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If God and the Church Love Me So Much, I Must Be Worthwhile
The Sun was setting and the snow-covered range reflected and radiated its color from the rays of the Sun behind us. It was so breath-taking that we stopped our car to gaze at it for a while; we felt as though we were bathing in a Sky turned into sheer brilliance. The next morning, I sat in the windowsill of the large picture window of our hotel room, and for half an hour intensely concentrating on the mountain peak. I cleared my mind of everything and held my gaze for the first part of the half hour, Mt. Blanc remained a realistic mountain, pure ivory white, incredibly beautiful against the deep blue of the morning sky. Then, as I continued to concentrate on it, the mountain gradually changed before my eyes into another form. It became abstract. It was now, as the underlying form emerged, composed of disembodied squares and circles and planes. I loved it still, as I love the cubist paintings by Picasso and Braque. The mountain form seemed to be painted on canvas, it was disembodied, pure form with no weight or movement. Or one could as easily say, the mountain form was all weight and all movement; with living form it does not matter, as Brancusi illustrates in his sculptures of golden line soaring up from its base which he rightly calls “Bird in Flight.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
However, as I continued to concentrate steadily on it, this weightless form gradually changed again. The vast mountain took on a body, now organic, three-dimensional. It became a new being on a new level. Now I saw it in a living depth. The glowing ivory forms had come together again into an organism, not personal but neither was it impersonal. It seemed to be pure form. I felt more tan saw an embodied structure, now an ultimate form, part of the Universe as I was also. The mountain, like myself looking at it, embodied a Universe of beauty and meaning. Since that day, this experience of my concentration on Mt. Blanc has remained vivid in my mind. Leaving the Swiss border town and driving up through the foothills of the French Alps toward Chamonix and Mt. Blanc was a blessed experience. Back in New York, later, when I looked out the window of my office on the 25th floor high above the Riverside Drive, I saw in the delicate skyline of New York also a pure form—now pure lace. The clouds above the city likewise assumed the forms I had seen in Chamonix, and as I walked home at night the giant elm trees on Riverside Drive took on this same significant form, all part of the same Universe. This experience of living forms, this embodied being, took me out of myself. Whenever I called it out of the past into my mind again, it gave me a new experienced which was beyond living our dying. The feeling was oceanic; it was my participation in the Being of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Such an experience cannot be said to exist only in my imagination, nor is it solely a kind of telepathy emerging from Mt. Blanc. The experience is both inner and outer, both subjective and objective. It is a fusion of my imagination and the emanating form of the mountain. This is an illustration of ecstasy. The word comes from the Greek ex-stasis, meaning to stand outside of, or above. It is also self-transcendent. It gives one the experience of going beyond, or absorbing the old self, and a new self, or more accurately an enlarged self, takes its place. O put it in psychoanalytic language, my ego was not denied but absorbed. My self was enlarged by participation in a new being which happened in this case to be the form of Mt. Blanc. My letting go of my ordinary awareness, which I call my banal consciousness, permitted a new consciousness to be born in me. Eastern religion and philosophy speak of this as the experience of the Absolute, or cosmic experiences, a participation in a Universal awareness. One participates in a greater consciousness, temporarily as it may be. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
It may be clear that artists share this consciousness. Artists are the ones who are particularly sensitive to experiencing scenes in new forms. They have the capacity to look at a scene until it is born in their inner minds and imagination, born in their total consciousness. This may occur immediately, as the artists look at a scene for the first time, or it may be a new experience of a scene they have already seen many times, like Monet’s waterlilies. When they say, “I have looked at this many times, but this is the first time I have really seen it,” this is what people mean. I have looked at many trees in my life, but I never really saw one until I had seen Cezanne’s paintings of trees. Through participating in the Cezanne’s imagination, which so unforgettably finds the ground forms of trees, I was enabled to experience and create for myself the form of trees in a new and completely different way. This is one of the contributions artists make to the World: they experience these living forms, and through their art they enable the rest of us to see them—or better to experience them in our lives. The artist, including any and all of us who choose to create, to make imaginatively, as the ones who care themselves to this experience of essence. They are the ones who are caught up in greater or lesser ecstasy, and they hasten then to reproduce it on paper or on canvas or in music. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
The artists vocation is to communicate that experience of ecstasy to others. Not to communicate it is to surrender the vision to atrophy; the artist must paint, or write, or sculpt—else the vision withers away and he or she is less apt to have it again. There is also another accompaniment to this experience of ecstasy, and that is gratitude. I think I have never painted a watercolor, sketchy as it might have been, without feeling a strange gratification afterwards. I sometimes feel I have been invited in where Angels fear to tread, and for that would not be grateful? The wonder of being human is that any part of us who so choose may be privileged to participate in this experience of ecstasy, with its accompanying gratitude. Before beauty liberates one from free pleasure, and the serenity of forms tames down the savageness of life, what are mortals before beauty? It is not a subject for academic students of technical metaphysics or for professional followers of institutional religion—although they are welcome to all that it has to give them, to the richer form and the inspired understanding of their own doctrine. No—it is primarily for the ordinary person who is willing to heed to one’s intuitive feeling or who is willing to use one’s independent thinking power. It escapes pushing into recognizable and separate divisions, definitions, or groups. Let it be stated clearly that mysticism is an a-rational type of experience, and in some degree common to all mortals. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
It is an intuitive, self-evident, self-recognized knowledge which comes fitfully to mortals. It should not be confounded with the instinctive and immediate knowledge possessed by animals and used by them in their adaptations to environment. The average mortal seldom pays enough attention to one’s slight mystical experiences to profit or learn from them. Yet one’s need for them is evidenced by one’s incessant seeking for the thrills, sensations, uplifts, and so on, which one organizes for oneself in so many ways—the religious way being only one of them. In fact, the failure of religion—in the West, at any rate—to each true mysticism, and its overlaying of the deeply mystic nature of its teachings with a pseudo-rationalism and an unsound historicity may be the root cause for driving people to seek for things greater than they feel their individual selves to be in the many sensation-giving activities in the World today. Mysticism is not a by-product of imagination or uncontrolled emotion; it is a range of knowledge and experience natural to mortals but not yet encompassed by one’s rational mind. The function of philosophy is to bring these experiences under control and to offer ways of arriving at interpretations and explanations. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
Mysticism not so controlled and interpreted is full of pitfalls, one of which is the acceptance of confusion, sentimentality, cloudiness, illusion, and aimlessness as integral qualities of the mystical life—states of mind which go far to justify opponents of mysticism in their estimate of it as foolish and superstitious. The mystic should recognize one’s own limitations. One should not refuse the proffered hand of philosophy which will help one’s understanding and train one’s intuition. One should recognize that it is essential to know how to interpret the material which reaches one from one’s higher self, and how to receive it in all its purity. One of the realities of every historical era is that several generations coexist and inevitably find areas of conflict. Failure to resolve these conflicts may have a far-reaching and damaging effect on attempts to develop human potential beyond the level of the earlier generation. We must encourage people to take the time necessary to discover what it is like to be alive and human. By learning to really communicate with myself and other people, I have found that life has become much more worthwhile. I have emerged with the insight that life does not always have to remain a painful struggle. When an organization includes as part of its ongoing activities the quest to be better far than you are, and combines it with the knowledge of how to use the latest techniques for such growth, the organization is indeed facilitating and enhancing joy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
What happens when significant personality changes do occur within the context of our religious communities? There is no question that remarkable changes in life occur in many individuals who pass through a crisis type experience, which the church may call a conversion or simply a religious experience. Perhaps it will be instructive to view such an experience through the eyes of William, a man now in his forties whose conversion occurred when he was in high school. William was the son of a small-town minister of one of the larger Protestant denominations in America. The father was by no means a fire and brimstone preacher. He was, in fact, a rather warm, gentle, and shy man who lacked the aggressiveness to attract the attention of larger congregations. Though reserved, one probably expressed one’s affection to William and his other children, especially when they were small. That he loved them and took pride in them there is no doubt. There was never any severe physical punishment in the family. He was, however, much concerned that his children behave properly. William recalls one incident in particular that illustrates this: “I was quite small at the time—maybe for our five. I was playing outside and was so engrossed in what I was doing that I did not want to stop and go inside when I needed to urinate. Besides, the idea of doing it outside as Dad and I did when we were on fishing trips appealed to me. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
“So I did it right there, which happened to be alongside the church and somewhat protected from view, so I thought. However, I was not safe at all! Dad came along just then and spotted me. I am sure no punishment was meted out, and I cannot remember what he said, but I do remember feeling I have done a pretty horrible thing by urinating outside!” William’s mother was very affectionate, as he remembers it. She appeared to enjoy cuddling her children, and especially him. However, she, too, was very concerned about matters of behavior. When he was no older than eight or nine, she extracted a promise from him that he would never smoke. The degree to which her own fears about herself were involved in her attitudes are revealed by something se said to him later as a teenager. At a moment when they were alone together she said, “Son, you and I are very sensitive people. We do not go in for thing halfway. Keep this in mind when you are an adult, as it can be an asset for your career aspirations.” When he was around twelve, the question of church membership arose. William’s parents did not tell him he had to join. They simply told him if he wanted to, he was old enough to join. William felt, however, that there was an expectation on their part and the congregation’s part that the minister’s son would become a church member. Yet he had many doubts and questions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
William was not sure that God existed; and furthermore he was aware of anger and resentment that he did not think Christians should feel Furthermore, he was becoming more and more aware of the feelings of pleasures of the flesh, which were at the same time exciting and frightening. These, too, he felt were feelings that a Christian should not have. He felt very guilty about these doubts and feelings, but unfortunately he did not feel free to discuss them with his parents or anyone else. So he joined the church and felt guilty about that, too! Four or five year later William’s father become the minister of a struggling neighborhood church. The church was torn by internal struggles and the father, probably in an effort to unify the congregation, agreed to suggestions by the more conservative members that an evangelist be engaged. For William it was an emotional week of nightly meetings. The music was joyful and contagious, but he could enter in only half-heartedly, burdened down by the knowledge that he was not really a Christian. He wanted desperately to confess his hypocrisy, but could bring himself to do so. On the final evening of meeting and during the last call for those who want to accept the Lord Jesus as their personal Savior to hold up their hands whole every head is bowed, he held up his hand. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Relief was not immediate. He went home and spent a restless night. The next morning, a Sunday, he sought out the evangelist at church and asked to speak to him. They went to a private room where he told the evangelist of his doubts and his feeling of sin. They prayed together, and the evangelist assured him of God’s love and desire to forgive him. It was then that William suddenly felt loved and accepted. A great sense of being right with God and humankind swept over him. He felt twelve feet high and the World suddenly seemed a wonderful place in which to be alive! William really felt like he was, as the evangelist might have put it, a new man in Christ Jesus. The congregation soon became aware of what has happened. And although William’s mother at first expressed some bewilderment that such an experience should have been necessary, family and congregation expressed their delight and approval at his new and wonderful awareness of the Christian faith. And William himself was filled with feelings of good will and love for all humankind. From a psychological standpoint, it would appear that this experience in William’s life could be described as an interruption in the rejection cycle. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Having been filled with feelings of self-hate, guilt, and self-condemnation, he suddenly felt worthwhile and loved by God and the Christian community. He felt cleansed of sin, and born again, no longer an object of self-hatred but of God by adoption. Had William at the time been able to put his beliefs into words, William might have said something like this: “I now know that God loves me and forgives me for having been and for being the terrible person that I am. Therefore, I am released from the terrible burden of self-hate and guilt that has plagued me and am free to be more creative and more loving. In terms of the rejection cycle, what happened might look like this: Feelings of rejection by parents, feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, confession and conversion, overwhelming feeling of acceptance by God and the Christian community, new feelings of worth (“If God and the church love me so much, I must be worthwhile.”). However, prior to conversion there is a need to escape by attempting to please by joining the church. Unsuccessful attempts to suppress anger, pleasures of the flesh, doubt and so forth, which lead to feelings of further rejection (“God condemns me, and parents and the church people would if they knew me.”), producing feelings of worthlessness and self-hate. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
There is no denying that a remarkable change occurred in William’s life. Change in behavior may not have been particularly noticeable, since he had always done pretty much what was expected of him. However, one cannot listen to him describe the experience without being aware that a dramatic change did occur in his feeling of being condemned by God, a change that had significant effect on many of his attitudes. Many members of religious communities live of their lives at this level of understanding whether they reach it by a conversion experience, as William did, or by a gradual growth process in a religious home. And many people seem relatively happy in this life. It costs them something in spontaneity, for they go to considerable psychological effort to keep many of their feelings suppressed. And when they slip back and do things they should not do, say things they should not say, or feel things they should not feel, they again feel guilty, confess, and feel forgiven again for their sins. They rejoice in the amount of love they feel for others, although the sensitive outsider may feel they are more condemning than loving. The catch in William’s adjustment to his kind of religious community is that it is based on a view that regards mortals as inherently evil. And William’s conversation bear much resemblance to the escape hatch in which the person tries to escape feelings of self-hate by attempts to please. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
By saying in effect, “I have been an unworthy sinner who should be condemned, but I intend henceforth to lead a life of faith and dedication to the service of God, the individual often does win a favorable response from family, the religious community, and, he believes, from God. However, the hazards that go along with attempts to please are potentially attendant here also. The individual is likely to come to feel that the love he experiences is conditional upon one’s performance and therefore is not really directed toward one as a person. And, too, although he may keep his feelings of self-hate largely repressed, they are potentially increased, for in becoming a convent he had given up much of his freedom to be an individual in his own right. He is dedicated to hating and eradicating feelings that are an important part of oneself, particularly one’s anger and many of one’s feelings for pleasures of the flesh. To accomplish this one becomes more repressed and less spontaneous in one’s behavior. William eventually came to this conclusion: he entered seminary and followed his father into the ministry, but he found that he was not successful in suppressing the feelings he felt were wrong and for which he had sought forgiveness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
William married while he was in college, but he fond that he felt attraction for pleasure of the flesh towards women other than his wife. This was sinful, so he felt guilt, embarrassed, and inept around women. There were many times when he felt depressed our sullen toward other people and helpless to do anything about it, for to be aware of anger would be a sin in itself. To express it directly would be unthinkable. He also found himself tending to be critical and condemning people for doing things he later realized were things he wanted to do but did not feel free to do. Eventually William found his way into a therapeutic program where he discovered he could be loved for himself as a person—not for what he presented to be. In this secular setting what might be described as an even more basic conversion occurred. In a process that will be descried more fully later, he experienced much more fundamental feelings of self-worth than he had ever experienced before. Was William religious conversation as a high school boy a negative experience in his life? He does not feel that it was. He says, “Although I no longer accept the view of mortals or God on which that experience was founded, nevertheless it was a turning point in my life. At a time when I needed it most, it gave me a feeling of being worth something, however shaky that feeling may have proved later. It is certainly not the route to self-acceptance that I would choose for others to follow. However, for me, at that time and in that environment, it may well have been the only way that held any hope for me.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
So for William it might be fair to say that religion was both a hinderance and a help. The belief that the neglect of actual life is the beginning of spiritual life, and that the failure to use clear thought is the beginning of guidance from God, belongs to mysticism in the most rudimentary stages—and had no truth in it. The World will come to believe in mysticism because there is no alternative, and it will do so in spite of mysticism’s historical weaknesses and intellectual defects. However, if those weaknesses and defects were self-eliminated, how much better it would be for everyone. He has also learned the art of living that the experiences of everyday life yield up their meaning to him, and the reflections of daily meditation endow him with wisdom. If it be asked, “What is the nature of mystical experience?” the answer given very tersely is, “It is experience which gives to the individual a slant on the universal, like the heart’s delight in the brightness of a May morning in England, or the joy of a mother in her newborn child, in the sweetness of deep friendship, in the lilt of great poetry. It is the language of the arts, which if approached only by intellectual ways yields only half its content. Whoever comes eventually to mystical experience of the reality of one’s own Higher Self will recognize the infinite number of ways in which nature throughout life is beckoning one. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
The higher mystical experience is not a sport of nature, a freak phenomenon. It is the continuation of a sequence the beginning and end which are as vast as the beginning and end of the great cycle of life in all the Worlds. No mortal can measure it. It is truth that there is little mention of the beauty of the World in the Gospel. However, in so short a text, which, as Saint John says, is very far from containing all that Christ taught, the disciples no doubt thought it unnecessary to put anything so generally accepted. It does, however, come up on two occasions. Once Christ tells us to contemplate and imitate the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, in their indifference as to the future and their docile acceptance of destiny; and another time he invites us to contemplate and imitate the indiscriminate distribution of rain and Sunlight. The Renaissance thought to renew its spiritual links with antiquity by passing over Christianity, but it hardly took anything but the secondary products of ancient civilization—art, science, and curiosity regarding human things. It scarcely touched the fringe of the central inspiration. It failed to rediscover any link with the beauty of the World. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Sometimes One Can Mistake Gratitude for Love—Dogs are Hardly an Article of Faith
Love or the lack of it is at the root of everything. Guard your children. Weigh wisdom of intervention if such is even possible. Ponder the question of inevitability. To cease wishing is a contemporary emotional and spiritual wasteland, almost like inhabiting the land of the dead. Another characteristic is satiety; if wishes are thought of only as pushed toward gratification, the end consisting of the satisfying of the need, the reality is that emptiness and vacuity and futility are greatest where all wishes are met. For this means one stops wishing. Without faith we cannot want anymore, we cannot wish. The truth of faith consists in true symbols concerning the ultimate. And the faithful is one human being with the power of thought and the need for conceptual understanding. There is a dimension of meaning expressed in the symbolism of the whish, this is what gives the wish its specifically human quality, and without this meaning, the emotional and spiritual aspects of wanting become dried up. When we have faith, it is a symbol that peace and prosperity are just around the corner and it is only a matter of time until all our need will be met. However, the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful. The difference is obvious and fundamental. However, it is, as the phrase “in principle” indicates, a difference which is not maintained in the actual life of philosophy and of faith. It cannot be maintained, because the philosopher is a human being with an ultimate concern, hidden or open. And the faithful one is a human being with the power of thought and the need for conceptual understanding. This is not only a biological fact. It has consequences for the life of philosophy in the philosopher and or the life of faith in the faithful. An analysis of philosophical systems, essays or fragments of all kinds shows that the direction in which the philosopher asks the question and the preference one gives to special types of answers is determined by cognitive consideration and by a state of ultimate concern. The historically most significant philosophies show not only the greatest power of thought but the most passionate concern about the meaning of the ultimate whose manifestations they describe. The philosophy, in its genuine meaning, is carried on by people in whom passions of an ultimate concern is united with a clear and detached observation of the way ultimate reality manifests itself in the process of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
At most general faith means much the same as trust. Therefore, we are being asked to have faith as knowledge of specific truths revealed by God. Faith is a practical commitment beyond the evidence to one’s belief that God exists. We are to have a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit. It is this element of ultimate concern behind the philosophical ideas which supplies the truth of faith in them. Our vision of the Universe and our predicament within it unites faith and conceptual work. We may hold that in our sinful state we will inevitably offer a resistance to faith that may be overcome only by God’s grace. It is, however, a further step for individuals of faith to put their revealed knowledge into practice by trusting their lives to God and seeking to obey his will. Humans contain the potentialities of these creative principles, and can choose to make their lives an ascent towards and then a union with the intuitive intelligence. The One is not a being, but infinite being. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Thus Christian and Jewish philosophers who held to a creator God could affirm such a conception that God is infinite, and created the World. God, as the creator of all, is not far from any one of us. Philosophy is not only the mother’s womb out of which science and history have come, it is also an ever-present element in actual scientific and historical work. The frame of reference within which the great physicists have seen and are seeing the Universe of their inquiries is philosophical, even if their actual inquiries verify it. In no case is it a result of their discoveries. It is always a vision of the totality of being which consciously or unconsciously determines the frame of their thought. Because this is so one justified in saying that even in the scientific view of reality an element of faith is effective. Scientific view of reality an element of faith is effective. Scientists rightly try to prevent these elements of faith and philosophical truth from interfering with their actual research. This is possible to a great extent; but even the most protected experiment is not absolutely pure—pure in the sense of the exclusion of interfering factors such as the observer, and as the interest which determines the kind of question asked of nature in an experiment. What we said about the philosopher must also be said about the scientist. Even in one’s scientific work one is a human being, grasped by an ultimate concern, and one asks the question of the Universe as such, the philosophical question. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Intellectual inquiry into the faith is to be understood as faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). To believe is to thin with assent (credere est assensione cogitare). It is an act of the intellect determined not by the reason, but by the will. Faith involves a commitment to believe in a God, to believe God, and to believe in God. What is eternal is unchanging. In the same way the historian is consciously or unconsciously a philosopher. It is quite obvious that every task of the historian beyond finding of the facts is dependent on evaluation of historical factors, especially the nature of mortals, one’s freedom, one’s determination, one’s development out of nature and so forth. It is less obvious but also true that even in the fact of finding historical facts philosophical presuppositions are involved. This is especially true in deciding, out of the infinite number of happenings in every infinitely small moment of time, which facts shall be called historically relevant facts. The historian is further forced to give one’s evaluation of sources and their reliability, a task which is not independent of one’s interpretation of human nature. Finally, in the moment in which a historical work gives implicit or explicit assertions about the meaning of historical events for human existence, the philosophical presuppositions of history are evident. Where there is philosophy there is an expression of an ultimate concern; there is an element of faith, however hidden it may be by the passions of the historian for pure facts. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
God does not possess anything superadded to his essence, and his essence includes all his perfections. No one can attain to truth unless one philosophizes in the light of faith. Our faith in eternal salvation shows that we have theological truths that exceed human reason. And if one could attain truths about religious claims without faith, these truths would be incomplete. Higher truths are attained through faith. All these consideration show that, in spite of their essential difference, there is an actual union of philosophical truth and the truth of faith in every philosophy and that this union is significant for the work of the scientist and the historian. This union has been called philosophical faith. The term is misleading, because it seems to confuse the two elements, philosophical truth and the truth of faith. Furthermore, the term seems to indicate that there is one philosophical faith, a philosophia perennis, as it has been termed. However, only philosophical questions are perennial, not the answers. There is a continuous process of interpretation of philosophical elements and elements of faith, not one philosophical faith. Revealed theology is a single speculative science concerned with knowledge of God. Because of its greater certitude and higher dignity of subject matter, it is nobler than any other science. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Philosophical theology, though, can make demonstrations using the articles of faith as its principles. Moreover, it can apologetically refute objections raised against the faith even if no articles of faith are presupposed. There is truth of faith in philosophical truth. And there is philosophical truth in the truth of faith. In order to see the latter point we must confront the conceptual expression of philosophical truth with the symbolical expression of truth of faith. Now, one can say that most philosophical concepts have mythological ancestors and that most mythological symbols have conceptual elements which can and must be developed as soon as the philosophical consciousness has appeared. In the idea of God the concepts of being, life, spirit, unity and diversity are implied. In the symbol of the creation concepts of finitude, anxiety, freedom and time are implied. The symbol of the “fall of Adam” implies a concept of mortal’s essential nature, of one’s conflict with oneself, of one’s estrangement from oneself. Only because every religious symbol has conceptual potentialities is theo-logy possible. There is a philosophy implied in every symbol of faith. However, faith does not determine the movement of the philosophical thought, just as philosophy does not determine the character of one’s ultimate concern. Symbols of faith can open the eyes of the philosopher to qualities of the Universe which otherwise would not have been recognized. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Faith is the starting point, scripture offers the data, and philosophy is a supplement not a competitor. Faith, philosophy, and scripture help make sense of each other. However, faith does not command a definite philosophy, although churches and theological movements have claimed and used Platonic, Aristotelian, Kantian or Humean philosophies. The philosophical implications of the symbols of faith can be developed in many ways, but the truth of faith and the truth of philosophy have no authority over each other. In the past few years, a number of persons in psychiatry and related fields have been pondering and exploring the problems of wishing and willing. We may assume that this confluence of concern must be in answer to a strong need in out time for a new light on these problems. It is not wishing that cases illness but lack of wishing. The problem is to deepen people’s capacity to wish, and one side of our task in therapy is to create the ability to wish. Wish is an optimistic picturing in imagination. It is a transitive verb—to wish involves an act. Wishing is similar to faith because it allows us to see beyond our experience and knowledge and hope that something good may happen, and so we send out more beneficial vibrations into the Universe. Every genuine wish is a creative act. I find support for this in therapy: it is indeed a beneficial step when the patient can feel and state strongly, for example, “I wish to buy a beautiful Cresleigh home and feel safe and secure in my community.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
That wish, in effect, moves the conflict from a submerged, unarticulated plane in which one takes no responsibility but expects God and parent to read his or her wishes by telepathy, to an overt, healthy conflict over what one wants. On the basis of theological myth of creation God exults when mortals come through with a wish of one’s own. The wish in interpersonal relationship requires mutuality. This is a truth shown in its breach in many myths, and brings the person to one’s doom. Peer Gynt in Ibsen’s play runs around the World wishing and acting on his wishes; the only trouble is that is wishes have noting to do with the other person he meets but are entirely egocentric, encased in cask of self, sealed up with a bung of self. In The Sleeping Beauty, by the same token, the young princes who assault the briars in order to rescue and awaken the slumbering girl before the time is ripe, are exemplars of behavior which tries to force the other in love and pleasures of flesh before the other is ready; they exhibit a wishing without mutuality. The young princes are devoted to their own desires and needs without relation to Thou. If wish and will can be seen and experienced in this light of autonomous, imaginative acts of interpersonal mutuality, there is profound truth in St. Augustine’s dictum, “Love and do what you will.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
We cannot be naïve about human nature. We know full well that this wishing is stated in ideal terms. We know that the trouble is precisely that mortals do wish and will against their neighbor, that imagination is not only the source of our capacity to form the creative mutual wish but it is also bounded by the individual’s own limits, convictions, and experience; and, thus, there is always in our wishing an element of doing violence to the others as well as to ourselves, no matter how well analyzed we may be or how much the recipient of grace or how many times we have experienced satori. This is called the willful element, willful here being the insistence of one’s own wish against the reality of the situation. Willfulness is the kind of will motivated by defiance, in which the wish is more against something than for its object. The defiant, willful is correlated with fantasy rather than with imagination, and is the spirit which negates reality, whether it be a person or an aspect of impersonal nature, rather than sees it, forms it, respect it, or takes joy in it. There are two realms of will, the first consisting of an experience of the self in its totality, a relatively spontaneous movement in a certain direction. In this kind of willing, the body moves as a whole, and the experience is characterized by a relaxation and by an imaginative, open quality. This is an experience of freedom which is anterior to all talk about political or psychological freedom; it is a freedom, presupposed by the determinist and anterior to all the discussions of determinism. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
In contrast, the will of the second realm is that in which some obtrusive element enters is that in which some obtrusive element enters, some necessity for a decision of an either/or character, a decision with an element of an against something alone with a for something. If one uses the Freudian terminology, the “will of the Super-Ego” would be included in their realm. We can will to read but not to understand, we can will knowledge but not wisdom, we can will scrupulosity but not mortality. This is illustrated in creative work. In the second realm of will is the conscious, effortful, critical application to creative endeavor, in preparing a speech for meeting or revising one’s manuscript, for example. However, when actually giving the speech, or when hopefully creative inspiration takes over in our writing, we are engrossed with a degree of forgetfulness of self. In this experience, wishing and willing become one. One characteristic of the creative experience is that it makes for a temporary union by transcending the conflict. The temptation is for the second ream to take over the first; we lose our spontaneity, our free flow of activity, and will become effortful, controlled and so forth, Victorian will power. Our error, then, is that will tries to take over the work of imagination. This is very close to a wish. Will is the capacity to organize oneself so that movement in a certain direction or toward a certain goal may take place. Wish is the imaginative playing with the possibility of some act or state occurring. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Will and wish may be seen as operating in polarity. Will requires self-consciousness; wish does not. Will implies some possibility of either/or choice; wish does not. Wish gives the warmth, the content, the imagination, the innocence’s play, the freshness, and the richness of the will. Will gives the self-direction, the maturity, to wish. Will protect wish, permits it to continue without wish, will loses its life-blood, its viability, and tends to expire in self-contradiction. If you have only will and no wish, you have the dried-up, Victorian, neopuritan mortal. If you have only wish and no will, you have the driven, unfree, infantile person who, as an adult-remaining-an-infant, may become the robot mortal. Awareness of one’s feelings lays the groundwork for knowing what one want. This point may look very simple at first glance—who does not know what one wants? However, the amazing thing is how few people actually do. If one looks honestly into oneself, does one not find that most of what one thinks one wants is just routines like fresh fish on Friday; or what one wants is what one thinks one should want—like being a success in his or her work; or wants to want—like loving one’s neighbor? One can often see clearly the expression of direct and honest wants in children before they have been taught to falsify their desires. The child exclaims, “I like ice cream, I want a cone,” and there is no confusion about who wants what. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Such directness of desire often comes like a breath of fresh air in a murky land. It may not be best that one has the cone at the time, and it is obviously the parents’ responsibility to say Yes or No if the child is not mature enough to decide. However, let the parents not teach the child to falsify one’s emotions by trying to persuade him or her that he or she does not want the cone! To be aware of one’s feelings and desires does not at all imply expressing them indiscriminately wherever one happens to be. Judgment and decision are part of any mature consciousness of self. However, how is one going to have a basis for judging wat one will or will not do unless one first knows what one wants? For an adolescent to be aware that one wants to drive a brand-new BMW 3 Series, does not mean that one acts on this impulse. However, suppose he never lets his impulses reach the threshold of awareness because they are not socially acceptable? How is he then to know years later, when he buys a care, whether he wants to drive it or not, or whether because thus is then the acceptable and expected act, the routine thing to do? People who voice with alarm the caution that unless desires and emotions are suppressed they will pop out every which way, and everyone, will experience neurotic emotions. As a matter of fact, we know that it is precisely the emotions and desires which have been repressed which later return to drive the person compulsively. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The Victorian gyroscope kind of person had to control his or her emotions rigidly, for, by virtue of having locked them up in jail, one had turned them into lawbreakers. However, the more integrated a person is, the loses compulsive become one’s emotions. In the mature person feelings and wants occur in a configuration. In seeing a dinner as part of a drama on the stage, to give a simple example, one is not consumed with desires for food; one came to see a drama and not to eat. Or wen listening to a concert singer, one is not consumed with pleasures of the flesh even though she may be very attractive; the configuration is set by the fact that one chose in coming to hear music. Of course, as we have indicted, none of us escape conflicts from time to time. However, these are different from being compulsively driven by emotions. Every direct and immediate experience of feeling and wanting is spontaneous and unique. That is to say, the wanting and feeling are uniquely part of that particular situation at the particular time and place. Spontaneity means to be able to respond directly to the total picture—or, as it is technically called, to respond to the figure-ground configuration. Spontaneity is the active “I” becoming part of the figure ground. In a good portrait painting the background is always an integral part of the portrait; so an act of a mature human being is an integral part of the self in relation to the World around it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Spontaneity, thus, is very different from effervescence or egocentricity, or letting out one’s feelings regardless of the environment. Spontaneity, rather is the acting “I” responding to a particular environment at a given moment. The originality and uniqueness which is always part of spontaneous feeling can be understood in this light. For just as there never was exactly that situation before and never will be again, so the feeling one has at that time is new and never to be exactly repeated. It is only neurotic behavior which is rigidly repetitive. God’s great plan of happiness provide a perfect balance between eternal justice and the mercy we can obtain through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It also enables us to be transformed into new creatures in Christ. A loving God reaches out to each of us. We know that through his love and because of his Atonement of his only begotten Son, all humankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances. Eternal relationships are also fundamental to our theology. The family is ordained of God. Under the great plan of our loving Creator, the mission is to achieve the supernal blessing of exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Finally, God’s love is so great that, except for the few who become people of perdition, God has provided a destiny of glory for all his children, including those who have passed away. Our loving Heavenly Father wants us to have joy. “Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested,” reports Kate Atkinson. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
It is Me Against the World–You Have Been Sentenced to a Life of Pain and Suffering!
We must learn to get our own broadcasting station in order. We must tune our own receiving sets. It may take time and effort, but the goal we seek is worth the journey, and the prize that is offered is worthy of our effort. Heaven is lost only because we lack the idea of harmony; it was destined from the foundation of the World that right should finally win and that love should concur all. We all are spiritual and mental broadcasting stations. There is a silent force flowing from us in every direction at all times. How necessary it is that we assume the role of announcer and the broadcaster. How necessary that we write our own program and deliver it ourselves. It is a law, a vibration which reproduces the word of God, the intonation, the inflections are broadcasted. As we pursue the building of this sure foundation, I am fearful that some of us may have lost sight of our divine responsibility to nurture each other in this process. We cannot force love and respect and admiration. We cannot force faith and testimony of truth. Even though we cannot force those things that matter most, there are ways we can help one another. That is, we can prepare hearts to obtain a deep and abiding testimony that God is the Savior of the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
If things have soul, then they can also suffer and become neurotic: such is the nature of the soul. Care of the soul therefore entails looking out for things, noticing where and how they are suffering, seeing their neuroses, and nursing them back to health. We do not usually concern ourselves with the state of things and tolerate much more ugliness and neglect in the things of our society than we should endure. We do not seem to realize how much our own pain reflect the ailments of our things. There is no separation between out soul and the World soul. If the World is neurotic, we will share in that disorder. If we are depressed, it may be because we are living or working in a depressed building. People impeded by either illness or frailty often feel demeaned by the World around them. Rejections come at them from all directions, from random strangers to providers of medical care. To many, the disabled serve as constant visible reminders to the able-bodies that the society they live in is shot through with inequality and suffering, and that they live in a counterfeit paradise. As God tunes the great musical instruments of creation, on the strings of this great World guitar are angels, humans, and things. We all vibrate sympathetically like different octaves of the same time, our human hearts pulsing in the same rhythms as those of the material and spiritual. World#RandolphHarris 2 of 13
We participate in the fate and condition of our objects, just as they participate in ours. Dignity is a solitary attribute. Other people can detract from it, but we have to replenish it on our own. In situations of physical incapacity, self-possession is maintained by literal holding onto oneself in spite of every possible infringement. A man disabled in a car accident claimed that he learned that it was considered bad form for him to behave like a normal person in certain situations. When someone is frightened or in pain, speaking up is not easy. Tasks are given priority over feelings, productivity over kindness. Is the cancer that afflicts our human bodies essentially the same as the cancer we see corroding our cities? Is our personal health and the health of the World one and the same? Many people tend to think that the World is their enemy, that it is full of poisons that attack us, seeding us with illness and death. “It’s just me against the World. Nothin’ to lose. Witnessin’ killings, leavin’ dead bodies in abandoned buildings. More bodies being buried, I’m losing my homes in a hurry, they are relocating to the cemetery. Got me worried stressin’, my vision is blurred. The question is will I live? No one in the World loves me. I’m headed from danger, don’t trust strangers,” reports Tupac Shakur in Me Against the World. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Although the late Tupac Shakur was a young man, many senior citizens and children can relate to him. My friend’s son was afraid to go to school today because of all of the mass shootings he has been hearing about on television news. And the elderly fear leaving their houses. A sixty-six-year-old woman with degenerative arthritis decided to give up leaving her house because on the street she feels like a crippled old lady, a nothing because of how people look away from her. And how the drivers behave, constantly almost running her over with their cars like it is some kind of funny joke to see fright in someone’s eyes as a 2,000 -5,000-pound piece of metal comes close to striking them with a force that could end their lives. Some of them even yell curses. And the lady made up her mind that she is safe and secure in her house. She has plenty to read and a lot to think about. She goes on to say, “If I really want to see what is going on out there, I can look out my windas (windows).” If the World soul and our own souls are one, then as we neglect and abuse the things of the World, we are at the same time abusing ourselves. If we are to attempt to develop a sound practice of ecology, we need to tend to our inner pollutions at the same time, and if we are to attempt to clean up our personal lives through therapy or some other method, we will bed at the same time to tend to the neuroses of the World and to the suffer of people and things. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Medical contempt hurts as much as any illness. Amidst pressures to hurry, patients who slow things down are regarded as obstacles. Those who cannot hear or see well or may have issues with mobility, or who ask that information be repeated, or who need to discuss their problems thoroughly are especially dreaded by hurried staff in many medical facilities. When it comes to human life, people need good quality treatment. We only get one body and if serious conditions are overlooked or not treated that person could lose their precious life or suffer an irreversible condition that may impair the quality of their life all because an analysis has a vice, or malicious intentions. No one wants to be held captive and helpless. Care of the soul requires that we have listen and see the World’s suffering. In many American cities, streets and open spaces are littered with abandoned refuse—old tires, appliances, furniture, paper, feces, urine and garbage. Houses are boarded up, windows are smashed, wood is rotting, weeds have grown wild, grass is brown, and trees are dying. We behold such a scene and think, the solution is to solve the problem of poverty. However, why not feel for the things and people themselves. We see things and people in a suffering condition—sick, broken, and dying. This disease before us is our failure in relation to the World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
What is it in us that can allow people and the things of the World to become so distressed and to show so many symptoms without a nursing response from us? What are we doing when we treat people and things so badly? After some people have endure hardships and see how much more life they have to live and what can possibly go wrong, they want to let go to avoid feeling decades more of unnecessary pain. After a serious surgery and a “questionable hemorrhage, which was going to causing him to lose so much blood that he was going to die, this is how one young man responded. “Please, please, get these doctors to listen to me. They are going to transfuse blood into me any minute, blood that I do not want. I do not care where I am bleeding. Why doesn’t anyone listen? I am ready to die. I have had a good life. Now I just want to lie here, in peace. Please, can you make them understand? They keep coming in here and patting me on the arm and telling me it will be all right, but they do not cancel the transfusions. Maybe they will listen to you, a nice young lady, if you tell them for me.” When someone is frightened or in pain, speaking up to this extent is not easy. If a physician talks quickly and uses obscure language, the person is doubly silenced. People whose physical powers are constricted cannot live by American values, which presume that one is able-bodied and independent. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Those who are not self-sufficient cannot control the outcomes of ordinary tasks, let alone their larger undertakings. They dare not invest their self-esteem solely in what they are able to accomplish, and they cannot afford to live for a future that may be more difficult than their present or past. Veronika Decide to Die is a movie about a young lady (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in the midst of a struggle. She felt powerless, and had to learn a way to react to all the negative messages around her in order to survive. Proving that she was still strong, capable, and attractive was a message she tried to give to a negative World a dozen times a day. Veronika felt she was stuck in a soul sucking financial job, and she was tired of evolving. She has no personal life and was morbidly depressed. Veronika had expected life to be like a strong whiskey, but felt she was being force fed a weak tea. One day, she took a hand full of pills to end her life, but she woke up in a mental hospital and now had a heart condition. Her botched suicide attempt caused an aneurysm in her heart, and she only had a week left to live. Older people who have retained their good health and full physical capacities often find themselves similarly estranged. By virtue of age, most no longer go along with our culture’s preference for the future over the past, and retirement may have hurtled them into days more focused on being than doing. Watching their peers cope with physical problems, they may regard their self-sufficiency as a perishable privilege. It addition to these pressures, everywhere they look aging itself is scorned. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Deflecting disdain on so many levels at once takes considerable stamina. Instead, many people, older and young, absorb the contempt and begin to despise themselves for no longer being capable to fulfill American values. They shrink themselves down to the size of these degrading expectations, taking on an outer demeanor which constrains their self-expression but which is regarded by others as more acceptable for their age, gender, race, culture or status. Older or disabled people who insist on remaining themselves face an exhausting divergence between who they know themselves to be and how others treat them. They feel drained each time strangers respond to them as if they are discounted or worthless members of society. These individuals are regarded as something alien, a foreign species. While our leaders fight for the rights of illegal immigrants and provide them with lawyers and financial assistance. Destructive reactions, such as the tendency to equate old age or disability with mental deficiency, are surprisingly common, and many people have no place to turn. A well-intention young senator, who is an advocate for illegal immigrants, gave a group of older people a tour around the Senate Chamber. He treated them a little like schoolchildren; explaining the legislative process in words of one syllable and shouting, as if they could not speak any English. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Finally, turning to one of the group, the Senator asked, “And what used you to be?” The old man fixed an evil eye on him and replied, “I still am.” Self-preservation can sometimes be accomplished in a sentence. Usually, however, the struggle is more protracted and the feelings that are aroused cannot be handled so succinctly. Repeatedly treated as simple-minded, many people begin to question their intelligence and competence. So little regard reaches older and disabled people from the outside World that their inner stores of confidence may slowly become depleted. Far more is involved than what occurs at the given moment of an encounter when elderly or disabled individuals meet the able-bodied every day. It is a history of learned inferiority. Aged and disabled people must constantly find ways to override other people’s inability to see them. Labels often prevent us from seeing beauty. Much like the trashed-out areas of our cities, the billboards, the thoughtless destruction of buildings that have memory and a long past, and the construction of cheap housing and commercial buildings—these and countless other soulless ways of dealing with things and people indicate anger, a rage at the World itself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
When our citizens spray-paint a trolley or subway or a bridge or a sidewalk, or the side of a historical building, clearly they are not just angry at society. They are raging at the things of the Word, we have to find some insight into this anger, because at a certain level those people who are desecrating our public places are doing a job for us. We are implicated in their acting out. Why does our culture seem so angry at things and people? Why do we take out our frustrations upon the very things that could potentially make our World into a satisfying and comforting home? One answer is may be that when we are cut off from soul and its sensitivity to get great spans of time and even timeless elements, we long painfully for an ideal future and for immortality. Things have a different lifespan than humans; they can outlast many generations. Historical buildings remind us of a past we were not part of. Those past times represent our desire for immortality. If our life efforts are directed toward making a new World, toward growth and constant improvement, then the past will be the enemy, a reminder of death. Concentration on growth and change erodes appreciation for the eternal realities, those parts of the self that transcend the limits ignorance. However, the soul loves the past and does not merely learn from history, it thrives on the stories and vestiges of what has been. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Our history, like many elder and disabled people, youth, and other vulnerable groups, hold fiercely to our remaining capacities. For society, and each and every person, there is a limit to the amount of surrender we are able to countenance without losing ourselves. Acts of self-assertion do not have to be monumental to be vitalizing. One of the powers of soul, is a vision of life that embraces past, presence, and future in a way that transcends ordinary awareness. A soul of sensibility awakens an appreciation for old ways and ancient wisdom, for buildings that hold in their architecture and design the tastes and style of another era. Soul loves the past and does not merely learn from history, it feeds on the stories and vestiges of what was. We are also so angry at things and people that we feel no longer serves us. Abusing things and people is no way to have power over anything, it is actually a way of displaying that you are helpless and weak. Many of the rusting objects and rotting builds decorated with graffiti that pollute our city streets are outmoded or no longer functioning tools. If we define a thing or people only in terms of their function, when they no longer function the way we would like, or refuse to, we have no feeling for them. We discard them without a proper burial. And yet, old things and people who have been through tremendous struggles eventually reveal that they hold a great deal of soul. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Our history and people and bits of evidence of past times seem literally to glow with soul. Do not be afraid to talk to God, as he is the oldest soul maker in the World. Always remember that God speaks a certain kind of language and there is nothing negative in it. We believe in prayerful, affirmative life above anything else. We believe in actually talking to God and then letting God answer. God is unquestionably transcendent. He is wholly other than the World he made. God is the pure and unsullied Mind of the Universe, transcending virtue, transcending knowledge, transcending the good itself. God is the World’s prime mover. God is beyond thought and being. God is an independently existing entity. God will always respond to us. We shall always receive the comfort and consolation we need, the inward sense of security and well-being that everyone must have to be happy and whole. Let us find a new wavelength for our mental instruments, and as surely as we do this we shall begin to broadcast on this wavelength. We shall discover that we are not only helping ourselves, but we are helping everyone around us. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
First of all, we must be sure that we are right inside, and then learn to trust ourselves because we have faith in God. Let us tune our mental instruments to success and happiness, to the idea of physical wholeness, and above everything else to the comforting thought that there is a love in the Universe which by its very presence dissolves all hate; there is a faith that neutralizes all fear; there is a confidence that brushes aside every doubt. God never deserts us, and we shall never have to convince God to be Good. All we have to do is reverse our whole mental and spiritual outlook on life and then the miracle will take place, because what goes out must return. We live in an intense reality. Somewhere along our journey in the mortal World, we must find a faith greater than all our doubts and fears and uncertainties. Somewhere along the line we must find a love greater than all animosity. And we must find a peace beyond our confusion. This is the pathway that we are all seeking, whether or not we know it, and we are being guided by a loving intelligence which evermore seeks to being us peace and comfort, cheer and good-will, happiness and success, healthy and abundance. And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
God is Looking for People Who Have Faith that is Demonstrated
No one lives without accumulating stories. Many things in life offer useful guidance toward finding spiritual values in the World. The spirituality of a place might be marked with a well or drawing on the ground, or a monument, like a castle or mansion. When we place markers on historical battlefields or on houses where our ancestors were born, or where significant historical figures lives, we are performing a genuine spiritual act. We are honoring the special spirit that is attached to a particular place. Family is also a source and focus of spirituality. In many traditions a home shrine and special photographs honor family members. Rites of family gatherings, visits, storytelling, photographs albums, keepsakes, and even tapes of elderly relatives recording their recollections can be spiritual acts that nourish the soul. “The final state of the soul is to dwell with God or be cast out (1 Nephi 15.35).” The opportunity to voice memories to a person who both cares and understands is the most satisfying kind of completion. Story-telling is therefore far more valuable than it may seem. Realizing that such stories allow us to make an ending and find worth in the past elevates remembering and listening to their actual stature. We widen our solitudes by esteeming our memories and making use of them, instead of guarding them in a secret chess, disregarding them, or keeping them to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Action and speech are indeed the two activities whose end result will always be a story with enough coherence to be told. The most important and challenging way to honor our ancestors is to fulfill our personal and potential life’s purpose here on Earth. It can take a lifetime to know our parents in their full humanness. As we get older, our respect for our parents’ achievements increases, as does our sympathy for their disappointments and letdowns. The more our own lives twist in unexpected and humbling directions, the more we realize that our parents had been similarly buffeted. We become our parents’ retrospective peers, seeing more of them as we attain each decade. To be fully understood, vulnerability has to be lived rather than merely witnessed. It is not easy to imagine that one’s own body, which is so fresh and often so full of pleasant feelings could slow down, become tired, and may not be as agile as it once was. One cannot imagine it and, in the end, one does not want to. Many of the realizations that rush upon us as we mature are simply not attainable earlier in life. When our parents need our help prior to passing into Heaven, the period after they pass away, and the time of life when we ourselves are weak and near passing, changes our perspective on life and what we scrutinize. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Indeed, it is this period of the relationship that is perhaps the most difficult and, at the same time, the most significant. However, knowing that there is a God who strongly protects against intrusion and violation might help nurture that spirit in our own lives and honor it in others. We may discover that there are ways to be spiritual that do not counter the soul’s needs for body, individuality, imagination, and exploration. Eventually, we might find that all emotions, all human activities, and all spheres of life have deep roots in the mysteries of the soul, and therefore are holy. As children, the chief illusion we project upon our parents are that they know what they are doing and that they have control over what happens. It does not occur to us that what appears to be inflexibility may actually be a cover for confusion, or what comes out of anger may stem from stress, or what seems to be neglect and a lack of concern may be the consequence of depression. If we allow them to account for themselves and to acknowledge the extent to which their actions stemmed from their own weaknesses, all of this can make sense later. The more hurtfully our parents treated us as children, the more crucial it is for us to try to ascertain the wounds of their upbringing. Otherwise, their weaknesses become holes into which we pointlessly pour or resentment. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Everyone of their failures has a story behind it, a history which has been carried forward and re-expressed rising out of a collective need for stronger union between the human and the divine. Exploring the implications of the soul allows us to learn our parents’ history and to see them as people, rather than to react blindly against them and risk replicating their hurts in our own lives. Turing the furor of our reactions into a reasonable quest for understanding is made easier when we are granted full access to our parents’ histories. Formal teachings, rites, and stories of religions provide an inexhaustible source of reflection on the mysteries of the soul. While listening to our mother or father, we might find ourselves standing in the powerful, streaming currents of time and fate. This may represent the stream of events and persons in which the individual finds one’s place. No one lives without making mistakes and incurring regrets, yet we all hope to be worthy of regard in the end. We learn from these formal sources how to understand and deal with the soul in special circumstances, and also how to understand similar images when they appear in dreams. We all hope that our parents survive into extended old age. Many cultures maintain that we each have a unique destiny to fulfill. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
It is nice to have many generations in families being alive at the same time, leading to new opportunities for reworking and repairing relations between parents and children. This will also further the collective growth and maturation in the spirit realms. We are all children of parents, yet the ability to picture our parents as children can easily elude us. Like nothing else, such glimpses across generations permits us to comprehend those who shaped us and ultimately ourselves. We must find our soul’s purpose as an ethical and loving person. The ancestors are seen as allies in this process of remembering and a reservoir of power and backing to help us embody our potential in this lifetime. Conversely, when we have lost touch with a sense of greater purpose, if we are fortunate, the ancestors may bring about life changes aimed to guide us into greater contact with our soul’s longing and increased awareness of the agreements made before our birth. This may be an inspiring metaphor of the willingness to step courageously into the river of existence, instead of finding ways to remain safe, dry, and unaffected. The notion of reciprocity, of being helped and then helping in return, appeals to our basic requirement for balance and order. When children watch their parents take time out of their bust lives to help their parents, they learn that devotion can persist. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Children should realize that if they regret the longevity of their parents, they will actually be regretting their own future longevity. As we get to know our parents better, we have new opportunities for correcting old misconceptions. One young man was shocked by something his father did. His father never let anyone near his checkbook. However, he got a really bad trimmer in his hand, but still insisted on paying all his bills himself. One day, out of the blue, he called his son up and asked him to come over to help him write out checks. The son could not believe it. He was incredibly nervous when he sat down next to him to do it. Although he handles million-dollar budgets for his company, his hand also started to shake because he was so honored to help his father with his precious checkbook, as it was a bonding experience. In a way, the father was allowing his son to participate in the ritual of becoming the man of the house. His father’s trust was sweeter to this son than his achievement in the corporate World. Also, the father had the opportunity to see how important he was in his son’s life, despite his son’s having garnered every external success. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Extending leniency to our parents gives us hope that someone will do the same for us when we reach this position of physical need and spiritual reckoning. Even fumbled efforts at helpfulness and reconciliation are significant reckoning. Even fumbled efforts at helpfulness and reconciliation are significant for the hope that they instill and the example they set. People feel blessed to have their parents live so long and that hope is the essence of the commandment to honor our parents, making the prospect of living a long life less frightening. Whatever helps us to become more ethical, on even kilt, and open-hearted is one of the most powerful and sincere offerings we can make to our ancestors. An individual must take time every day to remind oneself that we are also spirits, that we are one with God, and to try to being about a deep realization that there is a power greater than oneself sustaining us; a wise counselor guiding us; a generous provider who is ready and willing to meet the needs of everyday life. We do not deny either the body or the mind, but we do affirm the spirit as the supreme presence and the superior principle of all life. We do come from this thing that we call life, or God, and we are fundamentally spiritual beings even while in the flesh. Therefore, in order to be whole, we must establish a right relationship within this trinity of our being, which is thought, feeling and action. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
All Love is the Love of Some Degree of Beauty
The love of God is the force that holds the universe together. Thus, it is asserted that love is a single principle permeating all things, from the material through the spiritual, and that this principle is the dynamic factor in cosmic change. There is no difference in essence between the attraction the elements have for one another and the forms of love that exist in human beings. Love, shame, gratitude, contempt, jealousy, and other affective states are experiences frequently and vividly in everyday social life. These states often include a psychic excitement expressed through bodily gestures, and, therefore, may seem to be too private and psychological to bear much relevance for sociology or to be amenable to sociological analysis. The sociological perspective allows us, however, to demonstrate how seemingly individual behavior and experience are shaped by social features, culture shapes the occasion, meaning, and expression of affective experience. Love, pity, indignation, and other sentiments are socially patterns of feelings, gestures, and meaning. One must lose oneself in order to find oneself, but in so doing, one finds that what one has really discovered is God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Differences in feeling, action, and meaning among sorrow, guilt, and love are socially created, and that is how we learn enduring societal relationships. Social life produces emergent dimensions of emotion that resist reduction to properties inherent in the human organism. One strong tradition takes the conscious feeling to be the emotion. Thus, a passion of the soul is perception, a conscious state, in which the soul is passively affected, as in sense perception, but in which what is perceived is attributed to the soul itself, rather than some physical body. Emotion is merely a sensual feeling, but is refined by communication and sympathetic imagination in primary-group relationships. Thus, love is a sentiment, while lust is not; resentment is, but not rage; the fear of disgrace or ridicule is, but not terror. Shame originates through the organizing influence of social processes upon arousal sensations, bodily gestures, and other emotional elements. If similar sentiments are found in different societies, their origin should be sought in similarities among social relationships, rather than in innate human nature. The one and only way to know what love, happiness, joy, and remorse is, is to actually experience these feelings. Gratitude, for example, supplements exchange and reciprocity relationships everywhere as a powerful means of social cohesion that effects the return benefit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Thus, the emotion is only cognitions which give rise to it and its expressions, whether voluntary or involuntary. A socially emergent dimension of affect is the prolonged time span of love, hatred, resentment, and most other sentiments. In enduring social relationships, previous interaction and anticipations of the relationship’s future course influence feeling. These social affects transcend the single situation, while rage, surprise, terror are confined to the duration of intense arousal and its transient stimulus. In contrast, a feeling like love or hatred reflects the developing properties of the social relationship over time. The significant sociological problem here is how changes in the social relationships are linked with shifts in the associated feelings. Sometimes when we say what we are feeling, we are actually saying what we are thinking. For example, “I feel that you are not hearing me” is a statement of perception or opinion, rather than of actual feeling, a statement that is debatable (unlike a straightforward statement of real feeling). If you cannot figure out what emotion(s) you are feeling, then give data about what sensations you are feeling: “There is a good fragrance in here” or “My heart is fluttering” or “I feel like a light just turned on in my head.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Many people suffer by shutting themselves off from their own depths. The structural coherence of feeling, gesture, meaning, and occasion for jealousy or indignation is maintained by social, not psychological, forces. The structure or pattern of jealously, for example, is socially constructed and meaningful. Jealously can be accompanied by diverse psychological dynamics and motives across individuals. One person may be mainly angry at the rival, another person may fear losing his or her partner, while yet another’s jealousy has to be prompted by pressure from concerned friends. The structural coherence of jealousy does not derive from these diverse psychological factors, but from social forces, such as how people respond to expressions of jealousy and how the course and meaning of jealousy are socially defined. Faithfulness to a relationship gradually supplements the psychic forces that originally brought the relationship about. These initial feelings and motives gradually weaken, but in spite of all variety of origin, the original psychic states attain, in the form of faithfulness, a certain similarity. Even a relationship begun for extrinsic reasons develops its own faithfulness which, in turn, gives rise to deeper and more adequate feeling states. That is how that popular term “catch feelings” came to be. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Truly fulfilling relations encompass empathy, vulnerability, and capacity for emotional literacy. The true power and resolve of relationships also comes from their authenticity, their capacity to anchor themselves in real integrity. Emotion is the modifiability of feeling, expression, and meaning in response to social interaction and cultural norms and beliefs. Love, guilt, and compassion are not fixed in innate human nature. Instead, we identify and act upon them in terms of social events, relationships, and values. Psychologists usually conceive of emotion as acting through the person, motivating and directing his or her behavior and experiences. In addition, that activation process may work mainly in the opposite direction, from consciousness and ongoing action toward feeling and gesture. The social person is sentient, reflecting upon feelings and sometimes changing feeling about how they are interpreted. For example, we may summon up feelings of love, or strive to diminish their intensity. We can also try to mobilize love in another person, directing our gestures to shape their feelings. There is a deeper life for humanity, a life in which responsibility and freedom are connected, a life in which happiness not the foundation of what we have, but in what we fundamentally are. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
On a larger, historical scale, love and other sentiments change in how they are expressed, where they are appropriate, and what they mean culturally. These social levels of change in feeling and expression are irreducibly independent from the physiological dynamics of emotion, and are an appropriate and important subject for sociological explanation. Emotion is activity and reactivity of the tissues and organs innervated by the autonomic nervous system. An emotion can occur without its typical overt expressions. One can be happy, or feeling love, or excited, or overjoyed, or even angry without anyone else even knowing it. Thus, it seems that the emotion itself is something inner which may or may not issue in overt behavior. Each of your emotions is worth getting to know very well—its nature, its purpose, its expression, its containment, its values, your history with it, your use and misuse of it. Even plants have emotions. I have two potted trees that have been touching for eight years, I move one of them, it took a month, but the other started leaning towards its mate. “And blessed at thou because thou hast established a church among this people; and they shall be established, and they shall be my people. Yeah, blessed is this people who are willing to bear my name (God); for in my name shall they be called; and they are mine” (Mosiah 26.17-18). #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Peter My Mink is Dragging on the Floor
A stunning first impression is not the same thing as love at first sight, but surely it is an invitation to consider the matter. We are drawn to people, inspired by them, and even strengthened by their examples. If first impressions are sufficiently favorable, persons will be motivated, when they begin to interact, to provide behaviors that will result in favorable outcomes to the other, and to the degree each is successful in this respect, they become progressively motivated to provide rewards that will maintain the relationship. Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. One of the most important rewards that persons exchange as a relationship develops is support for each other’s view of themselves as persons, their self-concepts. How do you and I become so converted to the truth, so full of faith, so dependent on God that we are able to meet trials and even be strengthened by them? A fundamental purpose of Earth is personal growth and attainment. We will have challenges, even difficulties, where decisions of great importance must be made so that we can grow, develop, and succeed in this mortal test. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Gratefully, God’s love is perfect. God has moved so deeply in the hearts of so many. Some people regard unconditional love is something that is real, and the most real things there is. The most consistent finding in the empirical literature on attraction is that persons are attracted to others whom they perceive as accepting them as they see themselves and who allow them to behave in a self-validating manner. Thus, in the early phases of interaction, each person begins tentatively to reveal one’s self to the other. The process of self-disclosure involves first, information about the self that each feels relatively confident about and relatively certain that the other will find acceptable. We may disclose information about our intellectual aptitude, or athletic abilities to see how we relate to others. This type of comparison helps us decide whether we are superior or inferior to others. Disclosures about abilities or talents can also make us more relatable to others. For instance, 80 percent of people find faithfulness as a top attribute they find attractive about a person. A sense of humor is important and it makes people seem more intelligent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
For long relationships, individuals tend to prefer others who are altruistic, kind, and do good deeds. Being involved in a charity is seen as a really attractive trait. Other studies have shown the people with dogs are generally more attractive also because they have a capacity to love and care for another being over a long term. We want to make ourselves open to others, through self-disclosure, but we also want to maintain a sense of privacy. If someone knows too much about you upfront, it might impede them from going further in the relationship because they see it as too much of a risk or hassle. Later in the process of self-disclosure, persons revel more intimate details about which they are less confident, hence in greater need of social validation, and which they are less certain will be regarded favorably. Revelations at this level play an important part in the process of self-creation. As a relationship develops, each person feels sufficiently secure to try out or tentatively display new elements of identity. Such displays may take the form of revealing hitherto private hopes and fears about the self, or more indirectly, of recounting to the other past or current episodes of behavior where the person behaved in a fashion viewed as confirming some nascent element of self. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Studies of the self-disclosure process generally find that, in the early part of a relationship at least, each person tends to pace the process of disclosure by revealing to the other information about the same level of intimacy. As in any other exchange, persons feel obligated to adhere to the norm of reciprocity. To the extent that one person’s revelations at progressively more intimate levels are increasingly rewarding in terms of signifying regard and trust to the other partner, the latter feels obligated to return revelations thought to be of equal rewarding value. However, disclosures that are too intimate often highlight character, personality, or other kinds of sensitivity information, thus decreasing congeniality. People who make intimate disclosures too early in relationships are often perceived as insecure, which further decreases someone’s interest in them. One time I was walking by a fancy Italian restaurant, and two guys in their forties were on what seemed to me as their first date, and one of them was telling the other guy about how painful his recovery from cancer was. The guy he was with replied, “Oh, gees,” and picked up a bread stick and ate it. He seemed rather pensive and I got the impression that it would probably be their last date. The process of self-disclosure contributes to another basic interpersonal process, the growth of trust, which in turn further facilitates more intimate disclosure. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
While there is not complete agreement on a definition of trust, a key element appears to be a sense of certainty that the trusted person will not behave at some point in the future in a way that endangers anticipated favorable outcomes of the trusting person. When first dating, you want to make an individual feel good and talk about things that make them happy. It is like you are selling yourself in a sense. People have options and they do not want to get attached to someone who might drain them of their emotional or financial resources. Each person’s revelations of progressively more intimate details concerning one’s self, and their acceptance and confirmation by the other, give assurance that any resultant vulnerability will not be exploited, either because both partners are equally vulnerable or because each perceives the exchange of progressively more intimate details as a sign of increasingly close interpersonal ties. Generally, as the details get more intimate, that means that the emotional bond in the relationship is probably increasing. So, when the relationship seems to be getting more serious, that is a good time to tell a person sensitive information about yourself that might affect them wanting to have a long-term commitment with you, and that is only fair. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
More than likely if a person cares enough and can deal with it, then they will likely continue in the relationship because they are already emotionally and somewhat financially invested. For instance, some people have commitment issues and cannot figure out whether they want to move to another part of the country or go back to school, or even just a plan to get a cup of coffee with a friend. One might be reluctant to disclose that he or she has problems making choices, from something as small as choosing what movie to see, to something more significant like signing a lease for house. The fact that persons perceive the intimacy of disclosure as indicative of attraction allows the self-disclosure process to function as a pacing device in the development of a relationship. By the depth of disclosure to another, a person may indicate one’s degree of emotional involvement in the relationship. While our emphasis so far has been on the manner in which self-disclosure allows for maintenance and creation of self-elements, an extremely important reward, self-disclosure provides each partner with information concerning other outcomes as well. Persons learn what kinds of behaviors have reward value to each other and which behaviors are costly. This information, in turn, can be used as a guide in arriving at mutually satisfying patterns of exchange that become a part of the structure of interdependence that constitutes the relationship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
As you get to now a person who seemed to be commitment issues, you might begin to understand that person has a lot going for one’s self, and just needed to meet someone who is trustworthy. That individual might be optimistic, loving, and a sincere individual who wants to settle down. People are capable of changing, but not until they are ready to understand how things are controlling their lives. It requires both willingness and openness to new insights and new activities before one is able to take the first step in successfully challenging relationship issues. God has given us the capacity to exercise faith, that we may find peace, joy, and purpose in life. However, to employ its power, faith must be founded on something. There is no more solid foundation than faith in the love Heavenly Father has planned. Lord, make us an instrument of your peace. Grant that we may not so much seek to be loved as to love. God, who from among all your angels, chose the Archangel Gabriel to announce the mystery of the Incarnation, mercifully grant that we who solemnly remember him on Earth may feel the benefit of his patronage in Heaven, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Bless it be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
California’s Circle of Fear
The purpose of a career is so that leaders can shape a better World by strategically exploring, planning, and creating future paths, where their actions and choices also facilitate continuous learning and growth in the work force. The structural imperative of the job, requires values that give a wide range of psychological variables, especially intellectual flexibility. Empirical evidence is substantive that complexity of work beneficially affects the socialization and self-creation of the individual. More specifically, as jobs increase in status and prestige, they also increase the degree of autonomy, creativity, and discretion allowed in the worker. The career also tends to be more satisfying and rewarding. People in work situations that provide little opportunity for upward mobility tend to limit their aspirations, seek satisfaction in activities outside of work or alienation from work. These displaced workers will create strong peer associations in which interpersonal relations take precedence over other aspects of the job, and develop loyalties to the local unit rather than to the larger organization. The second dimension, being low in organizational power, also has negative psychological and behavioral consequences for the individual. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Individuals who are stifled at work become pettier, bossier, and more authoritarian; use subordinates for their frame of reference; and rely more on coercive than persuasive techniques of control. And the third dimension is when people are underrepresented in their career field, they find it harder to be taken seriously; are more isolated and excluded from informal peer networks, and may be oppressed. All of these dimensions represent behavioral consequences of disadvantaged position is the work force. Breaking these cycles of development is difficult because the tendency is for the individual’s competence, confidence, and power progressively to increase (or decrease); and the perceptions and expectations that others have of the individual become solidified. This model can produce a set of structural conditions that contribute to the development of self-actualizing or self-defeating people. Self-actualized people are motivated to try out new experiences. They will feel secure enough about one’s own personality—strengths, weaknesses, and uniqueness—to expand one’s horizon. In contrast, people who are self-defeating let external influences serve to frustrate, thwart, or destroy one’s own intention of interests by internalizing and letting negative forces dictate their abilities. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The structure of opportunity brings in the workers assessment of the future, via prospects for upward mobility, as a factor in present adjustments. People relate to the present in part in terms of their expectations and prospects for the future to be stuck is a very different work experience than being up and coming. There is ample evidence on work in American society to suggest substantial dissatisfaction and alienation of workers from their jobs. In a recent department of Health, Education, and Welfare report, only 43 percent of workers who perform professional jobs (doctors, lawyers, teachers) and just 24 percent of labor workers (construction workers, retail, manufacturers) reported that they were satisfied with their jobs. The socialization consequences of work settings can reflect either processes of relatively passive compliance and adaptation to external exigencies or process of self-determination and expansion. Therefore, a critical element of career philosophy is to support internal mobility. Internal mobility is the extent to which employees move into new careers within an organization, based on their performance. It is a measure of how well some corporations encourage employees to develop and stretch themselves so that they can advance and live a productive life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Employees who are successful keep their skills and knowledge fresh and current. They show up to work on time, are professional, have good hygiene, maintain a reputation for being optimistic and adaptable. Highly competent employees develop and sustain meaningful professional relationships, and they stay informed about current trends influencing the corporation, economy, and their specific career field. Re-socialization can take place in various institutional settings established for this purpose, such as in peer groups, church, and compensatory education programs. The specific objectives of these contexts vary from political socialization (or brainwashing) to religious conversion to various types of reeducation such as workshops and meetings. Delinquency is seen primarily as a group phenomenon and the task of rehabilitation is one of changing the shared delinquent characteristics. Participation in some of these contexts is voluntary, and in others involuntary. Most of these contexts can be characterized as involving intense small-group interaction where the socialization ratio is large, and where the interaction environment is totalistic or closed. Under these circumstances, one’s sense of reality is most effectively restructured. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
The Democratic Communist program used brainwashing as a source of reeducation. Along with the physical coercion, the lack of sleep, and various forms of psychological stress, physical and financial assault to weaken their target’s hold on past beliefs and identities. It was a process of identity casting used in the situation. From the beginning, it was made clear that the target’s life and rights did not matter, and that they must perish, and in one’s place must arise a new person, resurrected in the Communist mold. Often times that meant an individual was killed and their identity was given to a different person. The original person’s major status identifications, such as doctor, priest, teacher, as well as the individual’s name, were undermined and replaced by the identity of criminal. Perhaps the most significant assaults upon the now prisoner’s identity occurred during the process of confession. Confession, which was the major technique employed by the captors to involve the prisoner in the process of one’s own reform, required thorough and compelling self-examination of every action, attitude, and thought, and always from the people’s perspective. A series of denunciations of friends and associates was required as an essential part of the confession. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Making these denunciations not only generated feelings of guilt and shame in the prisoner, but it subverted the structure of one’s own life. Even when the prisoner was aware that one’s confession was wild and one’s denunciations invalid, one usually began to behave as if one were a criminal. If the prisoner would not, then the opposition forces would have someone impersonate the individual to act out the behavior the oppressors wanted to convince the public that the prisoner’s refashioned identity was emerging. This may be considered the rebirth. In this case, the boy’s initial situation was purposely amorphous: The prisoner is left on one’s own to figure out why authorities are doing what they are doing and what they must do to get out of trouble. The new conscript soon discovered that the only avenue for release was through participation in the delinquent peer group, which was the primary source of pressure for change. The main interactions took place in daily group discussion session. In these group sessions, the essential ingredients of identity assault included confession of past transgressions through a minute re-examination of the past, including one’s former identities, with the assistant of a reform vocabulary and the constant pressure of the peer group. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Usually these targets are easy to break because they are alienated from their past identity, unhappy with themselves or their lives, lack a strong sense of self and identity, and carry a burden of guilt. The main task for the group is to channel this discontent into the creation of the new self. Initially, the major technique used to make the prisoner receptive to change was fear. It was simply fear of physical punishment and harassment. However, as the effects of confession, self-betrayal, and group attack began to take hold, it became a fear of psychological annihilation (hitting rock bottom psychologically). There is also another strategy, which was to use love to manipulate the prisoner. Love is used as the most coercive and cruel power of all. Either love or fear was used to strengthen the group’s hold over the individual and make the individual more vulnerable to radical re-socialization. However, when a target is resistant, the program may fail. Although the individual may be physically weaker, psychologically they are stronger. And as the participants in the program group, the corruption becomes exposed because people hear about the torture and they start to see. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
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A young father was taking a journey to Emigrant Lake, which was aptly named for the majestic pine covered mountains. The sky was blue, filled with puffy cumulus clouds, emanating beauty and serenity. As the blue light was scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth’s atmosphere, he noticed the little brown song sparrows singing a very sweet song in the early morning. The song sounded as if set to the lyrics, “Beautiful Day! Beautiful Day! Would you like to come and play! Beautiful Day! Beautiful Day!” As the young man was enjoying the panoramic views, lush greenery, running streams, and mild temperature, there was a loud rush of the wind through the branches. He gazed at the impression rock formations, and mountain meadows. When he looked up, he noticed peaks surrounding Emigrant Lake, including Melissa Coray Peak, which was named for a Pioneer woman who walked 2,000 miles to reach the west, he also noticed Covered Wagon Peak that still held patches of snow. He took a good rest, and took some time to think about how modern industrial society is so complex, differentiated, and rapidly changing, compared to the tall pine trees and glistening lake sparkling and shining with light. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The glistening surface of the lake was especially beautiful in the morning. The father thought to himself that he wanted his children to experience the rustic country atmosphere, as it had a refined elegance, and sweet air. He thought about how when his children grow up they will have to understand and perform many more roles than people in less complex societies. And he wanted them to develop a love for the natural World beyond. Respectable scientists—doctors, psychiatrists, educationalists, sociologist—suggest that when kids stop going out into the natural World to play, it can affect not just their development as individuals, but society as a whole. He thought about how he used to take his kids to Robert’s Park in Oakland, California to hike, climb trees, build dens, collect birds’ eggs, identify frogs, and take a gander at deer. The kids were thrilled, but also a little intimidated because it was not the concrete jungle that they were used to. The father thought about how individuals simply cannot become prepared in childhood for all the tasks and roles they will encounter as adults, but he was also concerned about the role definitions, how they are in flux, and about how new roles emerge frequently. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
As you know, role acquisition is tied to role conflict and role transition. In most situations, but particularly conflicting ones, internal as well as external stimuli affect the way persons learn presented roles. The demand of self may be as important, if not more so, than demands of other persons or society. Sometimes an incessant stream of self-reference flows through our thoughts concerning which we usually have no inkling. It may seem as if we are forced to compare with our own person all that we hear about strangers, as if our personal complexes become stirred up by associations from without. It seems impossible that this should be an individual peculiarity of our own person; it must, on the contrary, point to the way we grasp outside matters in general. We have reasons to assume that other individuals meet with experiences quite similar to ours. There may be small but incremental shifts from time to time in what an individual asks of oneself, and the resultant day-to-day alterations in one’s behavior, rewarded by oneself, lead to a cumulative change which over the years makes one much different from what one was when one was younger…until one day the individual finds how the change occurred. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
One outcome of such self-initiated processes of change is that an individual may redefine a role in a unique way. For instance, I admire my grandfather, he was very professional, obeyed the law, was organized, peaceful, responsible, private, clean, neat, not very social, kind, firm, and successful. He was not loud, nor emotional, did not drink nor swear and his house was always spotless and fresh. He did not like a lot of people around and did not want many children. And that is how I want my life to be as well. I want to live in a community of professionals, where people are respectful and quiet and obey the laws. There are several stages in role acquisition: anticipatory socialization, formal socialization, informal socialization, and personal role expectations. After the role incumbent has anticipated and experienced the role, then he or she may begin to redefine it and develop personally tailored role expectations. Thus, role demands that culminate in changes in the self may emanate from within the self, from others encountered in face-to-face situations, or from socially defined norms. While it is likely that demands from these different sources may be related, they are often incongruent. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Since role change continues throughout the course of the life cycle, the acquisition of new roles and loss of old ones has been a theoretical concern. The discontinuity involved in major role transition may be psychologically stressful. At times we may feel as if we are drowning in life. We live in a World full of hustle and bustle, and if we are not careful, the things of this World can drown out the things of the Spirit. The level of stress depends on the nature of the role abandoned or acquired. There are also institutionalized rites of passage that smooth the transition to new roles. An answer comes when we recognize the divine source of strength. It is a source often underestimated, yet it can be used daily to lighten our load and guide our precious children. That source is the guiding gift of the Holy Ghost. We learn about and make a covenant with God. Those we love support us and we pray and come out feeling of great joy. And the gift of God will guide us constantly as we live for that blessing. However, role discontinuity can be stressful. Role conflict implies conflicting demands at one point in time, whereas role discontinuity role discontinuity refers to a contradiction between demands of a new and an old role. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
It is this contradiction in role demands that is presumed to be problematic for the individual, both in terms of confronting him or her with a potentially traumatic situation and in terms of rendering the task of learning and adjusting to new roles more difficulty. Children have a natural desire to do good and to be good. We can sense their innocence, their purity. They also have a great sensitivity. We should teach our children spiritual education in the home, where spiritual principles can form the basis for daily living. Feeling and recognizing the Spirit will being spiritual capacity into our children’s lives, and the voice they come to know will become crystal clear. As we gain experience and success in being guided by the Spirit, our confidence in the impressions we feel can become more certain than our dependence on what we see or hear. We must live for the guiding gift of the Spirit. This gift will continue to lighten the weight we carry and lead us back to our Heavenly home,as long as we live for and follow God’s prompting. Immersing ourselves and families in the Spirit will keep our hearts and our children’s hearts open to God’s influence, love, compassion, and understanding. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
A Better Lifestyle with Family Benefits
One basic the basic concepts of forgiveness is that one must be truly repentant, having satisfied justice before forgiveness can take place. There should be no license for sin. God is merciful, but he is also just. An eternal aspect of justice has been decreed by divine law, that God is not mocked: for whatever a person does, is what they shall get back in return. History is made by strong individuals who issue commands to the masses about how to play the game; these leaders fit into the World. This is not the way spiritual history is made; it is made by exceptional people who do not fit into the World, who have a conception of the World other than that given in the games people play. What these people do not realize is that, even with the self-sacrifice of their lives, the most they can achieve is a small change in the rules by which these communal games of humankind are played. Self – (or social) evaluation can come about through a process of comparison with others. An individual’s judgment of how well he or she is doing is formed not only directly, on the basis of appraisals by others, but also indirectly, as a result of comparing his or her situation with that of others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Even in self-evaluations resulting from social comparison, however, normative factors come into play. In the first place, such factors mat specify the group with which the comparison must be made. And second, the comparison has consequences for self-evaluation only to that extent that the standard against which an opinion, performance, or situation is compared has normative force—that is, constitutes an expectation level that carries with it the implication of ought or should. It can be horribly mortifying when we experience the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else’s story. And if one can find any way out of our culture, then that is a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap. Many of the classic investigations of reference group behavior have concerned themselves with the consequences of conformity to the perceived prescriptions of some valued group for attitude stability or change. However, what is one to do when they do not want to conform to the group, are not accepted by the group, and the group is like a pervasive cancer, acting as a source of oppression at every move one makes to advance oneself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Sometimes hardworking people with a lot of promise and determination get stuck in awful places. However, what one may consider awful, others might consider a paradise. And it may seem no matter how hard we try to upgrade our lives, nothing seems to work out. One might have thought that years ago, they would be in a better situation. Then they look and are still in the same place and trying even hard to keep a roof over one’s head and advance. Another year rolls around, and they think to themselves, within six months from now, I know I will be in a better place, I cannot see being in this same situation any longer than that. Yet, three more years pass, and they are still in the same place. The influence of a reference group on attitudes or behaviors is a factor that should be considered. The salience of a reference group can increase a subject’s resistance to the propaganda directed against the group or increase the frequency of responses conforming to the norms of that group. That is why some people choose to join church, it helps them to be thankful for the everything in their lives, and they realize that at some point, through an increase in faith, that their hard work and determination will pay off. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Still, there is also an account for the ability to maintain a deviant perspective by its anchorage in a significant reference group or individual or have demonstrated that adoption of new reference figures (as through the development of close friendships) is associated with adoption of a new, at times deviant, perspective. For example, the fact that adolescents who use drugs are more likely to report drug use among their friends does not necessarily mean that such use is a consequence of selecting a particular reference group; the choice of reference group may be contingent on drug-taking behavior, or both may be consequences of particular combinations of residential, social, and other statuses. That is why parents who have lived in bad neighborhoods and low-income communities work hard to send their children to school, so they can provide a better environment for them so they do not have to be in a community with gang activity, crimes, and drugs. However, some people are jealous of people who are good, no matter what their situation is, and what do whatever they can to see that person fail. It brings them joy to see someone they do not like struggle and suffer. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
And then the cycle continues where the good person has to figure a way out of an oppressive situation that they were never meant to experience. As you can see, there are consequences of reference orientations. Yet, love changes everything. Medical studies about young children report that nurturing and supportive parenting can lead to improved physical health and possibly greater intelligence later in life. Kids need love, care, and people to teach them things. The effect of nurturing could be even stronger the younger the child is because it is possible that the brain is more sensitive to change earlier. People who have families are generally more happier and satisfied, and the motivation helps them to live a healthier life. People with families are motivated to eat healthier, exercise more, drink less alcohol, and put themselves in dangerous situations less often. In turn, this suggests that attitudinal similarity may be a potent factor in the formations of groups, which subsequently function as powerful references groups in inducing further attitude change. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
You have all you need to stand strong and firm and true because you have the Lord on your side. Notwithstanding the afflictions about us, notwithstanding the sordid things we see almost everywhere, notwithstanding the conflict that sweeps across the World, we can be better. I do not know what we did in the preexistence to merit the wonderful blessings we enjoy. We have come to Earth in this great season in the long history of humankind. It is a marvelous age, the best of all. As we reflect on the plodding course of humankind, from the time of our first parents, we cannot help feeling grateful. We promise to love the Lord, to honor him all the time—daytime and nighttime, Summer and Winter, good times and bad times—love the Lord and let that love show by the way we live. We also take time to thank God, take time to ask for help, take time to seek guidance, and then take time to listen. Take time for that still, small voice which will whisper to us, help us, and give us courage. Both laboratory experiments involving the choice of partners for limited kinds of interactions and investigations of friendship choices in the real World have pointed to some sort of similarity as one principle underlying the selection and acceptance of groups that function as normative referents. However, the question immediately arises, similarity with respect to what? #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Social psychologists tend to emphasize similarity with respect to individual values, attitudes, and other personality characteristics. Another factor is the social structure, which may make one group (individual, category, status, and so forth), more salient than another, in terms of its appropriateness or in terms of its power to confer rewards; the other is normative structure, which may be define one group (individual, category, status, and so forth) a more appropriate or more rewarding. Our Heavenly Father does bless us when we show our love for him in all things. We will stand witness in all places—both public and private, in secret, in dark or in light places; in church, school, home, or cars; in mountain places, or beach places; on the street or in the park. The potency of physical structure is dramatically demonstrated in a field of experiment in which the functional distance between apartments turned out to be a powerful determinant of friendship formation among persons who are similar to one another on a variety of social characteristics. Structural factors also come into play in those situations in which individuals adopt as a point of reference group whose values are quite dissimilar from their own. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
It is given unto you to judge that you may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain that you make know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. Stand as an example of a worthy child of God in all places. Heavenly Father, we come to you asking that you come into our lives and heart. As we are learning to discern the prompting of the Spirit, there are so many distractions. It is experience that helps us know good from evil. It is experience that helps us recognize the promptings of the Spirit. Experience can also help us recognize when good feelings are lacking. Dear Father God, we thank you for this wonderful free gift of Salvation and the knowledge that there is nothing left for us to do except to believe in you as our Savior. Thank you for your perfect righteousness and for giving us eternal life, which a special place reserved with us in Heaven, for all eternity. There are no words that can express our love and gratitude for this amazing free gift of grace—thank you. You Father God, are amazing and loving and graceful. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Corruption is the Enemy of Development
No program should set out to create failure or humiliate participants. The divide-and-conquer method might have been contrived in the religious and political realms, sharpened on the battlefield, and perfected in the dating game, but this technique can also be used to the individual’s advantage it is meant to harm. The divide-and-conquer may seem fruitless in modern times because the problems it creates become much more complicated as the input grows. There will always be resistance. Though power may tend to corrupt, there will always be those who believe in righteousness. Also, self-control and self-mastery leads to self-governance, and the realization that we do not necessarily need membership in a group we cannot trust. We do not need a chain of obedience or a corrupt hierarchical system. We only need leaders: preferably self-leadership that leads by healthy example. When we are isolated, we are better able to focus on our areas needing development. Our flexibility and resilience depends on the meaning we make out of a disappointing experience, and the strength of the relationships that shape, even transform, that experiences. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
One reason many leaders never make it to the top is because they never fail, leaving them at a loss when they do. It is not failure alone, but the ability to put failure to good use that creates endurance and success. When a person is able to make good things out of bad experiences, this allows one to transcend or recast painful experiences—or at least endure them with good humor. Good leaders develop good attitudes and lead to speak to people’s hearts, and not only will that individual, but also their audience will emerge from their caves of doom and gloom, like one awakened from sleep, to the World in which we live again. A collective force of free individuals living with the mindset that cosmic laws based on health, wellness, and survival are the keys to well-being. The goal is to not only ease one’s own pain, but to heal wounded feelings and mitigate the disappointment of others. This will allow us to find a common ground and cultivate a society of compassion and fraternity, as we withstand adversity, and persevere and develop relational sensibilities. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
It is important to actually get to know people and expose individuals to ideas that challenge their current ways of seeing. This will develop the ability to read people and situations with greater acuity; and help them reframe how they see difficult experiences. Sometimes a walk through a dark forest (do not try this) is exactly what we need to lead us to the light and refresh and recharge. Our feelings are a joint venture—a product of our interactions and the way we frame them, given our repertories. When we question our current way of seeing things, it also frees us to work together to map and alter the pattern. Maybe, even if it is risky, taking a new path is what we need because it will allow us to see something else, something that will illuminate our vision. The Anatomy Framework will turn our attention away from labeling people and toward what they are doing, how they feel, and how they interact. This will make it easier to make new sense of old situations in which we will caught. When we tether new actions to new ways of seeing, we will integrate new behaviors more quickly, and these behaviors will feel more natural to us and less artificial to others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
We can be negative and look for the ugly in life and the faults and failings of those around us, or we can develop optimistic attitudes and see the beautiful in life and the good, the strong, the decent, and the virtuous in people, which brings joy and happiness. It is a matter of attitude. Many of us have an even greater interest in the creation of beautiful people—the type of radiant beauty that comes from righteous living and acceptance of God. I have observed many people who have a beauty and spiritual glow. The Lord has told us that we can be beautiful. 1 Corinthians 3.16 reports: Know you that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. Love yourself. It is more important to stay optimistic because beauty comes from the inside out. Peace is the beauty of life. Beauty is Sunshine. The togetherness of a family. Beauty is the advancement of humanity, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth. The doorway of your heart is the place where loves resides for you are the temple of the living God (2 Corinthians 6.16). A solid foundation is the most important part of a building or of a person. We are to be the light to others, to control our anger, and reconcile bad feelings with others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. As we live with the principles of God in our hearts, we are building a rock-solid foundation upon which our lives can safely be constructed. The Lord, the great Master Architect, have given us perfect plans and specifications to guide us in the building of our lives. These are the sacred scriptures. They contain the words of the Lord and should frequently be read and considered. By seeking the Lord through prayer and through his holy scriptures, we learn to look for the beautiful and to develop great attitudes. We achieve guidance in the building of our foundations and our lives. Beauty is when you can appreciate yourself. When you love yourself and others, that is when you are the most beautiful. As we live righteous and unselfish rights, the Spirit of the Lord enters our souls and then radiates from us. We become beautiful, even as a holy temple is beautiful because we are happy with ourselves. Happiness is the greatest beauty secret. 2Nephi 4.16 reports: Behold, my soul delights in the things of the Lord, and my heart ponders continually upon the things which I have seen and heard. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Greed gives births to many ills—Crime and Corruption. The cancerous spread of corruption has been a matter of great concern to all people. Power is primarily being sought for amassing wealth, perks, and privileges. People’s welfare has become a thing of secondary importance on the agenda. Political ethics, values, ideology, policy issues, have been forgotten. Shockingly, the struggles for power has created divisions in government, businesses, and families. There is an iron rule in economics, it is Stein’s Law. If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. While divide-and-conquer seems like a great idea, the longer it goes on and the more people that get involved, the obvious it becomes, and it makes the corruption harder to hide. One may kill mosquitoes in a room by spraying insecticides, but many more will come inside from the breeding ground, the hole needs to be plugged. The breeding ground of corruption deserves to be cultured and the cause has to be located and removed. You cannot go on investigating corruption month after month, and year in and year out. There has got to be a point where the Government is able to say: “We have enough information.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Randolph Harris II International Institute 