that soul is habitually neglected. Problems are part of every human life, and they do not necessarily wither the soul. The soul suffers more from the everyday conditions of life when they do not nourish it with the solid experiences it craves. Care of the soul asks us to observe its needs continually, give them our wholehearted attention. Spirituality demands attention, mindfulness, regularity, and devotion. Dwelling on the thought that God is love, we permit this love to envelop everything and everyone, bringing with it a sense of peace and joy and certainty. When we realize that God is life, we open our whole thoughts to such a complete inflowing of this divine life. The divine substance exceeds by its immensity every form which our intellect attains. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
God’s presence in the human mind enables it to recognize eternal truth. God is in all things, not, indeed, as part of their essence, or as a quality, but in the manner that an efficient cause is present to that on which it acts. Hence, God is in all things, and intimately. God is present (even when unrecognized) at the ground or apex of the soul. Knowing that all things are possible to faith, be not afraid. Faith makes the way certain and goes before us and prepares the way. When we know that God is peace, we open our minds to the quiet influence and the calm certainty of this peace. And knowing that God is joy, allows us to meet every situation in happiness. It is important that we commit our lives unto that power which can do all things with complete assurance. The Lord has demonstrated throughout the generations that when the inhabitants of the Earth remember him and are obedient to his direction, he will bless then not only with spiritual blessings, but with material abundance. It has always been so. When the lives of the people are in harmony with the Lord’s will, all of the essential factors that produce the blessings God deigns to give his children seem to come into line. Love and harmony prevail. Even the weather, the climate, and the elements seem to respond. Peace and tranquility endure. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
No one lives entirely by oneself. We are all individual part of humanity, and whether or not we realize it, each is influencing those around them, and each in one’s turn is being influenced by others. No doubt the thoughts and opinions and actions of the whole World finally are based on what everyone things and believes. According Sir Isaac Newton’s III law, every action creates a separate, but equal reaction. Science tells us that this same power, if properly used, can become an instrument for the most rapid advance in civilization the World has every known. The limitless energy that scientists now know how to use can clean up and irrigate most wastelands in the World. Nature has placed before us the possibility of the greatest blessings in the World. If the majority of people came to believe in spiritual power and the benefits that can be obtained from it, they would all have a great desire to try a new kind of experiment, one that would bless instead of curse humanity. Have you ever notices the contagion of a happy person; one who has an enthusiastic joy in living? That person’s spirit permeates those around them, and the radiance from their personality influences the environment to such an extent that it finally changes it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Most people notice the effect a calm and poised person has on others and how they feel safe in that individual’s presence. However, we have all also had the experience of finding ourselves more or less frustrated and confused and beginning to wonder what it is all about. Perhaps the greatest tragedies of all time have occurred when people have received the promised blessings of the Lord and then have forgotten the sources of their good life. We have to make sure to acknowledge the Lord and thank him for his blessings. As we succeed, we have the sure promise of the Lord that he will prosper us in every way necessary for our well-being. When we have the privilege of sitting down quietly with someone whose atmosphere is permeated with peace and confidence, and gradually we have felt the rough edges of our agitation disappear until finally our own atmosphere changes, and we are filled with hope and confidence. God is present everywhere and in all people. For just as there is an energy caught from the Universe and locked in the physical atom that can be released, so there is a spiritual energy caught in every person’s mind and locked up in the individual life waiting to be released. Faith and conviction are the instruments through which this energy is used. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Spiritual power is within us to heal, bless and prosper those whom we think of. It has brought us the abundant life. It has made us happy, healthy, and serene. We who enjoy the abundant life want to share this happiness. It is wonderful to realize that we can sit in the quiet of our own being and consciously direct a power greater than we are for the definite purpose of helping ourselves and someone else. This power should be used for both purposes. For we have to get back to this simple proposition—we must use the power to help ourselves first, in order that we may establish a realization of our ability to use it for others. If we would bring happiness to those around us, we must first become happy ourselves. However, before we can become happy something has to happen to us that causes us to know that God is right where we are, that God is the final power in the Universe, and that love is an all-conquering force. We are better physically because we keep the Word of Wisdom and avoid those things harmful to our bodies. We are better spiritually because our goals are clarified. We learn more about our relationship with our Heavenly Father. We are more motivated to be a more understanding person, a more faithful individual. We must have confidence and self-assurance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
And this kind of confidence and self-assurance comes only through having proved to ourselves completely that there is a power greater than we are, that it is a power for good, and that it is available, and that we actually know how to use it. And the only proof we will every have is what it does to us and to others. Anyone who uses the creative energy of faith will receive a direct answer or will see a sign following the use of this power. We must make our religion and spiritual conviction come alive and move through us into action. If we decide to, we can pray effectively. If we have the will, we can learn to live with a sense of confidence and security by getting over our fears. Love is the greatest healing power in the World. Everyone needs to be loved. Everyone needs to be needed. Everyone has some kind of talent and wants to use it. Somehow in the magic of this marvelous World, we can find our place and make our contribution. When we think about peace we become peaceful. It is from this peace that we affirm the presence of love and truth and goodness. Because our prayer of affirmation works exactly like any other law in nature, signs will follow our belief. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
There are Seven Billion People on this Planet and God Cares What I Had for Lunch
God is life, God is power, and this life and this power are available right now. Perspective is the way we see things when we look at them from a certain distance, and it allows us to appreciate their true valuable. Professional psychology has created a catalogue of disorders, known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth edition (DSM-5), which is used by doctors and insurance companies to help diagnose and standardize problems of emotional life and behavior with precision. For example, there is a category called adjustment disorders. The problem is adjusting to life, while perhaps sane to all outward appearances, may sometimes be detrimental to the soul. It is extremely important that we do not make decisions of eternal value from the perspective of mortality. For decisions that affect eternity, we need to consider the perspective of our Father in Heaven, as his perspective is essential. God’s eternity signifies an everlasting, endless time. God is a Father, King, and Friend mediated with a knowledge that cannot be surpassed by abstract speculation. God’s plan gives us endurance even amid the wreckage of proximate hopes. Hope keeps us anxiously engaged in good causes even when these appear to be losing causes. Not having an eternal perspective, or losing it, can lead us to have an Earthly perspective as our personal standard and to make decision that are not in harmony with the will of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
God is eternal and through the contingency of finite things and as through the holy through the demands of the moral law, are an immediate, purely spiritual experience called mystical. The union of love and will between the Creator and his creations is permanently retained. Perversion, however, may be regarded either as a condition or as a capability. Society is more eager to accept it as a condition than to respect it as a capability. On its path to progress, society gets just so far—and then again prefers birth to merit, social status to personal achievement. The DSM-5 should also include the diagnosis psychological modernism, an uncritical acceptance of the values of the modern World. It includes blind faith in technology, inordinate attachment to material gadgets and conveniences, uncritical acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to electronic media, and a life-style dictated by advertising. This orientation toward life also tends toward a mechanistic and rationalistic understanding of matters of the heart. In this modernist syndrome, technology becomes the root metaphor for dealing with psychological problems. A modern person comes to therapy and days, “Look, I do not want any long-term analysis. If something is broken, let us fix it. Tell me what I have to do, and I will do it.” The boogey man has long been an indispensable figure in the family for frightening children. Grownups are now terrorized with the threat that the psychiatrist will come get them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Doctors have no imagination in describing diseases. Perhaps that is why their accounts of real illnesses fit imaginary illnesses so well. Such a person is rejecting out of hand the possibility that the source of a problem in a relationship, for example, may be a weak sense of values or failure to come to grips with mortality. The modernist syndrome urges people to buy the latest electronic gear and to be plugged in to news, entertainment, and up-to-the-minute weather reports. It is vitally important not to miss out on anything. There are some people who spend most of their day in front of several television monitors keeping track of events from around the World. These people do not need all of this information professionally, but they feel their lives would be empty if they let any gaps appear in their grasp of the news. A woman who manages a computer firm knows the very latest chemical and mechanical medical treatments, and she can tell you the side effects of whatever pill you are taking; yet in private she feels overwhelmed by her failure to get her life on track and settled. Her sickness is not amenable to the literal medications she knows so well, because her World-weariness is a soul of malady. The difference between mad-doctors and other man-people is roughly the same as that between convex and concave folly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The revenge of mollusk on man, of Shaw on Shakespeare, of the ghetto on God is rapid technological progress, opposition to which qualities one as a reactionary. There seems to be an inverse relationship between information and wisdom. We are overloaded with information about living healthfully, but we have largely lost our sense of the body’s wisdom. We can tune in to news reports and know what is happening in every corner of the World, but we do not seem to have much wisdom in dealing with these World problems. The World demands that we be responsible to it, not to ourselves. We have many demanding academic programs in professional psychology, and states often have rigid requirements for the practice of psychotherapy, and yet there is undoubtedly a severe dearth of wisdom about the mysteries of the soul. Only one is an artist who can see the mysterious in what is ordinary, and can thus transform a solution into a problem. The modernist syndrome also tends to literalize everything it touches. We have a spiritual longing for community and relatedness and for a cosmic vision, but we go after them with literal hardware instead of with sensitivity of the heart. We want to know about peoples from far away places, but we do not want to feel emotionally connected to them. The Lord has given us his standards of worthiness. He has not done it to keep us away from him, but to draw us to him. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Philosophy is at the center of every life problem, but it takes soul to reflect on one’s own life with genuine philosophical seriousness. If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. Our many studies of World cultures are soulless, replacing the common bonding of humanity and it shared wisdom with bites of information that have no way of getting into us deeply, nourishing and transforming our sense of ourselves. Soul, of course, has been extracted from the beginning because we conceive education to be about skills and information, not about depth of feeling and imagination We are not concerned with the weeping and wailing of the family. That is why we must look at life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective. The Lord knows what he wants to accomplish with each one of us. He knows the kind of reform he wants to achieve in our lives, and we do not have the right to counsel him. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We have a loving, just, and merciful Heavenly Father, who has prepared a plan for our eternal happiness. How seldom do we realize that there are no obstructions to divine power. The Heavens, even the highest Heavens, cannot contain you. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
As an individual gradually accumulates a storehouse of faith, when the emergency arises, one is able to stand calm and certain, uncaught by the fears of others. God always comes first and that is why our faith is sufficient. Our trust is complete. Our assurance is absolute. Our words are honored by a power great than us—that power which we all have access to, life itself. In life, joy and happiness are important also. For life intended us to be glad. Peace is also important because it rises above the storm of confusion and doubt and uncertainty that so often confronts us. If we listen to peace we will hear it, and it will infiltrate our whole being. We will discover that our words of peace, acting the law of good, will draw upon a power greater than we are and liquidate the confusion. This is the presence of God. Coming to know that divine power and understanding the complexity and the order and the harmony of the human body reinforces our faith in God. Here alone are peace and joy and certainty. Here alone is freedom from fear and doubt. We must learn to turn daily to the one and only supreme source, which is God. To be worthy of the celestial kingdom and the joy that is there, we must keep the commandments! For one who is not able to abide by the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Born of God–Gratitude is the Memory of the Heart
The World is God (the only substance) under his attributes of thought and extension. Spirituality does not arrive fully formed without effort. Occasionally, there is a time gap between the sacrifice and the blessing. The sacrifice may come according to our time schedule, but the blessing may not come by our calendar, but by the Lord’s date book. Religions around the World demonstrate that spiritual life requires constant attention and a subtle, often beautiful technology by which spiritual principles and understanding are kept alive. The Lord comforts us by acknowledging us. He tells us to be not weary in well-doing, for we are laying the foundation of a great-work. For good reason we prayer, go to church, temple, or the cathedral regularly and at appointed times, as it is easy for consciousness to become lodged in the material World and to forget the spiritual. Sacred technology is largely aimed at helping us remain conscious of spiritual ideas and values. This great gift of life is to be accepted. All that God has is our, there is nothing in us that can deny his presence, his power, his wisdom, his guidance, and his protecting love. Today and every day we shall live life to the full and we shall be glad. Always within us there is the power and the presence and the life of God, and unto this presence be glory and honor, dominion and power, both now and forever. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
When we get in agreement with God and believe what he says about us, then what we believe can supersede any natural law! There is something called a spiritual bank account. There are great spiritual forces that we can draw on and deposit in our souls and minds, and which can be used in any emergency, in any stress or strain of life. Life has enough of everything to meet our needs. It contains love and faith and peace and joy. The blessings surely come to us. Please remember when we make sacrifices, it might be a blessing itself because we are show we have faith and making deposits into our spiritual bank accounts. Things could not have been produced by God in any other manner or order than that in which they were produced. All things must have followed of necessity from a given nature of God, and they were determined for existence or action. God or the Absolute, as in its essence a self-diversifying unity, gave us the ability to meet emergences—the times when we need more love and tolerance, more kindness and understanding, a deeper faith and a higher hope by allowing these blessings to be poured out on us. There are the real crises in our lives. And at such time, unless we have a vast amount of good stored up, we not only become impoverished, but we sometimes become destitute of hope. And then despair takes the place of hope, and fear takes the place of faith. This is what we want to avoid because it means our inner work is not being allowed to reach deep enough. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
If we put God in remembrance of his promises and do not put him in remembrance of our problems, then we will be faithful to his word. How would it be if we all opened a spiritual account with the Bank of Life and, realizing that we were drawing on the infinite, each day deposited enough hope and happiness and faith to more than meet any emergency that might possibly arise? It is just like our surprise and joy when we receive an unexpected gift. As we give, we find that sacrifice being forth the blessings of Heaven. Love is the base of everything. We feel the need of a more genuine means of bringing outer experience deep inside us. Just as the mind digests it, creating wisdom and character out of the fodder of experience. The outer World serves as a means of deep spirituality and the transformation of ordinary experience into the stuff of soul is all important. If the link between life experience and deep imagination is inadequate, then we are left with a division between life and soul, and such a division will always manifest itself in symptoms. This can make us become skeptical and cynical and sometimes wonder if love, after all, is the greatest reality in life. And yet, we know that we could not live without love, for life is absolutely meaningless unless its whole motivation is built on love and giving. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
What God promised, he will do. Often prayers are given for specific blessings which we, in our incomplete understanding, believe we need. While the Lord does answer prayers according to his will, he certainly must be pleased when we offer humble prayers of gratitude. God has already answered a huge prayer for everyone born into this World, because God has given himself to us. He has imparted his own life and, in a mysterious way which is beyond our comprehension, has endowed us with the capacity to love. If God is love—and no sane person can doubt this—and if each one of us has, as we must have, immediate access to the love of God, then we earn the ability to draw on the bank of life in such degree as we become loving. The spirit of gratitude is always pleasant and satisfying because it carries with it a sense of helpfulness to other; it begets love and friendship, and engenders divine influence. Gratitude is the memory of the heart. God is love and all the love there is is ours now. We shall endeavor to see something lovable in everyone we meet, in every situation in which we find ourselves, and as we do this we shall accumulate a great degree of love to be deposited in our bank. And then when some experience comes along which seems unkind or unlovable, we shall be able to write a check on our bank of life which will cover every liability of hate or unkindness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Let us adopt an attitude of gratitude in all we do, we must keep our hearts full of thanks and appreciation for what we have and not dwell on what is not ours. The greatest secrets of nature—the person who has taken the time to harmonize oneself with love will find that, when some incident that seems hateful or discordant arises in one’s experience, one can draw on a reserve force which one now has. One can actually apply this to the situation when it arises. The most satisfying experience we have is to see what God does for people. He gives them a new outlook on life. He gives them a perspective that they have never felt before. God raises their sights to things noble and divine. Something happens to them that is miraculous to behold. They look to God and come alive. He brings love to bear on our situations—a love which comprehends and includes everything, a love which has no hurt in it, a love which is not afraid, a love which is clam and confident and sure of itself. Our lives and the lives of our posterity are changed forever. Right here is where the law of mind in action comes into play. When we apply our thought of love directly to discordant situations, and there is nothing in us which is afraid, our thought of love it applied to that situation will heal it, and any situation that confronts us will be healed. We must have a firm faith that God is love, and an equally firm faith when we apply this principle of love to any human problem. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
The commandments of God give emphasis to improvement of the individual as the only real way to bring about the real improvement of society. The very words we speak in out meditation or treatment or prayer will operate as law in the condition that confronts us, and will neutralize or overcome everything that opposes it. The Lord works from the inside out. The World works from the outside in. This is not an act of will. It has nothing whatsoever to do with concentrating our mind or influencing people. It has to do with this one thought: God is love. God has deposited love at the center of every human’s soul, whether we know it or not, and this love which we now use is not only the greatest sentiment in the Word; it is the supreme power, it is the perfect law, it is reality. And because we have deposited a love which can see around everything that contradicts it, and because we have ample love left in our own thought, we will find that the love we use, acting as law, will definitely overcome the fear and the hate and the sense of insecurity that comes where there is a sense of lack of love. God changes us, and then we change our environment. The World would shape human behavior, but God can change human nature. Above all odds, believe that you can do what God put in your heart. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
We will gain a new measure of vitality and strength as we learn that perfect love can cast out all fear. Love is always greater than fear. Fear is not really an enemy of love. All that fear can do is cast a shadow across our pathway. However, this shadow is dissipated when we look at it with love. This vitality and strength is a mighty force, an instrument in God’s hands to cause the only one force, which is absolute and conclusive. However, we must spend much time with ourselves straightening out all the little animosities and resolving them into one great love which is God. God never fails and love never fails and we will never fail if we use the love that is God. The most important thing next to love is faith—faith in God, faith in ourselves, faith in what we are doing, and faith in those around us. A person without faith is so insecure, so shaken by circumstances, that one becomes unstable in everything. Faith is natural; fear is unnatural. Faith is beneficial; fear is negative. Faith is affirmative; fear is a denial of life. If we are going to meet all the fears and uncertainties that we are sure to encounter, we need a great deal of faith. It is the nature of faith to believe God upon his bare word. It will not be, says sense; it cannot be, says reason; it both can and will be, says faith, for I have a promise for it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Get Ready Like Royalty—Feel Like Royalty!
Open up your mind and it will sing to you. The love that goes out into our work comes back as love of self. Work is an important component of the spiritual life, it can be a path to holiness, and profoundly affects the soul. When we think of work, we only consider function, and so the soul elements are left to chance. However, the rituals that are taking place when one performs a task is the soul’s work: something of the soul is being created in the work of ritual. Ordinary actions, too, accomplish something for the soul. Yet, where there is no artfulness about life, there is a weakening of soul. It seems that the problem with most modern manufacturing is not a lack of efficiency, it is a loss of soul. If people had a deep sense of the truly magical nature of their product, they would take care of the souls of their products with sacred imagination. The same principle holds for all professions and for all forms of labor. We could say, then, that all work is sacred, whether you are building a castle, creating a beautiful stain glass window, or taking out the rubbish. A special window might help ritualize a house, or a dinning room table of a special design or select wood could transform the house into an arena that has imaginal depth that feels one’s soul. It may conjure up certain memories and fantasies that have significance. Or work may be a means of sorting out issues that have little to do with the work itself. It may be a response to fate. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
We may find ourselves doing work that has been in the family for generations or working at a job that appeared after a number of coincidences and chance events. In this sense, all work is a vocation, a calling from a place that is the source of meaning and identity, the foundation of which are beyond human intention and interpretation. However, we can never do this unless we believe that we can, for the belief that we cannot binds us back to the antiquated precedents and compels us to accept only as much good as has been experienced in the past. If we can get firmly fixed in our mind that the principle of the soul is never bound by precedent, that the doing of new things in science through new discoveries always existed as a possibility, and there was nothing in nature which prohibited the larger experiences, we shall no longer be hypnotized by limitations of the past. It is possible that most of us go through life more or less hypnotized by what everyone has believed. We say that the good we desire cannot come to us because we have never experienced much of it, or there is not enough good to go around, of that God does not hear our prayers. Too often we turn over the possibilities of the individual life to the acceptance of the collective group. Not understanding soul, companies look to the work of other cultures and try to mimic their methods. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
It is not possible to care for the soul while violating or disregarding one’s own moral sensibility. What we should break down is the hypnotic suggestions that bind us, and create new avenues in the mind for a fresh approach and a new outlook to the spirit. This is something every individual must do for oneself, but there must be a method or a way to begin. We have to start with the firm faith that we are dealing with power which is not bound. It is not limited. It is not only some power; it is all-power. It is not difficult to convince the mind of this, since plain reasoning compels one to accept such a viewpoint. Alchemy was a process in which raw material was placed in a vessel where it was heated, observed closely, heated some more, passed through various operations and observed once again. In the end, the result was an arcane product imagined mysteriously to be gold, the stone of the philosophers, or a potent elixir. Alchemy was a spiritual practice carried out for the benefit of the soul. Just like many of you work to benefit your family, who are part of your soul. Face it, the only reason many of you get out of bed everyday and go to work is because you believe that the qualities you produce are scared rituals which benefit your soul and are a way to honor God and the people and things you love. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
You find your poetic inspiration in your home, family, garden, and furniture to keep going even when you are tired. We must assure ourselves that we have access to the power of God. We could never do this if we felt that the power was external to us, if it were something apart from or different from our own being. We discover that God is immediate and personal, a possibility latent within the self, and ready to be called upon and used. We could imagine our own everyday work alchemically in the same way. We work on the stuff of the soul by means of the things of life. This is an ancient idea. Ordinary life is the means of entry into higher spiritual activity. At the very moment we are hard at work on some Worldly endeavor, we are also working on a different plane. Perhaps without knowing it, we are engaged in the labours of the soul. The more deeply our work stirs imagination and corresponds to images that are sacred at the core of identity and fate, the more it will have soul. Having identified ourselves with the power which is law, and the presence which is the spirit, we must consciously increase our expectation and deepen our realization. This is done by prayer, communing with the divine, until gradually we so extend our concepts of life and the possibilities of living that we are no longer bound by our thought patterns of lack and limitation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is simply to try to get rid of the trial, and be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever had, and to hail it with delight as an opportunity of obtaining a larger measure of divine grace. There is one life, that life is God, that life is my life now. This power, this presence, and this life are perfect, complete, whole, and happy. We identify the mind with this wholeness, happiness, and perfection, affirming its presence and embodying a certain feeling about it, and inward awareness. This practice must continue until the idea becomes real to us, not as though we were something apart from or approaching the reality, but as through we were operating from the very center of it, which of course we are. It is an extension or reflection of ourselves. When one concludes a successful business transaction, one feels good about oneself. When one builds their dream house or gets a new care, one stands back and contemplates it, feeling a surge of pride. However, if we allow ourselves to do bad work, the whole society suffers a wound to soul. When it is not possible to feel good about our work, then soulful pride, so necessary for creativity, turns into narcissism. Pride and narcissism are not the same thing; in a sense, they are opposites. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
The product of our work should reflect a means of loving ourselves. However, if those products are not lovable, we are forced into a narcissistic place where we lose sight of the work itself and focus on our own personal needs. Love of the World and our place in it, attained largely by our work, turns into solipsistic craving for love. We will never achieve the flowing of our own natures until we find that piece of ourselves, that lovable twin, which lives in the World and as the World. Therefore, finding the right work is like discovering your soul in the World. There will be new thoughts, new ideas coming. We will open our whole consciousness to the influx of that which is larger and better, as we identify with inward peace and joy. At times, however, we may be confronted with negative arguments of set mental patterns which circumscribe, limit, and depress the mind. Our sense may try to insist that we follow the old established precedents as our true guide, since they have been adhered to by humankind from time immemorial. Contradict those vibes, they are so deceiving as the clouded heart. A major part of faith is trusting God when we do not understand why things happen the way they do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
We all know that God gives us opportunities. We have seen God give us favour, good situations, blessings, and promotion. That is the hand of God opening the World up for us. Right here, a certain amount of adventure, of imagination must be brought into play to create a feeling of acceptance which will break down those old thought patterns. We must understand that they are not the Truth of God’s Being, but merely monotonous repetitions of all the negative thought of the ages. We must know that our new declarations of truth have the power within themselves to completely destroy the old thought patterns. We are no longer hypnotized by the old thought patterns; we are no longer bound by negative precedents; we are no longer limited to what everyone has believed, because we know it has no truth, no reality, and no law to support it. It is but a phantom. It is obvious that climbing the ladder of success can easily lead to a loss of soul. Are there any moral problems in the job or workplace—making things detrimental to people or to the Earth, taking excessive profits or contributing to racial and sexist oppression? It is not possible to care for the soul while violating or disregarding one’s own moral sensibility. They will misconstrue your answers due to a lack of love. An alternative may be to choose a profession or projects with soul in mind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Signs of love and therefore of soul are feelings of attraction, desire, curiosity, involvement, passion, and loyalty in relation to our work. When the soul is involved, the work is not carried out by a need for prestige alone; it raises from a deeper place and therefore is not deprived of passion, spontaneity, and grace. We are and always have been part of God’s Universe. Do not ask someone else to justify your belief, for this is confusion. We must in our own minds increase our faith, reaffirming its own position, which will awaken the mind to the greater influx of blessings. Just as surely as we do this, the prison walls of the lesser self begin to crumble, the horizon experiences begins to push itself father away, and, because more spiritual territory is taken in, greater experiences are bound to follow. “Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the upright. Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy. The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the house of the upright will flourish (Proverbs 14.9-11).” Real satisfaction comes not in understanding God’s motives, but in understanding his character, in trusting in his promises, and in leaning on him and resting in him as the Sovereign who knows what he is doing and does all things well. Look at others with patient eyes, as some leave reality early due to the lack of love. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Randolph Harris II International Institute 