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Great Spirit Please Give to Me a Heaven Not so Large as Yours but Large Enough for Me
To these two eyes, weak as they may be, you are more beautiful than anybody I can think of. Do you make me happy? You make me happy in every way. When it comes to making a guy happy, you wrote the book. Feelings and spiritual qualities as inspiration, creative genius, virtue, and wisdom give emotions a place beside reason. There is an inner light, which allows God to satisfy the inner light of human beings. All experiences of human beings emerge against the background of the limited individual being, participation in the Absolute Being. By their relation to participation, which is constant and eternal, individual beings establish their relation to the World, and through the notions of essence and existence they establish their spiritual identity. The Absolute Beings is pure actuality, the infinite source of existential dynamism, and an endless reservoir of all possible forms of essences, from which individual beings receive their own limited existence. In spite of this direct and continuous dependence of the individual on God as the source, human freedom is safeguarded by the self-creativity of the individual. Indeed, from the human point of view, participation is a pursuit of an ideal which constantly moves ahead of our efforts. In this pursuit we create our spiritual self, and our experiences, moving onward, progressively acquire a unique form. Our effort in life is meant to discover this form, which has its prototype in the reservoir of Being and is our spiritual essence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
The accomplishment of our essence at our departure from the mortal realm mean the radical passage from limited existence into the transfinite Being. Thus, participation appears as the means of a person’s ultimate redemption, toward which everything occurring in the Universe converges. The World is the interval which separates pure Act (Being) from the limited act of participation (human existence). Matter, in limiting the spirit, offers the resistance necessary for the self to transcend itself. The World comprises three modes of reality: the World of things, that of idea, and that of individual beings (consciousnesses). The material World plays the necessary role of separating beings; ideas give spiritual meaning to things. The World of individual consciousnesses is necessarily conscious because the essence of the Absolute Being from which they proceed is itself perfect inwardness; as such it is eternally fecund and intended to communicate the creative act to beings which, in turn, propagate it in self-creation. Freedom is the essence of human destiny. However, whereas the Absolute Act is synonymous with absolute freedom, human, the participating act, is limited by the natural spontaneity of the instinct. Consequently, the life of the spirit, which is the ideal of human life, is a fighting toward gradual liberation from the passivity peculiar to instinct. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
We become fully human by subordinating natural spontaneity of instinct. We become fully human by subordinating natural spontaneity to reflection and rational discipline. Human freedom originates in this process; and this conversion of spontaneity into freedom is the real vehicle of participation. The spiritual being is endowed with potentialities for the accomplishment of its pre-established essence. Our vocation is to seek to make our actual selves coincide with the better part of ourselves, which represents these potentialities. This self-searching and self-controlling effort presupposes an act of consent to our vocation of the spirit. Everyday is a chance for us to rehabilitate our existence, as even the least significant instant is an opportunity for consent to the self-creative effort, and thereby, an opportunity for participation in the Absolute. Human communion is the ideal of wisdom as it is seen to be possessed in the union between a certain asceticism and everyday life and love. “And they arose from the Earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, my joy is full,” reports 3 Nephi 17.20. We must remember God’s words of assurance, and be fully of courage. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
We ought to realize that no matter what we have done in life, no matter what we do, God and Christ will still love us just much as they did before we may not have reached our goal. God and Christ do not separate themselves from people who are learning, from the people who are still trying to express their faith. Love from God is not earned. It is not merited; if it is, it is justice and reciprocity and reward. Love comes from a loving heart, and God’s love is unconditional. And he loves the worst of us and the best of us equally. We cause God to suffer when we do wrong, when he sees us live our lives in ways that destroy us, and when he sees us hurting other people—this must cause him pain. Life, however, is always a discipline, even for the lower animals as well as for people; it can be so dangerous that only by submitting to some sort of discipline can we become equipped to live in any true sense at all. This disappearance of the discipline of the old external taboos thus imposes upon us, inescapably, the creation of a new self-discipline of internal and personal taboos. If we are not responsible to an outside order which we no longer regard as valid, then we are responsible before the inner tribunal of the self, which cannot but be valid for us so long as we are alive. “The Lord has made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the Earth shall see the salvation of God,” reports 3 Nephi 17.20. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The fully knowledge of the World made available by an encyclopedia of human knowledge, as there already exist vast stores of experience held by groups of skilled workers, or by individuals, that are not fully utilized, if we collected and systematically arranged, and their full product was obtained for understanding, such an encyclopedia would be conducive to piety by bringing out the richness and variety in the World, and thus testifying to God’s wisdom and power. Many people desire a fuller knowledge of nature of things because it will increase piety and devotion to God. And so far from it being an easy and pleasant task, as some may at first have thought when they saw the old taboos melting away, it involves difficulties which their grandparents never knew. If it means the making of new and personal taboos, it involves a slow self-development and self-responsibility, which is not in itself a continual discipline, but runs the risk of conflict with others engaged in the same task and with the same sincerity. For what we may still term morals, since it has now become an individual outcome, will not be entirely the same for all individuals. All our moralities, indeed, cannot fail to be modifications of a common pattern because we all belong to the same community; but the differences involve a greater degree of mutual understanding and forbearance than when uniform taboos were imposed from outside. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
It would seem that for many years there can be no common emotional or intellectual background which may be take for granted; and if in the result not a little of human’s power must be spent in creating one’s own scheme of values, still there is no immediate remedy, for it is in the nature of contemporary thinking that it demands an effort as individual as it must be unsparingly honest if it is to have any meaning for our generation. Although two persons need not have qualitatively the same sense experiences, they can and do communicate, and this communication somehow depends on the nature of the space relations underlying the congruity of each person’s perceptions. So if the people of the former generation now leaving the World are often shocked to see swept away the old rigid taboos they were brought up in, they ma leave it in peace. Life, after all, may not have been so hard for them, not so hard, perhaps, as for the younger generation. None the less, that younger generation, also, may continue to carry lightly it burden, on youthful shoulders, joyfully creating a New World. No two things can be alike, but in a material thing there is always something that bears the traces of its earlier state, so that it s cause can be discovered in it. This element is the mind, since matter itself is incapable of containing such traces. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
From this point of view, God must be conceived as surveying all; the different possible Worlds and decreeing the existence of the one containing the greatest perfection. Here it must be remembered that what exists depends on God’s will, and unless possible demanded existence, God would have no reason for admitting any of them into existence. However, once this reason is given God, he can and does impose conditions of perfection. What God allows to exist, what he chooses as best, is chosen from natural characteristics, since to give us things what is not natural to them would involve a constant miracle. The natural tendency of a body moving in a curved path is to move along the tangent to the curve; bodies cannot naturally attract one another; matter is not naturally capable of thinking; there is a natural and not a merely arbitrary connection between our perceptions of secondary qualities and the bodily movements giving rise to these perceptions. God would not do anything merely because he willed it: if there were no objective reason to determine God’s will, he would not act at all. Obscenity is a permanent element of human social life and corresponds to a deep need of the human mind, or, for all we know to the contrary, of the mind. It is not confined to any nation or any stage of culture, low or high, naïve or highly educated. If you are unwilling to hear me because you do not like or respect people of my gender, race, profession, or background, then I am spilling my message onto unreceptive ground. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
Obscenity definitely exists and it recognized among the people of the World, it is even manifested by the greatest people of genius of all races. We forget that we are dealing with a fundamental and inevitable human impulse, and that it is our business to preserve those aspects of it which are good and to minimize those which are evil. When everything is obscene it becomes impossible to say what obscenity is. Hence the endless definitions of obscenity, and their absurdity. Some love darkness. That love of darkness is shrewd. For, if we think of it, any attempt whatever to define obscenity—once we have put aside the vague emotional terms of abuse, foul, filthy, lewd, disgusting, and so forth—in cool and precise terms cannot bring us to any crime against society. Influence through the mass communication need not be blatant—it can be very subtle indeed. Even when communicators are not making a direct attempt to sell us something, they can succeed in influencing the way we look at the World. Consciousness-raising is the process of making members of groups subject to discrimination aware of the ways in which they are being put down. It is impossible to estimate the social damage which has been done by outworn taboos of obscenity. Raising consciousness within the oppressed group is one thing, and raising consciousness among the oppressors is quite another. That is a job for God. “For the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea,” reports Habakkuk 2.14. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
The human relation problems yet to be explored are immense, and the solution will come no more easily than did the others. It is important to communicate. It I want to not-communicate with you, all I have to do is to code my message in symbols or language you cannot possibly understand. If my intent is to confuse your, lose you, make you upset or angry, cause you to feel inferior or to dislike me, then I can select message symbols in such a way as to accomplish any of those exact results. Or I can simply keep my mouth shut and send non-verbal messages (tight mouth, glared looks, clenched fist, turned back), and claim innocence (“I was not sending that message!”). To me, one of the most baffling aspects of the behavior of men and women in highly-responsible positions in some segments of our society, is their comparative lack of concern for—perhaps it is lack of awareness of—the factor of communication, as such, in the problems and situations in which they all have to deal. It is communication that makes human society possible. Children use words to express how they feel; adults use words to hide how they feel. Sometimes every reality can prove a bitter disillusionment. Therefore, we must practice love towards humanity for solidarity and compassion, not just out of love of God, but out of a desire to combat the cruelty of destiny and of nature. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Necessity and simplicity of nature exclude the presence of arbitrary or miraculous forces, as well as the efficacy of magic and of those forces to which it appeals. For communication to take place, the receiver must also be receptive. That means more than just having clean ears. One must also want or need to get the message and be willing to decode and fit it into one existing pattern of ideas or associations. If a student receiver is asleep in class, even if the professor’s must exciting and beautiful message will not get through to him. Another important factor in communication is the context in which a communication is being attempted. Suppose you and I are at a noisy party. I want to enjoy myself and not talk shop. You want to ask me a whole group of interesting psychological questions. I may turn off and refuse to receive, in a way I probably would not do in the classroom, on the campus, or perhaps at a different kind of part. The setting, thus, will have a lot to do with the communication or non-communication that take place. Today, many people are becoming increasingly aware that if they use certain words or body language, they will be considered sexist when they are talking to others. In such a situation, these loaded words or symbols do not communicate what the person intends; they have a different meaning for the other party. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Dare You See a Soul with the Successful Face of Love and Joy at the White Heat?
Vision is one of our most dominant sense. Good lighting is truly everything. Light, natural or artificial, helps us to define spatial relationships, and it stands to reason that many architects must concern themselves with light. Interior spaces demand lighting, either natural, artificial, or a combination of both. Our sense can be deeply affected by the quality of its light, as it is aesthetically the most visually pleasing and complimentary to both the inside and outside of a house. Because our sense are intertwined, others aspects of our spaces, such as acoustic features, artwork, and furnishings, also feel better when lighting is good. Lighting is also appealing because it is dynamic—brightness of light during different times of the day and color fluctuates with passing clouds. The spatial relationships demonstrate how important color—and, by extension, light—is to our experience of space. Electric light technology has made great efforts to emulate the natural patterns of light, and this is an indication that we appreciate and benefit from natural lighting as a species. One of the most dramatically lit spaces in all modern architecture is Le Corbusier’s church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp in eastern France. The light is admitted through narrow stained-glass windows on the exterior southern wall, but as the window boxes expand through the thick wall, the light broadens into wide shafts that possess an unmistakable spiritual quality. The effect is one of extraordinary beauty. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Architects understand that if they are interested in representing the World, they must learn to incorporate the effects of light in their construction. With increased attention to healthy living environment, people are looking for eye-catching homes that maximize natural light in floor plans that flow, which ass immeasurable value to their homes, as it is one of the largest investments. These homes tend to have more character and soul. They allow the buyer to take a journey and spend time exploring experiences and create the kinds of rooms, which represent places that makes one feel good. Lighting affects the ambiance and mood of a space and can help bring value to the function of architecture, as it plays a role in the way people experience and understand the atmospheric perspective of the architecture. The sense of space that light creates can allow us to see the and appreciate the beauty of the area around us when it is luminous and has intense light by giving the sense that the rooms stretch beyond the limits of vision. This can bring an emotional value to architecture—it helps create a spiritual experience as if we are surrounded by Heavenly light. Whether it is daylight or artificial lighting, light draws attention to textures, colors, and forms of a space, helping architecture achieve its purpose. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
In Heaven there is only pure light, but the fact that we can experience color—which, according to the laws of optics, depends upon light mixing with darkness—promises us the hope of salvation. Aesthetics is where designers and architects focus on the emotional impact and the balance of lighting because they want the people who occupy them houses to be awed as they walk through the doors, and have the ability to show off their product. In many causes light symbolizes the spiritual World, and it is powerful and revealing. It also helps occupants feel safe when navigating a room or entire home. They are able to see the floor and walls around the, which create a feeling of reassurance. Along with a breathtaking layout, the open floor plans and many windows allow for an incredibly energy efficient space. Lighting improves people’s lives, makes a house more beautiful by drawing attention to areas, all while making it easier to see. Ambient luminescence is the use of background lights that illuminates an entire space. It can suggest the freedom of space and can suggest infinity. Accent lighting is a layer that can by dynamic and colorful brilliance aim to excite the optic nerves, and in turn stimulates the body and spirit, quickens the appetite, awakens curiosity, and sharpens the wit. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Some people like to see a beautiful chandelier welcoming them in the house, and lavish wall sconces light the hallway, and areas of the house to be accentuated with pod lights, ceiling fans, pillars, and other architectural features such as sliding glass doors. To enhance vertical a home, light should be directed towards wall surfaces. If there is a wall that is a different texture, or simply one that the occupants should notice more than others, wall washing is a great tool. It will draw attention to the wall and make it appear as its own architectural elements instead of a piece of an entire room. Window treatments can also add style and functionality to a room. When thinking about lighting design, architects always have to take into consideration energy efficiency. Architecture has evolved to design greener buildings and homes. The goal is to be more focused on energy consumption and sustainability. Some new homes, like Cresleigh Domain, even come with solar panels included with the purchase of the home. New smart light designs focus on controlling the lighting from every room of the house. Light dimmers dominate newer designs because they allow for controlling the intensity of the light in a specific area. Smart lighting allows a person to complete tasks in a certain area while only using the light necessary to do so. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
When one spends a lot of time under fluorescent light, the brain tends to get overstimulated. This overstimulation might make people feel uneasy or nervous. This feeling affects concentration and reduces productivity. Light dimmers and warmer lights tend to help with this issue. As humans, we a have built-in biological clock. Our exposure to daylight influences the process. Too much exposure to bright light during the evening can delay our sleeping schedule. Dimming the lights before bed, however, has a calming and drowsy effect. Compliment colors in rooms can highlight the structural design. There is perhaps no better evidence of the psychological impact a change in intensity can make than to look at the newly restored frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling at the Vatican in Rome, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512. Restoration was begun in 1980 and was completed in 1995. The process was relatively simple. A solvent called AB 57, mixed with a fungicide and antibacterial agent and a cellulose gel so that it would not drip from the ceiling, was painted on to a small section of the fresco with a bristle brush. The AB 57 mixture was allowed to sit for three minutes, and then it was removed with a sponge and water that also removed the grime. The process was repeated in the dirtiest areas. The entire operation was documented in great detail by the Nippon Television Network of Japan, which funded the entire restoration project. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Restorers have discovered that the dull, somber hue always associated with Michelangelo were not the result of his palette, that is, the range of colors he preferred to use, but of centuries of accumulated dust, smoke, grease, and varnishes made of animal glue painted over the ceiling by earlier restorers. The colors are in fact much more saturated and intense that they seem, beside the golden tones of the unrestored surface, almost garish. As a result, there has been some debate about the metrics of the cleaning. Architectural trends are always evolving to make rooms and buildings more sophisticated. By adding a certain color or a combination of colors, one can simply change one’s mood, one’s room by creating optical illusion and make it seem smaller or larger. Color also gives us a certain state of mine, can energize us, can cheer us, can make us feel safe, calm, relax, can increase the ability to concentrate or remind us of pleasant things. Texture can also bring a perfectly fine design up to enviable levels. Texture is the sensation caused by the external surface of objects received through the sense of touch. Paint can be enhanced by adding texture to the walls. It has the ability to spark a mood or drama in a space without having to change out the furnishings, flooring, and architectural details. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Textured wall paneling is sold in sheets that can be attached to the wall, and then painted over. Several wall panel varieties come in different colors, or many home owners prefer to leave them white. Depending on the aesthetic one is trying to create, bold textured wall panels are a nice option for one’s interior walls. Many people like to use ship lap on walls, brick, stone, crushed formica in the paint to look like crystals, or Lincrusta wallpapers, which has various styles and patterns. Some people have walls that look art work. Other texture techniques used on interior walls involve painting murals, patterns, and even trompe l’oeil. Trompe l’oeil is an artistic technique that involves painting realistic images and scenes to give the illusion of textures, and realism. This is used on walls to give a room depth, character, or to change the mood of a room dramatically. Walls that have painted to look like artwork can be done by artisans or interior wall professionals. There are also wallpapers and do it yourself murals that mimic hand painted artwork on walls. Whichever is your method of application, the results can be stunning. Let us look deeply into our own lives, setting our own goals and focusing our plans to align with God’s in a way that will ultimately lead us toward our precious privilege to return and receive blessings. “God has entrusted you with these things, which are sacred, which he will keep and preserve for a wise purpose in one, that he may show forth his power unto future generations,” Alma 37.15. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Can Human Nature Not Survive Without a Listener? The Only Secret People Keep is Immortality!
One might advocate the ascetic life as a means of pleasing God and winning the eternal bliss of Heaven. Before the advent of the camera, illustration was the primary way that we recorded history, and today it provides visual interpretations of written texts, particularly in children’s books. Because it is so direct, tracing the path of the artist’s hand recorded directly on paper, artists also find drawing to be a ready-made means for self-expression. It is as if, in the act of drawing, the soul or spirit of the artist finds it way to paper. The young man in this picture seems to be doing the most ordinary thing in the World—drawing. We think of drawing as an everyday activity that everyone, artists and ordinary people, does all the time. You doodle on a pad; you throw away the marked-up sheet and start again with a fresh one. Artists often make dozens of sketches before deciding on the composition of a major work. However, people have not always been able or willing to causally toss out marked-up paper and begin again fresh. Before the late fifteenth century, paper was costly and expensive, and people wanted to preserve trees. The young man shown here is sketching on a wooden tablet that he would sand clean after each drawing. The artist who drew him at work, however, worked in pen and ink on rare, expensive paper. This work this represents a transition point in Western art—the point at which artists began to draw on paper before they committed their idea to canvas or plaster. This involves frustration of unfulfilled desires, and self-inflicted pain. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
I showed them the bedroom with the sealed-up window that was painted to look like a window. I showed them the steel plating on the door and the lock. I told them about the human guards twenty-four hours. They were to pull the curtains around the bed, and sleep in each other’s arms. No ray of Sun, no immortal, not mortal intruder, no one would bother them here. Of course they had a long time before Sunrise. Talk, talk, yes. They could wander. However, no spying on the Harris’, no. No probing for secrets, no. No searching for a lost child yet, no. No going home to the mansion, no. I told them I would meet them tomorrow at dusk. Now I had to leave, had to. Had to get out of here. Had to get out of there. Had to get out of everywhere. The open country. Near the Winchester Mansion. Distant rumble of trucks on the River Road. Smell of the River. Smell of the Grass. Walking. Grass wet. Field of scattered redwood evergreens. White clapboard house tumbling to ruin, the way they do in Louisiana, swaying walls and steeply pitched roof embraced and held suspended by the vines. Walking. I spun around. He was there. Technicolour ghost, black tailcoat, waling as I had been, through the grass, tossing aside the champagne glass, coming on. Stopped. I lunged at him, grabbed him before he could vanish, had him by the throat, fingers dug into what sought to be invisible, holding him, hurting what would be immaterial. Yeah, got you! You impudent phantom, look at me! #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
You think you can haunt me! I growled. You think you can do that to me! And just what crazy half-illuminated Afterlife are you from! What are your half-baked mystical promises! What are your half-baked mystical promises! Yeah, come on, what Other Side are you hawking, yeah, spill it, let us hear about Leo Winterland, yeah, testify, how many ectoplasmic Angels are on your side, give me the splendiferous images of your famous fabulous friggin’ self-created, self-sustained astral plane! Where the Hell were you going to take him! You going to tell me some Lord of the Universe sends spooks like you to take little boys to Heaven! (I was clutching nothing.) I was all alone. It was sweetly warm and there was a numbing quiet in the vibration of the distant trucks, a winking beauty in the passing headlights. Who missed the deep silence of so many past centuries? Who missed the deep darkness of the long pre-electric nights? Not me. When I reached Winchester Mansion, Randolph was standing on the terrace. Loose gray hair mussed, cotton pajamas, sashed robe, bare feet. A mortal could not have discovered him, standing in the shadows, waiting. An empathetic face, patient celibate alertness. Self-discipline is a genuine virtue, but it denies desire only when this is necessary to achieve an inclusive and harmonious satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Until the late fifteenth century, drawing was generally considered a student medium Copying a master’s work was the means by which a student learned the higher art of painting. Thus, in 1493, the Italian religious zealot Savonarola outlined the ideal relation between student and master: “What does the pupil look for in the master? I will tell you. The master draws from his mind an image which his hands trace on paper and it carries the imprint of his idea. The pupil studies the drawing, and tries to imitate it. Little by little, in this way, he appropriates the style of his master. That is how all natural things, and all creatures, have derived from the divine intellect.” Savonarola thus describes drawing as both the banal, everyday business of beginners and also as equal in its creativity to God’s handiwork in nature. For Savonarola, the master’s idea is comparable to divine intellect. The master is to the student as God is to humanity. Drawing is, furthermore, autographic: it bears the master’s imprint, his style. By the end of the fifteenth century, then, drawing had come into its own. It was seen as embodying, perhaps more clearly than even the finished work, the artist’s personality and creative genius. As one watched an artist’s ideas develop through a series of preparatory sketches, it became possible to speak knowingly about the creative process itself. By the time Giorgio Vasari wrote his famous Lives of the Painters in 1550, the tendency was to see, in drawing, the foundation of Renaissance painting itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Giorgio Vasari had one of the largest collections of fifteenth-century—or so-called quattrocento—drawings ever assembled, and he wrote as if these drawings were a dictionary of the styles of the artists who had come before him. In Lives he recalls how, in 1501, crowds rushed to see Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with St. Anne and Infant St. John, a cartoon (from the Italian cartone, meaning paper), a drawing done to scale for a painting or a fresco. “The work not only won the astonished admiration of all the artists, but when finished for two days it attracted to the room where it was exhibited a crowd of men and women, young and old, who flocked there, as if they were attending a great festival, to gaze in amazement at the marvels he had created,” reports Giorgio Vasari. Though this cartoon apparently does not survive, we can get some notion of it from the later cartoon illustrated here. Giorgio Vasari’s account, at any rate, is the earliest recorded example we have of the public actually admiring a drawing. The two works shown here illustrate why drawing merits serious consideration as an art form in its own right. In Leonardo’s Study for a Sleeve, witness the extraordinary fluidity and spontaneity of the master’s line. In contrast to the stillness of the resting arm (the hand, which is comparatively crude, was probably added later), the drapery is portrayed as if it where a whirlpool or vortex. The directness of the medium, the ability of the artist’s hand to move quickly over paper, allows Leonardo to being this turbulence out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Through the intensity of his line, Leonardo imparts a degree of emotional complexity to the sitter, who is revealed in the part as well as in the whole. However, the drawing also reveals the movements of the artist’s own mind. It is s if the still sitter were at odds with the turbulence of the artist’s imagination, an imagination that will not hold still whatever its object of contemplation. Movement, in fact, fascinated Leonardo. And nothing obsessed him more than the movement of water, in particular the swirling forms of the Deluge, the great flood that would come at the end of the World. It is as if, even in this sleeve, we are witnesses to the artist’s fantastic preoccupation with the destructive forces of nature. We can see it also in his famous notebooks, where he instructs the painter how to represent a storm. Rustlings, as if the house was full of ghosts. Glance of the real true hateful Randolph was out of the corner of my eye. It was Leonardo who turned. Then Randolph on the other side, and then there was Aaliyah, and the sound of taffeta as though from an old-fashioned floor-length dress. Leonardo turned again. His blue eyes fastened on me. He was worn down yet immeasurably strong, proud of the house and mildly happy with the way I looked at it. The night outside beat hard on the windows, the song of the winged things, throb of the frogs, with the full authority of the big garden. Narrow hallway, soaring walls. Evil stairs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Oh, what fearful noises were heard throughout the dark air as it was pounded by the discharged bolts of thunder and lightening that violently shot through it to strike whatever opposed their course. Oh, how many you might have seen covering their ears with their hands in abhorrence at the uproar….Oh, how much weeping and wailing! Oh, how many terrified beings hurled themselves from the rocks! Let there be shown huge branches of great oaks weighed down with men and borne through the air by impetuous winds…You might see herds of horses, oxen, goats and sheep, already encircled by waters left marooned on the high peaks of the mountains. Now they…huddled together with those in the middle clambering on top of the others, and all scuffling fiercely amongst themselves…The air was darkened by heavy rain that, driven aslant by the crosswinds and wafted up and down through the air, resembled nothing other than dust, differing only in that this inundation was streaked through by the lines drops of water makes as they fall. The alien fragrance again. However, more than that the smell of mortal death. How did I come by thus? Hand touching the newel post, sparked off it. Mortal tumbling down and down. Stairs made for the word headlong. These doors like temple doors rise up in protest to this domestic constriction. Added in 1868, everything just a little smaller in this room, but the best plasterwork in all the house. A wall of books, old leather. A magnificent ceiling. Tiny faces up there in the plaster medallion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Red carpet, went to the long window that opened on the small side porch and peered out as though measuring the World specifically by these particular lace curtains. Peacocks in the lace curtains. Because we can see in the earlier drawing of the sleeve a fascination with swirling line that erupts in the later drawings of the Deluge, we feel we know something important not only about Leonardo’s technique but about what drove his imagination. More than any other reason, this was why, in the sixteenth century, drawings began to be preserved by artist and, simultaneously, collected by connoisseurs, experts on and appreciators of fine art. One might regard the ascetic life as a means to liberation from this World suffering. It would be unrealistic to deny that we all suffer from time to time and that there are those for whom life is mostly suffering. It would be equally unrealistic, however, to deny that for mist of us the evils we experience are more than balanced by the genuine values we enjoy. Granted the existence of evil, the obvious expedient is to improve our World rather than to make it even worse by adding the sufferings involved in ascetic practices. If escape were desirable, there is no guarantee that the ascetic life would actually lead to freedom. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
My Worthiness is All My Doubt–Conform My Soul as it Were a Church unto Her Sacrament
Spontaneous creativity of the individual soul makes a work of art and that work of art is the human body. The soul forms a continuous spectrum, a rainbow in which the blue end is consciousness and the red end instinct. The body and consciousness together as both being soul manifestations. The body that the soul creates is the whole cosmos in microcosmic form. The display of the soul in the World, brought about through the act of human making, constitutes culture. Education in tis sense concerns the drawing out of soul to conjoin with World soul, and participation in culture consists of living in the unity of soul visible in the World. If we substitute for the World soul the word force, then we get just the principle which underlies the physics of the skies. The motive force is a soul; yet the force diminishes in proportion to distance, just as light diminishes in proportion to distance. This force must be something substantial—substantial not in the literal sense but in the same manner as we say that light is something substantial, meaning by this unsubstantial entity emanating from a substantial body. The impulse for learning originates in an alluring display of the beauty of the World, which evokes desire for intimate connection with the soul of the World. “Because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God,” reports Moroni 8.26. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27
The Heavenly machines is not a kind of divine, live being, but a kind of clockwork (and one who believes that a clock has a soul, attributes that maker’s glory to the work), insofar as nearly all manifold motions are caused by a most simple, magnetic, and material force, just as all motions of the clock are caused by a simple weight. These physical causes are to be numerical and geometrical expression. The Holy Ghost no longer merely fills the space between the motionless Sun and the fixed stars. It has become an active agent, a vis mortix that derives the planets. Nobody before had suspected the existence of such a force emanating from the Sun. The moving force of the Sun is similar with the light emitted by it. Things draw us to intimate knowledge as if they need us for their completion. Much like God—he needs humans for a reason. The beauty of the World draws the soul out of an inclination toward self-enclosing mastery of the World through disengagement and into engagement with reality. This living desire to experience the World pulsing through the body wants to initiate in us a care for all things. “Wo be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent. Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what man or woman or child can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear,” reports Moroni 8.16. Loving the hand that sent it. Vanquished, my soul will know. #RandolphHarris 2 of 27
This living desire to experience the World pulsing through the body wants to initiate in us a care for all things. When aspects of life are approached with the care of the soul, their Heavenly spirit shines forth. In the ancient World each thing was seen as inhabited by a supernatural force. What we see is not the God himself, but an emanation from him which is partly mortal, partly divine, and even this we do not see with our physical eyes, but with the eyes of our spirit, and it is an intermediary between the gods and the Earthly World, according to the reflective property, like is perceived by like. Learning the gospel is discipline required to awaken the astral or soul body, the capacity to perceive the other World as image. In modern times, humans have taken the nature out of life. In the past, people believe that thunder was God’s voice. The central task of learning is not accumulation of information, but learning to learn. This process consists of coming to realize the individual body in conjunction as container and reflector of soul. God is primordial being (Orweesn), the being without contrariety; he is the unity of all that exists. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27
Though the light of the Sun cannot itself be the moving force, it may perhaps represent a kind of moving force, it may perhaps represent a kind of vehicle, or tool, that the moving force uses. However, the first following considerations seems to contradict this. First, the light is arrested in regions that lie in shade. If, then, the moving force were to use light as a vehicle, darkness would bring the planets to a standstill. This kind of force, just like the kind of force that is light, can be regarded not as something that expands into the space between its source and the movable body, but something that the movable body, such as a planet. The answer to this is: although the moving force has no substance, it is aimed at substance, i.e., at the planet-body to be moved. Who will pretend that light has substance? Yet, nevertheless it acts and is acted upon in space, it is refracted and reflected, and it has quality, so that it may be dense or sparse and can be regarded as a plane where it is received by something capable of being lit up. The same thing applies to light as to our moving force: it has no present existence in space between the source and the object it lights up, although it has passed through that space in the past; it is not, it was, so to speak. Evil appears as the individual organism tears itself lose from the harmony of the whole. Finally, the organism achieves a loving reunion with other beings (human, for example, becomes reunited with Nature, Reason, Humanity, and God), and with the rediscovery of harmony, all evil is negated. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27
Gravity is the mutual bodily tendency between cognate [i.e., material] bodies toward unity or contact (of which kind of the magnetic force also is), so that the Earth draws a stone much more than the stone draws the Earth. If the Earth and the Moon were not kept in their respective orbits by a spiritual or some equivalent force, the Earth would ascend toward the Moon 1/54 of the distance, and the Moon would descend the remaining 53 parts of the interval, and thus they would unite. However, this calculation presupposes that both bodies are of the same density. If the Earth ceased to attract the waters of the sea, the sea would rise and flow into the Moon. If the attractive force of the Moon reaches down to the Earth, it follows that the attractive force of the Earth, all the more, extends to the Moon and even farther. If two stones were placed anywhere in space near to each other, and outside the reach of force of a third cognate body, then they would come together, after the manner of magnetic bodies, at an intermediate point, each approaching the other in proportion to the other’s mass. After, however, the historical path leads downward, to a final involution which is both the ending of a career and the birth of a new nice. Since the transition is gradual, and older age may survive for a time in a newer age. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27
Each development, nevertheless, exhibits genuine, unforeseeable novelty. “On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day,” reports 2 Timothy 1.17. There were others species of human like beings, in the past, which coexisted with humans. Such a Neanderthals. However, their nature was extremely naïve and childlike. In ancient times, many died through clumsiness and accidents. Research suggests, however, they Neanderthals were telepathic, curious by nature and hardwired with a tremendous amount of basic historical and intellectual knowledge. It is born knowing all about the species itself, the island continent from which they came, and the places in the British Isles to which they migrated after the island was destroyed by the same volcanos. Some of these volcanoes must have also created land bridges, and perhaps these beings that moved about them did so with incredible speed because they were not all fully human. Remember Angels mated with humans and created Nephilim, which in many cases turned out to be giants. Some of them were as tall as street lights, according to ancient legends. They had an extraordinary reproductive advantage and that is what made them so dangerous. However, their naivete, simplicity and lack of aggression are were their vulnerabilities. #RandolphHarris 6 of 27
Just stop a moment; both St. Januarius and St. Augustine have something to do with the calendar. Will you recall the blood miracle? Do you not know about it? The blood of St. Januarius is preserved in a phial in a church in Naples, and on a certain holiday, a miracle takes place causing it to liquefy. The people think a great deal of this miracle, and become very excited if the liquefying process is retarded, as happened once during the French occupation. The General in command—or Garibaldi, if I am not mistaken—then took the priest aside, and with a very significant gesture pointed out to him the soldiers arrayed without, and expressed his hope that the miracle would soon take place. And it actually took place. Just think of the saints of the calendar, the liquefying of the blood on a certain day, the excitement if the event does not take place, and the distinct threat that the miracle must take place. “I have such a need of you. I come to you ashamed of my failures. I come to you as the Prince of Blood. I do not claim to be anything better or worse. Listen to me. Help me. Help me for the sake of others. I beg you. Hear my prayer.” I was in this dark frame of mind, along with this message, which engaged my soul completely, when I hear a step on the iron stairs outside. However, what was all this to me with my broken hear, and illegitimate soul? #RandolphHarris 7 of 27
The Spirit of God witnesses to the redemption of our Lord and to nothing else. To find a tribe of tall beings, tender of bone, ancient, simple, tangled with my fledgling, unknown to the World of records, history and location essential to the sanity of those I love. Guidance. Mistake I have made with my fledgling spiraling out of control. Give to me your wisdom, your keen hearing, your vision Where are all the tall creatures? I am your loyal subject. More of less. I send my love. “And I seal up these records, after I have spoken a few words by way of exhortation unto you. Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hat been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. Ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not truth; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things,” reports Moroni 10.2-5. The only way is by allowing nothing of the old life to remain and by having only simple, perfect trust that we no longer want God’s blessings, but only want God Himself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27
Yesterday is still clear in our memory–keep it; may we have a bright suture with beauty, joy, happiness, and honestness. Thousands of rivers separate us and thousands of mountains are boundless. I can only trust my missing to the clouds, may you find a happy life and come back with a successful study earlier than anticipated. The hose is glittering and blessings are the huge streamer for a a safe voyage like the eyes of the sea; the Sun is also my eyes glittering like the diamond ball. I sing high praise for the party and its holy mission: a little sparkle results in a the Sunshine and beauty. You are the founder of the future making each young soul full of wisdom. The knowledge of this last hour belongs to God and no one else. Human beings have made many predictions that have never come true. Not be astonished in trouble, not panic in danger; look into the mountains from the low valley; show high ideals by simple life; kindly accept the bitterness in setback. We admire your state. It is up to us if we can survive this. You cast light on the soul of wisdom like morning Sunshine, and support people with water unselfishly like the spring. You give us direction like a compass. Your love educates many people. #RandolphHarris 9 of 27
The first natural impulses of the distressed heart often point out the best alleviation. You preach a doctrine which you know you do not believe, it is the way with you all. If you know that there is no Earthly happiness, why do you long to be a bishop or dean? Why do you want lands and income? Customers, employees, suppliers—all the participants in the World of Business—come in different ages, genders, races, and ethnicities, nationalities, and abilities, a truth that business has come to label diversity. Understanding this diversity means recognizing and accepting differences as well as valuing the unique perspectives such differences can bring to the workaday. For every advantage she imparts, Civilization holds a hundred evils in reserve. When managers speak of diversity, in the workforces, these experts typically mean differences in gender and race. While gender and race are important characteristics of diversity, others are also important. We can collect these differences into primary and secondary characteristics of diversity. Age, gender, race, ethnicity, abilities, and sexual orientation represent primary characteristics of diversity, which are inborn and cannot be changed. Secondary characteristics of diversity—work background, income, material statues, military experience, religious beliefs, geographic location, parental status, sexuality (who you are attracted to) and education—which can be changed. We acquire, change, and discard them as we progress through our lives. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27
No bond unites congenial hearts more firmly than that of a common great aim. The American workforce is becoming increasingly diverse. Once dominated by the mainstream culture, today’s workforce includes significantly more women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Veterans and the disabled, as well as senior citizens. As of 2014, women make up 51 percent of the workforce, and that is up from 47.9 percent in 2010, so clearly American is changing. The population in American is 75.1 percent European American, 12.3 percent African American, 0.9 percent American Indian, 3.6 percent Asian persons, 0.1 percent Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander, and 12.5 persons of Hispanic or Latino origin. However, it is estimated that within the next 50 years, Hispanics will represent 24 percent of the population, while African Americans will make up 9 percent, and Asians 9 percent. In the past, these groups may have faced some mild discrimination and higher unemployment rates and possibly were denied opportunities to assume leadership roles, in corporate America. Consequently, more and more companies are trying to improve Human Resources Management (HRM) programs to recruit, develop, and retain more diverse employees to better serve their diverse customers. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27
Some firms are providing special programs such as sponsored affinity groups, mentoring programs, and special career development opportunities. At US West, each manager’s contributions to the company’s diversity efforts are measure by a 16-point scorecard called the Diversity Accountability Tool. Managers implement the scorecard to rate their own efforts to foster diversity and then explain their score in a meeting with the company’s Chief Executive Officer. The manager receives an official diversity scores that is one factor in determining the manager’s annual bonus. Since the program was instituted, scores have jumped 60 percent. McDonald’s, Fannie Mae, Denny’s, Union Bank of California, Sempra Energy, Southern California-Edison, SBC Communications, Freddie Mac, PepsiCo, PNM Resources, and the Golden 1 Credit Union (the leading credit union in California) Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency and Wal-Mart are known for effectively managing diversity in the Workforce by cultivating and valuing its benefits and minimizing its problems. They take customer concerns very seriously and are extremely professional. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27
Success supposed endeavor. There are a number of benefits to fostering and valuing workforce diversity, including the following: More productive use of a company’s human resources and revenue. More harmony and fellowship among employees of different ethnicities, cultures, religions, and sexual orientations as they learn to respect each other’s differences; other benefits include more productive working relationships among diverse employees as they learn more about and accept each other. There is also increased innovation and creativity as diverse employees bring new, unique perspectives to decision-making and problem-solving tasks. There is also an increased ability to serve the needs of an increasingly diverse customer base. Make ambition your business and indifference your relaxation and you will fail; however, make indifference your business and ambition your relaxation and you will succeed. So impish are the ways of the gods. Nothing is so dangerous, especially to those who are not much accustomed to it, as a little success. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27
Success in projects is everything—companies that do not value their diverse employees are likely to experience greater conflict, as well as prejudice and discrimination. CBS13, in West Sacramento, California is a perfect example, they even slander their own employees; Tony Lopez is one of the worst offenders. However, no matter how many times you ask them to stop or report to their parent corporation, they will keep doing what they want and will even threaten to have you arrested or fired if you speak up. Among individual employees, for example, racial slurs and gestures, sexist comments, and other behaviors by co-workers harm the individuals at whom such behavior is directed. The victims of such behavior may feel hurt, depressed, or even threatened and suffer from lowered self-esteem, all of which harm their productivity and morale. No evil is insupportable, but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. In such cases, women and other employees may simply leave the firm, wasting the time, money, and other resources spent on hiring and training them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
When discrimination comes from a supervisor, employees may also fear for their career and life. A discriminatory atmosphere not only can harm productivity and increase turnover, but it may also subject a firm to costly lawsuits and negative publicity. The conscience is, like the spleen, a function whose uses are only to be understood in its derangement. A good conscience is the best of all narcotics. Astute businesses recognize that they need to modify their human resources management programs to target the needs of all their diverse employees, as well as the needs of the firm itself. These prestigious corporations realize the benefits of diversity are long term in nature and come only to those organizations willing to make the commitment. Most importantly, as workforce diversity becomes a valued organizational asset, corporations spend less time managing conflict and more time accomplish tasks and satisfying customers, which is, after all, the purpose of business. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
We live in a physical World whose properties are familiar, and, it is around us all the time. We cherish our own space. If you would have your son or daughter to walk honorably through the World, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his or her path, but tech your children to walk firmly over them—not insist upon leading a child by the hand, but let your child learn to go alone. Artists as reporters represent their World, and they even expect their work to have an impact on the World, to reveal hidden or universal truths. The work is about knowing and appreciating the beautiful, and that is how we can make the World a better place. Each photograph represents a particular intellectual, emotional, or expressive quality of the subject, they represent powerful emotions and feelings and passions. In 1666, Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated that objects appear to be a certain color because they absorb and reflect different parts of the visible spectrum. Obviously, not all artists are able to utilize light as fully as architects. Architects, particularly, must concern themselves with light. However, especially if artist and photographers are interested in representing the World, they must learn to imitate the effects of light in their work. There is something called the atmospheric perspective or aerial perspective, and these rules state that the quality of the atmosphere (the haze and relative humidity) between us and large objects, such as mountains, changes their appearance. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27
Objects further away from us appear less distinct, often cooler, or bluer in color, and the contrast between light and dark is reduced. Some of these photographs throw a veil of matchless color, that lucid interval of Morning dawn and dewy light on which the Eye dwells…and it is a sacrilege to pierce the mystic shell of color in search of form. With linear perspective one might adequately describe physical reality—a building, for instance—but through light one could reveal a greater spiritual reality. In this photograph, the light is much more expressive. It is, in large part, the dramatic play of light and dark in the photograph that contributes to this expressivity. The perspective system employed is used to focus our attention on the building, it is light that draws our attention to the grandeur and beauty. The Heavenly light surrounding the Capitol contrasts dramatically with the darkness of the rest of the composition. The building is symbolically offering you its body as nourishment. This purely spiritual act contracts with the gluttonous Worldly activity going on in the foreground, where a dog knaws at a bone, and a cat searches for leftovers. Light here symbolizes the spiritual World, and darkness our Earthly home. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27
Light and dark have traditionally had strong symbolic meaning in Western culture. We have only to think of the Bible, and the first lines of the Book of Genesis, which very openly associates the dark with the bad and the light with good. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that is was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. In the history of art, this association of light or white with good and darkness or black with evil was first fully developed in the late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century color theory of the German poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. For Goethe, colors were not just phenomena to be explained by scientific laws. They also had moral and religious significance, existing halfway between the goodness of pure light and the damnation of pure blackness. In Heaven, there is only pure light, but the fact that we can experience color—which, according to the laws of optics, depends upon light mixing with darkness—promises us at least the hope of salvation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 27
In the first, the figures are all passive, sleeping, or dead. In the second, the figures are bathed in an almost pure white light and barely recognizable at the top center of the painting. Figures swirl around him as if life itself is being born out of a vortex. Although this opposition between dark and light is taken for granted in our culture, many people of color, with reason, find such thinking offensive. They are especially offended by the use of the term value to describe gradations of light and dark, so that black is low, and white is high in value. Artists and art historians alike use the term as a part of a specialized descriptive vocabulary that, in itself, would seem to be art the furthest remove from issues of race and the relative worth of human beings. Nevertheless, it is clear that since Biblical times, Western culture has tended to associate blackness with negative qualities and whiteness with positive ones, and it is understandable why people might take offense at this usage. For this reason, we use the word key instead of value, substituting the musical metaphor for the moral and economic one. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27
If for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, blackness is not merely the absence of color, but the absence of good, for African Americans, blackness is just the opposite. Mighty drums echoing the voices of Spirits…these sounds are rhythmic, the rhythm of vitality, the rhythm of exuberance and the rhythms of Life. These are the sounds of blackness. Blackness—the presence of all color. When restoring some artwork, technicians found that the dull, somber hues always associated with Michelangelo were not the result of his palette, that is, the range of colors he preferred to use, but of centuries of accumulated dust, smoke, grease, and varnishes made of animal glue painted over the ceiling by earlier restorers. The colors are in fact much more saturated and intense than anyone had previously supposed. Some experts, in fact, find them so intense that they seem, beside the golden tones of the unrestored surface, almost garish. As a result, there has been some debate about the merits of the cleaning. However, it is not a controversy. It is a culture shock. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27
Therefore, agree with your adversary quickly. Do it quickly—bring yourself to judgment now. In moral and spiritual matters, you must act immediately. God is determined to have His child as pure, clean, and white as driven snow, and as long as there is disobedience, God will allow His Spirit to use whatever process it may take to bring us to obedience. The fact that we insist on proving that we are right is almost always a clear indication that we have some point of disobedience. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there until you have paid the last penny. God urged you to come to judgment immediately when He condemned you, but you did not obey. Then the inevitable process began to work, bringing its inevitable penalty. The moment you are willing for God to change your nature, His re-creating forces will begin to work. He will reach to the very limits of the Universe to help you take the right road. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27
God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but God tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with God. It is a matter of loosening the bands that hold back our lives. Those bands are loosened immediately by identification with the death of Jesus. It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. God wants you to be a living sacrifice. Poison wrapped up in sugared pills is but half a poison: the fear of death’s looks are more terrible than his stroke. Whom we fear more than love, we are not far from hating. Religion is not about forcing our wills on others, it is about spreading kindness. Just because we have the right to do something, does not mean it is the right thing. Freedom is speech is not about putting someone’s life in danger, it is about having the freedom to peacefully express yourself. If you know a person well, you may be able to detect deception from expressive changes. However, do not count on it. Most people learn to maintain careful control over their facial expressions. A good example is smiling, so you will not hurt someone’s feelings when you receive a disappointing gift. Because of such control, deception is often best revealed by body language. Even a good con artist may be too busy attending to his or her words and face to control certain bodily clues. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27
The reporter swears he is doing the community justice by sharing messages about cartoons. If you cannot touch his tongue to a hot knife, how else can you tell if he is lying? Most people assume that shifty eyes and squirming are clear signs of lying. However, neither of these clues increases when a person is fibbing. Also contrary to what you might expect, nervous movements such as hand rubbing, grooming, scratching, hair twisting, lip biting, chin stroking, and so on, are not consistently related to lying. On the other hand, illustrators (the gestures people use to illustrate what they are saying) may reveal lying. These gestures tend to decrease when a person is telling a lie. In other words, persons who usually talk with their hands may be much less animated when they are lying.Among the best clues to lying are the signs of strong emotion produced by the ANS. These include blinking, blushing, blanching, pupil dilation, rapid or irregular breathing, perspiration, frequent swallowing, speech errors, and a louder, higher pitched voice. All of these clues are hard for the liar to censor. However, such clues are like the polygraph: They reveal emotions; they do not always mean a person is lying. Remember, good liars can fool most people most of the time—and that is no lie. #RandolphHarris 22 of 27
Most people agree that health is important—especially their own. Yet, almost one half of all deaths, in North America, are primarily due to unhealthy behavior. Health psychology aims to do something about deaths. Health psychologist use behavioral principles to promote health and prevent illness. Psychologists working in the allied field of behavioral medicine apply psychology to manage medical problems, such as diabetes or asthma. Their interest include pain control, helping people cope with chronic illness, stress-related diseases, self-screening for diseases (such as breast cancer), and similar topics. Behavioral risk factors—around the turn of the twentieth century, people primarily died from infectious diseases and accidents. Today, people generally die from lifestyle diseases, which are related to health-damaging person habits. Examples include heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer. Clearly, some lifestyles promote health, whereas others lead to illness and death. As the cartoon character Pogo out it, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” #RandolphHarris 23 of 27
What kinds of behavior are you referring to as unhealthy? Behavioral risk factors are behaviors that increase the chances of disease, injury, or early death. Each of the following is a major behavioral risk factor: high levels of stress, untreated high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, and abuse of alcohol or other drugs, overeating, inadequate exercise, unsafe sexual behavior, exposure to toxic substances, violence, driving at excessive speeds, and disregarding personal safety. Protect your virginity. When many risk factors are present, a person is more likely to have medical problems. Many high school students in the United States of America engage in risky behaviors. As you can see, health-damaging behaviors are usually well established before adulthood. In addition to specific risk factors, a disease-prone personality type also exists. Such people tend to be chronically depressed, anxious, hostile, and…frequently ill. In contrast, people who are intellectually resourceful, compassionate, optimistic, and non-hostile tend to enjoy good health. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27
Lifestyles—in your mind’s eye, fast-forward an imaginary film of your life all the way to old age. Do it twice—once with a lifestyle including a large number of behavioral risk factors, and again without them. It should be obvious that countless small risks can add up to dramatically raise the chance of illness. If stress is a frequent part of your life, visualize your body seething with emotion, day after day. If you smoke, picture a lifetime’s worth of cigarette smoke blown through your lungs in a week. If you drink, take a lifetime of alcohol’s assaults on the brain, stomach, and liver and squeeze them into a month: Your body would be poisoned, ravaged, and soon dead. If you eat a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet, fast-forward a lifetime of heart-killing plaque clogging your arteries. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27
Although it may sound like it, discussion is not meant to be a sermon. It is merely a reminder that risk factors do make a difference. To make matters worse, unhealthy lifestyles almost always create multiple risks. That is, people who smoke are also likely to drink excessively. Those who overeat usually do not get enough exercise. And so on. Health-promoting behaviors—to prevent disease and promote well-being, health psychologists first try to remove behavioral risk factors. All the medicine in the World may not be enough to restore health without changes in behavior. We all know someone who has had a heart attack or lung disease who cannot or will not change the habits that led to their illness. #RandolphHarris 26 of 27
Beyond this, psychologists are also interested in getting people to increase behaviors that promote health. Health-promoting behaviors include such obvious practices as getting regular exercise, controlling smoking and alcohol use, maintaining a balanced diet, getting good medical care, and managing stress. Even something as simple as using seat belts in a car greatly ups life expectancy. Basic health practices should extend a person’s life. However, do they? A major study done in California provides an answer. People who get 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night, have a balanced diet, do not some, use alcohol moderately or not at all and get physical exercise had death rates 4 times lower than people who do not live a healthy lifestyle. Happy are they who are blessed with the power of making happy. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27
If Only Centuries Delayed, I Would Count them on My Hand—What Fortitude the Soul Contains
Have no motivation other than to know your Father in Heaven. As we increase our faith in God’s power to give rest unto our souls by forgiving our sins, redeeming imperfect relationships, healing the spiritual wounds that stifle growth, and strengthening and enabling us to develop the attributes of Go, we will more deeply appreciate the justice. Justice consists in treating equals equally and unequals unequally but in proportion to their relevant differences. This involves, first, the idea of impartiality; the honest judge considers only the features of the case that are relevant in law. Justice is no respecter of persons; wealth or status will influence judgment only if it makes a difference in law. Impartiality implies a kind of equality—not that all cases should be treated alike but the onus rests on whoever would treat them differently to distinguish them in relevant ways. It is not for a judge to decide the respect in which people are equal but to decide whether the respects in which they are unequal are relevant to the issues in the case. That is what is really meant by the right to equal consideration—to be treated alike unless relevant differences have been proved. During the coming weeks, find the time to review your life’s goals and your planes, and make sure they align with our Heavenly Father’s great plan for our happiness. If one needs to repent or change, then consider doing so now. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Justice is one of the most basic and potentially important social psychological areas of inquiry. Take the time to prayerfully think about what adjustments are needed in order to one keep focused on God’s glory. People care not only about the content of decisions; they also care about how the decisions are made. Much of psychological science and knowledge is significantly relevant to social justice. The goal is to decrease human suffering and to promote human vales of equality and fairness. A commitment to social justice has evolved as a more important value in the last few decades for psychology. An important goal is that we continue to find ways to agree or disagree in respectful manner regardless of where each of us stands on an issue. A number of studies showed that people will remain attached to their groups and satisfied with the authority figures as long as they think the authorities have followed fair procedures, even when they authorities have rendered a decision that adversely affects them. Research indicates that documented procedures communicate important information about social worth and value to involved parties. People need to feel they are valued and respected members of the group, and they need to take pride in their group membership. A just person is an individual in the right place, doing one’s best and giving the equivalent of what one has received. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Justice considered as reciprocity is often held to require returning evil for evil as much as good for good (lex talionis). In this case punishment would be paying back what is due. However, if law can be too rigid to do justice, does this not imply some extralegal canons of justice, by which perhaps the rules of law themselves might be assessed? There are many people who seem to rely solely on the Lord’s mercy rather than on accomplishing their own repentance. The Lord may temper justice with mercy, but he will never supplant it. Mercy can never replace justice. God is merciful, but he is also just. “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a person does to others, one shall also reap the consequences,” reports Galatians 6.7. That is an eternal aspect of justice that has been declared by divine law. Justice is an unchanging law that brings consequences for actions. Because of the law of justice, one receives blessings when one obeys God’s commandments. The law of justice also demands that a penalty be paid for every sin a person commits. It requires that no unclean thing be permitted to dwell with God. Justice is preeminently a matter of significance for everyone, no matter what stage in the life-cycle, social circumstances or nationality. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Justice assures personal and communal security, and is manifest in the way countries deal with crime, civil conflict and social strife within their borders or by agreement beyond. Justice is the maintenance of legal, social, or moral principles by the exercise o authority or power. The concept has a foundation at the core of moral philosophy and jurisprudence, and underpins the law that every community develops to fulfills their obligations and objectives. However, constitution such as courts and legal systems which start off sometimes with high and romantic origins, intents and aspirations, can, with passing of time, if we are not constantly alert and on guard, become disfigured, unreconisable and untrue to which benignant intentions which brought them into being. The of justice is to personalize the behaviour by making offenders more responsive to the human effects of their crimes. It also gives victim a role in the judicial procedure beyond laying the initial complaint and obliged judges to apply a remedial function on the court in helping to change the lives of offenders for the better. Justice and mercy are attributes of God They are also eternal principles. The Justice of God is a principle so fundamental that without it, God would cease to be God. On one hand, justice rewards righteousness. On the other hand, justice requires penalties as consequences of disobedience to the laws of God. “I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 1.31. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The actions of a living being are regarded as having a special class of casual effects which determine one’s future spiritual condition, both in this life and in succeeding ones. These effects are known as the products of action. Good deeds lead to progress toward liberation.Each person will thus be judged according to his or her works. Although the degree of accountability varies according to the extent of each person’s knowledge and culpability. However, in the material World, ignorance of the law is not an excuse for not knowing the laws. We cannot reasonable expect people to respect our interests unless we are prepared to respect theirs. It would be generally agreed that doing justice means treating equals equally and unequals according to their relevant inequalities. The Christian lives before God by faith alone. One’s awareness of God is always an awareness of one’s own infinite distance from God. Closure forms when one is in some way incomplete and through spiritual development becomes complete—it is like a circle with a small arch missing and then becomes a full circle. Humans are the supreme unification of Reason and Nature, for the possess the highest sort of mind joined to the highest sort of body. The individual souls that make up humanity are eternal, uncreated, immortal. Their number can neither be increased nor diminished. Humanity is thus complete at every moment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
When people should strive for is the imitation of the divine life in their own inner lives and in their social organizations. God is good, and people should participate in this goodness. The inner union with God (Gottesinnigkeit), or fervor for the divine, is the foundation of ethics, and ethics is the heart of religion. However, individuals cannot achieve the moral life alone, since they are what they are only as parts of the whole. The community and its various institutions are thus indispensable. Ideally, the community is governed by Right, which is the organic whole of all of the internal and external conditions necessary for the completion of life that are dependent on freedom. This supernational law is grounded in the nature of the divine; it expresses the right of Humanity, not simply the right of the individual human beings. The rights of the individuals, groups, and nations can be recognized, but only as subordinate to the right of Humanity as a while. Humanity is divided into a series of social organisms. Human beings are inhabitants in many cosmic systems. These human beings are subdivided into nations, races, communities, families, and so forth. There is an aesthetic community, a scientific community, a religious community, and a moral community. Each community has rights, although the right of Humanity takes precedence. Though God contains the World, he is nevertheless other than and superior to it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Enlightening Mystery–Faith is a Fine Invention for the People Who See a Door Just Opened
Since every person is part of nature and, hence, part of the divine, we share the basic impulses of all natural things, and have the urge to develop upward and outward, which is the striving for an ideal action. We spend our time praying for the best outcomes in life. To improve our vision, and increase our happiness, we have to make a plan so we have somewhere to place our hope. A plan will also help us to bring our Heavenly Father’s blessings into our lives. One early use of the word “golden” in English is “most excellent, important, or precious.” With reference to the rules or precepts it was used to mean of inestimable value, and the expression the golden rules was often specifically used wit reference to the precept in Matthew: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that people should do, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets,” (7.12). Thus, the principle that has come to be known as the golden rules has been so called presumably because it has been regarded as being of inestimable values or importance. This regard was not derived solely from the fact that it was set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. The golden rule has been widely accepted, in word if not in deed, by vast numbers of greatly differing peoples; it is a basic device of moral education and it can be found at the core of innumerable moral, religious, and social codes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
What the golden rule requires a person to do, then, is to take account of the wishes of others and accord them the respect and consideration one would want them to accord to them. In other words, what the golden rule requires of each of us is that we should treat others in accordance with same principles or standards that we would have others apply in their treatment of us. Thus, the golden rules, if this argument is sound, is compatible with differences in interests, needs, tastes, wishes, and desires, and does not presuppose that human nature is uniform in the sense specified. The golden rule has been said to provide just that element, the requirement of justice or fairness, that the World needs. It has also been claimed that the golden rule is a perfect guide to conduct and that the only thing needed to make the World perfect is for everyone to follow it. The nearly universal acceptance of the golden rule and its promulgation by persons of considerable intelligence, through otherwise of divergent outlooks, would therefore seem to provide some evidence for the claim that it is a fundamental ethical truth. By allowing ourselves to be drawn to God, we fulfill our nature and experience the greatest satisfaction of which we are capable. When we are uncertain of the future or our current situation, fear overrules our optimism and we find ourselves unhappy and a little sad. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
The personal unconscious consists of those associated webs of ideas and emotions named complexes, which have been repressed from consciousness because it finds them too painful to acknowledge, and also of those perceptions of reality which have never forced their way into consciousness. Each individual’s personal unconscious is thus to some extent explicable in terms of one’s own life history. Even the personal unconscious, however, has features which are common to every individual and do not derive from one’s personal history. The shadow of every human being is usually part of the personality they one usually rejects and imprisons because of its set of desires, emotions, and attitudes that we personify as unpleasant or hostile. The shadow is essentially infantile, for it is untouched by the process of maturation or education. The inability to acknowledge one’s shadow is always a potential danger to the personality, for the shadow unacknowledged and unrecognized is stronger and more wayward than the shadow recognized and accepted. Although every individual has a shadow, since the shadow is the product of what one’s particular consciousness has repressed, it belongs to the personal unconsciousness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Biological determinism, in part holds that there is an association between physical characteristics and such attributes as intelligence, morals, values, abilities, and even social and economic condition. In other words, some believe that cultural variation are inherited in the same manner as biological variations. It follows, the, that there are inherent behavioural and cognitive differences between groups. It is an old wives tale to be careful who you have kinds with because behaviour can be inherited. Early humans did not understand the mechanisms of inheritance, of DNA, or the translation of genetic information into morphology, physiology, or behaviour. However, they intuitively understood that inheritance shapes behaviour. Today, we easily recognize that both genes and the environment influence human behaviour. Genes, through their influences on morphology and physiology, creates a framework within which the environment acts to shape the behaviour of an individual. The environment can affect morphological and physiological development; in turn behaviour develops as a result of the person’s shaped internal workings. Genes also create the scaffold for learning, memory, and cognition, remarkable mechanisms that allow people to acquire and store information about their environment for use in shaping their behaviour. Instinctive, or hard-wired (genetically determined) behaviour is performed without thought and cannot be modified by learning. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Examples of instinctive behaviour include simple behavioural patterns, displayed in response to a specific stimulus or within a specific context. To further highlight this illustration, Olivia Benson adopted a baby called Noah Porter-Benson, on a show called Law and Order Special Victims Unit. Although Noah was a good baby and as cute as can be, many people knew that he would be trouble as he grew up because his father Johnny Drake was spent 20 years as ruthless and unethical business man involved in the sale, distribution, and punishment of large numbers of human capital. And last night, on the show, Noah started acting unusual because he was not ready to go to bed. He laid down as he was told, after protesting his bed time, and when his adopted mother put the covers on him, he ripped them back off and had a cold look in his eye. She then covered him back up and told him a few times that she loved him, and he just laid there with a blank look in his eye. Oliva was shocked. When this happens the personality itself is in danger; it has been taken over and magnified into something that expresses not the individual person but the collective image. Although he has been loved and adored, Noah has some genetic behavioural traits that he inherited from his father. It is not like there is no hope for Noah, children can change if they want to and are taught at a young age to suppress their shadow. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to intelligence, although it is not possible to measure accurately the percentage of each contributes. Intelligence is the mental capacity; ability to learn, reason, or comprehend and interpret information, facts, relationships, and meanings; the capacity to solve problems, whether through the application of previously acquired knowledge or through insight. In order to demonstrate Godly behaviour, it is why it is recommended for people to go to church for a lifetime, so they learn the right ways to live, learn the love and fear of God, and follow the golden rule, even when they feel their shadow wanting to surface. Controlling inherited tendencies of psychic functioning contained in the collective unconscious is why people send their children to private schools, as it is a religious based curriculum and they teach the laws of God, righteous behaviour, and monitor the behaviour of the child more than they do in public schools. Therefore, there is additionally usually a higher moral code and dress code. “I know that he (God) loves his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things,” reports 1 Nephi 11.17. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
We know that the roots of happiness rest in the biology of the whole species and that the potential of the species can only be realized in a culture, in a social system. It is knowledge and the social system which give life or take it away, and in so doing change the gene frequencies and continue the million-year-old interaction of culture and biology. Human biology finds its realization in a culturally determined way of life, and the infinite variety of genetic combinations can only express themselves efficiently in a free and open society. So how do we push away fear to make room for hope? First, begin by acknowledging that God lives and sees all—that he is in charge and that he knows you. No matter what you are going through, Heavenly Father understands. Next, set goals. A clear plan will increase one’s hope in the future. A good idea is to start telling your Father in Heaven what your goal and intentions are. Motivation is the essential and irreplaceable element of success. When we are not motivated, we fail. Have we not all felt that mid-task slump? When we experience even small amounts of success, our brains release dopamine, which is connected to feelings of pleasure, learning and motivation. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people. “Spirit and body shall be reunited in perfect form,” reports Alma 11.34. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
When we feel the effect of dopamine, we are eager to repeat the actions that resulted in success in the first place. Neuroscientists refer to this as self-directed learning. This is why achieving small goals is such an effective way to stay motivated during long-term projects and processes. It is important to recognize our need, but stop longing and make it a matter of action. Have unquestioning faith, and the great miracle will become real. Keep in mind, although we have goals on Earth, to return to God’s presence and to receive the eternal blessings that come from making and keeping covenants are the most important goals we can set. A key to happiness rests in understanding what destinations truly matter—and then spending our time, effort, and attention on the things that constitue a sure way to arrive there. God, our Heavenly Father, has given us the perfect example of goal setting and planning. His goal is to being to past the immortality and eternal life of all men and women. His means to achieve it is the plan of salvation. Our beloved Heavenly Father’s plan includes giving us a growing, stretching, learning, physical mortality through which we can become more like him. Clothing our eternal spirits in physical bodies, our faith is being tested so we can prove God’s character trustworthy in our minds. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Wise goal setting includes the understanding that short-term foals are only effective if they lead to clearly understood long-term goals. It is good to hobbies and goals and plans for our careers, for our education, even for our golf game. The simpler and more straightforward the goal is, the more power it will have. When we can reduce the goal to one clear image or two powerful and symbolic words, that goal can then become part of us and guide virtually everything we think and do. Project must be mindful of the practical hurdles and limitations associated with analyzing their stakeholders’ psychological attributes. Both the internal and especially the external stakeholder community can be very large and complex in terms of, inter alia (for organization) their respective missions, interests, goals, priorities and culture and (for individuals, groups, communities) their social and cultural diversity, economic background, objectives, awareness, education and intelligence, family upbringing, norms, values and personal or shared experiences and so forth. The stakeholder psychological attribute analysis is only useful as the quality of information it is based on, meaning, in order for it to be useful the information must at least be accurate precise, complete, relevant, specific, up-to-date, reliable and actionable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Finding information which satisfies this set of criteria on all stakeholders, especially external ones, can be very difficult, time-consuming, costly and sometimes simply impossible to do. Powerful or influential stakeholders must hereby be prioritized as these can significantly affect the project in either the positive or negative sense. Sentiments towards project may change immensely and rapidly in response to project developments and such changes much be reflected in a prompt corresponding change in the project’s stakeholder management/engagement strategies. This implies that a situational or periodic repeat of the information collect task and stakeholder attributes analysis would be necessary, adding to the process complexity and cost. Hence, attempting to devise and implement effective and customized stakeholder management/ engagement strategies on the basis of the stakeholder attributes analysis can be highly challenging, tedious and expensive and offer no guarantee of success. Without qualified support, for instance in the form of a team of highly skilled, competent, creative and experienced analysts or hired consultants, such activities would exceed burden project managers and teams already heavily burdened with the arduous technical and administrative takes they typically encounter in the day to day operations of their project. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
All stakeholders have needs and wants. Satisfying these needs and wants is a key objective for them, regardless of whether stakeholders are individuals, groups, or associations of individuals, communities, or organizations. Projects offer stakeholders a potential opportunity to satisfy their general and specific needs and wants and the stakeholders are naturally interested in ascertaining if, how and to what extent this is possible. Faith being worked out into reality must experience times of unbroken isolation. Projects thus constitute a source of motivation for stakeholders; this is good for the project because the greater this motivational intensity is the more likely it is that stakeholders will view the project in positive light and, of course, vice versa. The practical implication in project perspective is that project owners, planners and executors must carefully research stakeholders motivations and seek to align their projects with their stakeholder needs and wants to the maximum extent possible within the given project resources, time and other constraints. Doing so serves the twin objective of reducing actual or potential stakeholders offense. It is essential that you give people the opportunity to act on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual—one cannot act for another person. The moments we are truly alive are the moments wen we act with our entire will. #RandolpHarris 11 of 11
Desire’s Perfect Goal Should Not Disenthrall Thy Soul—Here is a Star, there is a Star, Some Lose Their Way!
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned. Love would conquer all, of course, but one has to know when it is there first. Glaucus was a fisherman. One day he had drawn his nets to land and had taken a great many fishes of various kinds. So he emptied his nets and proceeded to sort the fishes on the grass. The place where he stood was a beautiful island in the river, a solitary spot, uninhabited, and not used for pasturage of cattle, not visited by anyone but himself. On a sudden, the fishes, which had been laid on the grass, began to revive and move their fins as if they were in the water; and while he looked on astonished, they one and all moved off to the water, plunged in, and swam away. He did not know what to make of this, whether some god had done it, or some secret power in the herbage. “What herb has such a power?” he exclaimed; and gathering some of it, he tasted it. Scarce had the juices of the plant reached his palate when he found himself agitated with a longing desire for the water. Glaucus could no longer restrain himself, but bidding farewell to Earth, he plunged into the stream. The gods of the water received him graciously and admitted hi to the honour of their society. They obtained the consent of Oceanus and Tethys, the sovereign of the sea, that all that was mortal in him should be washed away. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
A hundred rivers poured their waters over Glaucus and then he lost all sense of his former nature and all consciousness. When he recovered, he found himself changed in form and mind. His hair was sea-green, and trailed behind him on the water; his shoulders grew broad, and what had been thighs and legs assumed the form of a fish’s tail. The sea-gods complimented him on the change of his appearance, and Glaucus fancied himself rather a good-looking personage. One day, Glaucus saw a beautiful maiden Scylla, the favourite of the water-nymphs, rambling on the shore, and when she had found a sheltered nook, laving her limbs on the clear water, he fell in live with her. Glaucus showed himself on the surface, spoke to the maiden, saying such things as he thought most likely to win her to stay; for she turned to run immediately on sight of him, and ran till she had gained a cliff overlooking the sea. Here she stopped and turned round to see whether it was a god or s sea animal, and observed with wonder his shape and colour. Glaucus, partly emerging from the water and supporting himself against a rock, said, “Maiden, I am not monster, nor sea animal, but a god; and neither Proteus nor Triton ranks higher than I. Once I was a mortal, and followed the sea for a living; but now I belong wholly to it.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Then he told the story of his metamorphosis, and how he had been promoted to his present dignity, and added, “But what avails all this if it fails to move your heart?” Glaucus was going on in this strain, but the maiden, Scylla, turned and hastened away. Glaucus was in despair, but it occurred to him to consult the enchantress, Circe. Accordingly he repaired to her island. After mutual salutations, Glaucus said, “Goddess, I entreat your pity; you alone can relieve the pain I suffer. The power of the herbs I know as well as any one, for it is to them I owe my change of form. I love Scylla. I am ashamed to tell you how I have sued and promised to her, and how scornfully she has treated me. I beseech you to use your incantations, or potent herbs, if they are more prevailing, not to cure me of my love—for that I do not wish—but to make Scylla share it and yield me a like return.” To which Circe replied, for she was not insensible to the attractions of the sea-green deity, “You had better pursue a willing object; you are worthy to be sought, instead of having to seek in vain. Be not different, know your own worth. I protest to you that even I, goddess though I be, and learned in the virtue of plants and spells, should not know how to refuse you. If Scylla scorns you, scorn her; meet one who is ready to meet you half way, and thus make a due return to both at once.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
However, Glaucus replied, “Sooner shall trees grow at the bottom of the ocean, and seaweed on the top of the mountains, than I will cease to love Scylla, and her alone.” The goddess Circe was indignant, but she could not punish him, neither did she wish to do so, for she liked him too well; so she turned all her wrath against her rival, poor Scylla. She took her plants of poisonous powers and mixed them together, with incantations and charms. Then she passed through the crowd of gamboling beasts, the victims of her art, and proceeded to the coast of Sicily, where Scylla lived. There was a little bay on the shore to which Scylla used to resort, in the heat of the day, to breathe their air of the sea, and to bathe in its waters. Here the goddess poured her poisonous mixture, and muttered over it incantations of mighty power. Scylla came as usual and plunged into the water up to her waist. What was her horror to perceive a brood of serpents and barking monsters surrounding her! At first she could not imagine they were a part of herself, and tried to run from them and to drive them away; but as she ran she carried them with her, and when she tried to touch her limbs, she found her hands touch only the yawning jaws of monsters. Scylla remained rooted to the spot. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
Scylla’s temper grew as ugly as her form, and she took pleasure in devouring hapless mariners who came within her grasp. Thus she destroyed six of the companions of Ulysses, and tried to wreck the ships of Aeneas, till at least she was turned into a rock, and as such still continues to be a terror to mariners. Mistakes are a deliberately wrong choice in the contest between what is clearly good and what is clearly bad is sin. We all want a partner, but some want one to the point of it being a pathology. Many people knowingly or unknowingly force a relationship due to an addiction of love. If one is honest with oneself, and know that one has nothing in common with their focus of their intertest, such as different goals, different lifestyles, and different hobbies, and the person is not attracted to the individual pursing a relationship, this is a clear indication that they do not like you in a romantic way, much like how Scylla was not in the least bit interested in Glaucus. Yet, Glaucus could not take no for an answer and ended up running her like, and the rage she experienced ruined the lives of others. Absolutely imagine if you had people dragging you into things you did not want to be part of, and you will understand why this is not a healthy thing to do. It is never a healthy thing to do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
People who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistake than people who think intelligence is fixed. One major difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how one responds to mistake. When one makes a mistake, the best thing to do is to try to learn from it and figure it out. Conversely, some people who think they cannot gain intelligence will not take the opportunities to learn from their mistakes, and they usually employ defense mechanisms to justify their behaviour so they do not feel guilt or remourse. Defense mechanisms are psychological maneuvers that operate below the surface of one’s awareness (they are unconscious) to protect one from emotional pain or distress. The most familiar one is probably denial. Denial allows one to dismiss a painful reality so that one can go on acting as if a situation or event is not true—because one does not want to admit it is true. Transgression is different from being overtaken in a fault. Both sins and mistakes can hurt us and both require attention. People who try to force relations, often end up feeling insecure, hurt, and betrayed for no reason. Then these individuals start questioning themselves as to why they are never good enough for the person they are interested in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
There should be no license for sin, but mercy should go hand and hand with reproof. Though it may be hard to admit, there comes a time when one just needs to cut their losses and leave a person alone. The progression of a romantic relationship cannot be formed. It must evolve naturally, over time. Impatient, insecure, or damaged people try to force relationships. Mortal make these kinds of mistakes all the times. However, these things are on an essentially predetermined course. A fool is a person lacking judgment or prudence. The Saviour used the term fool to characterize the lesson in this parable about the rich man who built greater barns to store his abundant fruits and goods and then said to his soul, “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” reports Luke 12.19. The distinction between sins and mistakes is important to our actions. We have seen some very bitter finger pointing. All of us make mistakes, and some of us very serious ones. Any thoughtful person feels a kind of failure because one’s sins or moral failure. One does not get clean by rolling in the mire. One does not get clean and whole by brooding unduly over the past, although we can certainly learn from our mistake. There is no strength in weakness; there is no strength in sin; and we do not overcome our mistake and our sins by fighting them directly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
If people dwell upon them too much, they may succumb to their sins. The avoidance of guilt can be addictive, too. Guilt-avoidance has become a drug of choice for many people, because it is so pleasurable, almost intoxicating, to think of oneself as morally pure. Those who are addicted to guilt-avoidance are usually a bit inconsistent. They avoid the guilt themselves, but they do not mind imposing a bit of it—maybe even a lot of it—on others. It can be immensely pleasurable to notice the flaws of others while ignoring your own. However, that is a sin, too. All things considered, we are on a safer ground when we focus on our own sins, not those of others. At least this is how we process theologians see things. We believe that when we harm others, or fail to act in ways that prevent them from being harmed, we violated something deep within the nature of nature. We have violated an Eros toward life’s flourishing that is divine. In sinning against others, we sin against God. It takes courage to stand up. The freedom to be different. The freedom to take guilt and make something beautiful of it. Humans have the freedom to turn guilt into love. Few gifts are more desirable than a clear conscience—a soul at peace with itself. Only God can heal a troubled soul. However, if we want God to forgive us, we must follow the procedure he has given to us. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Confession is a necessary requirement for complete forgiveness. It is an indication of true Godly sorrow. It is part of the cleansing process—the starting anew requires a clean page in the diary of our conscience. Confessions should be made to the appropriate person who has been wronged by us and to the Lord also. In addition, the nature of our transgression may be serious enough to require a confession to God in prayer. “Therefore I say unto you, Go; and whoever transgressed against me, him shall you judge according to the sins which he or she has committed; and if he or she confess his or her sins before thee and me, and repents in the sincerity of one’s heart, that person one shall forgive, and I will also forgive that individual,” reports Mosiah 26.29. Remember, it is complete deliverance from the tortures of a guilt-ridden soul that we seek. Repentance is not easy. Godly sorrow brings one to the depth of humility. This is why the gift of forgiveness is so sweet and draws the transgressor so close to the Saviour with a special bond of affection. Full repentance liberates the individual with joy unspeakable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Any type of open and truthful disclosure reduces stress and helps individuals come to terms with their behaviour. It is not coincidental that some of the most powerful people or institutions in may cultures encourage people to confess their transgressions. And there is strong evidence that writing about upsetting experiences or dark secrets can benefit your mental and physical well-being. Similar to religious confessions, expressive writing encouraged individuals to explore their deepest thoughts and feelings about upsetting experiences. For such emotional purges to work, people must be completely honest with themselves. Putting emotional turmoil into words changes how we think about it. Giving concrete form to secret experiences can help categorize them in new ways. Talking or writing about a disturbing event helps us to understand it better. And things we do not understand cause greater anxiety. Once we are able to express our upheavals, we tend to ruminate about them less, freeing us up to focus on others thing. Dozens of studies have also shown that expression is linked to less stress and improved sleep and cardiovascular function. Also, better sleep is associated with enhanced immune function and better general health—which correlates with better mental health, too. Confession can help people get through difficult times. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Bring Me the Sunset in a Cup–Our Summer Made a Light Escape into the Beautiful
Humans are alienated from their World. They come from a dim past and go into an indefinite future. After considering or doing everything, we must have faith that eternal life with worth anything we might be required to endure to receive it. Life in a flux in which one seeks anchor. Existence is rich in mysterious paradoxes and antinomies, such as those of freedom coexisting with dependence, communication with solitude, good with evil, truth with falsehood, happiness with grief, life with death, and progress with destruction. Learning more about life, death and what happens after death should make quite an impact on how we live. That knowledge should make us pause and consider what use we are making of the precious gift of life and whether we are using it to prepare for the eternal life God offers us. Authentic Existenz is disclosed through reason (Vernunft), while intellect (Verstand) concerns itself wit the pragmatic management of existence. Out of the numerous species of life in the Universe, humans are the only species that contemplate the meaning, values, and goal of life. We are encouraged to find the answers to these questions by deep reflection upon human existence in order to create an authentic individual to avoid despair and possess a cognitive and elevating emotion. A defining characteristic of humanity is our finitude, which one experiences as the limits to our existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Authentic existence will push back our perceived limits on our humanity as far as possible and then accept them and bear them. Death is one of the most dramatic of these barriers. It is the source of anxiety, but it also elevates the spirit because it emphasizes the urgency of living authentically without postponement. Consciousness of the inevitable presence of death gives humans the courage and integrity: it gives people an authentic perspective on things that matter most. This awareness is not that of an object, but reflection on the subjective satiation of being. Thus existence is about reflection upon the horizon of life. By reflecting upon that course (the limitless horizon of reality) we ask about being itself, which always seems to recede from us, in the very manifestation of all the appearances we encounter. This being we call the encompassing. However, the encompassing is not the horizon of our knowledge at any particular moment. Rather, it is the source from which all new horizons emerge, without itself ever being visible even as a horizon. Guilt is another important boundary situation. Humans not only feel guilty but, because of their total freedom, is guilty. One always could have chosen otherwise. Ultimate guilt cannot be removed: it must be accepted and can thereby become constructive. Our guilt demonstrates the power that our freedom has over our destiny. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Constructive guilt is often a blessings from God. A collage of reflections on healthy feelings of guilt, or remorse for having said and done things we wish we had not or left things unsaid and undone we wish we had is why constructive guilt can be a blessing. Remorse is honest and it can catalyze creative transformation. It can assist once in standing up for justice and courage, for wisdom and love. Constructive guilt can help one overcome addictions to false gods, both inner and outer, so that we can become our better selves. Just as we can cultivate compassions, so we can cultivate courage. Sometimes it begins by remembering times when we did indeed stand up, in ways large or small, despite our inclination to the contrary. In many cases, our standing up is also the result of a feeling of constructive guilt: that is, the guilt that comes from recognizing we have harmed others and ourselves through sins of commission and omission, by our words and actions, or lack thereof. We live in a World where some people believe guilt has no place in a healthy spiritual life. A lot of people want guilt-free spirituality. However, if we do not reflect on our lives and the things we have done, the illusion of moral purity is just that, an illusion. Good guilt is grounded in empathy and respect. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
It is important to respect and be aware of the dignity, the intrinsic value of each and every human life, and non-human, on its own terms and for its own sake. Every living being with subjective aims, with a desire to find satisfaction, deserves respect and care. It is complemented by the idea that the mystery at the heart of the Universe, God, cares for us and is enriched by each living being in his or her own uniqueness. The differences make the whole richer: the whole of the Earth and the whole of God. God sees each soul as having a great value. Constructive guilt, then, is an enlightened activity. It is the sense of remorse that wells up in the individual’s psyche when one wakes up to the harm one has causes others, by commission or omission. Inwardly, this good guilt is a form of repentance, it is like saying that one is sorry and will never sin in that manner again. Repentance is a turning away from harmful ways and turning toward a more courageous and compassionate way of living. Repentance is the creative outcome of good guilt. It does not cling to the guilt, but is catalyzed by it to make a permanent change. The boundary of situationality is the fact that we are partially thrust and partially choose ourselves into a particular human condition. We can be inauthentic and inevitably fall into these situations or be authentic a make them happen. Other important boundaries are chance, suffering, and conflict. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Freedom is central to human beings; it leads to the overriding importance of choice, which becomes the problem of moral responsibility. Freedom is identified with choice, awareness, and selfhood. To choose means to be free, and human’s freedom is one’s being. I am only to the extent that I choose freely. To be is to be conscious that one is free. I do not choose life’s meanings, I do not define humans since I am limited by my historicity—my past choices bind me. However, within these confines my freedom is total. Freedom is experiences as both spontaneity and action; it is thus more important to act and be an homme engage than to observe and be a theoretician. To know and use my freedom is the raison detre of Existenzerhellung. Whenever I choose, I act, I am conscious of my actions, I am aware of the values involved, I take chances (since the consequences of my choice are often uncertain), and I realise that commitment to some values are unavoidable. However, it is important to toughen up. No one is looking for the eternal scum. Call them grim soulless mortals feeding off the downtrodden or the downtrodden feeing off each other. I always wonder—and never learn—whether or not the genuine Power Thugs ever stop to look at the violet evening sky or the overhead branches of an oak. Crack peddlers, executioners, teenage gangsters for a fatal fifteen minutes, the morgue’s never empty in the inner city, it is an eternal brew of calculated malice mixed with moral ignorance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
The presence of anguish adumbrates the sacred nature of my freedom. Since each choice carries with it the accumulated weight of previous decisions, the first choice overshadows all others. Consequently, guilt is the inevitable concomitant of my freedom. My original choice (Urentschluss) bears down on my subsequent existence and assumes the role of original sin. I am accountable for that first choice, so that to be responsible means to have accepted that guilt. In addition, I am ceaselessly confronted with the choice between sacrificing my integrity for the sake of a longer life or surrendering myself to my authentic existential possibilities. The inherent difficult of these choices leads to further guilt, which I may alleviate by imagining absolute standards and then approximating them. However, in my heart I know there are no fixed standards and that absolutism is therefore a renationalization: the boundary of guilt is indeed impenetrable. When I realise I may lose the promise of my possibilities, anguish also appears. However, that same anguish gives me the urgency and courage to choose with my full beings to implement the authentic potential of my Existenz. I reach this pedagogically expedient brink caused by anguish when I recognize the limits of scientific thought or when I am faced with critical decisions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Confronted with the abyss, I may accept a philosophic or religious orientation, I may act as if I did not recognize the existence of the abyss before which I stand, or I may adopt the nihilistic position that judges these problems to be meaningless. Subjectivity is essentially intersubjective. I am only to the extent that another Existenz reflects me. Regrettably, most people seem to notice that life is short only after much of it has slipped away. We must learn to number our days, keeping in mind that our time will pass and we must take care to make the most of it. Understanding the meaning of life, death, and what follows this physical life can give priceless comfort and hope in the face of death. It should also have a great impact on the kind of person one is, motiving individuals to live carefully and make wise choices. Knowing that the purpose of this life is to prepare us for our eternal life of power and ability beyond anything we can imagine should encourage us to turn to God so he can begin to fulfill his promise in us. True communication is the feeling that people have know each other since eternity. My own freedom is in essence the search for the loving strife of communication with another Existenz. In fact, the search cannot be accomplished in the abyss of absolute estrangement. Existential philosophy is self-disclosure through communication, even being itself, although it can be represented only in ciphers as symbols, is made transparent solely through authentic communication (Existenzursprung). #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Existential communication is neither friendship nor psychotherapy; it is not fusion, esteem, or unanimity; it is, strictly speaking, as with Existenz itself, ineffable. However, in the end, human existence is a failure. There is no escape from human’s limits (the limit of death in particular), yet humans are condemned to endless striving. In this dreadful paradox between finite existence and striving for infinity, humans finds the ultimate symbol of salvation, which is transcendence. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” reports Hebrews. Faith is an integral part of every Christian’s life. It is with faith that we overcome trials, it is with faith that we look ahead to our future, and it is with faith that we withstand our enemy. Following God’s plan for us is the surest way to find happiness and endure life’s challenges. Our lives will not end when we die. Our future lives are determined by the way we live now. There can be no repentance without recognition of wrong. Whether by provocation, introspection, or wrenching remembrance, denial must be dissolved. “The Spirit speaks the truth and lies not. Wherefore, it speaks of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls,” reports Jacob 4.13. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Recognition is a scared moment, often accompanied by the hot blush of shame. After recognition, real remorse floods the soul. This is a Godly sorrow, not merely the sorrow of the World, nor the sorrowing of the damned, when we can no longer take sin. “And wo is me because of their wickedness; for my heart has been filled with sorrow because of their wickedness, all my days; nevertheless, I know that I shall be lifted up at the last day,” reports Mormon 2.19. False remorse instead is like fondling our fallings. In ritual regret, we mourn our mistake but without mending them. There can be no real repentance without personal suffering and the passage of sufficient time for the needed cleansing and turning. This is much more then merely waiting until the feelings of remorse subside. Misery, like adversity, can have its special uses. No wonder chastening is often needed until the turning is really underway. Real remorse quickly brings forth beneficial indicator, products meet repentance. In times, these products become helpful and prosperous. One with a broken heart will not hold back. As confession lets the sickening sin empty out, then the Spirit which withdrew returns renew. Support from others is especially crucial. We must go to God as his child, because only a child gets his or her prayers answered. Prayer is a great work. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Give Your Faith to No One Undeserved
We desire to possess a beauty that is worthy pursuing, worth fighting for, a beauty that is core to who we truly are. We want beauty that can be see; beauty that can be felt; beauty that affects others; a beauty all our own to unveil. Egyptians worshipped God in all things, and they believed they possessed a profound magic by which they were able to draw down cosmic powers into the statues of their gods, and that they reflect the divine mind behind the Universe. The idea behind it was they could turn from thinking about God to addressing him, and that way they were able to communicate with the living God, as distinct from merely giving intellectual assent to the God of philosophers. Intelligent, loving devotion to God has always been important with through eternity, it will never become obsolete. Because of the way different cultures channel God, it becomes obvious why scholars have long maintained that each era has a unique spirit, a nature or climate that sets it apart from all other epochs. Another remarkable and apparently pleasant feature of the spiritual existence is the absence of the measure of time and space as we know it here on Earth. God sent his word to heal us, and there is no time or distance in their spirit. Divine love permeates every part of our lives because God is greatly concerned with the quality of character we are building. The future the Lord has planned for us will be built on the strength of character we forge by his grace. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
It is God’s intention that our lives should be a seamless manifestation of his Spirit. God’s qualities are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The Lord has made abundant provisions for his indwelling our lives here and now. A fundamental aspect in our caring for our souls is to understand that we are always in the presence of God and it is important to redirect our minds constantly to the Lord. God is the great longing focus of our souls, and we are privileged to walk in this profound reality. God provided for human freedom through a doctrine of self-creation: humans are free even in the act by which they come into existence, for God allows human to collaborate in their own creation. God makes available a distinctively authentic and free mode of existence to all humanity. Only through practice of virtue are we able to transcend the barriers that separate the mental life of one age from that of another. “If you fully obey the LORD, your God, and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, The Lord, your God, will set you high above all the nations of Earth. If you obey the Lord, all these blessings will come upon you and accompany you. You will be blessed in your city and blessed in your country. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you,” Reports Deuteronomy 28.1.1-3 and 6-7. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Most people experience a rush of pleasure the moment a puzzling solution comes to them. When God puts a promise in our hearts, we have to come to the place where we believe in that promise so strongly no one and no circumstance can move us. Beauty grows in us to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul’s beauty. As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As spiritual knowledge unfolds, it must be understood, valued, obeyed, remembered, and expanded. The greatest achievement humankind can make in this World is to become familiarized with the divine truth, so thoroughly, so perfectly, that the example or conduct of no living creature in the World can ever turn us away from the knowledge that we have obtained. Of all treasures of knowledge, the most vital is the knowledge of God. The role of obedience in gaining spiritual knowledge is crucial. The Lord gives us gifts. He will quicken our minds. God will give us a knowledge that is so deeply rooted in our souls that it can never be rooted out. All we have to do is seek for the light and the understanding which is promised to us, and which we can receive, as long as we are true and faithful to every covenant and obligation, will become a treasure we are allowed to possess. “We trust God will deliver us, and deliver us out of the hands of our enemies,” reports Alma 58.37. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The satisfaction of performing a benevolent action will certainly encourage acts of benevolence in someone who desires the advantage of society. We must acknowledge the place of God in our lives, as we are already under his government. Our discoveries in nature have already prepared us to accept the main claims of revelation about God as a creator and judge. I do not like to see things on purpose. I like them to soak in. A friend asked me to go to the top of the state capitol castle once, and I told him that he should not treat park as a sight—it is a feeling, an emotional experience. And the same with every place. When you slow down and have a moment to reflect on everything, it is very beautiful. Some people go to watch people, I enjoy looking at the nature and the architecture. When there are not many people around, you can get a sense of how majestic everything is. It is like sensing God. There is perhaps no better evidence of the psychological impact nature can make than to look at the landscape and just be at peace. It is a warmth so powerful that even the blue sky is barely perceptible through the all-consuming, healing, green atmosphere. It is as if, the trees, grace, flowers, the statues, and the architecture of the castle cols the atmosphere, like rain in a time of drought, or shade at an oasis in the desert. It can be a very spiritual experience to reflect on the living memorial. Happiness should be all one feels. Just like a sunny autumn day. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Profound spiritual truth cannot simply be poured from one mind and heart to another. It takes faith and diligent effort. Precious truth comes a small piece at a time through faith, with great exertion, and at times wrenching struggles. The Lord intends it to be that way so that we can mature and progress. As packets of knowledge unfold, they must be understood, valued, obeyed, remembered, and expanded. As each element of truth is encountered, we must carefully examine it in the light of prior knowledge to determine where it fits. Ponder it; inspect it inside out. Study it from every vantage point to discover hidden meanings. View it in perspective to confirm one has not jumped to false conclusions. Prayerful reflection yields further understanding. Such evaluation is particularly important when the truth comes as an impression of Spirit. This awareness of age had a halo of innocence around it, and it also enjoys a measure of nobility. Spiritually sensitive information should be kept in a sacred place that communicates to the Lord. That is how we are to treasure it. Gaining spiritual knowledge is not a mechanical process. It is a sacred privilege based upon spiritual law. We can receive inspired help, as long as we humbly ask our Eternal Father. We must also seek the divine light, exercise faith in the Savior, and strive to live righteous lives. God will bless us and lead us as we move through this wonderful World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Our Father in Heaven loves all of his children equally, perfectly, and infinitely. The Lord’s love is an advantage and brings out the flavours of the personality. The Lord’s love can carve out an interior space where wisdom can take up residence. Character strengths and virtues are brought into existence by God. We love virtue. It is always nice to have people in our lives who are good in some important way. Good people make us laugh, support us in hard times, and inspire us. Virtuous actions are better than ordinary behaviours because virtues integrate ethics and health, are embodied traits of character, are sources of human strengths and resilience, are embedded within a cultural context and community, contribute to a sense of meaningful life purpose, and are grounded in the cognitive capacity for wisdom. We are expected to wait calmly in the face of frustration, adversity, or suffering because we are connected to something bigger than the self and the present circumstances. As we endure, God will give us the gift of acceptance, which is unconditional. Given that charity or supernatural love is paramount in our spiritual life, it is clear why we have a high level of devotion to God. When we accurately reflect on ourselves, we realize the excellence of our natural gifts. There is no knowledge of self without knowledge of God. “It is the Lord, your God, you must follow, and him you must revere,” reports Deuteronomy 13. 4. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The human person recognizes an intimate unity of the body and mind and understands that they are held in unity by the spiritual soul (as secondary formal and efficient causes) and by God (as ultimate first, formal, efficient, and final causes). People who use both reason and will in finding the standard moral knowledge are guided by well-ordered love, which is associated with healthy physiological and psychological functioning. The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather, the human nature purified, freed from the limitations of the individual human. Our knowledge of God is our acknowledgment of his attitude toward us, especially his attitude of benevolence and love. The character strengths of this virtue include love, kindness, and social intelligence. Humanity relies on doing more than what is only fair—we must show generosity when an equitable exchange would suffice, kindness even if it cannot (or will not) be returned, and understanding even when punishment is due. “Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better World, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope comes of faith, makes an anchor to the souls of people, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God,” reports Ether 12.4. Intelligence exists and we interpret it. Justice, as a civic strength, is the underlying foundation of healthy community life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
We need to recognize the hard mortal realities in all of this and must use common sense and guidance by personal revelation. We need to remember that trials and temptations are an important part of our lives. When people are faced with adversity or affliction, we are advised not to criticize others for the way they choose to exercise their moral agency. “Pray for them that repentance may come unto them,” reports Moroni 8.28. We each also have the privilege to carefully and prayerfully seek the Lord’s will for regarding our individual challenges and dilemmas. Personal revelation is personal, indeed. It is not based on gender or position, but on worthiness. It comes in response to sincere inquiry. “And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and humbleness of heart and because of our meekness and humbleness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God,” reports Moroni 8.26. When our lives are in balance, before we realize it our lives will be full of spiritual understanding that will confirm that our Heavenly Father loves us and that his plan is fair and true and we should strive to understand and enjoy it. We should be worthy of trust, and always keep confidences. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Strong Family Cultures Will Help Our Children Live in the World
Some families are in jeopardy of being lost. Values are the prime target of the adversary, as well are the sanctity of marriage and the central importance of families. It is the duty of parents to teach their children to keep the commandments of God. Our morals and spiritual values provide an anchor and the safe harbor of a home where each child of a loving Heavenly Father can be influenced for food and acquire eternal values. People who feel the love and support of their parents are proud of the example they have set. This makes life so enjoyable for many families that the children want to follow in the footsteps of the parents, to continue on through experiencing the same joy that had been theirs in their younger days. Some parents always find the time to take the family on vacation and they can count on fun experiences. As a result of such a solid background, the children are not able to turn from the teachings of their parents because their actions would reflect on their parents’ character. Culture is defined as the way of life of a people. There is a unique gospel culture, a set of values and expectations and practices common to all followers of God. This gospel culture, or way of life, comes from the plan of salvation, the commandments of God, and the teachings of living prophets. It is given expression in the way we raise our families and live our individual lives. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
However, so much has changed during our lifetime. The effects of childhood trauma, including emotional neglect or abuse in childhood, can have alarmingly potent effect on our psyche as we enter adulthood, event to the extent of rewiring the brain. The children of narcissistic parents, those who meet the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, know this all too well, having been raised by someone with a limited capacity for empathy and an excessive sense of grandiosity, false superiority and entitlement. Children of narcissistic parents are programmed at an early age to seek validation where there is one, to believe their worthiness is tied to the reputation of their families, and to internalize the message that they can only sustain their value by how well they can serve the needs of their parents. If given at all, they have lived an existence where love was rarely given. As the child of a narcissistic parent or parent, one is taught that they are not inherently worthy, but rather that there worth depended on what they could do for the narcissistic parent and how compliant one is. The emphasis on appearance, status, reputation is at an all-time high in households with a narcissistic parent. Due to the narcissistic parent’s grandiosity, false mask and need to be the best, children in these situations are probably part of a family that was presented in the best possible light, with neglect taking place behind closed doors. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
There is something really disturbing about parents who compete with their kids. Women who strive to be as hot as their teenage daughters. Parents threatened by the success of their adult children. Men who date girls the same age as their son’s girlfriend or daughter. And men who actually date their son’s girlfriends. Some parents even conspire with the children’s enemies to hurt their own kids because they envy them so much. So how have we gotten to this place? We all know that times have changed—and parenting is much more difficult as a result. Some parents feel like they did not have a chance to live the life they wanted so they take out their anger usually on one child who reminds them of what they would like to be. Let us take a closet look and find a way out of this madness and toward a better way to parent. Shine a light on yourself, rather than on your child. Get out of the mindset that your child is the enemy and you must win. Win what? No matter how your child behaves, you must commit to parenting from thoughtfulness, not anxiety, jealousy, and reactivity. Keep in the forefront of your mind that even at times of high stress, you are an adult and your children are supposed to learn from you. You want your children to look back and think of you as someone who loved God, followed the laws, and did everything possible to protect them, instead of sabotaging their lives and setting them up to fail. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
As adults, some people know that their parent or parents are bad and do not have their best interest at heart, but they still talk to them because they know their parents will not live forever and want to enjoy them while they are around, while secretly praying that their parent will repent and start showing them rest and unconditional love. Strong leaders focus on the preservation of their own integrity. They have a willingness to take responsibility for their own emotional well-being and do not try to make other people happy by changing their character. Being a strong leader is a quality that will actually help your child want to be led by you, rather than battle you. Remember that you are on your child’s team, not on the opposing side. You should not be sharing the personal business with their enemies who happen to be dangerous nor plotting to end the life of your own child. Some people saw that Casper the Ghost is a cautionary tale about Richie’s parents from Richie Rich killing him for insurance money. The Bible predicted that in the last days, “They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law,” reports Luke 12.53. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Lessons taught in the home by goodly parents are becoming increasingly important in today’s World, where the influence of the adversary is so wide spread. As we know, he is attempting to erode and destroy the very foundation of our society—the family. In cleaver and carefully camouflaged ways, the wicked one is attacking commitment to family life throughout the World and undermining the culture and covenants of faithful believers in God. Parents must resolve that teaching in the home is a most sacred and important responsibility. We must train up our children in the way he or he should go, this responsibility ultimately rests on the parents. According to the great plan of happiness, it is goodly parents with the care and development of Heavenly Father’s children. Parents should also pray in earnest, asking our Eternal Father to help them love, understand, and guide the children the Lord sent to them. It is also a good idea to hold family prayer, scripture study, and family home evenings and eat together as often as possible, making dinner a time of communication and the teachings of values. Parents should also share their testimonies often with their children, commit them to keep the commandments of God, and promise the blessings that our Heavenly Father promises his faithful children. Our strengthened family cultures will be a protection for our children from the fiery darts of the adversary embedded in their peer culture, the entertainment and television news. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Randolph Harris II International Institute 