Home » Dream House (Page 23)
Category Archives: Dream House
Who Can Read the Future?
Even if we do have a whiff of what is to come, the future can still hurt and maim. However, if we do no prepare for what many happen, then we will all suffer the gravest consequences. Wherefore, why have I not, a Devout who has firsthand knowledge of one’s own wretchedness, prepared better? Why have I relied so heavily on others more than I? Often times, Devouts are thought of as, or declared to be, Angels. In reality, we are only humans, and all too fragile humans at that. Problems such as martial distress, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and loneliness are all understood within this paradigm as they by-products of maladaptive cognitive patterns. These cognitions include attributions for various events, memories of past situations and encounters, and expectations for the future. Adherents of the cognitive paradigm treat psychological problems with psychotherapy that attempts to challenge and correct maladaptive cognitions, in order to help a client see the self and World in a more realistic (and, ideally, more beneficial) light. Cognitive approaches still figure very prominently in our understanding of many mental health problems and in the ways they are treated. Attributional accounts of loneliness argue that lonely people often blame themselves for interpersonal failures, thus reducing their motivation to remedy their undesirable interpersonal situations. This attributional tendency, combined with negative expectations and evaluations of other people, serves to maintain an unfortunate interpersonal life for a lonely person. Furthermore, for others, exposure to an individual who models the problematic behaviour, and is rewarded for doing so, can lead to the acquisition of the problem behaviour by an observer (exempli gratia, the child or parent with the problematic behaviour). #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The observer is thought to hold cognitive representations of the behaviour in one’s mind, which then becomes the eventual stimulus for producing the behaviour in the absence of the model. A hypothesis such as this clearly draws on cognitive-behavioural therapy for psychological problems draws on principles of both cognitive and behavioural therapies—focusing on cognitive patterns, attributional styles, and maladaptive expectations, along with engaging in pleasant activities and learning to disassociate punishing responses with otherwise functional behaviours (exempli gratia, experiencing extreme nervousness when going to a party). Advocates of the biological paradigm explain mental health problems with an appeal to such factors as depletion or excesses of various neurotransmitters, genetic predispositions and vulnerabilities, disturbed endocrine functioning, and irregular anatomical structures of function in the brain. The causes and consequences of mental illness is often due to the misfortunes of life from which arise deprivation of love, poverty, family quarrels, ill-judged choice of a partner in marriage, [and] unfavourable social circumstances. Psychological problems are patterns of inadequate and inappropriate action in interpersonal relations. Depression, for example, is a chiefly destructive process. It cuts off impulses to integrate constructive situations with others. Only destructive situations are maintained, and these are extremely stereotyped. What a person does in any social situations is a function of at least two factors: First of all, one’s multilevel personality structure; and the activities and effect of the other one, the person with whom one in interacting. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Students of interpersonal communication will immediately recognize the transactional and dyadic conceptualization inherent in the explanation of behaviour in social context. This conceptualization moves the locus of attention from purely internal psychological structures to the intersection of the self and the other. Social-interaction and interpersonal school tells of that among those seeking psychological treatment, the underlying problems usually turn out to be interpersonal in nature—frequently having the form, “I cannot (do something interpersonal).” Distressed and dysfunctional interpersonal relations are inextricably entwined with psychological distress. Because the World population has nearly tripled and many more people are being born with psychological problems and their parents do not see the need to have these problems addressed, it may be the group, and not the individual who has interpersonal problems. The majority group may have a deviant mental condition. Also, with religion being removed from government institutions and society, and declining church attendance, many people are not longer taught the Ten Commandments, so they have no guidelines as to how to behave. Therefore, the interpersonal approach suggests that treatment of psychological problems will be most effective when the social context is examined and modified. The focus of therapy is not on the individual, but on one’s important relationships with other people. Thus interpersonal therapy may involve the spouse, friends, and family members, in addition to the person who presents with the problem. Sometimes clients need to be taught how to improve the communication with other people, with the goal of building more desirable relationships. This can be achieved through social skills training. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Interpersonal psychotherapy is a very well-developed and useful technique for treating psychological problems. Scientists have discovered that people often react in consistent and predictable patterns to a person with certain psychological problems. In such cases, it is impossible to overlook the powerful effect of such wide spread reactions on the mentally distressed individual. It is most intriguing to learn that other people often exhibit behaviour toward the ill individual that is itself sometimes reflective of psychosocial disturbances. Such observations inevitably lead to the question of which came firs: the psychopathology, or the harsh, odd, or ambiguous behaviours of others in the social environment? Another area of attention in the interpersonal paradigm is the architecture of current and past interpersonal relationships with significant others. There is almost always trouble to be found in the terrain of interpersonal relationships with people who are or will become psychologically distressed. There is clear support for the notion that these troubled relationships somehow contribute to the development and course of the psychopathology. What a tragedy it would be to go through life as a child of the King in God’s eyes, yet as a lowly peasant in our own eyes. “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it,” John 14.13-14. Although interpersonal problems conceptually and empirically distinct, these disorders have a common correlate: disturbed and dysfunctional relationship with other people. Perhaps as a function of their inherently social nature, the well-being of most humans is inextricably entwined with the well-being of their interpersonal relations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
When interpersonal relationships sour, when the ability (and/or motivation) to communicate and interact with others fails to develop or deteriorates, and when behavioural reactions from other people stressful, mental health begins to break down. Is something similar going on in your life? Is your self-image so contrary to the way God sees you that you are missing out on God’s best? God sees you as successful. However, you may see yourself as a failure. Family-of-origin experiences play a powerful role in creating and/or maintaining psychological problems. Looking back at the childhoods of people with psychological problems, one often finds poor family cohesion, neglect, abuse, parental overinvolvement or overprotection, hostility and criticism, and even parental modeling of dysfunctional behaviour and attitudes. Most of these family processes have been implicated in multiple psychological problems. For example, parental abuse and neglect appear to be relatively childhood experiences for people who later go on to develop depression, social anxiety, personality disorders, and substance use disorders. Similarly, excessive family cohesion (either too high or too low) can be found in the families of people with social anxiety, eating disorders, and substance use disorders. Obviously, the social environment in which a child develops a sense of self and relation to other people has an immense impact on not just current, but future, psychological well-being. When these family relations decompose into neglect, abuse, overprotectiveness, and excessive hostility and criticism, the probability of a child’s developing psychological problems increase dramatically. Psychological problems invariably damage the happiness of the marriage. Symptoms of these problems are very taxing for spouses—often to such an extent that spouses exhibit psychological problems of their own. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
At the same time, the deterioration of a marriage can precipitate a number of psychological problems, such as depression, alcoholism, and loneliness. Findings on family-of-orientation experiences again reinforce the notion that psychological problems spill over into immediate family relationships, and appear to be yoked to the quality of these relationships. Often times friendships and or intimate partner relationships are quite simply lacking for people afflicted with depression, social anxiety, personality disorders, and eating disorders. One interpersonal phenomenon that may inhibit the development of such relationships is rejection. Numerous studies show that people with psychological problems such as schizophrenia, eating disorders, depression, and social anxiety incite rejection from others. Even when personal relationships are available to an individual with a psychological problem, they are often characterized by turbulence and conflict. Findings on general personal relationships bring badly needed attention beyond past and present family issues. The most fundamental building blocks of personal relationships, verbal and nonverbal communication behaviours, are seriously alerted by psychological distress. In the case of problems such as depression, social anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, and substance use disorders, these communication problems are often studies under the rubric of “social skill deficits.” Social skills involve the ability to communicate with other people in ways that are appropriate and effective. The involve the knowledge of what behaviours are appropriate, the capability to exhibit these behaviours, and the motivation to mobilize and apply that knowledge and behavioural repertoire. You may have been hurt in your life, or maybe made wrong choices. However, if you have honestly repented and done your best to do right since then, you no longer have to live with guilt and shame. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
You may not have achieved the pinnacle of success, but do not let the physically, mentally or spiritually cripple you. You standing in life does not change God’s covenant with you. You are still the child of the Most High. God still has great things in store for you. Be bold and claim what belongs to you. “Search me [thoroughly], O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting,” reports Psalm 139.23-24. I know it is not because of my goodness that Your kindness is extended, O God, but because of the covenant relationship I have been blessed to inherit. Please help me to better understand Your grace and Your goodness as I take my place at You table. Thank You, Father, for making a place for me! “Do not copy the behaviour and customs of this World, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God want you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect His will really is,” reports Romans 12.2. Many social, physical, and emotional problems stem from the fact that people do not like themselves. They are uncomfortable with how they look, how they talk, or how they act. They do not like their personality. They are always comparing themselves with other people, wishing they were something different. Major depressive disorder is a pervasive illness with a lifetime risk of 10-25 percent for women and 5-12 percent of men. Among certain segments of society, such socially disadvantaged women, lifetime prevalence can be as high as 33 percent. In any given year 5 percent of the population, or approximately 15.5 million people, will be afflicted with major depression. This disorder is associated with a dangerously high mortality rate, as 4-6 percent of its victims die by suicide. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Major depressive episodes are marked by the following symptoms: severely depressed mood, diminished interest in any activities, significant weight loss or gain, sleep disturbance, psychomotor agitation, intellectual disability, fatigue, feelings of worthlessness, and guilt, difficulty concentrating, and recurrent thoughts of death or suicidal ideation. For a formal diagnosis, these symptoms must be evident for a period of at least 2 weeks, but for many people with depression they may last months or even years. The interpersonal context of depression has drawn a great deal of empirical that excessive reassurance seeking is an issues that elicits feelings of interpersonal rejection, perhaps because of emotional contagion (id est, they make other people feel sad, depress, and hostile). The general personal relationships of people with depression are often lacking or distressed, contributing to a high comorbidity with loneliness. The family-of-origin experiences of people with depression are marked by relatively high rates of neglect, abuse, low parental care, and even signs of rejection from parents. The family-of-orientation experiences associated with depression are characterized by very high rates of material distress and parenting problems. Again, there is remarkable comorbidity between depression and loneliness. However, you can be happy with who God made you to be, and quit wishing you were someone or something different. If God wanted you to look like anyone else, He would have made you look like them. If God had wanted you to have a different personality, He would have given you that personality. Do not compare yourself to other people; learn to be happy with who God made you to be. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
People with depression consistently evaluate their own social skills on such inventories more negatively than nondepressed people do. Consequently, it has been suggested that depressed people’s negative views of their social skills may be part of a more generalized negative self-evaluation bias. For instance, depressed people hold negative views of themselves and distort feedback from the environment in ways that are unfavourable. Although self-rating of social skills are undoubtedly contaminated by this bias, depressed people’s general tendency to evaluate themselves negatively does not fully account for the self-report social skills deficits often noted to be associated with the disorder. However, God does not want a bunch of clones. He likes a variety, and one should not let people pressure one or make one feel badly about oneself because one does not fit their image of who one should be. Be an original, not a version of someone else. Dare today to accept the person God made you to be and then go out and be the best you that you can be. God has given us all different gifts, talents, and personality for a reason. One only needs God’s approval. However, certainly, one should always be open to wise counsel. Do not be foolish and rebellious. Nor will you lose your liberty by focusing more on your spiritual life. Yet, we never have permission to live an ungodly life. However, we do have God’s permission to be successful, confident, and not allow outside pressure to mould us into something or someone we are not. Be secure in who you are. People with depression do not use paralinguistic behaviours with the same degree of “skill” as nondepressed people. Studies of the temporal aspects of paralanguage indicate that people who are depressed speak more slowly than nondepressed people do. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
In fact, pause and duration is so powerfully linked to depression that many have argued for it as an indicator of an individual’s degree of depression. Investigation of speech production indicates that people with depression generally speak more quietly, and with more silences, and hesitancies, than nondepressed persons. When prompted by a topic, people with depression have more difficulty producing speech than nondepressed control do. There is evidence to suggest that people with depression speak in a monotonous tone and with lower pitch than nondepressed persons do. Depressed people are very skilled at communicating sadness and despair paralinguistically. However, they may be less concerned about cultural display rules that often proscribe the outward display of such emotional states. Alternatively, depressed people may be unable to mask their negative affects paralinguistically, since vocal cues such as pitch, speech rate, and intonation are difficult to control. “Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men; preserve me from violent men; they devise mischiefs in their heart; continually they gather together and stir up wars,” reports Psalms 140.1-2. God does not want us to be depressed. He wants us to enjoy life. God went to great lengths to make sure that each of us is an original. We should not feel badly because our personalities, tastes, hobbies, or even spiritual proclivities are not the same as another person’s. Some people are outgoing and energetic; others are timid and more laid-back. Some people like to wear suits and ties; other people like to wear jeans and a tee shirt. The only person that has to accept you for who you are is God. Have an attitude that you are going to enjoy the person God made you to be. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Humankind’s worst enemy is itself. The enemies of Humankind are the members of its own household. Nor is there necessarily any truth in the Devout who finds a prophet, a messiah, behind every shadow. “Look, here He is! Oops! Where the devil did He go? He is over there now!” Matthew on You in Your last discourse (24.23). I learned this lesson to my loss. Would that I be goose in the future, and not just a gull for every bit of juicy gossip! Watch it, watch it, watch it. That is what someone says to me as one entrusts a secret. Keep to yourself what I am about to tell you. And so I do, but while I keep my lips sealed and believe I am keeping a secret, one does not hold one’s tongue. One wags it all over the house, betraying oneself and me, and then, before I can berate one, one is off to another monastery. From cautionary tales like this and the incautious people who tell them, protect me, O Lord. Do not let me fall into their hands, and do not let me repeat such a gaff ever again. Grant that I may speak in a straightforward manner, not with a forked tongue. What ai am unwilling to put up with others, I should avoid at all costs myself. A tangle of “not’s.” Not to say bad things about good people. Not to believe bad things about these very same people. Not to spread a shaggy story about someone else. Not to reveal my inmost secrets to anyone else but You, O Lord, now and always the Inspector General of Hearts. Not to be swept away by every barrage of verbiage, but simply to desire all esoterica and exoterica to be regulated according to the Divine Pleasure! #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
How can Devouts and Celestial Grace enjoy safe conduct? They must flee human contact. They must avoid the winsome things of this World. However, they should always be on the lookout for the things that will bring them closer to the next World. Many a humble soul has died the death when someone’s outdated their virtuous life and held it up for public praise! Grace grows best under a bridge where it is dank and dark. On the bridge itself, it would be tromped by every itinerant temptation, tramped by very mercenary troop. Take the case of the frustrated parents. Second Wave civilization, as we saw, synchronized daily life, trying the rhythms of sleep and wakefulness, of work and play, to the underlying throb of machines. Raised in this civilization, the parents take for granted that work must be synchronized, that everyone must arrive at work at the same time, that rush-hour traffic is unavoidable, that meal times must be fixed, and that children must, at an early age, be indoctrinated with time-consciousness and punctuality. They cannot understand why their offspring seem so annoyingly causal about keeping appointments and why, if the nine-to-five job (or other fixed-schedule job) was good enough in the past, it should suddenly be regarded as intolerable by their children. The reason is that the Third Wave, as it sweeps in, carries with it a completely different sense of time. If the Second Wave tied life to the tempo of the machine, the Third Wave challenges this mechanical synchronization, alters our most basic social rhythms, and in so doing frees us from the machine. Once we understand this, it comes as no surprise that one of the fastest-spreading innovations in industry during the 1970’s was “flextime”—an arrangement that permits workers, within predetermined limits, to choose their own working hours. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Instead of requiring everyone to arrive at the factory gate or the office at the same time, or even at pre-fixed staggered times, the company operating on flextime typically sets certain core hours when everyone is expected to show up, an specifics other hours as flexible. Each employee may choose which of the flexible hours one wishes to spend working. This means that a “day person”—person whose biological rhythms routinely awakens one early in the morning—can choose to arrive at work at, say, 8.00 A.M., while a “night person,” whose metabolism is different, can choose to start working at 10.00 A.M. or 10.30 A.M. It means that an employee can take time off for household chores, or to shop, or take a child to the doctor. Groups of workers who wish to go bowling together early in the morning or late in the afternoon can jointly set their schedules to make it possible. In short, time itself is being de-massified. The flextime movement began in 1965 when a woman economist in Germany, Mrs. Christel Kammerer, recommended it was a way to bring more others into the job market. In 1967 Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm, the “Deutsche Boeing,” discovered that many of its workers were arriving at work worn out from fighting rush-hour traffic. Management gingerly experimented by allowing 2,000 workers to go off the ridge eight-to-five schedule and to choose their own hours. Within two years all 12,000 of its employees were on flextime and some departments had even given up the requirement for everyone to be there during core times. In some 2,000 German firms, the national concept of rigid punctuality had vanished beyond recall. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The reason was the introduction of Gleitzeit; id est, sliding or flexible hours. At one time, more than 5,000,000 employees in Germany were on one or another form of flextime, and the system was being used by 22,000 companies with an estimated 4,000,000 workers in France, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and Great Britain. In Switzerland, 15 to 20 percent of all industrial firms had switched to the new system for all or part of their work force. Multinational firms (a major force for cultural diffusion in today’s work), exported the system from Europe. Nestle and Lufthansa, for example, introduced it to their operations in the United States of America. According to a report by the American Management Association, 74 percent of all U.S. companies use flextime. Within a few years, it is projected that number will be 90 percent due to the pandemic. Among the American firms using flextime systems are such giants as Scott Paper, Bank of California, General Motors, Bristol Myers, and Equitable Life. Some of the more moss-backed trade unions—preservers of the Second Wave status quo—have hesitated. However, individual workers, by and large, see flextime as a liberating influence. Says the manager of the London-based insurance firm: “The young married women were absolutely rapturous about change-over.” A Swiss survey found that fully 95 percent of affected workers approve. Thirty-five percent men—more than women—say they now spend more time with the family. One mother working for Boston banks was on the verge of being fired because—although a good worker in other respects—she was continually turning up late. Her poor attendance record reinforced racist stereotypes. However, when her office went on flextime she was no longer considered late. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
It also turned out, reported sociologist Allan R. Cohen, “that she had been late because she had to drop her son in a day-care center and could just never get to the office by starting time. Employers, for their part, report higher productivity, reduced absenteeism, and other benefits. There are, of course, problems with any innovation, but according to the American Management Association, survey only 2 percent of the companies trying it have gone back to the old rigid time structure. One Lufthansa manager summed it up succinctly: “There’s no such thing now as a punctuality problem.” Humans are born free, and everywhere they are in chains. One who believes oneself the master of others does not escape being more of a slave than they. How did this change take place? I do no know. What can render it legitimate? Were I to consider only force and the effect that flows from it, I would say that so long as a people is constrained to obey and does obey, it does well. As soon as it can shake off the yoke and does shake it off, it does even better. For by recovering its liberty by means of the same right that stole it, either the populace is justified in getting it back or else those who took it away were not justified in their actions. However, the social order is a scared right which serves as a foundation for all other right. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature. It is therefore founded upon convention. The most ancient of all societies and the only natural one, is that of the family. Even so children remain bound to their father only so long as they need him to take care of them. As soon as the need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Once the children are freed from the obedience they owed the father and their father is freed from the care he owned his children, all return equally to independence. If they continue to remain united, this no longer takes place naturally but voluntarily, and the family maintains itself only by means of convention. This common liberty is one consequence of the nature of humans. Its first law is to see to one’s maintenance; its first concerns are those one owes oneself; and, as soon as one reaches the age of reason, since one alone is the judge of the proper means of taking care of oneself, one thereby becomes one’s own master. The family therefore is, so to speak, the prototype of political societies; the leader is the image of the father, the populace is the image of the children, and, since all are born equal and free, none give up their liberty except for their utility. The entire difference consists in the fact that in the family the love of the father for his children repays him for the care he takes for them, while in the state, where the leaders does not have love for his peoples, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of this feeling. Grotius denies that all human power is established for the benefit of the governed, citing slavery as an example. His usual method of reasoning is always to present fact as a proof of right. Learned research on public right is often nothing more than the history of ancient abuses, and taking a lot of trouble to study the too closely get one nowhere. A more logical method could be used, but no one more favourable to tyrants. According to Grotius, it is therefore doubtful whether the human race belongs to a hundred humans, or whether these hundred humans belong to the human race. This is Hobbes’ position as well. On this telling, the human race is divided into herds of cattle, each one having its own leader who guards it in order to devour it. #RandolohHarris 16 of 19
Just as a herdsman possesses a nature superior to that of one’s herd, the herdsmen of men who are the leaders, also have a nature superior to that of their peoples. According to Philo, Caligula reasoned thus, concluding quite properly this analogy that kings were gods, or that peoples were beasts. Caligula’s reasoning coincides with that of Hobbes and Grotius. Aristotle, before all the others, had also said that he took the effect for the cause. Every human born in slavery is born for slavery; nothing is more certain. In their chains slaves lose everything, even the desire to escape. They love their servitude the way the companions of Ulysses loved their degradation. If there are slaves by nature, it is because there have been salves against nature. Force has produced the first slaves; their cowardice has perpetuated them. I have nothing about King Adam or Emperor Noah, father of three great monarchs who partitioned the Universe, as did the children of Saturn, whom sone have believed they recognize in them. I hope I will be appreciated for this moderation, for since I am a direct descent of these princes, and perhaps of the eldest branch, how am I to know where, after the verification of titles, I might not find myself the legitimate king of the human race? Be that as it may, we cannot deny that Adam was the sovereign of the World, just as Robinson Crusoe was sovereign of his island, so long as he was its sole inhabitant. And the advantage this empire had was that the monarch, securely on his throne, had no rebellions, wars, or conspirators to fear. The evolution of each ego, of each entity conscious of a personal “I,” passes through three stages through immense periods of time. In the first and earliest stage, it unfolds its distinct physical selfhood, acquires more and more conscious of the person “I,” and hence divides and isolates itself from other egos. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The ego is seeking to differentiate itself from them. It feels the need to asset itself and its interests. This lead inevitably to antagonism towards them. Its movement towards externality, a movement which must inevitably end in its taking the surface or appearance of things for reality, that is, in materialism. Here it is acquisitive. In its second and intermediate stage, it unfolds its mental selfhood and hence adds cunning to its separative and grasping tendencies, with intellect expanding to its extreme point. Here it is inquisitive. However, midway in this stage, its descent comes to an end with a turning point where it halts, turns around, and begins to travel backward to its original source. In the third stage, the return towards its divine source continues. Its movement is now toward internality and—through meditation, investigation, and reflection—it ultimately achieves knowledge of its true being: its source, the Overself. And as all egos arise out of the Overself, the end of such a movement is one and the same for all—a common center. Conflicts between them cease; mutual understanding, cooperation, and compassion spread. Hence, this stage is unitive. The central point of the entire evolution is about where we now stand. Human attitudes and relations have reached their extreme degree of selfishness, separateness, struggle, and division, have experience the resulting exhaustion of an unheard-of World crisis, but are beginning to reorient themselves towards an acknowledgement of the fundamental unity of the second stage and then abruptly begins to vanish from human life altogether. The separatist outlook must cease. Most of our troubles have arisen because we have continued beyond the point where it was either useful or needful. The unequal state of evolution of all these egos, when thrown together into a conglomerate group on a single planet, is also responsible for the conflicts which have marked humankind’s own history. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
These egos stand on different steps of the ladder all the way from savagery to maturity. The backward ego naturally attacks or preys on the advanced one. This, the purely self-regarding ego, which was once an essential pattern of the evolutionary scheme—a necessary goal in the movement of life—becomes with time a discordant ingredient of that scheme, an obstructive impediment on that movement. If humanity is to travel upward and fulfill its higher destiny, it can do so only by enlarging its area of interest and extending its field of consciousness. It must, in short, seek to realize the Overself on the one hand, to feel its oneness on the other. The ego’s misapprehension of its own nature and misuse of its own capacities, create one form of evil. There are other forms. O Lord, one tiny bity of water rests on the palm of my hand. I bring it to you and with it I bring the whole ocean. This tiny drop has the power to ease the burning thirst of humans; when spread on the Earth, to give life to the seed and the future harvest; when poured on the fire to quench the blaze. A tiny drop of water can cleanse the whole of my impurity when blessed by your forgiveness. However, O Lord, more than all this, tiny drop of water passed over my head is the symbol of my birth in You. Thou Worker of deliverance alone! Turn to them, hear the words that mount to Thee; God of salvation, justify Thine own. O God of salvation, save Thou us! List to the surging voices of Thy throng, open the Earth, let help spring forth, O Thou delighting not in evil; Saviour strong! O God of our salvation, save Thou us! Open for us the gates of Heaven, we crave: open for us Thy goodly treasure now; ah! strife prolong not endlessly, but save! O God of our salvation, save Thou us! #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Cresleigh Homes
Mmmmm…we can smell the apple pie from here! 🍎 That kitchen island is big enough for pastry crust, a casserole, and a big bowl of chips for snacking!
The kitchen is ideal for fall festivities. We’d love to show you! Cresleigh Homes are designed with luxury in mind. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
When are You Going to Face the Real World?
The good and the bad are all part of the World-picture, although their proportions vary as the time-wheel turns around. It is the function of such opposing forces, environments, or persons to compel one to negotiate them properly, or suffer the consequences. Often what manages to get the public eye ends up with little or no spiritual profit. However, just as often what the public eye fails to notice is of the greatest possible spiritual importance. It would be a totally unobservant or totally theoretic person who denied the presence of evil, but it would be an ill-informed one who did not perceive that its life and power are circumscribed. I hope I shall not be misunderstood for saying that I saw clearly how the physical expression of evil is a necessary prerequisite to the spiritual redemption from evil. For what the sinner does is after all only an outcome of what one thinks. If the doing of wrong actions will, by the higher law of recompense, bring one ultimately the physical punitive consequences of those actions, they will also bring one—and again ultimately—the thought that the two are inseparably connected together. This is a step—admittedly only a first step—toward that repentance and that purification which make redemption possible. The notion that the God-Power is engaged in a desperate struggle with an evil power, that God calls on humans to give His help and that the outcome of this warfare depends to any extent on such help—this notion is a ridiculous one. My experience of life and observation of others have taught me that there is no situation in which you will find good alone present without some concomitant evil. To look for undiluted good is utopian, unrealistic, and self-deceptive. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The procession of love in God ought not to be called generation. In evidence whereof we must consider that the intellect and the will differ in this respect, that the intellect is made actual by the object understood residing according to its own likeness in the intellect; whereas the will is made actual, not by any similitude of the object willed within it, but by its having a certain inclination to the thing willed. Thus the procession of the intellect is by way of similitude, and is called generation, because every generator begets its own like; whereas the procession of the will is not by way of similitude of the object willed within it, but by its having a certain inclination to the thing willed. Thus the procession of the intellect is by way of similitude, and is called generation, because every generator begets its own like; whereas the procession of the will is not by way of similitude, but rather by way of impulse and movement towards an object. So what proceeds in God by way of love, does not proceed as begotten, or as son, but proceeds rather as spirit; which name expresses a certain vital movement and impulse, accordingly as anyone is described as moved or impelled by love to perform an action. All that exists in God is one with the divine nature. Hence the proper notion of this or that procession, by which one procession is distinguished from another, cannot be on the part of this unity: but the proper notion of this or that procession must be taken from the order of one procession in God takes its name from the proper notion of will and intellect; the name being imposed to signify what its nature really is; and so it is that the Person proceeding as love receives the divine nature, but is not said to be born. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Likeness belongs in a different way to the word and to love. It belongs to the word as being the likeness of the object understood, as the thing generated is the likeness of the generator; but it belongs to love, not as though love itself were a likeness, but because likeness is the principle of love. Thus it does not follow that love is begotten, but that the one begotten is the principle of love. We can name God only from creatures. As creatures generation is the only principle of communication of nature, procession in God has no proper or special name, expect that of generation. Hence the procession which is not generation has remained without a special name; but it can be called spiration, as it is the procession of the Spirit. The awful fact of innate evil, the hideous mystery of innate sin, must be recognized and faced. We cannot make bad humans into good humans; but Nature, Life, with millions of years at her disposal, can. Evil arises where the good is still undeveloped from its latency, but sometimes it is the distortion of the good. We will understand this problem better when we understand that the presence of good and evil in the Universe does not signify a division of power but a division of thought. Thought is the cause; thought is the cure. Satan can pretend to be an Angel of Light. There are adepts in evil who hide their real aim behind an outward show of altruistic purpose. These secret purposes disguise themselves in a convenient form, and if no other is convenient they will even use some open purpose which stands in total opposition to them. They emerge in the most unlikely and unlooked-for places. The evil in human relations springs from the ignorance in human beings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
As each one brings the principle of truth into one’s own consciousness, one brings it into one’s relations with others as a result. The love which accompanies it denies birth to cruelty, anger, and lust or dissolves any which already exist. Although it is perfectly true that divine goodness is at the heart of things, it is no less true that demonic evil is on the surface of things. The followers of simple cults which stubbornly try to see only the goodness and not the evil, which deny things as they are and indulged wishful thinking, have themselves and their leaders to blame when disaster awakens them to the errors in the map they are following. They would do better to arouse themselves, while there is yet time, to keep a soundly balanced attitude, neither falling over to one side or the other overmuch, yet always remembering that superphysical experience between the incarnations is disproportionately good and free from evil, by contrast with physical plane experience. Let us not insult human reason by denying human evil. In any universal arrangement or personal situation, there is either gross disorder, with its consequent turmoil trouble and suffering, or there is real order, with its harmonious co-operation with the divine will working outward from the divine center—be it humans’ heart or the sun’s rays. The great ills (miscalled evils) of bodily life, such as disease and poverty, are often forced upon one by an implacable fate. However, it would be a delusion to class them always with the great evils of mental life, such as hate and cruelty. For their control is frequently beyond one’s power, and their course may have to be endured, whereas sinful thoughts and their resultant deeds are not independent of one’s control and may be avoided. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Why is it that people are dazzled with this-Worldly thingamajigs? Well, unless they come to their right minds soon, they will amuse themselves to death. When right principles, theories, or concepts are taken up by the wrong persons, they become wrong themselves—because misused, falsified, prevented. Suffering is not always an evil. It is often educative. All evil is then seen to spring from separativeness, which is a stage inevitable to all creatures as they follow the line of unfoldment. Evil therefore is the adverse element in Nature. Humans can conquer it in one’s mind by conquering separativeness and realizing the All as oneself. At the same time one discovers that the whole creation is really a mental one, hence like but not the same as a dream; and if one keeps awake to the Static Reality whilst in the midst of the Earthly dream, the whole World becomes merely a school for educating consciousness. The suffering, evil, and the like are transient aspects leaving permanent results. The wedding of Heaven and Earth can never be brought about, since the Perfect and the Imperfect are incompatibles. However, they can be brought into some sort of equilibrium, into better balance, so that life in the World would not be as bad as it is. Those who ignorantly believe that God needs their help to ensure His triumph over evil in the World, have yet to learn that this triumph has been eternally accomplished already. The human being who can affect this situation either by helping or hindering does not exist. It is a disturbing concept which holds that man’s goodness seldom becomes actualized without the presence of, and struggle against man’s evil. If men engaged themselves more in asking not “What is good and what is evil?” but rather “What is the Highest Good?” the first question would get itself answered automatically and peace would then follow anyway. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
When the evil in humans is washed out, one will find in all its goodness the original stuff of which one is made—beneficent to all, a joy to oneself. However, because we affirm that the powers of evil will destroy themselves in the end, this must not be mistaken to mean that we may all sit down in smug complacency. We ought not to make this an excuse for inaction. On the contrary, it should inspire us to stronger efforts to preserve the noblest things in life from their attack. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good humans do nothing. The night’s darkness shelters the evil forces, the sun’s brightness tells us where the divine ones are centralized. “My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus,” Philippians 4.19. As God’s children, we are able to live an abundant life. That is acceptable. In fact, we should even expect to be blessed. Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one. If you come from a poor environment, or do not have a lot of material possession, that is fine. God has many blessings in store for you. However, all the good things in life are not material. Yet it is nice to also have material comforts. Therefore, do not allow the image of lack and limitation become the motion picture you constantly play in your head. It is good to be humble, but seeing yourself prospering is also healthy. One should seek to rise to new levels of success. Start looking through the eyes of faith and keep that image of happiness and success in your heart and mind. You may not be as affluent as you like, at the moment, but with hard work, dedication, education, and payer, anything is possible. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
God has called for human help, and no one is coming. We are his last resort! How often on Earth has God put His trust in a human being, even in a Devout, and yet been disappointed! However, then again how often has God found a helping hand where He had no reason to expect one? The conclusion? Vain is the hope for consistency in human behaviour. However, God is always consistent; if the Psalmist has it right (37.39), then the Just are always saved. Only God can find the good in everything that happens to us. Left to ourselves, we are infirm and unstable, falliable and fallable. The Christ Holy Bible and Book of Mormon clearly shows that God takes pleasure in prospering His children. As His children prosper spiritually, physically, and materially, their increase brings God a sense of satisfaction that we can only imagine. If I introduced Leo and Annie to you, and they went to school with no shoes on, had holds in their clothes, and dirt under their fingernails, you would probably say, “That man is not a god father. He does not take good care of his children.” Indeed, my children’s poverty would be a direct reflection on me as their day. Just like a governor who brags about having the 5th largest economy in the World and over a twenty-five-billion-dollar surplus, but has the highest homeless population in the developed World. Perhaps, taxes are so high people cannot afford to live? Perhaps the people need a rebate of some of their money? Perhaps there should be a record number of affordable housing units going up on undeveloped land? Perhaps taxpayer funded sports arenas could be converted into affordable lofts? #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Nonetheless, when we go through life with a poverty mentality, it is not glorifying to God. It does not honour His great name. No, God is honoured and pleased when we develop a prosperous mindset. God wants to supply every need you have, and He will! With that being said, do not expect much from your politicians. Do not turn to the news for answers. Pick up the Bible, go to church and pray to God for all that you seek. God, I thank You that You have better things in store for me than I would even choose for myself, that Your dream for me is even grander than my dream for myself, and Your resources are inexhaustible! Devouts like me keep a good monastic muzzle on ourselves in everything we say or do. However, will that caution and circumspection really prevent us from being axed and battleaxed? All I know, O Lord, is that whoever confides in You and “speaks from a simple heart”—a characteristic much favoured in the Wisdom of Solomon (1.1)—does not fall so easily. Oh, he will slip—he is bound to—but God will come to his rescue or, at the very least, God will offer one some help. That is because God does not desert whoever has put one’s hope in Him for the Long Haul. A rare find is the faithful friend who preserves through all the ups and downs of friendship. God is the most faithful of friends, O Lord, and without You there is no such thing as Friendships. “For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the World that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, not be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life,” reports John 3.16. The spiritual event, the mystical experience, is there but its presentation to the conscious mind—manipulated by one’s personal tendencies to an extent which exaggerates their importance—creates a mixed result. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
However, the glow of this transcendence lingers in the heart for long after its actual manifestation. It suffuses one with unearthly happiness and fills one with solemn reverence. When this mood is fully upon one, one may find it hard to talk to anyone for some time afterward. One emerges from the experience feeling surrounded by peace and protected by supernormal powers. The glimpse vanishes, slowly with a few, quickly with most, leaving its effects in one’s recognition of greater possibilities in life and grander ones in oneself. One comes back from the glimpse not only renewed in grace but purged in character, not only less egoistic but more detached, hence calmer. It is only a mood, of course, and may vanish in a few minutes, hours, or days. However, whereas most other moods pass from memory and are unrecallable, this kind is unforgettable. This wonderful and memorable experience, call it Void or call it God, will for some time afterwards become a kind of background to the events of one’s life and to one, oneself. Illumination arising from suffering seems to last longer than that arising from happiness because the latter is easier to lose. One is likely to become careless with that which comes from happiness. Whatever the height reached, the glory felt during the glimpse, one still lives on as a human being after it has passed. Thoughts reappear, ordinary emotions are felt again. The uplifted consciousness falls back, the rapturous moments pass away. One must then revert to the ordinary animal-intellectual life of everyday, to all the human implications of one’s existence. Why try, vainly, to deny them? #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
One has seen some truth and may want to share it. However, in what manner can one communicate that which is not intellectually measurable? If the glimpse does not last, is a human discovers, or rather comes back to find, that one still is human, one should be pleased that it came at all. It is not easy and it may need a long period of practice and remembrance, but something of this afterglow may be kept and retained even amid the turmoil of the World’s work. In those glorious enchanted moments which immediately succeed the glimpse, almost anything seems possible. The glimpse comes to be treasured in memory as something very precious and quite unique, most intimate and not freely talked about with others. Slowly and dimply one will become aware of one’s surroundings and one’s body. Little by little one will struggle back to them as if from some far planet. The recovery of consciousness will be only intermittent at first, only in brief snatches achieved with difficulty. However, later it will be heled and kept for longer periods until it remains altogether. The afterglow of this experience may be a sensation of its curative power, leaving nerves and heart healed of their troubled negative conditions, or of it purifying power, leaving the mind freed of its undesired and undesirable thoughts. The glimpse leaves an afterglow of truth, a reassurance of support. One’s heart will be warmed and one’s will moved as a consequence of this experience. The test will come when one has to descend from the mountain-peck of mediation into the valleys of prosaic everyday living. Can one adjust the greatness one has seen and felt to this smaller narrower World or will one lose it therein? #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The closer one comes to the Overself the more reticent one becomes about it. Even though the glimpse is so impressive, the subsequent activities of the day put it out of one’s mind until one is able to relax, perhaps at bedtime. When the spark of inspiration fades out, new ideas often go with it, of if they come, the power to utilize them escapes one. If the glimpse slips away from the greater calm, where does it go? Into the ever-active outward-turned thinking movement. From this inner World of Essence we descend to the outer World of Experience. “For every wrongdoer hates (loathes, detests) the Light, and will not come out into the Light, but shrinks from it, least one’s work (one’s deeds, one’s activities, one’s conduct) be exposed and reproved. However, one who practices truth [who does what is right] comes out into the Light; so that ones works may be plainly shown to be what they are—wrought with God [divinely prompted, sone with God’s help, in dependence upon Him],” reports John 3.20-21. Once there was a holy soul, St. Agatha, a wealthy girl who had vowed her virginity to Christ in the third century. As the official record of her martyrdom showed, she was brutally tortured and died in prison, but not before dropping this pearl of spiritual wisdom: “My mind is grounded and founded in Christ.” If only that were your sentiment also, then your every fear would not sting so, nor every unkind word stab. While the missionaries were on their trip westward, Joseph and his friends were busy in New York doing the Lord’s work. Parley Pratt’s nineteen-year-old brother, Orson, was much interested in Christ’s work in the latter day and went to Joseph requesting that he seek the Lord to know what his work would be. Joseph prayed earnestly in behalf of this young man. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
By revelation given in November, Jesus Christ said: “My son Orson, hearken and hear and behold what I, the Lord God, shall say unto you. Blessed are you because you have believed, and more blessed are you because you are called of me to preach my gospel; to lift up your voice as with the sound of a trump, both long and loud, and cry repentance unto a crooked and perverse generation; preparing the way of the Lord for His second coming. The time is soon at hand, that I shall come in a cloud with power and great glory, and it shall be a great day at the time of my coming. Therefore prophesy and it shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost; and if you are faithful, behold, I am with you until I come.” In December Sidney Rigdon and his friend, Edward Partridge, traveled from Kirtland to New York to visit Joseph Smith and to learn more about the church. Joseph prayed to know in what manner they might serve. After much prayer, the Son of God said: “Listen to the voice of the Lord your God…I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified for the sins of the World. Behold, verily, verily I say unto my servant Sidney, I have looked upon thee and thy works. I have heard thy prayers and prepared thee for a great work. I have heard thy prayers and prepared thee for a greater work. Thou art blessed, for thou shalt do great things. And it shall come to pass, that there shall be a great work in the land…and I will show miracles, signs and wonders, unto all those who believe on my name. And whoso shall ask it in my name, in faith, they shall cast our devils; they shall heal the sick; they shall cause the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak, and the lame to walk. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
“And the time speedily cometh that great things are to be shown forth unto the children of humans; but without faith shall not anything be shown. I haven sent forth the fullness of my gospel by the hand of my servant Joseph. Wherefore watch over one that one’s faith fail not, and it shall be given by the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, that knoweth all things; and a commandment I give unto thee, that thou shalt write for him. And the Scriptures shall be given even as they are in mine own bosom, to the salvation of mine own elect; for they will hear my voice, and shall see me. Lift up your hearts and be glad; your redemption draweth nigh. Fear not, little flock, the kingdom is yours until I come.” At about the same time this revelation came for Sidney Rigdon, a revelation was received directed to Edward Partridge, in which the Christ said: “I say unto you, my servant Edward, that you are blessed, and your sins are forgiven you, and you are called to preach my gospel. You shall receive my Spirit, the Holy Ghost, even the Comforter, which shall teach you he peaceable things of the kingdom. And you shall declare it with a loud voice, saying, Hosanna, blessed be the name of the most high God.” In a revelation given to Joseph in June, 1830 (Doctrine and Covenants 22), the Lord had explained that Moses had been told that men would one day take away many of the words which Moses and others had written, but that God would raise up another man who would give the words back to the people. By this God meant that parts of the Bible which Moses and others had written would be left out of the Scriptures or be lost, and another man would be inspired by God’s Spirit to know what had been omitted or lost and put them back in the Bible. This man was to be Joseph Smith, Jr., and Sidney Rigdon was to help him. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Sidney Rigdon was a student of the of the Bible, having spent years in its study. He had an unusual understanding of the Scriptures and at one time had resigned as minister because the church of which he was pastor did not teach according to the Bible. Truly the Lord had prepared him for a greater work. As Joseph and Sidney Rigdon worked together, God inspired them by his Holy Spirit that they might understand the things they read in the Bible. When two or more Scripture passages conflicted, God helped them to know what was right. The prophecy of Enoch is one book which is mentioned in the Bible but which had been omitted, apparently having been lost. Enoch was the righteous human who built the perfect city of Zion which was taken to Heaven. Enoch lived many hundreds of years before Jesus’ time. God made it known to Joseph Smith by his Holy Spirit what the prophecy of Enoch contained, and as God inspired his mind, he wrote about it. Joseph Learned that Enoch built the city of Zion where all were of one heart and mind and lived in righteousness. Enoch had been shown a vision in which he saw everything that was to happen to the World in the future. He saw Noah who built an ark to save the few righteous people from the flood which destroyed the wicked ones. He saw the coming of Jesus, the Son of God, who was born in a manger, and who came to show people the right way to live. He saw this Son of God crucified on a cross, and a great storm. He saw him raised from the dead and ascend into Heaven. In his visions Enoch saw the time when Jesus’ gospel would again return to the Earth. He saw the righteous gathered from all over the Earth to place called Zion, and to this place Enoch saw the Son of God come to live for a thousand year. The Lord has shown Enoch all things, even to the end of the World. Enoch saw the righteous people receive great joy, and the wicked ones fear God’s judgment against them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
God directed Joseph to put this lost book—the prophecy of Enoch—into the Holy Scriptures so it might be of help to those who study it to understand about God and his purpose. If they understood, they might become better people than they could otherwise be. This prophecy has also been included in the Doctrine and Covenants as Section 36. Joseph and Sidney Rigdon were working hard on the Inspired Version of the Scriptures when they received instructions by revelation in which the Lord said: “Behold, I say unto you, that it is not expedient in me that ye should translate any more until ye shall go to the Ohio. Ans again a commandment I give unto the church, that it is expedient in me that they should assemble together at the Ohio, against the time that my servant Oliver Cowdery shall return unto them. So Joseph and Sidney Rigdon laid aside their work on the Inspired Version of the Scriptures to preach and strengthen the church, and to prepare for an assembly of the Saints at Kirtland. The wonder of the human soul which, even surrounded by the depravity and folly of today, can still aspire nobly and think loftily, would be quite puzzling did we not know the dual nature of the human entity and the divine nature of the laws which govern it. So long as separate egos exist—separate from the cosmic ego in their own view, that is—so long will their ignorance produce what we call evil. The ego, let loose upon the World, uninstructed and unbridled, cannot in the final reckoning benefit the World. To talk of service, without wisdom or character, may squander its goodwill in egoistic mire. Note too that the resources of commerce and industry, far from making the tax more endurable through an abundance of money, only make it more burdensome. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
I will not dwell upon a very obvious point, namely that, although a greater or lesser quantity of money in a state can give it more or less credit outside the state, it in no way alters the real fortune of the citizens and does not make them any more or less comfortable. However, I must make two important remarks. First, unless the state has extra commodities and the abundance of money comes from export trade, only the commercial towns are aware of this abundance, and the peasant only become relatively poorer. Second, since the price of everything increases with the increase in money, taxes must be increased proportionately, so that the famer finds oneself under a great burden without having greater resources. It should be noted that the tax on lands is actually a tax on its product. While everyone agrees that nothing is so dangerous as a tax on grain paid by the buyer, how is it we do not see that it is a hundred times worse if this tax is paid by the farmer oneself. Is it not the most direct method possible of depopulating the homeland, and thus in the long run of ruining it? For there is no worse scarcity for a nation than that of humans. Only the true statesman can rise one’s sights above the financial objectives of imposing greater taxes. Only one can transform onerous burdens into useful regulations of public administration. Only one can make the people wonder whether such establishments have for their purpose the good of the nation rather than the production of taxes. Duties on the importation of foreign merchandise which the local people are eager to have but which the homeland does not need; on the exportation of domestically produced merchandise of which the homeland has none to spare and which foreigners cannot do without; on the product of useless and excessively lucrative arts; on the entry into towns of pure luxuries, and in general on all luxury items will all achieve this twofold purpose. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
It is by means of such taxes, which ease the burden of poverty and place the onus on wealth, that one must prevent the continual increase in the inequality of fortunes, the subjection of a multitude of workers and useless servants to the rich, the multiplication of idle people in the cities, and the desertion of rural areas. It is important to place a proportion between the price of thing and the duties imposed on them such that the greediness of private individuals is not too strongly tempted by the size of the profits to commit fraud. Moreover, smuggling must be made difficult by singling out merchandise that is more difficult to conceal. Finally, it is appropriate for the tax to be paid by the one who uses the thing taxed rather than the one who sells it, to whom the quantity of the duties with which one is charged would provide greater temptations and means of committing fraud. This is the usual practice in countries where the taxes are the heaviest and the best paid in the World. The merchant pays nothing. Only the buyer pays the duty, without any murmuring or sedition resulting, for since the provisions necessary for life, such as rice and grain, are completely exempt, the people are not oppressed and the tax falls only on the wealth. Moreover, all these precautions ought to be dictated not so much by the fear of smuggling as by the attention the government ought to pay to protecting private individuals from the seduction of illegitimate profits, which, after having turned them into bad citizens, would waste no time turning them into dishonest people. Let heavy taxes be levied on livery servants, carriages, mirrors, chandeliers and furnishings, on fabric and gilding, on the courtyards and the gardens of law makers, on public entertainment of all kinds, and on the idle processions, such as those of buffoons. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
In sort, on that group of objects of luxury, amusement and idleness that catch everyone’s eye and that can scarcely be hidden, since their whole purpose is to be on display, and they would be useless if they should fail to be seen. There is no cause for fear that the proceeds of such taxes would be arbitrary, since they are imposed only on things that are not absolutely necessary. It shows a poor knowledge of humans to believe that human who have once been seduced by luxury can ever renounce it. They would a hundred times rather renounce necessities, preferring to die of hunger than of shame. The increase in their expense is only a new reason for sustaining it, when the vanity of displaying oneself as wealthy will reap its reward from the price of the things as well as the expanse of the tax. As long as there are rich people, and the state cannot contrive a revenue less onerous and more secure than one based on this distinction. Would you rather have the state getting revenue only by taxing them life out of its citizens, or allow them to compete on a limited basis with private industry, which may result in them becoming more economical? For some reason, industry would have nothing to suffer from an economic order that enriched the public finances, revitalized agriculture by relieving the farmer, and imperceptibly brought all fortunes close to that intermediate level of wealth which constitutes the true force of a state. I confess it could happen that these taxes might contribute to making some fashions come and go more quickly; but it would never happen without substituting others on which the worker would earn a profit without the public treasury taking a loss. In short, suppose the spirit of the government was constantly to levy all taxes on the superfluities of the rich, one of two things might happen. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Either the rich would remove their superfluities to turn them into something useful, which would redound to the profit of the state, in which case, the imposition of taxes would have produced the effect of the best sumptuary laws. The expenses of the state will of necessity have diminished with those of private individuals; and the public treasury in this way would not receive less than it would thereby gain for having to pay out less. Or, if the rich do not cut back on any of their extravagances, the public treasury would have, in tax proceeds on these extravagances, the resources it was seeking in order to provide for the real needs of the state. In the first case, the public treasury is enriched by reducing expenditures. In the second case, it is enriched by the useless expenditures of private individuals. Let us add to all this an important distinction in the matter of political right, and to which governments, jealous of doing everything by themselves, should pay great attention. I have said that since personal taxes and taxes on absolute necessities attack the right to property and consequently the true foundation of public society, they are always subject to dangerous consequences, if they are not established with the express consent of the people or its representatives. It is not the same for duties on things whose use can be forbidden. For then, since the private individual is absolutely constrained to pay, one’s contributions can be reckoned as voluntary. Thus the individual consent of each of the contributions takes the place of the general consent, and even presupposes it in a certain way. For why would the people be opposed to any tax levy that falls only on whoever wants to pay it? It would appear to me certain that whatever is not prescribed by the laws or not contrary to mores and that the government can forbid, it can permit a payment of a duty. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
If, for example, the government can forbid the use of carriages, a fortiori it can impose a tax on carriages, a wise and useful way to blame their use without terminating it. Then one can view the tax as a type of fine, whose proceeds compensate for the abuse it punishes. Someone may perhaps object that since those called impostors, that is, those who impose or invent the taxes, are in the class of the rich, they will not take care to spare others at their own expense and to burden themselves in order to relieve the poor. However, such ideas must be rejected. If in each nation those to whom the sovereign commits the government of the peoples were, in virtue of their position, the enemies of the state, it would not be worth the trouble to inquire what they should do to make people happy. In millions of middle-class homes a ritual drama is enacted: the recently graduated son or daughter arrives late for dinner, snarls, flings down the wants ads, and proclaims the nine-to-five jobs, and the mother, exhausted and depressed from paying the latest batch of bills, are outraged. They have been through this before. Having seen good times and bad, they suggest a secure job with a big corporation. They young person sneers. Small companies are better. No company is best of all. An advanced degree? What for? It is all a terrible waste! Aghast, the parents see their suggestions dismissed one after another. Their frustration mounts until, at last, they utter the ultimate parental cry: “When are you going to face the real World?” Such scenes are not limited to affluent homes in the United States of America or even Europe. Japanese corporate moguls mutter in their sake about the swift decline of the work ethic and corporate loyalty, of industrial punctuality and discipline among the young. Even in Russia middle-class parents face similar challenges form youth. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Is this just another case of epater les parents—the traditional generational conflict? Or is there something new here? Can it be that young people and their parents are simply not talking about the same “real World”? The fact is that what we are seeing is not merely the classical confrontation of romantic youth and realistic elders. Indeed, what was once realistic may no longer be. For the basic code of behaviour, containing the ground rules of social life, is changing rapidly as the onrushing Third Wave. We saw earlier how the Second Wave brought with it a “code book” of principles or rules that governed everyday behaviour. Such principles as synchronization, standardization, or maximization were applied in business, in government, and in a daily life obsessed with punctuality and schedules. Today a countercode book is emerging—new ground rules for the new life we are building on a de-massified economy, on de-massified media, on new family and corporate structures. Many of the seemingly senseless battles between young and old, as well as other conflicts in our classrooms, boardrooms, and political backrooms are, in fact, nothing more than clashes over which code book to apply. The new code book directly attacks much of what the Second Wave person has been taught to believe in—from the importance of punctuality and synchronization to the need for conformity and standardization. It challenges the presumed efficiency of centralization and professionalization. It compels us to reconsider our conviction that bigger is better and our nations of “concentration.” To understand this new code, and how it contrasts with the old one, is to understand instantly many of otherwise confusing conflicts that swirl around us, exhausting our energies and threatening our personal power, prestige, or paycheck. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Prayer and focus on God is important for Spirit-Energy. This also helps the concentration of thoughts. The refusal to study the Bible or pray is short-sighted, narrow-minded, and unjustified, for this lays some foundation for the mental and higher planes of existence. Devotion to God is not concerned only with gaining abnormal physical power as the opponents seem to believe, but also with gaining physical health, freedom from sickness, abundant vitality, and especially a purified nervous system and disciplined instincts. God can bestow youthful elasticity to the body, and He will give deeper, more refreshing sleep; also, one passes into sleep more quickly. The steadiness which prayer provides has an effect on the consciousness, to, and it is an indirect means of attaining the requisite concentration, and ultimately, because of the effect on the interaction of heart and brain, the requiste inhibition of thiking. Thus, the art of prayer for self-healing and self-control has come to be traditionally handed down to the present day. Bakerman God, I am your living bread, strong, Bakerman God. I am your low, soft, and being-shaped loaf. I am your rising bread, well-kneaded by some divine and knotty pair of knuckles, by your warm Earth hands. I am bread well-kneaded. Put me in fire, Bakerman God, put me in your own bright fire. I am warm, warm as you from fire. I am white and gold, soft and hard, brown and round. I am so warm from the fire. Break me, Bakerman God. I am broken under your caring Word. Drop me in your special grace. The while for water we entreat Thee now, athirst as willows by the waterside, the pouring forth of old, remember Thou! O God of our salvation, save Thou us! These bearings boughs held upward in the way they sprout from Earth; these burdened by their plea, O answer, when in sudden need they pray. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Cresleigh Homes
It’s spooky season, 🎃 and spending time around the firepit is a highlight! 🔥 Good thing our Meadows Residence 2 home has so many options for enjoying the crisp fall evenings…
This single story home boats an ideal layout with 2,372 square feet, of thoughtfully designed living space, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage.
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters with a butler’s pantry to provide easy access to the dining room.
The great room is spacious and its open floor plan allows all parts of the home to flow. The Owner’s suite nestled away from the secondary bedrooms allowing for maximum privacy, yet still accessible.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier.
Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-2/
Has the Language of Accountability Yet Been Developed?
The idea of freedom is born with every generation. Only one generation create the Constitution of the United States of American. Do not be swayed by the well-oiled, smoothly reasoned words of human wisdom. As the Great Paul wrote in First Corinthians, “Virtual words will not get you into the Kingdom of God; only virtuous acts will do that,” reports 1 Corinthians 4.20. Pay attention to what God says. Let its warm your hearts and illumine your mind. It will loosen your conscience and infuse—who knows?—a little consolation. “O taste and see that the LORD is good; how blessed is the human who takes refuge in Him!” reports Psalm 34.8. Many people are missing out on God’s best because they do not realize that the good things in life have already been paid for. They may be on their way to Heaven, but they do not realize what has been included in the price of their quest. God has made more available to people than they can imagine. Never say a word that will make you seem better educated than another. Instead, stive to mortify your verbal vices. Why? Because spiritual progress, though sometimes painful, does you more good than any amount of philosophical knowledge, which often enough can be quite pleasant, or so I have been told. When someone reads from a random pile of books, one often increases one’s learning; but just as often one strays from the One True Principle. At once one must return to the One True Book. Why? God is the One who has given adults what little knowledge they find in their petty encyclopedias; and God is the One who has given the children their pretty abecedaries. “In Whom, because of our faith in Him, we dare to have the boldness (courage and confidence) of free access (an unreserved approach to God with freedom and without fear). So I ask you not to lose heart [not to faint or become despondent through fear] at what I am suffering in your behalf. [Rather glory in it] for it is an honour to you,” reports Ephesians 3.12-13. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Whoever hears God’s word will quickly become wise and make much progress in virtue. Woe to those who are out whiling away their time in flea markets and curiosity shoppes when they could be at home strenuously serving the Lord! God has everything we need—joy, forgiveness, restoration, peace, healing—anything we need to live at our full potential. It is all waiting for us by God’s grace. We must remember that we are the children of the Most High God, and He wants to enjoy what He has prepared for us. Just because something did no work out our way or someone disappointed us, that does not change who we are. “May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the [Holy] Spirit [Himself indwelling your innermost being and personality]. May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love, that you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God’s devoted people, the experience of that love] what is he breadth and length and heigh and depth [of it]; [That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!” reports Ephesians 3.16-19. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Philosophy does not agree with the doctrine that humans can sink into oblivion permanently. If a humans’ fundamental nature, however hidden it be, is essentially immaterial and of the same stuff as divinity, where can one sink back to except to that self-same divinity? The mystery of evil is perhaps the profoundest of all but it cannot be understood through surface views. Evil is closely connected with suffering and the latter in its turn with Universal Laws, which again is itself an expression of the fundamental self. It is all an educative process from which nobody can escape—not even Satan himself were there such a personal devil, which philosophy does not admit, although there are evil spirits, evil beings, and evil humans. All will be saved because when seen from the timeless viewpoint they are already saved. The great mass of humanity are moving in the right direction, despite appearances to he contrary, and they shall enter the kingdom of Heaven one day. Do not doubt that; the guarantee is that they are in their hidden selves already divine. No human is beyond redemption for no human is utterly evil. The problem of evil must be considered in the light of various factors. One of these is standpoint; one human’s evil is another human’s good. Another is Universal Law; the individual has enough latitude to go to the dogs but has to suffer from the consequences of one’s acts. Then there is the question of rebirth. It seems impossible for human beings o be reborn as animals but Nature has made some provision for it. Then the ethical value of suffering must be considered. However, most important of all are the questions of the nature of God, His relation to the Universe and to humanity, and the purpose, if any, which is being worked out. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
When a human commits an act of violence and destruction against other humans, one is denounced and punished as a criminal. However, when Nature commits such an act and maims or kills a mass of people, God is not denounced. Instead, poet and priest search for some excuse, find some hidden good intention, for God’s reputation for goodness must be saved. If the forces of evolution or laws of nature, as the expression of the World-Mind, have evoked the World-Idea and with it the possibilities of evil, we must unflinchingly accept the logical conclusion. This is that the World-Mind certainly permits the presence of Evil, allows and does not hinger its actuality. Nevertheless, we should always couple with this admission the equal and attendant truth that there is a higher outcome from the working of evil, a nobler purpose in its actuality. Through the operations of the laws of recompense and the pressures of divine evolution it is transmuted into good. Evil has nowhere else to turn in the end expect to turn itself into good! To accept God as the source of this Universe but to reject God as the source of those things contained in the Universe which we dislike, is to deny God. Because we humans dislike evil and suffering, we separate them from God. However, when we do that, we separate ourselves from God. Father, I now realize that I have been existing on little faith, while You have many blessings You want to bestow on me the moment I learn how to have faith for extraordinary things, and the price has already been paid. Thank You, Father, for blessing me today. When these rare glimpses are granted, take from them as they leave all that you can get—all the strength, the wisdom, the support, and the goodwill that they can hold. One has had the glimpse. The after-period is important. For as one returns to one’s ordinary self and to the ordinary persons around one, the opportunity is offered to make an adjustment, adjustment, a fresh start by the light of what the experience revealed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The great experience is soon over; the released insight lasts but a few minutes or hours, but its memory last long. It is a delectable foretaste and warming anticipation of what one’s continued spiritual development may bring to humans. It lifts one far above oneself and out of one’s ordinary state of consciousness, yielding sharper understandings and creating deeper sympathies. One returns from one’s first initiation into the egoless life with a rich cargo. One carries the stability of peace. A strange feeling of safety takes possession of one at that time. One knows neither care for the uncertain future nor regret for the unpleasant past. One knows that henceforth the life of one’s being is in the hands of the higher self, and with this one is quite content. Once one has attained this inner realization, the student should cling persistently to it, for the World’s multifarious forces will come to hear of it and seek to drag one away. “Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen (so be it),” reports Ephesians 3.20-12. To get up and move too soon after the glimpse has come to an end is to lose some of its Heavenly afterglow. To refrain from any movement, keeping sill and being patient, is to enjoy that glow till its last flickering moments as one may enjoy the last moments of sunset. One’s first need is to immerse oneself in the feeling, to preserve as much as one can of the glimpse. Print every detail of the Glimpse on your mind. It is a useful practice to write down every detail of the experience while it is still fresh in the mind. The record will still be there when the joy is gone. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The fragrance of this peace lingers on long after the glimpse itself is over. “His intention was the perfecting and the full equipping of the saints (His consecrated people), [that they should do] the work of ministering toward building up Christ’s body (the church), [That it might develop] until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the [full and accurate] knowledge of the Son of God, that [we might arrive] at really mature manhood (the completeness of personality which is nothing less than the standard height of Christ’s own perfection), the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found in Him. So then, we may no longer be children, tossed [like ships] to and fro between chance gusts of teaching and wavering with every changing wind of doctrine, [the prey of] the cunning and cleverness of unscrupulous humans, [gamblers engaged] in every shifting form of trickery in inventing errors to mislead,” Ephesians 4.12-14. The holy feelings generated by the Glimpse ought to be protected against the World’s disintegrating power and shielded against your own tendency to dissipate them by hasty violent movements or needless irrelevant chatter. Immediately after the glimpse no word should be spoken or it may be lost the more quickly. After such a glimpse there is enchantment in the air. The annoying or disagreeable happenings of the day fail to remove it. When the inspiration derived from the glimpse is upon one, the unexpected and the unpredictable may happen for one’s benefit; but when it is gone, one is no more fortunate than one’s neighbour. The glimpse goes and the habitual daily self returns. The single and simple largeness of the one is lost in the innumerable trivialities of the other. As the glimpse fades away, one takes the ego back into consciousness again. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
However, the glimpse may not stand alone in its full purity: one may put one’s own ideas into it as an accompaniment without knowing that one has done so. The time will come when the Teacher of teachers, the Christ of christs, the Lord of Angels, will appear; God’s Paul promised that to the Colossians (3.4). Yes, God will, come to audit all the lectures, examine all the students. That is to say, “Jerusalem will be searched by lamp light,” as the Prophet Zephaniah has said (1.12) and “all the errors will spring out of the darkness,” as Paul in First Corinthians has said (4.5). That should quiet the querulous once and for all! Case in point: two humble Devouts. The University takes ten years to educate the first. As for the second, God can raise one’s mind to where one can grapple equally well with the rationalizations and ratiocinations expected of any university graduate—and God can do it in a trice! God’s pedagogy? Well, God is the Logos, and so He does no need a lot of logorrhea to make His points. Philosophers and Theologians like to entertain other opinions; God does not. Academic pride, intellectual arrogance, public disputation whose only aim is to have the upper hand, not that the Truth may appear—all these are nice, but they are certainly not God’s style. His thesis is simply put: Despite this life. Shrink from the present. Seek the next life. Look forward to that happy time. Flee honours. Endure scandals. Hope is in God. Desire nothing but God. Love God ardently above all things. About the last, loving God ardently. If you do this, you will learn what the University has promised but failed to deliver; that is to say, the secrecies and prophecies of the Divine. That is to say, you make more spiritual progress when you leave the public disputation before it is over than when you linger to make yet another distinctio rationis ratiocnatae minor. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Sometimes God lectures in halls; sometimes God tutors in rooms. Occasionally God makes a personal impression by a miracle or a verbal expression by a metaphour. Once in a while God even takes the drape off a mystery. A book has once voice, but its many and varied readers do not necessarily come away from it with the same message. In the University Within, however, God’s is the only voice, and One is the only message. God is Lecturer, Examiner Invigilator. God interprets all thoughts, prompts all actions. All of which is another way of saying, and perhaps another way of rendering a passage in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (12.11), He marks each examination with alpha, beta, or gamma, enhanced or diminished by pluses or minuses. Wow to the Alphas! Woe to the Gammas! A relationship that is never taken into account, although it always ought to be reckoned the chief concern is that of utility each person derives from the social confederation which provides powerful protection for the immense possession of the rich and hardly allows a poor wretch to enjoy the cottage one built with one’s own hands. Are not the advantages of society for the powerful and the rich? Are not all the lucrative posts filled by them alone? Are not all the privileges and exemptions reserved for them alone? And is not the public authority entirely in their favour? When a human of high standing steals from one’s creditors or commits other acts of knavery, is one not always certain of impunity? Are not the assaults, the acts of violence one commits, even the murders and assassination one is guilty of, are not these things hushed up and after six months not given a thought? If this is same human were robbed, the entire police force is immediately put in motion, and woe to the innocent persons one suspects. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Does one have to pass through a dangerous area? One has escourts in rural areas. Is the axle of one’s chaise about to break? Everyone flies to one’s assistance. Is there a noisy disturbance outside one’s door? One says one word and everyone is silent. Does a crowd aggravate one? One makes a gesture and everyone steps aside from one. And better that fifty honest pedestrians going about their business should be crushed than that some lazy scoundrel’s coach should be delayed. All this respect costs one not a penny; it is the right of a rich human, not the price of riches. How different a picture is to be painted of the poor man! The more humanity owes one, the more society refuses one. All doors are closed to one, even when one has a right to open them. And if sometimes one obtains justice, it is with greater difficulty than the rich human would have obtaining a pardon. If there is an unpleasant job to do or troops to be raised, one is given preference. Besides one’s own burden, one always bears the one from which one’s more wealthy neighbour has the influence to get oneself exempted. At the least accident that happens to one, everyone avoids one. If one’s humble cart tips over, far from being helped by anyone, I count one lucky if one avoids the insults of the smart-aleck servants of some young duke who is passing by. In short, any free assistance escapes one when one needs it, precisely because one has nothing which to pay for it. However, if one has the misfortune of having and honest soul, a beautiful daughter, and a powerful neighbour, I take one for a lost human. Another no less important point to make is that the losses of poor humans are much more difficult to recoup than those of the rich, and that the difficulty of acquiring always grows in proportion to need. Nothing comes from nothing: it is just as true in business as it is in physics. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Money breeds money, and the first pistole is sometimes harder to earn than the second million. However, there is still more. Everything the poor human pays for is forever lost to one, and remains in or returns to the hands of the rich. And since the proceeds of the taxes sooner or later pass only to those humans who take part in the government or who are closely connected with it, they have, even in paying their hare, a clear interest in increasing taxes. The social part of the two estates: You need me, for I am rich and you are poor. Let us come to an agreement between ourselves. I will permit you to have the honour of serving me, provided you give me what little you have for the trouble I will be taking to command you. If all these things are carefully combined, we will find that in order to levy taxes in an equitable and truly proportionate way, the imposition should not be made merely in proportion to the goods belonging to the contributors, but in a proportion consisting in the differences of their conditions and of the superfluity of their goods. This terribly important and difficult operation is accomplished everyday by multitudes of honest clerks who know their arithmetic; but a Plato or a Montesquieu would not have dared to undertake such a task without trembling and imploring Heaven for enlightenment and integrity. Another disadvantage of the personal tax is that it makes itself felt too much and s levied with too much severity. This does not prevent its being subject to many instances of nonpayment, since it is much easier to hide one’s head than one’s possessions from the tax rolls and prosecution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Of all other kinds of tax assessments, the land tax or real tax has always passed for the most advantageous in countries where more thought is given to both the quantity of the proceeds and the certainty of recovering the funds, than to causing the least annoyance to the people. Some people have even dared to say that the peasant must be burdened in order to rouse one from one’s idleness, and that one would do nothing if one did not have to pay anything. However, among all the peoples of the World experience contradicts this ridiculous maxim. It is in Holland and England, where the farmer pays very little, and above all in China, where one pays nothing, that the land is best cultivated. On the other hand, wherever the worker finds oneself taxed in proportion to the product of one’s fields, one lets them lie fallow or else reaps just as much from them as one needs in order to live. For to one who loses the fruit of one’s labours gaining means of doing nothing. Imposing a fine on work is a rather unusual method of abolishing idleness. Taxes on land or on grain, especially when they are excessive, result in two disadvantages that are so terrible that they cannot in the long run avoid depopulating and ruining every country where they are established. The first comes from the lack of circulation of currency, for commerce and industry draw all the money from the rural areas into the capitols; and because the tax destroys the proportion that might still obtain between the needs of farmers and the price of one’s grain, money constantly leaves and never returns. The richer the city, the more miserable the rural areas. The proceeds from the tax pass from the hands of the prince of the financier into those of artists and merchants. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
And for the farmer, who never receives anything more than the smallest part of the proceedings, is eventually exhausted by always paying the same amount and always receiving less. How can a human live if one had veins and no arteries, or if the arteries carried blood only to within four inches of one’s heart? Chardin says that in Persia the king’s duties on commodities are also paid in commodities. This custom, which, Herodotus tells us, was practiced previously in the same country until the time of Darius, could prevent the evil of which I have been speaking. However, unless the intendents, directors, commissioners and where else, I am hard pressed to believe that the smallest part of all these products reaches the king, that grain does not in the granaries, and that fire does not consume the greater part of the warehouses. The second disadvantage comes form an apparent advantage, which lets the problems become aggravated before they are noticed: namely that grain remains cheap, and the farmer is the only one to bear the burden of the tax, which one has been unable to recoup in one’s selling price. It must be noted that one should not reason about a real tax the way one would about duties on all merchandise which in turn raise the price on all these goods and which are paid not so much by the sellers as by the buyers. For these duties on all merchandise which in urn raise the price on all these goods and which are paid not so much by the sellers as by the buyers. For these duties, however heavy they may be, are still voluntary and are paid by the seller only in proportion to one’s sales, one applies the law to private individuals. However, the farmer, who is required to pay, whether one sells or not, at a fixed rate for the land one cultivates, is not in a position to wait until one gets the price one wants for one’s produce. And even if one were not to sell it to support oneself, one would be forced to sell it to be able to pay the tax, so that sometimes it is the enormity of the assessment that keeps the produce at a low price. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The multipurpose corporation that has emerged demands, among other things, smarter executives. It implies a management capable of specifying multiple goals, weighting them, interrelating them, and finding synergetic policies that accomplish more than a single goal at a time. It requires policies that optimize not for one, but for several variables simultaneously. Nothing could be further from the single-minded styles of the traditional Second Wave manager. Moreover, once the need for multiple goals is accepted we are compelled to invent new measures of performance. Instead of the single “bottom line” on which most executives have been taught to fixate, the Third Wave corporation requires attention to multiple bottom lines—social, environmental, informational, political, and ethical bottom lines—all of them interconnected. Faced with this new complexity, many of today’s managers are taken aback. They lack the intellectual tools necessary for Third Wave management. We know how to measure the profitability of a corporation, but how do we measure or evaluate the achievement of non-economic goals? Managers are being asked to account for corporate behaviour in areas where no real standards of accountability have been established—where even the language of accountability has yet to be developed. This explains today’s efforts to develop a new language of accountability. Indeed, accounting itself is on the edge of revolution and is about to explode out of is narrowly economic terms of reference. The American Accounting Association, for example, has issued reports of a “Committee on Non-Financial Measures of Effectiveness” and of a “Committee on Measures of Effectiveness for Social Programs.” So much work is being done along these lines that each of these reports lists nearly 250 papers, monographs, and documents in its bibliography. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Many companies are working with consulting firms to develop methods for specifying what might be called the “trans-economic” goals of the corporation. The objective is to integrate these goals into corporate planning and to find ways of measuring the company’s trans-economic performance. In Washington, it has been suggested that the government itself should prepare a “Social Performance Index,” which would be a mechanism companies could use to assess their performance and its social consequences. Many large and medium-sized companies in Europe have been experimenting with [the social report] concept. In the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, about 20 of the larges firms now publish social reports regularly. In addition, more than a hundred others draw up social reports for internal management purposes. Some of these reports are no more than puff—accounts of the corporation’s “good works,” carefully overlooking controversial problems like pollution. However, others are remarkably open, objective, and tough. Thus a social report issued by the giant Swiss food firm, Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund self-critically confess that it pays women less than men, that many of its jobs are “extremely boring,” and that its nitrous dioxide emissions have risen over a four-years period. Says the company’s managing director, Pierre Arnold, “It takes courage for an enterprise to point out the differences between its goals and its actual results.” Companies like STEAG and the Saarbergwerke AG have pioneered the effort to relate company expenditures to specific social benefits. Less formally, companies like Bertelsmann AG, the publisher; Rank Xerox GmbH, the copier firm; and Hoechst AG, the chemical manufacturer, have radically broadened the kind of social data they make available to the public. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
A much more advanced system is employed by companies in Sweden and Switzerland and by Deutsche Shell AG in Germany. The latter, instead of publishing an annual report, now issues what it calls an Annual and Social Report in which both economic and trans-economic data are interrelated. The method used by Shell, termed “goal accounting and reporting” by Dierkes and Coppock, stipulates concrete economic, environmental, and social goals for the corporation, spells out the actions taken to achieve them, and reports the expenditures allocated to them. Shell also lists five overall corporate goals—only one of which is to achieve a “reasonable return on investment”—and specifically “carry the same weight” in corporate decision-making. The goal accounting methods force companies to make their trans-economic objectives explicit, to specify time periods for their attainment, and to open this up to public review. On a broader theoretical level, Trevor Gambling, professor of accounting at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, in a book called Societal Accounting has called for a radical reformulation of accounting that begins to integrate the work of economists and accountants with that of the social scientists who have developed social indictors and methods of social accounting. In Holland the Dean of the Graduate School of Management in Delft, Cornelius Brevoord, had designed a set of multidimensional criteria for monitoring corporate behaviour. This is made necessary, he suggests, by deep value changes in the society, among them the change from “an economic production orientation” in society to “a total well-being orientation.” Similarly, he notes a shift from “functional specialization to an interdisciplinary approach.” Both these changes strengthen the need for a more rounded concept of the corporation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Brevoord lists 32 different criteria by which a corporation must measure its effectiveness. These range over its relationships with consumers, shareholders, and unions to those with ecology organizations and its own management. However, he points out, even these 32 are only “a few” of the parameters along which the emerging corporation of the future will test itself. With the Second Wave economic infrastructure in a shambles, with change accelerating as de-massification spreads, with the biosphere sending danger signals, with the level of organization in society rising, and the informational, political, and ethical conditions of production changing, the Second Wave corporations is obsolete. What is happening, therefore, is a thoroughgoing reconceptualization of the meaning of production and of the institution that, until now, has been charged with organizing it. The result is a complex shift to a new-style corporation of tomorrow. In the words of William Halal, professor of management at American University, “Just as the feudal manor was replaced by the business corporation when agrarian societies were transformed into industrial societies, so too should the older model of the firm be replaced by a new form of economic institution.” This new institution will combine economic and trans-economic objectives. It will have multiple bottom lines. The transformation of the corporation is part of the larger transformation of the socio-sphere as a whole, and this in turn parallels the dramatic changes in the techno-sphere and info-sphere. Taken together, they add up to a massive historical shift. However, we are not merely altering these giant structures. We are also changing the way ordinary people, in their daily lives, behave. For when we change the deep structure of civilization, we simultaneously rewrite all the codes by which we live. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Important changes have developed in the nerve-structure and brain-formations of the human species. Body purification and strengthening are prerequisites and preparations for spiritual awakening and development. They allow the soul to awaken. The artist, the thinker, or the mystic must not neglect the muscular vigour and health of body that can be obtained through prayer and exercise. This would include deep breathing, stretching exercises, and a diet of light and easily digested foods which will not dull inspiration. Philosophical training puts must value on the quality of mental calmness, emotional composure, and on its reflected state in the body—physical stillness. The more a person’s mind is self-composed, the more will one’s whole personality be self-possessed. The passions of hatred, greed, lust, and anger cannot then bling one to the truth about one’s human situation or about the World’s nature. “In their spiritual apathy they have become callous and past feeling and reckless and have abandoned themselves [a prey] to unbridled sensuality, eager and greedy to indulge in every form of impurity [that their depraved desires may suggest and demand],” reports Ephesians 4. 19. Be grateful for all the things you do not need to know about life on this Earth. Consider yourself, though you are still alive and kicking, not part of the World. As far as you are concerned, as Galatians would put it (6.14), you are already hanging on the cross. Yes, you have to pass through many noisy patches as though you were deaf, and yes, you should open your ears to the things that bring you spiritual peace. Sometimes it is better not to meet the gaze of a troubled soul. One wants to talk, yes, but does one want to listen? #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
If you do stop to talk and the phlegm begins to fly, you are not the less pleasing to God. That is to say, if you are worsted in a hostile exchange and could have come to blows but did not, then at least your worsted’s still intact, and so is your virtue. O Lord, how long it has taken us to travel such a short distance! Look how a temporal loss sets the eyes to weeping! Even for a modest profit, we have to labour and lumber. As for a spiritual loss, it is scarcely noticed, let alone repented or retrieved. Beseeching the breath of the divine one, His life-giving breath, Hs breath of old age, His breath of waters, His breath of seeds, His breath of riches, His breath of fecundity, His breath of power, Hs breath of all good fortune, asking for His breath, and into my warm soul drawing in His grace, I add to Your grace that happily you may always live. O pity America’s host, I pray to Thee; forgive them, pardon their iniquity. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! As slaves, with eyes beseeching, seek their Lord, we came before Thee stricken, and implored: O God of our salvation, save Thou us! Triumphant Lord of lords, to Thee we pray; strife like a whirlwind scattered us, and we Thy sons lay crushed beneath the tyrant’s sway. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! Behold! with supplication how we throng—O Lord of grace and mercy,–unto Thee; Thy wondrous deeds, our never-ceasing song. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! “Flowing with milk and honey”: this Thy land spare Thou from drought. O stay her tears of woe; bind up her torrents with Thy healing hand. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! Plant us, we pray, upon a fruitful sod; send as old defenders from the foe, Thou just and righteous One! Thou faithful God! O God of our salvation, save Thou us! Recall Thy covenant with the Earth of yore, Thy sign, that while the Earth doth yet abide, Thine anger break and rend it never more. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
Now Selling!
Now selling! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms. Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!
While the kids hang out in the loft, you can retreat to your large primary suite and bath for a little rest and recharging. And when the weekend rolls around, the 3-bay garage is the perfect space to store all your outdoor toys.
Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included!
Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
The Awareness of Human Destructiveness Bursts!
Many humans, at one time, were primarily isolated, but enter relationships with members of the human family in order to satisfy their striving for please. Many of the relationships were sought after and conceived in a way that resemble relations in the marketplace. Each was only concerned with the satisfaction of one’s needs, but it is precisely for the sake of this satisfaction that one had entered into relations with others who offer what one needs, and need what one offers. Each living cell is supposed to be endowed with the two basic qualities of living matter, Eros (love) and the striving for death. We are struck by the significance of the possibility that the aggressiveness may not be able to find satisfaction in the external World because it comes up against real obstacles. If this happens, it will perhaps retreat and increase the amount of self-destructiveness holding sway in the interior. Impeded aggressiveness seems to involve a grave injury. It really seems as though it is necessary for us to destroy some other thing or person in order not to destroy ourselves, in order to guard against the impulsion to self-destruction. A sad disclosure indeed for the moralist! However, the most powerful impeding factor of all and one totally beyond any possibility of control is the death instinct. In theory of death instinct, the awareness of human destructiveness bursts forth in full strength, and destructiveness becomes the one pole of existence which, fighting with the other pole, Eros, forms they very essence of life. Destructiveness becomes a primary phenomenon of life. It is true that evil forces do exist but not true that they exist on the highest level. Insight into the ultimate sees the not. Evil is certainly present, plain to sight and unpleasant to experience, but it is not altogether, nor only what it seems. It is really an appearance, and reconcilable with the benign source of good. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Eros, present in every cell of living substance, has as its aim the unification and integration of smaller units into the unity of humankind. This is love that does not involve pleasures of the flesh, also known as the “love instinct”; love is identified with life and growth, and—fighting with the death instinct—it determines human existence. Humans are no longer conceived of as primarily isolated and egotistical, as l’homme machine, but as being primarily related to others, impelled by the life instincts which make one need union with others. Life, love, and growth are one and the same, more deeply rooted and fundamental then pleasures of the flesh and other pleasures. The change is vision shows clearly in this new evaluation of the Christian biblical commandment, “Though shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Anything that encouraged the growth of emotional ties between humans must operate against war. These ties may be of two kinds. In the first place they may be relations resembling those toward a loved object, though without having an aim for pleasures of the flesh. There is no need for psychoanalysis to be ashamed to speak of love in this connection, for religion itself uses the same words: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This, however, is more easily said than done. The second kind of emotional tie is by means of identification. Whatever leads humans to share important interests produces this community of feeling, these identifications. And the structure of human society is to a large extent based on them. Why is history such a record of wars, oppressions, exploitations, invasions, and persecutions? Why have all the saviours, avatars, prophet, and saints succeeded only with individual humans here and there, not with the mass of humankind? #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Is the religious dream of universal goodness nothing more than a dream? It is not a help but a self-deception to ignore the double polarity of existence, the yin-and-yang in the Universe, the shadow-self in humans. Only outside of religion, in the philosophic realm of the ultimate being, the Unique, the Real, where the entire World itself is cast out, can we talk of friction-free consciousness, and only in the deepest meditation can we share it. Although the experience is a temporary one, the peace in it so passes the understanding that “the Kingdom of Heaven” is its fit name. Here indeed is the Good raised to its highest degree. Here is a demonstration that human evil is but privation of good. What may be true on the ultimate level—the non-existence of evil, the reality of the Good, the True, the Beautiful—becomes false on the level of duality. Here the twofold powers, the opposites, do not exist, do hold the World in their sway. To deny relative evil here is to confuse different planes of being. The human who would deliberately harm one’s fellows for one’s own ends is a sinner. Evil arises only when an entity goes astray into the delusions of separateness and materialism, and thence into conflict with other entities. There is no ultimate and eternal principle of evil, but there are forces of evil, unseen entities who have gone so far astray and are so powerful in themselves that they work against goodness, truth, and justice. However, by their very nature such entities are doomed to eventual destruction, and even their work of opposition is utilized for good in the end and becomes the resistance against which evolution tests its own achievements, the grindstone against which is sharpens humans’ intelligence, the mirror in which its shows one one’s flaws. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The lower nature in incurably hostile to the higher one. It prefers its fleeting joys with their attendant miseries, its ugly sins wit their painful consequences, because this spells life to it. Everything and everyone has a negative side. One could fill up a lifetime looking for and finding it. One could go on grumbling, criticizing, ranting, and hating. However, there is also the beneficial side of it. The philosophical attitudes seeks deeper, keeps calmer, for it finds equilibrium on another plane. The descent from faith in Holy Spirit to faith in unholy spirits happens to those who are either too weak to remain at such a high altitude or too incapable of rising from a sensate view of existence. Evil can take every form, even that of the guru, the quest, and the leaner. Some yeas ago someone asked me, “What about absolute evil?” The answer is this: with Confucius we say that sin is due to ignorance, and with Pythagoras that evil is due to the absence of good. Ignorance leads to selfishness and extreme ignorance leads to extreme selfishness, which in turn leads to extreme evil. Now, all these are relative conditions and pass away in time as the person leans one’s lessons though the series of experience and corrects one’s mistake during reincarnations. There cannot be an absolute evil because there is only one Absolute Power, one God, one Supreme Being; and it is this which inspires the highest goodness know to humans when one discovers its presence, through the Overself, in one’s heart. In that sense only I said there was an absolute good. The pairs of opposites exist only in the finite, relative, and limited World. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
There is no opposite to the Supreme Power in the timeless and infinite World, no Satan with whom God is in everlasting conflict. However, on its own level, Mind knows neither good nor bad. There is only IS-ness. It seems that there is evil in the World, but why? What bad humans have done is to let their evil grow like a noxious weed too large and their good too little, whereas good humans have cultivated a high proportion of goodness. There is no absolute evil. It is truer to talk of absolute god for that is there first. Why? Because God is there first. Humans came later and broke the divine laws little by little. They created their own evil consequences. Or for different reasons they harm others and have later to suffer for it. Humans were once looked at as machines driven by chemical processes: feelings, affects and emotions were explained as being caused by specific and identifiable physiological processes. Most of hormonology and of the neurophysiological findings of the last decades were unknown to these humans, yet with daring and ingenuity they insisted on the correctness of their approach. Needs and interests for which no somatic sources could be found were ignored, and the understanding of those processes which were not neglected followed the principles of mechanistic thinking. The model of human behaviour could be repeated today in a properly programmed computer. One develops a certain amount of tension which at a certain threshold has to be relieved and reduced, while this realization is checked by another part, the ego, which observes reality and inhibits relief when it conflicts with the needs for survival. This Freudian robot would be similar to Isaac Asimov’s science-fiction robot, but the programming would be different. Its first law would be not to hurt human beings, but to avoid self-damage or self-destruction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
However, the new theory does not follow this mechanistic “physiologizing” model. It is centered on a biological orientation in which fundamental forces of life (and its opposite: death) become the primal forces of motivating humans. The nature of the cell—that is, of all living substance—becomes the theoretical basis for a theory of motivation, not a physiological process that goes on in certain organs of the body. The new theory was perhaps closer to a vitalistic philosophy than to the concept of the German mechanistic materialists. What motivated Dr. Freud to postulate the death instinct? One factor was probably the impact of the First World War. He, like many other humans of his time and age, had shred the optimistic vision so characteristic of the European middle class, and saw oneself suddenly confronted with a fury of hate and destruction hardly believable before August 1, 1914. From there, Dr. Freud became a man preoccupied with death. He thought of dying every day, after he was forty; he had attacks of Todesangst (“fear of death”), and sometimes he would add to his “goodbye”: “You might never see me again.” One might surmise that Dr. Freud’s disposition would have impressed him as a confirmation of his fear of death, and thus contributed to the formulation of death instinct. This preoccupation with death grew in intensity and led him to a concept in which the conflict between life and death was at the center of human experience, rather than the conflict between the two life-affirmative drives, pleasures of the flesh and ego drives. To assume that humans need to die because death is the hidden goal of one’s life might be considered a kind of comfort destined to alleviate one’s fear of death. And it is true, when people’s lives are in danger and they lack security that they learn not to fear death. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It seems likely that many hearts in American society have waxed cold since September 11, 2001, when there was an attack on American soil that claimed the lives of over 3,500 people. Many people were too young to realize how devastating it was at the moment, but I believe the tragedy affected everyone much like Dr. Freud was confronted with the fury of hate and destruction from August 1, 1914. Acts on war in your homeland make people realize that life is not promised and it can have a psychological impact. “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see,” reports Hebrews 11.1. Begin today to believe that what you have hoped for is going to happen, that good things are on their way. Notice, faith has to do with the unseen World. You may not be able to perceive anything beneficial happening in your life with your natural eyes today. In fact, everything may be falling apart—your finances, your health, your business, your relationships with your family and friend. All kind of problems may be on the horizon. However, do not be discoursed, turn your focus to the supernatural World, look to God and Jesus Christ for solutions and know that your harmony and peace will be restored. The World tells you that you need to live out loud and seeing is believing. However, God says seek ye the Kingdom of Heave first, and all these things will be added to you. Look through your Heavenly eyes of faith, and once you confirm something by faith, it will manifest in the physical World. What do you do when you see others being honored or elevated? You could feel bad about their feeling good. Or you could consider these as occasions for your feeling good about feeling bad. Why? #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
If only you knew it, the contempt of humans on Earth should not cause you to shed a single tear. What should you do? Direct your heart toward God in Heaven. In the past, many men did not view woman as equals with men, but some did. Overall, there was a patriarchal bias. However, the very essence of the Platonic myth is that male and female were once one and were then divided into halves, which implies, of course, that the two halves are equals, that they form a polarity endowed with the tendency to unite. Eros (love) aims at complicating life and preserving it, and hence is also conservative, because with the emergence of life an instinct is born which is to preserve it. However, we must ask, if it is the nature of the instinct to re-establish the earliest state of existence, inorganic matter, how can it at the same time tend to re-establish a later form of existence, namely life? Well, according to Plato’s report in the Symposium concerning the original unity of man who was then divided into halves by Zeus, after this division, each desiring his other half, they came together and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one. The living substance at the same time of its coming to life was torn apart into small particles, which have ever since endeavoured to reunite through martial union and procreation. These instincts, in which the chemical affinity of inanimate matter persisted, gradually succeeded, as they developed through the kingdom of the protists, in overcoming the difficulties put in the way of that endeavour by an environment charged with dangerous stimuli—stimuli which compelled them to form a protective cortical layer. These splintered fragments of living substance in this way attained a multicellular condition and finally transferred the instinct for reuniting, in the most highly concentrated form, to the combination of two souls. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
So it is no wonder so many people feel so fractured and incomplete. Their living substance was torn apart. Do you see things getting better in your life? Or are you just drifting along, accepting whatever comes your way? “I know I was not going to get that Cresleigh Havenwood House Residence 4. Noting good ever happens to me.” “This is just my lot in life. I knew I would never get that BMW 750Li with Xdrive.” “I knew I would never be blessed.” In the face of God’s blinding glory, many of us have to be blinkered. Perhaps that is why, without our peripheral vision, we are so easily hoodwinked by Vanity. If I assess myself correctly, never has an injury been done to me by another creature, and hence I have no right, at least not yet, to make a ruckus against God, my Righteous if Riotous Lord. Why? Because I have sinned against God frequently and gravely. Deservedly, therefore, should every creature pick up one’s pike against me. So it is only reasonable to conclude that confusion and contempt are my just due. Yours, however, is praise, honour, and glory. And in the light of these considerations, unless I prepare myself—by being looked down upon by every giraffe, outsped by every gazelle, overlooked by every gryphon—I can be neither pacified and stabilized interiorly, spiritually illuminated, nor fully one with God. Do not limit God with your small thinking. Have extraordinary vision for your life and live with faith and expectancy. You will be surprised that you will become what you believe. Some of the reasons are blessings are delayed in the fulfillment of the promise for year after year, is simply the fact that we cannot see it through our eyes of faith. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Is God trying to do something out of the ordinary in your life? Be sure to get into agreement with God. Do not tell God the reasons why things cannot happen. All the time God is trying to plant new seed of success inside of us. He is showing us that if we do not conceive in our hearts through faith, it will never come to pass. “The things which are impossible with humans are possible with God,” reports Luke 18.27. Let that word plant faith inside of your heart. You do not have to figure out how God is going to solve your problems, but turn the situation over to God. God can do what human beings cannot or will not do. God is supernatural. If you can put your trust and confidence in the Lord, God will surely bring it to pass. If you can see the invisible, God will do the impossible. In God, the love of a friend should stand. God is Ever-living, Everlasting Truth, your friend will not shed a tear if you live of die. It is because of God that love of a friend should stand. It is because of God that one should be loved, that is to say, everyone who is seemed good to you and who is very dear in this life. Without God the love of friendship will not have the strength to last. Nor is the love of friendship true and clear unless God is an integral part of it; that is as His Augustine described it in his Confessions (4.4). Which is another way of saying, you ought to be dead to two-person friendships, especially when the other person is another creature. However, when the other person is God, then something odd happens. The closer you approach God, the farther you recede from every friendly solace. Also the higher you ascend to God, the deeper you descend into yourself and the viler you appear to yourself. I want to get a grander vision for my life, Father, and then live it out with faith and expectancy, knowing that I will become what I believe. Today, I will focus on You, who You are and what You can do in and through me. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Whoever attributes good to oneself only makes it more difficult for oneself to receive the grace of God. Why? Because, as the spiritual wisdom echoing Proverbs (3.34), Psalms (55.22), and First Peter (5.5) has it, the grace of the Holy Spirit always seeks the humble heart. To annihilate yourself, to empty yourself of all created love—that is what you ought to do. And what I ought to do is fill that very same space with a very great grace. When you warm to the wonderfulness of the created World, the Creator’s respect for you begins to cool. Because of the Creator, if for no other reason, learn how to conquer yourself in all things. Do that, and you will have the strength to reach out to Divine Knowledge. However slight it may be, unruly love and irregular respect delay, even detour, your spiritual progress. The anal libido has a deep affinity to the death instinct. Now, controlling and possessing are certainly tendencies opposite of loving, furthering, liberating, which form a syndrome among themselves. However, “possession” and “control” do not contain the very essence of destructiveness, the wish to destroy, and hostility toward life. No doubt, the anal character has a deep interest in and affinity to feces as part of their general affinity to all that is not alive. Feces are the product finally eliminated by the body, being of no further use to it. The anal character is attracted by feces as one is attracted by everything that is useless for life, such as dirt, death, decay. We can say that the tendency to control and possess is only one aspect of the anal character, but milder and less malignant than hatred of life. Eros (love), therefore is looked upon as the biologically normal aim of development, while the death instinct is seen to be based on a failure of normal development and in this sense a pathological, though deeply rooted striving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
If one wants to entertain a biological speculation one might relate anality to the fact that orientation by smell is characteristic of all four-legged mammals, and that the erect posture implies the change from orientation by smell to orientation by sight. The change in function of the old olfactory brain would correspond to the same transformation of orientation. In view of this, one might consider that the anal character constitutes a regressive phase of biological development for which there might even be a constitutional-genetic basis. The anality of the individual could be considered as representing an evolutionary repetition of a biological human functioning. The theoretician arrives at the conclusion that humans have only the alternative between destroying oneself (slowly, by illness) or destroying others; or—putting it in other words—between causing suffering either to oneself or to others. The humanist rebels against the idea of this tragic alternative that would make war a rational solution of this aspect of human existence. An alternate is repression of the instinctual demands, which are the development of culture and civilization. Some people say the Europeans created such a successful society because they learned the art of self-control. The repressed instinctual drive was “sublimated” into valuable cultural channels, but still at the expense of full human happiness. On the other hand, repression led not only to increasing civilization but also to the development of neurosis among the many in whom the repressive process did not work successfully. Lack of civilization combined with full happiness or civilization combined with neurosis and diminished happiness seemed to be the alternative. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The contradiction between the death instinct and Eros confronts humans with a real and truly tragic alternative, a real alternative because one can decide to attack and wage war, to be aggressive, and to express one’s hostility because one prefers to do this rather than to be sick. That this alternative is a tragic one hardly needs to be proven. Something very remarkable, which we should never have guessed and which is nevertheless quite obvious. What happens to the aggressor when one renders one’s desire for aggression innocuous? One’s aggressiveness is introjected, internalized; it is, in point of fact, sent back to where it came from—that is, it is directed toward one’s own ego. There it is take over by a portion of the ego as super-ego, and which now, in the form of “conscience,” is ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other, extraneous individuals. The tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that is subjected to it, is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a need for punishment. Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within one to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city. The transformation of destructiveness into a self-punishing conscience does not seem to be as much as an advantage as it may seem to imply. According to this theory of conscience, it would have to be as cruel as the death instinct, since it is charged with its energies, and no reason is given why the death instinct should be “wakened” and “disarmed.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Rather, it would see that the following analogy expresses the real consequences of this thought more logically: a city that has been ruled by a cruel enemy defeats one with the help of a dictator who then sets up a system that is just as cruel as that of the defeated enemy; and this, what is gained? The instinct of destruction, moderated and tamed, and, as it were, inhibited in its aim, must, when it is directed toward objects, provide the ego with the satisfaction of its vital needs and with control over nature. This is a good example of sublimation; the aim of the instinct is not weakened, but it is directed toward other socially valuable aims, in this case the “control over nature.” This sounds, indeed, like a perfect solution. Humans are freed from the tragic choice of destroying either others or themselves, because the energy of the destructive instinct is used for the control over nature. However, we must ask, can this really be so? Can it be true that destructiveness becomes transformed into constructiveness? What can “control over nature” mean? Taming and breeding animals, gathering and cultivating planets, weaving cloth, building Cresleigh Homes, manufacturing pottery and many more activities including the construction of Ultimate Driving Machines, railroads, airplanes, skyscraper: al these are acts of constructing, building, unifying, synthesizing, and, indeed, if one wanted to attribute them to one of the two basic instincts, they might be considered as being motivated by Eros rather then the death instinct. With the possible exception of killing animals for their consumption and killing humans in war, both of which could be considered as rooted in destructiveness, material production is not destructive but constructive. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
As a result of a little speculation, we have come to suppose that this instinct is at work in every living creature and is striving to bring it to ruin and to reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter. Thus is quite seriously deserved to be called a death instinct, while procreation is the instinct represented by the effort to live. The death instinct turns into the destructive instinct when, with the help of social organs, it is directed outwards, on to objects. The organism preserves its own life, so to day, by destroying an extraneous one. Some portion of the death instinct, however, remain operative within the organism, and we have sought to trace quite a number of normal and pathological phenomena to this internalization of the destructive instinct. We have even been guilty of the heresy of attributing the origin of conscience to the diversion inwards of aggressiveness. If this process is carried too far, you will notice that it is by no means a trivial matter; it is possibly unhealthy. On the other hand if these forces are turned to destruction of the external World, the organism will be relieved and the effect must be beneficial. This would serve as a biological justification for all the ugly and dangerous impulses against which we are struggling. It must be admitted that they stand nearer to Nature than does our resistance to them for which an explanation also needs to be found. When the good is absent, the evil is present. The cynic who denies the existence of the good, the dreamer who denies the existence of the evil—each ignores the other half of life as evidence in history and in the World around one. When we go to the roots—that is what “radically” literally means—and discover that a great deal of our conscious thinking only veils our real thoughts and feelings and hides the truth; most of our conscious thought is a sham, a mere rationalization of thoughts and desires which we prefer not to be aware of. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
This is revolutionary because it leads people to open their eyes to the reality of the structure of the society they live in and hence to the wish to change it in accordance with the interests and desires of the vast majority. Much of the liberal middle class was suspected of being neurotic because their liberation of pleasures of the flesh is largely part of the ever-increasing consumerism. If people are taught to spend and spend, rather than, as in the nineteenth century, to save and save, if they were transformed into “consumers,” one had not only to permit but encourage consumption of pleasures of the flesh. It is after all the most simple and the cheapest of all consumption. Conservatives used to have a strict code of chastity and liberty of pleasures of the flesh lead to an anticonservative revolutionary attitude. If anything, historical development has shown that liberation of pleasures of the flesh has served the development of consumerism and weakened political radicalism. What more people really want is not to become more human, more free, more independent—that would mean more critical and revolutionary-minded—but they want to suffer no more than the average member of their class. They hardly see a really happy person, only a few people who have succeeded in being relatively satisfied with their lot, especially if they are successful and admired by others. Naturally, quite a few people, having a sympathetic listener to talk to, feel better, aside from the fact that as years go by experience in living makes the average person improve one’s lot, except those who are too sick to learn from experience. The contemporary capitalist society is considered to be the highest, most developed form of social structure. It is because all other social structures are more primitive or utopian, and not really successful. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
An ever-growing number of people have become aware that capitalist society is just one of innumerable social structures and is neither more nor less “real” than the societies of Central African tribes. The invention of artillery and fortifications has in our times forces the sovereigns of Europe to reestablish the use of regular standing troops to guard their fortresses. Yet however, legitimate the motives, there is reason to fear that the effect will be no less fatal. It will be no less necessary to depopulate the rural areas in order to raise armies and garrisons. To maintain them it will be no less necessary to oppress the peoples. And these dangerous establishments have in recent times been growing so rapidly in all of our part of the World, that no one can foresee anything but the imminent depopulation of Europe, and sooner, or later, the ruin of the people who inhabit it. Be that as it may, it should be noted that such institutions necessarily subvert the public domain, leaving only the wearisome resources of subsidies and taxes, which remain for me to discuss. It would be remembered here that the foundation of the social compact is property, together with its first condition that each person should be maintained in the peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to one. It is true that by the same treaty each person at least tacitly obliges oneself to be assessed for public needs. However, since this commitment cannot hard the fundamental law and presumes that contributors acknowledge the evidence of need, it is clear that to be legitimate, this assessment should be voluntary. It is not based on a private will, as if it were necessary to have the consent of each citizen, who should pay only as much as one pleases. This would be directly contrary to the spirit of the confederation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Rather, it should be through the general will, by majority vote, and on the basis of proportional rates that leave no room for an arbitrary imposition of taxes. This truth (that taxes can be legitimately established only by the general consent of the people or its representatives) had generally been recognized by all the philosophers and jurists who have any reputation in matters of political right. While some of them have established maxims that appear contrary, it is easy to see the private motives that moved them to do so. They stipulate so many conditions and restrictions that it all boils down to exactly the same thing. For whether the people can reuse it or whether the sovereign should not demand it, is a matter of indifference as far as right is concerned. And if it is only a question of force, it is utterly pointless to inquire what is or is not legitimate. The contributions levied on the people are of two kinds: real taxes (levied on things) and personal taxes (paid by the head). Both are called taxes or subsidies. When the people sets the amount it pays, it is called a subsidy; when it grants the entire proceeds of an assessment, it is a tax. In The Spirit of the Laws we find that a head tax is more in keeping with servitude, while a real tax is more suited to liberty. This would be incontestable, were everyone’s head share equal. For nothing would be more disproportionate than such a tax. It is especially in an exacting observance of proportions that the spirit of liberty consists. However, if a head tax is exactly proportioned to the means of private individuals and is thus at once both and personal, it is the most equitable and, as a result, the one best suited to free humans. At first these proportions appear quite easy to observe, because, being relative to each person’s position, the indications are always public. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
However, besides the fact that greed, influence-peddling, and fraud know how to leave no evidence behind, it is rare that an account is taken of all the elements that should enter into these calculations. First, one ought to consider the relationship of quantities according to which, all things being equal, someone who has ten times more goods than someone else should pay ten times more. Second, one ought to consider the relationship of use, that is, the distinction between what is necessary and what is superfluous. Someone who has only the bare necessities of life should not pay anything at all. Taxing someone who has superfluities can, in time of need, be extended to everything over and above the necessities of life. To this one will declare that, given one’s rank, what would be superfluous for a human of inferior standing is necessary for one. However, that is a lie. For humans of superior standing have two legs, just like a cowherd, and, like the cowherd, has only one stomach. Moreover, this alleged necessity of life is so little necessary to one’s standing that, if one knew how to renounce these things for some worthy cause, one could only be respected more. The people would prostrate themselves before a minister who would go on foot to the council because one had sold one’s Ultimate Driving Machines when the state had a pressing need. Finally, the law does not demand magnificence of anyone, and propriety is never reason against right. A cultivated human of taste and feeling can find much that is beautiful in nature and art; and if one is also a moral idealist, one will find much that is good and virtuous in human life and experience. However, it would be incomplete to stop there and ignore the fact that there is also around us much that is base, dark, and even evil. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The two sides put together form a complete observation. However, it is only the mystics and philosopher who can see—because it requires a deeper penetration than the intellect and the sense can give—that the dark side deals with the World of appearances, a World which is fleeting and ephemeral, whereas the good side and the beautiful side is merely a hint of that other World closer to Reality. Evil is a very real problem in this World of time and space. Evil forces exist and must be fought with all our strength. Nevetheless the Power out of which all things and all entities come is a beneficent one. Love is its radiation. There is no evil and no pain in it. They begin only on the lower level of separation and differentiation. Wild air, World-mothering air, nestling me everywhere, that each eyelash or hair girdles; goes home betwixt the fleeciest, frilest-flixed snowflake; that is fairly mixed with riddles, and is rife in every least thing is life; this needful, never spent, and nursing element; my more than meat and drink, my meal at every wink; their air, which, by life’s law, my lung must draw and draw now but to breathe its praise. Please give rain. We are the pure who camped by water. For Jacob’s sake who set the rods in water, O speed us! He strained and rolled the stone from off the water. Please give rain! Blest heirs to Torah’s quickening water, O save us! To win for them and for their offspring water. Please give rain! Today as then we cry for water. For Moses’ sake who found his people water, O speed us! He smote the rock and lo! out gushed the water. O save us, mighty God! Please give us rain! Our sires sang round the well of water. O save us! Because of Moses at Meribah’s water, O speed us! At Thy command he gave the thirsting water. O save us, mighty God! please give rain! Thy holy servants poured Thee water. O save us! For Thy chief minstrel’s sake who longed for water, O speed us! Yet turned and made libation with the water, O save us, mighty God! Please give rain! Four plants we wave that love the water, O save us! For American’s sake, the home of living water, O speed us! The parched Earth open to the Heavens’ water, O save us, mighty God! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Plenty of room for pumpkin pie filling and spices! A pantry this big lets us imagine we’re on our own episode of Great British Baking Show. 🥧 #Havenwood offers thoughtful floorplans with space for everything practical.
Now selling! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms. Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!
Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included!
Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
If God Gets Up and Leaves Forever, Why Should We Shed a Tear?
When we call something “Supernatural,” we mean that it is something which invades, or is added to, the great interlocked event in space and time, instead of merely arising from it. On the other hand this “Supernatural” part is itself a created being—a thing called into existence by the Absolute Being and given by Him a certain character or “nature.” We could therefore say that while “supernatural” in relation to this Nature (this complex event in space and time) it is, in another sense, “natural”—id est, it is a specimen of a class of things which God normally creates after a stable pattern. There is, however, a sense in which the life of this part can become absolutely Supernatural, id est, not beyond this Nature but beyond any and every Nature, in the sense that it can achieve a kind of life which could never have been given to any created being in its mere creation. If we consider it in relation not to humans, but to angels, the distinction will, perhaps, become clearer. (It does not matter, here, whether the reader believes in angels or not. I am using them only to make the point clearer.) All angels, both the “good” ones and the bad or “fallen” ones which we call devils, are equally “Supernatural” in relation to this spatio-temporal Nature: id est, they are outside it and have powers and a mode of existence which it could not provide. However, the good angels lead a life which is Supernatural in another sense as well. That is to say, they have, of their own free will, offered back to God in love the “natures” He gave them at their creation. All creatures of course live from God in the sense that He made them and at every moment maintains them in existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
However, there is a further and higher kind of “life from God” which can be given only to a creature who voluntarily surrenders oneself to it. This life the good angels have and the bad angels have not: and it is absolutely Supernatural because no creature in any World can have it by the mere fact of being the sort of creature it is. As with angels, so with us. The rational par of every human is supernatural in the relative sense—the sense in which both angels and devils are supernatural. However, if it is, as the theologians say, “born again,” if it surrenders itself back to God in Christ, it will then have a life which is absolutely Supernatural, which is not created at all but begotten, for the creature is then sharing the begotten life of the Second Person of the Deity. Christian writers use “spirit” and “spiritual” to mean the life which arises in such rational beings when they voluntarily surrender to Divine grace and become children of the Heavenly Father in Christ. It is in this sense, and in this sense alone, that the “spiritual” is always good. A regenerate human will find one’s soul eventually harmonized with one’s spirit by the life of Christ that is in one. Hence Christians believe in the resurrection of the body, whereas the ancient philosophers regard the body as a mere encumbrance. And this perhaps is a universal law, that he higher you rise the lower you can descend. Humans are a tower in which the different floors can hardly be reached from one another but all can be reached from the top floor. You are probably quite right in thinking that you will never see a miracle done: you are probably equally right in thinking that there was a natural explanation of anything in your past life which seemed, at the first glance, to be “rum” or “odd.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
God does not sake miracles into Nature at random as if from a pepper-caser. They come on great occasions: they are found at the great ganglions of history—not of political or social history, but of that spiritual history which cannot be fully known by humans. If your own life does not happen to be near one of those great ganglions, how should you expect to see one? If we were heroic missionaries, apostles, or martyrs, it would be a different matter. However, why you or I? Unless you live near a railway, you will not see trains go past your windows. How likely is it that you or I will be present when a peace-treaty is signed, when a great scientific discovery is made, when a dictator commits suicide? That we should see a miracle is even less likely. Nor, if we understand, shall we be anxious to do so. Nothing almost sees miracles but misery. Miracles and martyrdoms tend to bunch about the same areas of history—areas we have naturally no wish to frequent. Do not, I earnestly advise you, demand an ocular proof unless you are already perfectly certain that it is not forthcoming. Religious ideas are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of humankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes. As we already know, the terrifying impression of helplessness in childhood aroused the need for protection—for protection through love—which was provided by the father; and the recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life made it necessary to cling to the existence of a father, but this time a more powerful one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the danger of life; the establishment of a moral World-order ensures that fulfillment of the demands of justice, which have so often remained unfulfilled in human civilization; and the prolongation of Earthly existence in a future life provides the local and temporal framework in which these wish-fulfillments shall take place. Karl Marx, viewed religion in socioeconomic terms—as an opiate for the oppressed masses, who without the hope of a pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by would despair of compensation for their suffering. Some even explain religion in evolutionary terms; sociobiologist E. O. Wilson boasts, “We have come to the crucial stage in the history of biology when religion itself is subject to the explanations of the natural sciences. Theology is not likely to survive as an independent intellectual discipline.” Psychology has made great strides in understanding many other important aspects of human experience—sleep, pleasures of the flesh, and hunger—so why not investigate religious behaviour as well? What psychological function does religion serve? Imagine that God’s activity is not merely an occasional intervention in a Universe from which God is otherwise remote, but rather something more basic. Imagine that falling in love, having a child, or achieving good fortune could simultaneously be understood as entirely the outcome of natural processes and also as God’s loving handiwork. Explaining a belief does not explain it away. The truth of a belief is logically distinct from its psychological function. To see why, imagine at some point in the future we were to achieve a complete understanding of why some people are believers in God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The psychology of religion has finished its business and is ready to close up shop. Imagine also that we have by that time come to a full understanding of why some people are atheists. It is no chore at all to imagine explanations of atheism that parallel those proposed to explain them. Perhaps, for example, atheism is psychological wish fulfillment by prideful humans who lack the intellectual humility necessary to acknowledge a being infinitely greater than themselves. Perhaps for others atheism has socioeconomic motivations—a resistance to believing religion’s teachings regarding the value of all human life and the claims of the poor upon one’s material possession, which are then, a busy cluster of research studying “the psychology of unbelief” (the actual title of a book published some years ago). One can even envision a day when someone might say that atheism itself is subject to the explanations of the natural sciences and is therefore not likely to survive as a credible intellectual idea. However, hold it (here we rise to the defense of atheism as well as theism): if both belief systems are explained, as would happen if psychology had answered all its questions, that cannot mean they are both false. Either God exists or God does not exist, so one of these beliefs must be true. The point can be extended to any other belief or attitude: knowing why you believe something says nothing about its truth or falsity. To know why someone does or does not believe in extraterrestrial beings does not tell us whether such beings exist. To know how someone has been persuaded that a vegetarian diet is healthiest and how someone else has been persuaded that a nonvegetarian diet is healthiest does not decide which diet is, in fact, healthiest. To know the biological, psychological, social, and economic factors that lead one person to become a devout believer and another a nonbeliever does not tell us whether God, in fact, exists. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The refusal to modify people’s behaviour by a planned use of reinforcers does not really increase people’s freedom and dignity; rather, it abandons them to the whims of other controls, for better or, more often, for worse. Likewise, parents who are reluctant to impose their values on their children are in effect conceding their children, for better or for worse, to competing influences—television, music, and peers. In truth, however, few parents retreat from persuasive efforts on matter they really care about. We do not leave it to our children to decide for themselves (or under the influence of other persuasive forces) whether it is better to be honest or deceitful, kind or cruel, helpful or hostile. On such matters we all, unapologetically is sometimes ineffectively, do everything we can to socialize our children into what we believe to be right. It is primarily on matters that we ourselves do not really care that much about that we leave our children to work things out for themselves. Nevertheless, we welcome every advance toward truth, every refutation of falsehood, every approximation of reality that is more faithful to the known data. We do so believing that all truth is God’s truth and that our ultimate allegiance is to God alone rather than to the dictates of tradition or human authority. Neurotheology offers an interesting exploration of brain activity associated with spirituality, but no evidence regarding God’s existence. However, as you know, for instances, houses do not just manifest themselves, they need a creator and raw materials. Let us therefore submit ourselves to the incoming tide of science, and welcome it. Indeed, to all of God’s revelation, in whatever forms it comes. Let us be assured that God is the author of whatever truth is revealed, however surprising or unsettling it might be. Let us remember that it is therefore not just our right to freely pursue truth, but our religious duty. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
It is, indeed, part of what it means to worship God not only with our hearts, but with our minds. Many are those who have committed their hearts to Jesus; fewer are those who have also committed—through disciplined study and inquiry—their minds. “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will also bring with Him through Jesus those who have fallen asleep [in death]. For this we declare to you by the Lord’s [own] word, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall in no way precede [into His presence] or have any advantage at all over those who have previously fallen asleep [in Him in death]. For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a loud cry of summons, with the shout of an archangel, and with the blast of the trumpet of God. And those who have departed this life in Christ will rise first. Then we, the living ones who remain [on the Earth], shall simultaneously be caught up along with [the resurrected dead] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so always (through the eternity of the eternities) we shall be with the Lord! Therefore comfort and encourage one another with these words,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18. Independently of the public domain, which remits to the state in proportion to the probity of those who supervise it, were on one to have had sufficient knowledge of the whole force of the general administration, especially when it is limited to legitimate means, one would be astonished at the resources leaders have for anticipating all the public needs without touching the goods of private individuals. Since they are the masters of the state’s entire commerce, nothing is easier for them than to direct it in a manner that provides for everything, often without them appearing to have been involved. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The distribution of commodities, money and merchandise in just proportions according to time and place is the true secret of finances, and the source of their riches, provided those who administer them know how to be far-sighted enough and on occasion to take an apparent present loss so as really to obtain immense profits at some time in the distant future. When one sees a government paying duties instead of receiving them for the export of grain in years of plenty and for its import in years of scarcity, one needs to have such facts before one’s eyes to think them true; and if they had happened long ago, they would have merited being classed with novels. Suppose that, to prevent scarcity in bad years ne were to propose the establishment of public warehouses. In many countries, would not the maintenance of so useful an establishment serve as a pretext for new taxes? In Geneva, such granaries, established and maintained by a wise administration, are a public resource in bad years and the state’s chief revenue at all times. Alit et ditat [it nourishes and enriches] is the fine and just inscription one reads on the façade of the building. To show here the economic system of a good government, I have often turned my eyes toward the wisdom and happiness I would like to see reign in every country. If one examines how the needs of a state grow, one will find that this often arises in the same way as do those of private individuals: less by a true necessity than by an increase in useless desires, and that expenditures are increased for the sole reason of having a pretext for increasing income. Thus, the state would occasionally gain from not being rich, and such apparent wealth is essentially more burdensome than poverty itself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is true one can hope to hold peoples in a stricter dependence by giving them with one hand what one has taken away from them with the other, and this was the style of politics Joseph used with the Egyptians. However, this vain sophism is all the more fatal to the state in that the money does not return to the same hands it left. Such maxims only serve to enrich the idle with spoils taken from useful humans. The taste for conquests is one of those most obvious and dangerous causes of this increase. This taste, often engendered by another sort of ambition than the one it seems to proclaim, is not always what it appears to be, and its true motive is not the seeming desire to increase the nation but rather the hidden desire to increase the authority of the leaders at home, with the help of the increase in size of the troops and under the cover of the diversion created in the minds of citizens by wartime objectives. What is at least very certain is that nothing is as oppressed or as miserable as conquering peoples, and even their successes serve only to increase their miseries. Even if history did not teach us this, reason would suffice to show us that the larger a state is, the heavier and more burdensome will its expenditures become. For all the provinces are required to furnish their share of the expenses of the general administration, and, in addition, each province is required to spend the same amount for its own particular administration that it would if it were independent. Add to this the fact that all fortunes are made in one place and consumed in another. This eventually upsets the equilibrium of production and consumption, impoverishing a great deal of the country to enrich a single town. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Another source of the increase in public needs is linked to the preceding one. There may come a time when the citizens, no longer considering themselves interested in the common cause, would cease to be the defenders of the homeland, and when the magistrates would prefer to command mercenaries rather than free humans, if only to use the former at a sustainable time and place to subjugate the latter more effectively. Such was the state of Rome at the end of the Republic and under the emperors. For all the victories of the first Romans, just like those of Alexander, had been won by brave citizens who knew how to give their blood to their country in time of need, but never sold it. Marius was the first who, in the Jugurthine War, dishonoured the legions by introducing free humans, vagabonds and other mercenaries. Having become enemies of the peoples who they were assigned to make happy, the tyrants established regular standing armies, in appearance to contain foreigners and in actual fact to oppress the inhabitants. To raise these troops, farmers had to be taken away from their land; the lack of their services decreased the quality of the provisions, and maintaining these troops required the imposition of taxes which in turn increased food prices. The first disorder caused the people to murmur. Repressing them required the troops to be multiplied, and consequently the misery. And the more despair increased, the more one was constrained to increase it again to prevent its effects. On the other hand, these mercenaries, whose value could be determined on the basis of the price at which they sold themselves, were proud of their debasement, held in contempt the laws by which they were protected, as well as their comrades whose bread they ate, and believed it a greater honour to be Caesar’s satellites then Rome’s defenders. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
And given as they were to blind obedience, their task was to have their swords raised against their fellow citizens, ready to slaughter them all at the first signal. It would not be difficult to show that this was one of the principal causes of the ruin of the Roman Empire. “Thank [God] in everything [no matter what the circumstances may be, be thankful and give thanks], for this is the will of God for you [who are] in Christ Jesus [the Revealer and Mediator of that will],” reports 1 Thessalonians 5.18. Those brought up in the Second Wave civilization have a difficult time thinking of institutions as good corporate citizens. We find it hard to think of a hospital as having economic as well as medical functions, a school as having political as well as educational functions—or a corporation as having powerful non-economic or “trans-economic” functions. That recently retired exemplar of Second Wave thinking, Henry Ford II, insists that the corporation “is a specialized instrument designed to serve the economic needs of society and is not well equipped to serve social needs unrelated to its business operations.” However, while Ford and other defenders of the Second Wave resist the redefinition of the production organization, many firms are, in fact, altering both their words and their policies. Lip service and public relations rhetoric often substitute for real change. Fancy promotional brochures proclaiming a new era of social responsibility very often camouflage a robber-baron rapacity. Nevertheless, a fundamental “paradigm shift”—a reconceptualization—of the structure, goals, and responsibilities of the corporation is taking place in response to new pressures brought by the Third Wave. The signs of this change are numerous. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Amoco has had 150 years of keeping America moving and helping to drive the U.S. economy. This leading oil company states, that “it is the policy of our company, with respect to plant locations, to supplement the routine economic evaluation with a detailed exploration of the social consequences. We look at many factors, among them the impact on the physical environment, the impact on public facilities, and the impact on local employment conditions, particularly with respect to minorities.” Amoco continues to weight economic considerations most heavily, but it assigns importance to other factors as well. And where alternative locations are similar in economic terms but “different in terms of social impact,” these social factors can prove decisive. In the event of a merger proposal, the directors of Control Data operates. And while other companies have been racing into the suburbs, Control Data has deliberately built plants in inner city areas of Washington, St Paul, and Minneapolis, to help provide employment for marginalized members of the community and to help revive urban centers. The corporation states its mission as “improving the quality, equality, and potential of people’s lives”—equality being an unorthodox goal for a corporation. In the United States of America, the advancement of women and people who are non-European American has become a long overdue matter of national policy, and some companies go as far as to reward their managers financially for meeting “affirmative action” targets. At Pillsbury, a leading food company, each of its three product groups, at one time, had to present not only a sales plan for the following year but a plan relating to the hiring, training, and promotion of women and minority group members. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Executive incentives are linked to the attainment of these social goals. At AT&T all managers are evaluated annually. Fulfillment of affirmative actions objectives counts as part of a positive appraisal. At Chemical Bank in New York, 10 to 15 percent of a branch manager’s job performance appraisal is based on her or his social performance-sitting on community agency boards, making loans to not-for-profit organizations, hiring and upgrading marginalized groups. And the Gannet chain of newspapers, chief executive Allen Neuharth brusquely tells editors and local publishers that “a major portion” of their bonuses will “be determined on the basis of progress in these…programs.” Similarly, in many top corporations we see a distinct upgrading of the states and influence of executives concerned with the environmental consequences of corporate behaviour. Some now report directly to the president. Other companies have set up special committees on the board of directors to define the new corporate responsibilities. This social responsiveness of the corporation is not all substance. Some of this is pure public relations, of course. Some is self-serving. However, much of it actually does reflect a changed perception of corporate functions. Grudgingly, therefore, driven by protests, lawsuits, and fear of government actions as well as by more laudable motives, managers are beginning to adapt to the new conditions of production and are accepting the idea that the corporation has multiple purposes. “For you are all sons of the light and sons of the day; we do not belong either to the night or darkness,” reports 1 Thessalonians 5. 5. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
When times get tough—as they often do—or things do not go your way—as they sometimes do not—please keep on believing in God. What has Humankind done that God should respond with His grace? Reward us for not doing a thing, and we will see no reason to change. We are a hopeless lot. So, if God gets up and leaves forever, why should we shed a tear? But we will. If God does not give us what we want or ask for, who else will? Certainly I can think about this in verity and come up with a few mouthings. O Lord, I am nothing. O Lord, I can do nothing. O Lord, I find no good in myself. O Lord, there is nothing I do not need. O Lord, I am headed nowhere. Odd but true. And unless God gives us a helping hand and prop up our sagging spirits, we will just end up feeble, faltering wrecks. “You, however,” God, O Lord, “are always Yourself, and You remain as such for eternity,” said the Psalmist (102.27). That is to say, You are good, You are just, according to the standards of both spiritual and Earthly wisdom. However, I, who am proner to regress than progress, find it hard to stay long in one state of soul. As the Prophet Daniel saw in one of his visions (4.16), so I see myself passing from one stage to another in my life, and I am never in one phase long enough to establish a firm hold. “I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus,” reports Philippians 1.6. When discouragements come or when people tell you that your dreams are never going to come to pass, you are never going to be happy, and you can never change, boldly remind yourself who is at work in your life. God is turning things around in your favour. God is opening doors of opportunity for you. He is restoring relationships; He is softening people’s hearts toward you. God is completing what He started. You may not see anything happening with your natural eyes, but you must believe that in the unseen World, God is at work on your behalf. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
One thing I have noticed. My spiritual condition quickly improves when God stretched His hand to help. Be a believer, but be careful what you believe. If you go around with a victim mentality, thinking that you do not deserve the blessings of God, only focused on what is going wrong, you perceived faults, and always sad and blue and hurting, you are setting yourself up to live a dismal life. Society may in fact be doing you wrong, there may be nothing wrong with you. Others may just be jealous of who you are. Therefore, start seeing yourself as more than a conqueror, well able to succeed, strong in the Lord, the head not the tail, the successful self-actualizer, not the victim and you will reach a new level of fulfillment. Another thing I noticed is that sometimes God comes to the help of us human beings even without our having to ask. However, where I ask. Stop moving! Stand still! I am turning my head every which way, and I still cannot catch a sight of God. Only in God alone will my heart find conversion and quiescence. And may my face brighten up like Hannah’s after a prayer! A tender moment in First Samuel (1.18). Dare today to start believing in God for greater things. God does not want you to drag through life, barely making it. He does not want you to have to dig through the sofa cushions looking for change, trying to come up with enough money to pay for food and shelter, transportation, to pay your bills, or to worry about how you are going to send your children to school today and college in the future. God does not want you to be unhappy in your marriage. It is not His preference for you to live in perpetual pain. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
When, if follows, if one knows well enough to dump every consolation known to Humankind in our continuous pursuit of devotion and the Devotions of devotion, why do we have to ask, as Jeremiah did right at the beginning of his Lamentations (1.2), “Is there no one who can console me?” That being said, we must have high hopes for God’s grace and will exult when it comes. God wants us to have a good life, a life filled with love, joy, peace, and fulfillment. That does not mean it will always be easy, but it does mean it will always be good. God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him. You can dare to believe Him for a better marriage. Start believing Him for better health. Believe for joy and peace and happiness. Start believing for increase and abundance. As often as good stuff happens to me, I give my thanks to God, whence everything comes. I, however, am vanity and “nothingness before God,” if I may echo the Psalmist (39.5), a quack, a quondam, a quisling. I would like to boast, but I do not have anything to boast about. Whence can I find something to boast about? Why do I seek to be thought well of? Are not my desires just droppings? And is not all this World Vanity gone mad? Maybe you have endured terrible disappointments. Unspeakable negative things may have happened to you, to the point that you have ceased believing for anything good to occur in your life. You have lost your dreams. You are drifting through life, taking whatever comes your way. You may be tempted to tell yourself, “I have been living this way too long.” I am never going to get any better. I have prayed, I have believed, I have done everything I know how to do. Nothing has changed. Nothing is working I might as well give up. My life is over.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Glory at its emptiest is disease at its sickest, Vanity at its noisiest. That is because it draws a Devout’s attention away from the One True Glory and denudes one of Heavenly Grace. Here is an example of what can happen. A Devout is quite pleased with oneself for what one has been able to accomplish outside the monastery walls; that is to say, one has made so many friends among the rich and famous. Now I know that makes God nervous, my Joyful if sometimes Jealous Friend, and I do not want God to think I do not know why. Why? Because one spends one’s time in the unhappy pursuit of false celebrity instead of the happy pursuit of True Virtue. However, there is True Glory and Holy Exaltation to boast in You and not in oneself, to rejoice in You name, not in one’s own virtue, and certainly not to take delight in any creature, except insofar as it has something to do with You. No matter how many setbacks we have suffered, or how rich and famous we become, God still has a great plan for our lives. We must get our hopes up. If we do not have hope, we will not have faith. And if we do not have faith, you cannot please God, and you will not see His power revealed in your life. Keep hope alive in your hearts. Never give up on your dreams. Do not allow discouragement or another setback to keep you from believing what God says about you. You are never too far gone with God. Some people say, “It is too late. My life is in too big of a mess; you cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” However, God can take a mess of stones and make the most magnificent statue. There is True Glory and Holy Exaltation to boast in You and not in oneself, to rejoice in God’s name, not in one’s own virtue, and certainly not to take delight in any creature, except insofar as it has something to do with God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
May God’s name be praised, not mine. May God’s work be magnified, not mine. May God’s Holy Name be blessed, and may no praise from human mouths be attributed to me. God is my glory, God is the exultation of my heart. In God I shall exult all day long; Psalmist again (89.16). As Paul wrote in Second Corinthians, “All I have are my infirmities—precious possessions of all” (12.5). The Jews people hoped to find glory from among their tribes. However, the sort of glory I require “comes from God alone”; that is as God said on a Sabbath in Jerusalem, and as John wrote it down (5.44). Every alp, every medal, every decoration, when compared to God’s eternal glory, is mean, not to say meaningless. My Truth, my Mercy, my God—Blessed Trinity! To You alone be braised, honour, virtue, and glory forever and ever. “Father, I close to be a believer rather than a doubter. Today, I will live with faith, trusting You for everything I need, knowing that even when tough times come, You will see me through. Now this day, my Sun Father, now that you have come out standing to your sacred place that from which we draw the water of life prayer meal—here I give unto you. Your long life, your old age, your waters, your seeds, your riches, your power, your strong spirit, of all these, to me may you grant. O God, save, yea, save, we beseech Thee. O save, O forgive, O send prosperity; yea, please save us, God of our stronghold. Please give rain. Thy lieges pour their hearts as water, O please save us! For Abram’s sake who went through fire and water, O please speed us! In courtesy he gave the angels water, O please save us, mighty God! Please give rain! For us to pass was cleft the water. O please save us! For Isaac’s sake on mountain bound for slaughter, O please speed us! He turned and digged his people wells of water. O Please save us, mighty God. Please give rain! We are the pure who camped by water. O please save us! #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
We’re hosting Thanksgiving this year! 🍂Can’t pass up the opportunity to fill our gorgeous island at the Brighton Station Residence 3 home with turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. Gotta get moving on our fall decor; pumpkin carving is on the agenda this week! 🎃
Residence Three at Brighton Station boasts 2,757 square feet in this expansive two story home. There are four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and a three car garage!
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, quartz counters, and large walk in pantry. The openness in the design allows the Great Room and kitchen to interact with each other seamlessly.
This home comes with an en suite bedroom on the first floor making it ideal for guests, or multi-generational living. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-3/
The Muted Voice Had a Richness to it that Made a Greatly Enhanced Grace!
Accidental symbols have no intrinsic relationship to that which it symbolizes. Let us assume that someone has had a saddening experience in a certain city; when one hears the name of that city, one will easily connect the name with a mood of sadness, just as one would connect it with a mood of joy had one’s experience been a happy one. Quite obviously here in nothing in the nature of the city that is either sad or joyful. It is the individual experience connected with the city that makes it a symbol of a mood. The same reaction could occur in connection with a house, a street, a dress, certain scenery or anything once connected with a specific mood. The picture in the dream represents this mood, the city “stands for” the mood once experienced in it. Here the connection between the symbol and the experienced symbolized is entirely accidental. As a result, we need associations of the dreamer in order to understand what the accidental symbol means. Had one not told us about the experience one had in the city of which one dreamed or about the connection between the person one dreams of one’s experiences with this person, we could not possibly understand what these symbols mean. The universal symbol, on the contrary, is one in which there is an intrinsic relationship between the symbol and that which it represents. Take, for instance, the symbol of fire. We are fascinated by certain qualities of fire in a fireplace. First of all, by its aliveness. It changes continuously, it moves all the time, and yet there is constancy in it. It remains the same without being the same. The fire gives the impression of power, of grace and lightness. Fire is as if it were dancing and had an inexhaustible source of energy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
When we use fire as a symbol, we describe the inner experience characterized by the same elements which we notice in the sensory experience of fire: the mod of energy, lightness, movement, grace, gaiety—sometimes one, sometimes another of these elements being predominate in the feeling. However, fire can also be destructive and devastatingly powerful; if we dream of a burning house, fire symbolizes destructiveness not beauty. Similar in some ways and different in others is the symbol of water—of the ocean or of a stream. Here, too, we find the blending of constant movement and ye of permanence. We also feel the quality of aliveness, continuity and energy. However, there is a difference; where fire is adventurous, quick, exciting, water is quiet, slow, and steady in a river or lake. The ocean, however, can also be as destructive and unpredictable as fire. The universal symbol is the only one in which the relationship between the symbol and that which is symbolizes is not coincidental but intrinsic. It is rooted in the experience of the affinity between an emotion or thought, on the other hand, and a sensory experience, on the other. It can be called universal because it is shared by all humans, in contrast not only to the accidental symbol, which is by its very nature entirely personal, but also to the conventional symbol (as for instance a traffic signal), which is restricted to a group of people sharing the same convention. The universal symbol is rooted in the properties of our bodies, our senses, and our minds, which are common to all humans, and therefore not restricted to individuals or to specific groups. Indeed, the language of the universal symbol is the one common tongue developed by the human race. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
There are many dreams in which the censorship consists of nothing but the poetic and symbolic language in which the content is expressed, but this is a “censorship” only for people with little poetic imagination. For those with a natural sense of poetry, the symbolic nature of a dream language can hardly be explained as censorship. In the following I quote a dream which can be understood even without any association and where there are no elements of censorship. On the other hand, we can see that associations brought up by the dreamer enrich our understanding of the dream: A lawyer, twenty-eight years of age, wakes up and remembers the following dream which he later reports to the analyst: “I saw myself riding on a white charger, reviewing a large number of soldiers. They all cheered me wildly.” The first question the analyst asks his patient is rather general: “What comes to mind?” “Nothing,” the man answers. “The dream is silly. You know that I dislike war and armies, that I certainly would not want to be a general.” And in addition, “I also would not like to be the center of attention and to be stared at, cheering or no cheering by thousands of soldiers. You know from what I told you about my professional problems how difficult it is for me to plead a case in court with everybody looking at me.” The analyst answers: “Yes, but it does not do away with the fact that this is your dream, the plot you have written and in which you assigned yourself a role. In spite of all obvious inconsistencies, the dream must have some meaning and must make some sense. Let us begin with your associations to the dream contents. Focus on the dream picture, yourself and the white charger and the troops cheering—and tell me what come to mind when you see this picture.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
“This memory is certainly interesting. Tell me more about your liking for that picture and your interest in Napoleon.” “I can tell you a lot about it, but I find it embarrassing. Yes, when I was fourteen or fifteen, I was rather shy. I was not very good in athletics and kind of afraid of tough kids. Oh, yes, now I remember an incident from that period which I had completely forgotten. I liked one of the tough kids very much and wanted to become his friend. We had hardly talked with each other, but I hoped that he would like me, too, if we would get better acquainted. One day—and it took a lot of courage—I approached him and asked him whether he would not like to come to my house; that I had a microscope and could show him a lot of interesting things. He looked at me for a moment, then he suddenly started to laugh and laugh and laugh. “You sissy, why don’t you invite some of your sisters’ little friends?” I turned away, choking with tears. At that time I read voraciously about Napoleon; I collected pictures of him and indulged in daydreams of becoming like him, a famous general, admired by the whole World. Was he no small of stature, too? Was he no also a shy youngster like myself? Why could I not become like him? I spent many hours daydreaming; hardly ever concretely about the means to this end but always about the achievement. I was Napoleon, admired, envied, and ye magnanimous and ready to forgive my detractors. When I went to college I, I had got over my hero worship and my Napoleon daydreams; in fact I have not thought of this period for many years, and certainly have never spoken to anyone about it. In kind of embarrasses me even now to talk to you about it.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
“’You’ forgot about it, but the other you, that which determines many of your actions and feelings, well hidden from your daytime awareness, is still longing to be famous, admired, to have power. That other you spoke up in your dream last night; but let us see why just last night. Tell me what happened yesterday that was of importance to you.” “Nothing at all; it was a day like any other. I went to the office, worked to gather legal material for a brief, went home and had dinner, went to a movie and went to bed. That’s all.” “That does not seem to explain why you rode on a white charger in the night. Tell me more about what went on at the office.” “Oh, I just remember…but this cannot have anything to do with my boss—the senior partner of the firm—for whom I collected the legal material, he discovered a mistake I had made. He looked at me critically and remarked, ‘I am really surprised—I thought you would do better than that.’ For the moment I was quite shocked—and the thought flashed through my mind that he would not take me into the firm as a partner later on as I had hoped he would. However, I told myself that this was nonsense, that anyone could make a mistake, that he had just been irritable and that the episode had no bearing on my future. I forgot about the incident during the afternoon.” “How was your mood then? Were you nervous or kind of depressed?” “No, not at all. On the contrary, I was just tired and sleepy. I found it difficult to work and was very glad when the time came to leave the office.” “The last thing of importance during that day, then, was your seeing the movie. Will you tell me what it was?” “Yes, it was the film Juarez, which I enjoyed very much. In fact, I cried quite a bit.” “First at the description of Juarez’s poverty and suffering and then when he had been victorious; I hardly remember a movie which moved me so much.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
“Then you went to bed, fell asleep, and saw yourself on the white charger, cheered by the troops. We understand a little better now why you had this dream, do we not? As a boy you felt shy, awkward, rejected. We know from our previous work that this had a general deal to do with your father, who was so proud of his success but so incapable of being close to you and of feeling—to say nothing of showing—affection and of giving encouragement. The incident you mentioned today, the rejection by the tough kid, was only the last straw, as it were. Your self-esteem had been badly damaged already, and this episode added one more element to make you certain that you could never be your father’s equal, never amount to anything, that you would always be rejected by people you admired. What could you do? You escaped into fantasy where you achieved the very things you felt incapable of achieving in real life. There, in the World of fantasy where nobody could enter and where nobody could disprove you, you were Napoleon, the great hero, admired by millions and—what is perhaps the most important thing—by yourself. As long as you could retain these fantasies you were protected from the acute pains that your feeling of inferiority caused you while you were in contact with the reality outside yourself. Then you went to college. You were less dependent on your father, felt some satisfaction in your studies, felt that you could make a new and better beginning. Moreover, you felt ashamed of your ‘childish’ daydreams, so you put them away; you felt you were on the way to being a real man. However, as we have seen, this new confidence was somewhat deceptive. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
“You were terribly frightened before every examination; if there was a young man around, you felt that no girl could really be interested in you; you were always afraid of your boss’s criticism. This brings us to the day of the dream. The thing you tried so hard to avoid had happened—your boss had criticized you; you began to feel again the old feeling of inadequacy, but you pushed it away; you felt tired instead of feeling anxious and sad. Then you saw a movie which touched upon your old daydreams, the hero who became the admired saviour of a nation after he had been he despised powerless youngster. You pictured yourself, as you had done in your adolescence, as the hero, admired, cheered. Do not you see that you have not really given up the old retreat into fantasies of glory; that you have not burned the bridges that lead you back to that land of fantasy, but start to go back there whenever reality is disappointing and threatening? Do not you see this fact, however, helps to create the very danger you are so afraid of, that of being childish, not an adult, not being taken seriously by grown-up men—and by yourself?” A modern mystic, the late William Wirt Winchester, was told from within, “Because I love you, I have given you demons since the beginning of your life, so that you would feel how dependent you are on Me.” The Overself knows what you are, what you are, what you seek, and what you need. “Ask not for healing, or longevity, or prosperity; ask only to be free!” exclaimed Vivekananda. The Overself does not have the power to heal the diseases of the body by its Grace, but whether that Grace will be thus exercised or not is unpredictable. It will do what is best for the individual in the ultimate sense, not what the ego desires. For the Divine Wisdom is back of everything every time. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Spiritual healing does not necessarily follow automatically upon the giving of complete faith. Nor does it necessarily follow upon the voluntary cleansing of the emotional nature. There are other factors involved in it. The place of suffering and sickness in the World-Idea is one of them. For those aspirants who will be satisfied with nothing short of achieving the Highest, the need of transcending the ego takes precedence over everything else, even over the body’s healing. It is impossible either to guarantee or to predict what would happen in any individual case. If one tries to get the Truth simply as a means to achieve the healing, the difficult is that the Truth eludes one. One has therefore to seek Truth and leave one’s fate to it, which will always work out for the best, materially or otherwise. Continued ill health is a great trial. The very fact that an individual has been forced to endure a life of endless suffering will surely lead one to realize that Worldly life yields littler—if any—real satisfaction or happiness, and that it is necessary to seek it in something Higher, in the Quest of the true Spiritual Life, or in God. Somewhere, sometime, this need of one’s will call forth an answer. People are attracted toward these cults either because they are in desperate need of physical healing or because they are in need of spiritual healing, or because they see in these doctrines an opportunity to satisfy both spiritual aspiration and material needs by a single faith and effort. They are trying to make the best of both Worlds. To be able to attain the Kingdom of Heaven and to gain prosperity or curse disease along with it is certainly a most attractive benefit. However, unfortunately it is also a little too good to be true. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
We would all like to have it, but can we have it. What did Jesus Himself say about this point? He said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you.” The word of greatest importance in this sentence is the word “first.” If you wish to employ the help of a higher power and feeling, then you must first give your thought, your first devotion, your first reverence, your first love to that higher power and not to any lesser thing, such as material gain or even physical cure, as the price of your worship. New Thought and Christian Science should correct their errors, for some of the things which they label as “negative” may not be so at all. It is divine love which sanctions losses, sickness, poverty, and adversities. They are not to be regarded as enemies to be shunned but rather as tutors to be heeded. Through such blows the ego may be crushed and thus allow truer thoughts to fill the emptied space. If their end and effect is to close the mind’s door to light, even pleasure and prosperity may deal a human wore blows than the so-called negatives can deal one. All inner healing depends ultimately upon the operations of grace for its effectiveness. For grace is guided by wisdom and it is not always wise for a human to be healed quickly or even at all. In the case of certain characters, good health may be but a gate to dubious activities leading to worse ills that would befall them. There are times when the Overself’s grace may manifest even in the ugly form of illness! #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
If its entry into the everyday consciousness is blocked or twisted by materialistic scepticism, animalistic obsessions, inherited complexes, or excessive extroversion, it may forcibly make its way through them. The body may then be stricken down with sickness until such time as the blockage or distortion is removed. Ramana Maharshi one told us the story of a man whom he had seen when he himself was a young man. This man was crippled, could not use his legs, and had to crawl. An old man suddenly appeared before him and commanded, “Get up and walk!” The cripple was so excited that he automatically rose up and found himself able to walk properly. When he looked round to see this strange benefactor, the man had vanished. The healing was permanent. The point here is first, not whether the vision was subjective or objective, but that the healer did not even have a familiar identity, was not recognized as a Christian saint or Hindu god, and second, that the sufferer was stimulated into having enough faith o obey the command to believe he was healed already; it was not a matter of time. A woman came for an interview who had exhausted all patience with her husband and announced that she was about to leave him. He was an alcoholic of the worst kind. I asked her to be patient with him, not to leave him, but to give him a further chance. Then I went into silence for her. An hour or two after her return homer, her husband made his first and last attempt at suicide. It failed and he was stopped before he could do any serious harm to his body. Then he fell into a deep sleep for a very long time. He awoke feeling better in every way but still despondent. A few weeks later the desire to drink left him completely and never returned. He was cured. “A miracle has happened,” was his wife’s comment in a letter. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Dorothy Kerin was almost instantaneously restored to health and freed from diabetes and tuberculosis. Moreover, her wasted flesh filled out and a gastric ulcer vanished within an hour. At the same time she saw a vision of Jesus Christ, Mary, and the Angels. St Michael the Archangel, illustrious leader of the Heavenly army, defends us in the battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the World of darkness and the spirit of wickedness in high places. He comes to the rescue of humankind, whom God has mad in His own image and likeness, and purchased from Satan’s tyranny at so great a price. Holy Church venerates you as her patron and guardian. The Lord has entrusted St. Michael to the task of leading the souls of the redeemed to Heavenly Blessedness. He entreats the Lord of peace to cast Satan down under our feet, so as to keep him from further holding humans’ captive and doing harm to the Church. St. Michael carries our prayers up to God’s throne, that the mercy of the Lord does quickly come and lay hold of the beast, the serpent of old, Satan, and his demons, casting him in chains into the abyss, so that he can no longer seduce the nations. It is perfectly true that the divinity within humans will shelter, feed, and clothe one materially, as it will also do spiritually, provided one looks for it, submit oneself to its guidance, and obeys its promptings. However, it is also true that the selfsame divinity may strip prosperity and possessions from a human’s shoulders and lead one into the cold waters of destitution, and this because it has begun to make its presence felt in one’s life. It may do this or it may not, depending on individual circumstances and the human’s degree of attachment to material possessions, but whatever it does will be wise and needful. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The healing power issues from an infinite source. There is no kind of disease which it may not cure; but it can do so only within the conditions imposed by the nature of the human body itself. When it seems that you and your physicians have exhausted all methods, read the Christian Bible, and allow a great mental stillness and inner indrawing to come over you. Then realize that the ego has to confess its total failure and cast itself on the mercy of the higher power in humiliation and prayer. Come to the understanding that one or one’s physicians are competent to cure whatever aliment you are facing, the correct way is to disbelieve that and to look to the Overself alone for healing. Continue with your medical treatment, but realize that it is God who will heal you through your various treatments. See that the stillness is its grace, that this quietness is its power. If only one will relax and let it enter, it will best cure you. So surrender to it and soon it will be healed. “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” reports Ephesians 2.10. Some mysterious advice. Lose yourself, and what you will find? God. Stop dead in your tracks! Do not make another move! Another choice is not necessary. No need to consult your own self-interest. Do these, and you will regain all the self-worthy you thought you had lost forever! You may not always control your temper as you know you should. You may disobey God’s Word, or slip and say things you wish you had not said. Please seek forgiveness from God and from anyone you may have offended, but do not go around beating yourself up, living in condemnation. As long as you are pressing forward, you can hold your head up high, knowing that you are a work of progress, and God is in the process of changing you. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Fall on your face when you are following God, but do not flounce right up. Down is better than up, and a new shipment of grace will arrive on your doorstep tomorrow. How often does God want one to give up, surrender oneself? As often as one moves without His permission. Please do not misunderstand. God does not condone wrongdoing, and we should not either. However, do not become so focused on your faults that you cannot enjoy who God made you to be. You have got to be happy with who you are right now and accept yourself, faults and all. Your sense of value is not based on your achievements, how well you preform, how somebody else treats you, or how popular or successful you are. Your sense of value extends from the fact that you are a child of the Most High God. As His unique creation, you have something to offer this World that nobody else has, that nobody else can be. At first blush, there is more cause for alarm in the findings of the religion-prejudice studies. American church members have tended to be more radically prejudiced than nonmembers, and those professing traditional Christian beliefs have expressed more racial prejudice than those with less traditional beliefs. Perhaps it should not shock us, for throughout history religion has provided convenient excuses—indeed, powerful justifications—for all sorts of cruelty. For the dehumanization of slavery and apartheid. For the subordination of women. The beautiful medieval town of St. Andrew, where these words are being written, was the ecclesiastical center of early Protestantism in Scotland. In the year 1643 alone—the midpoint of a 150-year reign of terror in St. Andrews and its environs—forty terrified women were judged by church elders to be witches and consigned to torture and death. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
These women and the St. Andrews martyrs who preceded them at the time of the Reformation remind us that behind religious fanaticism evil sometimes lurks. Jesus therefore reserved some of his strongest condemnation for the self-righteous religious folk of this say. From His time to ours, “not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,” speaks for God. As Pascal lamented, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” It is vital that you accept yourself and learn to be happy with who God made you to be. If you want to truly enjoy your life, you must be at peace with yourself. Many people constantly feel badly about themselves. They are overly critical of themselves, living with all sorts of self-imposed guilt and condemnation. No wonder they are not happy; they have a war going on inside. And if you cannot get along with yourself, you will never get along with other people. These are people who can start a fight in an empty house. The place to start is by being happy with who God made you to be. God wants small thing, big things, it makes no difference. What God is saying is our chiefest possession is self-love, and on the Heavenly Market it has no value. Hence, in every situation God wants us to be found stripped of our self-love. Otherwise, how can we be His, and He be ours? Disrobe your ego and leave your ego on the floor. The quicker you do this, the better the hold you will have on the situation. And the fewer your conditions and the sincerer your attitude, the more you will please God and the more you will gain for yourself. You may not be perfect—nobody is! Sure, you have some flaws—we all do! Every person has a weakness. Even the great men and woman of the Bible make mistakes. They all had shortcomings, but that did not stop God from loving them, blessing them, and using them to accomplish great deeds. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
In spite of your imperfection, to be truly free, you must have a healthy respect for yourself. Religion’s links with prejudice seem paradoxical. Religion makes prejudice and it unmakes prejudice. The unmaking of prejudice is suggested first by studies of church members; in nearly every one of more than two dozen studies, faithful church members and attenders exhibited less prejudice than irregular attenders. Second, those for whom religion is an end in itself (who agree, for example, with the statement “My religious beliefs are what really lie behind my whole approach of life”) typically express less racial prejudice than those for whim religion is more a means to other ends (who agree, for example, that “A primary reason for my interest in religion is that my church is a congenial social activity”). Third, ministers and priests—who presumably are more religiously committed and motivated than most people—have also generally been more supportive of civil rights efforts than have their own laypeople. So it seems that among the churched, the devout exhibit less prejudice and deeper feelings of human brotherhood and sisterhood than the nominally religious, who are somewhat more likely to rationalize prejudice with the assistance of religion. We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. What, then, might be our response to bigots and love the bigotry? Hate the sin and love the sinner. Hate the bigotry and love the bigot. Be intolerant of intolerance, despise lovelessness, detest injustice, and remember: “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Throughout or lives, God is continually forging us. They key to future success is to not be discouraged about your past or present while you are in the process of being “completed.” The Christian Bible indicates that one goes from glory to glory as we are being transformed into God’s image. Whether you realize it or not, right now God is moving you onward toward greater things. The path of righteousness gets brighter and brighter. Some make the Unconditional Surrender in public, but in their hearts they have retained certain private conditions; that is to say, they do not put their trust wholly in God. You can usually tell who they are because they take every precaution not to be caught with an empty buttery. Others offer themselves up whole and entire right from the starter. After some time, however, bullied and sullied by temptation, they return to their old ways. Baby steps, not manly strides, that is about the only spiritual progress they make after that. They live life that has little to do with freedom of heart or grace of friendship. Which is just another ways of saying, they have not really surrendered themselves fully and sacrificed themselves daily to God. Without continued acts like these, a friendship has no roots, let alone any fruits. As you go through your day, when you are tempted to get discouraged, remind yourself that according to God’s Word, your future is getting brighter; you are on your way to a new level of glory. You think you have a long way to go, but you need to look back at how far you have already come. You may not be everything you want to be, but thank God that you are not what you used to be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
It is one of my favourite sayings, and I know I have bored you to tears with it many times. Indulge me just once more. Lose yourself, surrender yourself, and you will enjoy great internal peace. It is amazing, o God, that although You know me better than anyone, You continue to love me, faults and all. I know I cannot earn Your love, Father, so let me learn to enjoy it, to embrace it, and reflect it to others. I will give up all my stuff for God. We must stand tall and strong for God, and we will get His attention. We will be free in heart and darkness will no longer frighten us. It is important that we despoil ourselves of everything we possess, and stand here in baptismal beauty, with no possessions and no prepossessions. And follow Jesus. From this day on, make an agreement to live eternally for God. Then will slip away all the airy elephants, all the evil roughhouse, all the needless needlings. Then also will unbridled fear quiet down and unruly love come home to roost. “All who keep His commandments [who obey His orders and follow His plan, live and continue to live, to stay and] abide in Him, and He in them. [They let Christ be a home to them and they are the home of Christ.] And by this we know and understand and have the proof that He [really] lives and makes His home in us: by the [Holy] Spirit Whom He has given us,” reports 1 John 3.24. Some people seem obsessed with putting other down; they talk negatively about someone you love, or something you are passionate about. You cannot always ignore negative input, but do not let other people, systems, or circumstances influence your estimation of value. “One who commits sin [who practices evildoing] is of the devil [takes one’s character from the evil one] for the devil has sinned (violated the divine law) from the beginning. The reason the Son of God was made manifest (visible) was to undo (destroy, loosen, and dissolve) the words the devil [has done],” reports 1 John 3.8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Unfortunately, you may have gone through some traumatic, painful experiences in which somebody mistreated you, used you, or rejected you. Maybe your husband or wife walked out on you and you and you went through a bitter divorce. Maybe a good friend or a parent, or your entire family turned on you for no reason, and you now feel alone and worthless. Perhaps your childhood experiences have left you living with feelings of guilt and shame. It is possible that you even convinced yourself that the negative things that happened in your past are all your fault, that you deserve nothing but doom and gloom, drama chaos, pain and suffering, guilt and condemnation. However, nothing could be father from the truth. “Everyone who commits (practices) sin is guilty of lawlessness; for [that is what] sin is, lawlessness (the breaking, violation of God’s law by transgression or neglect—being unrestrained and unregulated by His commands and His will),” reports 1 John 3.4. You cannot allow your self-esteem and your sense of value to be determined by how other people treat you. The Holy Bible tell us that God accept us even if the World rejects us. There is a glimmer of hope reflected in your eyes. The Lord will adopt you as His very own child. God will never reject you. He always accepts you. Do not allow the rejection of other people to cause you to reject yourself. Maybe you live with someone who is verbally abusive. Let that loose rap go in one ear and out the other. Constantly remind yourself that you are made in the image of Almighty God. Remind yourself that He has crowed you with glory and honour, that you are God’s own master piece. Do not let other people play games with your mind, deceiving you into thinking that your value has depreciated. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
You may feel that your dreams have been shattered by the choice you are your guardians have made. May you feel trapped in the devil’s trap, but there is hope! God wants to appreciate your sense of value. God wants to be a new record on the player, a new song in your heart; He wants to full you with love, faith, success, and light. God wants you to know that you are loved more than you can imagine, and He can turn your broken truths and shattered dreams into something beautiful. Hold your head up high, knowing that God is in control and He has a great plan and purpose for your life. “Beloved, do not put faith in every spirit, but prove (test) the spirits to discover whether they proceed from God; for many false prophets have gone forth into the World. By his you may know (perceive and recognize) the Spirit of God: every spirit which acknowledges and confesses [the fact] that Jesus Christ (the Messiah) [actually] has become man and has come in the flesh is of God [has God for its source],” reports 1 John 4.1-2. Your life may not have turned out exactly as you had hoped, but the Bible says that God’s ways are better and higher than our own ways. No matter what you go through in life, no matter how many disappointments you suffer, you will always be the diamond of God’s eyes. He will never give up on you. “Little children, you are of God [you belong to Him] and have [already] defeated and overcome them [the agents of the antichrist], because He who live in your is greater (mightier) than one who is in the World,” reports 1 John 4.4. I thank You, Father, that You see not just where I am today, but the potential for where I can be tomorrow. Even if other people reject me, I know that I am accepted in Heavenly places. I know that I am wholeheartedly accepted by You! #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Hail Mother, who are the Earth, hallowed by thy soil, rocks and flora that nourish and support all life. Blessed be thy wind that gives us breath and thy waters that quench, bathe and refresh all living things. Holy Earth—as one—we praise your majesty, grace and wonder. We cast out every unclean spirit, every satanic power, every onslaught of the infernal adversary, every legion, every diabolical group and sect, in the name and by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. We command you, begone and fly far from the Church of God, from the souls made by God in His image and redeemed by the precious blood of the divine Lamb. No longer dare, cunning serpent, to deceive the human race, to persecute God’s Church, to strike God’s elect and to sift them as wheat. For Most High God commands you, He to whom you once proudly presumed yourself equal; He who will all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. God the Father commands you. God the Son commands you. God the Holy Spirit commands you. Christ, the eternal Word of God made flesh, commands you, who humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, to save our race from the perdition wrought by your envy; who founded His Church upon a firm rock, declaring that the gates of hell should never prevail against her, and that He would remain with her all days, even to the end of the World. The sacred mystery of the cross commands you, along with the power of all mysteries of Christian faith. The exalted Virgin Mary, Mother of God, commands you, who in her lowliness crushed your proud head from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception. The faith of the holy apostles Peter and Pau and the other apostles commands you. The blood of martyrs and the devout prayers of all holy men and women command you. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Therefore, accursed dragon and every diabolical legion, we adjure you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by God, who so loved the World that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life; to cease deluding human creatures and filling them with the poison of everlasting damnation; to desist from having the Church and hampering her freedom. Begone, Satan, father and master of lies, enemy of man’s welfare. Give place to Christ, in whom you found none of your works. Give way to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, which Christ Himself purchased with His blood. Bow down before God’s mighty hand, tremble and flee as we call on the holy and awesome name of Jesus, before whom the denizens of hell cower, to whom the Heavenly Virtues and Powers of Dominations are subject, who the Cherubim and Seraphim praise with unending cries as they sing: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. For his sake who did play and dance and sing, who taught the Law with sound of pipe and string, who, thirsting sore, poured out to Thee the water—save those who trust salvation Thou wilt bring, save them, our Father. For his sake whom a whirlwind once did bear to Heaven, whose seal turned back Thy wrath, whose prayer drew fire from Heaven, which licked up dust and water—save her, O God, whose eyes are fountains fair, save her, our Father. For him who served his Lord in deed and thought, on whom twofold the spirit fell; who sought a minstrel ere the ditches filled with water—save them that sand: “Lord, who such deeds hath wrought?” Save them, our Father. For his sake, swift to do the word from Thee, who bid Thy sheep repent, and set them free from the blasphemer, staying founts of water—Save America, beautiful and fair to see, Save her, our Father. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
Now Selling!
Now selling! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms. Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!
Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included!
Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town.
Residence Two a spacious single story home with over 2,600 square feet of home thoughtfully designed to maximize every available foot of space. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage all come included in this home. The layout if an entertainer’s dream with large kitchen and working island, dining room connected through the butler’s pantry, and a large great room overlooking the ample rear yard. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
More Wonders of the Invisible World
Witchcraft is one of the most hidden works of darkness. And California had its full share of obscurity. People groping their way in the dark are unlikely to be either stable or judicious, and thus it is hardly surprising that much of the legends about witchcraft are violent and partisan. The Devil improves the darkness of this affair to push us into a blind man’s buffet, and we are even ready to be sinfully, yea, hotly and madly mauling one another in the dark. Some people want to contact the dead and consider seances, but they are dangerous because it is easy for a gate to be opened and something evil to come along with the spirit you want to contact. There is an old urban legend about “Bloody Mary.” If you chant “Bloody Marry” thirteen times into a mirror in a dark room, her spirit will appear. Some say she will prophesize for you, other versions say she will attack you. Historically, Bloody Mary was a nickname for Mary I of England, who suffered several miscarriages. She was also alleged to be a witch and was burned at the stake. Divination by mirror has been practiced in nearly all cultures for as long as mirrors have been around. Before that, any reflective surface, especially still water, was used to prophesy or catch a glimpse of the future. In many of these legends, the danger is that while you are trying to catch a glimpse of your future, you might also see some aspect of Death. Tradition also holds that at the moment of death, all the mirrors in the house should be covered so hey do not trap the departing spirit. Ancient Greeks and Native Americans believed that the reflection contained the soul, and could be capture by water. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
It is bad luck to break mirrors because they are reflections of the soul, and also because they hold the future. That is why the seven years of bad luck occurs, you have broken your future. Many of the persons confessing these myths are witches by their own confession and have therefore abjured God and Chris, and given themselves up to the Devil, the Father of Lies. And what credit is to be given to the testimony of such against the lives of others? Many historians believe these early American legends are important and endeavor that the complete history of secret California witchcrafts and possessions might not be lost. The preservation of that history might in a be a singular benefit unto the church and unto the World, which makes many solicitous about it. Mrs. Winchester, who has been strangely visited by some shining spirits during the construction of her mansion, believed they were good Angels in her opinion of them. She intimated several things unto her friends, whereof some were to be kept secret. She also said that a new storm of witchcraft would fall upon the country to chastise the iniquity that was used in the willful smothering and covering of the last, and that many fierce opposites to the discovery of witchcraft would be thereby convinced. Many people are looking to acquire authentic, single-family Victorian homes because they believe in the renaissance of witchcraft and these homes possess souls, spirit, ghost, hidden occult symbol, and are supposedly spiritual nexuses. They are a power source to contacting the other World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
All spirits have something in common, but it matters who they are haunting. It matters what their traditions were when they were alive. In many Native American legends, they have thousands of Gods, and each of them had attendant monsters and demons. Pishachas are beings who haunt places where violent deaths have occurred. They eat human flesh and are supposed to be the sons of anger. They haunt cemeteries and places where cremations have taken place and can change their shape and become invisible. Sometimes they attack and eat their victims, in other instances they possess them and drive them insane. It is believed because there was some covenanting with the Devil they had committed and it was an unpardonable sin, that sin of which the scriptures said we must not pray for. Sometimes anyone who was not in a proper covenant with God was considered to be a witch. Witches are known to change into rabbits, cats, other familiar animals. Halloween costumes are a surviving remnant of the belief that transformed witches would be abroad before All Hallow’s Eve. Some of the Indian Powows [id est, pries-magicians] in this country during the 17th century, having received the Gospel and given good evidence of a true conversion to God in Christ, had with much sorrow of heart declared how they had, whilst in their Heathenism, by the hands of Evil Angels murdered their neighbours. A Nagual is a human being, a Shaman, who has acquired the power to shapeshift. Some Nagual have vampire qualities, changing into bats or owls to drain blood; in other cases the nagual is a respected and feared member of the community. In some places nagual are said to attack Indians who have too much contact with mestizo or Anglo populations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
There are myriad instances of witchcraft both in history and in the Bible, but some of the demonologists personal experiences are remarkable enough to make us wish they had given a more detailed account of the. In referring to Balaam, the biblical conjurer of familiar spirits, one of them said, “we have seen and know such wizards among the Heathen in our own land.” If I meant anything, it was that a ghost story would have a great pull over other ghost stories if one could see the person it happened to. One does get rather provoked at never coming across him or her. In April, nearly fifteen years after the Winchester Mansion opened for tour, it was a clear spring day, with no fog or half-lights about, and it was not yet four o’clock in the afternoon—not very ghost-like circumstances, you will admit. I had come home early from my club—it was a sort of holiday time with me just then for a few weeks—intending to get some letters written which had been on my mind for some days, and I had sauntered into the library of the mansion, a pleasant, fair-sized room lined with books, on the first floor. Before setting to work I sat down for a moment or two in an easy-chair by the fire, for it was still cool enough weather to make a fire desirable, and began thinking over my letters. No thought, no shadow of a thought of Mrs. Winchester was present with me, of that I am perfectly certain. The door was on the same side of the room as the fireplace; as I sat there, half facing the fire, I also half faced the door. I had not shut it properly on coming in, I had only closed it without turning the handle, and I did not feel surprised when it slowly and noiselessly swung open, till it stood right out into the room, concealing the actual doorway from my view. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
If you think of the door as just hen acting like a screen to the doorway, you will perhaps understand the position better. From where I say I could not have seen anyone entering the room ill he or she had got beyond the door itself. I glanced up, half expecting to see someone come in, but there was no one; the door had swung open of itself. For the moment I sat on, with only the vague thought passing through my mind, “I must shut I before I begin to write.” However, suddenly I found my eyes fixing themselves on the carpet; something had come within their range of vision, compelling their attention in a mechanical sort of way. What was it? I rubbed my eyes and the wavy something that kept gliding, rippling in, gradually assumed a more substantial appearance. It was—yes, I suddenly became convinced of it, it was rippled of soft silken stuff, creeping in as if in some mysterious way unfolded or unrolled, not jerkily or irregularly, but glidingly and smoothly, like little wavelets on the sea-shore. And I sat there and gazed. I sat there still, as if bewitched, or under some irresistible influence, I cannot tell, but so it was. And it—came always rippling in, till at last it began to rise as it sill came on, and I saw that a figure, a tall graceful woman’s figure, was slowly advancing, backwards of course, into the room, and that the waves of pale silk—a very delicate shade of pearly grey I think it must have been—were in fact the lower portion of a long court-train, the upper part of which hung in deep folds from the lady’s waist. She moved in—I cannot describe the motion, it was not like ordinary walking or stepping backwards—till the whole of her figure and the clear profile of her face and head were distinctly visible, and when at last she stopped and stood there full in my view just, but only just beyond the door, I saw—it came upon me like a flash, that she was no stranger o me, this mysterious visitant! #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
I recognized, unchanged I seemed to me since the day, twenty-five years ago, when I had last seen her, the beautiful features of Mrs. Winchester. I should not have said unchanged. There was one great change in the sweet face. You remember my telling you that one of Mrs. Winchester’s greatest charms was her bright sunny happiness—she never seemed gloomy or depressed or dissatisfied, seldom even pensive. However, in this respect the face I sat there gazing at was utterly unlike Mrs. Winchester’s. Its expression, as she—or “it”—stood there looking, not towards me, but out beyond, as if at someone or something outside the doorway, was of the profoundest sadness. Anything so sad I have never seen in a human face, and I trust I never may. However, I sat on, as motionless almost as she, gazing at her fixedly, with no desire, no power perhaps, to move or approach more nearly to the phantom. I was not in the least frightened. I knew it was a phantom, but I felt paralyzed and as if I myself had somehow got outside of ordinary conditions. And there I sat—staring at Mrs. Winchester, and there she stood, gazing before her with that terrible, unspeakable sadness in her face, which, even though I felt no fear, seemed to freeze me with a kind of unutterable pity. I do not know how long I had sat thus, or how long I might have continued to sit there, almost as if in a trance, when suddenly I heard the front-door bell ring. It seemed to awaken me. I started up and glanced round, half-expecting that I should find the vision dispelled. But no; she was still there, and I sank back into my seat just as I heard my brother coming quickly upstairs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
He came towards the library, and seeing the door wide open walked in, and I, still gazing, saw his figure pass through that of Mrs. Winchester in the doorway as you may walk through a wreath of mist—only, do not misunderstand me, the figure of Mrs. Winchester till that moment had had nothing unsubstantial about it. She had looked to me, as she stood there, literally and exactly like a living woman—the shade of her dress, the colour of her hair, the few ornaments she wore, all were as defined and clear as a real person, or perhaps became so again as soon as my brother was well within the room. He came forward, addressing me by name, but I answered him in a whisper, begging him to be silent and to sit down on the seat opposite me for a moment or two. He did so, though he was taken aback by my strange manner, for I still kept my eyes fixed on the door. I had a queer consciousness that if I looked away it would fade, and I waned to keep cool and see what would happen. I asked George in a low voice if he saw nothing, but though he mechanically followed the direction of my eyes, he shook his head in bewilderment. And for a moment or two he remained thus. Then I began to notice that the figure was growing less clear, as if it were receding, yet without growing smaller to the sight; it grew fainter and vaguer, the colours grew hazy. I rubbed my eyes once or twice with a half idea that my long watching was making them misty, but it was not so. My eyes were not at fault—slowly but surely Sarah Winchester, or her ghost, melted away, ill all trace of her was gone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
I saw again the familiar pattern of the carpet where she had stood and the objects of the room that had been hidden by her draperies—all again in the most commonplace way: but she was gone, quite gone. Then George, seeing me relax my intense gaze, began to question me. I told him exactly what I have told you. He answered, as every common-sensible person of course would, that it was strange, but that such things did happen sometimes, and were classed by the wise under the head of “optical delusions.” I was not well, perhaps, he suggested. Been overworking? Had I not better see a doctor? However, I shook my head. I was quite well, and I said so. And perhaps he was right, it might be an optical delusion only. I had never had any experience of such things. “Poor” Mrs. Winchester I cannot help calling her. I heard of her indirectly, and probably, but for the sadness of her story, I should never have heard it at all. It was a friend of her husband’s family who had mentioned the circumstances in the hearing of a friend of mine, and one day something brought round the conversation to old times, and he startled me by suddenly enquiring if I remembered Sarah Winchester. I said, of course, I did. Did he know anything of her? And then he told me. She was dead—she had died some months after a long and trying illness, the result of a terrible accident. Something happened one evening when dressed for some grand entertainment or other, and though her injuries did not seem likely to be fatal at the time, she had never recovered the shock. “She was so pretty,” my friend said, “and one of the saddest parts of it is she could have not been any older than twenty when she passed away in 1922. She was such a sweet and bright lady.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
We all thought the she had finished construction of her mansion and moved up north to build another one. I did not tell him my story, for I did not want it chattered about, but a strange sort of shiver ran through me at his words. Not everyone was in agreement that the specters in the Winchester mansion had all been angry spirits or a delusion of the Devil. It having been represented to us that a most horrible witchcraft or possession of Devils hath invested several towns in Our Province of California under your government, and that divers persons have been convicted of witchcraft, like the Prison’s of the River, in Sacramento, California; some whereof have confessed their guilt, but others being of a known and good reputation these proceedings had caused a great dissatisfaction among our good subjects, for which reason you have put a stop thereunto until Our Pleasure should be known concerning the same, We therefore until Our Pleasure should be known concerning the same, We therefore approving of your care and circumspection herein have thought fit to signify Our Will and Pleasure, as We do hereby will and require you to give all necessary directions that in all proceedings against persons accused for witchcraft or being possessed by the Devil the greatest moderation and all due circumspection be used, so far as the same may be without impediment to the ordinary course of justice within Our said Province. And so We bid your very heartily farewell. Given at the Winchester Mansion the 15th day of April, 1947, in the fifth year of Our Reign. By Her Majesty’s Command. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Although the topic of witchcraft was now explosively controversial in California, nobody was to deny that people practiced it, and there was still some interest in investigating it. There are therefore references to it in many of the sermons in the 19th century. However, after the Winchester mansion was opened for tour, the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Winchester was thought to be paranormal and a circular letter was sent by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to investigate the collection of more instances of “remarkable providences” (these would include unusual natural phenomena as well as the preternatural). Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings in the Winchester mansion, on stones in the basement on the walls in the dressing room, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings in forbidden areas of the mansion which interpret to the mystical the inspired secrets of Mrs. Winchester, in the cryptic emblems of her old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practiced at reception by this secret society, there were found indications of a doctrine which was everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. It is likewise to be understood, those who are desirous to raise any souls of the dead, ought to select those places wherein these kind of souls are most known to be conversant; or by some alliance alluring the souls into their forsaken bodies, or by some kind of affection in times impressed in them in their life, drawing the souls to certain places, things, or persons; or by the forcible nature of some place fitted and prepared to purge or punish these souls: which places for the most part are to be known by he appearance of visions, nightly incursions, and apparitions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Mrs. Winchester lists convincing evidence that her experience of witchcraft extended well beyond what she had committed to writing: I know a young man who had gone so far as to get ready a Covenant with Satan, written all of it in his own blood. However, before the signing of it, the sinful, I was made the happy instrument of his deliverance. As soon was this man was left alone in the mansion, the devil, imagining that he had found the right moment for breaking his courage, incontinently roused up his own chosen vessel, who appeared to have reposed longer than usual. Having beheld this from afar, he grew stiff with terror by reason of his being alone; but soon recovering his courage, and no place of refuge being at hand, he valiantly withstood the onset of the fiend, who came rushing upon him with a terrible noise, and he struck the axe which he wielded in his hand deep into his body. On receiving this wound, the monster groaned aloud and turning his back, fled with a rapidity not at all inferior to that with which he had advanced, while the admirable man urged his flying foe from behind, and compelled him to seek his own tomb again; which opening of its own accord, and receiving its guest from the advance of the pursuer, immediately appeared closed again. Hence it is that the souls of the dead are not to be called up without blood or by the application of some part of their relict body. In the raising therefore of these shadows, we are to perfume with new blood the bones of the dead, and with flesh, eggs, milk, honey, and oil, which furnish the soul with a medium apt to receive its body. Gosh, it must be terrible to know you witnesses something, but that you will never be able to remember it or tell anyone about it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
I know a woman whose brother was tortured with a cruel, pricking, incurable pain in the crown of his head, which continued until there was found with her a puppet in wax, resembling him, with a pin pricked into the head of it, which being take out her recovered immediately. He goes on about demons. A demon killed his wife, he says, and just expects me to believe it. However, what he looks like to me is someone who let grief turn him into a monster. Whatever happened to his wife, it does not excuse what he had done. He attacks, kills, then springs away before anyone can react. Wicked sorceries have been practised in the land, and, in the late inexplicable storms from the invisible World thereby brought upon us, we were left by the just hand of Heaven unto those errors whereby great hardships were brough upon innocent persons, and (we fear) guilt incurred which we have all cause to bewail with much confusion of face before the Lord. We confess that we ourselves were not capable to understand nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the Powers of Darkness and Prince of the Air, but were, for want of knowledge in ourselves and better information from others, prevailed with to take up with such evidence against the accused as on further consideration and better information we justly fear was insufficient for the touching the lives of any, whereby we fear we have been instrumental with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon ourselves and this People of the Lord the guilt of innocent blood, which sin the Lord saith in scripture He would not pardon (2 Kings 24.4), that we suppose, in regard of His temporal judgments. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
I know a person who, missing anything, would use to sit down and muter a certain charm, and then immediately by an invisible hand ben directly led unto the place where the thing was to be found. turquoise carvings placed in Native American graves to attract good spirits and guard the grave. Also, turquoise tied onto a bow was supposed to make you shoot more accurately. The body of saints often times cannot be found when their graves are dug up because their bones were frequently interred in the cornerstones of cathedrals, so their spirits would guard the holy location. Unwilling sacrifices would be more likely to become angry spirits instead of guarding. Canaanites sacrificed infants and put them in the foundations of houses and temples. “At the cost of his first-born shall he se up its gates,” reports Joshua 6.26. Bones were discovered in the basement of the original farm house that was engulfed as part of this estate during the expansion. Sightings of Hell Hounds date back to 1888. Some reports say the creatures are threatening. The Victorian parklike grounds seem to breed sightings of big wolf creatures or beast at night. Since the legends have been uncovered, many people have reported seeing a big black wolf and two men walking around the Winchester mansion at night, even when it is closed. Four kids and a police officer allegedly disappeared after climbing the gate to get a closer look one night. Nearly 134 years of sightings. These people are probably sadly deluded and mistaken, their minds are more likely disquieted and distressed, and we do therefore humbly beg forgiveness, first of God for Christ’s sake for this error, and pray that God would not impute the guilt of it to ourselves nor others. And we also pray that we may be considered candidly and aright by the living suffers as being then under the power of a strong and general delusion, utterly unacquainted with and not experienced in matters of that nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
I know a woman who upon uttering some words over very painful hurts and sores did use instantly to cure them, unto the amazement of the spectators. Now, thought I, if this wretch can effectually employ Devils to cure hurts, why may not she to cause them also, which is the worst that the witches do? The matter being so dark and perplexed as that there is no present appearance that all God’s servants should be altogether of one mind in all circumstances touching the same and believing the Devil’s accusations. These practices and principles have been the beginner and procurer of the sores afflictions, not to Llanda Villa only, but to this whole country, that did ever befall them. It should be noted in passing that Llanda Villa’s attorneys have concluded that these peoples visions and afflictions are due to illness caused by demonic possession. No specters evidence may be hereafter accounted valid or sufficient to take away the life or good name of any person or persons within this province. God hath a controversy with us about what was done in the time of the witchcraft. I fear that innocent blood hath been shed, and that many have had their hands defiled therewith. Public acknowledgement of guilt, and humiliation for it, and the more particularly and personally it is done by all that have been actors, the more pleasing it will be to God and more effectual to turn away his judgments from the land, and to prevent his wrath from falling upon the persons and families of such as have been most concerned. Moreover, if it be true, as I have been often informed, that families of such as were condemned for supposed witchcraft have been ruined by taking away and making havoc of their estates and leaving them nothing for their relief, I believe the whole country of lies under a curse to this day, and will do till some effectual course be taken by our honored governor and Supreme Court to make them some amends and reparations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Winchester Mystery House
Get in the Halloween spirit and celebrate the first weekend of October 2021 at the Winchester Mystery House! Our All Hallows’ Eve tickets are selling fast so be sure to grab them while you can 👻
🎟️link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
Do Not Threaten the Eternal Crown–This Money Came from His Family’s Estate!
If the populace were to govern itself and there were nothing interposed between the administration of the state and the citizens, they would have to assess themselves on occasion, in proportion to the public needs and the abilities of private individuals. And since no one would ever lose sigh of the payment or the use of funds, neither fraud nor abuse could slip into the management of them. The state would never be weighed down with debts, nor would the populace be crushed by taxes; or at least the assurance of how it would be used would console the people for hardship of the tax. However, things cannot happen this way; and however limited a state may be, the civil society is always too populous to be capable of being governed by all its members. Public funds must necessarily pass through the hands of the leaders who all have over and above the interest of the state, their own private interest, which is not the last to be heard. The populace, for its part, perceiving the leaders’ greed and ridiculous expenditures more than public needs, grumbles about seeing itself despoiled of necessity to furnish someone else with superfluities. And when once these manoeuvres have embittered it to a certain degree, the most honourable administration would utterly fail to reestablish confidence. If contributions are voluntary, in such circumstances, they produce nothing. If hey are forced, they are illegitimate. And the difficulty of a just and wise economy lies in the cruel alternatives of allowing that state to perish or attacking the sacred right to property which is its underpinning. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The first thing to be done by the founder of the republic, after the establishment of the laws, is to find a sufficient fund for the maintenance of the magistrates and other officers, and for all public expenditures. If it consists of money, and public domain, if it consists of land, this fund is called aerarium or fisc. And the latter is far preferable to the former for reasons that are not hard to see. Anyone who has reflected enough on this matter could hardly be of any other opinion than the of Bodin, who views the public domain as the most upright and the most secure of all the means of providing for the needs of the state. It is worth noting that Romulus’ first concern in the division of the lands was to set aside a third of the land for this use. I confess that it is not impossible for the proceeds of a badly administered state to be reduced to nothing. However, it is not of the essence of the domain to be administered poorly. Prior to any use that fund, it ought to be assigned or accepted by the assembly of the people or the estates of the country, which should then determine its use. After this solemnity which renders this fund inalienable, it changes its nature, as it were, and its revenues becomes so sacred that diverting the least amount to detriment of its destination is not only the most infamous of all thefts but a crime of high treason. It is a great dishonour for Rome that the integrity of the quaestor Cato had been a subject of conversation, and that an emperor, on rewarding a singer’s talent with a few crowns, needed to add that money came from his family’s estate and not from the state’s. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
However, if there are not many like Galba, where will we find Catos? And once vice is no longer a cause for dishonour, what leaders will be scrupulous enough to refrain from getting their hands on the public funds left to their discretion, and not eventually fool themselves by pretending to confuse their vain and scandalous dissipations with the glory of the state, and the means of extending their authority with those of increasing its power? It is above all in this delicate part of the administration that virtue is the only effective instrument, and that the integrity of the magistrate is the only restrain capable of containing one’s greed. Books and all the ledgers of managers seems less to reveal their infidelities than to cover them up. And prudence is never as prompt at imagining new precautions as knaves are at eluding them. Therefore forget about the ledgers and papers, and place the finances in faithful hands; this is the only way to have them faithfully administered. Once the public fund is established, the leaders of the state are rightfully its administrators, for this administration constitutes a part of the government, always essential, though not always equally so. Its influence increases in proportion to the decrease of the influence of the other parts of the government. Once could say that a government has reached its final degree of corruption when the only thing left of its sinews is money. For since every government constantly tends toward diminution, this reason alone shows why no state can subsist if its revenues do not constantly increase. The first experience of the necessity of this argument is also the first sign of the interior disorder of the state. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
And the wise administrator, in giving though to finding money in order to see to present need, does not neglect to seek the distant cause of this new need, just as a sailor, on seeing water flood his vessel, does not forget, while working the pumps, to take steps to find and plug the leak. From this rule flows the most important maxim of the administration of finances, which is to work with much greater care to prevent needs than to augment revenues. However, diligent one might be, help that comes only after the misfortune took place, and more slowly, always leaves the state in distress. While one gives thought to the remedy for one problem, another problem is already making itself felt, and the resources themselves produce new difficulties. Thus in the end the nation is thrown into debt, the populace is downtrodden, the government loses all its vigour and it spends a great deal of money doing not much of anything. I believe it was from this great and well established maxim that the marvels of ancient governments flowed, which did more with their parsimony than ours do with all their treasures. And it is perhaps from this that the standard meaning of the word economy is derived, which denotes more the wise management of what one has, than the means of acquiring what one does not have. What deepens the identity crisis of the corporation still further is the emergence, against this already unsettling background, of a Worldwide movement demanding not merely modest changes in this or that corporate policy but a deep redefinition of its purposes. In the United States of America, public anger at corporations is beginning to well up at a frightening rate. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
A study by Harvard Business School whose findings sent tremours throughout the corporate World, revealed about half of all consumer polled believe they are getting worse treatment in the marketplace than they were a decade earlier; three fifths say that products have deteriorated; over half mistrust product guarantees. A worried businessman said, “It feels like siting on a San Andreas fault.” Worse yet, growing numbers of people are not simply disenchanted, irritated or angry, but irrationally and erratically afraid of new technologies and business ventures. Public confidence in American corporation is lower than at any time since the Great Depression. American business and the accounting profession are being called on the carpet for a kind of zero-based rejustification of just about everything we do. Corporate performance is being measured against new and unfamiliar norms. Similar tendencies are visible in Scandinavia, Western Europe, and even, sotto voce, in the socialist industrial nations. In Japan, as Toyota’s official magazine puts it, “A citizens’ movement of a type never before seen in Japan is gradually gathering momentum, one that criticizes the way corporations disrupt everyday life.” Certainly corporations have come under scorching attack at other times in their history. Much of today’s clamour of complaint, however, is crucially different and arises from the emerging values and assumptions of Third Wave civilization, not the dying industrial past. Throughout the Second Wave era corporations have been seen as economic units, and the attacks on them have essentially focused on economic issues. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Critics assail corporations for underpaying working, overcharging customers, forming cartels to fix prices, making shoddy goods, and a thousand other economic transgressions. However, no matter how violent, most of these critics accept the corporation’s self-definition: they share the view of the corporation as an inherently economic institution. Today’s corporate critics start from a totally different premise. They attack the artificial divorce of economics from politics, morality, and the other dimensions of life. They hold the corporation increasingly responsible, not merely for its economic performance but for its side effects on everything from air pollution to executive stress. Corporations are thus assailed for asbestos poisoning, for using poor, marginalized, rare and/or oppressed populations as test subjects, for distorting the development of the non-industrial World, for racism, sexism, for secrecy and deception. They are pilloried for supporting unsavory regimes or political parties, from the fascist generals in Washington D.C and the racists in Sacramento to the Community party controlling the State of California and the mostly fake news media. What is at issue here is not whether such charges are justified—all too often they are. What is far more important is the concept of the corporation they imply. For the Third Wave brings with it a rising demand for a new kind of institution altogether—a corporation no longer responsible simply for making a profit or producing goods but for simultaneously contributing to the solution of extremely complex ecological, moral, political, racial, sexual, and social problems. Instead of clinging to a sharply specialized economic function, the corporation, prodded by criticism, legislation, and its own concerned executives, is becoming a multipurpose institution. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
God sees your good moves. Do not fear the judgment of Humankind, My dear Devout, especially when your conscience judges you innocent and returns a verdict of not guilty. Rather, cast your heart firmly in the Lord. Your Heavenly Father does not dwell on the times you reached the point where you were so unhappy and without hope that you could not feel any worse. “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace,” Ephesians 6.14-15. You need the breastplate of God’s approval. Every morning, no matter how you feel, no matter what you may have done wrong the day before, you can get up and says, “Father, I thank You that You approve me, and that You are pleased with me. I thank You that I am forgiven. I know that I am a friend of God.” If you will do that, you will be amazed at what begins to happen. God will change your whole self-image, and remove the heavy load of guilt and condemnation will be lifted off you. God will restore your joy, and bless you with the ability to go out and enjoy your day with a Godly attitude. However, when the tongue of another stings, know two things. First, that something good and blessed may actually have happened. Second, that your trust in God as opposed to yourself cushioned the blow. Putting on the breastplate of God’s approval does not happen automatically; it is something we must do. Just as we put on our clothes every morning, we need to get up and consciously put on God’s approval. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
One of the worst mistakes we can make is to go through life disapproving of ourselves. Nothing will plunge you into defeat any quicker than being negative and critical toward yourself. “I do not know why I cannot do anything right?” “Why can I not get over this habit?” “How come I can not break this cycle of oppression and poverty?” Many people can blither and blather, but they are no more convincing at the end of an hour than at the beginning. Of course, satisfying everybody is never really possible. As the Great Paul reported in First Corinthians, he strove to do it in the Lord (10.33), and the Lord made him all things to all men (9.22). Nevertheless, he thought it pretty small beer when he received good reports from his peers (4.3). Paul did about as much as any one person could do for the edification and salvation of others. However, try though he did, he knew that he could not prevent himself from offending others. The best remedy was to commit himself totally to God, who knew all his strengths and weaknesses. With Patience and Humility as his only allies, then, he was able to defend himself against whatever mouthings came from the thinking crowd and whatever hurlings came from the drinking crowd. And there was another reason why he responded; his silence could be interpreted, at least in the minds of the weak, as admission of guilt. God sees in you what He made you to become. He knows you can live up to your full potential. God did not create anyone to fail. He will keep working on you and make you into the person he wants you to be. God can see your heart, but humans look at the outside. You have gifts and talents that nobody else has. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Stop thinking about what you cannot do and look at what you can do. If I may use the words of God’s Isaiah (51.12), who are you that you should fear Mere Mortal Man? He is here today but gone tomorrow. If I may use the words of God’s First Maccabist (2.63). Fear God, yes, but do not lose your water over humanmade terrors. What real harm can insults or injuries do you? The tout or the lout who specializes in this sort of behaviour actually does more harm to oneself than to you. And that is in this life; in the next, there is nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. The judgment of God awaits one, no matter who one is; Paul assured the Romans of that (2.3). The remedy? Put God in first place. And do not waste time and energy tossing quarrelsome words about. Good advice from Paul in his Second to Timothy (2.14). However, what happens in the present moment if you do not succumb to concussion and suffer contusion you do not deserve? First off, do not get indignant, and do not threaten your eternal crown by outbursts of all, God the One who will rescue you from all confusion. And God is the One who will reward you according to your just deserts. God’s Paul assured the Romans of that (2.6), and so He assures you. The Scripture says, “Be confident of this. He that began a good work in you will continue to perform it until it is perfectly complete,” reports Philippians 1.6. God is never going to quit working on us. He is not going to get halfway through and say, “I am tired of dealing with you.” “You keep making that same mistake.” “You have got so many faults, I have had it with you.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
No, God is going to keep working on you until you are more valuable than all the diamonds in the Universe. In fact, you already are! You just have to come into your full potential and you will see what God already sees about you. Therefore, keep persevering. Do not allow the devil to keep replaying your mistake, distorting your legacy, slandering your character. One day the legendary artist Michelangelo was standing in front of a huge rock. With his hammer and chisel, he was working on the rock, in the beginning stages of sculpting it into a piece of art. He knew it was going to be a long, drawn-out process. Somebody came along and said, “What are you doing wasting your time working on that big piece of junk?” Michelangelo said, “There is a beautiful angel trapped in this rock, and I am doing my best to let him out.” The master artist saw something that other people could not see because they did not have the talent and the skill and the vision to create. Michelangelo’s David state is what he ended up creating and it has captivated the World for centuries. It is considered one of art history’s major master pieces. The fine detail make it look like a 17-foot-tall marble made with the perfect body, gorgeous hair, and the exquisite facial features known to man. It was all formed from a single block of marble between 1501 and 1504, and weighs six tons. The sculpture portrays David, a biblical figure. In a particularly well-known narrative (1 Samuel 17), David battles Goliath, a colossal Philistine. Against all odds, an unarmored David knocks down his enemy. The statue of David symbolizes unwavering courage, unexpected strength, and biblical perseverance that a nation should see in itself. And that is what God sees in us. One may have made a lot of mistakes, but stay focused on what you can become and God will get you where you need to be. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
God sees you are a valuable son or daughter whom He created in His own image. He is not done working on your yet. God loves you, He approves of you, and God’s approval is something He put in you before the foundation of the World. It is not based on your achievements or performance. It is based solely on the fact that you are His child and He sees the best in you. God accepts you. God approves you. There is nothing you can do and there is nothing anybody else can do that will ever change your value in God’s eyes. Father, I thank You that You have already accepted and approved of me. I may not be perfect, but I am trying, and I am going out today with my head held high, knowing that You are in the process of changing me. Four missionaries—Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer, and Ziba Peterson—knew they must leas their new friends in Kirtland and continue their journey westward to preach to the Indians. Doctor Frederick G. Williams, who had been baptized at Kirtland, went with them. They stopped several days and preached to the Wyandotte Indians in Ohio. On December 20, 1830, they left Cincinnati, Ohio, by boat to go to St. Louis, Missouri. Because the weather turned cold and ice blocked the river, their boat docked at Cairo, Illinois, and these men walked two hundred miles to St. Louis. This was not unusual. Many travelers walked in those says. They had walked most of the way from New York and people along the way opened their homes to give them food and shelter. God had sent them on a mission to preach to the Lamanites (Indians), and they were anxious to reach the western land. The winter was very cold, and there would be no boat to western Missouri until spring, but not one of them suggested waiting until spring. They walked. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The worst snowstorms the country had ever seen raged through Missouri as these men walked the two hundred and fifty miles from St. Louis to Independence. Many mornings it was twelve degrees below zero, and it snowed day after day until the snow was four feet deep. There were few roads in those days. Though sometimes there were trials the humans could follow, most of the time they walked in knee-deep snow across trackless land. At times they walked days before they saw a house. They carried their extra clothing, books, and food on their backs. Their food consisted of frozen bread and pork, and at time the bread was so frozen they could bite off only pieces of the outside crust. However, they kept going and God was with them. Their mission was inspired by Jesus Christ, and they were protected and happy even though it was difficult journey. They arrived in the tiny western Missouri town of Independence on January 31, 1831, after walking nearly a month in the terrible winter storms. Two of the men immediately started a tailor shop in Independence, where they made clothing. Three of them, including Oliver Cowdery and Parley Pratt, crossed into Kansas which was Indian territory, to take the angel message to the Lamanites. There they were taken to the chief of the Delaware Indians, a man who had long been the chief and was called the Great Grandfather. He was seated on a sofa of furs, skins, and blankets before a fire in the center of his two-room cabin. The chief welcomed the missionaries and motioned for them to sit down on blankets and robes. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The Indian women brought a tin pan full of beans and corn cooked together. This tasted very good, but there was just one wooden spoon so the man had to take turns eating. One of the Indians understood English, and he could interpret what the missionaries said to the old chief. The men told the chief about the Book of Mormon and asked him to call a council of his Indians. At first the chief refused, but after they explained more about the book, he was interested and called his Indians together. Within an hour forty Indians came and shook hands with the missionaries and sat around them. Oliver Cowdery then talked to them in the words they could understand. “Chief and members of the council,” he said, “we are glad to talk to you as our native brothers and friends. We have come a long way from the rising sun to being you glad news, across he rivers and through the deep snows so you might know the things which will do the native man good as well as the pilgrims. “Once the natives were many, and the land from the rising to the setting sun was theirs, for the Great Spirit gave it to them. There were no pilgrims then, but now the natives are few, they are por and the pilgrims many. “Thousands of moons ago when the native man lived in peace in this land, the Great Spirit talked with them and taught them his law and his will. They wrote these things in a book which was written on plates of gold and handed down from father to son for many ages. The people were wealthy and strong and mighty. However, they became wicked and killed each other. They killed the wise men and the prophets of the Great Spirit, and tried to destroy the book. The Great Spirit was angry and would speak to them no more. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
“The Great Spirit commanded Mormon and Moroni—their last wise men and prophets to hide the book in the Earth so it might be saved. He promised that later it would be given to the pilgrims who would come to the land that they might again bring it to the native man so they might learn the Will of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit promised that if the native man would receive the book and learn the things written in it and do them, they would be happy again and live in peace. Then the native man would become great with plenty to eat and good clothes to wear, and find favour with the Great Spirit and be His children.” Oliver then explained how Joseph Smith had prayed to the Great Spirit, and how the angel told him about the book. It was written in the language of the native man’s forefathers so that young man could not read it. However, the angel gave him a way to translate the book so it could be written on paper, and be printed, and now there were thousands of copies of the book. Oliver gave the chief a Book of Mormon. The Indians talked this over in their own language. Then the chief said the missionaries, “We are truly thankful to our pilgrim friends who have come so far to tell us the good news of our forefathers. It makes us feel glad in here,” and he placed his hand over his heart. The Indian chief promised they would build a council house where the missionaries could teach the Indians. Several of the Indians could read, and they were given copies of the Book of Mormon. The Indians were so interested that the government men in charge of the Indians were distributed. They forbade the missionaries to preach to the Indians any more and ordered them to leave the Indian country. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The three men then returned to Independence to preach to pilgrim men, some of them who believed and were baptized. Though the missionaries could not preach again these Indians, they felt they had accomplished much as now Indians in New York, in Ohio, and in Kansas had heard the story of heir forefathers. They hoped they might teach them more at a later time. The next month Parley Pratt was sent back to New York to reports on their work and to get more copies of the Book of Mormon, because they had given away all they had brought with them. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father; and He is distinct from the Son, according to the words, “I will ask My Father, and He will give you another Paraclete,” reports John 14.16. Therefore in God another procession exists besides the procession of the Word. There are two processions in God; the procession of the Word, and another. In evidence whereof we must observe that procession exists in God, only according to an action which does not tend to anything external, but remains in the agent itself. Such an action in an intellectual nature is that of the intellect, and of the will. The procession of the Word is by way of an intelligible operation. The operation of the will within ourselves involves also another procession, that of love, whereby the object loved is in the lover; as, by the conception of the word, the object spoken of or understood is in the intelligent agent. Hence, besides the procession of the Word in God, there exists in Him another procession called the procession of love. There is no need to go out infinitude in the divine processions; for the procession which is accomplished within the agent in an intellectual nature terminates in the procession of the will. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
All that exists in God, is God; whereas the same does not apply to others. Therefore the divine nature is communicated by every procession which is not outward, and this does not apply to other natures. Though will and intellect are not diverse in God, nevertheless the nature of will and intellect requires the processions belonging to each of them to exist in a certain order. For the procession of love occurs in due order as regards the procession of the Word; since nothing can be loved by the will unless it is conceived in the intellect. So as there exists a certain order of the Word to the principle whence He proceeds, although in God the substance of the intellect and its concept are the same; so, although in God the will and the intellect are the same, still, inasmuch as love requires by its very nature that it proceeds only from the concept of the intellect, there is a distinction of order between the procession of love and the procession of the Word in God. Many additional-more perplexing—studies have accumulated on the links between religion and altruism and between religion and prejudice. Most of the studies of altruistic behaviour have observed people’s willingness to help in minor emergencies—to mail an addressed lost letter found on the sidewalk, to call the garage for a stranded motorist who just spent her only spare change calling the wrong number, to assist someone in an adjacent room who was heard to fall off a ladder. However, there is no evidence that [highly religious people] are any more likely than he less religious to help someone in need. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The more religious may see themselves as more helpful and caring; they may even been seen this way by others. However, when it comes to action, there is no evidence that they are more helpful. Other research asks, Who are the long-term altruists? Who gives most generously of time and money? Most of America’s top philanthropists are religious: Jewish, Mormon, Protestant, and Catholic. And most attribute their philanthropic urges at least in part to their religious background. It is not just the superrich and generous. Americans who said they never attended church or synagogue reported giving away 1.1. percent of their incomes. Weekly attenders were two and a half times as generous. This 24 percent of the population gave 48 percent of all charitable contributions. The other three-quarters of Americans gave the remaining half. Follow-up surveys in 2015, 2020, and 2021 confirmed the faith-philanthropy correlation. A half dozen national surveys also reveal that faith is linked to volunteerism. Charitable and social-service volunteering was reported by 28 percent of those who rated religion “not very important” in their lives and by 50 percent of those who rated it “very important.” People who think Godliness unrelated to goodliness might also want to consider: Who most often adopts children? Who sponsors the nation’s food pantries and soup kitchens? Who first took medicine into the developing World and opened hospitals? Who sheltered orphans? Who spread literacy and established schools and universities? And who led movements to abolish the slave trance, end apartheid, and establish civil rights? Let no one be smug. It is true that many are good without God, that many believers go to sleep behind bars each night, and that toxic religion can undergird terrorism. #RandolphHaris 17 of 18
Yet the accumulating evidence indicates that, in general, faith tethers self-interest and nurtures character. Godliness and goodliness do seem more than typographically linked. Ice mountain melted ages ago, and made this ridge, this place changes. Now we are rooted in it, we of the old ones, we of the new ones from afar; oatgrass meadow, dougals fir thicket, we are rooted in the ridge of changes in the time of changes. The winds carry strange smells; this is a day of change. Great ones above and below, please bless us! O shining One above, please feed us with your light! O soft ones, sky darkeners, please wash us with your raindrops! O powers above us, bless us with your gift, for we reach up to you, branching wood and sap. O Earthmother from whom we grow, sandy gravel into whom our roots branch wood and sap deep down, bless us in our night-sleep, in our death and decay. Please bless us, dark Earth as we give back that which we have received as we make a forest of blessing a ridge of blessing for the future to grow upon. For those of old who went Thy wars to fight whole-hearted, in their hands Thy saving might; chosen when gathering in their palms the water—save them for ever faithful in Thy sight, save them, our Father. For him, that only son, who crushed the foe, sacred from birth, a Nazarite to grow, for whom from out a jaw-bone gushed forth water—Save! even for Thine holy name save now! Please save us, our Father. For his sake who is favour yet grew on when through their sinfulness the throngs had gone; who, turning men from sin, spake: “Now draw water”—please save her more fair than America when she shone, please save her, our Father. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
Dining in the big house or the small house tonight? We’ll be serving fruit snacks and goldfish crackers in the small house…😂
The best floorplans include space for all the indoor and outdoor fun your family needs! We’re loving the open, spacious flow of the Mills Station Residence 4 home!
Residence Four at Mills Station boasts 2,692 square feet in the largest home in the community. The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a two car garage plus workshop.
The Home Hub, located off the entry, can be used as a study, office, or kids play room. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters and opens onto the spacious great room.
Upstairs you’ll find the Owner’s retreat, two bedrooms, and the loft perfect for a game room or TV lounge. The Owner’s retreat is spacious and inviting with a large bedroom and spa like bathroom featuring a free-standing soaking tub, walk-in shower, dual vanities, and large walk-in closet.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/
The Devil Loveth No Salt in His Meat!
Every night in the year, four of us sat in the parlous of the Winchester Mansion. This particular night, there was a thin, bright moonshine: it was bitter cold, windy, and frosty; the town had not yet awakened, but an indefinable stir already preluded the noise and business of the day. The ghouls had come later than usual, and they seemed more than usually eager to be gone. They wished, and declared their wish, that their blood might be the last innocent blood shed. They prayed that God would discover the witchcraft were among us. They forgave their accusers. The fervency of the spirits were very affecting and drew tears from many. Affecting and melting to the hearts of some considerable spectators. They prayed earnestly for pardon for all other sin and for an interest in the precious blood of our dear Redeemer, and seemed to be very sincere, upright, and sensible of their circumstances. One of the ghouls said, “I have been put to death, and my grandfather suffered, and all his estate seized because of my own vile and wretched heart, confessed several things contrary to my conscience and knowledge, though to the wounding of my own soul—the Lord pardon me for it. But oh! the terrors of a wounded conscience, who can bear? Blessed be the Lord; He would not let me go in my sins, but in mercy I hope so my soul would not suffer me to keep it in any longer, but I was forced to confess the truth. Gunshots in the hills and the echo of that awful hellspawn voice in my head. I was sought after by a sorcerer, which resulted in fatal mishaps for those sorcerers because they caught me in the wrong mood, and I turned into a lethal weapon. Dear Mrs. Winchester, let me beg your prayers to the Lord on my behalf, and please send us a joyful and happy meeting in Heaven.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Mrs. Winchester replied, “But the Lord He know it is, if it be possible, that no more innocent blood be shed, which undoubtedly cannot be avoided in the way and course you go in. I question not but your honours do to the utmost of your powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft and witches, and shall not be guilty of innocent blood for the World.” A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student and the other ghouls. “My God! she cried, “but what have I done? and when did I begin?” Nothing could be explained any further because we realized that we had long since ceased to pay attention to anything said by the suspect. Our minds and hearts were so filled with the hideous torments of the afflicted and the frightful tales of the confessors that we were quite unable to absorb anything else. The student was violent, and it was said that she had beaten to death a former teacher and other students in the classroom before she and her accomplices were shot dead by a Winchester model 1866. They were much addicted to sorcery in the said town, and there were forty men in it that could raise the Devil as well as any astrologer. Time had little changed this small town. It stood then, as now, upon a crossroad, out of call of human habitations, and buried fathom deep in the foliage of six thousand cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon either hand, one loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping furtively from pond to pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous old flowering chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the bell and old tunes of the precentor, were the only sounds that disturbed the silence around the rural Winchester Mansion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
The Resurrection Man was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs found on the estate, the paths worn by the feet of legions of spirits and mourners, and the offerings and the inscriptions of bereaved affection. To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in Earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-Iit, terror-haunted resurrection that often happened at the Winchester Mansion, which was fully of uneasy ghosts. It was pitch dark; and we had just raised a few souls from the dead. Their bodies awaited them in the basement. Here and there a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a short space across the night; but for the most part it was at a foot pace, and almost groping, that they picked their way through the resonant blackness to their solemn and isolated destination. In the basement the last glimmer failed them, and it became necessary to kindle a match and reillumine one of the lanterns of the gig. Thus, under the dripping pipes, and environed by huge and moving shadows, they reached the scene of their unhallowed labours. However, the devil, imagining that he had found the right moment for taking possession of one of these resurrected bodies. A creeping chill began to possess my soul. It grew upon my mind that some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen one of the dead bodies, and in fear of their unholy burden wolves were outside the mansion howling. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The curse of evil had come into one of the bodies, and the evil malediction spread into his parts with a strange kind of screaming sound that made me turn pale with fear. He then rose to his feet, proclaiming he was the Devil and that he would take these other resurrected bodies with him to the underworld and speak with the dead. Mrs. Winchester said, “I rebuke you, Satan!” The Devil laughed and said he was not at all afraid of us. “You insult me with these testimonies as if you were Divine Oracles!” he said. Then departed in a black cloud of smoke with the resurrected bodies. How often I have read in books written by Jesuits that Martin Luther was a wizard, and that he did himself confess that he had familiarity with Satan! The Holy Son of God himself was reputed a magician, and one that had familiarity with the greatest of Devils. The blaspheming Pharisees said, “He casts out the Devils through the Prince of Devils,” reports Matthew 9.34. There is then not the best saint on Earth, man or woman, that can assure themselves that the Devil shall not cast such an imputation upon them. At the time when Luther died all the possessed people in the Netherlands were quiet. The Devils in them said the reason was because Luther had been a great friend of theirs, and they owed him that respect as to go far as Germany to attend his funeral. But the Father of Lies is never to be believed. He will utter twenty great truths to make way for one lie; he will accuse twenty people of witchcraft if he can but thereby bring one innocent person into trouble. However, it is better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned. The Devil makes his witched to dream strange things of themselves and others which are not so. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos, who invented the Pythagorean theorem, a^2+ b^2 = c^2, also lead seances in approximately 540 BC, using something like a Quija board. Grim reapers are purely psychic entities, with power over time and perception. They can change the way a human sees one’s surroundings, and change their own appearance, usually to ease the transition from life into death. If it is by virtue of some contract with the Devil that witches have the power to do such things, it is hard to conceive how they can be bid to do them without being too much concerned in that Hellish covenant. We ought not to practice witchcraft to discover witches. The Devil have of late accused some eminent persons. It is an awful thing which the Lord had done [id est, permitted] to convince some among us of their error. To take away the life of anyone merely because a specter or Devil in a bewitched or possessed person does accuse them will bring the guilt of innocent blood on the land where such a thing shall be done. What does such an evidence amount unto more than this: either such an one did afflict such an one, or the Devil in one’s likeness, or one’s eyes were bewitched. The natural way for a living person to see a reaper is as a wraith-like figure wearing tattered winding sheets or burial cloth. Black dogs are also buried in the foundations of churches to guard and protect the gates between here and the afterlife. What will be the issue of these troubles God only knows. I am afraid that ages will not wear off that reproach and those stains which these things will leave behind them upon our lands. It is possible that bewitched and possessed person are afflicted by the Devil, but without agency of witches. Yes, there are witches, and there have been since the beginning of the World. Their craft is performed with the Devil’s assistance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
During one evening at the mansion, Mrs. Winchester invited the maid in for a séance. She chanted, “By the virtue of the holy resurrection and the torments of the damned, I conjure and exorcise thee, spirit of Malphas, thirty-ninth Spirit, to answer my liege demands, being obedient unto these sacred ceremonies, on pain of everlasting torment and distress. Arise, arise, arise, I charge and command thee.” A black man appeared, I do not think he was human. His skin was black as midnight and I could not see his eyes, teeth, or any other features. He was just black and in the shape of a man. He offered her a book to sign. The book was supposed to contain witches’ pacts, and he told her that is she touched it, it would cure her of the hauntings. In all, Mrs. Winchester was tempted from three boos. The third she demanded that they let her read before she think of signing it. The man refused. In general the book seemed a journal of the chief things acted or designed a their great witch-meetings, not without some circumstances that carried an odd resemblance of the Koran. It has in it the methods to be used in seducing of people unto the service of the Devil, and the names of them that had been seduced, with terms which they were to serve. It particularly surprised some in the room, on the even of May 13, 1888, to overhear her, in the book then opened unto her, spelling a word that was in Latin. The letters she recited was “Quadragesima.” Mrs. Winchester conversed at length with the spirit(s) who visited her, and the voices were “big, low, thick,” as they had been reported to be in European witchcraft accounts. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
We saw flames arise from the cauldron on the table, and the room smelled of brimstone. The spirit of a bird appears. It attacked the maid and the next morning, she was found tied to the tree top. She was excessively sore when we brought her down from the tree. There were blisters raised upon her. To cure the soreness which last night’s fiery trail gave to her, we were forces sometimes to apply oil commonly used for the cure of scads. And yet (like other witch-wounds) in a day or two all would be well again. Only the marks of some wounds thus given her, she will probably carry to her grave. I may add that once they thrust an hot iron down her throat, which though it were to us invisible, yet we saw he skin fetched off her tongue and lips. Indeed, her sufferings were so severe that Mrs. Winchester thought the rapid healing of her wounds was part of a design to keep her in continual torment. She was, Mrs. Winchester wrote, “wounded with a thousand pains all over, and cured immediately that the pains of these wounds might be repeated.” One of the maid’s symptom occurred when her hallucinations were peopled by specters bring her a little cup that had a whitish liquor in it (unto us wholly invisible), which they would pour down her throat, holding her jaws wide open, in spite of all [her] shriekings and strivings. We saw her swallow this poison, though we saw not the poison, and immediately she would swell prodigiously and be just like one poisoned with a dose of rats-bane [arsenic trioxide]. After these potions she was capable ordinarily to beg of us that we would he her to some salad-oil, upon the taking whereof the swelling would in a little while abate. Sometimes our laying our hands on the mouth of the maid, when she perceived the specters forcing their poisons into her mouth, did keep her from taking of them in. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The maid, Agnus, was unable to hear prayer or religious instruction directly. However, not only did she hear the spectral Christmas dance, but several times Agnus had her arms cruelly scratched and pins thrust into her flesh by Fiends while they were molesting her. Several persons did sometimes actually lay their hands upon these Fiend. The wretches were palpable while they were not visible, and several of our people though they saw nothing, yet felt a substance that seemed like a dog. And though they were not fanciful they died away [id est, fainted] at the fright. And at this time, Mrs. Winchester believed much of this unchristian practice was the result of someone delivering curses. A curse delivered by a woman, Margaret Rhodes Crocker, known to have dabbled in witchcraft, although again it is not absolutely certain that she practiced malefic witchcraft. It was upon the Lord’s Day, the 8th of September, in the year 1889, that Margaret Crocker, after some hours of previous disturbance in the Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, fell into odd fits, which caused her friends to carry her home, where her fits in a few hours grew into a figure that satisfied the spectators of their being preternatural. Some of the neighbours were forward enough to suspect the rise of this mischief in an house hard-by, where lived a miserable woman who had been formerly imprisoned on the suspicion of witchcraft, and who had frequently cured very painful hurts by muttering over them certain charms, which I shall not endanger the poisoning of my reader by repeating. This woman had, Mary Frances Sherwood Hopkins Searless, the evening before Margret fell into her calamities, very bitterly treated her and threatened her. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
However, the hazard of hurting a poor woman that might be innocent, notwithstanding surmises that might have been more strongly grounded than those, caused the pious people in the vicinity to try whether incessant supplication to God alone might not procure a quicker and safer ease to the afflicted than hasty prosecution of any supposed criminal. Mary Francis was assaulted by eight cruel specters, whereof she imagined that she knew three or four, but the rest came still with their faces covered, so that she could never have a distinguishing view of the countenance of those who she thought she knew. She was very careful of my reiterated charges to forbear blazing the names, lest any good person should come to suffer any blast of reputation through the cunning malice of the great Accuser. Nevertheless, she having since privately named them to myself, I will venture to say this of them, that they are a sort of wretches who for these many years have gone under as violent presumptions of witchcraft as perhaps any creatures yet living upon Earth, although I am far from thinking that the visions of this young woman were evidence enough to prove them so. Margaret Crocker’s hallucinations were somewhat varied. She saw not only spectral witches and the “Black Man….their master” who was often seen in abandoned mansions, where he resisted new residents, but also a “White Spirit” who she took to be an Angel. Such a figure had also been seen at the Winchester and in several Oakland witchcraft cases, such as at the Ellen Kenna Mansion, Emma Bray’s Mansion, and at Alexander Dunsmuir’s mansion. The white spirit comforted and advised Margaret during her attack. Among other things, the Angel told her that Oliver Winchester was her spiritual father. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The Angel had always maintained the Devils might appear in the shape of an innocent person. Mrs. Winchester cried for the Lord, as for the deliverance of these women from the malice of Hell, for the deliverance of the powers of Hell has now seized upon all of them. And that the whole plot of the Devil to reproach her poor maid, Angus, be defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ. During a séance Mrs. Winchester was told that one of the several beings that was haunting her and these other grand estates was a Rakshasa. A being reincarnated from evil human beings. They are a type of demon. Rakshasa have the power to change their shape at will and appear as animals, as monsters, or in the case of female demons, as beautiful women. They also have magical powers, including invisibility. They are cannibalistic, and particularly target anything religious or holy. In addition to human flesh they, they will eat spoiled food. Their finger nails are poisonous. They are most powerful in the evening, particularly during the dark person of a new moon, but are dispelled by the rising sun. They especially detest sacrifices and prayer. Most powerful among them is their kind, the 10-headed Ravana. Many believe him to be Satan. Margaret had the common inability of afflicted persons to hear religious words, especially, in her case, the words of prayer. She had a full catalog of physical symptoms. She would be strangely distorted in her joins an thrown into such extravagant convulsions as were astonishing unto the spectators in general. She would be cruelly pinched with invisible hands very often in a day, and the black and blue marks of the pinches became immediately visible unto the standers by. She was also afflicted with pins, both real ones found about her person and spectral ones. The psychosomatic skin lesions would in a few minutes ordinarily be cured. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
As with Mary Frances, her specters burnt her with spectral brimstone, and she would be so bitterly scorched with the unseen sulphur thrown upon her that very sensible blisters would be raised upon her skin. Like Angus, Margaret was forced to swallow spectral poison. She would sometimes have her jaws forcibly pulled open, whereupon something invisible would be poured down her throat. We all saw her swallow, and yet we all saw her try as she could that she might not swallow. She would cry out “as of scalding brimstone poured into her” and would be so monstrously inflamed that it would have broken a heart of stone to have seen her agonies. The spectators would testify also that the Crocker Mansion often reeked “so hot of brimstone that we were scarce able to endure it.” And one of the occasion “the standers by plainly saw something of that odd liquor itself on the outside of her neck.” There was a spectral powder thrown into her eyes, and “one time some of this powder was fallen actually visible upon her cheek, from whence the people in the room wiped it with their handkerchiefs.” Mrs. Winchester was also afflicted by spirits. “We once thought we perceived something stir upon her pillow at a little distance from her, whereupon one present [the Butler Clayton] laying his hand there, he to his horror apprehended that he felt, though none could see it, a living creature not altogether unlike a vampire bat, which nimbly escaped from him. And there were diverse other persons who were thrown into a great consternation by feeling, as they judged, at others times the same invisible animal.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
However, the most starling phenomenon in Mrs. Winchester’s case was levitation. “Once,” said Clayton, “her tormentors puled her up to the ceiling of the chamber and held her there before a very numerous company of spectators, who found it as much as they could all do to pull her down again.” Clayton obtained signed confirmations of this and other instances of levitation: “I do testify that I have seen Mrs. Winchester in her hauntings from the invisible World lifted up from her bed, wholly by an invisible force, a great way towards the top of the room where she lay. In her being so lifted she had no assistance from any use of her own arms or hands or any other part of her body, not so much as her heels touching her bed or resting on any support whatsoever. And I have seen her thus lifted when not only a strong person hath thrown his whole weight across her to pull her down, but several other persons have endeavoured with all their might to hinger her from being so raised up, which I suppose that several others will testify as well as myself when called unto it. Witness my hand,” Clayton Straus. “We can also testify that we have several times seen Mrs. Winchester so lifted up from her bed as that she had no use of her own limbs to help her up, but it was the declared apprehension of us, as well as others that saw it, impossible for any hands but some of the invisible World to life her.” Henry Brown, Frank Drew, Phillip Goodwin. “We whose names are underwritten do testify that one evening when we were in the chamber where Mrs. Winchester then lay in her haunting, we observed her to be by an invisible force lifted up from the bed whereon she lay, so as to touch the garret floor, while yet neither her feet nor any other parent of her body rested either on the bed or any other support, but were also by the same force lifted up from all that was under her, and all this for a considerable while. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
“We judged it several minutes, and it was as much as several of us could do with all our strength to pull her down. All which happened when there was not only we two in the chamber, but we supposed ten or a dozen more whose names we have forgotten.” W. R. Leigh and Spenser T. Olin. These accounts could not be the power of suggestion because these people were not just bystanders. They believed that they witnessed levitation, and they were engaging in violent physical activity, trying to bring her body back to the bed. Such activity would, ordinarily, break the power of suggestion. And levitation has been so frequently reported, from so many times and places (from the 5th century to the 21st century), that one cannot be at all sure there is a satisfactory explanation for it, particularly since so many witnesses insisted that no part of Mrs. Winchester’s body was touching the bed. However, whatever the explanation for these symptoms, Mrs. Winchester and her estate are truly a mystery. However, it is also noted the other prominent Queen Anne Victorian Mansions and other built during the Victorian times experienced afflictions. Witchcraft is one of the most hidden works of darkness. Although some people and some estates were more haunted than others, the Bay Area, during Victorian Times, had its full share of obscurity. All publications on witchcraft and supernatural events have been forbidden by these prominent families at the time. Their desire was to quail tempers, and use wisdom to relax fear, while upholding their honour, integrity, and reverence for the Victorian era. “All things are possible to one that believeth,” reports Mark 9.23. Who that beareth it upon one shall not dread one’s enemies, to be overcome, nor with no manner of poison be hurt, nor in no need misfortune, nor with no thunder one shall be smitten nor lightning, no in no fire be burnt suddenly, nor in no water be drowned. Nor one shall not die without shrift, nor with thieves to be take. Also one shall have no wrong neither of Lord or Lady. This be in the names of God and Christ. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Winchester Mystery House will be going dark this weekend for All Hallows’ Eve, but we will be back to haunt you Thursday, September 30th! Purchase your tickets for next weekend early and let the ghoul times roll 👻
See link in bio for ticket info 🎟 winchestermysteryhouse.com
May the World Used to be Flat–How do they Dare to be so Arrogant?!
God touch will come and it will heal. That is what He said to the Centurion, when he asked the Lord to help His paralyzed servant; Matthew had the story correct (8.7). Out of your skin you may be, but God is not the cause. It is the grizzly temptation that bothers you, the groundless fear that dithers you. Why do you work now about what is going to happen in the future? That way you will be shedding tear after tear year after year! “Every day has its own malice,” or so that Great Matthew has pointed out (6.34). Useless, and less than useless, it is to feel puzzled or pleased about the future. Either way you have little to gain. That is because such wool-gathering rarely produces a cloak. However, it not that just Humankind, to play about with fanciful projects? Your spiritual progress has been modest, I must say, if you allow yourself to be dazzled by the Enemy. Why? One does not care a joy whether one’s illusions or deceptions are right or wrong. They cause prostration, all right, but one does not care a tittle whether it is out of love for the present or fear of the future; I say something about that in John (14.27). Humans can orient themselves in two contradictory modes: one’s main interest, love, concern—or as Dr. Freud puts it, one’s libido (energy dealing with pleasures of the flesh)—can either be directed toward oneself or toward the World outside: people, ideas, nature, humanmade things. Narcissism is a necessary intermediate stage between autoeroticism and “object-love.” It is not primarily a perversion of pleasures of the flesh, the passionate love for one’s own body, but it is a complement of the instinct of self-preservation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The most important evidence of the existence of narcissism came from the analysis of schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients were characterized by two features: megalomania and diversion of their interests from the external World—from people and things. The interest they had withdrawn from others they directed to their own person—and thus developed megalomania; the image of their own self as omniscient and omnipotent. This concept of psychosis as a state of extreme narcissism was one basis of the idea of narcissism. The other was the normal development of the infant. Dr. Freud assumed that the infant exists in a completely narcissistic state, at the moment of birth, as it had been in the intrauterine state. Slowly the infant learns to take an interest in people and things. This original state of “libidinal cathexis of the ego” fundamentally persists and is related to the object-cathexis “much as the body of an amoeba is related to the pseudopodia which it puts out. Dr. Freud’s discover of narcissism not only explained the nature of psychosis but it also showed that the same narcissism exists in the average adult as exists in the child; to put it differently, that the “normal person” partakes to some lesser or greater degree in that attitude which, when quantitatively stronger, constitutes psychosis. Narcissism plays a huge role in survival. While from a standpoint of values the maximal reduction of narcissism is desired, from the standpoint of biological survival narcissism is a normal desirable phenomenon. If humans did not put their own goals and needs before those others, how could they survive? One would lack the energetic qualities of egoism necessary to take care of one’s own life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
To put it differently: the biological interests of the survival of the race requires a certain amount of narcissism among its members; the ethico-religious goal of the individual, on the contrary, is the maximal reduction of narcissism toward the zero point. In Victorian times, love for most men did not exist expect as the attachment of the male to the feeding women. To be loved (the male by the conquered woman) gives strength, to love actively weakens. While it was presumed the male’s love was anaclitic, id est, it had its object the person who feeds him, it was assumed that woman’s love is narcissistic, that they only can love themselves, and cannot participate in that great “achievement” of men: to love the hand that feeds them. Several men in Victorian times were unaware that the woman of the elite class were cold precisely because their men wanted the cold, id est, to behave like property, and not even to grant them “separate but equal” role in the sleeping chambers. The bourgeois man got the woman as he imaged her and he rationalized his superiority by believing this limited female—limitations imposed by him—was only concerned with wanting to be fed and take care of. This is of course typical male propaganda in the war between the genders, another example of which is that woman are less realistic and less courageous than men. Indeed, this insane World which does not seem to stop running into catastrophe is governed by man, but would a society run by woman be any better? All dominant groups tend to be just as corrupt, if not more so than the processor. In fact, some even try to inflict the pain and oppression on purpose because they are hurting, even though people have been enlightened. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
However. As to courage, many people know that in most cases of illness women are usually much better able to cope with difficulties than the typical male, who wants mother to help them. As to narcissism, women are forced to present themselves attractively, because they are exhibits on the slave market; but when they love they usually love more deeply and reliably than the average man, who is characterized as roaming around and trying to satisfy their narcissism, invested in their male organ of which they are so proud of. To narcissistic persons the only sector that seems fully real is their own person. Feeling, thoughts, ambitions, wishes, body, family, everything that they are or what is theirs. What they think is true, because they think it, and even their bad qualities are beautiful because they are theirs. Everything related to them has colour and full reality. Everybody and everything outside is gray, ugly, and without colour, hardly existing. Here is an example: A man called me to ask for a meeting. I answered that I had no free time in the week but could see him during the following week. He responded by pointing out that he lived very near to my office and hence it would take him little time to come over. When I answered that this was indeed convenient for him but it did not alter the fact that I had no free time, he was unimpressed and continued with the same argument. This is an example of a rather sever case of narcissism, because he was totally unable to distinguish between my needs and his. It is obvious that it makes a great difference how intelligent, artistically talented, knowledgeable a very narcissistic person is. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Many artists and creative writers, music conductors, dancers and politicians are extremely narcissistic. Their narcissism does not interfere with their art; on the contrary it often helps. They have to express what they subjectively feel, and the more important their subjectivity is to their performance, the better they perform. The narcissistic person is often particularly attractive for one’s very narcissism. Think for example of a narcissistic entertainer. One is filled with oneself; one exhibits one’s body and one’s wit with the pride of owning a rare jewel. One has no doubts about oneself as a less narcissistic person necessarily has. What one says, does, the way one walks and moves is enjoyed by oneself like a precious performance and one oneself is one of one’s greatest admirers. I assume that the reason for the attractiveness of the narcissistic person lies in the fact that one portrays an image of what the average person would to be: one is sure of oneself, has no doubts, feels always on top of the situation. The average person, in contract, does not have this certainty; one is often plagued by doubts, prone to admire others as being superior to oneself. One may ask why extreme narcissism does not repel people. Why do they not resent the lack of real love? This question is easy to answer: real love is so rare today as to be almost outside the field of vision of most people. In the narcissist one sees someone who at least loves one person, oneself. The completely untalented narcissist, on the other hand, may be only ridiculous. If the narcissistic person is extremely gifted, one’s success is virtually guaranteed. Narcissistic people are often to be found among successful politicians. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Even if they are talented or gifted they would not be so impressive without the narcissism that, as it were, oozed out of them. Instead of feeling “How do they dare to be so arrogant?” many people are so attracted by the narcissistic self-image projected that they see in it nothing more than the adequate self-appreciation of a very talented person. It is important to understand that narcissism, which may be called “self-infatuation,” is in contrast to love, if we mean by love the fact of forgetting oneself and caring more for others than oneself. Of equal important is the contradiction between narcissism and reason. Since I have just talked about politician as examples of narcissistic personalities, a statement about the conflict between narcissism and reason seems absurd. However, I am not speaking of intelligence but of reason. Manipulative intelligence is the capacity to use thinking for manipulating the World outside for humans’ purposes. Reason is the faculty to recognize things as they are, regardless of their value or danger to us. Reason aims at the recognition of things and persons in their suchness, undistorted by our subjective interest in them. Cleverness is a form of manipulating intelligence, but wisdom is an outcome of reason. If one’s manipulative intelligence is, the narcissistic person can be extremely clever. However, one is apt to make sever mistakes, because one’s narcissism seduces one into overestimating the value of one’s own wishes and thoughts and into assuming that the result has already been accomplished, simply because it is one’s wish or one’s thought. Narcissism is often confused with egoism. An egoistic person may have an undistorted view of the World. One may not give to one’s thoughts and feelings a greater value than they have in the outside World. One may see the World, including one’s role in it, quite objectively. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Egoism is basically a form of greediness; the egoist wants everything for oneself, one does not like to share, one perceives others as threats rather than as possible friends. Self-interest prevails in them more or less completely; but the prevalence of self-interest does not necessarily distort the egoist’s picture of oneself and the World around one, as it does with the narcissistic person. Among all character orientations narcissism is by far he most difficult to recognize in oneself. To the extent to which a person is narcissistic one glorifies oneself and is unable to see one’s defects and limitation. One is convinced that the image one has of oneself as a wonderful person is correct, and since it is one’s image one sees no reason o doubt it. Another reason why narcissism is so difficult to detect in oneself is that many narcissistic persons try to demonstrate that they are anything but narcissistic. One of the most frequent examples of this is the attempt of narcissistic persons to hide their narcissism behind behaviour which is characterized by concern and help for others. They spend so much energy and time in helping others, even making sacrifices, being kind, ex cetera, all with the aim (usually unconscious) of denying this narcissism. The same goes, as we all know, for persons who are particularly modest or humble. Not only do such people often try to hide their narcissism, they satisfy it at the same time by being narcissistically proud of their kindness or modesty. A nice example of this is the joke about a dying man overhearing his friends who were at his bedside praise him—how learned he was, how intelligent, how kind, how concerned. The dying man listened and when they had finished praising he angrily shouted, “And you failed to mention my humility!” #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Narcissism wears many masks: saintliness, obedience to duty, kindness and love, humility, pride. It ranges from the attitude of a haughty and arrogant person to that of a modest and unobtrusive one. Everybody has many tricks to disguise one’s narcissism and is hardly aware of them and their function. If the narcissistic person is successful in persuading others to admire one, one is happy and functions well. However, when one is without success in convincing others, if one’s narcissism is pricked, as it were, one many collapse like a deflated balloon; or one may be intensely furious, filled with unforgiving rage. To inflict a wound on a person’s narcissism may either produce a depression or an unforgiving hate. Therefore, have faith in God’s mercy. Often when you think that you have gone a step too far, you will find another chance for earning even more merit than before. When something bad happens to you, no, it is not a total loss. Do not make long-term commitments to do or not to do in the light of present pleasure or displeasure. Do not cling overlong to a mood or mode, no matter what its source; people will think it is chronic. If from time to time God’s sends one some tribulation or withdraws some consolation, do no think you are a derelict, a beached and abandoned hulk. After all, it all lead to the same destination, that is to say, to the Kingdom of Heaven. “It is You who blesses the righteous person, O LORD; You surround one with favour as with a shield,” reports 5.12. For me and the rest of the Devouts, it is more helpful to be exercised by adversity than entertained by prosperity. God knows our hidden thoughts and what is wrong with that? He finds it helpful in planning our salvation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Doing without consolation for a while is not all that bad. It prevents us from feeling too good about the spiritual tracks one is making or the ladder of perfection one is climbing. What God has given, He can take back, and what God has taken back, He can give again. Whenever He wants. When God gives, it is His to give. When He takes it back, it is not really ours to keep. Every gift of God’s is good, and “all gifts are good,” at least according to the Letter of James (1.17). If God sends us a gift that hurts, do not get uppity, do not let one’s heart go pit-a-pat. God can soon lighten the load, and every burden will be changed into joy. As for God’s dealings with us, He trust we will find them satisfactory; that is to say, fair and just in every way, with a little mercy mixed in. So, we are right in recommended God to others. “When men began to increase in number on the Earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of human were beautiful, and they married any of hem they chose. Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit will no contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.’ The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days—and also afterward—when the son of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the Earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the Earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, ‘I will wipe humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the Earth—humans and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and bird of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.’ However, Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD. This is the account of Noah,” reports Genesis 6.1-9. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Every time you encounter a road block on your spiritual journey, you should not go sit by the side of the road and be sad; rather, you should rejoice and give thanks. Why? God has afflicted us with woes, yes, but you are not the only one. Yes, God knows the lash of John has let this be known to us. “As the Father has loved Me, so I love you,” report John 15.9. That is a lot of comfort to many pour souls, seeing how things eventually get sorted out between God, Jesus Christ, and ourselves. “I will exalt You, O LORD, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. O LORD my God, I called You for help and you healed me. O LORD, you brough me up from the grave; you spared me from going down into the pit. Sing to the LORD, you saints of His; praise His holy name. For His anger lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a nigh, but rejoicing comes in the morning,” reports Psalm 30.1-5. God has sent us off not to minor joys but to great battles; not to honour ceremonies but to contempt encounters; not to leisurely activities but to laborious exercises; not to relax without anxiety, but to endure with patience, like the seeds that fell on the good soil in His parable in Luke (8.15). As hey germinated, so should you. All words worth remembering. “The LORD is my portion; I have promised to keep Your words. I sought Your Favour with all my heart; be gracious to me according to Your word,” reports Psalm 119.57-58. We must wake up every morning and declare God’s favour in our lives. Every morning, thank God for opening doors of opportunity and brining success into your life. God will make people desire to help you because they can see His love and light in your soul. They know that there is something special about you. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Anytime you get into a hard situation, declare the favour of God in your business. Yet, I think it is important we remain rational because limitless expectations can breed endless frustrations. “Blessed is one who expects nothing, for one shall never be disappointed,” counseled the poet Alexander Pop in a 1727 letter. Life’s greatest disappointments, as well as its highest achievements, are born of the most optimistic expectations. In saying that, it is a balancing act to expect the most extraordinary things, but to also know life happens on God’s timeline and when He sees fit. Yet, it is important to remain optimistic and not be depressed. Meaning and purpose is derived from spiritual insight. Intellectual knowledge is inseparable from the emotional and spiritual. Forgiveness of others who cause distress (including parents) complete the therapeutic restoration of self. Therefore, even in the mundane aspects of life, we will not be imposing on God’s goodness by declaring His favour. He wants us to act on it. For example, maybe you are deciding between a Cresleigh Havenwood home, and there is someone else interested in the same lot you are. Simply declare, “Father, I thank You that I have Your favour, and that You are going to make a way for me where it appears that there is no way right now.” Then keep trusting God and looking for the opportunity to open. God is supreme. Humility, acceptance of (divine” authority, and obedience (to the will of God) are virtues. God has your best interests at heart, and He is working everything for your good. Like a good parent, Goes does not always give you what you want. However, He will always give you what you need. A delay may spare you from something you are not supposed to experience, or maybe something else is opening up for you that will encourage you even more. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Personal identity is eternal and derived from the divine. Relationship with God defines self-worth. When you live favour-minded, you will begin to see God’s goodness in the everyday, ordinary details of the architecture in your home, at work job, in the landscape, or in your soul. You may be at Cresleigh’s Design Center picking out the materials for your house and praying you get the lot someone else just purchased, when a sale agent taps you on the shoulder and says, “Come with me. I have this lot that would be perfect for you, and this particular house has a few incentives from the builder, which will cost you nothing.” When you are living in favour-minded, God’s blessings seem to chase you down and overtake you. Also, when you are a Christian, remember that your values may be quite different from those of other people. Many people expect psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers to be guided by value-free professionalism and objective science, but much of their research, theories, and techniques are implicit expression of humanistic and naturalistic belief system that dominate both psychology and American universities generally. So antireligious prejudice would not be surprising. To them, Christians are perceived as religious nuts. However, religious communities provide both a relief structure and loving, emotional support which often inhibits the manifestation of psychological and physical disorders. There is a code of self-control in terms of absolute values, strict morality, and universal ethics. Christian groups also often endorse high standards of impulse control and as a result have low rates of alcoholism, drug addition, divorce, and emotional instability. There tends to be a stable marriage and family life, which pays psychological and social dividends. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Christian values are important and should be acknowledged more openly because they tend to strongly support humanistic values of love, freedom of choice, and honesty. Nevertheless, values that permeate psychotherapy should be openly acknowledged and tested; moreover, psychologists should consider the possibility that genuine spiritual-religious values may indeed have beneficial, health-promoting consequences. Therefore, when those kind things you have been praying for happen, be grateful. Be sure to thank God for His favour, and for His special assistance in your life. Do not take God’s favour for granted. When you are living favour-minded, God’s blessings seem to chase you down and overtake you. You will not be able to outrun the good things of God. Everywhere you, go things are going to change in your favour. Someone is going to want to share God’s blessings with you and they may not even know why. That is why one should get in the habit of consistently speaking God’s favour over our lives. And not simply over our own lives, but over our businesses, our employees, our children, our ultimate driving machine, and our families. “Father, I thank You my clients are loyal to me, and that this property is going to sell I thank You that Your favour is leading me to the right people. Your favour is causing people to want to buy this home.” That is why one must speak God’s favour over every area of one’s life. Remember, the more favour-minded you are, the more God’s favour you are going to experience. God sends His Disciples off not to minor joys but to great battles; not to honours ceremonies but to contempt encounters; not to leisurely activities but to laborious exercises; not to relax without anxiety, but to endure with patience, like the seeds that fell on the god soil in His parable in Luke (8.15). As they germinated, so should you. All words worth remembering. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Thank You, Father, that You are opening doors for me that no one can shut. Thank You for causing people to be kind to me and to assist me. You make a way for me where it seems there is no way. The big corporation was the characteristic business organization of the industrial era. Today thousand such behemoths, both private and public, bestride the Earth, producing a large proportion of all the goods and services we buy. Seen from the outside, they present a commanding appearance. They control vas resources, employ millions of workers, and they deeply influence not merely our economies but our political affairs as well. Their computers and corporate jets, their unmatched ability to plan, to invest, to execute projects on a grand scale, make them seem unshakably powerful and permanent. At a time when most of us feel powerless, they spear to dominate our destinies. Yet that is not the way they look from he inside, to the men and women who run these organizations. Indeed, many of our top managers today feel quite as frustrated and powerless as the rest of us. For exactly like the nuclear family, the school the mass media, and the other key institutions of the industrial age, the corporation is being hurled about, shaken, and transformed by the Third Wave of change. And a good many top managers do not know what has hit them. The most immediate change affecting the corporation is the crisis in the World economy. For three years, the Second Wave civilization worked to create an integrated global marketplace. Periodically these efforts were set back by wars, depressions, or other disasters. However, each time the World economy recovered, emerging larger and more closely integrated than before. Today a new crisis has struck. However, this one is different. Unlike the crises during the industrial era, it involves not only money, but countless human lives and goods, services and supplies. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The current pandemic is bringing inflation, unemployment, death, disability, lack of resources, surpluses of jobs openings, stagnant wages, immigration crisis, high demands of good and services, lack of supply, simultaneously, not sequentially. Unlike those of the past, it is directly linked to health care, housing shortages, low incomes, ecological problems, an entirely new species of technology, and to the introduction of a new level of communications into the production system. Finally, it most certainly is not, as Marxist’s claim, a crisis of capitalism alone, but one that involves socialist industrial nation as well. It is, in short, the general crisis of the age of information civilization as a whole. The upheaval in the World economy threatens the survival of the corporation as we know, it throwing its managers into a wholly unfamiliar environment. Thus from the end of World War II until the early 2000’s the corporation functioned in a comparatively stable environment. Growth was the key word. The dollar was king. Currencies remained stable for long periods. The current financial crisis from the government shutting the economy down and making people stay in their homes for months, threatened the escalator to affluence as it was still ascending, and economists were so confident of their ability to predict and control the economic machine that they spoke casually about “fine tuning’ it. Today the phrase evokes only derisive snorts. The President wisecracks that he knows a fortune-tell from Mexico who is a better forecaster then the economists. Secretary of the Treasury, says that “the economics profession is close to bankruptcy in understanding the present situation—before or after the fact. Standing in the tangled wreckage of economic theory and the middle of the rubble of the pandemic infrastructure, corporate decision-makers face rising uncertainties. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Interest rates zigzag. Currencies gyrate. Central banks buy and sell money by the carload to damp the swings, but the gyrations only grow more extreme. The dollar, yuan, yen and cryptocurrency perform a Kabuki dance, while people in the Middle East stock pile American weapons and military supplies, frantically off-load billions of dollars worth of American paper. God and silver prices break all records. While all of this is occurring, technology and communications restructure World markets, making transnational production both possible and necessary. And to facilitate such operations, a jet-age money system is taking form. A global electronic banking network—impossible before the computer and satellite—now instantaneously links Hong Kong, Manila, or Singapore with the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and New York. This sprawling networks of banks, with its Citibanks and Barclays, its Sumitomos and Narodnys, not to mention Credit Suisse and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, creates a balloon of “stateless currency”—money and credit outside the control of any individual government—which is really innovative in ways yet imagined. The bulk of this stateless currency consists of Eurodollars—dollars outside the United States of America. The accelerated growth of cryptocurrency is a wild card in the economic game. “Here the ‘Crypto’ contributes to inflation, there they shift the balance of payments, in another place they undermine the currency—as they stampede from place to place” across national boundaries. At this time there is a total value of $2.02 trillion in such cryptocurrencies. Bankers dealing with the supranational currency are free to issue unlimited credit and—not be required to hold any cash reserves—and are able to lend out at bargain-basement rates with no credit check, fast funding (as little as in a few hours) and choice of loan currency. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The Third Wave economic system in which the corporation grew up is based on national markets, national currencies, and national government. This nation-based infrastructure, however, is utterly unable to regulate or contain the new transnational and electronic “Crypto-bubble.” This is why China has made Cryptocurrencies illegal as well as the mining and trading of them to protect their own Yuan. The structures designed for a Third Wave World are no longer adequate. Indeed, the entire global framework that stabilized World trade relations for the giant corporations is rattling and in danger of coming apart. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the American Stock Market are all under heavy attack. Governments around the World scramble to bolt together a new structure to be controlled by them. The “less developed countries” n one side, and the Middle East brandishing their petrodollars on the other, clamour for influence in the financial system of tomorrow and speak of creating their own counterparts to the IMF. The dollar is being dethroned, and jerks and spasms rip through the World economy. All this is compounded by erratic shortages and gluts of energy and resources; by rapid changes in the attitude of consumers, workers, and managers; by rapidly shifting imbalances of trade; and above all by rising militancy of the non-industrial World. This is the volatile, confusing environment in which today’s corporations struggle to operate. The managers who run them have no wish to relinquish corporate power. They still battle for profits, production, and personal advancement. However, faced with soaring levels of unpredictability, with mounting public criticism and hostile political pressures, our most intelligent managers are questioning the goals, structures, responsibility, the very raison d’etre of their organizations. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Many of our biggest corporations are experiencing something analogous to an identity crisis as they watch the once stable introduction of the Third Wave framework disintegrate around them. Of particular interest is group narcissism. Group narcissism is a phenomenon of the greatest political significance. After all, the average person lives in social circumstances which restrict the development of intense narcissism. What should feed the narcissism of a poor human, who has little social prestige, whose children even tend to look down upon one? One has nothing—but if one can identify with one’s nation, or can transfer one’s personal narcissism to the nation or corporation, then one is everything. If such a person said, “I am the most wonderful person in the World; I am the cleanest, cleverest, most efficient, best educated of all people; I am superior to everybody in the World,” anybody who heard his would be disgusted and feel that the person was a bit crazy. However, when people describe their nation in these terms, nobody takes exception. On the contrary, if a person says, “My nation is the strongest, the most cultured, the most peace-loving, the most talented of all nations,” one is not looked upon as being crazy but as a very patriotic citizen. The same hold true for religious narcissism. That millions of adherents to a religion can claim that they are the only possessors of the truth, that their religion is the only way to salvation, is considered to be perfectly normal. Other examples of group narcissism are political groups and scientific groups. The individual satisfies one’s own narcissism by belonging to and identifying oneself with the group. Not one the nobody is great, but one the member of the most wonderful group on Earth. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Someone will say to me that anyone who has humans to govern should not seek outside their nature a perfection of which they are incapable, that one should not desire to destroy their passions, and hat the execution of such a project should be no more desirable than it is possible. I will agree more strongly with all of this because a human who had no passion would certainly be a very bad citizen. However, one must agree that even though humans cannot be taught to love nothing, it is not impossible for them to learn to love one object more than another and what is truly beautiful more than what is deformed. If, for example, they are trained early enough never to consider their own persons except in terms of being related to the body of the state, and not to perceive their own existence except as part of the state’s existence, they will eventually come to identify themselves in some way with this larger whole, to feel themselves to be members of the country, to love it with that exquisite sentiment that every isolated human feels only for oneself, to elevate their soul perpetually toward this great object, and thus to transform into a sublime virtue this dangerous disposition from which arises all our vices. Not only does philosophy demonstrate the possibility of these new directions, but history furnishes us with a thousand striking examples. If they are so rare among us, it is because no one is concerned about whether there are any citizens, and sill less does anyone give any thought to take steps early enough to train them. It is too late to alter our natural inclinations when they have taken their course and habit has been joined with self-love. It is too late to draw us out of ourselves, once the human self concentrated in our hearts has acquires that disputable activity which absorbs all virtue and constitutes the life of mean-spirited people. RandolphHarris 19 of 22
How could love of country develop in the midst of so many other passions which choke it? And what is left for our fellow citizens of a heart already dividing its affections among greed, a mistress and vanity? One might object to the evaluation of one’s group and claim it is not realistically correct. For one thing, a group can hardly be as perfect as its members describe it; the more important reason, though, is that criticism of the group is responses to with intense rage, which is the reaction characteristic of one whose individual narcissism is wounded. In the narcissistic characteristic character of national, political and religious group reaction lies the root of all fanaticism. When the group becomes the embodiment of one’s own narcissism, any criticism of the group is felt to be an attack against oneself. In cases of cold or hot wars, the narcissism takes on a still more drastic form. My own nation is perfect, peace-loving, cultured, et cetera; the enemy’s is the contrary—vile, treacherous, cruel, et cetera. In reality most nations are equal in the overall balance of good and evil traits; however, virtues and vices are specific for each nation. What narcissistic nationalism does is to see only the virtue of one’s own and the vices of the enemy’s nation. The mobilization of group narcissism is one of the important conditions for the preparation of war; it must begin much earlier than the outbreak of the war, but it becomes reinforced the closer nations move towards war. The feelings at the beginning of the First World War are a god example of reason’s becoming silenced when narcissism rules. British war propaganda accused the German soldiers of bayoneting infants in Belgium (a complete lie but believed by many in the West); the Germans called the British a nation of treacherous traders while they themselves were heroes fighting for freedom and justice. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Can this group narcissism ever disappear and with it one condition for war? Indeed, there is no reason to assume that it cannot. The conditions for its disappearance are manifold. One is that the life of individuals must be so rich and interesting that they can relate to others with interest and love. This in turn presupposes a social structure that engenders being and sharing and discourages having and possessing. With the development of interest in love for others, narcissism tends to be increasingly reduced. The most important and most difficult problem, however, is that group narcissism can be produced by the basic structure of society, and the question is how this happens. The first condition for the increasing development of narcissism in industrial society is the separateness and antagonism of individuals toward each other. This antagonism is a necessary consequence of an economic system that is built on ruthless selfishness and on the principle of seeking advantages at the expense of others. When sharing and mutuality are absent narcissism is bound to thrive. However, the more important condition for the development of narcissism, and one which has been given full measure only in the last decades, is the worship of industrial production. Humans have made themselves into a god. They have created a New World, the World of human-made things, using the old creation only as raw material. Modern humans have laid bare the secrets of the microcosmos as well as the macrocosmos; one has discovered the secrets of the atom and the secrets of the cosmos, relegating our Earth to an infinitely small entity among the galaxies. The scientists making these discoveries had to perceive things as they are, objectively and hence with little narcissism. However, the consumer, in the same way as the technicians and practitioners of applied science, has not had to have the scientist. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
The overwhelming part of the human race has not had to devise the new technics; they have been able to build it according to the new theoretical insights and admire it. Thus it happens that modern human has developed an extraordinary pride in their creation; one has deemed oneself to be a god, one has felt one’s greatness in the contemplation of the grandeur of the human-made new Earth. Thus admiring one’s second creation, one has admired oneself in it. The World one has made, harnessing the energy of coal, of oil, and now of the atom, and especially the seeming limitless capacity of one’s brain, had become the mirror in which one can see oneself. Humans’ gaze into this mirror which reflects not one’s beauty but one’s ingenuity and power. Will one drown in this mirror as Narcissus drowned gazing at the picture of his beautiful body mirrored in the lake? God, please save us with Thy mighty hand. Please adorn us with the radiance of a victorious host. Please cause us to cleave close to Thee. Please bring us near to the time of redemption. Please lead us to Thy house with song and gladness. Please glorify us with salvation and joy Please bless us with ample substance and deliverance. Please hearten us with the rebuilding of Thy city to its former glory. Please exalt us to that we may merit respect everywhere. May we be remembered for gladness and rejoicing. Please cause us to lie down in a fertile valley, bright with Thy splendour, and do Thou save us. Please fortify us, O God of Jacob, and do Thou save us. We overcome this wind. We desire the rain to fall, that it be poured in showers quickly. Ah, thou rain, I adjure thee fall. If thou rainiest, it is well. A drizzling confusion. It rains and our food ripens, it is well. If the young men sing, it is well. A drizzling confusion. If our grain ripens, it is well. If our women rejoice, if the children rejoice, if the young men sing, if the aged rejoice, an overflowing in the granary, a torrent in flow, if the wind veers to the south, it is well. If the rain veers to the south, it is well. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
cresleighhomes
You’re looking at the temperature controlled beverage center with glass door, but we can’t take our eyes off that backsplash!
The Meadows Residence 2 has a little secret – this butler’s pantry between the full sized kitchen and dining room. Practical AND chic – a two-for-one deal.
This single story home boats an ideal layout with approximately 2,400 square feet, of thoughtfully designed living space, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage.
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters with a butler’s pantry to provide easy access to the dining room.
The great room is spacious and its open floor plan allows all parts of the home to flow.
The Owner’s suite nestled away from the secondary bedrooms allowing for maximum privacy, yet still accessible.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-2/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 