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When the Morning Blesses Thee for Enlivening All the Cheerful Eyes the Heart Upsprings!
Change is the biggest story in the World today, and we are not covering it adequately. Leadership is a work one everyone’s lips. The young attack it and police seek it. Experts claim it and artists spurn it, while scholars want it…bureaucrats pretend they have it, politicians wish they did. Everybody agrees that there is less of it than there used to be. The pessimistic consensus and longing for leadership extends to the Church, which many today believe suffers from an alarming lack of leadership when compared to history as recent as the decades between the forties and seventies (decades which produces leaders of the stature of Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, Carl F.H. Henry and Francis Schaeffer, as well as dynamic local church and layleaders). Is there really less leadership than there used to be? It appears so, but objective analysis is difficult. Statistics do indicate this, however: male leadership in the Church is on the decline as women outnumber men, for men comprise only 41 percent of adult church attenders, and some smaller churches cannot find even one man to fill the office of elder. More and more men are content to let others shoulder the heavy responsibilities while they go along for the ride. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
It is certainly true that leadership is more difficult today due to the sheer complexity of life and the size of today’s institutions, and because of the contemporary confusion as to what leadership is. Secular analysis has produced more than 350 definitions of leadership. Leadership, to some, is like the Abominable Snowman, whose footprints are everywhere but he is nowhere to be seen. However, none of this excuses today’s Church—or today’s Christian humans. Unlike our culture, the Bible provides clear instruction regarding leadership through the lives of its great leaders and through specific teachings regarding the character, qualifications, and commitment of spiritual leaders. In addition to this, amidst our culture’s confusion about leadership there are some astute analysts who have pinpointed the essentials of leadership and are providing information which has immense benefits for the general culture, including the Church. As we tackle the topic of the discipline of leadership, we will draw from both sources, with the greatest reliance being upon God’s word. When the Saviour was on the Earth, He taught His Apostles about leadership service: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
“These things I command you, that ye love one another,” reports John 15.16-17. After His ascension into Heaven, His disciples became greater leaders and built up the Church in their day. The first mention of Joshua comes in Exodus 17.8, 9 after the Amalekites’ attack upon the stragglers at Israel’s rear: “Moses said to Joshua, ‘Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.’” Moses, then in his eighties, took the rod of God with which he had parted the Red Sea and ascended a nearby hill. Joshua, in his fighting prime, took charge of the army below. In the ensuing battle, when Moses lifted his hands in intercessory prayer, Israel prevailed. However, as Moses wearied and began to lower his arms, the tide of battle turned to the Amalekites. Then again, as Moses mustered all his power and elevated his hands, the advantage returned to Israel. Israel’s fate ebbed and flowed with Moses’ aged hands. Soon Aaron and Hur were called to assist Moses, seating him on a stone and standing at his sides to hold his hands Heavenward. When sunset came, Moses’ hands were still reaching upward to God, and Israel had carried the day. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
The lessons for Joshua were clearly manifest. He learned that the real power was not in his sword, but in God. The victory undoubtedly tempted him to forget that. He was an instant hero, and that night all the campfires sang the name of Joshua. However, fixed in Joshua’s mind was the image of Aaron and Hur coming to Moses’ side and lifting his hands up to God. No one attains true spiritual leadership who thinks one’s power is one’s own or the past victories are due to one’s own genius. The overriding lesson Joshua learned that day was the backbone of any work done for God is prayer. Those who have effective leadership are not leaders because of brilliancy, but because, by the power of prayer, they could command the power of God. How contrary this is to conventional thinking on leadership. The first thing the World (and all too often the Church!) considers is a leader’s magnetism and elan—does one have the charisma to magnetize people? But the Holy Spirit places prayer first. In our day we are called on to be leaders and to beckon others to follow Jesus’s teachings. You may be a leader in your ward or branch or among your group of friends. Young people in the Church are learning. “I learned not to just pay attention to how things are done, but to go to individuals and help them in whatever way they need,” said Leo. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
There may be time when we do not know what to do and that is when one should recall to open up the scriptures. Also, keep in mind that Christian leadership includes helping everyone feel welcome. Now, when we set out on the path of the surrendered will we find we must come to grips with our fallen character. This character will have taken over our habitual or “automatic” ways of thinking and feeling, shaped our social World past and present, permeated our body and its responses, and even sunk down into the unconscious depths of our soul. In their fallen character thoughts, feelings, social interactions, body, character, will, and the soul will usually not be in accordance with the genuine intentions of our reborn spirit or will. The fallen character in fact poises every element of our being against God. When we are subjected to environments where people may or may not have willfully, knowingly and enthusiastically submitted to the influence of Satan and are attacking us, we must remember to seek spiritual counsel even more, and commit to more Bible study so our souls do not become sucked into their blackhole of evil. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
We do not want to end up in the adversary’s web because we want to go to Heaven and not suffer any legal consequences while on Earth either because the bad people are going to get themselves in trouble with God and human’s laws. The condition we find ourselves in can best be described as one of entanglement. By contrast, the condition we must move to is that of single-minded focus upon doing the will of God in everything, distracted by nothing. Do not care about anything but Christ. Make sure your intention is that you and your team care for nothing before Christ, which means the ways of the Lord must come first. Nothing should be allowed to detract from that or conflict with it. All lesser desires have to be done away with (hence they are macabre baggage!). Some people, of course, are more concerned about language they think is wrong than about hearts not set wholly on Christ. In our fallen World very few people live with a focused will, even a will focused on an evil. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
However, in fact—and we can be thankful for this—even “the worst” rarely have much intensity about them. There are always hecklers in this World, however. Evil people who are genuinely focused can gain the great power they do over others because of the fact that good people and evil people alike are, for the most part, simply drifting through life. The “Chief Executive Officer” of the self has abandoned its post to other dimensions of the self and is dragged hither and thither by them. If it is recognized at all, in our culture today the direction of the self is usually left to feelings; and the will is either identified with feelings or else regarded as helpless in the face of feelings. The cognitive aide of the mind is hijacked to renationalize it all by producing or borrowing suitable “insights,” usually lying ready to hand in surrounding culture. David Hume’s eighteenth-century claim that “reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions” was prophetic of a World to come—our present World—to the existence of which e significantly contributed: a World of perpetual drift in which manipulation and entanglement of the will is simply unavoidable. Purity of heart is to will one thing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Before we can come to rest in such single-mindedness as the habitual orientation of all dimensions of our being, to allow it and to sustain it, a serious battle is required. However, the call of grace and wisdom is nonetheless to “lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus,” reports Hebrews 12.1-2. “No soldier in active service entangles oneself in the affairs of everyday life,” Paul reminded Timothy, “so that one may please the one who enlisted one as a soldier,” reports 2 Timothy 2.4. Dear Martha was “worried and bothered about so many things,” as Jesus pointed out, while only a few things are necessary, really only one, “Many has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her,” reports Luke 10.41-42. And Paul’s own testimony was that he really did only one thing, which was to “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus,” reports Philippians 3.13-14. According to the classical principle of utility, the best actions produce the greatest amount of utility for the greatest number of individuals, and the best actions maximize the average utility which may be enjoyed by each individual. Now it is tempting to argue against the principle that it presupposed a real and equal acceptance of risk by all members of society. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
At some time, one wants to say, everyone must actually have agreed to take the same chances. Since clearly there was n such occasion, the principle is unsound. Consider an extreme case: when confronted by his slaves, a slaveholder, in his attempts to justify his position to them by claiming that, first of all, given the circumstances of their society, the institution of slavery is in fact necessary to produce the greatest average happiness; and secondly, that in the initial contractual situation he would choose the average principle even at the risk of its subsequently happening that he is justifiably held a slave. Now offhand we are inclined to reject the slaveholder’s argument as beside the point, if not outrageous. One may think that it makes no difference what one would choose. Unless individuals have actually agreed to a conception of justice subject to real risk, no one is bound by its requirements. On the contract view, however, the general form of the slaveholder’s argument is correct. It would be a mistake for the slaves to retort that his contentions are irrelevant since there has been no actual occasion of choice, no equal sharing of risk as to how things would turn out. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The contract doctrine is purely hypothetical: if a conception of justice would be agreed to in the original position, its principles are the right ones to apply. It is no objection that such an understanding has never been nor ever will be entered into. We cannot have it both ways: we cannot interpret the theory of justice hypothetically when the appropriate occasions of consent cannot be found to explain individuals’ duties and obligations, and then insist upon real situations of risk-bearing to throw out principles of justice that we do not want. Thus in justice as fairness the way to refute the slaveholder’s argument is to show that the principle one invokes would be rejected in the original position. We have no alternative but to exploit the various aspects of this initial situation (on the favoured interpretation) to establish that the balance of reasons favours the two principles of justice. People can often say that everyone makes choices and decisions and because they have a troubled life that you should also have to suffer a life of hardships and they may manufacture a situation to make sure that you do. The issues here is, while what they are saying is true, there life turned out bad because of the probability of the choices and decisions they made. Usually people are not victims of a conspiracy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
In many cases the lot of evidence shows that a particular coin is unbiased, but when a group of people plot to ruin a person and no one step in to help, even after the situations are reported, not only is that biased, but it is illegal, unconstitutional and unfair. What is distinctive about the use of the principle is that it enables one to incorporate different kinds of information within one strictly probabilistic framework and to draw inferences about probabilities even in the absence of knowledge. Prior probabilities however arrived at are part of one theory along with estimates of chances based on random sampling. The limiting case of no information does not pose a theoretical problem. As evidence accumulates the prior probabilities are revised anyway and the principle of insufficient reason at least insures that no possibilities are excluded from the outset. Now I shall assume that the parties discount likelihoods arrived at solely on the basis of this principle. This supposition is plausible in view of the fundamental importance of the original agreement and the desire to have one’s decision appear responsible to one’s descendants who will be affected by it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
We are more reluctant to take great risks for our descendants than for ourselves; and we are willing to do so only when there is no way to avoid these uncertainties of the original position. Recall that the original position is an elegant thought experiment. It asks one to imagine that they are temporarily ignorant (veil of ignorance) about certain things, including important facts about themselves, such as how well off they are especially talented, and what their core personal values—religious or otherwise—are. One is then to ask oneself: If I did not know these things, what principle of justice would I choose to regulate the basic institutions of society? To be a little more precise, we are employing a vision of the familiar idea of a social contract. The parties to the contract are choosing basic principles of justice for their society. However, they are behind what is referred to as the veil of ignorance: they do not know how well off they are especially talented, and what their core personal values are. In such a situation, given certain additional stipulations, it would be rational for the parties to choose the following two principles of justice. First, a principle that guaranteed each citizen a robust package of liberal rights to such things as freedom of conscience, freedom to vote and stand in elections, and rights to due process in law. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Second, a principle that ensured fair equality of economic opportunity as well as shares of income and wealth that were maximally beneficial to people with the least amount of income and wealth. So the people in our scenario can guarantee the protection of their liberties and a reasonably satisfactory standard of life as the conditions of their society permit. In fact, it is questionable whether the choice of the average principle really offers a better prospect anyway, waiving the fact that it is based on the principle of insufficient reason. It seems, then, that the effect of the veil of ignorance is to favour the two principles. This conception of justice is better suited to the situation of complete ignorance. If they were sound, there are, to be sure, assumptions about society that would allow parities to arrive at objective estimates of equality. The idea is to formulate certain reasonable assumptions under which it would be rational for self-interested parties to agree to the standard of utility as a political principle to assess social policies. The necessity for such a principle arises because the political process is not a competitive one and these decisions cannot be left to the market. Some other method must be found to reconcile divergent interests. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The principle of utility would be agreed to by self-interested parties as the desired criterion. Over the long run of many occasions, the policy of maximizing utility on each occasion is most likely to give the greatest utility for any person individually. Consistent application of this standard to taxation and property legislation, and so on, is calculated to give the best results from any one human’s point of view. Therefore by adopting this principle self-interested parties have reasonable assurance that they will not lose out in the end, in fact, will best improve their prospects. However, there are some flaws in these positions, especially the basic structure. For one, people who move from one social position to another in random fashion must live long enough for gains and losses to average out, or else there is some mechanism which insures that legislation guided by the principle of utility distributes its favours evenly over one time. However, clearly society is not a stochastic process of this type; and some questions of social policy are much more vital than others, often causing large and enduring shifts in the institutional distribution of advantage. Therefore, we must not be enticed by mathematically attractive assumptions into pretending that the contingencies of human’s social positions and the asymmetries of their situations somehow even out in the end. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Rather, we must choose our conceptions of justice fully recognizing that this is not and cannot be the case. From our point of view it is often easy enough to appraise another individual’s situation as specified say by one’s social position, wealth, and the like, or by one’s prospects in terms of primary goods. We put ourselves in one’s shoes, complete with our character and preferences (not the individual’s), and take account of how our plans would be affected. We can go much further. We can assess the worth to us being in another’s place with at least some of one’s traits and aims. Knowing our plan of life, we can decide whether it would be rational for us to have those traits and aims, and therefore advisable for us to develop and encourage them if we can. It suffices to observe here that what we cannot do is to evaluate another person’s total circumstances, one’s objective situation plus one’s character and system of ends, without any reference to the details of our conception of our good. If we are to judge these things from our standpoint at all, we must know what our plan of life is. The worth to us of the circumstances of others is not, as the constructed expectation assumes, its value them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
Furthermore, as we have seen, the clearest basis for interpersonal comparisons is in terms of primary goods, things that every rational person is presumed to want whatever else one wants. The more we ascend to the higher aims and aspects of the person and try to assess their worth to us, the more tenuous the procedure becomes. The reason for this is that these evaluations contemplate more fundamental changes in our way of life, more far-reaching revisions in our plans. Indeed, it seems pointless to try to define a measure between persons which includes the full range of final ends. The problem is similar to comparing different styles of art. There are simply many things in which human beings become engaged and find fully worthwhile depending upon their inclinations. The expectation finally arrived at in the reasoning for the average principle seems spurious for two reasons: it is not, as expectations should be, founded on one system of aims; and since the veil of ignorance excludes the knowledge of the parties’ conception of their good, the worth to a person of the circumstances of others simply cannot be assessed. The argument ends up with a purely formal expression for an expectation that is without meaning. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
This difficult about expectations is analogous to that concerning the knowledge of probabilities. In both instances the reasoning carries on with these notions aster the basis for their legitimate use has been ruled out by the conditions of the original position. Anger at the absence of an attachment figure is not like the anger that is felt when an instinctual drive is frustrated (unless we take attachment to be the frustrated instinct) and it is not like the anger felt during an experience of deprivation or persecution—two frequent sources of anger mentioned in psycho-analytic literature. Whenever separation is only temporary, which in the large majority of cases it is, anger has two functions: first, it may assist in overcoming such obstacles as there may be to reunion; second, it may discourage the loved person from going away again. This is coercive anger, and is thought of as the anger of hope. Angry coercive behaviour, acting in the service of an affectional bond, is not uncommon. It is seen when a mother, whose child has run foolishly across the road, berated and punishes it with an anger born of fear. It is seen whenever one berates one’s partner for being or seeming to be disloyal. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Dysfunctional anger, on the other hand, occurs whenever a person becomes so intensely or persistently angry that the bond of affection is weakened instead of strengthened. Clinical experience suggests that the situations of separation and loss with which this work is concerned are especially liable to result in anger that crosses the threshold of intensity and becomes dysfunctional. Separations, especially when prolonged or repeated, have a double effect. On the one hand, anger is aroused; on the other, love is attenuated. Thus not only many angry discontented behaviour alienate the attachment figure but, within the attached, a shift can occur in the balance of feeling. Instead of a strongly rooted affection laced occasionally with “hot displeasure,” such as develops in a child brough up by affectionate parents, there grows a deep-running resentment, held in check only partially by an anxious uncertain affection. “And now it came to pass that when Jesus had told these things he expounded them unto the multitude; and he did expound all things unto them, both great and small. And he saith: These scriptures, which ye had not with you, the Father commanded that I should give unto you; for it was wisdom in him that they should be given unto future generations. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“And he did expound all things, even from the beginning until time that he should come in his glory—yea, even all things which should come upon the face of the Earth, even until the elements should melt with fervent heat, and the Earth should be wrapt together as a scroll, and the Heavens and the Earth should pass away; and even unto the great and last day, when all people, and all kindreds, and all nations and tongues shall stand before God, to be judged of their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil—if they be good, to the resurrection of everlasting life; and if they be evil, to the resurrection of damnation; being on a parallel, the one on the one hand and the other on the other hand, according to the mercy, and the justice, and the holiness which is in Christ, who was before the World began. And now cannot be written in this book even a hundredth part of the things which Jesus did truly teach unto the people; however, behold the plated of Nephi do contain the more part of the things which he taught the people. And thee things have I written, which he taught the people; and I have written them to the intent that they may be brought again unto this people, from the Gentiles, according to the words which Jesus hath spoken. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And when they shall have received this, which is expedient that they should have first, to try their faith, and if it shall so be that they shall believe thee things then shall the greater things be made manifest unto them. And if it is so be that they will not believe these things, then shall the greater things be made manifest unto them. And if it so be that they will not believe these things, then shall the greater things be withheld from them, unto their condemnation. Behold, I was about to write them, all which were engraven upon the plates of Nephi, but the Lord forbade it, saying: I will try the faith of my people. Therefore I, Mormon, do write the things which have been commanded me of the Lord. And now I, Mormon, make an end of my sayings, and proceed to write the things which have been commanded me. Therefore, I would that ye should behold that the Lord truly did teach the people, for the space of three days; and after that he did show himself unto them oft, and did break bread oft, and bless it, and give it unto them. And it came to pass that he did teach and minister unto the children and multitude of whom hath been spoken, and he did loose their tongues, and they did speak unto their fathers great and marvelous things, even greater than he had revealed unto the people; and he loosed their tongues that they could utter. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“And it came to pass that after he had ascended into Heaven—the second time that he showed himself unto them, and had gone unto the Father, after having healed all their sick, and their lame, and opened the eyes of their blind and unstopped the ears of the deaf, and even had done all manner of cures among them, and raised a man from the dead, and had shown forth his power unto them, and had ascended unto the Father—behold, it came to pass on the morrow that the multitude gathered themselves together, and they both saw and heard these children; yea, even babes did open their mouths and utter marvelous things; and the things which they did utter were forbidden that there should not any human write them. And it came to pass that the disciples whom Jesus had chosen began from that time forth to baptize and to teach as many as did come unto them; and as many as were baptized in the name of Jesus were filled with the Holy Ghost. And many of them saw and heard unspeakable things, which are not lawful to be written. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And they taught, and did minister one to another; and they had all things common among them, every human dealing justly, one with another. And it came to pass that they do all things even as Jesus had commanded them. And they who were baptized in the name of Jesus were called the church of Christ,” reports 3 Nephi 26.1-21. If one can look back and reflect that a hundred people have firmly grounded their minds in truth and planted their feet on the road to eternal liberation through the word done by this transitory body, one will count the years gloriously spent. For those who welcome the Truth-bringer must needs be few, those who want the truth must be fewer still, and of these again those who can endure it when brought face to face with it are rare. The sages of old deliberately restricted the public from their full knowledge so that their immediate following was always numerically insignificant. Yet the paradox was that they excised an indirect influence disproportion to their small numbers. This was achieved by a concentrating their tuition on humans in positions of high authority or leadership, and establishing popular religions and cults suited to the capacity of the multitude. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
For a religious leader to try to convince others of the truth would require that they are seeking the truth. However, how many are consciously and deliberately doing so? Falsity is not to be sought in the senses except as truth is in them. Now truth is not in them in such a way that the senses know truth, but in so far as they apprehend sensible things truly. And this takes place through the senses apprehending things as they are, and hence it happens that falsity exists in the sense through their apprehending or judging things to be otherwise. The knowledge of things by the senses is in proportion to the existence of their likeness in the senses; and the likeness of a thing can exist in the senses in three ways. In the first way, primarily and of its own nature, as in sight there is the likeness of colours, and of other sensible objects proper to it. Secondly, of its own nature, though not primarily; as in sight there is the likeness of shape, size, and of other sensible objects common to more than one sense. Thirdly, neither primarily nor of its own nature, but accidentally, as in sight, there is the likeness of a human, not as a human, but in so far as it is accidental to the coloured object to be a human. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Sense, then, as no false knowledge about its proper objects, expect accidentally and rarely, and then, because of the unsound organ it does receive the sensible form rightly; just as other passive subjects because of their indisposition receive defectively the impressions of the agent. Hence, for instance, it happens that on account of an unhealthy tongue sweet seems bitter to a sick person. However, as to common objects of sense, and accidental objects, even a rightly disposed sense may have a false judgment, because it is referred to them not directly, but accidentally, or as a consequence of being directed to other things. Our Holy King lowers Himself to bed to rest for tomorrow’s travel. I, too, will soon go to my bed, resting with the dreams of the Holy Ones send. Eternal God, who sendest consolation unto all sorrowing hearts, we turn to Thee for solace in this, our trying hour. Though bowed in grief at the passing of our loved ones, we affirm our faith in Thee, our Father, who art just and merciful, who healest broken hearts and art ever near to those who are afflicted. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
Israel’s hope for Thy true kingdom here on Earth, impel us to help speed that day when peace shall be established through justice, and all humans recognize their brotherhood in Thee. With trust in Thy great goodness, we who mourn, rise to sanctify Thy name. Life is good and life’s tasks must be performed. Help us, O Lord, to rise above our sorrow and face the trials of life with courage in our hearts. Please give us insight in this hour of grief, that from the depths of suffering may come a deepened sympathy for all who are bereaved, that we may feel the heartbreak of our fellow beings and find our strength in helping them. Heartened by this hymn of praise to Thee, we bear our sorrow with trustful hearts, and knowing Thou art near, shall not despair. With faith in Thine eternal wisdom, we who mourn, rise to sanctify Thy name. As around our home the darkness grows, I light the evening lights. As the daytime spirits depart, I say my goodbyes: you will stay in our hearts the whole night through. As the nighttime spirits gather about, I give greetings to them: may these lights honour you who come with the darkness. Where there is shadow, there is light. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Full Golden—In Her Eyes a Brighter Day Dawned Blue and Full of Love!
If you wander around in enough confusion, you will soon find enlightenment. Life is an unanswered question, but let us believe in the dignity and importance of questions. When one finds one’s life unlivable, a person needs a place to go. When you want to be offstage, free from your usual roles, free to discover and define your being-for-yourself, society seems to conspire such that there is nowhere to go. Judges, critics, and commissars are omnipresent. If a human steps out of line and departs from one’s usual roles, someone is there to remind one of who one is, to define one, and to punish one for daring to define oneself. The upshot is many wives and mothers find they cannot face their families another moment without shrieking in protest against the sameness of their unappreciated daily grind. However, they stifle the shriek and carry on. Fathers and husbands become bored with the wives, infuriated by their children, and worn out by the work that lacks joy—continued only because there is no other work to do, and the bills fall due each day, week, month, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually. The children, in turn, cannot get along with each other, or with their parents. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles live a thousand miles away and cannot take the youngsters in for a day, week, or a month of respite. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Without anyone to help with housing, new employment opportunities, bills, nor child care, the trapped ones persist on their joyless, desperate treadmills until physical illness grants them a ticket admission to a hospital emergency room. Or they “blow up,” suffer from a case of neurosis, and are treated as “not in their right minds.” They may manifest a physical condition that takes years to recover from, or could lead to permeant disability, where they truly are unable to work. Or they many enter a mental hospital, there to be placed in storage until the regime of shock, tranquilizers, and periodic consultations with an overworked psychiatrist bring them “to their senses.” However, even in the hospital, there in no respite from roles; patients are cast into new ones and lack the freedom to choose their being. They return to the way of life they lived before, perhaps with the protest in them electroshocked or drugged out of existence. If new alternatives could be provided, before this drama reached its climax in the sickroom or the sanitarium, it would be helpful. If we had acceptable “checkout places,” what would life in our society be like? In moments of reverie, I have invented some. Let me describe one such, a healing-house that appeals to me. It is probably healing only for middle-class people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
It is a place where one can enter and find confirmation for any way one has chosen to be, or any way that circumstances have brought to one. If a human wises solitude, one can find it there; and if one wishes to remain silent, no one will speak to one. If one wishes congenial and enlivening body-contact, a masseur or masseuse (one can choose which) is available to provide the physical therapy. If a housewife or househusband wants to paint, listen to music, or just sit and have intercessory prayer, there is a room for one to do so. The place would be like a brand-new mansion in the suburbs, with all the amenities one could imagine, and close to shopping centers. It would be like an upscale bed and breakfast, a social club, where people could check-in, their medical insurance, employer, or government subsidy would pay for the cost of the vacation to help reduce the strain on health care system. Each person would be entitled to a rom with inviolate privacy. There one could go, and stay for a day, a week, a month, or years. It would be like an extended family with people who actually like each other and can respect others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In this home, no one would enter your room without your invitation; and once a person closed the door, no one else could enter. There would be dinner, breakfast and lunch served as a group, or one could eat their mean in a private area of the house. Otherwise, the pantry would be always available, with abundant supplies of milk and honey, fruit, bread, raw vegetables, various kinds of meats, juice, water, and similar snacks. A resident could come and go, nibbling as one wished. If one wised conversation, one could go to the great room, where one could sit; and one’s presence alone would signify that one would be willing to talk. Or if one wished to enter into uninterrupted dialogue, one could invite someone to the privacy of the upstairs lobby, or home hub. The rule of the house would be freedom for the self, with respect for the freedom of the other. People who entered would leave their roles at the doorstep. No status, no rank, would interpose itself between the guests—who would have a first name, or surname, or no name, or a pseudonym, if that is what they chose. This would be a place where people could quite freely go out of their minds and roles, as these were known outside. All the paperwork would be handled by a confidential office before anyone reached the house so no one would know what anyone’s status and rank in society is, and all people would be screened to make sure they are safe. Also, office stand would be required to be bonded. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
It would be a place for people to unwind, relax, and get cozy before they had a nervous breakdown. Kind of like going home to your mother’s house and knowing you are safe and welcomed as long as you want to stay. It would also be a place where creative people—writers, painters, dancers, architects, lawyers, cooks, poet, et cetera—could go to live awhile and present their more tender creations in an accepting, or better, honest milieu, where commercial criteria for judging art and ideas are irrelevant. This would be a place where one could go to redefine oneself, apart from the people “back home,” who have a vested interest in keeping the person in the roles by which they knew one, but which were sickening to one. It would be a place where people could reach their ideal body image. The tense and nervous could find surcease and relaxation; the aimless might meet people with aims that could inspire and redirect their lives. These houses would be the place for one went for recreation. The directors would eschew drugs and medicines. They would heal by letting healing take place. The houses would be places where joy could be experienced, and peace. The staff of permanent residents, which would be the goal because people like stable communities, could include professional psychotherapists, resident artists, playwrights, dancers, masseurs, writers and teachers, and musicians. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Some of these residents might come and go; but all would provide seekers with an atmosphere of spiritual freedom, and examples of the quest for new avenues of being and expression. A working persons, professional person, wife or mothers, or lonely person could come daily for an hour or so, or weekly, and find relaxation, edification, or companionship. Much like a house-church, there could be a book club or house-coffee shop for friends. If they were on a private, pay-as-you-go basis, I have little doubt that such houses would pay for themselves. And I suspect that is they were underwritten by some grant, or by public-health moneys—but with their operation strictly in the hands of the director of each house—they would more than pay for themselves, in the for of physical breakdown that did not happen and a mental breakdown that would not materialize. I suspect that for the people who patronized such a house, intake of drugs and medicines would diminish radically. The mass invasion of physicians’ clinics and waiting-rooms would be reduced to manageable dimensions. And the waiting lists of practicing psychotherapists would doubtless be less packed with names. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Such houses of retreat and healing will, alas, not become part of every village, town, or city neighbourhood. However, sensible people will find ways to pool resources so that they can organize them by themselves. Or if they can afford it, they will buy or rent a “pad” on the other side of town, away from family and friends. Perhaps some organizational genius will find the necessary staff, and the capital to invest; and one will become a millionaire by providing what everyone needs, at a price all can afford to pay. If such places came into being as a normal part of society, I suspect psychotherapists would lose some of their present raison d’etre, and would have to apply their knowledge of how people sicken and become whole to teaching, and to living fulfilled lives themselves, so that by their being, they would represent viable ways. And I suspect that physicians would find their practices confined to delivering babies, setting broken bones, and stanching the flow of blood. Sales of drugs would diminish, and people could return to work or home refreshed. Transcendent-behaviour has been shown to occur most usually in persons who are committed to some goal to which they assign high value. Commitment implies price. The more fully a person is committed to some project, problem, or outcome, the more of one’s time, energy, and personal resources one freely devotes to the quest on which one is launched. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The conditions under which people are able to become strongly committed to their work, or to truth, justice, beauty, or goodness, are not as yet fully understood. When there have been leaders or predecessors who provide an inspiring example to imitate, since values are created by humans, it is most likely that an individual will become committed to some goal, achievement. Another factor which seems to promote commitment is the promise of large rewards, whether immediate or remote, concrete or symbolic. The persons who become committed to some unpopular cause—who have to fight public opinion, poverty, and even danger to life without support—are more difficult to explain. People in whom transcendent behaviour is relatively frequent occurrence likely are persons who trust themselves and have developed some measure of confidence in their powers to themselves. Self-confidence seems to derive both from history of graduated successes in coping with increasingly difficult and complex problems, and from the experience of being seen by other people as competent and trustworthy. Lack of self-doubt, is often characteristic of explorers, daredevils, and others whose achievements transcend their own previous exploits, as well as the achievements of many of their fellow humans. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Any experiences which permit average people to diminish their distrust of their own capacities and their own worth, and which permit them to attribute power to themselves, probably would contribute to the frequency with which they transcend their own usual levels of functioning. The self-concept, which, as we have seen, is a limiting factor in behaviour, can also be a freeing factor for transcendent achievement. If it is true, as existential thinkers insist, that human cannot define oneself in any fixed way, but is always in process of creating and then re-creating oneself, then it follows that the most accurate self-concept is one which permits a human to see oneself as a being with relatively unplumed capacities for all modes of function. Humans have powers of survival and adaptation which they have never imagined. It seems likely that any person who formulates a fixed concept of oneself, including a concept of one’s powers to cope, is doing oneself an injustice. Since humans tend to behave in accordance with their concepts of themselves, then they will not rise to meet a challenge that calls for behaviour in conflict with one’s present self-concept. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If a human sees oneself as weak, one will not take challenges posed by life, but will instead avoid them. If a human sees oneself as always in process of being challenged and “tested” by life, and one’s capacities as always in process of unfolding, one probably has a self-concept more closely in tune with reality. Transcendent-behaviour has been portrayed as the release of modes of behaviour that ordinarily are suppressed by habit. Challenges can release transcendent behaviour in a person, but so also can symbols like mandalas, cameos, metaphors such as the flag, the Star of David, the name God, or the image of a loved person to whose well-being one has pledged oneself. When he was in the army, my father said that a few of the things that inspired him to actions which kept him alive where thinking about God, his family, and house. Deeply religious people report that they experience God as a Being who perpetually challenges them; and under the instigation of this challenge, they continually bring forth from themselves achievements and feats of endurance which might be impossible for persons less challenged. It may be proposed as a hypothesis that challenge, however brought about, is a highly important condition for some types of transcendent behaviour. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
One of the aims of the field of personality hygiene, beyond that of preventing mental illness, should be to understand and master the conditions for transcendent-behaviour, so that, ultimately, the average person will not be a mere non-candidate for a psychiatric hospital, but instead a being who can release one’s capacities for transcendent functioning as needed. Therapists of personality then would not be experts at restoring those with neurosis or psychosis to “normal” levels of function; rather, they would be more like those few inspired and inspiring teachers who are able to elicit transcendent performance from their students, to the surprise and delight of all. I suspect that our heroes of the playing field, of the cultural arena, of the study, or of the laboratory are persons whose fulfillment is a proof or pledge of hidden potentiality in the broad mass of the population. Too few people have any idea of their latent possibilities. Perhaps their concepts of their powers are false, and perhaps they are false because our educational procedures and fake news media indoctrinate people with a view of themselves as beings with sclerosed possibility. However, we can, indeed, seek to learn more about helping humans to experience their will and to eschew resignation to the thrust of determining forces. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
If it is possible for multibillion-dollar education program to train people to see themselves as limited beings, it should be also possible for that program to encourage people to see themselves as embodiments of the capacity to transcend their present concepts of themselves and their powers. They can explore the path to those possibilities for optimal functioning that lie buried beneath habit and socialized being, so that more can realize the experience of liberation, satori, awakening, or the attainment of selfhood. I would like to see more psychotherapists functioning as gurus and as protectors of human freedom and enlightenment, as disclosers of humans to themselves, to balance the efforts of those of us whose work has served as guidance for industrial, business, political, and institutional leaders in ways to direct masses of little humans. I would like to see psychology leading psychiatry in the arts of evoking potentials for health and full functioning, rather than following psychiatry in its search for pockets of pathology. I think the concern for human possibilities that marks a humanistic psychologist makes one an important resource person to such agencies as the Office of Education, offering guidance and suggestions as to means for enriching our present institutions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
We need to have teachers who can guide, educate, and liberate people as well as presently they indoctrinate and socialize them. We are on the brink of new leaps in the evolution of humans—because of the fantastic development of technology. We must welcome this possibility, and those of us who study humans can help our fellows and ourselves to find our ways and our possibilities in an unprecedented era. It is either that, or be grim, soulless mortals, furiously busy with irrelevant issues in the backwaters of the swamp, not the crisp, clean, waters of the mainstream, of the human course. A person’s experience with one’s attachment figures during the years of immaturity—infancy, childhood, and adolescence—are the principal determinants of the pathway along which that person’s attachment develops. When things go wrong this is due to the psychological development having somehow followed a deviant pathway. It is not due to a fixation at, or a regression to, some earlier stage of development. Disturbed patterns of attachment behaviour can be present at any age, due to a deviant development. When attachment behaviour is overreadily called forth, resulting in over-anxious attachments, a common form of disturbance occurs. Another common form is the partial or total de-activation of attachment behaviour. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
However, children do suffer when removed from their parents, and this must be taken seriously. Even now, as those know who have been an inkling of what goes on in some nursery schools, day-centers and creches, there are many misconceptions about the norms of behaviour to be expected of young children when left, even briefly, in a strange place with strange people. Misconceptions persist, especially among professional people. Again and again it is implied that a healthy normal child should not make a fuss when mother leaves, and that is one does so it is an indication either that mother spoils one or that one is suffering from some pathological anxiety. When the natural history and function of attachment-behaviour are understood, it is hoped that such reactions will be seen in a new and more realistic light. When no special effort has been made to prepare and cushion the child: yearning and searching for the missing mother, sadness, increasing protest at her absence and growing anger with her for staying away, increase ambivalence on return home and evident fear of being separated again become ingrained in the child’s consciousness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Whenever young children who have had an opportunity to develop an attachment to a mother-figure are separated from her unwillingly, they show distress: and should they also be placed in a strange environment and cared for by strange people such distress is likely to be intense. The way they behave follows a typical sequence. At first they protest vigorously and try by all the means available to recover the mother. Later they seem to despair of recovering her but nonetheless remain preoccupied with her and vigilant for her return. Later they seem to lose interest in the mother and to become emotionally detached from her. Each of the three main phases of the response of a young child to separation is related to one or another of the central issues of psycho-analytic theory. Thus the phase of protest is found to raise the problem of separation anxiety; despair that of grief and mourning; detachment that of defence. In view of the damage done by this early separation is totally reparable, and always leaves some mark on the adult personality, in severe cases having so strong an effect as to be the main determinant of the adult’s thought and feeling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Attachment behavior has deep biological roots, and therefore the anxieties which attend separation from an attachment figure must also have deep biological roots. The deepest anxieties with the currently more widely held view that the deepest anxieties concern the fear that the organized self may be disrupted when the nervous system has to handle more stimulus than it can manage at a time, so that the emerging neural structuring disintegrates. In that view, the mother’s function is to take the overload and prevent disintegration. (There is, of course, no reason why there should be just one basic anxiety: it can certainly be argued that both may be aspects of the same anxiety.) Many take for granted the stimulus-situations that arouse fear can be regarded as naturally occurring clues to events that constitute a potential danger to the species in question. This applies especially to situations that arouse fear on the first occasion that an individual encounters them. A number of these are strangeness, being unsupported on a height, being alone, having something zoom rapidly into view, and other such. None of these is intrinsically dangerous, but to the being they indicate the possibility of an increased risk of danger. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
A natural clue is associated as a rule with a raised degree of risk, and this can make a child’s behaviour appear phobic when it occurs in situations which appear incomprehensible to the adult World. Anxiety has a survival function for the species. Anxiety motivated action to remove the painful stimulus. The person would prefer less and less stimulation till the peace of death overs all. The human being is naturally equipped to relate, indeed, to cling, and naturally equipped to move about and explore and seek stimulus, always providing that there was a person or a place of safety to move back to. However, we are not done yet! Beyond contentment lies intelligent, energetic participation in accomplishing God’s will in our World. We are no longer spectators, but are caught up in a vivid and eternal drama in which we play an essential part. We embrace our imposed circumstances, no matter how tragic they seem, and act for the good in a power beyond ourselves. “We are reigning—exercising dominion—in life by One, Christ Jesus,” reports Romans 5.17. We are “looking toward an eternity of reigning with God through ages of ages,” reports Revelation 22.5. We take action to accomplish the will of God in his power. Our tiny “willpower” is not the source of our strength. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
We hardly notice any exercise of our willpower, though it is fully dedicated to carrying out God’s purposes in every respect. However, we are carried along by the power of the divine drama within which we live actively engaged. So far from struggling to resist sin, we are devoted to realization of righteousness all around us. This is the real meaning of “Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” The strongest human will is always the one that is surrendered to God’s will and acts with it. This progress toward full identification of our will with God’s will is one that, perhaps for most people, may not be fully realized in this life. However, that does not really matter. It is a progression that tis there for us to enter into now, through the power at work within us as disciples of Jesus Christ. It may be that at present we cannot even imagine what it would be like for us to have a will significantly identified with God’s will as just described. However, we must never forget that He “is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, in terms of the power that is working within us,” reports Ephesians 3.20. Our part is to begin as best we can. “Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him” reports Isaiah 64.4. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
At any given time there are several spiritual shepherds in the World, each with one’s own distinct and separate flock. It is inevitable and right that one should sieve humanity for those alone who need one or who were born to follow one or who seek the kind of guidance which one especially can give. One’s compassion is broad-based; it is for all. However, one’s personal work is extremely narrow for it is only for the few who will receive it most readily. This implies that one works among the sympathetic and mature, not among the hostile and immature. The reason for this is the need to practise economy of time and energy that one may not waste one’s arrows of effort on the vacant air. For a similar reason one prefers to enlighten the leaders, and let the flocks alone. “For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. However, unto you that fear my name, shall the Son of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves in the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of Hosts. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“Remember ye the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with that statues and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their father, les I come and smite the Earth with a curse,” reports 3 Nephi 25.1-6. Darkness descends, as the Sun lowers itself behind the horizon and I stand facing the last light, with my shadow at my back. Farewell to you, Lord of Light, as you go to your rest. I turn to face the darkness and greet it without fear. O Lord and King who art full of compassion, in whose hand is the soul or every living thing and the breath of all flesh, to Thine all-wise care do we commit the souls of our dear ones, who have departed from this Earth. Teach all who mourn to accept the judgment of Thine inscrutable will and cause them to know the sweetness of Thy consolation. Quicken by Thy holy words those bowed in sorrow, that like all the faithful in Israel who have gone before, they too may be faithful to Thy Torah and thus advance the reign of Thy Kingdom upon Earth. In solemn testimony to that unbroken faith which links the generations to one another, let those who mourn now rise to magnify and sanctify Thy holy name. I bow to the setting Sun, lowering myself as it descends over the World’s edge. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters. The great room is spacious and full of natural light with a covered patio! The Owner’s suite is nestled in the rear of the home separate from the secondary bedrooms, providing maximum privacy. Enjoy a spa like experience in the Owner’s bathroom with a large walk in shower, dual vanities, and makeup counter.
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O, thus be it ever when free humans shall stand, between their loved homes and the war’s desolation; blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land. Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, and this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave!
For the Greeks “Original Sin” was Lack of Knowledge, Not Eating from the Tree of Knowledge!
You should not have to buy a marriage off the rack; it should conform exactly to the contours of those who chose to clothe themselves in it. Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than government. It is almost the equal of family. It is the hardest thing in the World to explain. It is not something you can learn in school. However, if you have not learned the meaning of friendship, you really have not learned anything. Yet, not matter what you have learned, much like family, real friendship should not be a “Door Way to Hell.” True friendship is based on love of God and sharing that love with others. Think for a minute what it means to know you have someone standing right by you, someone you can trust to be your friend on good days and bad, someone who values you and supports you even when the two of you are apart. Our most prized friend is Jesus Christ Himself. Is there any greater assurance than His commitment, “I will be on your right hand and on your left, and mine Angels are round about you, to bear you up,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 84.88? So often those “angels round about” are our friends. Therefore choose good friend. In today’s World so many people willingly sell their souls for money, gifts, video games, car, cosmetic procedures, video games, text messages, jobs, and even houses. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
These individuals spend their time identifying with the television personalities who for them are not only faces on the screen, but people they imagine the friends, family, neighbours and coworkers to be. As a result of television intoxication, people can become insane. What people see on television affects viewers behaviour, attitudes, and values. Generally, research has demonstrated 3 main effect of watching television too frequently: Aggression, desensitization, and fear. Humans are the only being for whom life poses the existential question most starkly: “What shall I do and be?” So long as one answered, “Live!,” for millennia the questioned was settled; because securing the means for living always commanded the greater part of every person’s time and energy. The biblical injunction to observe the Sabbath was epochal because it enjoined humans to pause, so that one might realize there are other things to do besides work to stay alive, amass power, and indulge senses. However, what will happen when every day could be a Sabbath, when work is obsolete, and the prospect of leisure, that abyss of freedom, confronts us? This is a freedom at its most dizzying. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
It is at once a horrifying and challenging future horrifying because few are ready for leisure and freedom and challenge because of the promise imminent of a bold leap into as yet unfathomed possibilities of being. The horror is warranted. Society condemns our “senior citizens” to a residual life sentence of “leisure” as soon as they are about seventy-years old. This liberation from work operates as a rapid death sentence for many. And for sill more, release from the experience of feeling useful brings on either the living death of boredom, or the rapid encroachment of gibbering senility in hitherto vigorous humans. A friend of mine, a survivor of a death-camp, once visited a community and he saw the people shuffling or siting about, drinking and partying and arguing and fighting like street dogs. They were fatter than the people in the death camps, to be sure; but the aimless and lifeless expressions of the faces were the same. Next to our prisons and mental hospitals, the retirement centers for those awaiting death are surely American equivalents of concentration camps. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
About twenty five hundred years ago, the Greeks lived in nearly automated society—their work-producing “machines” were slaves and women—and the men produced a flowering of consciousness such as has not existed since. Liberated as they were from the menial cores of producing and distributing goods, humans were free to think, imagine and explore, to perfect themselves in their World. For the Greeks “original sin” was lack of knowledge, not eating from the tree of knowledge. We still have not, today, exhausted all the beginnings they laid down. Right now, our technology advances inexorably toward near-total automation, and we have responded, not by flights of creative imagination, not by liberation of our spirits to soar to new heights of possibility, as was true in ancient Greece. We have instead responded by becoming increasingly like our slaves, the machines. We have mechanized more and more of our relationships with each other; these become role-bound, boring, far departures from the “swing” of true dialogue. We manipulate ourselves in order to present attractive packages to others. We allow ourselves to be manipulated by the news, politicians, sales people, moviemakers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
We routinize our daily round of existence so we will the better fit into timetables for transportation from suburb to place of body-work. We eat, not to nourish and perfect our bodies, but to keep up with the Hiltons, to consume the overproduction of our farms, or to palliate nagging feelings of loneliness. We do not embrace one another in love, despite the liberation permitted by the courts and church—rather many fornicate in order to feel, or to feel alive, or to reassure themselves that they are attractive and desirable. Every aspect of our loves aims at turning us off, numbing us, so that we will keep our once-born, programmed status in the social system, and not rock boat. The other mornings, I found myself wondering why did God just not make us robots because that is what we are trying to become. A pill to sleep, a shot of espresso to wake up, medication to help with digestion—at some point the human body needs to rest and relax and function naturally before it drowns. Many people think a pill or a drink or an injection can save them from anything, but God is our Saviour and we need to listen to our bodies and not abuse them. Often after a banana is bruised, one cannot reverse the damage. If you can so much about how your fruit looks, think about your internal organs and live right. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
From my earliest days of growing up, friends have been special blessing to me. The closet friends made in my youth remain my friends to this day. We have always been there for each other. And I have been grateful to make new friends who have been a strength and a blessing to me as well. Friends hep to determine your future. You will tend to be like them and to be found where they choose to go. Remember, the path we follow in this life leads to the path we follow in the next. The friends you choose will either help or hinder your success. These are sobering words. I even wish I could live next door to a prophet because I know we would learn to become good friends. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of being good friends. Becoming such friends is not always easy. The only way to have a friend is to be one. To have friends who live high standards, who stand for virtue and goodness, who are faithful and true to their covenants, you must be such a person to them. In this World where people are addicted to sleaze, permissiveness, and immorality, having good friends will go a long way in ensuring our ability to withstand the evils of society. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Having good friends will put us in a position to attract the kind of eternal companion one will hope to find. It was the Saviour who proclaimed to His disciples, “Ye are my friends,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 84.63. It was the Saviour who taught, “Great love hath no one than this, that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” reports John 15.13. It was the Saviour who beckoned, “Come unto me,” Matthew 11.28. When you accept the Saviour as your friend, you will always be in favour with Him and His Father, so it does not matter who likes you. You have already won the popularity contest with the Divine Source, and is all that matters. In friendship, as in every other principle of the gospel, Jesus Christ is our Exemplar. Modern science, in all its specializations, aims at understanding Nature in order to manipulate and control her. This may be fine, for botany, zoology, climatology, physics and chemistry. However, the same definition of science, with the same aims, has been extended to the human sciences—especially psychology, but also pedagogy, sociology, political science, economic, and psychiatry. Now no human will consent to be understood, in order to be manipulated and controlled by someone, unless one is mystified and stupefied, so that one does not know what is going on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Yet people are being manipulated and controlled daily, and seem unaware that it is going on. Somebody or some institution is playing games with human consciousness, seeking to control it, so that behaviour will thereby be controlled, and fit into systems. When humans are thus controlled, one has changed in ontological status from person to thing. I submit that this transmutation of humans into things has been going on for a few centuries of western history, but it is continuing today at an accelerated pace. I will even indulge a taste for prophecy, and predict that in the next few years, in American, we will witness a struggle between those who would keep human’s consciousness and action to limits that fit a status quo, and those who see in automation the signal for inventing new Worlds, for the flowering once again of human potentialities comparable to the fantastic creativity of ancient Greece. The struggle, as a matter of fact, may be bloody. I hope the champions of human growth in diversity win. I am on that side. What light might psychology shed on this matter? And what role might schools and universities play in increasing the odds that we will enter a magnificent age of enlightenment rather than an age where each human is even more stringently shaped to roles and statuses that makes one useful to the State, but not potentiating of oneself in one’s personal life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Frist, a perspective on social systems. These come into being because humans cannot live alone. Originally, they are instituted because they seem efficient ways to divide labour, and maximize freedom from want and danger. However, then, a struggle for control over goods, wealth, and power takes place and some few gain control over the many, by gaining control over wealth and hence the means of socialization. The major institutions of society are a means for maintaining the status quo. The aim of socialization practices, beginning in the rearing of infants, but extending to formal schooling, is so to train people that they will habitually experience and behave in the ways they must behave or so they will be afraid to behave in any way other than those ways which maintain the status quo. Mass media, religion, the law, custom, public opinion, even the healing professions all collude to keep people behaving, and what is even more insidious, experiencing the World in the ways that keep the present social structure intact. Human’s highest purpose and duty in America, so it would seem, is to consume, so factories will not close down. Advertising inusres that one will: more money is spent on that means of “shaping” than is spent on education. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
If anyone misses being so brainwashed, one is invalidated—encountered with threats and actualities of imprisonment, ostracism, poverty, or hospitalization—unless one is very enlightened, or very cunning. This is the way societies maintain themselves. This is the way they resist change, whether it be change in national purpose, change in means of production, or changes in class structure. However, when change in the productive base takes place, as is occurring with expanding automation, these ways have become irrelevant and obsolete. A “World” (the term “World (in quotes) refers to the World as experience by humans or by a particular human) has truly come to an end, though few realize it. However, what is it that we know? This is a question about the specific items of knowledge we possess and about the extent or limits of our knowledge. And second: How do we decide in any given case whether or not we have knowledge in that case? What are the criteria for knowledge? This is a question about our criteria for knowledge. Now suppose we wan to sort all of our beliefs into two groups—the true of justified ones and the false or unjustified ones—in order to retain the former and dispose of the latter in our entire set of beliefs. Such a sorting would allow us to improve our rational situation and grow in knowledge and justify belief. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
However, now a problem arises regarding how we are to proceed in this sorting activity. It would seem that we would first need an answer to at least one of our two questions. Yet, before we can answer our first question about the extent of our knowledge, we would seem to need to answer our second question about our criteria for knowledge. Still, before we can answer the second question, we seem to require an answer for our first question. This is the problem of the criterion. If we do not know how we know things, how can we know anything at all or draw limits to human knowledge? However, if we do not know some things before we ask ourselves how can we have knowledge in the first place, on what basis will we answer that question? There are no truths apart from scientific truths, and even if there were, there would be no reason to believe them is how many people think. However, advocates of weak scientism allow for the existence of truth apart from science and are even willing to grant that they can have some minimal, positive rationality status without the support of science. Nonetheless, advocates of weak scientism still hold that science is the most valuable, most serious, and most authoritative sector of human learning. Every other intellectual activity is inferior science. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Further, there are virtually no limits to science. There is no field upon which scientific research cannot shed light. To the degree that some issues or belief outside science can be given scientific support or can be reduced to science to that degree the issue or belief becomes rationally acceptable. Thus we have an intellectual, and perhaps, even a moral obligation to try to use science to solve problems in fields heretofore untouched by scientific method. For example, we should try to solve problems about the mind by the methods of neurophysiology and computer science. Since true and false are opposed, and since opposites stand in relation to the same thing, we must needs seek falsity, where primarily we find truth; that is to say, in the intellect. Now, in things, neither true nor falsity exists, expect in relation to the intellect. And since every thing is denominated simply by what belongs to it per se, but is denominated relatively by what belongs to it accidentally; a thing indeed may be called false simply when compared with the intellect on which it depends, and to which it is compared per se, but may be called false relatively as directed to another intellect, to which it is compared accidentally. Now natural things depend on the divine intellect, as artificial things on the human. Wherefore artificial things are said to be false simply and in themselves in so far as they fall short of the form of art; whence if it falls short of the proper operation of one’s art a craftsman is said to produce a false work. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
In things that depend on God, falseness cannot be found, in so far as they are compared with the divine intellect; since whatever takes place in things proceeds from the ordinance of that intellect, unless perhaps in the case of voluntary agents only, who have it in their power to withdraw themselves from what is so ordained; where in consists the evil of sin. Thus sins themselves are called untruths and lies in the Scriptures, according to the words of the text, “Why do you love vanity, and seek after lying?” (Ps. 4.3): as on the other hand virtuous deeds are called “truth of life” as being obedient to the order of the divine intellect. Thus it is said, “One that doth truth, cometh to the light,” reports John 3.21. However, in relation to our intellect, natural things which are compared thereto accidentally, can be called false; not simply, but relatively; and that in two ways. In one way according to the thing signified, and thus a thing is said to be false as being signified or represented by word or thought that is false. In this respect anything can be said to be false as regards any qualitied not possessed by it; as if we should say that a diameter is false commensurable thing, as the Philosopher. So, too Augustine says (Soliloq. Ii, 10): “The true tragedian is a false Hector”: even as, on the contrary, anything can be called true, in regard to that which is becoming to it. In another way a thing can be called false, by way of cause—and this a thing is said to be false that naturally begets a false opinion. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
And whereas it is innate in us to judge things by external appearances, since our knowledge takes its rise from sense, which principally and naturally deals with external accidents, therefore those external accidents, which resemble things other than themselves, are said to be dales with respect to those things; this gall is falsely honey; and tin, false gold. Regarding this, Augustine says (Soliloq. ii 6): “We call those things false that appear to our apprehension like true:” and the Philosopher says (Metaph v, 34): “Things are called false that are naturally apt to appear such as they are not, or what they are not.” In this way a human is called false as delighting in false opinions or words, and not because one can invent them; for in this way many wise and learned persons might be called false, as stated in Metaph. V 34. A thing compared with the intellect is said to be true in respect to what it is, and false in respect to what it is not. Hence, “The true tragedian is a false Hector,” as stated in Soliloq. ii, 6. As therefore, in things that are is found a certain non-being, so in things that are is found a degree of falseness. Things do not deceive by their own nature, but by accident. For they give occasion to falsity, by the likeness they bear to things which they actually are not. Things are said to be false, not as compared with the divine intellect, in which case they would be false simply, but as compared with our intellect; and thus they are false only relatively. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Likeness or defective representation does not involve the idea of falsity except in so far as it gives occasion to false opinion. Hence a thing is not always said to be false, because it resembles another thing; but only when the resemblance is such as naturally to produce a false opinion, not in any one case, but in the majority of instances. Moral reformers are members of a society who stand outside that society’s code and pronounce a need for reform and change in that code. However, if an act is right is and only if it is in keeping with a given society’s code, then the moral reformer oneself is by definition an immoral person, for one’s views are at odds with those of one’s society. Moral reformers must always be wrong because they go against the code of their society. However, any view that implies that moral reformers are impossible is defective because we all know that moral reformers have actually existed. Put differently, moral relativism implies that neither cultures (if conventionalism is in view) nor individuals (if subjectivism is in view) can improve their moral code. The only thing they can do is change it. Why consider any change in a code from believing, say, racism is right to racism is wrong. How should we evaluate this change? #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
All the moral relativist can say is that, from the perspective of the earlier code, the new principle is wrong, and from the perspective of the new code, the old principle is wrong. In short, here has merely been a change in perspective. No sense can be given to the idea that a new code reflects an improvement on an old code because this idea requires a vantage point outside of and above the society’s (or individual’s) code from which to make that judgment. And it is precisely such a vantage point that moral relativism disallows. Some relativists respond to this claiming that moral reformers are allowed in their view because all moral reformers do is make explicit what was already implicit but overlooked in the society’s code. Thus, if a society already has a principle that persons ought to be treated equally, then this implicitly contains a prohibition against racism even though it may not be explicitly noted. The moral reformer merely makes this explicit be calling people to think more carefully about their code. Unfortunately, this claim is simply false. Many more reformers do in fact call people to alter their codes. They do not merely make clear what was already contained in preexisting codes. Every powerful movement has had its philosophy which has gripped the mind, fired the imagination and captured the devotion of its adherents. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Lord and Saviour, true and kind be the master of my mind; bless and guide and strengthen still all my powers of thought and will. While I play the scholar’s task, Jesus Christ please be near, I ask; please help the memory, clear the brain, knowledge still to seek gain. Please take my intellect, and use every power as Thou shalt choose. If there is a religion in the World which exalts the office of teaching, it is safe to say that it is the religion of Jesus Christ. A religion divorced from earnest and lofty thought has always, down the whole history of the Church, tended to become weak, jejune and unwholesome, while the intellect, deprived of its rights within religion, has sought its satisfaction without, and developed into a godless rationalism. Unbelievers watch us while we are at work and they notice the forms that our worship and fellowship take. If unbelievers do not see a vibrant intellectual life when they observe Christians at work, or engaged in fellowship and worship, are they to be blamed if they conclude that truth and rationality do not matter much to us? God created us to be rational creatures. We have a religious duty to think and to think well. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
The essence of worship is the intentional ascription of worth, service, and reverence to the Lord. Worship can take place in public or private, individual or corporate ways. In fact, for the integrated believer, in one way or another, everything in life can be understood as an act of worship. In this sense, worship is expressed in one’s overall approach to life and every area of life. “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this World, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not thing yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each one of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If one man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
“If it is serving, let one serve; if it is teaching let one teach; if it is encouraging, let one encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let one give generously; if it is leadership, let one govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let one do it cheerfully,” reports Romans 12.1-8. Worship creates a home for the soul as it learns to rest in God. A more specific form of worship occurs in specific acts of praise and exultation, especially in the assembly with the people of God. Of special importance to this later understanding is the conscious expression of worship in the very act of study in high school or college or in and through the vocation a believer selects. God is a maximally perfect being. This means that God is not merely the greatest, most perfect being who happens to exist. He is the greatest being that could possibly exist. I bear witness that a very important element of your experience in the gospel is the friends you make and the mentors you follow, just as I was promised. I pray that each of us will have the privilege of enjoying righteous friendships and mentoring relationships as we grow together in the gospel of Jesus Christ. “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality,” reports Romans 12.9-13. In these cases, our degree of worship ought to increase and, therefore, a God who just happened to be the greatest being around (and who could be surpassed in excellence) would not be a worthy object of total worship. Fortunately, the God of the Bible is a maximally perfect being; that is, He is the greatest being that could possibly exist. It is impossible for a greater being to supersede God or for God Himself to improve Himself in any way. Thus, God is owed our supreme, total worship. This is why Scripture calls idolatry the activity of giving more dedication to something finite than to God. God is worthy of the very best efforts we can give Him in offering our respect and service through the cultivation of our total personality, including our mins. Seen in this light, dedicated to intellectual growth is not merely to be done for the edification of the worshipper, but as an act of service rendered to God. Halfhearted study in high school or college represents a failure to grasp the fact that loving God with the mind is part of worship. Such halfhearted study is an unworthy offering to the Lord. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
With this as a background, let us look at how we can better bring our minds into our corporate and individual acts of adoration and praise. Worship should never be reduced to an act of intellect—it involves all that we are—but the intellect is more central to worship than we often realize. “And then shall that which is written come to pass: Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child; for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not, lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame; for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any mire. For they maker, thy husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer, the Holy one if Israel—the God of the whole Earth shall he be called. For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For this, the waters of Noah unto me, for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the Earth, so I have sworn that I would not be wroth with thee. For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted! Behold, I will lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. In righteousness shalt thou be established; thou shalt be far from oppression for thou shalt not fear, and form terror for it shall not come near thee. Behold, they shall surely gather together against thee, not by me; whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake. Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall revile against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord,” reports 3 Nephi 22.1-17. Far too often, when we come to worship God in the assembly of His people, we are allowed to leave our minds at the door. This is simply unacceptable and beneath God’s dignity as a maximally perfect being. What we need to do is plan more carefully and think harder about how we can engage the intellects of our brothers and sisters as part of our collective offerings of praise to our Father. “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth,” reports John 4.24. This verse is well known. Worship is to be rooted in the inner being; it should be sincere and earnest; and it ought to be in accordance with the true nature of God, His revelation, and His acts. At the close of the day, I face the west, the direction of rest, and raise my hands in prayer to the Sun. Great shining one, may I go to rest with your regards as you go to yours with mine. As you lower yourself through the Sky toward the horizon, I hold your red disk between my hands. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
You who fill my hands, fill my heart and stay with me through the dark time, until morning comes again. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us with Thy precepts and commanded us to dwell in the Sukkah. It is for us to praise the Lord of all, to proclaim the greatness of the Creator of the Universe for He hath not made us like the unbelievers of the World, nor placed us like heathen tribes of the Earth; God hath not made our destiny as theirs, nor cast our lot with all their multitude. We bend the knee, worship and give thanks unto the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He. God stretched forth the Heavens and laid the foundations of the Earth. His glory is revealed in the Heavens above, and His might is manifest in the loftiest heights. God is our God; there is none else. In truth He is our King; there is none besides Him; as it is written in His Torah: Know this day, and consider it in thy hear that the Lord is God in the Heavens above and on Earth beneath; there is none else. God will illuminate and exert His influence upon His children consistently and effortlessly. His power and light will radiate naturally from Him. It is not by our heart, but by our faith and devotion that we receive help and healing. God has thought about us and remembers us for we are all held within His Mind. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Cresleigh Homes
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters with a butler’s pantry to provide easy access to the dining room. The great room is spacious and its open floor plan allows all parts of the home to flow. The Owner’s suite nestled away from the secondary bedrooms allowing for maximum privacy, yet still accessible.
The Great Room in this #Meadows Residence 2 home at #PlumasRanch is looking mighty comfy right now… 😍 And the green mid-mod dining chairs are just the pièce de résistance!
Utilize the interactive floor plan for this Residence on our website to plan where your furniture will go! Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-2/
I Roam in Pleasant Darkness, More Unseen than Saturn in His Exile!
There is beauty in everybody. You are born with it. It is just a matter of what you do with it, and if you lose it, it is like losing your soul. The experience of surprise is a sign of one’s readiness to grow. Amazement and wonder signify that one’s concepts of self and of the World and of other people are “loose,” ready to be re-formed. The “know-it-all,” the “cool” one, has pledged oneself never to be surprised. Everything that the World discloses is no more than an unfolding of what one has expected and predicted, or so one tries to convey to others. However, when a human can be dumbfounded and surprised at what comes out of one or at what one’s friend or spouse is capable of doing and disclosing, one is a growing person. In fact, if I intentionally adopt the “set” that all of my concepts are tentative and provisional, I invite others, myself, and the World to reveal surprisingly new facets of their being to me, so that even my daily life can be an unfolding of newness, where simply perceiving the World or the self is a source of endless variety and surprise. If I am with you, and I have willfully adopted the set that I do not know and cannot ever fully know all your possibilities, my very presence embodies an invitation to you to surprise, to show off, to transcend your (and my) previous concepts of your being. #RandolpHarris 1 of 23
I can tell when I am in the presence of a person with a closed mind. I feel constrained to shut off most of my possibilities. However, in the present of a wonder-er, I feel an absence of prejudgment, a permissive acceptance; and my terror and self-consciousness about revealing surprises is diminished. In short, if you and I retain our capacity for surprise, we assist and confirm one another’s growth. It seems to me that artists in society embody and disclose possibilities of experiencing that are available to everyone, but are generally stifled. If every mad-person is an ineffective revolutionary, and every sick person is an anarchist who failed, then each artist who produces art successfully points the way toward new modes of experience and action. The true revolutionary, who changes people’s minds and spirits, is not the political fanatic or the religious zealot, but the person who wields the painter’s brush or the poet’s pencil or one who composes and produces sounds no human has heard before. The World—Being—discloses itself without surcease. The World discloses itself in forms and patterns and as change. The being of the World is revealed in splendiferous variety, depending upon the nature of the “surface” from which it is refracted. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The human race is a myriad of refractive surfaces staining the white radiance of eternity. Each surface refracts the refraction of refractions of refractions. Each self refracts the refractions of others’ refractions of self’s refraction of other refractions. Here is the glory and wonder and mystery, yet too often we simply wish to ignore or destroy those points of view that refract the light differently from ourselves. The World-for-human is a World refracted in human intentional consciousness. This magnificent and mysterious entity, consciousness, is but little understood. Indeed, it can only be understood by a being such as itself of by another consciousness; for understanding is given only to human consciousness. Being can be refracted by animals, and by human-made instruments; but understanding of the being revealed to an animal or machine is possibly only if the animal or machine somehow transmits its refraction of the being of the World to a human consciousness. And a consciousness can attain some measure of self-understanding by transmuting itself into a reflective consciousness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
All people are born with the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. The ability, called conscience, is a manifestation of the Light of Christ. The light of Christ is the divine energy, power, or influence that proceeds from God through Christ and gives life and light to all things. The Light of Christ influences people for good and prepares them to receive the Holy Ghost. One manifestation of the Light of Christ is what we call conscience. The Light of Christ “proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space.” It is “the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed,” reports Doctrine and Covenants. This power is an influence for good in the lives of all people. “And that I am the true light that lighteth every human that cometh into the World,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 93.2. Conscience is a manifestation of the Light of Christ, enabling us to judge good from evil. The prophet Mormon taught: “The Spirit of Christ is given to every human, that one may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
“And now, my brethren, seeing that ye know the light by which ye may judge, which light is the light of Christ, see that ye d not judge wrongfully; for with that same judgment which ye judge ye shall also be judged,” reports Moroni 7.16,18. The study of consciousness, at least from a disciplined, scientific standpoint, is still in its infancy. We are still in the descriptive and taxonomic stages, with a crude beginning at experimental analysis of experiential change. I shall draw on the little we now know and suspect about that marvelous being—my consciousness and yours—to discuss art, and its relation to human possibility. Reflections shows that any conscious of the World is subject to transmutations, which are miraculous as the alchemical transubstantiation base metal to gold. The differing modes for anything to appear to someone’s consciousness include: the perceptual mode—seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching something. The recollective mode refers to a person’s capacity to re-experience past consciousness; we call it remembering. The conceptual mode is the name for a “thinking” and abstracting consciousness, the awareness of the acts of thinking about something as one of a kind, and reasoning about it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The imaginative mode is the name which refers to an experience of possibility. The fantasy mode is a paradoxical form of consciousness, because it is not conscious at the time of its occurrence, expect under rare and special circumstances. Yet it is always present as a kind of shadowy background to any and all conscious-modes. We know of our fantasy consciousness after it has just gone through a detectable change, as when we experience ourselves as empty, sucked dry, following an encounter with a very dependent bore. Another mode of being-conscious-of-something is the anticipatory consciousness: the experience or expectation that something is going to appear in perception, or memory. Probably this is a subclass of imagination. Construing, or giving-meaning can perhaps be regarded as a mode of experiencing the World, though it seems to be dependent upon the act of reflecting upon one’s perception, or other modes for experiencing. And it is perhaps meaningful to regard the experience of willing (trying to make something appear) as a mode of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Feeling and emotion may be designed as qualities of intentional experience. In a person with a unified consciousness, feelings are fused with every perception, memory, or imaginative act. The person feels alive because one feels. However, feelings and emotions arise only when an individual is committed to goals and projects in the World, when events and actions help or hinder one’s success. And feelings will be felt only if a person has not excluded them from one’s consciousness by acts of repression. Every mode of consciousness is dependent upon the basic, perceptual consciousness. Without inputs of intentional perception, the other modes of experiencing become static and irrelevant as guides to effective mastery of the World and successful adaptation of the self in the World. All modes of experiencing are fed by inputs of the World’s disclosure, refracted and detected by several sensory channels—the eyes, ear, nose, mouth, and skin. The power to abstract belongs to the understanding. It is of its own nature, prone to abstractions. Characteristically, it is most active when it is not restrained by sensory data. It loves to fly upwards to the highest generalities. It is unfettered movement is often evident in language behaviour when the notions behind words become confused and are over-hastily abstracted from the facts. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Indeed, the understanding, enjoying the serene tranquility of abstract wisdom, often leaves the real World so far away that the intellect seems so insubstantial as to be deemed immortal: we must see some of the philosophers which are least divine and most immersed in the senses and denied generally the immortality of the soul, yet come to this point, that whatsoever motions the spirit of humans can act and perform without the organs of the body they thought might remain after death; which are only those of the understanding and not of the affections. The power of abstracting enables and accompanies another characteristic activity of the understanding, namely, that of apprehending. This process seems to be to the understanding what sensing is to the sensorium. Abstracting and apprehending, mutually sport each other, enabling the human being to handle the forms and the formal aspects of things and to deal with the relationships among natural objects and events and among humanmade things, including speech and language. The senses produce organized bits of experience that in an older vocabulary are called “sensible species.” Every sense package goes into the memory whole, as individuals, to be used as the materials of imagining and thinking. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The understanding produces what an older terminology labels “intelligible species.” The understanding produces forms and natures. The understanding, a faculty of the rational soul, refers to both the power and the act of apprehending. The sensible soul also is assigned an apprehensive power by which we perceive the species of sensible things, present or absent, and retain them as wax doth the prints of a seal. Consciousness of the World’s disclosure is always patterned and structured. The pattern and structure of your experienced World is a function of your projects, goals, needs, and values. This means that you and I, chronically pursuing security, wealth, fame, love, or whatnot, are cognizant only of those aspects of the World relevant to the attainment of these ends. To all else, we are effectively blind. It is not strictly true to say we are blind to aspects of the Word not relevant to our projects. Rather, the unattended aspects of experience blur into the background of our consciousness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
We have a subsidiary consciousness of them rather than a focal awareness. They are ground rather than figure, in the language of Gestalt psychology. Thus, the structure of a given mode of consciousness, say, the perceptual r imaginative mode, can be analyzed into its components of the focal awareness—that which is explicitly attended to—and the subsidiary awareness of the background experience. The possibility of our consciousness functioning in a unified, fully turned-on way is limited by our projects. If attainment of goals is impeded by attention to inputs from some sensory channels, we blot that face of the World out of being. Thus, most of us functionally amputate our noses, our tastes bunds, and our capacity to feel something when we touch it, because these experiences may divert us from attaining our goals in the World. If our imagination diverts from restless or anxious scanning of the World, as we seek the main chance or the chief danger, then we blot this possibility out of being. And if feelings, or a body-consciousness, diverts from our serious business, then we bolt that out. The upshot is that a typical human’s consciousness is a distorted, fragmented, disunified being, only half-functional. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The fragmentation, compartmentalization, and mutilation of experience is undertaken by a human oneself. One effects various praxes upon one’s experience, such as I have alluded to. For example, one blots some of one’s consciousness from existence. One separates one’s experience of one’s mind from one’s experience of one’s body, and produces the pernicious and perennial dualism that impedes our attainment of harmony with our World. And by conceptualizing the World, humans freeze it. One must attend to constancies, and give the names, else one could not navigate or transact effectly. And many of us repress our feelings, such that perception, recall, or imagination are cold and lifeless. Every concept is an abstraction from a more global experiencing of the World; and this means that so soon as something is named, the person stops perceiving it: one closes off one’s reception of the being’s transmission of its essence. Thus, must of us live in a conceptual World, unrefreshed by new perceptual experiences of the beings we have named. This can get to be a stagnant World, one that sensitive humans feel to be suffocating and boring. And because the social World in which we live resists change—we are shaped and socialized, such that our imaginative consciousness becomes crippled. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Our feeling-consciousness becomes reduced in intensity and variety. Our willing-consciousness virtually vanishes; and we experience ourselves, not as creatures who live and decide, but as beings lived by social pressures, or glandular explosions. We construct barriers that separate our various modes one from the other, and allow ourselves to experience them serially, never in a unified, simultaneously active way. One minute we perceive; the next minute we imagine; the next we remember; the next we think. There is no reason for us to believe that serialized consciousness is natural, more God-given then unified experience, such as happens to average people in rare moments of ecstasy, in “peak experiences” and in so-called mystical or transcendental experiences. Indeed, there is some reason for suspecting that in young children, before they are socialized, a unified consciousness, fully turned-on, is the mode. And in certain mad-persons and outsiders—those who have “checked out” of the usual social games, or who have somehow escaped complete engulfment by their culture—we can suspect that their consciousness has eluded the fate that the average person is subject to, or has willingly submitted to. #Randolphharris 12 of 23
The capacity for a specialized consciousness, one usually atrophied in the average human—as in seeing, or imagining, or thinking and reasoning, or feeling—enter int the evolution of that human we call an artist. The dazzling images of the Church assault us again and again in the New Testament in an effort to raise our thinking to the proper height. As the Church, actually we are Christ’s body (Ephesians 1.22,23). He is the Head, and as members of His Body we have at the same time a profound unity, diversity, and mutuality. We are a temple (Ephesians 2.19-22). Jesus is the cornerstone, and we are living stones (1 Peter 2.5)—forming a living place of worship. We are the bride (Ephesians 5.25-33). And Christ, or groom, loves us with a holy love which will beings us to the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. We are his sheep, and He is the nurturing shepherd (John 10.14-16, 25-30). Jesus is the vine, as we are the branches. We are organically in Him, drawing all our sustenance for life from Him (John 15.5). What should the truth that we are the Church means to us? It should fill us with wonder and thanksgiving. We ought to sing, “I am His body, His temple, His bride, His sheep, His branch. I have come to His city—to Angels—to brothers and sisters—to God Himself—to the Church glorified—to Jesus—to forgiveness through Christ’s blood.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
The World is like a great express train hurtling towards disaster—perhaps towards total destruction. And in this truly desperate situation certain passengers are running up and down the corridors announcing to each other that the Church is in great danger! The irony of it would be laughable if it were not so searing. Why, most of the Church’s members have already got out at stations en route. And we ourselves shall be getting out soon anyway. And if the crash comes and the World is burn to askes, then the only thing that will survive the disaster will of course the Church. Personally, the doctrine of the Church ought to tell us that we are part of the grandest institution the Universe has ever know, and that we are tragically diminished by non-participation in Christ’s Body. Correspondingly, the Church is diminished by our nonparticipation as well. You and I need the Church! The Scriptures are most explicit regarding this: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching,” reports Hebrews 10.25. This straightforward exhortation ought to be enough in itself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
However, there are several other powerful reasons for faithful participation in the Church, not the least of which is that, as Cyprian argued, we all need a mother. The Church has certainly been that to me. It was the womb which warmed my soul till it was ready for birth which I was led to Christ. I was lovingly nurtured as a youth attending Church. The Church gave me the milk of the Word through strong teaching of my College Department teacher. The Church teaches us to dedicated our lives to God. I owe so much to Christ’s Church: my life, my character, my Worldview, my calling, my vision, my peace, my hope—everything. I believe in the Church! Understanding, then, is what we need the mothering of the Church, we may also understand that we will never benefit as we should from it apart from commitment to hear Head. The entire Christian life is about commitment—first and above all to Christ, but also to the Church, to family, to marriage, to friendship, to ministry. None of these will ever flourish apart from the commitment. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
For example, marriage can never produce the security, satisfaction, and growth that it promises unless there is commitment. This is why today’s provisional live-in arrangements are coming up short. Commitment through hood and bad times is what makes a marriage grown and brings the greatest fulfillment. Humans, on the most elementary level, you do not have to go to church to be a Christian. You do not have to go home to be married either. However, in both cases if you do not, you will have a very poor relationship. Among the growth-inducing benefits of commitment to the Church are: Worship—having your soul swept up to God in the unique elevating power of corporate worship. Hearing the Word—so that your soul can feed on its proper food, brining health to your whole being. Attendance at the Lord’s table—so that you are refreshed as you thank God for the atoning work of Christ. Discipleship—as one is committed to the Church through its ups and downs, an appropriate deepening takes place which the uncommitted heart can never know. Vision and mission—as one remains committed, a supernatural vision for life takes hold which results in mission. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Humans, you need the Church because the Scriptures say you do, because you need a mother and because without commitment to her you will not grow. “And now it came to pass that when Jesus had ascended into Heaven, the multitude did disperse, and every man did take his wife and his children home. And it was noised abroad among the people immediately, before it was yet dark, that the multitude had seen Jesus, and that he had ministered unto them, and that he would also show himself on the morrow unto the multitude. Yea, and even all the night it was noised abroad concerning Jesus; and insomuch did they send forth unto the people that there were many, yea, an exceedingly great number, did labour exceedingly all that night, that they might be on the morrow in the place where Jesus should show himself unto the multitude. And it came to pass that on the morrow, when the multitude was gathered together, behold, Nephi and his brother whom he had raised from the dead, whose name was Timothy, and also his son, whose name was Jonas, and also Mathoni and Mathonihah, his brother, and Kumen, and Kumenonhi and Jeremiah, and Shemnon, and Jonas, and Zedekiah, and Isaiah—now these were the names of the disciples whom Jesus had chosen—and it came to pass that they went forth and stood in the midst of the multitude. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“And behold, the multitude was so great that they did cause that they should be separated into twelve bodies. And the twelve did teach the multitude; and behold, they did cause that the multitude should kneel down upon the face of the Earth, and should pray unto the Father in the name of Jesus. And the disciples did pray unto the Father also in the name of Jesus. And it came to pass that they arose and ministered unto the people. And when they had ministered those same words which Jesus had spoken—nothing varying from the words which Jesus had spoken—behold they knelt again and prayed to the Father in the name of Jesus. And they did pray for that which they most desired; and the desired that the Holy Ghost should be given unto them. And when they had thus prayed, they went down unto the water’s edge, and the multitude followed them. And it came to pass that Nephi went down into the water and was baptized. And he came up out of the water and began to baptize. And he baptized all those whom Jesus had chosen. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“And it came to pass when they were all baptized and had come up out of the water, the Holy Ghost did fall upon them, and they were filled with the Holy Ghost and with fire. And behold, they were encircled about as if it were by fire; and it came down from Heaven, and the multitude did witness it, and did bear record; and Angels did come down out of Heaven and did minister unto them. And it came to pass that while the Angels were ministering unto the disciples, behold, Jesus came and stood in the midst and ministered unto them. And it came to pass that he spake unto the multitude, and commanded them that they should kneel down again upon the Earth and also that his disciples should kneel down upon the Earth. And it came to pass that when they had all knelt down upon the Earth, he commanded his disciples that they should pray. And behold, they began to pray; and they did pray unto Jesus, calling him their Lord and their God. And it came to pass that Jesus departed out of the midst of them and went a little way off from them and bowed himself to the Earth, and he said: Father, I thank thee that thou hast given the Holy Ghost unto these whom I have chosen; and it is because of their belief in me that I have chosen them out of the Word. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“Father, I pray thee that thou wilt give the Holy Ghost unto all them that shall believe in their words. Father, thou hast given them the Holy Ghost because they believe in me; and thou seest that they believe in me because thou hearest them, and they pray unto me; and I pray unto me because I am with them. And now Father, I pray unto thee for them, and also for all those who shall believe on their words, that they may believe in me, that I ay be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we may be one. And it came to pass that when Jesus had thus prayed unto the Father, he came unto his disciples, and behold, they did still continue, without ceasing, to pray unto him; and they did not multiply many words, for it was given unto them what they should pray, and they were filled with desire. And it came to pass that Jesus blessed them as they did pray unto him; and his countenance did smile upon them, and his countenance did smile upon them, and the light of his countenance did shine upon them, and behold they were as white as the countenance and also the garments of Jesus; and behold the whiteness thereof did exceed all the whiteness, yea, even there could be nothing upon the Earth so white as the whiteness thereof. And Jesus said unto them: Pray on; nevertheless they did not cease to pray. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“And he turned from them again, and went a little way off and bowed himself to the Earth; and he prayed again unto the Father saying: Father, I thank thee that thou hast purified those whom I have chosen, because of their faith, and I pray for them, and also for them who shall believe on their words, that they may be purified in me, through faith on their words, even as they are purified in me. Father, I pray not for the World, but for those whom thou hast given me out of the World, because of their faith, that they may be purified in me, that I may be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we may be one, that I may be glorified in them. And when Jesus had spoken these words he came again unto his disciples; and behold they did pray steadfastly, without ceasing, unto him; and he did smile upon them again; and behold they were white, even as Jesus. And it came to pass that he went again a little way off and prayed unto the Father; and tongue cannot speak the words which he prayed, neither can be written by humans the words which he prayed. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“And the multitude did hear and do bear record; and their hearts were open and they did understand in their hearts the words which he prayed. Nevertheless, so great and marvelous were the words which he prayed that they cannot be written, neither can they be uttered by humans. And it came to pass that when Jesus had made an end of praying he came again to the disciples, and said unto them: So great faith have I never seen among all the Jews; wherefore I could not show unto them so great miracles, because of their unbelief. Verily I say unto you, there are none of them that have seen so great things as ye have seen; neither have they heard so great things as ye have heard,” reports 3 Nephi 19-1-36. Following your course, laid down in ancient times, you have come unerringly to the heights of the sky, there where you can survey the wide Earth with no obstruction. May all on which you gaze be to you liking! May all below follow its course as well as you! Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who createst the fruit of the vine. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who didst choose us for Thy service from among all peoples. Thou didst exalt us above all tongues by making us holy through Thy commandments. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
In love hast Thou given us, O Lord our God [Sabbaths for rest] holidays for gladness, festivals and seasons for rejoicing. Thou hast granted us [this Sabbath day] this say of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Season of our Freedom, the Feast of Weeks. The Season of the Giving of our Torah, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Season of our Gladness, the Eighth Day Feast of Assembly, the Season of our Gladness, as a holy convocation, commemorating our liberation from Egypt. Thou didst choose us from among all peoples and didst sanctify us by giving us Thy holy [Sabbath and] Festivals as a joyous heritage. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest [the Sabbath] Israel and the Festivals. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who creates the light of fire. Hail to you, Father, high as the Sun in the southern sky. A king in full power are you, sitting high in the Heavens’ throne room. And I come to you, as faithful subject, to ask you to please stretch forth your many shining hands, and please lay then on my head in benediction. Your heart fully open, shining. Your glory in full beauty, shining. Your grace in full radiance, shining. Please see me on high, Bright King, please watch over me, shining. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Cresleigh Homes
When it comes to building homes, we do not cut corners — unless, of course, those corners will be turned into a window feature. Then it is totally acceptable. 😉 // #MillsStation Residence 1
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This masterfully designed home manages to include all the basics–then adds a little more. Note the transform and floor to ceiling windows, the slanted ceilings, the large great room, spacious kitchen. Special amenities makes this home stand-out from others in its class. Note all the natural light, the sliding glass door to the patio and the wealth of closet and storage space.
Of Happy Times, when All He Had Endured Would Seem a Feather to the Mighty Prize!
I must be getting absent-minded. Whenever I complain that things are not what they used to be, I always forget to include myself. Humans grow and fulfill their peculiar possibilities—physical, mental, and spiritual—only through struggle, and, moreover, struggle to find one’s own way. To eliminate it is virtually to annihilate all possibilities save the one actualized, the possibility of being like somebody else. Behavioural engineers are correct when they discuss the undisputable value of programmed instruction, say, of the content of textbooks. It removed “needless struggle” from the teachers’ effort to impart knowledge. They argue that elimination of struggles saves time, and frees teacher and pupil alike for free dialogue, discussion, and other unprogrammable encounters. What is overlooked is that there is something monstrous, at least to me, of having one thousand pupils reading the same book in the same way—which is what a “programmed text” requires the reader to do. The fact is, there are many ways for people to master skills or subject matter, and many ways to read a book. It has by no means been proven that programmed materials are better, than, say, lectures, demonstrations, and the struggle on a student’s part to learn efficient ways to tackle subject-matter. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
We may have been sold a bill of goods. We may be so enamored of the scientific aura exuded by “learning packages,” that we have become blind to shortcomings. However, since there may be something of value in programed instruction for schools and universities, “P.I.” should be optional, not compulsory. One high school student I know is obliged to study English grammar from a programmed text, and it is driving him silly. I advised him to get hold of an old fashioned book and read it sub rosa. Programmers can program humans who conform to Hitler’s or Himmler’s image of the ideal, useful (to the state) human. They can program humans who conform to the image of humans who have made it in the United States of America. They only thing they cannot so far program is commitment itself. Perhaps soon they will, and scientific knowledge will thereby be advanced. That is good. However, each human must, by oneself and for oneself, select goals worth one’s struggle to achieve them. It is the meaningful struggle itself—not the product, the success or failure—that makes humans. Guaranteed success without full engagement produces suave but moronic “nebbishes.” We may have to develop a new kind of specialist, as automation and programming of behaviour eliminate struggle and risk from more realms of existence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The new specialist might be called a struggleologist, or a “de-programmer” (in fact, this is what the guru and therapist are). It will be one’s task to treat with “programmed humans” who have enough soul left to realize one is bored to death. Perhaps one too can develop a program, whereby, in small incremental steps, one will reintroduce one’s client to tolerate increasing degrees of uncertainty, increasing degrees of challenge. One will be a coach of spiritual weightlifting. One’s will be an “antiprogram” program. As I see them, programmers are invaluable in settings where humans want or need to function like interchangeable parts in a social system, where “training” is the objective. Some kind of learning-programs is necessary to train soldiers, or to indoctrinate people in traffic rules, or the rules in Emily Post etiquette book. Perhaps programmed instruction is best seen as the swiftest way for a society to impart some of its past—its culture, knowledge, and skills—to the oncoming generations. However, for education, which entails inventing and actualizing the future, I do not believe packaged teaching programs are relevant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Imagine the fully programmed human sitting, waiting for the next frame in one’s teaching machine to appear—and the electricity breaks down. One no longer knows how to search for facts, though one may be surrounded by them. One is like the city boy who starves to death in the jungle, surrounded by enough protein and carbohydrates to feed a million humans—but not in the form of bread, streak, caramel apple tarts, New York cheesecake, cobb salad, and espresso. Survival training in the army and outwardbound training in the Peace Corps are embodiments of antiprogramming. However, as fast as these antiprogram programs are evolved, new programs spring up. I think that like antibiotics, programming is a mixed curse-blessing. A sterile gut produced by massive doses of penicillin and aureomycin cannot cope with minor infection. A sterile soul, produced by massive doses of programming, cannot cope with the unprogrammed disclosure of the World. Once one is on those giant shoulders of the master one chooses, if one is to grow, one must leap, grope, and struggle to fulfill new possibilities. The quest cannot be simplified, and it takes courage in the face of repeated failure to make actual what was an invented possibility. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Scientific programming may be the way in which humans skills are quickly attained for this new Utopia we face. However, if a human is not to go mad, or become wholly robot-like oneself in this impending World, ten Education—with a capital E—must be reorganized, so as to awaken imagination and courage to struggle in millions. Imagination is called for so people can invent new values, beyond comfort, ease, and sensual enjoyment, worth pursuing (these latter will be produced automatically, by machines). And courage will be called for, so that meaningful struggle, that vital ingredient, will remain in the World. Then, the new World will be populated by humans, not humanoids. And these humans will have the inner resources to keep inventing and producing new Worlds, whenever their present World becomes static and not fit for the whole human to live in. The implication for education is clear: where training is called for, let it be done quickly and efficiently with all the technical help available. However, let the schools and universities have on their staff those who expertise is, not training, but rather the talents of the guru. These humans will aim at helping learners to transcend their own programming, to invent new goals, and to address them with vigour and courage. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Change is in the World. The being of the World is always changing. My body is in the World, and it changes from instant to instant. Things and other people are in the World; and they metamorphose swiftly or ever so slowly. I may not be aware of the change that is the World. The World-for-me may not appear to change; but rather it may seem congealed, constant, fixed. I may also experience my own being as unchanging. In fact, people strive to construct a stable World, a World they can control and get their bearings in. A view of the World exclusively as constant is an achievement—a praxis, not a “given.” A naïve view of the World sees it as both a “buzzing, blooming confusion” and as stable and “structured.” We simply cannot navigate in a World that changes swiftly. And so we “freeze” it by pledging not to notice change until it has reached some critical degree, until it has gone so far it can no longer be ignored. Then, we might acknowledge it. If everything changed during the night, and you awakened to a new experience of yourself and the World, you might be terrified. However, if suddenly, the World froze, so that as everything now is, it would remain for eternity, you would be horrified. It would be hell—a hell of perfect predictability and boredom. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
A growth cycle can also be triggered when goals and projects turn stale; when money can no longer buy anything that the person wants; when the fame that was once the person’s glory has turned to ashes; and when the love of that woman, long-pursued, is now experienced as cloying, suffocating possessiveness. The lack of fulfillment when long-enjoyed goals are achieved signifies, however, indirectly, that our personal being has changed, unnoticed by us. Our concept of ourselves, as the person who would be fulfilled by this pleasure or be made happier by that “success,” has gotten out of touch with the reality of our being. We are in for some surprises. The boredom signified the imminence of growth. The time is ripe for the experience of new goals, and new unfoldings of our being. It is time to let the World and ourselves disclose their being to our experience. We may undergo this new experience (if we let it happen) in delight, or in the terrifying realization that we are going out of our minds. The World is full of Being, of many beings—some human, some animal, some inanimate. Being has many forms. Every being in the World can be likened to a kind of broadcasting station, transmitting signals of its being to the World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
This transmission is ceaseless. As people and things and animals exit, they change; and they broadcast the fact of this change into the World. You and I are both beings, but beings of a special kind. We have (or are) awareness. We are embodied consciousness. We experience the transmissions that originate in our bodies; and through our bodies, we experience some of the transmissions of being that originate elsewhere. As human beings, we originate transmissions of our being, and we receive transmissions from other beings. My being discloses itself to me—I experience my own being—and it is disclosed to you through my appearance and behaviour. My experience of my being is different from your experience of my being. And my experience of the being you disclose to me differs from your experience of your own being. Humans are concept-makers. They form concepts of the being of the World, and of one’s own self-being. A concept is an abstraction from what is. From a phenomenological and existential perspective, a concept is a commitment to stop noticing the changing disclosures (disclosures of change) incessantly being transmitted by the beings in the World. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
I will suspend my concepts when my projects in life (which depend on accurate concepts of reality for their fulfillment) are thwarted, when my predictions about how things will act or react prove wrong. Then, if I adopt the attitude of “let the World disclose itself to me,” I will have grown. My concepts of being can change under more pleasant circumstances than failure. In those rare moments when I have gratified all of my urgent needs—I have done my work, I feel good and fulfilled, and I want nothing out f the World just now—then the World will disclose all kinds of new faces to me. I am letting the World “be itself, for itself.” I may then notice all kinds of things about my friends, trees, the beautiful Sky, animals, whatever is there; things that call upon me to enlarge my previous concepts of those same beings. Thus, success and gratification can be psychedelic (consciousness-expanding). They can open up my World for me and let me experience it in new dimensions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
You may notice that I appear different from the last time you saw me. My behaviour and my verbal disclosures will show a change to you. You will say of me, “He has changed, he has grown.” You will have to modify your concept of me at that time. If you do, then you will have grown. Your action toward me will reflect your changed concept of me, your changed experience of me. And I shall then say to you, “You have changed; you have grown.” You will feel confirmed in your being. You will feel understood; you will feel that the disclosure of your changed being—in words and actions—has been received and acknowledged by me. I have a certain concept of my being, of myself. This is my self-concept. It is my belief about my own being. My being discloses itself to me in the form of my intentional experience of myself. I experience the feel of my body’s existence. I experience my own action from the inside. I form a concept of myself—what I am like, how I react, what I am capable of and what I cannot do—on the basis of this self-experience. You may also tell me what and who you think I am, on the basis of your experience of the outside of my being; and I take your belief into account. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
We may agree that I am thus and such a kind of person—a man, a psychologist, kind, strong, able to play a fair game of handball, unable to sing in keys, et cetera. Once I have formed this concept of who and what I am, I proceed to behave in the World as if that is all and everything I am or can be. My behaviour, my self-disclosure, endlessly confirms my self-concept. It is as if I have taken a pledge to present this and only this as my being. In fact, my being, like all Being, is changed. This change discloses itself to me though my experience and to others through my behaviour. However, if you and I have formed a concept of my being, neither of us pays attention to the ceaseless transmission of my changing being. It is transmitted, but no receiver is tuned in to acknowledge the change. Things can get more complicated. I may notice the changes, and change my concept of myself accordingly. You may not notice the changes. You treat me as if I were the same person. I do not recognize myself as the one you believe I am. I feel you are talking to somebody else, not me. Or, you may notice the changes before I do, and change your concept of me accordingly. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Again, I may not recognize the “me” that you seem to be addressing. Your concept of me is disjunctive from my self-concept. Or, I may display and disclose the newly experienced facets of my being to you. You may say, “I do not recognize you. You are not yourself today. I do not like the person you seem to be. I will come see you when you have gotten back into your ‘right mind.’” If you thus disconfirm my newly experienced and tentatively disclosed being, and if I am unsure of myself, I may try to suppress and repress my newly emerged being and seek to appear to you and to me as the person I was. If I do this chronically, and successfully, I enter an untenable situation; and I may become mad. When I experience you, I may not be undergoing a perceptual experience, but rather an imaginative experience of your being. I tune out your disclosed being, and I replace it by an imaginative experience. Or a fantasy experience. Imagination veils perception. In fact, much of our experience of the people in our lives, even when they are face-to-face with us, is not perceptual, but imaginative, or fantastical. It is like a mode of experience embodied in one’s conscious experience of the World, but may not be true. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Sometimes we have to realize that our instincts and intuition may not be accurate or there may be some reason they are not applicable in this situation. We may be reading the person correctly, but there may be something about their being that is acting as an obstruction to our desires. Perhaps the person is just fascinated by our attention, perhaps the person is in a relationship, or perhaps the individual is just nice? The perceptual mode of experiencing entails the readiness to receive inputs of disclosure from the other, such that one’s awareness of the other is a changing awareness. However, the imaginative and fantasy modes of experiencing “tune out” fresh disclosures. My image of you remains fixed, unhanged by your disclosures, because I do not pay them any attention. Now, if you can break through my imaginative experience, or my fantasy image, of you; if you can catch my attention, by a shout, a blow, a scream of pain or joy—I may, as it were, “wake up” from my daydream-like experience of your being and undergo a fresh perceptual experience of you. You will surprise me. If you do this, if you get me “un-hung” from fixation on these modes of experiencing you—the imaginative and the fantasy modes—so that I can now perceive you, I shall have grown. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
My consciousness of you will have expanded. My awareness will have grown; and where I had previously been aware of you only as an image or a concept (though I was not reflectively aware that his was an image), now I can experience you perceptually. If my consciousness expands so that I can experience you or the World in many more modes than I could hitherto—imaginatively, perceptually, recollectively, in the mode of fantasy—then I have grown. I am my awareness; and if my awareness expands, I have grown. My World of awareness may not only be fixed in one mode of experiencing, exempla gratia, the abstracting, conceptual mode or the imaginative mode; my World may also be confined to some one or two sensory “channels” of awareness. For example, I may limit my clear awareness only to visual and auditory impressions and exclude the Worlds of smelling, tasting, or the feel of my own being. If you can turn me on to my feelings, to smells, to tastes; if you can wake my imagination; if you can get me to experience my being–you will have expanded my awareness and helped me to grow. In deep moments of intercession with God, we let the World disclose more of its changing being to us; and we may find ourselves experiencing more of the variety in the World. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
When we let our personal being happen—we do not try to monitor and control it so that it conforms to a concept, yours or mine, of my being. Fascinated engagement at anything can let change happen and be experienced such that the next time I reflect upon myself, I find my experience of myself different from how I remember it the last time I reflected. And my concept of myself will have to change to encompass the new experiencing I have undergone. Challenge, fascination, total involvement in some task or project such that self-consciousness and self-conceptualizing is not the mode of experience, will permit the changed self-being to experienced. Certainly the will of a spiritual being is the one thing in His creation that God chooses not to override and force to take on a specific character. He allows it to go its way or ways. However, that does not mean that such a being gets what it wants. Indeed, that proves to be impossible for such a will, which is following a delusion. It only means that God will not force it to do what He wants. It has its choice-though it does not have its choice of the consequences of choosing what it wants. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
And one of the consequences of choosing what one wants without regard to God’s will is enslavement to one’s own self-conflicted will. On the path of self-will people eventually come to the place where they cannot choose what God wants and cannot want God. They can only want—themselves! “I wake and feel the fell of dark,” the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins wrote, “The lost are like this and their scourge to be as I am mine, their sweating selves.” This is the condition of the “lost.” Obviously there is something very deep here and something crucial to God’s purposes in creating human beings, which we at present cannot understand. Thus God permits there to be a World such as we live in, where the wills of human beings are often set on what is evil, wrong, or foolish and where even good and wise inclinations are frequently defeated by other components of the persons involved: the “sin in our members,” social influences, mistaken ideas, overwhelming feelings, or disconnections and ruptures in the depths of the soul. The outcome may be a whole person (or even a whole society) intently focused upon accomplishing evil, or it may be a person (or society) baffled and torn by the chaos and evil it finds within itself—as the “modern liberal” person and society of today. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Some self-actualized beings do not wish to enter into any precise relationship with others. They do not give personal initiation or accept disciples formally. However, the sensitive will feel that some sort of inner benefit was got by the contact, non-visible and impersonal though it was. The meeting with a higher personage, whether on the physical plane or on an inner one, is to be considered fortunate, and a blessing upon one’s own higher endeavours. The body is a battery and there are electrical radiations from certain parts of the body, certain centers—the most important center being the eye—and that through those radiations, a part of the aura is actually projected outwards. This would also explain why some do not like to have their food looked at by others, which they consider a polluting act. “Behold, now it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words he looked round about again on the multitude, and he said unto them: Behold, my time is at hand. I perceive that ye are weal, that ye cannot understand all my words which I am commanded of the Father to speak unto you at this time. Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and pinder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“However, now I go unto the Father, and also to show myself unto the lost tribes of Israel, for they are not lost unto the Father, for he knowneth whither he hath taken them. And it came to pass that when Jesus had thus spoken, he cast his eyes round about again on the multitude, and beheld they were in tears, and did look steadfastly upon him as if they would ask him to tarry a little longer with them. And he said unto them: Behold, my bowels are filled with compassion towards you. Have ye any that are sick among you? Being them hither. Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, or maimed, or leprous, or that are withered, or that are deaf, or that are afflicted in any manner? Being them hither and I will heal them, for I have compassion upon you; my bowels are filled with mercy. For I perceive that ye desire that I should show unto you what I have done unto your brethren at Jerusalem, for I see that your faith is sufficient that I should heal you. And it came to pass that when he had thus spoken, all the multitude, with one accord, did go forth with their sick. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“They also went forth with their afflicted, and their lame, and with their blind, and with their dumb, and with all them that were afflicted in any manner; and he did heal them every one as they were brought forth unto him. And they did all, both they who had been healed and they who were whole, bow down at his feet, and did worship him; and as many as could come for the multitude did kiss his feet, insomuch that they did bathe his feet with their tears. And it came to pas that he commanded that their little children should be brought. So they brought their little children and set them down upon the ground round about him, and Jesus stood in the midst; and the multitude gave way till they had all been brought unto him. And it came to pass that when they had all been brought, and Jesus stood in the midst, he commanded the multitude that they should knew down upon the ground. And it came to pass that when they had knelt upon the ground, Jesus groaned within himself, and said: Father, I am troubled because of the wickedness of the people of the house of Israel. And when he had said these words, he himself also knelt upon the Earth; and behold he prayed unto the Father, and the things which he prayed cannot be written, and the multitude did bear record who heard him. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And after this manner do they bear record: They eye hath never seen, neither hath the ear heard, before, so great and marvelous things as we saw and heard Jesus speak unto the Father; and no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak; and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us unto the Father. And it came to pass that when Jesus had made an end of praying unto the Father, he arose; but so great was the joy of the multitude that they were overcome. And it came to pas that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise. And they arose from the Earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now, behold, my joy is full. And when he had said these words, he wept, and the multitude bare record of it, and he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them. And when he had done this he wept again; and he spake unto the multitude, and said unto them: Behold your little ones. And as they looked to behold they cast their eyes towards Heaven, and they saw the Heavens open, and they saw Angels descending out of Heaven as it were in the midst of fire. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“And the Angels came down and encircled those little ones about, and they were encircled about with fire; and the Angels did minister unto them. And the multitude did see and hear and bear record; and they know that their record is true for they all of them did see and hear, every man for himself; and they were in number about two thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men, women, and children,” reports 3 Nephi 17.1-25. Look up, look up, at the glorious Sun, the World calls to me, and says, “Look up!” From high above, I can feel the heat descending, warming me as I walk here below. I wish to look up, but my eyes are not meant for such power. I will feel the warmth, though, and thank you, Lord. Our God and God of our fathers, please accept our rest. Please sanctify us through Thy commandments, and please grant our portion in Thy Torah. Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and please make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Please purify our heart to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, please gran that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may Israel who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
Take a look into Residence One at #Riverside, located at #PlumasRanch, in our blog post today. Link in bio! https://cresleigh.com/blog/
Disparted, and Far Upward Could be Seen Blue Heaven, and a Silver Car, Air-Borne!
Wonderful people do not always make wonderful parents. The year 2020 and beyond—more than any previous decade—will be a period in which human choice will operate more decisively than ever before. The rapid development of technology has freed humans from slavery to environmental and biological circumstances. No longer is one a prisoner of a particular geographic locality, because one can travel easily to the other side of the World. One can converse with people around the globe via new electronic devices. New bio-medical advances are making it possible for one to have a longer life and better health. Improved economic systems have removed—at least in many nations—the once ever-present danger of starvation. We now see the future not as a World that is forced upon us, but as a World that we ourselves create. Terrorism and crime will persist, but so will scientific and technological breakthroughs. Some aspect of the World’s problems will grow worse, but others will improve, and our lives. Another scenario would see us being carried away by the newest developments in technology. Incredible advances in computer intelligence and decision making; In vitro fertilization babies implanted in a woman’s uterus, or perhaps grown entirely outside the human body. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
There will be a new species of microscopic and macroscopic life being created through recombinant work with genes; cities under domes will make it possible to expand urban sprawl into the desert, with the whole environment controlled by people; completely artificial environments permitting human beings to live in space: these are some of the new technologies that may affect our lives. They have in common the fact that each removes humankind further and further from nature, from the soil, the weather, the Sun, the wind, and all natural processes. These developments would produce changes of unknown magnitude as we endeavour to manufacture decisions and lives and environments that are completely human-made. Hopefully this will affect us for good. It is possible that evolution will lead us to a supraconsciousness and supermind of vastly more power than mind and consciousness now. The persons have hitherto undreamed-of potential. This person’s nonconscious intelligence is vastly capable. It can control many bodily functions, can heal diseases and viruses, can create new realities. It can penetrate the future, see things at a distance, communicate thoughts directly. This person has a new awareness of one’s strength, abilities, and power, an awareness of self as a process of change. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
This person lives in a new Universe, where all the familiar concepts have disappeared—time, space, object, matter, cause, effect—nothing remains but vibrating energy. We see a new World around us. We have the impression tat we are at the dawn of a new period, with all the excitement, the hopes, and also the risks which are inherent in a new start. Who will be able to live in this utterly strange World? I believe it will be those who are young in mind and spirit—and that often means those who are young in body as well. As our youth grow up in a World where trends and views such as I have been describing envelop them, many will become new persons—fit to live in the World of tomorrow—and they will be joined by seniors who have absorbed the transforming concepts. Not all young people, of course. I hear that young people today are only interested in jobs and security, that they are not persons who take risks or make innovations, just conservatives looking out for “number one.” Possibly that is so, but it certainly is not true of the young people with whom I come in contact. However, I am sure that some will continue to live in our present World; many, however, will dwell in this New World of tomorrow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Where will they come from? It is my observation that they already exist. Where have I found them? I find them among corporation executives who have given up the gray-flannel rat race, the lure of high salaries and stock options and Swiss annuities, to live a simpler new life. I find them still among some in the corporate World, as well as those young men and women in blue jeans who are defying most of the values of today’s culture to live in new ways. I find them among priests and nuns and minister who preach about how wonderful God is. I find them among women who are vigorously rising above the limitations that society has placed on their personhood. I find them among marginalized groups of people who are pushing out from generations of passivity into an assertive, optimistic life. I find them among those who have experienced encounter groups, who are finding a place for feelings as well as thoughts in their lives. I find them among creative school dropouts who are thrusting into higher reaches than their sterile schooling permits. I realize, too, that I saw something of this person in my years as a psychotherapist, when clients were choosing a freer, ricer, more self-directed kind of life for themselves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
These are a few of the places in which I have found persons wo may be able to live in this transformed World. As I have experienced these qualities of the person of tomorrow, I find they have certain traits in common. These persons have an openness to the World—both inner and outer. They are open to experience, to new ways of seeing, new ways of being, new ideas and concepts. They have a desire for authenticity. These persons value communication as a means of telling it the way it is. They reject the hypocrisy, deceit, and double talk of our culture. They are willing to explore and learn new science and technology. Many of these self-actualized individuals have a desire for wholeness. They do not like to live in a compartmentalized World—body and mind, health and illness, intellect and feeling, science and common sense, individual and group, sane and insane, work and play. The compassionate beings strive rather for a wholeness of life, with thought, feeling, physical energy, psychic energy, healing energy, all being integrated in experience. There is a drive for a new form of closeness, of intimacy, of shared purpose. They are seeking new forms of communication in such a community—verbal as well as nonverbal, feeling as well as intellectual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
As people continue to evolve they become more caring persons, eager to be of help to others when the need is real. It is a gentle, subtle, nonmoralistic, nonjudgmental caring. In addition to being open to others, these healthy people feel a closeness to, and a caring for, elemental nature. They are ecologically minded, still care about economic advancement of society, and get their pleasure from an alliance with the forces of nature, rather than in the conquest of nature. While knowing that education is extremely important, these individuals also believe in the authority within. They have a trust in their own experience and a profound sense of discernment of others. They make their own moral judgments, even demanding justice and equality for all. Because of all of the hard work that goes into making a living and being aware that reducing physical stress on the body, these self-actualized people have a respect for property, public and private. They can live with affluence, but it is not the only way of life. Many people are also yearning for the spiritual as they wish to find meaning and purpose in life that is greater than the individual. These are some of the characteristics I see in current and future leaders. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
This new World will be more human and humane. It will explore and develop the richness and capacities of the human mind and spirit. It will produce individuals who are more integrated and whole. It will be a World that prizes the individual person—the greatest of our resources. It will be a more natural World, with a renewed love and respect for nature. It will develop a more human science, based on new and less rigid concepts. Its technology will be aimed at the enhancing, rather than the exploitation, of persons and nature. It will release creativity as individuals sense their power, their capacities, their freedom. The winds of scientific, social, and cultural change are blowing strongly. They will envelop us in this New World of tomorrow, and the changes will be in the direction of more humanness. The drive toward good, which is naturally implanted in the human will by its Creator, is splintered, corrupted, and eventually turned against itself as a result of practical self-deification and all that accompanies it. The question, “What good can I bring about?” is replaced by “How can I get my way?” Manipulation, deception, seduction, and malice replace transparency, sincerity, and goodwill, as exaltation of self replaces submission and service to God. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Reflecting on fallen humanity “as usual,” the existentialist thinkers of the last two centuries have emphasized the splintered, self-conflicted, and frustrated condition of the human will in its natural state. Dr. Freud and many other psychologists have, in their own ways, done the same. All of this has now become part of the modern person’s self-understanding and is accepted as part of standard educational programs and of the popular and other arts. Jean-Paul Sarte and his existentialist associates accordingly turned the ridicule of sincerity, as necessarily a posture of self-deception, into a fine art. Ambiguity of will was elevated by them and others into basic human nature, from which “freedom” was made to emerge in the form of arbitrary—perhaps totally irrational decision and action. Does not that sound like Helter Skelter once more? As an account of the usual fallen humanity, theirs was really a very penetrating analysis—one now standing in literary, musical, cinematic presentations of life. Whereas in prior times a focused and coherent will was assumed to be necessary to human freedom, today the assumption is that freedom only comes with an incoherent and vagrant will. Truth, by contrast, is regarded as bondage and rigorous identity as a prison that prevents me from endlessly creating myself and re-creating myself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The powers of humans—the faculties of understanding, reason, imagination, memory, appetite, and will are distinguished from one another because they function in special ways. The senses are responsible for experience and keep humans in touch with their environment, physical and social, external and internal. They also feed information to the inner human. Organizing human’s restless, dynamic spirit in distinctive ways, the senses with the help of memory builds states of mind and being that are essential to the functioning of understanding, reason, and imagination. These three faculties, setting homo sapiens off from one’s relatives in the animal World, draw upon materials stored in memory, contributed rational experience, states, and habits to the storehouse, and used the complex of experience in ways that make it possible for humans to control themselves and the forces of physical reality, and even at times to bring one’s spirit in touch with the divine spirit. The imagination in its own right afforded images of accumulated experience that memory alone cannot produce and it affords rational imagery that reason alone cannot create. The understanding enables humans to abstract and isolate items from the rush and surge of immediate behaviour. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The understanding enables one to stop experience, consider it, interpret it, account for it, and “reason” about it. In a word, the understanding is the power of dealing with the forms of experience. It is often said, in figurative language, to be the “place” or home of forms. The more abstract, the more formal, one’s thinking, the neater it is to “pure” understanding. The power was known also under a Latin term, intellect, but beginning with Elyot the English preferred their own word, understanding. In The Book Named the Governour (1531), Sir Thomas Elyot wrote that the understanding, the “most pure part of the soul,” is “in Latin, Intellectuals, whereunto I can find no proper English, but Understanding.” The understanding manifested two kinds of motions. It seized upon and gathered unto itself a unit of formal experience. This movement can be compared to the simplest and fastest of stimulus-response events. It was the element of intellectual movement. It was intellect behaving nondiscursively. On the other hand, reason, so far as it was separate from understanding, was the intellect moving discursively. This kind of movement was most evident when humans combined symbols, such as words, in various ways. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Speaking and writing are constant illustrations of discursive reason. Grammar and logic deal with the forms of reasoning. The term discourse is intended to denote the manifest activity of reason, and humans are a rational being because they use speech. The action of the mind, id est, primarily understanding and reason, were generally considered to be apprehension, composition, division, discoursing, reasoning, memory, which come include in invention, and judgment. Intellectual movement is explained by postulating thee aspects of mental life and a characteristic function. One aspect is the passive, often referred to as the passive intellect. It is passive in the sense of being acted upon, of being affected. At birth human’s intellect is like a clean slate or sheet of paper or tablet. A condition of being acted upon implies a change or alteration of the condition, and this implies, in turn, that something can be take away. Hence change in the passive state is sometimes said to be that of suffering. There was a further implication: if something could be taken away, something could be added. Accordingly, passivity entails both receiving and giving up. The passive understanding is that state of mind that receives and yields. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Another aspect of mental life is called the possible understanding. It is that which is potential to receiving and giving up. The mind cannot receive and yield without establishing the potentiality of the intellectual action was coupled by philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition. It must be noted that potentiality is employed in two senses, first in the sense of the capacity to receive, and second in the sense of a capacity to use what has been received. The mind has both the power to learn and to use what it learns. Truths are decayed from among the children of men. Truth, properly speaking, resides only in the intellect, as said before, but things are called true in virtue of the truth residing in an intellect. Hence the mutability of truth must be regarded from the point of view of the intellect, the truth of which consists in its conformity to the thing understood. Now this conformity may vary in two ways, even as any other likeness, through change in one of the two extremes. Hence in one way truth varies on the part of the intellect, from the fact that a change of opinion occurs about a thing which in itself has not changed, and in another way, when the thing changed, but not the opinion; and in either way there can be a change from true to false. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If, then, there is an intellect wherein there can be no alternation of opinions, and the knowledge of which nothing can escape, in this immutable truth. Now such is the divine intellect, as is clear from what has been said before. Hence the truth of the divine intellect is immutable. However, the truth of our intellect is mutable; not because it is itself the subject of change, but in as far as our intellect changes from truth to falsity, for thus forms many be called mutable. Whereas the truth of the divine intellect is that according to which natural things are said to be true, and this is altogether immutable. The true and being are convertible terms. Hence just as being is not generated nor corrupted of itself, but accidentally, in so far as this being or that is corrupted or generated, so does truth change, not so as that no truth remains, but because that truth does not remain which was before. A proposition not only has truth, as other things are said to have it, in so far, that is, as they correspond to that which is the design of the divine intellect concerning them; but it said to have truth in a special way, in so far as it indicates the truth of the intellect, which consists in the conformity of the intellect with a thing. When this disappears, the truth of an opinion changes and consequently the truth of the proposition. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
So therefore thus proposition, “Socrates sits,” is true as long as he is sitting, both with the truth of the thing, in so far as the expression is significative, and with the truth of signification, in so far as it signifies a true opinion. When Socrates rises, the first truth remains, but the second is changed. The sitting of Socrates, which is the cause of the truth of the proposition, “Socrates sits,” has not the same meaning when Socrates sits, after he sits, and before he sits. Hence the truth which results, varies, and is variously signified by these propositions concerning present, past, or future. Thus it does not follow, though one of the three propositions is true, that the same truth remains invariable. The third aspect of mental life is named the active intellect, or the agent intellect. It is that which renders the actual the potential. Passivity, possibility, and potentiality are states or conditions of mind which set up a readiness to act; the agent intellect is the mind acting. The agent intellect is like light, for it is as essential to mental activity as light is to vision. Mind is what it is, said by Aristotle, “by virtue of becoming all things,” and “by virtue of making all things”; and the power of making things is “a sort of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours into actual colours.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The active intellect appears to have been called in Latin, ingenium, and in English, wit or intelligence. One notes, in passing, that grammarians, knowing that words and speech are of the mind, referred to language behaviour as having an active voice and a passive vice. The agent is that which is called the wit of humans, acumen or subtlety, sharpness of invention, when one doth invent of oneself without a teacher, when one learns anew, which abstracts those intelligible species from the phantasy, and transfers them to the passive understanding. That which the imagination hath take from the sense, this agent judgeth of, whether it be true or false; and being so judged one commits it to the passible [passive intellect?] to be kept. The agent is a doctor or teacher, the passive a scholar; and one’s office [id est, the passive intellect’s office] is to keep and farther judge of such things as are committed to one’s charge: as a bare and raised table at first, capable of all forms and notions. As passive understanding grows and develops, its contents are thought of as states or conditions. Memory plays its part in maintaining the, Five states are usually recognized: Intelligence, Wisdom (sapientia), Knowledge (scientia), Prudence (prudential), and Art (ars). #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Fully developed in the mature human who has been properly educated, the produce, under proper stimulation, statements marked by truth rather than falsehood, and as a result yield acts accepted as good rather than bad. Hence these states of mind, Intelligence, Wisdom (sapientia), Knowledge (scientia), Prudence (prudential), and Art (ars), are often called the intellectual virtues, or intellectual habits. Two additional states are sometimes identified, Opinion (opinio) and Suspicion or Doubt (suspicio), which are thought of as sources of false statement and bad conduct. The two are occasionally called habits, but never virtues. The states taken together constitute the possibility and potentiality for thinking and acting. An intellect act involves intelligence (the doing of what only intellect can do). It carries the certainty of sensory-derived materials, and the certainty or “acceptance” of the intellectual act itself, as in apprehension, when the species of a thing embedded in an image is recognized as human, or ox, and reflected by the common concrete noun. Involved, also, is the generalization of intellectual acts into the idea reflected by the abstract noun, exempli gratia, animal, or animalness; and the discursive action of the intellect, seen when intellectual objects are combined, as in the proposition and the syllogism. #RandolphHaris 16 of 22
Ratiocination or reasoning is distinguished from understanding and assigned to a separate power or ability, the reason. Nevertheless, understanding continued to carry three meanings. It means the state or condition of the human built up as a result of rational acts and experience. It means the power of abstracting and of forming apprehensions and conceptions. It means the power of supplying both intellectual materials and first principles with which reason works. Involved more or less prominently are all actions of the passive, potential, and active aspects of the mind. The two modes of activity are labeled invention and judgment. They comprise searching, exploring, and finding on the one hand, and judging, accepting, and rejecting on the other. The mind will consider what it invents, comparing the product with its criteria of truth and goodness. Invention and judgment thus embraces the mind creative and the mind critical. Another distinct activity of the intellect is called “interpretative.” It holds a special interest for modern students of the communication process. The intellect starts interpreting the moment humans communicate. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
In communication there are two acts, excogitatio and significatio. The former is related to the configuratio or the confirmatio of knowledge, and is the act of expressing outwardly the inner experience. Signification carries the sign and symbol aspect of utterance and reveals the speaker’s knowledge and meaning. The intellect refers to the working intellect, specifically to two chief modes of activity recognizable when the understanding and reason, either alone or in concert, engage in sustained endeavour. An intellect thus constituted has a characteristic function—that of abstracting. It abstracts qualities from the experience supplied by imagination, memory, and the sense, and combines them into forms. The process of abstracting and forming is said to make experience intelligible. A particular act of the senses produces, in contrast, sensible species. Using modern terms, we speak of conceiving and perceiving. “And verily, verily, I say unto you that I have other sheep, which are not of this land, neither of the land of Jerusalem, neither in any parts of that land round about whither I have been to a minister. For they whom I speak and they who have not as yet heard my voice; neither have I at any time manifested myself unto them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“However, I have received a commandment of the Father that I shall go unto them, and that they shall hear my voice, and shall be numbered among my sheep, that there may be one fold and one shepherd; therefore I go to show myself uno them. And I command you that ye shall write these sayings after I am gone, that if it so be that my people at Jerusalem, they who have seen me and been with me in my ministry, do not ask the Father in my name, that they may receive a knowledge of you by the Holy Ghost, and also of the other tribes whom they know not of, that these sayings which ye shall write shall be kept and shall be manifested unto the Gentiles, that through the fulness of the Gentiles, the remnant of their seed, who shall be scattered forth upon the face of the Earth because of their unbelief, may be brought in, or may be brought to a knowledge of me, their Redeemer. And then will I gather them in from the four quarters of the Earth; and then will I fulfil the covenant which the Father hath made unto all the people of the house of Israel. And blessed are the Gentiles, because of their belief in me, in and of the Holy Ghost, which witnesses unto them of me and of the Father. Behold, because of their belief in me, saith the Father, and because of the unbelief of you, O house of Israel, in the latter day shall the truth come unto the Gentiles, that the fulness of these things shall be made known unto them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“However, wo, saith the Father, unto the unbelieving of the Gentiles—for notwithstanding they have come forth upon the face of this land, and have scattered my people who are of the house of Israel; and my people who are of the house of Israel have been cast out from among them, and have been trodden under feet by them; and because of the mercies of the Father unto the Gentiles, and also the judgments of the Father upon my people who are of the house of Israel, verily, verily, I say unto you, that after all this, and I have caused my people who are of the house of Israel to be smitten, and to be afflicted, and to be slain, and to be cast out from among them, and to become hated by them, and to become a hiss and a byword among them—and thus commandeth the Father that I should say unto you: At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fullness of my gospel, and shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, and shall be lifted up in pride of their hearts above all nations, and above all the people of the whole Earth, and shall be filled with all manners of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret abominations. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“And if they shall do all those things, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, behold, saith the Father, I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them. And then will I remember my covenant which I have made unto my people, O house of Israel, and I will bring my gospel into them. And I will show unto thee, O house of Israel, that the Gentiles shall not have power over you; but I will remember my covenant unto you, O house of Israel, and ye shall come unto the knowledge of the fullness of my gospel. However, if the Gentiles will repent and return unto me, saith the Father, behold they shall be numbered among my people, O house of Israel. And I will not suffer my people, who are of the house of Israel, to go through among them, and tread them down, saith the Father. However, fi they will not turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, I will suffer them, yea, I will suffer my people, O house of Israel, that they shall go through among them, and shall tread them down, and they shall be as salt that hath lost is savour, which is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of my people, O house of Israel. Verily, verily, I say unto you, thus hath the Father commanded me—that I should give unto this people this land for their inheritance. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“And then the words of the prophet Isaiah shall be fulfilled which say: Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing, for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem. The Lord hath 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 16.1-20. You have mounted to your throne in the roof of Heaven, you have achieved the eights. In the midpoint of the day, you rule from the midpoint of the Sky. Lord of Light, I praise you as you shine! Our Fathers’ shield, God’s word has ever been; He giveth life eternal to the dead. Holy is He; no other can compare with Him who giveth rest each Sabbath day unto His people whom He loves. With veneration and with awe we serve Him; we praise Him every day and bless His name. To God all thanks are due, the Lord of peace, He hallowth the Sabbath and doth bless the seventh day; He giveth rest unto a people knowing its delight, in remembrance of creation. The great shinning eye that sees all things will see that my deeds are done justly. I place myself under your gaze at the high point of the day. Praise to the Sun, at the roof of the World. Praise to the Lord, at His point of great power. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Cresleigh Homes
Tucked away behind that door is a laundry room equipped with plenty of space and storage for all your laundry items! And tucked inside that pantry is all the tomato soup you’ve been saving for this colder weather. Ergo, it’s time to settle in with a cozy cardigan and hot soup once the clothes are in the wash. 🥣🧺 // #MillsStation Residence 1
It Keeps Eternal Whisperings Around Desolate Shores and with its Mighty Swell!
Nothing is quite as funny as the unintended humour of reality. Many lines of inquiry have demonstrated that that range of characteristics that are associated with creative productivity in a human being is very wide. These characteristics fall into almost all categories into which personal traits have been divided for purpose of study—abilities, interests, drives, temperament, and so on. To limit our discussion to scientific productivity, it is clear to start with that there are great variations in the amount of curiosity possessed by different people. Curiosity appears to be a basic drive. I suspect it may vary consistently with gender, on either a biological or a cultural basis, but we have as yet no idea how to measure such drives. No one becomes a scientist without a better-than-average amount of curiosity, regardless of whether one was born with it, was brought up in a stimulating environment, or just did not have it severely inhibited. Intelligence and creativity are not identical, but intelligence does play a role in scientific creativity—rather more than it may play in some other forms of creativity. In general, one my summarize by saying that the minimum intelligence required for creative production in science is considerably better than average, but that, given this, other variables contribute more to a variance in performance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
It must also be noted that special abilities (numerical, spatial, verbal, and so on) play somewhat different roles in different scientific fields, but that ability must in no case be below average. A cultural anthropologist, for example, as little need for great facility with numbers. An experimental physicist, on the other hand, does require facility with number, although one need not have great facility with words. A number of studies have contributed to the picture of the personality patterns of productive scientists, and it is rather striking that quite different kinds of investigations have produced closely similar results. These can be briefly summarized in six different groups, as follows: 1. Truly creative scientists seek experience and action and are independent and self-sufficient with regard to perception, cognition, and behaviour. These findings have been expressed in various studies in such terms as the following: they are more observant than others and value this quality; they are more independent with respect to cognition and value judgments; they have high dominance; they have high autonomy; they are Bohemian or radical; they are not subject to group standards. 2. They have a preference for apparent but resolvable disorder and for an aesthetic ordering of forms of experience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
They have high tolerance for ambiguity, but they also like to put an end to it in their own way—and in their own time. 3. They have strong egos (whether this derives from or is responsible for their independence and their tolerance for ambiguity is a moot question). This ego strength permits them to regress to preconscious states with certainty that they will return from these states. They have less compulsive superegos than others. They are capable of disciplined management of means leading to significant experience. They have no feeling of guilt about the independence of thought and action mentioned above. They have strong control of their impulses. 4. Their interpersonal relations are generally of low intensity. They are reported to be ungregarious, not talkative (this does not apply to social scientists), and rather asocial. There is an apparent tendency to femininity in highly original men, and to masculinity in highly original women, but this may be a cultural interpretation of the generally increased sensitivity of the men and the intellectual capacity and interest of the women. They dislike interpersonal controversy in any form and are especially sensitive to interpersonal aggression. 5. They show much stronger preoccupation with things and ideas than with people. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
They dislike introversive and affect-associated preoccupations, expect in connection with their own research. 6. They like to take the calculated risk, but it must involve nature, not people, and must not depend on simple luck. How do these personality characteristics relate to the creative process in science? An open attitude toward experience makes possible accumulation of experience with relatively little compartmentalization; independence of perception, cognition, and behaviour permit greater than average reordering of this accumulated experience (the behavioural eccentricities so often noted are consistent with this). The strong liking for turning disorder into order carries such individuals through the searching period which their tolerance for ambiguity permits them to enter. The strong egos, as noted, permit regression to prelogical forms of thought without serious fear of failure to get back to logical ones. Preoccupation with things and ideas rather tan with people is obviously characteristic of natural scientists, and even some of some social scientists. This characteristic is not directly related to creativity. I think, but rater to the content of it. I need not add tat such statements as these are generalizations and that any individual case may be an exception. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
We may go farther, however, and generalize differences among humans who follow different branches of science. That a human chooses to become a scientist and succeeds means that one has the temperament and personality as well as the ability and opportunity to do so. The branch of science one chooses, even the specific problems one chooses and the way one work on them, are intimately related to what one is and to one’s deepest needs. The more deeply engaged one is, the more profoundly is this true. To understand what one does, one must try to know what one’s work means to one. The chances are that one does not know or care to know. Indeed, one does not need to know. We do. In many ways the social scientist differs from the natural scientist in terms of personality and motivation. It has been found, for example, that social scientists are more interested in interpersonal relationships, while physical are less so. The apparent coldness, remoteness and objectivity of the physical scientists, however, might be related to the commonly accepted notion of science as a purely impersonal thing. If so, it would be interesting to speculate what possible effects a humanization of science might have upon the personality dynamics of future scientists. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Now we ask, What does a will or heart look like that has been transformed into Christlikeness? How is it to be characterized? Jesus said of himself—and of course he is always the pattern—“He who sent Me is wit Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him” (John 8.29). And Paul has this to say: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Galatians 2.20). We also recall John Calvin’s words: “The only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads. Let this, then, be the first step, to abandon ourselves, and devote the whole energy of our minds to the service of God.” So we have the answer to our question: Single-minded and joyous devotion to God and his will, to what Gd wants for us—and to service to him and to others because of him—is what the will transformed into Christlikeness looks like. That is the outcome of Christian spiritual formation with reference to the will, heart, or spirit. And when it has become the governing response of every dimension of our being, this outcome becomes our character. Then we can truly be said to have “put on Christ.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
However, how far this is from the usual human will and character we hardly need say! Instead of being simple and transparent through a constant and coherent devotion to God, the usual human will and character we hardly need say! Instead of being simple and transparent through a constant and coherent devotion to God, the usual human will is a place of chaotic duplicity and confusion if not darkness, because it is the playing field of pride and fear and lack of confidence in God, shrouded in layer of destructive habits. We recall that our will (heart, spirit) is that dimension of our being by which we become an underivative presence and source in the World. What comes from it comes from nothing else but us. This radical creativity is what makes the individual person absolutely unique and irreplaceable, and therefore an “end in itself,” not just “another one of a certain kind.” In other words, it is what prevents a person from being a mere thing. Let us try to put this in other words, hoping thereby to make clearer something that really is very hard to grasp. Will is the ability to originate or refrain from originating something: an act or a thing. It brings things into existence. Sticks and stones do not have that ability. Will is the capacity for radical and underivative origination of events and things. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Therefore, will is the core of what and what we are as individuals, for what arises from it is from us alone. It is that aspect of personality in virtue of which we have a likeness to God or are “in His image.” We are created to be creators—of good. Our consents and non-consents are the measure of our worth as humans…the only strictly underivative and original contribution which we make to the World. And our will is simply our capacity for “consents” and “non-consents.” It is the core of our nonphysical being. It is, strictly speaking, our spirit—the human spirit, not divine—though it comes directly from God and it meant to be in his keeping through our trust in him. It is the nature of the spiritual to be self-determined. Such self-determination is absolute or unrestricted in God (“I AM THAT I AM.” Exodus 3.14. “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hat he given to the Son to have life in himself.” John 5.26). However, it is very limited, though still very real, in humans. Its primary exercise in the human, as we have already noted, is the power to select what we think on and how intently we will focus on it—from which our other decisions and actions then more or less directly flow. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Functionally, the will is the executive center of the human self. From it the whole self or life is meant to be directed and organized, and mist be if it is to be directed or organized at all. This is why we recognize the will to be the same as the biblical “heart” or center. It is also clear, then, that will is not the same thing as character, but character does develop from it, as specific willing become habitual and, to some extent, “automatic.” Character is revealed most of all in what we feel and do without thinking. However, to a lesser extent it is revealed in what we repent of after thinking and what we then do as a result of repenting. Thought, feeling, and will give rise to character. One is to keep the Ideal ever before one’s eyes, and to recognize that it overlimns the personality of the master. The picture of the Ideal is held in one’s subconscious mind all the time and become the pattern to be imitated, the invisible Master to be followed with faith and with love. It is affiliation to Christ, not propinquity to his body, that will bring these benefits. It will not be until a late stage that one will wake up to the realization that the real giver of Grace, the real helper along this path, the real master is not the incarnated master outside but God who is inside of one’s own heart. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
What the living God does for one is only to arouse one’s sleeping intuition and awaken one’s latent aspiration, to give one the initial impetus and staring to guidance on the new quest, to point out the obstructions to advancement in one’s individual character and to help one deal with them. What one feels about God’s power may be true but it is a sign of one’s elementary state that one places it outside oneself. The true meaning of God to the disciple’s understanding should be as the presence and force, the revelation and voice of one’s own inmost spiritual being. Let us be more concerned with the quest of right principles rather than impressive persons, for this will put our attitudes to all events on the right plane. Because tis simple truism was forgotten most of the religious and mystical movements have gone astray. The proper attitude is to regard God as the higher power, so that the veneration and devotion proffered are directed towards that power. We must learn to look in our own heart, mind, body, and soul for God because that is where we find the Lord. Why not go to the direct source? God is the ultimate spiritual guide whom we are to revere and the real spiritual helper on whom we are to rely. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
When disciples follow a teacher, what is it that they really follow? Suppose the teacher advocated cruelty, and preached selfishness—would the disciples still continue to follow one? Obviously, they would not. This is because their own inward feeling would reject the teaching. It shows that they are really following the teacher within themselves, the voice of God. It is God within them which makes them seek out and respond to a true teacher, for one is really an outward spiritual guide and we all can use guidance at times. However, only in our inner being can we meet and know God. Those who interest themselves in personalities take the wrong path. A teacher’s ideas are the best part of one. Let students take them and not trouble themselves about one’s appearance, career, traits, and habits. God alone is eternal. The truth of enunciations is n other than the truth of the intellect. For an enunciation resides intellect, and in speech. Now according as it is in the intellect it has truth of itself: but according as it is in speech, it is called in the enunciable truth, according as it signifies some truth of the intellect, not on account of any truth residing in the enunciation, as though in a subject. If no intellect were eternal, no truth would be eternal. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Now because the only divine intellect is eternal, in it alone truth has eternity. Nr does it follow from this that anything else but God is eternal; since the truth of the divine intellect is God Himself, as shown already. The nature of a circle, and the fact that two and three make five, have eternity in the mind of God. That something is always and everywhere, can be understood in two ways. In one way, as having itself the power of extension to all time and to all places, as it belongs to God to be everywhere and always. In the other way as not having in itself determination to any place or time, as primary matter is said to be one, no because it has one form, but by the absence of all distinguishing form. In this manner all universals are said to be everywhere and always, in so far as universals are independent of place and time. It does not, however, follow from this that they are eternal, expect in an intellect, if one exists that is eternal. That which now is, was future, before it (actually) was; because it was in its cause that it would be. Hence, if the cause were removed, that thing’s coming to be was not future. However, the first cause is alone eternal. Hence it does not follow that it was always true that what not is would be, expect in so far as its future being was in the sempiternal cause; and God alone is such a cause. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Because our intellect us not eternal, neither is the truth of enunciable propositions which are formed by us, eternal, but it has a beginning in time. Now before such truth existed, it was not true to say that such a truth did exist, expect by reason of the divine intellect, wherein alone truth is eternal. However, it is true now to say that that truth did not then exist; and this is true only by reason of the truth that is not in our intellect; and not by reason of any truth in the things. For this is truth concerning not-being; and not-being has not truth of itself, but only so far as our intellect apprehends it. Hence it is true to say that truth did not exist, in so far as we apprehend its not-being as preceding its being. The Christian affirmation is that the Trinitarian structure which can be shown to exist in the mind of a human and in all one’s works is, in fact, the integral structure of the Universe, and corresponds, not by pictorial imagery, but by necessary uniformity of substance, with the nature of God, in whom all that is exists. To think secularly is to think within a frame of reference bounded by the limits of our life on Earth: it is to keep one’s calculations rooted in this-Worldly criteria. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
To think Christianly is to accept all things with the mind as related, directly or indirectly, to human’s eternal destiny as the redeemed and chosen by God. It is important to see that apologetics is not an activity reserved for philosophers who also happen to be religious believers. Much that passes as philosophy of religion is really apologetics as practiced by individuals who reject tenets of religious belief. I do not say this to be critical of philosophers of religion who may also happen to be atheists. Philosophers who reject the Christian religion do not suddenly become, by virtue of this fact alone, more objective or rational or open-minded than philosophers who are Christians or Jews. Of course, we must wholeheartedly agree that without a saving relationship with Jesus Christ all is lost. However, we must not mistakenly reason that one’s relationship with Christ minimizes the importance of His Church. Yet this is precisely what multitudes of evangelicals assume and act out. Church attendance is infected with a malaise of conditional loyalty which has produced an army of ecclesiastical hitchhikers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The hitchhiker’s thumb says, “You buy the Ultimate Driving Machine, pay for repairs and upkeep and insurance, fill the car with gas—and I will ride with you. However, if you have an accident, you are on your own! And I will probably sue.” So it is with the credo of so many of today’s church attenders: “You go to the meetings and serve on the boards and committees, you grapple with the issues and do the work of the church and pay the bills—and I will come along for the ride. However, if things do not suit me, I will criticize and complain and probably bail out—my thumb is always out for a better ride.” This putative loyalty is fueled by a consumer ethos—a “McChristian” mentality—which picks and chooses here and there to fill one’s ecclesiastical shopping list. There are hitchhikers wo attend one church for the preaching, send their children to a second church for its dynamic youth program, and go to a third church’s small group. Church hitchhikers have a telling vocabulary: “I go to” or “I attend,” but never “I belong to” or “I am a member.” The average adult thinks that belonging to a church is good for other people, but represents unnecessary bondage and baggage for oneself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
So today, in the twenty first century, we have a phenomenon unthinkable in any other century: churchless Christians. There is a vast heard of professed Christians who exist as nomadic hitchhikers without accountability, without discipline, without discipleship, living apart from the regular benefits of the ordinances. They have God as their Father, but reject the Church as mother and as a result are incomplete and stunted. The tragedy is compounded because statistics indicate that humans are far less committed to the Church than they used to be—inevitably producing a shriveled leadership. As to why the Church has fallen on such hard times, historians tell us that an overemphasis on the “invisible” Body of Christ by evangelical leaders produced an implicit disregard for the visible Church. However, membership in an invisible Church without participation in its local expression is never contemplated in the New Testament. Another reason for the de-churching of many Christians is historic individualism of evangelical Christianity and the grass-root American impulse against authority. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
The natural inclination is to think that one needs only an individual relationship with Christ and needs no other authority. Such thinking produces Christian Lone Rangers who demonstrate their authenticity by riding not to church, but out to the badlands, reference Bible in hand, to do battle single-handedly with the outlaw World. Such a cavalier disregard for the doctrine of the Church is eccentric, to say the least. It disregards not only Scripture, but the consensus of the doctors of the Church. St. Augustine in his Enchiridion holds up to the visible Church saying: “For outside the church they [one’s sins] have no remission. For it is the Church in particular which has received the earnest, the Holy Spirit, apart from whom no sins receive remission.” Augustine could not conceive of one being regenerated yet consciously separated from the visible Church. “The deserter of the Church,” he said, “cannot be in Christ, since one is not among Christ’s members.” Martin Luther similarly stated, “Outside this Christian Church there is no salvation or forgiveness of sins, but everlasting death and damnation; even though there may be a magnificent appearance of holiness.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
John Calvin echoed Cyprian’s though that the evidence of having God as your Father is having the Church as your mother. In fact, he subtitled chapter 1 of book 4 of his Institutes “The True Church with Which as Mother of All the Godly We Must Keep Unity.” And in his commentary on Ephesians he wrote, “The Church is the common mother of all the godly, which bears, nourishes, and governs in the Lord both kings and commoners; and this is done by the ministry. Those who neglect or despise this order want to be wiser than Christ. Woe to their pride.” The Swiss Second Helvetic Confession put the idea even more forcefully: For as there was no salvation outside Noah’s ark when the World perished in the flood; so we believe that there is no certain salvation outside Christ, who offers himself to be enjoyed by the elect in the Church; and hence we teach that those who wish to live ought not to be separated from the true Church of Christ. (Chapter 27). Finally, the Westminster Confession refers to “The visible church out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (Chapter 25.2). #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
So we conclude that church hitchhikers, ecclesiastical wanderers, spiritual Long Rangers, Christian who disdain membership, and aberrations in the history of the Christian Church and are in grievous error. “Verily, verily, I say that I would that ye should do alms unto the poor; but take heed that ye do not your alms before humans to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father who is in Heaven. Therefore, when ye shall do your alms do not sound a trumpet before you, as you will hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of humans. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. However, when thou doest alms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth; that thine alms may be in secret; and thy Father who seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly. And when thou prayest thou shalt not do as the hypocrites, for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of humans. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. However, thou, when thou priest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret; and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“However, when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. For, if ye forgive humans their trespasses your Heavenly Father will also forgive you; however, if ye forgive not humans their trespasses neither your Heavenly Father will forgive your trespasses. Moreover, when ye fast be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto humans to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. However, thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto humans to fast, but unto thy Father, who is in secret; and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon Earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“However, lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and were thieves do not break through not steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye; if, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. However, if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No human can serve two masters; for either one will hate one and love the other, or else one will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. And now it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words he looked upon the twelve who he had chosen, and said unto the: Remember the words which I have spoken. For behold, ye are they whom I have chosen to minister unto this people. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto one’s stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, even so will he clothe you, if ye are not of little faith. Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we Eat? or, What shall we drink? or Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For your Heavenly Father knowth that ye have need of all these things. However, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient is the day unto the evil thereof,” reports 3 Nephi 13.1-34. Bright youth, newly born, I pray to you. A fresh day has been given to me; may I be worthy of the gift. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
I stand in the morning and face east and greet the Sun and a new day. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people Israel and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of Israel. May the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. O may our eyes witness Thy return to Zion. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restores Thy divine presence unto Zion. We thankfully acknowledge Thee, O Lord our God, our fathers’ God to all eternity. Our Rock art Thou, our Shield that saves through every generation. We give Thee thanks and we declare Thy praise for all Thy tender care. Our lives we trust into Thy wonders and Thy miracles are daily with us, evening morn and noon. O Thou who art all-good, whose mercies never fail us, Compassionate One, whose lovingkindness never cease, we ever hope in Thee. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who art our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Cresleigh Homes
Your #CresleighRanch backyard is perfect in any season, but you can make it just right with some easy switches. 🍂 This fall, swap that coffee table for a firepit to create a cozy outdoor space for toasting marshmallows! // #BrightonStation Residence 4
Mysteries Whispered in their Presence–A Person Clamoured for Love and Attention but I Did Not Hear!
No one knows what to say in the loser’s room. Divulging any client’s financial secrets is a criminal act and bank officers or employees can be punished by up to five years imprisonment and a fine of up to $5000.00. This secrecy requirement does not end with bank employment but goes with the employee to one’s grave. One study shows that only 30 percent of U.S. employers believe school graduates are literate and numerate; but 70 percent of students and 60 percent of parents think their schools are fine. This points to the core problem with U.S. education: low intensity, in all but sport, and low expectations, for all but the brightest students in honours classes. Also, the cost of private health insurance, mostly borne by industry, is doubling every seven years. What is more significant is that health is now a common-middle class headache for the first time. Employers are forcing their employees to contribute more and take less generous benefits; the high cost of insurance squeezes wages; people who have a poor health history, even if fully cured, find themselves locked into their jobs, because prospective new employers refuse to take them on. Many believe this added government control of an industry which comprises one fifth of the American economy has only meant higher taxes and reduced quality of medical care for everyone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Now, a hypothesis. I believe that independent learning, the embodiment of the state of being fascinated, involves six stages. The first is the experience of the impasse. The next stage we will provisionally call the stage of detachment, a kind of dying. The third is immersion in oneself—an entry into one’s center, one’s source of experiencing. Next is an emergence, or rebirth. Fifth is the experience of new possibilities. Sixth is the selection and pursuit of one of these. I shall attempt to illustrate this hypothesis with examples from several realms: religious conversion, brainwashing, research in psychedelic drugs, psychotherapy, and dialogue. I base my hypothesis upon personal experience, buttressed by reading that has seemed related, and the reported experience of others. It appears to me that fascination-with-something, the process of being turned on, has a certain “natural” history in adults. It is the natural state with healthy children who have not yet been “turned off.” The “turning off” begins with the experience of despair, boredom, or meaninglessness as one continues one’s habitual way of life—acting in one’s roles, doing one’s work, being one’s public self. Friendships grow stale. Work becomes meaningless and pointless. One feels dead, or deadened. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
The World looks stale, and music loses its savour. Nothing changes. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. I am doing something for everybody, and nothing for me. One feels trapped. No way out seems apparent. Each step out of the circle encounters dread or a sense of hopelessness, and futility. One tries new hobbies, new friends, new within which one feels like a robot. The depression deepens. One becomes afraid one is losing one’s mind. It is at this point that one’s friends, family, conventional psychiatry, and religion may enter. They try, and in this state gradually “loses interest,” “stops caring about thing.” One is regarded as sick, in need of “treatment” to stop one from going out of one’s mind. Actually, the “not-caring” is a self-initiated process of detachment from previous concerns, a phase in the death-rebirth process we are concerned with. If nothing stops the process, the person gradually enters one’s own experience more and more. One’s self-structure dissolves. One detaches oneself from one’s image of oneself, from previous friendships—which, after all, have been stabilizing one, keeping one in sameness, which is not the same as sanity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
This person may become panicky, as the process of detachment continues; and one finds oneself experiencing emotions, fantasies and memories, that ordinarily have been repressed. One surely needs reassurance here, to let the process unfold rather than shut it off. One is encountering one’s possibilities. If one lets go enough, one will fully enter the realm of experiencing that mystics have described as “transcendental,” like a homecoming, a visit to the course, rather than a hell to be avoided. It is, in fact, the way of experiencing that we all shared as children, before we were wholly engulfed by the culture. One cannot, and does not long stay in this realm. One re-enters one’s ego, but with a new perspective. The self-structure is redefined. I choose a new identity for myself and present it to others who may confirm it or not. The World does not look the same now. It is not the same because I am not the same, and it is my World. I look at the old things and the old people; and new features, new possibilities disclose themselves to me. I commit myself to some of these, and I am renewed, until some later time; when the new fascinations, values, and projects go stale, I must begin the process again. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When I am reborn and awakened, I experience the World and the people in it as a constant and varied calling, a constant source of invitations to become involved. The calls and invitations that were always there, but I never heard them before. The sky called to be looked at. A person clamoured for love and attention but I did not hear. Mysteries whispered their presence, but I did not notice; I thought what was mysterious was actually known and understood. In short, I begin once again to encounter the World, and the people in it. In the encounter, I let myself experience the varied reality of the World, a reality that I did not experience the varied reality of the World, a reality that I did not experience so richly, or in so many dimensions, as I do. Renewed by the plunge into the depths of my own experiencing, I survey the World that I am encountering. Some invitation, some call, some challenge, fascinates me more than the others. Nobody can predict what will now fascinate or repel me, not even me. I commit myself to this one, and off I go until I become deadened once again by a new set of habits. It has just occurred to me, after completing a year of sabbatical leave in England, that the process I just described is a sabbatical leave of one’s mind, of one’s personality structure. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The academic sabbatical is a removal from one’s usually surroundings, but I discovered it is easier to get out of one’s surroundings than to get them out of oneself so that new surroundings can invite one into encounter. Many of my American colleagues in England successfully shielded themselves from fascination with and involvement in the English experience, because of the panic they felt when invited to let go their usual preoccupations. They carried America with them. Indeed, the phenomenon of “culture shock,” long noted by anthropologists, is another dimension of the experience of leaving, not just one’s country, but one’s mind. One has to let the American in one die in order to become a participant in a new experience, to be reborn. Indeed, initiation ceremonies of all kinds recognize the, like fraternity initiation rites or Marine boot-camp training. The hazing, in whatever form, is a symbolic killing-off of a previous incarnation, to abet the reincarnation in the way of being. However, we are as afraid of dying as we are of leaving our minds. We equate habitual ways of valuing, construing, and acting with life itself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Therefore, to stop these, even when they cease to yield satisfaction and meaning, is experienced as the end of life. It is equated with death. We are afraid to explore the possible experience beyond the tether. In the act of love, the climax is frequently experience as a “dying.” And after the successful act of love, a person feels oneself reborn, ready to respond anew to new dimensions of the World that suddenly, magically, have disclosed themselves to the person. However, many acts of love are climaxed not by ego-shattering orgasm; but only by localized, pleasurable twitching. Evidently one has to be ready to go out of one’s mind to make love the love that renews and revivifies. In the psychedelic-drug experience a person ingests a substance; and then, if one lets go, one commences a voyage into depth of experiencing of which one never would have dreamed oneself capable. However, taking one dose or consistent and frequent doses of any drug, especially one as potent as LSD or PCP, is by no means safe for all individuals and may put certain people at high risk of a psychotic episode they may never recover from or cause one to develop a drug addiction. People may believe the marijuana is a safe drug, but it is not. It is bad your lungs and could cause schizophrenia, or lead to the use of more dangerous and addictive drugs. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
It may cause one to feel as if one is looking through a fogged-up window with only a tiny spot wiped clean. With religion, however, a rebirth is caused and the whole window is wiped clean; and the World stands forth. The World will disclose itself to one in different dimensions than it had disclosed itself hitherto, and one will select some aspects of it with which to involve oneself. Brainwashing is a corruption of the death and rebirth theme. There, the commissars, who know what they want a person to do and be, convince one that one (one’s old self) is dead. Under the regime of torture, a person may indeed enter the transcendental realm, but one re-enters a new “robot,” into new roles that have been ready-made for one. Doubtless, they seem as real and meaningful to the brainwashee as did one’s previous incarnation which had been made untenable and unlivable for one by one’s captors. In religious conversion, the common denominator seems to be the despair at continuing in the old way. The person enters one’s experience after leaving the World. If one’s background and present associates are appropriate, then, like the brainwashee, one enters a new way of being that is more or less ready-made for one. In good psychotherapy, the therapist lets one’s patient enter one’s experience deeply. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
One remains present to help the patient cope with the terrors that arise as one lets go and experiences feelings, memories, and the like that have been long suppressed. With one’s interpretations, the therapist may assist the process of symbolic dying and facilitate the onset of the therapeutic despair, or the therapeutic psychosis which is part of every effective psychotherapy sequence. Then the person is reborn, and one faces the World with the capacity to respond to its invitations in new ways. In good teaching, after the fashion of Sokrates, the skilled and compassionate dialectician will challenge every assertion and belief of one’s pupil until the pupil feels one is going to go out of one’s mind. One may balk at this point. However, one may also flip into a realization of infinite possibility, and be thus turned on. This is my hypothesis restated: independent learning entails the experience of fascination. Fascination is a response to an invitation or challenge disclosed by the World. The invitation and challenge were always there, but the person could not experience them so long as one remained “hung up” or fixated in one’s usual roles, self-structure, and preoccupations. It is necessary that the usual attachments be suspended, and raw experiencing be turned on. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
This disengagement from usual concerns is fostered by entrapment and despair (it can be fostered in dialogue); and it maybe experienced with dread, as a going out of one’s mind, or a dying, followed by rebirth or re-entry into an enlarged self-structure. In the reborn state, the person is now more open to one’s experience of the World. While one is in this “open” condition, a challenge appears, and the person responds. One may or may not be confirmed by others in one’s new being. I would propose that something like this happens repeatedly in those healthier personalities for whom independent learning is no problem. I would propose further that a variety of factors militate against this complete process of death and rebirth. And so, practically speaking, the renovation of the heart in the dimension of feeling is a matter of opening ourselves to and carefully cultivating love, joy, and peace: first by receiving them from God and from those already living in Him, and then as we grow, extending love, joy, and peace to others and everything around us in attitude, prayer, and action. Following our VIM (Vision, Integrity, and Mission) pattern, we must intend this and decide that it shall be in all we are and do. Of course our thought life, as already described, will be focused upon God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Then through grace we can translate this intention to dwell in love, joy, and peace into the fine texture of daily existence. Our walk with Jesus and the Father will teach us and show us the details of the means required to bring it to pass. The conscious personal mind of the teacher may know nothing of the help that is radiating from one to one who silently calls on one from a long distance, yet the reality of that help remains. If the requisite condition exist, only then can this internal quickening and intense telepathy between the master and the disciple can occur. Even at the beginning of probation (spiritual probation) the seeker will often be given a hint of what awaits one later through the spiritual experience resulting out of the contact with the teacher. However, whether one gets it or not, from the moment of acceptance there will come to every student a sense of peace, and above all, an inner stability and certitude which will become one of the greatest assets in one’s life. Again and again the novice falls into mistakes about the telepathic communications which one feels one is receiving from the master. One regains them as such when they are nothing of the sort, or one interprets them in too material or too egoistic a manner. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The master sends a thought-current to one which is intended to lift one up to a diviner, hence more impersonal level. One, however, drags it down to a lower, more egocentric level. The telepathic impulses which one sends out to others during these times of prayer or meditation are most often received quite subconsciously. Only later is their effect felt or their origin suspected. One’s disciples may not be aware of any new reception of truth or beatitude at the time. However, increasing clarification or growing liberation may slowly change their course. It is also possible to take any revered person as a master and, in one’s own mind, make one the teacher. Even though no meeting on the physical level may occur, one’s attitude of attention and devotion in meditation will draw from one a reaction which will telepathically give whatever guidance is needed at the time. Just as the glance, the touch, or the spoken word may carry the ardour of mutual desire from to woman so may it also carry the initiatory blessing or the spiritual gift from master to disciple. Like the message of God to a praying spiritual person, the help which comes from such a teacher is above thinking but it translates itself into terms of thinking. In this process of translation, it is seized n by the ego and interfered with. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
The guide may send one’s blessing telepathically only once but if it is powerful enough it may work itself out through a hundred different experiences extending over several years. Because one identifies oneself with the timeless spaceless soul, one’s blessing may express itself out through a hundred different experience extending over several years. Because one identifies oneself with the timeless spaceless soul, one’s blessing may express itself anywhere in space and anywhen in time. Moreover one may formulate it in a general way but it may take precise shapes unconsciously fashioned by and suited to the recipient’s own mentality and degree of development. Here is some of the work to be done. For many of us, just coming to honest terms with what our feelings really are will be a huge task. Paul says in Romans 12.9, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” That is, let it be genuine or sincere. To do only this will require serious effort, deep learning, and quantities of grace. Our ordinary life and our religious associations are so permeated with insincere expressions of love, often alongside of contempt and anger, that it is hard not to feel forced into hypocrisy in some situations. However, we can learn to avoid it, and we shall immediately begin to see what a huge difference that alone makes. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
However, there is much more to do. Very few people are without deep negative feelings towards others who are or have been closely related to them. Wounds carried steadily through the years have weighed us down and prevented spiritual growth in love, joy, and peace. They may have seeped over into our identity. We would not know who we are without them. However, they can be healed or dismissed, if we are ready to give them up to God and receive the healing ministry of His Word and Spirit. This applies similarly to hopelessness over not achieving things long sought or long lost. In general, the task, once we have given ourselves to Christ, is to recognize the reality of our feelings and agree with the Lord to abandon those that are destructive and that lead us into doing or being what we know to be wrong. This one will then help us with. We may need to write out what those feelings are in a “letter to the Lord,” or perhaps confer about them with wise Christian friend who knows how to listen to us and to God at the same time. Perhaps individuals or our fellowship group can have a prayer ministry to us. Journaling about progress with feelings can also help. It can bring to light the ideas and images or past events on which destructive feelings are based. Those, too, will need to be replaced or revised. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Many such details may play a role as we progress toward predominance of love, joy, and peace in that dimension of our mind and our self that is our feelings. We can be very sure that this is our feelings. We can be very sure that this is God’s intent for us. Thus Paul prayed for his friends in Ephesus that they would be “rooted and grounded in love” and “know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God,” reports Ephesians 3.17-19. And we have seen the intent of Jesus: “That My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full,” reports John 15.11. Also his, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the World gives, do I give you. Let not your heart be troubled nor let it be fearful,” reports John 14.27. And here is Paul’s benediction to the Romans: “Now may the God of hope fill you with al joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit,” Romans 15.13. There are the same dispositions of things in being and truth. As good has the nature of what is desirable, so truth is related to knowledge. Now everything, in as far as it has being, so far is it knowable. The soul is in some manner all things through the senses and the intellect. And therefore, as good is convertible with being, so is the true. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
However, as good adds to being the notion of desirable, so the truth adds relation to the intellect. “And it came to pass that there was a voice heard among all the inhabitants of the Earth, upon all the face of this land, crying: Wo, wo, wo unto this people; wo unto the inhabitants of the whole Earth except they shall repent; for the devil laugheth, and his Angels rejoice, because of the slain of the fair sons and daughters of my people; and it is because of their iniquity and abominations that they are fallen! Behold, that great city Zarahemla have I burned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof. And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned. And behold, that great city Moronihah have I covered with Earth, and the inhabitants thereof, to hide their iniquities and their abominations from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints shall not come any more unto me against them. And behold, the city of Gilgal have I caused to be sunk, and the inhabitants thereof to be buried up in the depths of the Earth; yea, and the city of Onihah and the inhabitants thereof, and the city of Mocum and the inhabitants thereof, and the city of Jerusalem and the inhabitants thereof. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
“And water have I caused to come up in the stead thereof, to hide their wickedness and abomination from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints shall not come up any more unto me against them. And behold, the city of Ganiandi, and the city of Gadiomnah, and the city of Gimgimno, all these have I caused to be sunk, and made hills and valleys in the places thereof; and the inhabitants thereof have I buried up in the depths of the Earth, to hide their wickedness and abominations from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints should not come up any more unto me against them. And behold, that great city Jacobugath, which was inhabited by the people of the king Jacob, have I caused to be burned with fire because of their sins and their wickedness, which was above all the wickedness of the whole Earth, because of their secret murders and combinations; for it was they that did destroy the peace of my people and the government of the land; therefore I did cause them to be burned, to destroy them from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints should not come up uno me any more against them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“And behold, the city of Laman, and the city of Josh, and the city of Gad, and the city of Kishkumen, have I caused to be burned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof, because of their wickedness in casting out the prophets, and stoning those whom I did send to declare unto them concerning their wickedness and their abominations. And because they did cast them all out, that there were none righteous among them, I did send down fire and destroy them, that their wickedness and abomination might be hid from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints whom I sent among them might not cry unto me from the ground against them. And many great destructions have I caused to come upon this land, and upon this people, because of their wickedness and their abominations. O all ye that are spared because ye were more righteous than they, will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you? Yea, verily I say unto you, if ye will come unto me ye shall have enteral life. Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, one will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“Behold, I am Jesus Christ the Son of God. I created the Heavens and the Earth, and all things that in the are. I was with the Father from the beginning. I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and in me hath the Father glorified His name. I came unto my own, and my own received me not. And the scriptures concerning my coming are fulfilled. And as many as have received me, to them have I given to become the sons of God; and even so will I to as many as shall believe on my name, for behold, by me redemption cometh, and in me is the law of Moses fulfilled. I am the light and the life of the World. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. And ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood; yea, your sacrifices and your burnt offerings shall be done away, for I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings. And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, one will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not. Behold, I have come unto the World to bring redemption unto the World, to save the World from sin. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Therefore, whoso repenteth and cometh unto me as a little child, one will I receive, for of such is the kingdom of God. Behold, for such I have laid down my life, and have taken it up again; therefore repent, and come unto me ye ends of the Earth, and be saved,” reports 3 Nephi 9.1-22. Some critics reject the idea of Grace and declare its impossibility in a World governed by strict cause and effect. The meaning of the word suggests something or anything of an immaterial moral or material nature. That is given to humans. Why should not the Master who has attained a higher strength wisdom and moral character than that which is common to the human race, give assistance freely out of one’s beneficent compassion for others struggling to climb the peak one has surmounted? One certainly cannot transmit one’s own inner life to another person in its fullness. However, one can receptive, sensitive, and in inward affinity with one. If this too is denied then let the objector explain why both the feeling of and the sense of the Master’s presence pervade the disciple’s existence for many years after one’s initiation, if not the rest of one’s life. The master, by process of telepathic transfer, enables the disciple to get a glimpse of what the realization of one’s own spiritual possibilities can lead to. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The pupil who has been allowed to sit in deep conversational prayer with God should be able to carry on with this impetus, even though it happened only once. It is really an initiation. During this intercession, the disciple may actually feel a stream of power flowing out to one from the master, but it is not essential that one do so. What the master reflects and radiates into the disciple’s deeper mind at this sitting, will necessarily incubate for a period of time which may be measurable in minutes, days, months, or even years. No one can predict how long it will be, for not only are the disciple’s readiness, capacity, and affinity determining factors but also one’s destiny. Nor can anyone predict whether the result will appear slowly, gently, little by little, or suddenly, with violent jolting force. The master is forever after present in the disciple’s heart, whether the disciple see one again or not. From the hour of this initiation the master will be much in one’s thoughts and the sense of affinity will be often in one’s heart. The experience which the candidate has at the initiatory intercession with the master is often (but not always) a herald and token of one’s possibilities of later attainment under this particular master. One must work harder than ever on one’s character and, by crushing one’s ego, sensitize one’s mind for the reception of the spiritual Grace that is to come during initiation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
It seems as if the Master has come into one’s consciousness and thereby changed its quality and area. If the change is necessarily for a brief while only, it is still a memorable one. Father of All, Father of All: as I go through the day, keep my eyes open wide. May I not miss beauty. May I not miss joy. May I not miss wonder. Please keep me away and aware of the World. Thou hast made known unto us, O Lord our God, Thy righteous judgments, and hast taught us to perform Thy statutes. Thou hast given us, O Lord our God, ordinances that are just and true, statutes and commandments that are good. Thou hast enriched our lives with joyous seasons and holy days and festivals to bring free will offerings, giving us as a sacred possession the Sabbath Day and Holy Days, and the joyous delight of the Three Festivals. Thou hast made distinction, O Lord our God, between the sacred and the secular, between light and darkness, between Israel and the heathens, between the seventh day of rest and the six days of work. Thou hast set a distinction between the higher sanctity of the Sabbath and the lesser sanctity of the Festival, and hast hallowed the seventh day above the six days of work. Thus hast Thou distinguished and sanctified Thy people Israel through Thy holiness. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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No Special Privileges are to be Given to those Exactly Six Feet Tall or Born on a Sunny Day!
Mind is like an ocean. The surface layers of the mind function actively while the deeper levels remain silent. We assume that persons in the original position, which is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice, are rational. In choosing between principles each tries as best one can to advance one’s interests. However, we also have assumed that the parties do not know their conception of good. This means that while they know that they have some rational plan of life, they do not know the details of this plan, the particular ends and interests which it is calculated to promote. How, then, can they decide which conceptions of justice are most to their advantage? Or must we suppose that they are reduced to mere guessing? People assume that they would prefer more primary social goods rather than less. Primary social goods generally include rights, liberties, opportunities, income, and wealth. Of course, it may turn out, once the veil of ignorance is removed, that some of them for religious or other reasons may not, in fact, want more of these goods. The veil of ignorance is a method of determining the morality of issues. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The veil of ignorance asks a decision-maker to make a choice about social or moral issues and assumes that they have enough information to know the consequences of their possible decisions for everyone but would not know, or would not take into account, which person they are. The theory contents that not knowing one’s ultimate position in society would lead to the creation of a just system, as the decision-maker would not want to make decisions which benefit a certain group as the expense of another, because the decision-maker could theoretically end up in either group. However, from the standpoint of the original position, it is rational for the parties to suppose that they do want a larger share, since in any case they are not compelled to accept more if they do not wish to, nor does a person suffer from a greater liberty. Thus even though the parties are deprived of information about their particular ends, they have enough knowledge to rank the alternatives. They know that in general they must try to protect their liberties, widen their opportunities, and enlarge their means for promoting their aims whatever these are. Guided by the theory of the good and the general facts of moral psychology, their deliberations are no longer guesswork. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
The primary goods are the all-purpose social means that are necessary to the exercise and development of the moral powers and to pursue a wide variety of conceptions of the good. Justice is a good-for the just person in a just society and life in a just society is good. Therefore, the theory of good states that any rational person should want, whatever one’s rational plan of life is. Rational people can make a rational decision in the ordinary sense. The concept of rationality invoked here, with the exception of one essential feature, is the stand one familiar in social theory. Thus in the usual way, a rational person is thought to have a coherent set of preferences between the options open to one. One ranks these options according to how well they further one’s purposes; one follows the plan which will satisfy more of one’s desires rather than less, and which has the greater chance of being successfully executed. The special assumption made here is that a rational individual does not suffer from envy. If only others have less as well, one is not ready to accept a loss for oneself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
One is not downcast by the knowledge or perception that others have a larger index of primary social goods. Or at least this is true as long as he differences between oneself and others do not exceed certain limits, and one does not believe that the existing inequalities are founded on injustice or are the result of letting chance work itself out for no compensating social purpose. The assumption that the parties are not moved by envy raises certain questions. Perhaps we should also assume that they are not liable to various other feelings such as shame and humiliation. Now a satisfactory account of justice will eventually have to deal with these matters, too, but for the present I shall leave these complications aside. Another objection to our procedure is that it is too unrealistic. Certainly humans are afflicted with these feelings. How can a conception of justice ignore this fact? I shall meet this problem by diving the argument for the principles of justice into two parts. In the first part, the principles are derived on the supposition that envy does not exist; while in the second, we consider whether the conception arrived at is feasible in view of the circumstances of human life. One reason for this procedure is that envy tends to make everyone worse off. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
In this sense envy is collectively disadvantageous because of the tendency it has to make condition acrimonious. Presuming its absence amounts to supposing that in the choice of principles humans should think of themselves as having their own plan of life which is sufficient for itself. They have a secure sense of their own worthy so that they have no desire to abandon any of their aims provided others have less means to further theirs. I shall work out a conception of justice on this stipulation to see what happens. Later I shall try to show that when the principles adopted are put into practice, they lead to social arrangements in which envy and other destructive feelings are not likely to be strong. The conception of justice eliminated the conditions that give rise to disruptive attitudes. It is, therefore, inherently stable. The assumption of mutually disinterested rationality, then, comes to this: the persons in the original position try to acknowledge principles which advance their system of ends as far as possible. They do this by attempting to win for themselves the highest index of primary social goods, since this enables them to promote their conception of the good most effectively whatever it turns out to be. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The parties do not seek to confer benefits or to impose injuries on one another; they are not moved by affection or rancor. Nor do they try to gain relative to each other; they are not envious or vain. Put in terms of a game, we might say: they strive for as high an absolute score as possible. They do not wish a high or a low score for their opponents, nor do they seek to maximize or minimize the difference between their success and those of others. The idea of a game does not really apply, since the parties are not concerned to win but to get as many points as possible judged by their own system of ends. There is one further assumption to guarantee strict compliance. The parties are presumed to be capable of a sense of justice and this fact is public knowledge among them. This condition is to insure the integrity of the agreement made in the original position. It odes mean that in their deliberations the parties apply some particular conception of justice, for this would defeat the point of the motivation assumption. Rather, it means that the parties can rely on each other to understand and to act in accordance with whatever principles are finally agreed to. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Once principles are acknowledged the parties can depend on one another to conform to them. In reaching an agreement, then, they know that their undertaking is not in vain: their capacity for a sense of justice insures that the principles chosen will be respected. It is essential to observe, however, that this assumption still permits the consideration of human’s capacity to act on the various conception of justice. The general facts of human psychology and the principles of moral learning are relevant matters for the parties to examine. If a conception of justice is unlikely to generate it own support, or lacks stability, this fact must not be overlooked. For then a different conception of justice might be preferred. The assumption only says that the parties have a capacity for justice in a purely formal sense: taking everything relevant into account, including the general facts of moral psychology, the parties will adhere to the principles eventually chosen. They are rational in that they will not enter into agreements they know they cannot keep, or can do so only with great difficulty. Along with other considerations, they count the strains of commitment. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Thus in assessing conceptions of justice the persons in the original position are to assume that the one they adopt will be strictly complied with. The consequences of the agreement are to be worked out on this basis. With the preceding remarks about rationality and motivation of the parties the description of the original position is for the most part complete. We can summarize this description with the following list of elements of the initial situation and their variation. (The asterisks mark the interpretations that constitute the original position.) 1. The Nature of the Parities: *a. continuing persons (family heads, or genetic lines), b. single individuals, c. associations (states, churches, or other corporate bodies). 2. Subject of Justice: *a. basic structure of society, b. rules of corporate associations, c. law of nations. 3. Presentation of Alternatives: *a. shorter (or longer) list, b. general characterization of the possibilities. 4. Time of Entry: *a. any time (during age of reason) for living persons, b. all actual persons (those alive at some time) simultaneously, c. all possible persons simultaneously. 5. Circumstances of Justice: *a Hume’s conditions of moderate scarcity, b. the above plus further extremes. 6. Formal conditions on Principles: *a. generality, universality, publicity, ordering, and finality, b. the above less publicity, say. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
7. Knowledge and Beliefs: *a. veil of ignorance, b. full information, c. partial knowledge. 8. Motivation of the Parties: *a. mutual disinterestedness (limited altruism), b. elements of social solidarity and good will, c. perfect altruism. 9. Rationality: *a. taking effective means to ends wit unified expectations and objective interpretation of probability, b. as above but without unified expectation and using the principle of insufficient reason. 10. Agreement Condition: *a. unanimity in perpetuity, b. majority acceptance, or whatever, for limited period. 11. Compliance Condition: *a. strict compliance, b. partial compliance in various degree. 12. No Agreement Point: *a. general egoism, b. the state of nature. We can turn now to the choice of principles. However, first I shall mention a few misunderstandings to be avoided. First of all, we must keep in mind that the parties in the original position are theoretically defined individuals. The grounds for their consent are set out by the description of the contractual situation and the preference for primacy goods. Thus to say that the principles of justice would be adopted is to say how these persons would decide being moved in ways our account describes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Of course, when we try to conduct ourselves in moral argument as its constraints require, we will presumably find that our deliberations and judgments are influenced by our special inclinations and attitudes. Surely it will prove difficult to correct for our various preopensites and aversions in striving to adhere to the conditions of this idealized situation. However, none of the affects the contention that in the original position rational persons so characterized would make a certain decision. This proposition belongs to the theory of justice. It is another question how well human beings can assume this role in regulating their practical reasoning. Since the persons in the original position are assumed to take no interest in one another’s interests (although they may have a concern for third parties), it may be thought that justice as fairness is itself an egotistic theory. It is not, of course, one of the three forms of egoism mentioned earlier, but some may think, as Schopenhauer thought of Kant’s doctrine, that it is the egoistic nevertheless. Now this is a misconception. For the fact that in the original position the parties are characterized as not interested in one another’s concerns does not entail that persons in ordinary life who hold the principles that would be agreed to are similarly disinterested in one another. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Clearly the two principles of justice and the principles of obligation and natural duty require us to consider the rights and claims of others. And the sense of justice is a normally effective desire to comply with these restrictions. The motivation of the persons in the original position must not be confused wit the motivation of persons in everyday life who accept the principles that would be chosen and who have the corresponding sense of justice. In practical affairs an individual does have a knowledge of one’s situation and one can, if one wises, exploit contingencies to one’s advantage. Should one’s sense of justice move one to act on the principles of right that would be adopted in the original position, one’s desires and aims are surely not egoistic. One voluntarily takes on the limitations expressed by this interpretation of the moral point of view. This conclusion is supported by a further reflection. Once we consider the idea of a contract theory it is tempting to think that it will not yield the principles we want unless the parties are to some degree at least moved by benevolence, or an interest in one another’s interests. Perry, as I mentioned before, thinks of the right standards and decisions as those promoting the ends reached by reflective agreement under circumstances making for impartiality and good will. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Now the combination of mutual disinterest and the veil of ignorance achieves the same purpose as benevolence. For this combination of conditions forces each person in the original position to take the good of others into account. In justice as fairness, then, the effects of good will are brought about by several conditions working jointly. The feeling that this conception of justice is egoistic is an illusion fostered by looking at but one of the elements of the original position. Furthermore, this pair of assumptions has enormous advantages over that of benevolence plus knowledge. As I have noted, the latter is so complex that no definite theory at all can be worked out. Not only are the complications caused by so much information insurmountable, but the motivational assumption requires clarification. For example, what is the relative strength of benevolent desires? The combination of mutual disinterestedness plus the veil of ignorance has the merits of simplicity and clarity while at the same time insuring the effects of what are at first sight morally more attractive assumptions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
And if it is asked why one should not postulate benevolence with the veil of ignorance, the answer is that there is no need for so strong a condition. Moreover, I would defeat the purpose of grounding the theory of justice on weak stipulation, as well as being incongruous with the circumstances of justice. Finally, if the parties are conceived as themselves making proposals, they have n incentive to suggest pointless or arbitrary principles. For example, none would urge that special privileges be given to those exactly six feet talk or born on a sunny day. Nor would any one put forward the principle that basic rights should depend on the colour of one’s skin or the texture of one’s hair. No one can tell whether such principles would be to one’s advantage. Furthermore, each such principle is a limitation of one’s liberty of action, and such restrictions are not to be accepted without a reason. Certainly we might imagine peculiar circumstances in which these characteristics are relevant. Those born on a sunny day might be blessed with a happy temperament, and for some position of authority this might be a qualifying attribute. However, such distinctions would never be proposed in first principles, for these must have some rational connection with the advancement of human interests broadly defined. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The rationality of the parities and their situation in the original position guarantees that ethical principles and conceptions of justice have this general content. Inevitably, then, racial and gender discrimination presupposes that some hold a favoured place in the social system which they are willing to exploit to their advantage. From the standpoint of persons similarly situated in an initial situation which is fair, the principles of explicit racist doctrines are not only unjust. They are irrational. For this reason we could say that they are not moral conceptions at all, but simply means of suppression. They have no place on a reasonable list of traditional conceptions of justice. Of course, this contention is not all a matter of definition. It is rather a consequence of the conditions characterizing the original position, especially the condition of the rationality of the parities and the veil of ignorance. That conceptions of right have a certain content and exclude arbitrary and pointless principles is, therefore, an inference from the theory. The way of discipleship means that there is to be constant endeavour to live in the master’s mental atmosphere. Of course this can be done very feebly and only occasionally at first. Success depends not only on the pressure of perseverance but also on the sensitivity to thought-transference. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
The aspirant who comes into the presence of someone who functions on a high moral and spiritual or philosophical level—and feels the attraction, charm, spell, influence, or force of one’s personality—can, after a sufficient time or association, be stimulated in development quite markedly. It is the case not only of benefiting by the other human’s words and copying one’s example, but also of directly experiencing the telepathic working of mind upon mind. If they believe in the genuineness and reality of telepathy—as they must if they believe philosophy at all—then they must accept our declaration that inner communion renders unnecessary the outer communion, that the sense of inner presence of the guide renders unnecessary one’s letters, visits, and other external signs. We know hat the mind can both project and receive thoughts. Telepathy becomes more and more a scientifically recognized fact. Where affinity harmony and preparation exist, the spiritual guide can project calming, uplifting, and spiritualizing mental waves to the spiritual aspirant. The silent wordless and unprepared hypnosis of a subject is factual pointer to the understanding of the silent wordless and telepathic influence of a disciple by one’s guide. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
As the power of suggestion becomes dynamic in the hypnotist, so its higher octave, the power of grace, becomes dynamic in the spiritual guide. The mental waves can be transmitted from master to disciple, that spiritual peace can be reflected from the mind of one to the mind of the other, is not merely a new theory but really an old practice. It has been known and done in the Old World for thousands of years. The master’s work is carried on by word-of-mouth, by written statement, and by personal example. However, it cannot end with these methods, for they are all external ones. So it is continued by telepathic impulses, by inspirational impact, and by mental osmosis. These are internal ones. Such communication between the teacher and student might be called “Telementation.” Now I no longer believe that there are dimensions of personality that exist “in-themselves.” Id, ego, super-ego; self-concept, self-ideal, public selves; traits; derives and needs—these are the terms in which we have long thought of and described “personality”: “This individual is highly authoritarian or egalitarian; one has a strong ego or a weak one; one’s Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI is the most widely used and researched clinical assessment tool used by mental health professionals to help diagnose mental health disorders) scores are thus and such, et cetera.” #RandolphHaris 16 of 25
This way of conceptualizing a person, whether as a whole or just some part of one, is no longer relevant or valid for me. After having tried out psychoanalytic, trait-theory, self-theory, and other kinds of theoretical models of humans, I have opted for a model that is no model or is a meta-model. It is one implicit in the philosophical tradition of existential phenomenology. According to this perspective, humans are the being that in one’s being, one being is in question. One’s being is inextricably linked with the World one experiences as real. Other people are part of this World. The being one discloses, shows to me, when I am in one mode of my being—impersonality, formality, and distant, reserved, playing the role of hard-nosed scientist—is different from the being one will show me when I am with one in the mode of invitational dialogue. One’s experience of one’s being and the being that one disclosed will differ with the context. One’s being-for-me will differ from one’s-being-for-oneself, one’s being-for-one’s bird, one’s teacher, one’s mother, the experimenter who studies one, and the guru whose help one may seek to transcend one’s personality traits or structure. There is a problem here: to dimensionalize and discover hierarchy here, a hierarchy of being. I suspect it is measurable objectively and subjectively in terms of “degrees of freedom.” #RandolphHarr is 17 of 25
That is, a person may experience one’s being-for-one’s-bird as a freer, more authentic and expressive being than one’s being-for-one’s boss, or one’s spouse. A person chooses all modes and manifestations of one’s being. One cannot choose the initial impact on one’s experiential field of a shout, a blow, a promise, a sunset, a caress—all these things just affect one. However, one can effect various actions upon one’s experience once it has happened. One can blot it out, reconstrue it, project it, distort it, try to preserve it, or let it flow. One’s personality-for-others and one’s personality-for-oneself can embody a resolve to confine one’s experience and action to the limits of a procrustean mold. One can regard one’s experience as being without value and importance or as rich in value. If so, one is impersonating a robot; and one may experience oneself as such. A person can choose what of one’s experience one will disclose in words our behaviour (behaviour is meaningful disclosure too) to whoever is nearby. Indeed, we have begun to explore what one chooses to disclose to others, in words, behavior, or even in physiological messages; under what conditions; and to which others. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
In light of this research, I now suspect and challenge the validity (or at least generalizability) of all published psychology, including the psychology of human learning and of human personality. I suspect their validity, because the original data (which after all are disclosures) may have been gathered under conditions in which the person being studied neither knew nor trusted the experimenter to whom one showed one’s learning or traits. The experimenter does not know what experience of the subjects is embodied in the subjects’ behaviour. What the psychological scientist calls “data” is actually one mode in which the subjects disclose part of their being. There is a growing body of empirical data now to confirm the assertion that a person’s being for psychologist A may differ from one’s being for psychologist B. Perhaps we should subtitle each report of research: “S’s disclosure of learning, of traits, et cetera, for Dr. So-and-So.” In what follows, we shall actually be talking more about interpersonal conditions of independent learning, then about personality factors. The capacity to “go out of one’s mind” (to transcend one’s personality) seems to be one of the necessary conditions for independent learning, for learning-for-oneself. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
And so we are interested in who is able to invite a person out of one’s mind: who are the “psychedelic people,” and who is willing to accept the invitation? There may be a stable trait that could be isolated, that we might call “transcendence-readiness,” or “readiness to leave one’s personality.” Perhaps it persists in people, beyond childhood, through failures on the part of the commissars to get the child fully socialized. This is referred to as resistance to enculturation as one of the general traits of self-actualizing subjects, in whom peak experiences are not a rare occurrence. The peak experience, of course, entails a leaving of one’s mind, one’s usual personality. “Now behold, I will show unto you that they did not establish a king over the land; but in this same year, yea, the thirtieth year, they did destroy upon the judgment-seat, yea, did murder the chief judge of the land. And the people were divided one against another; and they did separate one from another into tribes, every human according to one’s family and one’s kindred and friends; and thus they did destroy the government of the land. And every tribe did appoint a chief or a leader over them; and thus they became tribes and leaders of tribes. Now behold, there was no man among them save he had much family and many kindreds and friends; therefore their tribes became exceedingly great. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“Now all this was done, and there were no wars as yet among them; and all this iniquity had come upon the people because they did yield themselves unto the power of Satan. And the regulations of the government were destroyed, because of the secret combination of friends and kindreds of those who murdered the prophets. Ans they did cause a great contention in the land, insomuch that the more righteous part of the people had nearly become wicked; yea, there were but a few righteous humans among them. And thus six years had not passed away since the more part of the people had turned from their righteousness, like the dog to his vomit, or like the sow to her wallowing in the mire. Now this secret combination, which had brought so great iniquity upon the people, did gather themselves together, and did place at their head a man whom they did call Jacob; and they did call him their king; therefore he became a king over this wicked band; and he was one of the chiefest who has given his voice against the prophets who testified of Jesus. And it came to pass that they were not so strong in number as the tribes of the people, who were untied together save it were their leaders did establish their laws, every one according to one’s tribe. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“Nevertheless they were enemies; notwithstanding they were not a righteous people, yet they were united in the hated of those who had entered into a covenant to destroy the government. Therefore, Jacob seeing that their enemies were re numerous than they, he being the kind of the band, therefore he commanded his people that they should take their light into the northernmost part of the land, and there build up unto themselves a kingdom, until they were joined by dissenters, (for he flattered them that there would be many dissenters) and they become sufficiently strong to content with the tribes of the people’ and they did so. And so speedy was their march that it could not be impeded until they have gone forth out of the reach of the people. And thus ended the thirtieth year; and thus were the affairs of the people Nephi. And it came to pass in the thirty and first year that there were divided into tribes, every human according to one’s family, kindred and friends; nevertheless they had come to an agreement that they would not go to war one with another; but they were not untied as to their laws, and their manner of government, for they were established according to the minds of those who were their chiefs and their leaders. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“However, they did establish very strict laws that one tribe should not trespass against another, insomuch that in some degree they had peace in the land; nevertheless, their hearts were turned from the Lord their God, and they did stone the prophets and did cast them out from among them. And it came to pass that Nephi—having been visited by Angels and also the voice of the Lord, therefore having seen Angels, and being eye-witness, and having had power given unto him that he might know concerning the ministry of Christ, and also being eye-witness to their quick return from righteousness unto their wickedness and abominations; therefore, being grieved from the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds—went forth among them in that same year, and began to testify, boldly, repentance, and remission of sins through faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. And he did minister many things unto them; and all of them cannot be written, and a part of them would not suffice, therefore they are not written in this book. And Nephi did minister with power and with great authority. And it came to pass that they were angry with him, even because he had great power than they, for it were not possible that they could disbelieve his words, for so great was his faith on the Lord Jesus Christ that Angels did minister unto him daily. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“And in the name of Jesus did he cast out devils and unclean spirits; and even his brother did he raise from the dead, after he had been stoned and suffered death by the people. And the people saw it, and did witness of it, and were angry with him because of his power; and he did also do many more miracles, in the sight of the people, in the name of Jesus. And it came to pass that the thirty and first year did pass away, and there were but a few who were converted unto the Lord; but as many as were converted did truly signify unto the people that they had been visited by the power and Spirit of God, which was in Jesus Christ, in whom they believed. And as many as had devils cast out from them, and were healed of their sickness and their infirmities, did truly manifest unto the people that they had been wrought upon by the Spirit of God, and had been healed; and they did show forth signs also and did do some miracles among the people. Thus passed away the thirty and second year also. And Nephi did cry unto the people in the commencement of the thirty and third year; and he did preach unto them repentance and remission of sins. Now I would have you to remember also, that there were none who were brought unto repentance were not baptized with water. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“Therefore, there were ordained of Nephi, men unto this ministry that all such as should come unto them should be baptized with water, and this as a witness and a testimony before God, and unto the people, that they had repented and received a remission of their sins. And there were many in the commencement of this year that were baptized unto repentance; and thus the more part of the year did pass away,” reports 3 Nephi 7.1-26. Hail to You, God, as you rise the Sun in the East, scattering before You the terrors of the night as a shark among fish. No mere shark you are, though: a young Divine Being, roaring through the sky, blazing eagerly int the tasks of the day. Enshrine me, young Lord; suit me for the task ahead. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and Gd of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possesses all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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We Christians Must Never Forget that Our God is a God of Truth, Reason, and Logic!
Television had proved that people will look at anything rather than at each other. Principles of justice should be general. That is, it must be possible to formulate them without the use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions. Thus the predicates used in their statemen should express general properties and relations. Unfortunately deep philosophical difficulties seem to bar the way to a satisfactory account of these matters. In presenting a theory of justice one is entitled to avoid the problem of defining general properties and relations and to be guided by what seems reasonable. Further, since the parties have no specific information about themselves or their situation, they cannot identify themselves anyway. Even if a person could get others to agree, one does not know how to tailor principles to one’s advantage. The parties are effectively forced to stick to general principles, understanding the notion here in an intuitive fashion. The naturalness of this condition lies in part in the fact that first principles must be capable of serving as a public charter of a well ordered society in perpetuity. Being unconditional, they always hold (under the circumstances of justice), and the knowledge of them must be open to individuals in any generation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Thus, to understand these principles should not require a knowledge of contingent particulars, and surely not a reference to individuals or associations. Traditionally the most obvious test of this condition is the idea that what is right is that which accords with God’s will. However, in fact this doctrine is normally supported by an argument from general principles. For example, Locke held that the fundamental principle of morals is the following: if one person is created by another (in the theological sense), then that person has a duty to comply with the precepts set to one by one’s creator. This principle is perfectly general and given the nature of the World on Locke’s view, it singles out God as the legitimate moral authority. The generality condition is not violated although it may appear so at first. Nest, principles are to be universal in application. They must hold for everyone in virtue of their being moral persons. Thus I assume that each can understand these principles and use them in one’s deliberations. This imposes an upper bound of sorts on how complex they can be, and on the kinds of number of distinctions they draw. Moreover, a principle is ruled out if it would be self-contradictory, or self-defeating, for everyone to act upon it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Similarly, should a principle be reasonable to follow only when others conform to a different one, it is also inadmissible. Principles are to be chosen in view of the consequences of everyone’s complying with them. As defined, generality and universality are distinct conditions. For example, egoism in the form of first-person dictatorship (Everyone is to serve my—or Pericles’—interest) satisfies universality but not generality. While all could act in accordance with this principle, and the results might in some cases not be at all bad, depending on the interests of the dictator, the personal pronoun (or the name) violated the first condition. Again, general principles may not be universal. They may be framed to hold for a restricted class of individuals, for instance those singled out by special biological or social characteristics, such as hair colour or class situation, or whatever. To be sure in the course of their lives individuals acquire obligations and assume duties that are peculiar to them. Nevertheless, these various duties and obligations are the consequence of first principles that hold for all as moral persons; the derivation of these requirements as a common basis. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
A third condition is that of publicity, which arises naturally from a contractarian standpoint. The parties assume that they are choosing principles for a public conception of justice. Public Right is the sum total of those laws which require to be made universally public in order to produce a state of right. No right in a state can be tacitly and treacherously included by a secret reservation, and least of all a right which the people claim to be a part of the constitution, for a laws within it must be thought of as arising out of public will. Thus if a constitution allowed rebellion, it would have to declare this right publicly and make clear how it might be implemented. This condition is to apply to a society’s conception of justice. It is suppose that everyone will know about these principles all that one would know if their acceptance were the result of an agreement. Thus the general awareness of their universal acceptance should have desirable effect and support the stability of social cooperation. The difference between this condition and that of universality is that the latter leads one to assess principles on the basis of their being intelligently and regularly followed by everyone. However, it is possible that all should understand and follow a principle and yet this fact not be widely known or explicitly recognized. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
The point of the publicity condition is to have the parties evaluate conceptions of justice as publicly acknowledged and fully effective moral constitutions of social life. The publicity condition is clearly implicit in Kant’s doctrine of the categorical imperative insofar as it requires us to act in accordance with principles that one would be willing as a rational being to enact as laws for a kingdom of ends. He thought of this kingdom as an ethical commonwealth, as it were, which has such moral principles for its public charter. A further condition is that a conception of right must impose an ordering on conflicting claims. This requirement springs directly from the role of its principles in adjusting competing demands. There is a difficulty, however, in deciding what counts as an ordering. It is clearly desirable that a conception of justice be complete, that is, able to order all the claims that can arise (or that are likely to in practice). And the ordering should in general be transitive: if, say, a first arrangement of the basic structure is ranked more just than a second, and the second more than just a third, then the first should be more just than the third. These formal conditions are natural enough, though not always easy to satisfy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
However, is trial by combat a form of adjudication? After all, physical conflict and resort to arms result in an ordering; certain claims do win out over others. The main objection to this ordering is not that it may be intransitive. Rather, it is to avoid the appeal to force and cunning that the principles of right and justice are accepted. Thus I assumes that to each according to one’s threat advantage is not a conception of justice. It fails to establish an ordering in the required sense, an ordering based on certain relevant aspects of persons and their situation which are independent from the social position. For example, if it turns out that the fair division of playing time between Matthew and Luke depends on their preference, and these in turn are connected with the instruments they wish to play. Since Matthew has a threat advantage over Luke, arising from the fact that Matthew, the trumpeter, prefers both of them playing at once to neither of them playing, whereas Luke, the pianist, prefers silence to a cacophony, Matthew is allotted twenty-six evenings of play to Luke’s seventeen. If the situation were reversed, the threat advantage would be with Luke. However, we have only to suppose that Matthew is a jazz enthusiast who plays the drums, and Luke a violinist who plays sonatas, in which case it will be fair on this analysis for Matthew to play whenever and as often as he likes, assuming as it is plausible to assume that he does not care whether Luke plays or not. Clearly something has gone wrong. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
What is lacking is a suitable definition of status quo that is acceptable from a moral point of view. We cannot take various contingencies as known and individual preferences as given and expect to elucidate the concept of justice (or fairness) by theories of bargaining. The conception of the original position is designed to meet the problem of the appropriate status quo. But this may be similarly defective from an ethical point of view. The fifth and last condition is that of finality. The parities are to assess the system of principles as the final court of appeal in practical reasoning. There are no higher standards to which arguments in support of claims can be addressed; reasoning successfully from these principles is conclusive. If we think in terms of the fully general theory which has principles for all the virtues, then such a theory specifies the totality of relevant considerations and their appropriate weights, and its requirements are decisive. They override the demands of law and custom, and of social rules generally. We are to arrange and respect social institutions as the principles of right and justice direct. Conclusions from these principles also override considerations of prudence and self-interest. This does no mean that these principles insist upon self-sacrifice; for in drawing up the conception of right the parties take their interests into account as best they can. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The claims of personal prudence are already given an appropriate weight within the full system of principles. The complete scheme is final in that when the course of practical reasoning it defines has reached its conclusion, the question is settled. The claims of existing social arrangements and of self-interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result. Taken together, then, these conditions on conceptions of right come to this: a conception of right is a set of principles, generally in form and universal in application, that is to be publicly recognized as a final court appeal for ordering the conflicting claims of moral persons. Principles of justice are identified by their special five conditions exclude none of the traditional conceptions of justice. It should be noted, however, that they do rule out the listed variants of egoism. The generality condition eliminates both first-person dictatorship and the free-rider forms, since in each case a proper name, or pronoun, or a rigged definite description is needed, either to single out the dictator or to characterize the free-rider. Generality does not, however, exclude general egoism, for each person is allowed to do whatever, in one’s judgment, is most likely to further one’s own aims. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The principle here can clearly be expressed in perfectly general way. It is the ordering condition which renders general egoism inadmissible, for if everyone is authorized to advance one’s aims as one pleases, or if everyone ought to advance one’s own interests, competing claims are not ranked at all and the outcome is determined by force and cunning. The several kinds of egoism, then, do not appear on the list presented to the parties. They are eliminated by the formal constraints. Of course, this is not a surprising conclusion, since it is obvious that by choosing one of the other conceptions the persons in the original position can do much better for themselves. Once they ask which principles all should agree to, no form of egoism is a serious candidate for consideration in any case. This only confirms what we knew already, namely, that although egoism is logically consistent and in this sense not irrational, it is incompatible with wat we intuitively regard as the moral point of view. The significance of egoism philosophically is not as an alternative conception of right but as a challenge to any such conception. In justice as fairness this is reflected in the fact that we can interpret general egoism as the no-agreement. If the were unable to reach an understanding, it is what parties would be stuck with. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Artifice has so much got the upper hand that the fictitious dares to usurp the place of the real. The overvaluation of productivity that is afflicting our age has so thrived and its par-technical glance has set up a senseless exclusiveness of its own that even genuinely creative people allow their organic skills to degenerate into an autonomous growth to satisfy the demand of the day. What the born deceivers never had, they give up: the ground where the roots of a genuinely lived life alone can grow. They mean, they strive for, and at last they contain nothing but creativity. Instead of bringing forth a natural creation, in a gradual selective progression from experiences to thoughts, from thought to words, from words to themselves out turning all experience to account as public communication; they renounce true necessity and give themselves over to the arbitrary. They poison experience, for already while it is taking place they are dominated by the will to produce. Thus they prostitute their lives and are cheated of the reward for their ignominy; for how can they expect to create anything save the artificial and the transitory? They forfeit both life and art, and all that they gain is the applause of their production-mad contemporaries. However, it seems to me that the will to create is a legitimate part of the experience of every productive human. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Thus the painter is the person who paints with all one’s senses. One’s seeing is already a painting, for what one sees is not merely what one’s physical sight receives: it is something, two-dimensionally intensified, that vision produces. And this producing does not come later, but is present in one’s seeing. Even one’s hearing, one’s smelling, are already painting, for they enrich for one the graphic character of the thing; they give one not only sensations but also stimulations. In the same way the poet creates poetry with all one’s senses; in each of one’s experiences the form in which it will be phrased is immediately announced. One’s perceiving is already a transformation of the thing perceived into the stuff of poetry, and in its becoming each impression presents itself to one as an expression of rhythmic validity. That is need so. However, this dynamic element that you find in the experience of the creative is no will to create but an ability to create. This potentiality of form also accompanies every experience that befalls the non-artistic human and is given an issue as often as one lifts an image out of the stream of perception and inserts it into one’s memory as something single, definite, and meaningful in itself. For the creative human this potentiality of form is a specific one, directed into the language of one’s particular art. If an intention is expressed in this direction, it is that of one’s genius, not that of a self-conscious resolution. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The dynamic element of one’s experience does not affect is wholeness and purity. It is otherwise when in perceiving one already cherishes the deliberate intention of utilizing what one perceives. Then one disturbs the experience stunts its growth, and taints the process of its becoming. Only the unarbitrary can grow properly and bear mature and healthy fruit. That humans are legitimately creative who experiences so strongly and formatively that one’s experiences unite into an image that demands to be set forth, and who then works at one’s task with full consciousness of one’s art. However, one who interferes with spontaneity of perceiving, who does not allow the inner selection and formation to prevail, but instead inserts an aim from the beginning, has forfeited the meaning of this perception, the meaning that lies above all aims. And one who meets humans with a double glance, an open one that invites one that invites one’s fellows to sincerity and the concealed one of the observer stemming from a conscious aim; one who is friendship and in love is cleft into two humans, one who surrenders oneself to one’s feelings and another who is already standing by to exploit them—this individual cannot be delivered by any creative talent from the blight that one has brought upon oneself and one’s work, for one has poisoned the springs of one’s life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
You wish, then, to reintroduce int aesthetics the ethical principle that we have finally succeeded in banishing from it? What was banished from aesthetics was an ideology that had degenerated into rhetoric and had thereby become false. It certainly signified a conquest of sure ground wen the perspective was established that evaluated a work of art—approving or rejecting it—not by its relation to the aspirations of the aspirations of the artist buy by its intrinsic qualities. Now for the first tie we can, without promoting misunderstanding, strive towards the deeper insight: that this approval affords entrance into the other circle only, but in the inner circle those works alone count that have given form to the meaning of being. Similarly, a gain in clarity and solidity was achieved when it was recognized that the significance of an artist does not depend upon one’s morals: now for the first time we can attain the deeper clarity that in inner development mastery and power accrue only to that artist who is worthy of one’s art. The way people use language is braided together tightly with the way they think. While we do not need to think in language (a child can think prior to language acquisition, and, in fact, since language is a vehicle for thought, language presupposed thought and not vice versa), nevertheless, language development is critical for cultivating a careful, precise, attentive mind. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Most people today do not use good grammar or syntax in sentence construction. Interestingly, the demise of grammar and syntax reflects a change in the main way language is currently used. Today, we primarily use langue to express emotions, create experiences, or get someone to do something, like buy a product. Careful thought is not always relevant to these modern appropriations of language. How many television commercials actually persuade us to buy something on the basis of an articulate defense of a product! The devaluation of grammar correlates closely with a devaluation of the mind, truth, and thought. When a main purpose of language is the careful precise expression of thought, grammar and syntax become critical because they make such expression of thought possible. If we Christians are to develop our minds, we must take greater care to improve our syntax and grammar, and we must expect this from each other. From years of experience grading student papers, I can tell you that is a student’s grammar is poor, one has a difficult tie developing a coherent line of thought clearly and carefully. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Let us give ourselves permission to correct one another’s grammar with a gentle, nonarrogant spirit in our fellowship meetings. Is not a developed intellectual love for God worth the price of an initial embarrassment at such correction? After all, the alternative is to continue to allow one another to speak incorrectly and fail to realize the intellectual benefits that come from the correct use of language. Having seen the importance of a Christian mind, and having (hopefully) been persuaded of the importance of good thinking, ordered language, and good grammar, you may be asking, “Okay, wat is well-reasoning thinking?” Let us look now at an introduction of some of the principles that govern reasoning and why they are important to the mind. Why Logic? Besides cultivating virtue, taking study as a spiritual discipline, and being more disciplined about your grammar and syntax, you should be acquainted with certain logical tools that constitute the very nature of thought. Even young children use these tools without knowing the names for them. If you really want to develop your intellectual skills, you should memorize these and practice using them and recognizing their presence in things you hear or read. We Christians must never forget that our God is a God of truth, reason, and logic. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
He speaks wisdom to His children, invites them to reason and argue with God logically, and demands that they present in logical fashion the reason why they believe. The image of God within us includes the faculty of abstract reasoning and logical thought. In Romans, the apostle Paul presents in a careful, logical fashion a host of Old Testament text about the nature of sin, judgment, and justification. In public debate, Jesus Himself regularly used careful logic to refute opponents’ arguments and present them with a carefully reasoned alternative. When John Wesley told a group of ministers to become proficient in logic as a part of their calling, he was expressing a deep understanding of the Christian faith as that faith is depicted in the Bible and throughout church history. In logic, an argument is defined as a group of statements containing premises and a conclusion in which the former are claimed as support for the latter. Using an argument is not the same as being argumentative. In using an argument, one simply supports a conclusion with premises. Being argumentative is a defensive personality defect. Christians are required by God to argue, not to be argumentative. “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. However, do this with gentleness and respect,” reports 1 Peter 3.15. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Arguments are either deductive or inductive. In a valid deductive argument, if the premises are true, then the conclusions must be true. For example, “(1) All dogs are ducks, (2) All ducks are cats, (3) Therefore, all dogs are cats,” is a valid deductive argument. In spite of the fact that premises 1 and 2 are false, if they were true, the conclusion would have to be true. In an inductive argument, the premises do not guarantee but merely provide support or grounds for the truth of the conclusion. An inductive argument with true premises does not guarantee but only makes probably the truth of its conclusion. It would be possible to have a good inductive argument with true premises and a false conclusion. For example, “(1) Ninety-five perfect of people who receive the antibiotic get well, (2) We are about to give John the antibiotic, (3) Therefore, John is about to get well” is a good inductive argument. Premises 1 and 2 do in fact provide good support for the conclusion, even though the premises could be true and the conclusion false. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Deductive arguments can be either valid or invalid. As we have seen, if a deductive argument is valid, its conclusion must be true if its premises are true. An invalid deductive argument is one in which the premises could be true but the conclusion false. For example, “(1) All dogs are mammals, (2) All cats are mammals, (3) Therefore, all dogs are cats: is invalid because it contains true premises and a false conclusion. A sound argument is a deductive argument with true premises (and therefore, a true conclusion), and this is what we want to employ as best we can. A syllogism is deductive argument that consists of exactly two premises and one conclusion. The argument above about dogs and cats is a syllogism (an invalid one). If you wish, call it self-making—this process of using one’s own mental powers, one’s own emotional energies, to actualize the new being that is one’s best self. It does not seek like a mendicant for free transformation by another person, a guru. It makes use of the highest kind of imagination, a deeply relaxed suggestive visualization. Whatever is called for to being on enlightenment exists within oneself already, but it is latent and undeveloped. By study, exercise, and practice the aspirant can be one’s own teacher. Sooner or later one will have to take this work into one’s own hands. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The notion that someone else can or will do it for one is delusory, the belief that a guru can absolve one’s duty is adolescent wishful thinking. If the result is to have any lasting value, it must be self-wrought or in the end the aspirant will have to start again, use this approach, and throw away the negative thought the one is helpless without someone else who must be sought and found. The kind of teacher who is really useful will put no emphasis upon oneself but upon the aspirant’s own work, and then see one at intervals only. Once the materials needed are pointed out, the student should teach oneself; and this one can do only through self-practice. “And it came to pass that in the latter end of the eighteenth year those armies of robbers had prepared for battle, and began to come down and to sally forth from the hills, and out of the mountains, and the wilderness, and their strongholds, and their secret paces, and began to take possession of the lands, both which were in the land south and which were in the land north, and began to take possession of all the lands which ad been deserted by the Nephites, and the cities which had been left desolate. However, behold, there were no wild beasts nor game in those lands which had been deserted by the Nephites, and there was no game for the robbers save it were in the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And the robbers could not exist save it were in the wilderness, for the want of food; for the Nephites had left their lands desolate, and had gathered their flocks and their lands desolate, and had gathered their flocks and their herds and all their substance, and they were in one body. Therefore, there was no chance for the robbers to plunder and to obtain food, save it were to come up in open battle against the Nephites; and the Nephites being in one body, and having so great a number, and having reserved for themselves provisions, and horses and cattle, and flocks of every kind, that they might subsist for the space of seven years, in the which time they did hope to destroy the robbers from off the face of the land; and thus the eighteenth year did pass away. And it came to pass that in the nineteenth year Giddianhi found that it was expedient that he should go up to battle against the Nephites, for there was no way that they could subsist save it were to plunder and rob and murder. And they durst not spread themselves upon the face of the land insomuch that they could raise grain, lest the Nephites should come upon them and slay them; therefore Giddianhi gave commandment unto his armies that in this year they should go up to battle against the Nephites. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“And it came to pass that they did come up to battle; and it was in the sixth month; and behold, great and terrible was the day that they did come up to battle; and they had a lamb-skin about their loins, and they were dyed in blood, and their hears were shorn, and they had head-plates upon them; and great and terrible was the appearance of the armies of Giddianhi, because of their armor, and because of the being dyed in blood. And it came to pass that the armies of the Nephites, when they say the appearance of the army of Giddianhi, had all fallen to the Earth, and did lift their cries to the Lord their God, that he would spare them and deliver them out of the hands of their enemies. And it came to pass that when the armies of Giddianhi saw this they began to shout with a loud voice, because of their joy, for they had supposed that the Nephites had fallen with fear because of the terror of their armies. However, in this thing there were disappointed, for the Nephites did not fear them; but they did fear their God and did supplicate him for protection; therefore, when the armies of Giddianhi did rush upon them they were prepared to meet them; yea, in the strength of the Lord they did receive them. And the battle commenced in this sixth month. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And great and terrible was the battle thereof, yea, great and terrible was the battle thereof, yea, great and terrible was the slaughter thereof, insomuch that there was never known so great a slaughter among all the people of Lehi since he left Jerusalem. And notwithstanding the threatenings and the oaths which Giddianhi had made, before, the Nephites did beat them, insomuch that they did fall back from before them. And it came to pass that Gidgddioni commanded that his armies should pursue them as far as the borders of the wilderness, and that they should not spare any that should fall into their hands by the way; and thus they did pursue them and did slay them, to the borders of the wilderness, even until they had fulfilled the commandments of Gidgiddoni. And it came to pass that Giddianhi, wh has stood and fought with boldness, was pursed as he fled; and being weary because of his much fighting he was overtaken and slain. And thus was the end of Giddianhi the robber. And it came to pass that the armies of the Nephites did return again to their place of security. And it came to pass that this nineteenth year did pass away, and the robbers did not come again in the twentieth year. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And in the twenty and first year they did not come up to battle, but they came up on all sides to lay siege round about the people of Nephi; for they did suppose that if they should cut off from all their outward privileges, that they could cause them to yield themselves up according to their wishes. Now they had appointed unto themselves another leader, whose name was Zemnarihah; therefore it was Zemnarihah that did cause that this siege should take place. However, behold, this was an advantage to the Nephites; for it was impossible for the robbers to lay siege sufficiently long to have any effect upon the Nephites, because of their much provision which they had laid up in store, and because of the scantiness of provisions among the robbers; for behold, they had nothing save it were meat for their subsistence, which meat they did obtain in the wilderness; and it came to pass that the wild game became scarce in the wilderness insomuch that the robbers were about to perish with hunger. And the Nephites were continually marching out by day and by night, and falling upon their armies, and cutting them off by thousands and by tens of thousands. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“And thus it became the desire of the people of Zemnarihah to withdraw from their design, because of the great destruction which came upon them by night and by day. And it came t pass that Zemnarihah did give command unto his people that they should withdraw themselves from the siege, and march into the furthermost parts of the land northward. And now, Gidgiddoni being aware of their design, and knowing of their weakness because of the want of food, and the great slaughter which had been made among them, therefore he did send out his armies in the night-tie, and did cut off the way of their retreat, and did place his armies in the way of their retreat. And this did they do in the night-time, and got on their march beyond the robbers began their march, they were met by the armies of the Nephites both in their front an in their rear. And the robbers who were on the south were also cut off in their place of retreat. And all these things were done by command of Gidgiddoni. And there were many thousands who did yield themselves up prisoners unto the Nephites, and the remainder of them were slain. And their leader, Zemnarihah, was taken and hanged upon a tree, yea, even upon the top thereof until he was dead. And when they had hanged him until he was dead they did fell the tree to the Earth, and did cry with a loud voice. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“He said: May the Lord preserve his people in righteousness and in holiness of heart, that they may cause t be felled to the Earth all who shall seek to slay them because of power and secret combinations, even as this man hath been felled to the Earth. And they did rejoice and cry again with one voice, saying: May the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, protect this people in righteousness, so long as they shall call on the name of their God for protection. And it came to pass that they did break forth, all as one, in singing, an praising their God for the great thing which he had done for them, in preserving them from falling into the hands of their enemies. Yea, they did cry: Hosanna to the Most High God. And they did cry: Blessed be the name of the Lord God Almighty, the Most High God. And their hearts were swollen with joy, unto the gushing out of many tears, because of the great goodness of God in delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; and they knew it was because of their repentance and their humility that they had been delivered from an everlasting destruction,” reports 3 Nephi 4.1-33. O God, Whom none can love except they hate the thing that is evil, and Who willedst by Thy Son our Saviour to redeem us from iniquity; please deliver us when we are tempted to look on sin without abhorrence, and let virtue of His Passion come between us and the enemy of our souls; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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