Why give up an opportunity to see her again? There was not any harm in just seeing her. The more we come to terms with our soul tendencies, the more we find ourselves conceiving and living by a universal structure of reality. A friend of mine with whim I was having lunch seemed depressed. The lunch was not far along when he told me that he was preoccupied over some event of the weekend. His three children, aged twelve to twenty-three, had devoted several pithy hours to pointing out how he had been, if not responsible for, at least a prime contributor to, their problems. The upshot of their attack was that he had not made enough clear decisions in his relation to them, had not take a firm enough stand or set a strong enough structure. However, it is important that his children felt comfortable enough to communicate their issues with him, because some adult children stay respectful to their parents out of necessity and you never may know how they feel about the things you did and know you are responsible for doing that caused extreme hardship in their lives, when you know it is your fault, regardless of if you are in denial or not. Nonetheless, my friend, a sensitive, imaginative man who was a considerable success in his own life and work, had been brought up by strict inner-directed parents. However, he had known that he could never raise his children on that Victorian will-power pattern. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

At the same time, my friend and his wife had also never been devotees of the popular over permissiveness which filled the vacuum when Victorianism was routed. What struck me with poignancy as he talked was my awareness that almost every parent these days seems to express in some form the same pain and perplexity that infused his question, “How does a parent make decisions about his children? How should a father asset his will?” This crisis of will affects the neurotic and normal alike—the patient on the couch as well as the psychiatrist or psychologist in the chair listening to him. The man I referred to was not in treatment for neurosis; yet he was experiencing the same contradiction in will and decision that is an inescapable expression of the psychological upheaval of the transitional age in which we live. The inherited basis of our capacity for will and decision has been irrevocably destroyed. And, ironically if not tragically, it is exactly in this portentous age, when power has grown so tremendously and decisions are so necessary and so fateful, that we find ourselves lacking any new basis for will. That Victorian will power is a faculty by which people make resolutions and then direct their lives down the rational and moral road that the culture dictates. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

However, most of what motives us and our behaviors—whether in bringing up children or participating in pleasures of the flesh or running a business—are determined by unconscious urges, anxieties, fears, and the endless host of bodily drives and instinctual forces. The deeply rooted belief in psychic freedom and choice is quite unscientific and must be given ground before the claims of a determinism which governs mental life. Loss of individual will and responsibility is due to the fact the people no longer reflect on what is emerging from the depths of their soul or culture, and then they reflect and interpret and mold what they find without pondering why. In effect, this is a mutilation of one’s own consciousness, and it forfeits the chance to pus through the crisis to a new place of consciousness and integration. And in the process, one’s image of oneself will never be the same again; our only choice is to retreat before this destruction of our vaunted will power or to push on to the integration of consciousness on new levels. I do not wish or choose to do the former; but we have not yet achieved the latter; and our crisis of will is that we are now paralyzed between the two. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

The dilemma arising from the undermining of will has become a thorny problem. Among the sophisticated use of the term will power has become perhaps the most unambiguous badge of naivete. It has become unfashionable to try, by one’s unassisted efforts, to force one’s way our of a condition of neurotic misery; for the stronger the will the more likely it is to be labeled a counter-phobic maneuver. The unconscious is heir to the prestige of will. As one’s fate formerly was determined by will, now it is determined by the repressed mental life. Knowledgeable moderns put their backs to the couch and in so doing may fail to put their shoulders to the wheel. As will has been devalued, so had courage; for courage can exist only in the service of will, and can hardly be valued higher than that which it serves. In our understanding of human nature we have gained determinism, lost determination. The tendency to see ourselves as the spawns of determinism has spread, in late decades, to include contemporary mortal’s conviction that one is the helpless object of scientific forces in the form of atomic power. The helplessness is, of course, vividly represented by the nuclear bomb, about which the typical citizen feels powerless to do anything. Many intellectuals saw this coming and asked in their own terms whether modern mortals are obsolete. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

However, the important development in our present decade is that this is the common awareness of all who even watch TV or go to the movies, the modern era has destroyed mortal’s faith in one’s ability to influence what happens to him or her. Indeed, the central core of modern mortal’s neurosis, it may be fairly said, is the undermining of one’s experience of oneself as responsible, the sapping of one’s will and ability to make decisions. The lack of will is much more than merely an ethical problem: the modern individual so often has the conviction that even if one did exert one’s will—or whatever illusion passes for it—one’s actions would not do any good anyway. It is this inner experience of impotence, this contradiction in will, which constitutes our critical problem. Our ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because emblematic language alone is able to express our supreme concern. Symbols have one characteristic in common with signs; they point beyond themselves to something else. The red sign at the street corner points to the order to stop the movement of cars at certain intervals. A red light and the stopping of cars have essentially no relation to each other, but conventionally they are untied as long as the convention lasts. The same is true of letters and numbers and partly even words. They point beyond themselves to sounds and meanings. They are given this special function by convention within a nation or by international conventions, as mathematical signs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

Sometimes such signs are called symbols; but this is unfortunate because it makes the distinction between signs and symbols more difficult. Decisive is the fact that signs do not participate in the reality of that to which they point, while symbols do. Therefore, signs can be replaced for reasons of expediency or convention, while symbols cannot. This leads to the symbol: It participates in that to which it points: the flag participates in the power and dignity of the nation for which it stands. Therefore, it cannot be replaced except after an historic catastrophe that changes the reality of the nation which it symbolizes. An attack on the flag is felt as an attack on the majesty of the group in which it is acknowledged. Such an attack is considered blasphemy. Another characteristic of a symbol is that it opens up levels of reality which otherwise are closed for us. All arts create symbols for a level of reality which cannot be reached in any other way. A picture and a poem reveal elements of reality which cannot be approached scientifically. In the creative work of art we encounter reality in a dimension which is closed for us without such works. The symbol’s characteristic not only opens up dimensions and elements of reality which otherwise would remain unapproachable but also unlocks dimensions and elements of our soul which correspond to the dimensions and elements of reality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

We never know we go—when we are going. We jest and shut the door; fate following behind us bolts it, and we accost no more. A great play gives us not only a new vision of the human scene, but it opens up hidden depths of our own being. Thus we are able to receive what the play reveals to us in reality. There are within us dimensions of which we cannot become aware except through symbols, as melodies and rhythms in music. Symbols cannot be produced intentionally—this is further characteristic. They grow out of individual or collective unconscious and cannot function without being accepted by the unconscious dimension of our being. Symbols which we have an especially social function, as political and religious symbols, are created or at least accepted by the collective unconscious of the group in which they appear. Additionally, a consequence of the fact that symbols cannot be invited, like living beings, they grow and die. They grow when the situation is ripe for them, and they die when the situation changes. The symbol of the king grew in a special period of history, and it died in most parts of the World in our period. Symbols do not grow because people are longing for them, and they do not die because of scientific or practical criticism. The die because they can no longer produce response in the group where they originally found expression. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

These are the main characteristics of every symbol. Genuine symbols are created in several sphere of mortal’s cultural creativity. The built environment reflects the natural World and the conception of the people who inhabit it of their place within the natural scheme of things. A building’s form might echo the World around it, or might contrast with it—but, in each case, the choices builders make reveal their attitudes toward the World around them. The architecture of the vast majority of early civilizations was designed to imitate natural forms. The significance of the pyramids of Egypt is the subject of much debate, but their form may well derive from the image of the god Ra, who in ancient Egypt was symbolized by the rays of the Sun descending to Earth. A test in one pyramids reads: “I have trodden these rays as ramps under my feet.” I believe that inscription is in one of the Pyramids of Mycerinus (circa 2470 BCE). As one approached the mammoth pyramids, covered in limestone to reflect the light of the Sun, the eye was carried skyward to Ra, the Sun itself, who was in the desert the central fact of life. Human’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically! One may ask: Why can it not be expressed directly and properly? If money, success or the nation is someone’s ultimate concern, can this not be said in a direct way without symbolic language? It is not only those cases in which the content of the ultimate concern is called “God” that we are in the realm of symbols? #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

The answer is that everything which is a matter of unconditional concern is made into a god. If the nation is someone’s ultimate concern, the name of the nation becomes a sacred name and the nation receives divine qualities which far surpass the reality of being and functioning of the nation. The nation then stands for and symbolizes the true ultimate, but in an idolatrous way. Success as ultimate concern is not the natural desires of actualizing potentialities, but is readiness to sacrifice all other values of life for the sake of a position of power and social predominance. The anxiety about not being a success is an idolatrous form of the anxiety about divine condemnation. Success is grace; lack of success, ultimate judgment. In this way concepts designating ordinary realities become idolatrous symbols of ultimate concern. The reason for this transformation of concepts into symbols is the character of ultimacy and the nature of faith. That which is the true ultimate transcends the realm of finite reality infinitely. Therefore, no finite reality can express it directly and properly. Religiously speaking, God transcends one’s own name. This is why the use of one’s name easily becomes an abuse or a blasphemy. Whatever we say about that which concerns us ultimately, whether or not we call it God, has a symbolic meaning. It points beyond itself while participating in that to which it points. In no other way can faith express itself adequately. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

The language of faith is the language of symbols. If faith were what we have shown that it is not, such an assertion could not be made. However, faith, understood as the state of being ultimately concerned, has no language other than symbols. When saying this I always expect the question: Only a symbol? One who asks this question shows that one has not understood the difference between signs and symbols nor the power of symbolic language, which surpasses in quality and strength the power of any nonsymbolic language. One should never say “only a symbol,” but one should say, “not less than a symbol.” With this in mind we can now describe the different kinds of symbols of faith. The fundamental symbol of our ultimate concern is God. In the 1432 portrait of God by Jan van Eyck, God is celebrated in a materialism that is the proper right of benevolent kings. Behind God’s head, across the top of the throne, are Latin words that, translated into English, read: “This is God, all power in his divine majesty; of all the best, by the gentleness of his goodness; the most liberal giver, because of his infinite generosity.” God’s mercy and love are indicated by the pelicans embroidered on the tapestry behind him, which is Christian tradition symbolize self-sacrificing love, since pelicans were believed to wound themselves in order to feed their young with their own blood if other food was unavailable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

A symbol of God is always present in any act of faith, even if the act of faith includes the denial of God. Where there is ultimate concern, God can be denied only in the name of God. One God can deny the other one. Ultimate concern cannot deny its own character as supreme. Therefore, it affirms what is meant by the word “God.” Atheism, consequently, can only mean the attempt to remove any ultimate concern—to remain unconcerned about the meaning of one’s existence. Indifference toward the ultimate question is the only imaginable form of atheism. Whether it is possible is a problem which must remain unsolved at this point. In any case, one who denies God as a matter of ultimate concern affirms God, because one affirms ultimacy in one’s concern. God is the fundamental symbol for what concerns us ultimately. Again it would be completely wrong to ask: So God is nothing but a symbol? Because the next question has to be: A symbol for what? And then the answer would be: For God! God is a symbol for God. This means that in the notion of God we must distinguish two elements: the element of ultimacy, which is a matter of immediate experience and not symbolic in itself, and the element of concreteness, which is taken from our ordinary experience and symbolically applied to God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

The mortal whose ultimate concern is a sacred tree has both the ultimacy of concern and the concreteness of the tree which symbolizes one’s relation to the ultimate. The person who adores Apollo is ultimately concerned, but not in an abstract way. One’s ultimate concern is symbolized in the divine figure of Apollo. The mortal who glorifies Jahweh, the God of the Old Testament, has both an ultimate concern and a concrete image of what concerns one ultimately. This is the meaning of the seemingly cryptic statement that God is the symbol of God. In this qualified sense God is the fundamental and universal content of faith. It is obvious that such an understanding of the meaning of God makes the discussion about the existence or non-existence of God meaningless. It is meaningless to question the ultimacy of a supreme concern. This element in the idea of God is in itself certain. The symbolic expression of this element varies endlessly through the whole history of humankind. Here again it would be meaningless to ask whether one or another of the figures in which an ultimate concern is symbolized does exist. If existence refers to something which can be found within the whole of reality, no divine being exists. The question is not this, but: which of the innumerable symbols of faith is most adequate to the meaning of faith? #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

In other words, which symbol of ultimacy expresses the ultimacy without idolatrous elements? This is the problem, and not the so-called existence of God—which is in itself an impossible combination of words. God as the ultimate in mortal’s ultimate concern is more certain than any other certainty, even that of oneself. God as symbolized in a divine figure is a matter of daring faith, of courage and risk. God is the basic symbol of faith, but not the only one. All the qualities we attribute to him, power, love, justice, are taken from finite experiences and applied symbolically to that which is beyond finitude and infinite. If faith calls God “almighty,” it uses the human experience of power in order to symbolize the content of its infinite concern, but it does not describe a highest being who can do as one pleases. So it is with all the other qualities and with all the actions, past, present, and future, which mortals attribute to God. They are symbols taken from our daily experiences, and not information about what God did one upon a time or will do at sometime in the future. Faith is not the belief in such stories, but it is the acceptance of symbols that express our ultimate concern in terms of divine actions. Another group of symbols of faith are manifestations of the divine in things and events, in persons and communities, in words and documents. This whole realm of sacred objects is a treasure of symbols. Holy things are not holy in themselves, but they point beyond themselves to the source of all holiness, that which is of ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13

Our senses do not always play fair, or so it often seems. Sometimes the strangest phenomena occur which cause us to doubt our sanity or the effectiveness of our sensory apparatus. When we consider how intricate our nervous system is and how complex our sensory equipment, it is small wonder that there is not a lot more confusion than there actually is. We have you in our World now, and I must say you have a divine house here, and I so admire the paintings which have only just come from Paris, you and your friends are so very cleaver, and the furniture, there is so much of it, yes, it seems you have delicately places things in every nook and cranny, yet who could have asked for anything finer? Incoherence is the result of the present disintegrative processes in education. Thus, we must recognize that natural and humanmade ecological systems require as much study as isolated particles and elementary reactions. For there is a basic correlation of elements in nature as in mortals which cannot be separated, which compose each other and alter each other mutually. Thus we hope to widen appropriately our conceptual framework of reference. For our epistemological problem consists in finding the proper balance between our lack of an all-embracing principle relevant to our way of evaluating life and in our power to express ourselves in a logically consistent manner. All of this is sharply expressed in the relation of faith and doubt. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

If faith is understood as belief that something is true, doubt is incompatible with the act of faith. If faith is understood as being ultimately concerned, doubt is a necessary element in it. It is a consequence of the risk of faith. Our experience challenges us to recognize a totality richer and far more complex than the average observer could have suspected—a totality which compels one to think in ways which the logical dichotomies denies. We are summoned to revise fundamentally our ordinary ways of conceiving experience, and thus, by expanding our vision and by accepting these forms of thought which also include nonexclusive categories, then mind is then able to grasp what it was incapable of grasping or accepting before. The doubt which is implicit in faith is not a doubt about fact or conclusions. It is not the same doubt which is the lifeblood of scientific research. Even the most orthodox theologian does not deny the right methodological doubt in matter of empirical inquiry or logical deduction. A scientist who would say that a scientific theory is beyond doubt would at that moment cease to be scientific. One may believe that the theory can be trusted for all practical purposes. Without such belief no technical application of a theory would be possible. One could attribute to this a kind of belief pragmatic certainty sufficient for action. Doubt in this case points to the preliminary character of the underlying theory. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

We initially experience the soul as a blind push, driving us toward the assertion of ourselves. This blind push is original in two senses: first, it is the original way the infant experiences the soul, but it is also the way the soul instantaneously strikes each of us regardless of how old we are. Nature operates out of necessity; there is no alternative in nature, no will, no freedom, no choice as there is for mortals. Mortals must have convictions and values to live for, and this also is recognized and accepted by those scientists who are at the same time philosophers. For they then realize that duty and devotion to our task, be it a task of acting or of understanding, will become weaker and rarer unless guidance is sought in a metaphysics that transcends our historical and scientific views in a religion that transcends and yet pervades the work we are carrying on in the light of day. Our blind urges become more and more sieved through the context of what gets us what we wish; we begin the long process of learning the gradual acculturation of soul urges. We are born into a social group, and would not survive more than a few hours without this community—no longer than Oedipus would have lasted out on the hillside if he had not been found by the shepherd. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The skeptical doubt is an attitude toward all the beliefs of mortals, from sense experiences to religious creeds. It is more an attitude than an assertion. For as an assertion it would conflict with itself. Even the assertion that there is no possible truth for mortals would be judged by the skeptical principle and could not stand as an assertion. Genuine skeptical doubt does not use the form of an assertion. It is an attitude of actually rejecting any certainty. Therefore, it cannot be refuted logically. It does not transform its attitude into a proposition. Such an attitude necessarily leads either to despair or cynicism, or both alternately. And often, if this alternative becomes intolerable, it leads to indifference and the attempt to develop an attitude of complete unconcern. However, since mortals are those beings who are essentially concerned about their being, such an escape finally breaks down. This is the dynamics of skeptical doubt. It has an awakening and liberating function, but it also can prevent the development of a centered personality. For personality is not possible without faith. The despair about truth by the skeptic shows that truth is still one’s infinite passion. The cynical superiority over every concrete truth shows that truth is still taken seriously and that the impact of the question of an ultimate concern is strongly felt. The skeptic, so long as one is a serious skeptic, is not without faith, even thought it has no concrete content. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

For the nature of knowledge, whether scientific or ontological, consists in reconciling meaning and being. And being signifies nothing other than the actualization of potentiality, self-realization which keeps in tune wit the transformation. This leads to experience in terms of the individual; and to organization and patterning in terms of the Universe. Thus organism and World actualize themselves simultaneously. And so we may understand that organism is being enduring in time, in fact in eternal time, nor with birth, nor does it end with death. Energy and matter in whatever form they may manifest themselves are transtemporal and transspatial and are therefore metaphysical. Mortals as mortal is summoned to know what is right and what is wrong, for emptied of such knowledge one is unable to decide what is better or what is worse. The doubt which is implicit in every act of faith is neither the methodological nor the skeptical doubt. It is the doubt which accompanies every risk. It is not the permanent doubt of the scientists, and it is not the transitory doubt of the skeptic, but it is the doubt of one who is ultimately concerned about a concrete content. One could call it the existential doubt, in contrast to the methodological and the skeptical doubt. It does not question whether a special proposition is true or false. It does not reject every concrete truth, but it is aware of the element of insecurity in every existential truth. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

At the same time, the doubt which is implied in faith accepts this insecurity and takes it into itself in an act of courage. Faith includes courage. Therefore, it can include the doubt about itself. Certainly faith and courage are not identical. Faith has other elements besides courage and courage has other function beyond affirming faith. This dynamic concept of faith seems to give no place to that restful affirmative confidence which we find in the documents of all great religions, including Christianity. However, this is not the case. The self-motivated perception of faith is the result of a conceptual analysis, both of the subjective and of the objective side of faith. It is by no means the description of an always actualized state of mind. An analysis of structure is not the description of a state of things. The confusion of these two is a source of many misunderstandings and errors in all realm of life. An example, taken from the current discussion of anxiety, is typical of confusion. The description of anxiety as the awareness of one’s finitude is sometimes criticized as untrue from the of view of the ordinary state of the mind. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Anxiety, one says, appears under special conditions but it not an ever-present implication of mortal’s finitude. Certainly anxiety as an acute experience appears under definite conditions. However, the underlying structure of finite life is the universal condition which makes the appearance of anxiety under special conditions possible. In the same way doubt is not a permanent experience within the act of faith. However, it I always present as an element in the structure of faith. This is the difference between fait and immediate evidence either of perceptual or of logical character. There is no faith without an intrinsic “in spite of” and the courageous affirmation of oneself in the state of ultimate concern. This intrinsic element of doubt breaks into the open under special individual and social conditions. If doubt appears, it should not be considered as the negation of faith, but as an element which was always and will always be present in the act of faith. Existential doubt and faith are poles of the same reality, the state of ultimate concern. The insight into this structure of faith and doubt is of tremendous practical importance. Many Christians, as well as members of other religious groups, feel anxiety, guilt and despair about what they call loss of faith. However serious doubt is confirmation of faith, it indicates the seriousness of the concern its unconditional character. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

This also refers to those who as future or present ministers of a church experience not only scientific doubt about doctrinal statements—that is as necessary and perpetual as theology is a perpetual need—but also existential doubt about the message of their church, for instance, that Jesus can be called the Christ. The criterion according to which they should judge themselves is the seriousness and ultimacy of their concern about the content of both their fait and their doubt. So, it seems all people question their faith from time to time, and that is nature, and even people who do not have or are just establishing their faith have an inclination to believe in God and Christ, but the bottom line is that they know they should be good people, even if they do not recognize God. A belief in God or not believing in God is not a key to sin and think it is all good because you can see something much greater than humans created this World and at sometime, we are going to have to answer for the things we have done. Thus, mortals have discovered their own nature, and with this self-knowledge one has left the state of nonage and entered adulthood. For one is the only being who is able to say “no” to life but “yes” and to make for oneself a life that is human. In this decision lie our burden and our greatness. For the power of life or death lies not only in the tongue but in mortal’s recently acquired ability to destroy or to create life itself, and therefore one is faced with unlimited and unprecedented choices for good and evil that dominate out time. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Our common concern is the very destiny of the human race. For mortals have now intervened in the process of evolution, a power not given to the pre-Socratics, nor to Aristotle, nor to the Prophets in the East or the West, nor to Copernicus, not to Luther, Descartes, or Machiavelli. Judgments of value must henceforth direct technological change, for without such values mortals are divested of one’s humanity and of one’s need to collaborate with the very fabric of the Universe in order to bestow meaning, purpose, and dignity upon one’s existence. No time must be lost since the wavelength of chance is now shorter than the life-span of mortals. In spite of the infinite obligation of mortals and in spite of their finite power, in spire of the intransigence of nationalisms, and in spite of the homelessness of moral passions rendered ineffectual by the technological outlook, beneath the apparent turmoil and upheaval of the present, and out of the transformations of this dynamic period with the unfolding of a World-consciousness, the purpose of humanity is to help quicken the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth and interpret the significant elements of the World Age now taking shape out of the core of that undimmed continuity of the creative process which restores mortals to humankind while deepening and enhancing one’s communion and one’s symbiotic relationship with the  Universe. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Regardless of how loud we protest, we need our communities around us. The soul occurs within the context of this social group. To what extent will it be used against them, to attack the, or force them to bend to our needs and desires; and to what extent and wen will it be used as a cooperative assertion? Adults retain the propensity to experience the soul as a blind push, as sheer self-assertion. In all sorts of demonstrations, it is necessary to stir the mob spirit before the act can be done. We experience security in the mob, a comfortable feeling of being completely protected. We surrender our individual consciousness to the group mind; we feel as thought we were in the ecstatic state of trance under hypnosis. No matter how civilized an individual may pride oneself on being, or how much one may deplore violence on the part of others, one must still admit that one is capable of this—or, if one is not, something important in one’s character has been suffocated. The attractiveness of giving one’s self over to the mob lies in the excitement without individual consciousness—no more alienation, no sense of isolation, and none of that fatiguing burden of personal responsibility. All of this is taken over by the group mind, a fictitious phrase which stands for the lowest common denominator. This is what constitutes the attraction—indeed, at times the horrendous joy—of war and of mass demonstrations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

They assume from us in our individual personal responsibility for the soul; and the fact that my sentence begins with “they” indicates how much we must assign the action to anonymous figures. In society like our, which represses the soul, these states are welcomed for the primitive security they give. Prejudice is a result of disrespect for our fellow beings. We cannot participate in attitudes of prejudice without distancing ourselves from others. True respect, then, comes as we develop our ability to love our brothers and sisters as ourselves. Gossip, another everyday form of disrespect, is incompatible with love. What we say about people in their absence should be what we would say to them, with love, if they were present. Feeling empathy for others is a symptom of respectful behavior, while feeling unsympathetic is a symptom of disrespectful acts. Respect is also synonymous with care and concern. We respect those we care about. Sometimes we excuse our disrespect, even for people we care about, by holding against them their lack of caring or concern for us. “And ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every person according to that which one is due,” reports Mosiah 4.13. While there are many examples of disrespect in the media, there are so good example, like the teach who helped buy one of her students brand new car and get him a paid internship because he was working three job. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Teach your children to respect their neighbors, church leaders, and teachers. The act of faith, like every act in a mortal’s spiritual life, is dependent on language and therefore on community. For only in the community of spiritual beings is language alive. Without language there is no act of faith, no religious experience! This refers to language generally and to the special language in every function of mortal’s spiritual life. The religious language, the language of symbol and myth, is created in the community of the believers and cannot be fully understood outside this community. However, within it, the religious language enables the act of faith to have a concrete content. Faith needs its language, as does every act of the personality; without language it would be blind, not directed toward a content, not conscious of itself. This is the reason for the predominant significance of the community of faith. Only as a member of such a community (even if in isolation or expulsion) can mortals have a content for one’s ultimate concern. Only in a community of language can mortals actualize their faith. If there is no faith without community of faith, is it not necessary that the community formulate the content of its faith in a definite way as a creedal statement and demand that every member of the community accept it? Certainly this is the way in which the creeds came into existence, and is the reason for the doctrines and legal fixation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

However, we cannot force every member of the community to accept out beliefs. This would not explain the tremendous power of these expressions of the communal faith over groups and individual generation to generation. Nor does it explain the fanaticism with which doubts and deviations were suppressed, not only by external power but even more by the mechanism of inner suppression. These mechanisms had been planted into the individual mind and were most effective even without pressure from the outside. In order to understand these facts we must remember that faith as the state of ultimate concern includes total surrender to the content of this concern in a centered act of the personality. This means that the existence of the personality in the ultimate sense is at stake. Idolatrous concern and devotion may destroy the center of the personality. If, as in the Christian Church, in centuries of strife the content of the communal faith has been defended against such intrusions, it is understandable that every deviation from these formulations is considered destructive for the soul of the Christian. One is thought to have fallen under demonic influences. Ecclesiastical punishments are attempts to save one from demonic self-destruction. In these measures the concern which is the content of faith is take absolutely seriously. It is a matter of eternal life and death. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

However, it is not only the individual for who subjection to the established creed is of decisive importance. It is also the community of faith as such which must be protected against the distorting influences of individuals. The Church excludes from its community those who are though to have denied the foundations of the Church. This is the meaning of the concept of heresy. The heretic is not one who has erroneous beliefs (tis is a possible implication of heresy, but not its essence), but the heretic is one who has turned away from the true to a false, idolatrous concern. Therefore, one may influence others in the same direction, destroy them, and undermine the community. If the civil authorities consider the Church as the basis of the conformity and cultural substance without which a society cannot live, they persecute the heretic as a civil criminal and use means of indoctrination and external pressure by which they try to keep the unity of the religio-political realm. However, if this point is reached, the reaction of mortal’s spiritual autonomy begins to work and, if victorious, removes not only the political enforcement of a creedal system but the creedal system itself—and beyond this, often faith itself. However, this proves to be impossible. It can be and has always been done only through the power of another ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Faith stands against faith in the World historical struggles between the Church and its liberal critics. Even the faith of the liberal needs expression and some communal formulations, and it needs to be defended against authoritarian attacks. Even more: the ultimate concern of the liberal needs concrete contents, as does every ultimate concern. One also lives in institutions of a definite historical character. One, too, has a special language and uses special symbols. One’s faith in freedom as an element in the concreteness of a total situation. If one undercuts this concreteness in the name of freedom, one produces a vacuum into which antiliberal forces easily enter. Only creative faith can resist the onslaught of destructive faith. Only the concern with what is truly ultimate can stand against idolatrous concerns. How is a community of faith possible without suppression of the autonomy of mortal’s spiritual life? That is based on the relation of the civil authorities to the communities of faith. Even if a society is practically identical with a community of faith and the actual life of the group is determined by the spiritual substance of a church, the civil authorities should as such remain neutral and risk the rise of dissident forms of faith. If they try to enforce spiritual conformity, and are successful, they have removed the risk of courage which belongs to the act of faith. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

They have transformed faith into a behavior pattern which does not admit alternatives, and which loses its character of ultimacy even if the fulfillment of the religious duties is done with supreme concern. However, such a situation has become rare in our period. In most societies the evil authorities have to deal with different communities of faith, unable to enforce the one or the other in all members of the society. In this case the spiritual substance of the social group is determined by the common denominator of the different groups and their common tradition. This denominator may be more secular or more religious. In any case it is an outgrowth of faith, and its expression—as in the American Constitution—is affirmed in an attitude which sometimes has the unconditional character of an ultimate concern, but more often the conditional character of a preliminary concern of highest degree. Just for this reason the civil authorities should not try to prohibit the expression of doubt about such a basic law, although they must enforce the legal consequences of it. People may have to struggle within themselves about their subjection; but after they have made the decision, no doubt can be admitted by them about the infallible statements of the authorities. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

This faith has become static, a nonquestioning surrender not only to the ultimate, which is affirmed in the act of faith, but also to its concrete elements as formulated by the religious authorities. In this way something preliminary and conditional—the human interpretation of the content of faith from the Biblical writers to the present—receives ultimacy and is elevated above the risk of doubt. The fight against the idolatrous implications of this kind of static faith was waged first by Protestantism and then, when Protestantism itself became static, by Enlightenment. This protect, however insufficient its expression, aimed originally at a dynamic faith and not at the negation of faith, not even at the negation of creedal formulations. So we stand again before the question: How can a faith which has doubt as an element within itself be untied with creedal statements of the community of faith? Creedal expressions of the ultimate concern of the community must include their own criticism. It must become obvious in all of them—by they liturgical, doctrinal or ethical expressions of the faith of the community—that they are not ultimate. Rather, their function is to point to the ultimate which is being all of them. This is what I call the “Protestant principle,” the critical element in the expression of the community of faith and consequently the element of doubt in the fact of faith. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Neither the doubt nor the critical element is always actual, but both most always be possible within the circle of faith. From the Christian point of view, one would say that the Church with all its doctrines and institutions and authorities stands under the Cross, if the Cross is understood as the divine judgment over mortal’s religious life, and even over Christianity, though it has accepted the sign of the Cross. In this way the dynamic faith which we first have described in personal terms is applied to the community of faith. Certainly, the life of a community of faith is a continuous risk, if faith itself is understood as a risk. However, this is the character of dynamic faith, and the consequences of the Protestant principle. Faith is a principle of action and power. Whenever we work toward a worthy goal, we exercise faith. We show our hope for something that we cannot see. We can exercise faith in Christ when we have an assurance that he exists, a correct idea of the Lord’s character, and a knowledge that we are striving to live according to his will. Having faith in Jesus Christ means relying completely on him—trusting his infinite power, intelligence, and love. It includes believing his teaching. It means believing that even though we do not understand all things. Because the Lord has experienced all our pains, afflictions, and infirmaries, he knows how to help us rise above all our daily difficulties. Faith is much more than passive belief. We express our faith through action—by the way we live. Our faith an lead us to good works. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

Who missed the deep silence of so many past centuries? Who missed the deep darkness of the long ago pre-electric nights? Not me. We can no longer postpone the challenging question: How does one know that among that bedlam of voices which beset us all, one is really hearing one’s soul? Inner voices—experienced as actual or metaphorical ones—are notoriously untrustworthy; they can tell one anything. Many people hear voices, but there are few Joans Arc. The most important criterion which saves the soul from anarchy is dialogue. Almost every contemporary psychotherapist gains in importance and comes much more than a mere technique for dialogue implies that mortals exist in relationship. The fact that dialogue is possible at all—that it is possible, in favorable circumstances, for us to understand each other, stand where the other is standing—is, in itself, a remarkable point. Communication presupposes community which, in turn, means a communion between the consciousness of the persons in the community. This is a meaningful interchange which is not dependent upon the individual’s mere whim but is a built-in aspect of the structure of human intercourse. Human life is life in dialogue; we can know the self only in dialogue. As we move into times of accelerating change and deepening uncertainty, we need to get smart about how to talk to one another. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

We need to be able to overcome differences, find common ground, build meaning and purpose, be able to think together as groups, as teams, as committees, as communities and as citizens.  Consensual validation shows the enteral importance of dialogue, and has the merit of emphasizing the experiential side rather than mere discourse. The word logos (meaningful structure of reality) is the anchor of this term, dia-logos. If we can talk about the soul meaningfully, we already are in the process of integrating it into the structure of our lives. We find through dialogue the structure of experience and then each mortal is not cast adrift on one’s own. Ideas and reminiscence has to only be awakened and brought out. Understanding is possible, specially by the structure of language, and more generally by the structure of human relationships. Truth exists in the individual as well as in universal structures, for we ourselves participate in these structures. Logos speaks not only in objective laws but subjectively, through the individual person. The integrated soul pushes the person toward some universal structure of meaning, as shown in dialogue. To be guided by your own soul requires a fundamental humility. Your own convictions will always have an element of blindness and self-distortion; the one ultimate illusion is to operate under the conceit that you are free from illusion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

Indeed, some scholars believe the original Greek phrase “know thyself” means “Know that thou art only a mortal.” This implies that what as to be surrendered or worked through, as we say psychoanalytically, is the tendency arising in human infancy to play god and the omnipresent demand to be treated as through we were god. Dr. Freud’s concepts of resistance and repression are descriptions of the profound difficulty of knowing thyself. The concept of bad faith and good faith is also an illustration—the dilemma of honesty with one’s self lying in the fact that there is always some element of self-distortion in our acts and beliefs. The mortal who thinks one is in good faith is at that point in bad faith, and the only way to be in good faith is to know that you are in bad faith, for instance, to know that there is some element of distortion and illusion in your perception. The moral problem is not simply a matter of believing in one’s convictions and acting on them, for people’s convictions can be as dominating and destructive, if not more so, than mere pragmatic positions. The moral problem is the relentless endeavor to find one’s own convictions and at the same time to admit that there will always ben in them an element of self-aggrandizement and distortion. Here is where the principle of humility is essential, for psychotherapists and for any moral citizen. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

The shift from independents (people who own their own businesses) to employees is in itself conducive to decreasing work satisfaction for the reason. The employed person, more than the independent one, works in an alienated position. Whether one is paid a lower or a higher salary, one is an accessory to the organization rather than a human being doing something for one’s self. There is one factor, however, which could mitigate the alienation of work, and that is the skill required in its performance. However, here too, development moves in the direction of decreasing skill requirements, and hence increasing alienation. While the managerial or professional groups have at least considerable interest in achieving something more or less personal, the vast majority sell their physical, or an exceedingly small part their intellectual capacity to an employer to be used for purposes of profit in which they have no share, for things in which they have no interest, with the only purpose of making a living, and for some chance to satisfy their consumer’s greed. Dissatisfaction, apathy, boredom, lack of joy and happiness, a sense of futility and a vague feeling that life is meaningless, are the unavoidable results of this situation. This socially patterned syndrome of pathology may not be in the awareness of people; it may be covered by a frantic flight into escape activities, or by a craving for more money, power, prestige. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

However, the weight of the latter motivations is so great only because the alienated person cannot help seeking for such compensation for one’s inner vacuity, not because these desires are the natural or most important incentives for work. Is there any empirical evidence that most people today are not satisfied with their work? It is evident from psychoanalytic experience that the sense of unhappiness and dissatisfaction can be deeply repressed; a person may consciously feel satisfied and only one’s dreams, psychosomatic illness, insomnia, and many other symptoms may be expressive of the underlying happiness. The tendency to repress dissatisfaction and unhappiness is strongly supported by the widespread feeling that not to be satisfied means to be a failure, unsuccessful, etcetera. (Thus, for instance, the number of people who consciously think they are happily married, and express this belief sincerely in answer to a questionnaire is by far greater than the number of those who are really happy in their marriage.) However, even the data on conscious job satisfaction are rather telling. In a study about job satisfaction on a national scale, satisfaction with and employment of their job was expressed by 85 percent of the professionals and executives, by 64 percent of the white-collar people, by 41 percent of the factory workers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

In another study, we find a similar picture: 86 percent of the professionals, 74 percent of the managerial, 42 percent of the commercial employees, 56 percent of the skilled, and 48 percent of the semi-skilled workers expressed satisfaction. We find in these figures a significant discrepancy between professionals and executives on the one hand, workers and clerks on the other. Among the former only a minority is dissatisfied—among the latter, more than half. Regarding the total population, this means, roughly, that over half of the total employed population is consciously dissatisfied with their work, and do not enjoy it. If we consider the unconscious dissatisfaction, the percentage would be considerably higher. Taking the 85 percent of satisfied professionals and executives, we would have to examine how many of them suffer from psychologically determined high blood pressure, ulcers, insomnia, nervous tension and fatigue. Although there are no exact data on this, there can be no doubt that, considering these symptoms, the number of really satisfied people who enjoy their work would be much smaller than the above figures indicate. As far as factory workers and office clerks are concerned, even the percentage of consciously dissatisfied people is remarkably high. Undoubtedly the number of unconsciously dissatisfied workers and clerks is much higher. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

This is indicated by several studies which show that neurosis and psychogenic illness are the main reasons for absenteeism (the estimates for the presence of neurotic symptoms among factory workers go up to about 50 percent). Fatigue and high labor turnover are other symptoms of dissatisfaction and resentment. The most important symptom from the economic standpoint, hence the best studied one, is the wide speared tendency of factory workers, not to give their best to the work, or work restriction as it is often called. In a recent poll conducted, 49 percent of all the manual workers questioned answered that when a person takes a job in a factory he or she should turn out as much as one can, but 41 percent answered that one should not do one’s best, but only turn out the average among. We see that there is a great deal of conscious, and even more unconscious dissatisfaction with the kind of work which our industrial society offers most of its members. One tries to counteract their dissatisfaction by a mixture of monetary and prestige incentives, and undoubtedly these incentives produce considerable eagerness to work, especially in the middle and higher echelons of the business hierarchy. However, it is one thing that these incentives make people work, and it is quite another thing whether the mode of this work is conducive to mental health and happiness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The discussion on motivation of work usually considers only the first problem, namely whether this or that incentive increases the economic productivity of the worker, but not the second, that of one’s human productivity. One ignores the fact that there are many incentives which can make a person do something, but which at the same time are detrimental to one’s personality. A person can work hard out of fear, or out of an inner sense of guilt; psychopathology gives us many examples of neurotic motives leading to overactivity as well as to inactivity. Most of us assume that the kind of work current in our society, namely, alienated work, is the only kind there is, hence that aversion to work is natural, hence that money and prestige and power are the only incentives for work. If we would use our imagination just a little bit, we could collect a good deal of evidence from our own lives, from observing children, from a number of situations which we can hardly fail to encounter, to convince us that we long to spend our energy on something meaningful, that we feel refreshed if we can do so, and that we are quite willing to accept rational authority if what we are doing makes sense. However, even if this is true, most people object, what help is truth to us? #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Industrial, mechanized work cannot, by its very nature, be meaningful; it cannot give any pleasure of satisfaction—there are no ways of changing these facts, unless we want to give up out technical achievements. Does the proposed way of acting make for the integration of the individual as a totality? Does it—at least potentially—make for the expansion of interpersonal meaning in one’s life? And in the lives of those persons significant to the individual? Would this way of acting, if adopted by other people (in principle, all of humankind), make for the increase of interpersonal meaning? It may help to see what happens when the soul is not experienced in dialogue. Examples of this can be seen in every nation at war. Unfaced within one’s self and one’s group, the soul is projected on the enemy. It is no longer seen as a nation which has its own security and power needs, but as the Evil One, the personification of the devil; one’s own soul tendencies are placed on it. The enemy becomes the carrier of the elements we repress in ourselves. We fight our adversaries little realizing that we are fighting our own selves, denied though it be. This projection requires assertion of self-righteousness on the part of the in group, which is what makes it almost impossible to negotiate: to negotiate with the devil is to admit him as an equal; you have, in principle then, already given in to him. This is exactly why the democrats do not want to negotiate with president Trump, but a nation divided amongst itself will fall. #RandolphHaris 9 of 17

The next step in war psychology is that imagination and vision are blocked. There comes out of the capital—of whatever nation—cliché after cliché, each one thinner than its predecessor, which people do not believe on one level but join together in a conspiracy to believe one another. They become rigid in their soul obsession. It is impossible for them even to conceive of any solutions. This process makes the soul impersonal again. It removes the whole area from our having control over it; the soul regresses to what it originally was—a blind, unconscious push unintegrated with consciousness. We now become not only nature’s tools but her blind tools. This is abetted by the vicious-circle mechanism, presented in nations as well as neurotics. We do not learn from experience; we make decision patently against our own interest, and wen they do not work we self-destructively make them all over again. Shrunken in vision and sensitivity, we move monolithically, straight ahead, like the ancient dinosaur who could not learn, blond even to out own dinosaurian movements. Indeed, anxiety may take all forms and intensities, for it is the human being’s basic reaction to a danger to his or her existence, or to some value one identifies with one’s existence. Fear is a threat to one side of the self—if a child is in a fight, one may get hurt, but that hurt would not be a threat to one’s existence; or the university student may be somewhat scared by a midterm, but one knows that the sky will not fall in if one does not pass it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

However, as soon as the threat becomes great enough to involve the total self, one then has the experience of anxiety. Anxiety strikes us at the very core of ourselves: it is what we feel when our existence as selves is threatened. It is the quality of an experience which makes it anxiety rather than the quantity. One may feel only a slight gnawing away in one’s stomach when a supposed friend passes one on the street and does not speak, but though the threat is not intense, the fact that the gnawing continues, and that one is confused and searches around for an explanation of why the friend snubbed one, shows the threat is to something basic in us. In its full-blown intensity, anxiety is the most painful emotion to which the human being is heir. Present dangers are less than future imaginings, and people have been known to leap out of a lifeboat and drown rather than face the greater agony of continual doubt and uncertainty, never knowing whether they will be rescued or not. The threat of death is the most common symbol for anxiety, but most of us in our civilized era do not find ourselves looking into the barrel of a crazed stalker’s gun nor in other ways specifically threatened with death very often. The great bulk of our anxiety comes when some value we hold essential to our existence as selves is threatened. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Tom, the man who will go down in scientific history because he had a hole in his stomach through which the doctors at New York Hospital could observe his psychosomatic reactions in times of anxiety, fear and other stress, gave a beautiful illustration of this. In a period when Tom was anxious about whether he could keep his job at the hospital or would have to go one relief, he exclaimed, “If I could not support my family, I would as soon jump off the dock.” That is, if the value of being a self-respecting wage-earner were threatened, Tom, like the salesman Willie Loman and countless other people in our society, would feel one no longer existed as a self, and might as well be dead. However, when God put a dream in your heart, he also set a date for completion, so never give up. Nonetheless, this illustrates what is true in one way or another for practically all human beings. Certain values, be they success or the love of someone, or freedom to speak the truth, one’s inner voice is believed in as the core of the person’s reason for living, and if such a value is destroyed, the person feels one’s existence as a self might as well be destroyed likewise. “Give me liberty or give me death,” is not just rhetoric nor is it pathological. Since the dominant values for most people in our society are being liked, accepted and approved of, much anxiety in our day comes from the threat of not being liked, being isolated, lonely or cast off. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Most examples of anxiety given above are normal anxiety, that is, anxiety which is proportionate to the real threat of the danger situation. In a fire, battle, or crucial examination in the university, for example, anyone would feel more or less anxiety—it would be unrealistic not to. Every human being experiences normal anxiety in many different ways as one develops and confronts the various crises of life. The more one is able to face and move through these normal crises—the weaning from mother, going off to school, independence from dad’s credit card, and sooner or later taking responsibility for his or her own vocation and marriage decisions—the less neurotic anxiety one will develop. Normal anxiety cannot be avoided; it should be frankly admitted to one’s self. However, most neurotic anxiety comes from such unconscious psychological conflicts. The person feels threatened, but it is as though by a ghost; one does not know where the enemy is, or ow to fight it or flee from it. These unconscious conflicts usually get started in some previous situation of threat which the person did not feel strong enough to face, such as a child’s having to deal with a dominating and possessive partner or having to face the fact that one’s family does not love him or her. The real problem is then repressed, and it returns later as an inner conflict bringing with it neurotic anxiety. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

The way to deal with neurotic anxiety is to bring out the original real experience one was afraid of, and ten to work the apprehension through as normal anxiety or fear. In dealing with any severe neurotic anxiety, the mature and wise step is to get professional psychotherapeutic help. However, our main concern is to understand how to use normal anxiety constructively. And to do that we need to make clearer one very important point, the relation between a person’s anxiety and one’s self-awareness. After a terrifying experience such as a battle or fire, people often remark, “I felt as though I were possessed.” This is because anxiety knocks out the props, so to speak, from our awareness of ourselves. Anxiety, like a torpedo, strikes underneath at the deepest level, or core, of ourselves, and it is on this level that we experience ourselves as persons, as subjects who can act in a World of objects. Thus anxiety in greater or lesser degree tends to destroy our consciousness of ourselves. When we are in a state of anxiety, or panic we become disoriented, and our clear knowledge of who we are and what is going on is temporarily wiped out, and it blurs our view of reality around us. This betwixting—this confusion as to who we are and what we should do—is the most painful thing about anxiety. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

However, the beneficial and hopeful side is that just as anxiety destroys our self-awareness, so awareness of ourselves can destroy anxiety. That is to say, the stronger our consciousness of ourselves, the more we can take a stand against and overcome anxiety. Anxiety, like fever, is a sign that an inner struggle is in progress. As fever is a symptom that the body is mobilizing its physical powers and giving battle to the infection, let us say the tuberculosis bacilli in the lungs, so anxiety is evidence that a psychological or spiritual battle is going on. We have noted above that neurotic anxiety is the sign of an unresolved conflict within us, and so long as the conflict is present, there is an open possibility that we can become aware of the causes of the conflict, and find a solution on a higher level of health. Neurotic anxiety is nature’s way, as it were, of indicating to us that we need to solve a problem. The same is true of normal anxiety—it is a signal for us to call up our reserves and do battle against a threat. As the fever in our example is a symptom of the battle between the bodily powers and the infecting germs, so anxiety is evidence of a battle between our strength as a self on one side and a danger which threatens to wipe out or existence as a self on the other. The more the threat wins, the more then our awareness of ourselves is surrendered, curtailed, hemmed in. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

However, the greater our self-strength—that is, the greater our capacity to preserve our awareness of ourselves and the objective World around us—the less we will be overcome by the threat. There is still hope for a tuberculous patient so long as he has a fever; but in the final stages of the infirmary, when the body has given up as it were, the fever leaves and soon the patient dies. However, they deserve the opportunity to pass naturally, because in the last few moments there could be a miracle and the patient could recover. Just so, the only thing which would signify the loss of hope for getting through our present difficulties as individuals and as a nation, would be a resigning into apathy, and a failure to feel and face our anxiety constructively. Our task, then, is to strengthen our consciousness of ourselves, to find centers of strength within ourselves which will enable us to stand despite the confusion and bewilderment around us. We must be committed to the recognition that all great changes are preceded by a vigorous intellectual reevaluation and reorganization. The sin of hubris may be avoided by showing that the creative process itself is not a free activity if by free we mean arbitrary, or unrelated to cosmic law. For the creative process in the human mind, the developmental process in organic nature and the basic laws of the inorganic realm may be but varied expressions of a universal formative process. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

The present period is one of exceptional tensions, but there is also at work an exceptional movement toward a compensating unity which refuses to violate the ultimate moral power at work in the Universe, that very power upon which all human effort must at last depend. In this way we may come to understand that there exists an inherent interdependence of spiritual and mental growth which, though conditioned by circumstances, is never determined by circumstances. In this way the great plethora of human knowledge may be correlated wit an insight into the nature of human nature by being attuned to the wide and deep range of human thought and human experience. It can be troublesome when we cannot filter out unwanted sensations. It is annoying to have static on your car radio or to walk into a building that smells like smoke or garlic. These sensations and perception can work against each other. Not only do we have competing sensations to wade through and sort out, we may also have to compete with our own expectations, assumptions, prejudices, or personal needs. “I am mindful of you always in my prayers, continually praying unto God the Father in the name of his Holy Child, Jesus, that he, through his infinite goodness and grace, will keep you through the endurance of faith on his name to the end,” reports Moroni 8.3. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

You hopeless, egregious Boy! You are patently unworthy of all the philosophical considerations I have lavished upon you! Political liberty by itself is, in fact, always illusory. A mortal who lies in economic subjection six days, if not seven, a week, does not become free merely by making a cross on a ballot-paper once in five years. If freedom is to mean anything to the average mortal it must include industrial freedom. Until mortals at their work can know themselves members of a self-governing community of workers, they will remain essentially servile, whatever the political system under which they live. It is not enough to sweep away the degrading relation in which the wage-slave stands to an individual employer. When workers are left in bondage to a tyranny that is galling because it is impersonal, work is not as active, responsible, attractive, partial, and meaningful as it could be. Mortals are in chains everywhere because the disease of civilization is not so much material poverty of many as the decay of the spirit of freedom and self-confidence. The revolt that will change the World will spring, not from the benevolence that breeds reform, but from the will to be free. Mortals will act together in the full consciousness of their mutual dependence; but they will act for themselves. Their liberty will not be given them from above; they will take it on their own behalf. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

Just voting for someone because they the first of their kind to make it in a field may not be freedom, it could be another form of bondage. What matters most is an individual’s mind set. We must put our appeal to the public not in the questions, “Is it not unpleasant to be poor, and will you not help to raise the poor?” but in this form: “Poverty is but a sign of mortal’s enslavement: to cure it you must cease to labour for others and must believe in yourself.” Wage-slavery will exit as long as there is a mortal or an institution that is the master of mortals: it will be ended when the works learn to set freedom before comfort. The average person will become one who seeks freedom not in order to secure a minimum standard of civilized life, but because they feel ashamed of the slavery that blinds them and their fellows, and because one is resolved to end the practices that make them slaves. We must find our soul and figure out what it wants to express and do things that we love to provide for ourselves and our families. And we must become the accredited agents of the community in the economic sphere. Recently, at 31 years of age, Andy Murray announced that he was in pain. His hip has been causing him profound physical discomfort for some time and it is no secret. He has been in a lot of pain for about two years, and has done everything he can do to feel better. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

Andy Murray is a very successful tennis player, and he has many great achievements such as winning the Grand Slam singles tournament at the 2012 US Open. On 7 July 2013, Andy Murray won the 2013 Wimbledon Championships. Andy Murray was also the only man in history to win an Olympic Gold and US Open in the same calendar year, as well as the third man to hold the Gold Medal and two majors on different surfaces. He is also the very first tennis player and only man in its history to have won two Olympics Gold Medals in the singles category and on two different surfaces (grass in 2012, and hard in 2016), making a consecutive Olympics singles Gold Medal final in Rio 2016 and defending his title by defeating Juan Martin del Potro in the Gold Medal singles final. Subsequent to his success at the Olympic and Wimbledon in 2013, Andy Murray was voted the 2013 BBC Sports Personality of the Year. In summary, he is a very successfully young man, loves what he does for a living and is highly decorated. However, Andy Murray has played through the pain much of his 14-year career. It is hard for him to remember a time when playing tennis had been pain free. He was born with bipartite patella, a split kneecap, that was first diagnosed at the age of 16. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

Andy Murray certainly pushed his body to the limit, as he had recurring problems whit his ankles and back. He tried various treatments, from strengthening the muscles around the joint to daily sessions with a portable ultrasound, but it was always containment not cure. The pain was part of his life. And trying so hard to thrive and continue doing what he loves, Andy Murray cried when he announced 11 January 2019 that he has to retire because he is in too much pain. However, it a great that Andy had a chance to live his dreams, make money, and get endorsements before he retires, so he has something to live off of. There are some people who get injured before they start their careers, and cannot work, but keep doing what they can, in hopes that someday they will find something they can do, make money and retired. Working everyday in extreme pain is not a good thing. This is why it is important for us to have faith. Faith is an act of human personality, as its centered and total act. An act of faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by and turned to the infinite. It is a specific act with all the limitations of a mortal act, and it is an act in which the infinite participates beyond the limitations of calculable constrains. Faith is certain in so far as it is an experience of the holy. However, faith is uncertain in so far as the infinite to which it is related is received by a mortal. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

This element of uncertainty in faith cannot be removed, it must be accepted. And the element in faith which accepts this is courage. Faith includes an element of immediate awareness which gives certainty and an element of uncertainty. To accept this is courage. In the courageous standing of uncertainty, faith shows must visibly its dynamic character. We have to interpret present and past events impinging on human life in our growing World Age and World consciousness and envisage what mortals may yet attain when summoned by an unbending inner necessity to the quest of what is most exalted in one. The purpose of faith is to offer new vistas in terms of World and human development while refusing to betray the intimate correlation between universality and individuality, dynamics and form, freedom and destiny. We come to understand that spirit and nature are not separate and apart; intuition and reason must regain their convergence as the means of perceiving and fusing inner being with outer reality. Anxiety, the other characteristic of modern mortals, is even more basic than emptiness and loneliness. For being hollow and lonely would not bother us except that it makes us prey to that peculiar psychological pain and turmoil called anxiety. No one who reads the morning newspaper needs to be persuaded that we live in an age of anxiety. We have had two World wars in modern history, economic upheavals and depressions, and it shows that the foundations of our World are shaken. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

We have become so injured to living in a state of quasi-anxiety that our real danger is the temptation to hide our eyes in ostrich fashion. However, it is by imagination and understanding that we can face these upheavals openly, and see if, by courage and insight, we can use this anxiety constructively. It is a mistake to believe that the contemporary wars and depressions and government shutdowns and political threats are the total cause of our anxiety, for our anxiety also cases these catastrophes. The anxiety prevalent in our day and the succession of economic and political catastrophes our World has been going through are both symptoms of the same underlying cause, namely traumatic changes occurring in Western society. Fascist and Nazi totalitarianism, for example, do not occur because a Hitler or Mussolini decides to seize power. When a nation, rather, is prey to insupportable and economic want and is psychologically and spiritually empty, totalitarianism comes in to fill the vacuum: and the people sell their freedom as a necessity for getting rid of the anxiety which is too great for them to bear any longer. The confusion and bewilderment in our nation show this anxiety on a broad scale. In this period of wars and threats of wars, we know what we are against, namely, totalitarian encroachment of mortal’s freedom and dignity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

We are confident enough of our military strength, but we fight defensively, but other nations believe we are not sure if we waiting for things to go wrong or looking for solutions. We are confused about constructive goals—what are we working for? America seems to have become betwixted about the gestures of new agendas which give magnificent promise for a New World. When an individual suffers anxiety continuously over a period of time, one lays one’s body open to psychosomatic illness. When a group suffers continuous anxiety, with no agreed-on constructive steps to take, its members sooner or later turn against each other. Just so, when our nation is in confusion and bewilderment, we lay ourselves open to such poison as witch hunts, and the ubiquitous pressures to make every person suspicious of one’s neighbor. Turning our glance from the society to the individual, we see the most obvious expressions of anxiety in the prevalence of neurosis and other emotional disturbances—which, as practically every from Dr. Freud onward has agreed, have their root cause in anxiety and guilt about the past. People feel guilty because of the ways that they have treated others, so they bend the rules and break laws for certain protected classes of people to amend for their sins, even though it may not be the most rational thing to do and could put innocent lives in danger. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Anxiety likewise, is paranoia about the future, and the World might view others when they are perceived as being unjust for not allowing certain people to break the law in the name of humanity, but there is also a level of propaganda about why so many people are becoming so welcoming and humanistic all of the sudden. For some, it is about staying in power and totalitarianism. Some people think there is no point to negotiating, others think we need to hurry up and reach a resolution. Nevertheless, the impasse results in Anxiety. Anxiety is the common denominator psychologically of the psychosomatic disturbances—such as ulcers, many of the form of the great white plague—the greatest destroyer of human health and well-being. When we look below the surface of our individual anxiety, we find that it also comes from something more profound than the threat of war and economic uncertainty. We are anxious because we do not know what roles to pursue, what principles for action to believe in. Our individual anxiety, somewhat like that of the nation, is a basic confusion and bewilderment about where we are going. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

Shall a mortal strive competitively to become economically successful and wealthy, as we used to be taught, or a good fellow who is liked by everyone? One cannot be both. Shall one follow the supposed teaching of the society with regard to pleasures of the flesh and be monogamous, or should one follow the average of what is done. Some people in typical communities are caught in a chaos of conflicting patterns, none of them wholly condemned, but no one of them clearly approved and free from confusion. That confusion has now gone deeper to the levels of feelings and desires. In such a bewilderment many persons experience the inward gnawing apprehension of the young man in Auden’s poem, The Age of Anxiety: “It is getting late. Shall we ever be asked for? Are we simply not wanted at all?” If anyone believes there are simple answers to these questions, one has neither understood the questions nor the times in which we live. This is a time when a whole generation is caught between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequences that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standards, no security, no simple acquiescence. However, it is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible. Indeed, our present upsets are as much a proof of new possibilities for the future. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

What is necessary for the constructive use of anxiety is, first of all, that we frankly admit and face our perilous state, individually and socially. Both men and women need a self-assertion to bridge their separateness and to achieve union with each other and the World. Otherwise, the way we have amputated significant aspects of reality in overcultivation of power and control, we run the risk of losing exactly what we set out to gain. A curious thing which never fails to surprise persons in therapy is that after admitting their anger, animosity, and even hatred for society and berating people during the hour, they end up with feelings of love toward their peers and their community. A patient may have come in smoldering with negative feelings but resolved, partly unconsciously, to keep these, as a good gentleman or lady does, to oneself; but one finds that one represses the love for humanity at the same time as one suppresses their aggression. This is called the inclusion of the negative—which is essential if the beneficial is likewise to come out. What is occurring here is more than the fact that human consciousness works in polarity: the beneficial cannot come out until the negative does also. This is why in analysis, the negative is analyzed, with the hope—which becomes true often enough to justify the rule—that the beneficial will then able to come into its own. This is the constructive use value in facing and admitting of the World soul. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

We recall that within our soul, we have the ability not simply to love, but also to hate. It has to do with an energizing, a shocking of our normal existence—it is a gadfly that keeps us forever awake; the soul is the breathless peace. Hate and love are not polar opposites; they go together, particularly in transitional ages like ours. We often see the drama on the streets of people who are communicating and it is clear, even if they are peaceful, they are uncomfortable and it is obvious in their nervous laughter or their hesitancy; not-knowing-whether-to-laugh; but that they are deeply affected by communication with community members is more obvious. This power comes from the soul wishes, thoughts, and feelings which go on in every person but are almost always denied in our bourgeois society. What bewitches us is that people often do not truly express how they feel because they are worried about impression management. Most human beings have some level of love for each other beneath the emotional savagery, but they are afraid of it and afraid of their own tenderness. To be able to experience and live out capacities for tender love requires the confronting of the soul. It is our goal to will something with each other. We can will because in the process of the struggles we all face, we learn to end our illusions, and that really strikes a chord with people in civilized societies. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

It is clear that our soul lives in the subconscious and unconscious. One of the reasons that we have been able to rise to our unsurpassed height as a civilization is our courage and openness in facing the desires and dreams of our soul. We are glorified in passion and love. We have been able to achieve our belief that the essence of virtue for a mortal is that we responsibly choose our passions rather than being chosen by them. World perspectives endeavors to show that the conception of wholeness, unity, organism is a higher and more concrete conception that that of matter and energy. Thus an enlarged meaning of life, of biology, not as it is revealed in the test tube of a laboratory but as it is experienced within the organism of life itself, presents courage as an element of faith. This faith is the daring self-affirmation of one’s own being in spite of the powers of nonbeing which are the heritage of everything finite. Where there is daring and courage there is the possibility of failure. And in every act of faith this possibility is present. The risk must be taken. Whoever makes one’s nation one’s ultimate concern needs courage in order to maintain this concern. Only certain is the ultimacy as ultimacy, the infinite passion as infinite passion. This is a reality given to the self with one’s own nature. It is as immediate and as much beyond doubt as the self is to the self. It is the self in its self-transcending quality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

The principle of life consists in the tension which connects spirit with the realm of matter, symbiotically joined. The element of life is dominant in the very texture of nature, thus rendering life, biology, a transempirical science. The laws of life have their origin beyond their mere physical manifestations and compel us to consider their spiritual source. In fact, the widening of the conceptual framework has not only served to restore order within the respective branches of knowledge, but has also disclosed analogies in mortal’s position regarding the analysis and synthesis of experience in apparently separated domains of knowledge, suggesting the possibility of an ever more embracing objective description of the meaning of life. The risk to faith in one’s ultimate concern is indeed the greatest risk mortals can run. For if it proves to be a failure, the meaning of one’s life breaks down; one surrenders oneself, including truth and justice, to something which is not worth it. And that is why young people cry when they are forced to retire early from injuries, or why people get upset when they are striving to be a success and working through tremendous pain and never seem to make it. One has given away one’s person center without having a chance to regain it. The reaction of despair in people who have experienced the breakdown of their national claims is irrefutable proof of the idolatrous character of their national concern. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

In the long run this is the inescapable result of an ultimate concern, the subject matter of which is not ultimate. And this is the risk faith must take; this is the risk which is unavoidable if a finite being affirms itself. However, it is risk and demands courage if it affirms a concrete concern. And every faith has a concrete element in itself. It is concerned about something or somebody. However, this something or this somebody may prove to be not ultimate at all. Then faith is a failure in its concrete expression, although it is not a failure in the experience of the unconditional itself. A god disappears; divinity remains. Faith risks the vanishing of the concrete god in whom it believes. It may well be that with the vanishing of the god the believer breaks down without being able to re-establish one centered self by a new content of one’s ultimate concern. This risk cannot be taken away from any act of faith. There is only one point which is a matter not of risk but of immediate certainty and herein lies the greatness and the pain of being human; namely, one’s standing between one’s finitude and one’s potential infinity. Knowledge no longer consist in a manipulation of mortals and nature as opposite forces, not in the reduction of data to mere statistical order, but is a means of liberating humankind from the destructive power of fear, pointing the way toward the goal of the rehabilitation of the human will and the rebirth of faith and confidence in the human person. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

The cry for patterns, systems and authorities is growing less insistent as the desire grows stronger in both East and West for the recovery of a dignity, integrity and self-realization which are the inalienable rights of mortals who may now guide change by means of conscious propose in the light of rational experience. May a loving Father in Heaven bless us tomorrow to remember how we felt today, and bless us to strive with patience and persistence toward the ideals we have heard proclaimed about his knowing and divine love and unfailing help to be with us even when we struggle—no, especially when we struggle. Ultimately, we know that every physical ailment, malady, or imperfection will be healed in the Resurrection. However, Jesus Christ can heal more than just our physical bodies. He can heal our spirits as well. Throughout scripture we learn how Christ helped those whose spirits were weak and made them whole. As we ponder these experiences, our hope and faith in the Savior’s power to bless our lives increase. Jesus Christ can change our hearts, heal us from the effects of injustice or abuse we may experience, and strengthen our capacity to bear loss and heartaches, bringing us peace to help us endure the trials of our lives, healing us emotionally. “And again I say unto you, is there one among you that doth make a mock of one’s brother, or that heaps upon one persecutions? Wo unto such an one, for one is not prepared, and the time is at hand that one must repent or one cannot be saved,” reports Alma 5.30-31. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15