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Tell Me that I Will Always be the One that You Want, Do Not Know What I Would do if I Ever Lose You!
Well, now, there is a remedy for everything except death. Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! It is not what name others call you that matters, but name you respond to that truly determines who you are. If asked in a poll, although most people would say they believe in God, and though church attendance still remains high and confessions of atheism are relatively rare, it is still perfectly clear that the crisis in modern society has also had a negative effect on religion. Theologians themselves have realized this and have spoken quite openly about the anguish religion as we know it is currently going through. The development began centuries ago, but the closer we come to the present, the greater its rate of acceleration has been. Because religion fulfills a double function, its collapse leaves us with a double loss. Our religion, based primarily on the Judeo-Christian tradition, provides us with both an explanation of the natural World and moral principles—an ethic. Those two functions have nothing to do with each other, for how you explain the natural World is one thing, and what moral principles and values you have is quite another. However, the two functions were not originally separated, and there are a number of reasons why not. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
First of all, the idea that the World was created by a God who incorporated in Himself the highest intelligence, wisdom, and power was a plausible, indeed, a rational hypothesis. And even if you are a convinced Darwinist who sees the development of the World and of humans as a consequence of natural selection or mutation, you may still feel that the population of God the Creator is much easier to understand and accept than the rather complex alternative; for evolutionary theory claims that humans in their present form are the product of certain principles that went into effect hundreds of millions of years ago and that are to some degree subject to pure chance or, at best, to the laws of natural selection. Dr. Darwin’s explanation of the natural World seems altogether logical and plausible, but despite that it remains alien to our minds. Here is a story illustrating the profound corruption of the soul. It is a story about a church that would generally be regarded as successful or prosperous. Whether real or imagined, I leave you to ponder. In actuality you will find many churches that are a close fit to this description. The church in question was founded out of conflict in another church. It called its first pastor, and things seemed to be going well until that pastor committed adultery, and used to church funds to buy a brand new Mercedes Benz because one of the young women in the church had the most expensive Mercedes-Benz. The pastor also committed various other improper financial acts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The congregation dismissed the pastor, and a second pastor was appointed. He was very popular and the church grew, but he resigned after four years from stress, or an episode of neurosis, depending on whom you believed. A third pastor came and was quite popular. Again, the church grew, but after a while he started giving himself salary raises, which the congregation did not knowingly approve. After ten years he left, started another church within ten miles of his former church, and took three hundred members with him. A fourth pastor was called. Everything seemed fine. Then he has an affair involving pleasures of the flesh with another man, which he eventually disclosed to his board and staff, after being caught in the church bathroom with his britches down around his ankles in the throes of passion, and he expected them to cover it up. In the midst of much lying and discord in the board and staff, the church seemed to go on as before. Of course the people in the community came to know about the affair anyway. A year or so later the pastor received a call from a larger church a two-hour drive away. He took the position, leaving behind a congregation, board, and staff full of strife and anger. This all happened in cone congregation over a period of thirty-six years. I use this story because, in the language of Peter, “judgment must begin at the house of God.” It is there we see soul ruin at its greatest. If we cannot simply do what is right there, where can we? #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The story is also illustrative of the extent to which sin, in a form everyone plainly recognizes as such, undermines even the efforts of Christ’s own people to be his people. That is its power. Although the degree and details differ, the story of this church is—in spite of come very fine exceptions—all too common. (Leading Christian magazines now feature regular sections where the sad story is told month by month.) I have also chosen the story as an illustration because a major part of the response by Christians to manifest sin, in this case, was to cover it up. This is not uncommon. No doubt it was “for the sake of the ministry,” as is usually said. The “confessions” of various pastors were often half-truths or less and were clearly matters of a formality which would, supposedly, allow the pastors and staff members to “get on with God’s business.” The exist of the last pastor left the church board and staff bitterly divided over the issues of loyalty to the former pastor and over whether or not the truth of what had happened should be publicly stated. A long period followed in which almost every meeting was filled with anger and tension and in which people retreated into their various camps, hardly speaking to each other. The words of James ring true: “Where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice,” reports James 3.16. Most Christians have never been in an intimate fellowship where the corrupted condition of the human soul did not in fact prevail—that is, in a fellowship in which they could assume that everyone would do what everyone knew to be right. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
And many people in our culture have, on the basis of their experiences, simply given up on the church—many of them in the name of God and righteousness. However, it is still a known fact that you have had church members who have tried to kill others by poisoning them and stating that they have a right to do so. What kind of God are those type of people serving? Satan. In a period of a few weeks, some years back, three nationally known pastors in California were publicly exposed for sins involving pleasures of the flesh. That is wat is now called “news.” However, pleasures of the flesh are far from being the only problem. The presence of vanity, egotism, hostility, fear, indifference, racism, homophobia, class discrimination, and down right meanness can be counted on among professing Christians. Maybe the need artificial sweetener in their sweet tea to add a little more Southern charm and pleasantness to their personality? Their opposites cannot be counted on or simply assumed in the “standard” Christian group; and the rare individual who exemplified them—genuine purity and humility, death to selfishness, freedom from rage and depression, and so on—will stand out in the group with all the obtrusiveness of a sore thumb. He or she will be a constant hinderance in the group process and will be personally conflicted by those processes, for he or she will not be living on the same terms as the others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Now for the rest of the verse from Peter: “If judgment first begins at the house of God, what shall be the outcome for those who give no heed to the gospel of God? And if it is difficult for the righteous to be saved, what will happen to the Godless and rebellious,” reports 1 Peter 4.17. It really may be about the same outside as within. The daily news, courts, law offices, community, family, and educational and penal institutions provide a constant outpouring of wrongness and wrongdoing that wells up from the malformed human spirit, mind, soul, body, and social context. Diogenes, the ancient Greek, lit a lantern and walked the streets of Athens at noonday looking for an honest man. He never found one, it is said. However, as in the church, so in life generally, a few ready to deal with the realities of the deeper self, in themselves or in others. And those few are not exactly welcomed by others. Sokrates tried to deal with the realities of the soul Athens and was killed for it. This is the customary fate of the “prophet.” Jesus was not crucified for saying, “Behold the lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin,” but for saying, “Behold the Pharisees, how they steal.” Humans have always had a need, even in their earliest, most primitive stages, to form a picture of the World and of its creation. One version of the creation that goes back in time claims that human beings were made out of blood that flowed from someone who had been killed. Not everyone was made of that blood, however. Only the brave were. Cowards and women were made from the flesh of the two legs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
That is an ancient version of the theory that Konrad Lorenz has put forward, namely, that human beings have n inborn instinct to kill, a blood lust. It was nice, of course, of the people who believed in the myth to exempt women from that blood lust, but it was not so nice of them then to throw women in with the cowards. Things have not changed much even today. According to the prejudices of modern society, women have less conscience, are more vain and cowardly, and are less realistic than men. Now all those claims are notoriously false. In many cases the shoe could easily be put on the other foot. Most women know what a pathetic figure a man can cut when he is unwell. He is much more given to self-pity and much less secure than a woman, in some cases. However, no one admits that for fear of destroying the myth. We see the same thing happening here that we see in racial stereotypes. What men say about women has no more basis in fact that what democrats say about republicans. Even Dr. Freud claimed that women have less conscience than men. Now I find it hard to imagine how anybody could have less conscience than men. What those claims, are, of course, is nothing more than propaganda about the inferiority of an enemy, which is a tactic the main stream media uses against anyone they do not like these days. The news should actually be called the propaganda department, much of what they report is sleezy gossip and malicious lies. The meteorologist used to be considered the biggest liars and unreliable, now it is the anchors and field reporters who are consider liars and incompetent. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
That kind of propaganda turns up whenever one group dominates another and discourages rebellion by holding the self-confidence of the dominated group down to an absolute minimum. That is by way of a little footnote to one of the functions of religion I mentioned above, to wit, an explanation of the natural World. Everything went along just fine until sin and dysfunction became acceptable. Dr. Darwin taught us that if we looked at creation of the World and of humans from a rational and scientific point of view we could dispense with the idea of God and explain those phenomena by the laws of evolution. It is easier for the average person to grasp the idea of God, but for science after Dr. Darwin the creation was no longer a mystery. In the light of the theory of evolution, “God” was reduced to a working hypothesis and the story of the creation of the World and of humans to a myth, a poem, a symbol, which clearly expressed something but could no longer be regarded as scientific truth. We have rejected the attempt to restrict love to its emotional element. However, there is no love without the emotional element, and it would be a poor analysis of love which did not take this element into consideration. The question is only how to relate it to the ontological definition of love. One can say that love as an emotion is the anticipation of the reunion which takes place in every love-relation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Love, like all emotions, is an expression of the total participation of the being which is in an emotional state. In the moment in which one is in the fulfillment of the desire for reunion is anticipated and the happiness of this reunion is experienced in imagination. This means that the emotional element in love does no precede the others ontologically but that the ontologically founded movement to the other one expressed itself in emotional ways. Love is a passion: this assertion implies that there is a passive element in love, namely the state of being driven towards reunion. Infinite passion for God, no less then the passion of the flesh, a consequence of the objective situation, namely of the state of separation of those who belong together and are drive towards each other in love. The ontology of love is tested by the experience of love fulfilled. There is a profound ambiguity about this experience. Fulfilled love is, at the same time, extreme happiness and the end of happiness. The separation is overcome. However, without the separation there is no love and no life. It is the superiority of the person-to-person relationship that it preserves the separation of the self-centered self, and nevertheless actualizes their reunion in love. The highest form of love and that form of it which distinguishes the Old World and the New World cultures is the love which preserves the individual who is both the subject and the object of love. In the loving person-to-person relationship Christianity manifests its superiority to any other religious tradition. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
To be everywhere primarily and absolutely, is proper to God. Now to be everywhere primarily is said of that which in its whole self is everywhere; for if a thing were everywhere according to its parts in different places, it would not be primarily; thus if a being has white teeth, whiteness belongs primarily not to the man but to his teeth. However, a thing is everywhere absolutely when it does not belong to it to be everywhere accidentally, that is, merely on some supposition; as a grain of millet would be everywhere, supposing that no other body existed. It belongs therefore to a thing to be everywhere absolutely when, on any supposition, it must be everywhere and this properly belongs to God alone. For whatever number of places be supposed, even if an infinite number be supposed besides what already exist, it would be necessary that God should be in all of them; for nothing can exist except by Him. Therefore to be everywhere primarily and absolutely belongs to God and is proper to Him: because whatever number of places be supposed to exist, God must be in all of them, not as to a part of Him, by as to His very self. The universal, and also primary matter are indeed everywhere; but not according to the same mode of existence. Number, since it is an accident, does not, of itself, exist in place, but accidentally; neither is the whole but only part of it in each of things numbered; hence it does not follow that it is primarily and absolutely everywhere. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The whole body of the Universe is everywhere, but not primarily; forasmuch as it is not wholly in each place, but according to its parts; nor again is it everywhere absolutely, because, supposing that other places existed besides itself, it would not be in them. If an infinite body existed, it would be everywhere; but according to its parts. Were there one animal only, its soul would be everywhere primarily indeed, but only accidentally. When it is said that the soul sees anywhere, this can be taken in two senses. In one sense the adverb “anywhere” determines the act of seeing on the part of the object; and in this sense it is true that while it sees the Heavens, it sees in the Heavens; and in the same way I feels in the Heavens; but it does not follow that it lives or exists in the Heavens, because to live and to exist do not import an act passing to an exterior object. In another sense it can be understood according as the adverb determines the act of the seer, as proceeding from the seer; and thus it is true that where the soul feels and sees, there it is, and there it lives according to this mode of speaking; and thus it does not follow that it is everywhere. Once the religious explanation of the natural World lost its power to convince, religion lost some authority. All that remained for it to stand on was the propagation of moral postulates. “Love thy neighbor,” the Old Testament says. “Love the stranger.” The New Testament says, “Love your enemies.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
How can anyone who takes those instructions seriously be successful in modern society? Anyone who follows those precepts is a fool. One will fall behind, not get ahead. We preach the moral precepts of the Bible but do not practice them. We run on two separate tracks. Altruism is praised; we are supposed to have love for our neighbors. However, at the same time the pressure to succeed keeps us from practicing these virtues. In my opinion it is altogether possible in our society to be a good Christian or a good Jew, that is, a loving human being, without starving to death. What matters is your level of competence and the courage needed to adhere to the truth and persist in love rather than give yourself up for the sake of your career. However, all that notwithstanding, it remains a fact that Christian or Jewish morality maybe incompatible with the morality of success, of ruthlessness, of selfishness, of not giving, of not sharing. Since that point will be obvious to anyone who reflects on it, I need not dwell on it here. Anyway, this double standard in our morality has been described and criticized often. To sum up, then, the ethic that dominates in modern capitalism has amputated religion’s others foundation of authority. Religion no longer functions as a promulgator of values, for people no longer trust it in that role either. God has abdicated both as the creator of the World and as the spokesperson for values like love of neighbor and the overcoming of greed. However, humanity does not seem either willing or able to do without religion entirely. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Humans do not live by bread alone. One has to have a vision, a faith, that awakens one’s interest and elevates one above mere animal existence. A regression to earlier heathenism and worship of idols holds no attraction for modern humans, but I think we can say that our century is developing a new religion, one I would like to call the religion of technology. There are two particular aspects of this religion I would like to mention here. One is the promise the Trump Tower, the dream of unlimited and instant gratification. New needs are being produced every minute; there is no end to them; and humankind, like an eternal suckling babe, waits with an open heart, expecting to receive consideration and concern and unconditional love, and expecting to be fed more and more delicious food and sweet, nourishing nectar. This is a paradise of total gratification, a paradise of superfluity that makes us lazy and passive. Technology’s goal becomes the elimination of effort. The other aspect of this religion is more complex. Ever since the Renaissance, humanity has concentrated its intellectual efforts on penetrating and understanding nature’s secrets. However, nature’s secrete were, at least to some extent, also the secrets of nature’s creator. For four hundred years humans have invested their energies in plumbing nature’s mysteries so that one will be able to control nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
One’s most deep-seated motive was to cease being a mere spectator of the natural World and to become able to create that World oneself. It is difficult to express precisely what I want to say here, but if I were to state what I mean in its most radical form, I would have to say: Humans wanted to become God. What God was able to do, humans wanted to be able to do, too. I think the spectacle and the enthusiasm we witnessed when the astronauts first set foot on the Moon had the quality of a pagan religious ceremony. That moments represented the human’s first step on the way to overcoming one’s human limitations and becoming God. Even Christian newspapers were saying that the conquest of the Moon was the greatest thing to happen since the creation of the Universe. Now it is a bit imprudent of Christians to say that—after the creation itself—there is another event more important tan the Incarnation. However, that was all forgotten in the moment when people were themselves witness to the fact of human’s stepping outside the laws that hard limited one before, overcoming the force of gravity, and setting on a path to infinity. It is God making the impossible possible, much like he may one day allow humans to discover the secrete to resurrection and immortality. I mean, in the 1970s, liver transplants where not possible, in the 1800s, humans could not fly into space and now they can. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Technology emerging as a new God, perhaps an extension of God’s power. That is why scientists have to coverup what they are doing and humans rationalize their advancements because there are things most people do not have the mental ability to recreate. Technology is becoming the Great Mother who will feed all her children and satisfy all their demands. Technological capability has become a moral obligation, and has become the very source of our morality. If God is dead, then anything would be permitted, but then the World He created would also cease to exist. If people no longer believe in God, if God was no longer a reality that forms their thoughts and actions, then we have a good reason to ask whether they will not become totally immortal, whether they will not stop looking to any kind of moral principles for guidance. That is a question we have to take seriously, and if we are feeling pessimistic, we may conclude that it is exactly what has happened and that our morality is continuing to decline all the time. There are significant differences between now and earlier times. In 1914, for example, the warning nations adhered to two internationally accepted rules. Civilians were not killed, and no one was tortured. Today it is taken for granted that civilians will be killed in the course of any and all hostilities, because warring parties no longer accept any limitations on their use of forces. Then, too, technology cannot make allowances for that kind of differentiation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Technology kills anonymously, like Agent Orange, which was manufactured by Dole, the same people you buy fruits and vegetables from. And if you did not know, Agent Orange not only killed people, but it caused cancer and alter army’s DNA and some of them passed on birth defects to their children. Leaders kill these days with sprays or by pressing a button, and unlike people impacted by 9/11 or other weed killer, Dole has never had to compensate their victims. Because people do not see their opponent of their fighter supporting them, they are not moved by sympathy or compassion. Some people actually find it funny to tease people who have cancer or who have been injured because of war, because it makes them feel better about their pathetic lives, unattractiveness and lack of success. And torture is the rule today, not the exception. Everyone tries to deny that, but it is generally known fact. The use of torture to obtain information is widespread and even used by politics like Jerry Brown, Kevin Johnson, Gavin Newsom and Darrel Steinberg. We would be astonished to know in how many counties, cities, states, and countries of the World torture is used. Perhaps we need not say that cruelty is on the increase, but it would be hard to deny that humanity and the moral prohibitions that go with it are declining. That has brought about a great change in the World, but on the other hand we can see that new moral principles are coming to the fore; we find them in the younger generation, for example, in their struggle for peace, for life, against destruction and war. They are not just mouthing empty phrases. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Many people and not just young ones are insisting that we learn to live in a World of law and order, kindness and fairness, love and harmony. They are reestablishing their allegiance to God. Billions of people have become sensitive to the destruction of life on so many fronts, to inhumane wars in which there is not even a pretense of self-defense. We see a new mortality of love taking shape, too, in opposition to the consumer society. The new morality may have its flaws, but it remains impressive in its protest against empty forms and words. We see evidence of a new morality, too, in the self-sacrifices made in the political realm, in the numerous struggles for liberation and self-determination that are going on today. Those are encouraging developments. God and other religions like Buddhism provide us with a glowing example of how come cultures develop moral principles. Those principles are rooted and flourish in humane soil. Human beings cannot live and be happy without God because when they do not acknowledge His authority, they seem to lose sight of what is good and righteous. We cannot, however, force God on people, he granted them free will. To be of God is something that has to emerge from them. People have to be deeply rooted in need to act morally. Immortality cases them to lose their inner harmony and balance. And it is immortality going under the guise of mortality if people are told that they have to kill, that they have to obey, that they should pursue only their own selfish interests, that sympathy will be a hindrance to them, and so forth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
If voices of that kind grow too loud they can drown out a person’s own inner voice, the voice of one’s humanistic conscience. That it why so many people are turning the news and radio off. It is evil mixed in with entertainment. Otherwise they will get the idea that God is dead, politicians are their only hope, and everything is permitted. “And the church did meet together off, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls. And they did meet together oft to partake in nourishment in remembrance of the Lord Jesus,” reports Moroni 6.5-6. It is very meet and right, with all powers if heart and mind, and with the service of the lips, to praise the invisible God, the Father Almighty, and His Only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, Who paid the debt of Adam for us to the eternal Father, and effaced the bond of the ancient guilt by the Blood poured forth in loving-kindness. For this is the Paschal festival in which that true Lamb is slain, and the door-posts hallowed by His Blood: in which first Thou didst bring our fathers, the children of Israel, out of Egypt, and madest them to pass over the Red Sea dry-shod. This then is the night which cleared away the darkness of sin by a pillar of radiance. This is the night which now throughout the World restores to grace and unties to holiness believers in Christ, separated from Worldly vices and from the gloom of sin. This is the night in which Christ broke the bonds of death, and ascended a Conqueror from the grave. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
For to be born had been no blessing to us, unless we could have been redeemed. O the wonderous condescension of Thy loving-kindness towards us! O the inestimable tenderness of Thy love! To redeem the servant, Thou gavest up the Son. This holy night, then, puts to flight offences, washes away sins, and restores innocence to the fallen, and joyousness to the sad. O truly blessed night which spoiled the Egyptians and enriched the Hebrews—the night in which Heaven and Earth are reconciled! We pray Thee therefore, O Lord, that Thou wouldest preserve Thy servants in the peaceful enjoyment of this Eternal happiness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord Jesus, if I love thee my soul shall seek thee, but can I seek thee unless my love to three is kept alive to this end? Do I love thee because thou art good, and canst alone do me good? It is fitting thou shouldest not regard me, for I am vile and selfish; yet I seek thee, and when I find thee there is no wrath to devour me, but only sweet love. Thou dost stand as a rock between the scorching Sun and my soul, and I live under the cool lee-side as one elect. When my mind acts without thee it spins nothing but deceit and delusion; when in my affections act without thee noting is seen but dead works. O how I need thee to abide in me, for I have no natural eyes to see thee, but I live by faith in one whose face to me is bright than a thousand Suns! #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
When I see that all sin is in me, all shame belongs to me; let me know that all good is in thee, all glory is thine. Keep me from the error of thinking thou dost appear gloriously when some strange light fills my heart, as if that were the glorious activity of grace, but let me see that the truest revelation of thyself is when thou dost eclipse all my personal glory and all the honour, pleasure and good of this World. The Son breaks out in glory when he shows himself as one who outshines all creation, makes people poor in spirit, and helps them to find their good in one. Grant that I may distrust myself, to see my all in thee. It is my experience of World-wandering that those who most know truth are themselves the least known among people. This is partly because so few seek that kind of truth which is theirs—the highest—partly because it is their own wish to remain inaccessible to all except these few seekers, and partly because their completely ego-free character is utterly without any ambition to put themselves forward in public under any pretext whatsoever, whether to gain the benefits and advantages of such a position or to practise so-called service. However, eager a Master may be to reveal truth, one is forced, by indifference and miscomprehension of the World, to conceal it. It is not an isolation due to arrogance, to too high a notion of one’s own status. It is the others who are really apart, by their animalism or egotism. One is not alien to humanity but only alien to what is low and bestial in humanity. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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And I Want Just to Call You ‘Cause We Go Together Just Like Jam and Bread or Maybe Birds of a Feather!
Accept the pain, cherish the joys, resolve the regrets; then can come the best of benedictions. As you simplify your life, the laws of the Universe will be simpler. There is only a slight difference between keeping your chin up and sticking your neck out, but it is a difference worth knowing. All of us try to feel, and pretend to feel, but we seldom do so alone. Most often we do it when we exchange gestures or signs of feelings with others. Taken together, emotion work, feeling rules, and interpersonal exchange make up our private emotional system. We bow to each other not only from the waist but from the heart. Feeling rules set out what is owed in gestures of exchange between people. They enable us to assess the worth of an outward tear or an inward attempt to feel sad for people who are inappropriate behavior. Looking at a bright light to make a tear glisten is a mark of homage, a way of paying respect to those who proclaim that sadness is owed. More generally, it is a way of paying respects to a rule about respect paying. In psychological “bowing,” feeling rules provide a baseline for exchange. There are two types of exchange—straight and improvisational. In straight exchange, we simply use rules to make an inward bow; we do not play with them. In improvisational exchange, as in improvisational music, we presuppose the rules and play with them, creating irony and humor. However, in both types, it is within the contact of feeling rules that we make our exchange and settle our accounts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
In our society, some unmeant gestures occur in such a wide variety of performances and convey impressions that are in general so incompatible with the ones being fostered that these inopportune events have acquired collective symbolic status. First, performer may accidentally convey incapacity, impropriety, or disrespect by momentarily losing muscular control of oneself. One may trip, stumble, fall; one may belch, yawn, make a slip of the tongue, scratch oneself, or be flatulent; one may accidentally impinge upon the body of another participant. Secondly, the performer may act in such a way as to give the impression that one is too much or too little concerned with the interaction. One may stutter, forget one’s lines, appear nervous, or guilty, or self-conscious; one may give way to inappropriate outbursts of laughter, anger, or other kinds of affect which momentarily incapacitate one as an interactant; one may show too much serious involvement and interest, or too little. Thirdly, the performer may allow one’s presentation to suffer from inadequate dramaturgical direction. The setting may not have been put in order, or may have become readied for the wrong performance, or may become deranged during the performance; unforeseen contingencies may cause improper timing of the performer’s arrival or departure or may cause embarrassing lulls to occur during the interaction. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Performances differ, of course, in the degree of item-by-item expressive care required of them. In the case of some international cultures, we are ready to see a high degree of expressive coherence. Granet, for example, suggests this of filial performances in China: Their fine toilet is in itself a homage. Their good deportment will be accounted an offering of respect. In the presence of parents, gravity is requisite: one must therefore be careful not to belch, to sneeze, to cough, to yawn, to blow one’s nose nor to spit. Every expectoration would run the risk of soiling the paternal sanctity. It would be a crime to show the lining of one’s garments. To show the father that one is treating him as a chief, one ought always to stand in his presence, the eyes right, the body upright upon the two legs, never daring to lean upon any object, to bend, nor to stand on one foot. It is thus that with the low and humble voice which becomes a follower, one comes night and morning to pay homage. After which, one waits for orders. Wen we commence a relationship with somebody for some purpose, we begin in a role, as teacher, or as customer, or as helper. In that sense each participant has a role to fulfill. A third party looking at this transaction can watch it and say, “You are fulfilling the role of the helper, and he or she is fulfilling the role of the helpee.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
I may be aware I am supposed to fulfill the role of helper, but I can do this in a way that expressed my genuine commitments and intentions and in my idiosyncratic way. It is the difference between taking a role and playing a role. To take a role is a commitment to a task; to play a role is a charade. Some people lose zest when they feel they can only work in a cut-and-dried, stereotyped way. In due time one outgrows that stereotype way. If one feels one must stick to that stereotyped way, it makes one sick. This is why many nurses, psychotherapists, doctors, and teachers ultimately get fed up with their professions. They lose zest because they feel that they have got to keep up the appearance of the role of a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, a therapist in some stereotyped way. When they do that, what they are telling you is that they are more committed to imitating the role than they are carrying out their professional commitment, that is [to] bring about results. When your commitment is to goals, and not means, you cannot help but be eccentric, idiosyncratic, offbeat, oddball, and creative. In contrast, in persons in whom the craving for prestige is uppermost, hostility usually takes the form of a desires to humiliate others. This desire is paramount in those persons whose own self-esteem has been wounded by humiliation and who have thus become vindictive. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Usually they have gone through a series of humiliating experiences in childhood, experiences that may have had to do either with the social situation in which they grew up—such as belonging to a underrepresented group, or being themselves poor but having wealthy relatives—or with their own individual situation, such as being discriminated against for the sake of other children, being spurned, being treated as a plaything by the parents, being sometime privileged, and other times shamed and snubbed. Often experience of this kind are forgotten because of their painful character, but they reappear in awareness if the problems concerning humiliation are clarified. In adult neurotics, however, never the direct but only indirect results of these childhood situations can be observed, results which have been reinforced by passing through a “vicious circle”: a feeling of humiliation; a desire to humiliate others; enhanced sensitivity to humiliation because of a fear of retaliation; enhanced wish to humiliate others. The tendencies to humiliate are deeply repressed, usually because the neurotic, knowing from one’s own sensitivity how hurt and vindictive one feels when humiliated, is instinctively afraid of similar reactions in others. Nevertheless some of these tendencies may emerge without one’s being conscious of it: in an inadvertent disregard of others, such as letting them wait, in inadvertently bringing others into embarrassing situations, in letting others feel dependent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Even if the neurotic is completely unaware of wishing to humiliate others or of having done so, one’s relations with them will be pervaded by a diffuse anxiety which is revealed in a constant anticipation of rebuke or humiliation for oneself. Inhibitions resulting from this sensitivity to humiliation often appear in the form of a need to avoid anything which might possibly seem humiliating to others; such a neurotic, for example, may be incapable of criticizing, of refusing an offer, of dismissing an employee, with the result that one often appears overconsiderate or over-polite. Finally, a tendency to humiliate may be hidden behind a tendency to admire. Since inflicting humiliation and bestowing admiration are diametrically opposed, the latter offers the best means of eradicating or concealing tendencies toward the former. This is the reason also why both these extremes are frequently to be found in the same person. There are several ways in which the two attitudes may be distributed, the reasons for the distribution being dependent on the individual. They may appear separately in different periods of life, a period of a general contempt for people succeeding a period of hero-worship; there may be admiration for men and contempt for women, or vice versa; or there maybe blind admiration for one or two persons, and just as blind a contempt for the rest of the World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
It is in the process of analysis that one can observe that the two attitudes in reality exist together. A patient may at the same time blindly admire and despise the analyst, either suppressing one of the two feelings or vacillating between them. In the striving for possession hostility usually takes the form of a tendency to deprive others. The wish to cheat, steal from, exploit or frustrate others is not in itself neurotic. It may be culturally patterned, or it may be warranted by the actual situation, or it may normally be considered a question of expediency. In the neurotic person, however, these tendencies are highly charged with emotion. Even if beneficial advantages one derives from them are sight or irrelevant one will feel elated and triumphant if one meets with success; in order to find a bargain, for example, one may spend time and energy entirely disproportionate to the amount saved. One’s satisfaction at success has two sources: a feeling that one has outwitted others, and a feeling that one has injured others. This tendency to deprive others takes many forms. The neurotic person will feel resentment toward a physician if one is not treated gratuitously, or for less than one is able to pay. One will feel anger toward one’s employees if they are not willing to work overtime without pay. In relations with friends and children the exploiting tendency is often justified by alleging that they have an obligation toward one. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The ordinary aspirant, whose intuition is not sufficiently developed, should test the person one proposes to accept as one’s master. This will require one to watch the other closely for a period of time. In some cases a week will give the answer, in others three months will be needed. In all cases, the aspirant ought not to commit oneself until one has enough evidence that one is committing oneself rightly. Those who lack the innate discernment or wide experience needed to detect the real character and true capacity of a master, should wait sufficiently long an seek outside advice before entrusting themselves to one. The faith that God is working through a particular being can be tested for its validity by watching one, for a sufficient length of time, what happens to those who reject one utterly or respond to one ardently. In their excessive eagerness to discover a master, they fail to practice discernment. However, wait for the true master requires a certain patience and strength. A true self-actualized person is hard to find. A false one, drooling one’s plagiarism or one;s platitudes, is easy to find. Do not fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Parents may actually destroy their children’s lives by demanding sacrifices on such a basis, and even if the tendency does not appear in such destructive forms, any mother who acts according to the belief that the child exist to give her satisfaction is bound to exploit the child emotionally. A neurotic of this kind may also tend to withhold things from others, withhold money which one ought to pay, information which one could give, pleasures of the flesh which one has led another to expect. The presence of robbing tendencies may be indicated by repeated dreams of stealing or one may have conscious impulses to steal, which one checks; one may actually have been a kleptomaniac at some period. Persons of this general type are often unaware that they purposely deprive others. The anxiety connected with their wish to do so may result in an inhibition as soon as something is expected of them, so that, for example, they forget to buy an expected birthday present, or they become impotent if a woman is willing to yield to them. This anxiety, however, does not always lead to an actual inhibition, but may become apparent in a lurking fear that they are exploiting or depriving others, as indeed they are, though consciously they would indignantly repudiate such an intention. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
A neurotic may even have this fear concerning certain of one’s activities in which these tendencies are actually not present, at the same time remaining unaware that in other activities one does exploit or deprive other people. These tendencies to deprive others are accompanied by an emotional attitude of begrudging envy. Most of us will feel some envy if others have certain advantages which we should like to have ourselves. With the normal person, however, the emphasis lies on the fact that one wishes to have these advantages oneself; with the neurotic the emphasis lies on the fact that one begrudges them to others, even if one does not want them at all. Mothers of this kind often begrudge the gaiety of their children and tell them that “those who sing before breakfast will cry before supper.” The neurotic will try to disguise the crudity of one’s begrudging attitude by putting it on the basis of a justified envy. The advantage of others, whether it concerns a doll, a girl, leisure or a job, appears so glorious and desirable that one feels entirely justified in one’s envy. This justification is possible only with the help of some inadvertent falsification of facts: an under-estimation of what one has oneself, and an illusion that the advantages of others are the really desirable ones. The self-deception may go so far as to make ne actually believe that one is in a miserable state because one fails to have the one advantage in which another person surpasses one, completely forgetting that in all other respects one would not like to change with the other. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The price one has to pay for this falsification is incapacity to enjoy and appreciate the possibilities for happiness that are available. This incapacity, however, serves to protect one from the much-feared envy of others. One does not deliberately keep oneself from satisfaction with what one has, as many normal persons who have good reason to protect themselves against the envy of certain persons, and therefore misrepresent their real situation; one does a thorough job of it, and really deprives oneself of any enjoyment. Thus one defeats one’s own ends: one wants to have everything, but in consequence of one’s destructive drives and anxieties one emerges at the end with empty hands. Love, power, and justice are metaphysically speaking as old as being itself. They preceded everything that is, and they cannot be derived from anything that is. They have ontological dignity. And before having received ontological dignity they had mythological meaning. They were gods before they became rational qualities of being. The substance of their mythological meaning is reflected in their ontological significance. Dike, the goddess of justice, receives Parmenides when he is introduced into truth itself. For there is no truth without the form of truth, namely justice. And being-itself, according to the same philosopher, is kept within the bondage of eternal laws. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
The logos of being is the power which keeps the World going and the city alive, according to Heraclitus, and Mind is the divine power which swings the wheel of being, according to Xenophanes. According to Empedocles, it is hate and love, separation, and reunion which determine the movements of the elements. Love, power, and justice are ever repeated subjects of ontology. There is hardly a leading philosopher who does not put them into they very foundations of one’s thought. In Plato we find the doctrine of eros as the power which drives to the union with the true and the good self. In his interpretation of ideas as the essences of everything, he sees them as the power of being. And justice for him is not a special virtue, but the uniting form of the individual and the social body. In Aristotle we find the doctrine of the universal eros which derives everything towards the highest form, the pure actuality which moves the World not as a cause (kinoumenon) but as the object of love (eromenon). And the movement he describes is a movement from the potential to the actual, from dynamis to energeia, two concepts which include the concept of power. Marriage under the Lordship of Christ is a mutually sanctifying relationship—it moves us toward holiness. Most of us, by the time we get married, are like a well-furnished home—and a lot of furniture needs to be tossed out to make room for the other person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Marriage helps empty those rooms. Genuine marital love reveals rooms of self-centeredness. Beyond these are autonomy and self-will—an ongoing house cleaning. Marriage certainly did that for me. I had no idea how self-centered I was until I married! In fact, marriage is the one institution which tames the inveterate barbarianism of man. Over the years a good marriage can change us for the better—almost beyond recognition. There is indeed a mutual sanctification in marriage. However, the emphasis in the Scriptures is on the responsibility of a husband’s love for his wife: “to make her holy, cleansing her by he washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless,” reports Ephesians 5.21-6.9. This is what Christ will do through our divine married to Him, for at His return the washed and regenerated Church will be presented to Him in absolute perfection. This is the dealing of the romance of the ages. Meanwhile, these divine nuptials are a parable of what ought to be the loving husband’s elevating effect on his wide. He is to be the man ff the Word who lives a Godly life, praying and sacrificing for his wife. His authentic spirituality is meant to buoy her onward and upward toward the image of Christ. The man who sanctifies his wife understands that this is his divinely ordained responsibility. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Men (ignoring for the moment our wives’ spiritual responsibility to us), do you realize it is your responsibility to seek your wife’s sanctification? Even more, honestly, do you accept it? Marriage will reveal something about her which you already know about yourself—that she is a sinner. Marriage reveals everything: her weaknesses, her worst inconsistencies, the things others never see. Loving your spouse is not to love as a saint, but as a sinner. If we love her for her saintliness, we do not love her at all. You see your wife as you see yourself, and you love her as yourself. You realize your mutual need, and you delve into God’s Word, to listen to it with your heart and try, by His grace, to love out so that she will be encouraged by your life—and thus become an even more beautiful bride for Christ. This brings up some hard questions: Is my wife more like Christ because she is married to me? Or is she like Christ in spite of me? Has she shrunk from His likeness because of me? Do I sanctify her or hold her back? Is she a better woman because she is married to me? Is she a better friend? A better mother? Men, our call is clear: sanctifying love. A passage emphasizing the complete and absolute forgiveness of our sins is Isaiah 43.25, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Here God uses two expressions: He blots out our transgressions—that is, He removes them from the record—and He remembers them no more. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
A friend of mine, because of a teenage “prank,” had a felony conviction in Canada. Later, he received a Queen’s pardon. Now, if his past is ever investigated for criminal activity, the response given is, “We have no record of this person.” His record has not just been marked “pardoned,” it has been completely removed from the file and destroyed. It has been blotted out, never to be seen again. This is what God does with our sins. When you trust in Jesus Christ as you Savior, God removes your record from the file. He does not keep it there or daily add the long list of sins you continue to commit even as a Christian. God not only blots our sins from His record, He also remembers them no more. This expression means God no longer holds them against us. The blotting out of our transgressions is a legal act. It is an official pardon from the Supreme Governor. The remembering them no more is a relational act. It is the giving up by an injured party of all sense of being offended or injured. It is a promise never to bring up, either to Himself or to you, your sins. There is a difference between not remembering and forgetting. Forgetting is passive and is something that we human beings, not being omniscient, so. “Not remembering” is active; it is a promise whereby one person (in this case, God) determines not to remember the sins of another against him. To “not remember” is simply a graphic way of saying, “I will not bring up these matters to you or others in the future.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Consider a rebellious, recalcitrant student in a classroom. His acts of defiance toward the teacher may have both legal and relational consequences. Legally, he may be expelled from school. Relationally, the teacher may feel a deep sense of hostility toward the student. Even if the student is allowed to return to school (the equivalent of a pardon), the teacher may continue to hold hostility toward the student, “remembering” his rebellion and defiance. In order to gain a good standing in the classroom, the rebellious student needs to be both pardoned by the school authorities and forgiven by the teacher. On needs to have the teacher give up al sense of being offended and agree “not to remember”—for instance, not to bring up—his poor behavior. (Obviously, for this to happen, the student’s attitude and future conduct must change. However, still, the teacher must decide to not remember the past.) This, then, is similar to what God does when He blots out our transgressions and remembers our sins no more. As the Supreme Governor and Judge, God pardons us. As the offended party, God forgives us and He promises never to bring up our sins again. Through His death, Jesus not only secured our pardon with God, He also reconciled us to God. However, Paul said, “All this from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.18. God, acting in grace through the giving of His Son to die for us, was the initiator of reconciliation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
If you have trusted in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, you are both justified (a legal act) and reconciled (a relational act). You are no longer condemned by God. As Paul said, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8.1. In addition, you are no longer estranged from God. God is no longer against you; God is now for you. Again as Paul said, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (8.31). Both of these wonderful changes occurred because of God’s grace and despite our sin and guilt: “[For] where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (5.20). Those who hate you do not win unless you hate them—and then you destroy yourself. Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can be felt only if you do not set conditions. Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasure prove of golden sands and crystal brooks with silken lines, and silver hooks. “And there shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth; and they shall be like unto the old save the old have passed away, and all things have become new,” reports Ether 13.9. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, Who didst descend from Heaven to Earth, out of the bosom of the Father, and didst sustain five wounds upon the wood of the Cross, and shed thy precious Blood for the remission of our sins. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
We humbly beseech Thee, God, that at the day of judgment we may be set at Thy right hand and be thought worthy to hear those sweetest words, “Come, ye blessed, into the kingdom of My Father:” Who with the same Father, who will save all beings. O Father, Thou hast made man from the glory of thyself, and when not an instrument of that glory, he is a thing of nought; no sin is greater than the sin of unbelief, for if union with Christ is the greatest good, unbelief is the greatest sin, as being cross to thy command; I see that whatever my sin is, yet no sin is like disunion from Christ by unbelief. Lord, keep me from committing the greatest sin in departing from him, for I can never in this life perfectly obey and cleave to Christ. When thou takest away my outward blessings, it is for sin, innot acknowledging that all that I have is of thee, in not serving thee through what I have, in making myself secure and hardened. Lawful blessings are the secret idols, and do mist hurt; the greatest injury is in the having, the greatest good in the taking away. In love divest me of blessings that I may glorify thee the more; remove the fuel of my sin, and may I prize the gain of a little holiness as overbalancing all my losses. The more I love thee with a truly gracious love the more I desire to love thee, and the more miserable I am at my want of love; the more I hunger and thirst after thee, the more I faint and fail in finding thee, the more my heart is broken for sin, the more I pray it may be far more broken. My great evil is that I do not remember the sins of my youth, nay, the sins of one day I forget the next. Keep me from all things that turn to unbelief or lack of felt union with Christ. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
By the shedding of the Blood of Christ our Lord, peace has been established in Heaven and Earth. O truly precious is the Covenant of peace, which was made by the offering of that holy Blood! Not with gold, nor silver, nor gems, nor pearls, but with the Blood that gushed from the side of the Saviour. That Blood-shedding gladdened Heaven, purified Earth, and terrified hell. Today, O good Jesus, for us Thou didst not hide Thy Face from shame and spitting. Today, Jesus our Redeemer, for us Thou wast mocked, buffeted by unbelievers, and crowned with thorns. Today, O good Shepherd, Thou didst lay down Thy life on the Cross for the sheep, and wast crucified with robbers, and hadst Thy sacred hands nailed through. Today Thou was laid in the guarded sepulcher, and the Saints burst open their tombs. Today, O good Jesus, put an end to our sins, that no the day of Thy Resurrection we may joyfully receive Thy holy Body, and be refreshed with Thy sacred Blood. O Christ, the Only-begotten Son of the Unbegotten Father, Who for us wast this say slain, the Innocent for the ungodly; remember the price of Thy Blood, and bout out the sins of Thy people; and as Thou wast pleased to endure for us reproaches, spitting, bonds, blows, the scourge, the cross. The nails, the bitter cup, death, the spear, and lastly burial, vouchsafe to us wretched ones for whom Thou didst suffer this, the infinite blessedness of Heavenly kingdom; that we who bow down in reverence for Thy Passion, may be raised up to things Heavenly in the joys of Thy Resurrection. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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I Used to think Love was Something I Could Take or Leave Alone but Now I Could Not do without My Supply!
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new end. We should be lenient in our judgment, because often the mistakes of others would have been ours had we had the opportunity to make them. What is food to one being is bitter poison to others. Every negative development in a person is to be understood as the result of damaging influences in early childhood. This has led sometimes to irrational self-accusation on the part of parents who feel guilty for every undesirable or pathological trait that appears in a child after birth, and to a tendency of people in analysis to put the blame for all their trouble on their parents, and to avoid confronting themselves with the problem of their own responsibility. Good intentions mean noting if they cover up the unconscious intentions; “honest” dishonesty demonstrates that it is not enough to have “meant” well consciously. Forces operate in beings of which one is not aware and rationalization protects one from awareness; unconscious forces are integrated in a system to which we call character. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Character syndromes are rooted and nourished in the particular forms of relatedness of the individual to the outside World and oneself; furthermore, inasmuch as the social group shares a common character structure (“social character”) the socioeconomic conditions shared by all members of a group mold the social character. That is where the saying, “birds of a feather flock together” comes from. Love, tenderness, sadism, masochism, ambition, curiosity, anxiety, rivalry—these and many other drives are no longer each attributed to a special instinct, but to the influence of the environment (essentially the significant persons in early childhood) via the psyche. The description given thus far suggest that character determines, the character trait, whether loving or destroying, drives a person to behave in a certain way, and the person is acting according to one’s character feels satisfied. Indeed, the character traits tells us how a person would like to behave. However, we must add an important qualification: if one could. The conflict between what we would like to do and the demands of self-interest remains crucial. We cannot always behave as we are driven to by our passions, because we have to modify our behavior to some extent in order to remain alive. The average person tries to find a compromise between what one’s character would make one want to do and what one must do in order not to suffer more or less harmful consequences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The degree to which a person follows the dictates of self-preservation (ego interest) varies, of course. At one extreme the weight of the ego interest is zero; this holds true for the martyr and a certain type person who targets and terminates prominent people. At the other extreme is the opportunist for who self-interest includes everything that could make one more successful, popular, or comfortable. Between these two extremes all people can be arranged, characterized by a specific blend of self-interest and character-rooted passions. How much a person represses one’s passionate desires depends not only on factors within oneself but on the situations; if the situation changes, repressed desires become conscious and are acted out. This holds true, for instance, for the person with a sadistic-masochistic character. Everybody knows the type of person who is submissive to one’s boss and sadistically domineering to one’s wife and children. Another case in point is the change that occurs in character when the total social situation changes. The sadistic character who may have posed as a meek or even friendly individual may become a fiend in a terroristic society in which sadism is valued rather than deplored. Another may suppress sadistic behavior in all visible actions, while showing it in a subtle expression of the face or in seemingly harmless and marginal remarks. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Repression of character traits also occurs with regard to the most noble impulses. In spite of the fact that the teachings of Jesus are still part of our moral ideology, a being acting in accordance with them is generally considered a fool or a neurotic; hence many people still rationalize their generous impulses as being motivated by self-interests. These considerations show that the motivating power of character traits is influenced by self-interest in varying degrees. They imply that character constitutes the main motivation of human behavior, but restricted and modified by the demands of self-interest under varying conditions. Here is possessed the fundamental difference between behaviorism and psychoanalytic characterology. Conditioning works through its appeal to self-interest, such as the desire for food, security, praise, avoidance of pain. In animals, self-interest proves to be so strong that by repeated and optimally spaced reinforcements that interest for self-preservation proves to be stronger than other instincts like pleasures of the flesh or aggression. Humans of course also behave in accordance with one’s self-interest; but not always, and not necessarily so. One often acts according to one’s passions, one’s meanest and one’s noblest, and is often willing—and able—to risk one’s self-interest, one’s fortune, one’s freedom, and one’s life in the pursuit of love, truth, and integrity—or for hate, greed, sadism, and destructiveness. In this very difference is possessed the reason conditioning cannot be a sufficient explanation for human behavior. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The discovery of unconscious processes and of the dynamic concept of character were radical because they went to the roots of human behavior; they were disquieting because nobody can hide any longer behind one’s good intentions; they were dangerous, because if everybody were to know what one could know about oneself and others, society would be shaken to its very foundations. Psychoanalysts is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one’s subjective needs and expectations (transference), of character, and of conflicts between passionate strivings embodied in character traits and the demands for self-preservation. Thus far, feelings of inferiority have nothing to do with any factual inferiority, but have been discussed only as the effects of a tendency to recoil from competition. Do they then have nothing to do with existing shortcomings, with a realization of actual flaws? They are in fact the result of both actual and imagined inadequacies: feelings of inferiority are a combination of anxiety-motivated belittling tendencies and a realization of existing defects. As I have emphasized several times, we cannot ultimately fool ourselves, though we may be successful in shutting certain impulses out of awareness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
And therefore a neurotic person of the character we have been discussing will know, deep down, that one has anti-social tendencies which one must conceal, that one is far from genuine in one’s attitudes, that one’s pretenses are quite different from the undercurrents below the surface. One’s registering of all these discrepancies is an important cause for one’s feelings of inferiority, even though one never recognizes clearly the source of the discrepancies because they arise from repressed drives. Not recognizing their source, one gives to oneself reasons for feeling inferior which are rarely the real reasons, but only a renationalization. There is another reason why one feels that one’s inferiority feelings are the direct expression of an existing deficiency. On the basis of one’s ambition one has built up fantastic notions of one’s own value and importance. One cannot help measuring one’s realistic accomplishments against one’s notions of being a genius or a perfect human being, and in this comparison one’s real acts or one’s real possibilities appear inferior. The total result of all these recoiling tendencies is that the neurotic incurs real failures, or at most does not get on as well as one should, considering one’s opportunities and one’s gifts. Others who started with one get ahead of one, have better careers, greater success. This lagging behind does not concern only external success. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The older one becomes the more one feels the discrepancy between one’s potentialities and one’s achievements. One feels keenly that one’s gifts, whatever they may be, are going to waste, that one is blocked in the development of one’s personality, that one does not mature as time goes on. The problem of persons around the age of forty is that they become blocked in their development. However, one has not recognized the conditions leading up to such a situation, and therefore has not found any satisfactory solution. And one reacts to the realization of this discrepancy with a vague discontent, a discontent which is not masochistic but real and proportionate. A discrepancy between potentialities and achievement may be due, as I have already pointed out, to external circumstances. However, the discrepancy which develops in a neurotic person, and which is a never-failing character of neuroses, is due to one’s internal conflicts. One’s actual failures and the consequent increasing discrepancy between potentialities and achievements inevitably give even greater force to one’s existing inferiority feelings. Thus one not only believes oneself to be, but actually is inferior to what one might be. The impact of this development is all the greater since it puts the inferiority feelings on a realistic basis. Meanwhile the other discrepancy which I have mentioned—that between high-flown ambitions and the comparatively poor reality—becomes so unbearable that it demands a remedy. As such a remedy fantasy offer itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
More and more the neurotic substitutes grandiose ideas for attainable goals. The value they have for one is obvious: they cover up one’s unendurable feelings of nothingness; they allow one to feel important without entering into any competition and thus without incurring the risk of failure or success; they allow one to build up a fiction of grandeur far beyond attainable goal. It is this blind-alley value of grandiose fantasies that makes them dangerous, because the blind alley has a definite advantage for the neurotic when compared with the straightforward road. These neurotic ideas of grandeur should be distinguished from those of the normal person and those of the psychotic. Even the normal person will at times think oneself wonderful, attribute undue importance to what one is doing, or indulge in fantasies of what one might do. However, these fantasies and ideas remain decorative arabesques and one does not take them too seriously. They psychotic person with ideas of grandeur is at the other end of the line. One is convinced that one is a genius, the Emperor of Japan, Napoleon, Christ, and will reject all evidence of reality which tends to disprove one’s conviction; one will be wholly unable to comprehend any reminder that one is actually a less affluent doorman, or patient in an asylum or the object of disrespect and ridicule. If one become aware of the discrepancy at all one will decide in favor of one’s grandiose ideas, and will believe that the others do not know any better, or that they are deliberately treating one with disrespect in order to hurt one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, if therapy enables the individual to reorient one’s pattern of life and to reduce the tension and anxiety one feels regarding one’s personal problems, then the reactions of one’s automatic nervous system in, for example, a situation of stress, should also be altered. Essentially, if a change in life pattern and in internal tension occurred in therapy, this should show up in organismic changes in autonomic functioning, an area over which the individual has no conscious control. Individual who have experienced therapy develop a higher frustration threshold during their series of therapeutic contacts, and are able to recover their homeostatic balance more rapidly following frustration. After therapy, the individual is able to meet, with more tolerance and less disturbance, situations of emotional stress and frustration or stress was never considered in therapy; the more effective meeting of frustration is not a surface phenomenon but is evident in autonomic reactions which the individual cannot consciously control and of which one is completely unaware. Thus, it is predicted that if therapy enabled the individual to better handle stress at the psychological level, then this should be evident also in one’s autonomic functioning. Therefore, do not major in the minors. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. Remember to breathe not weak, snatched gasps, but deep riveting drafts. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Another point in which the impossibility of the theory of addition of love and justice becomes visible is the relation of love and justice to the concrete situation. Justice is expressed in principles and laws none of which can ever reach the uniqueness of the concrete situation. Every decision which is based on the abstract formulation of justice alone is essentially and inescapably unjust. Justice can be reached only if both the demand of the universal law and the demand of the particular situation are accepted and made effective for the concrete situation. However, it is love which created participation in the concrete situation. It would be completely wrong to say that love must be added to justice if the uniqueness of the situation is to be reached. For this would mean that justice as such is impossible. Actually the situation shows that justice is just because of the love which is implicit in it. However, this can e understood fully only in the context of an ontological analysis of the root meanings of both love and justice. The weight of the problems and the dangerous character of the confusions is equally obvious when we finally confront power and justice. It is in this realm of problems that the relation of law and order to justice and of all of them to power is discussed and more often confused than illuminated. The first questions is: Who gives the law in which justice is supposed to be expressed? #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
To give a law is the basic manifestation of power. However, if a group which has power gives laws, how are they related to justice? Are they not simply the expression of the will to power of this group? The Marxist theory of the State asserts that the laws of the State are tools which give social control to a ruling group. The origin of its power may be military invasion or it may be socioeconomic stratification. In both cases justice is possible only if the State has withered away and has been replaced by an administration without political power. The justice of the ruling class is injustice and, if defended, ideology. The laws it gives preserve a social order, and as long as there is no alternative social order, the laws of the ruling classes are better than chaos. The more cynical representatives of this theory interpret justice exclusively as a function of power and in no way as its judge. They accept the Marxist analysis without the Marxist expectation, and reduce justice completely to a function of power. In reaction against this removal of justice as an ultimate principle a theory has been developed which tries to separate justice from power and completely and to establish it as a self-contained system of valid judgements. Justice is an absolute, without any relation to structures of power. The absolute law, derived from the principles of the natural or rational law, does not express wat is, but it demands what should be. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Irrespective of power it commands and expects obedience because of its intrinsic validity. It does not express but it judges power. The contrast of these two theories about the relation of power to justice reveals the difficulty of the problem and the necessity of an ontological research into the rot meanings of power and justice. As announced before, I have led you into a jungle of problems and confusions, and, at every point, I have indicated the way out; namely, the ontological analysis of love, power, and justice. When the God we love chose to reveal Himself, He did so in creation itself and in more specific, special ways—most importantly, in the Scriptures and Jesus Christ. When we affirm that the Bible is a revelation from God, we do not simply assert that God as a person is known in and through it. We also mean that God has revealed understandable, objectively true propositions. The Lord’s Word is not only practically useful, it is also theoretically true (John 17.17). God has revealed truth to us and not just Himself. This truth is addressed to our minds and requires an intellectual grasp to understand and then apply. Because of the Bible’s nature, serious study is needed to grasp what it says. Of course, the Scripture contains easily grasped portions that are fairly straightforward. However, some of it is very difficult, intellectually speaking. In fact, Peter one said that some of Paul’s writings were intellectually challenging, hard to understand, and easily distorted (that is, uneducated in Christian theology) and unstable people (2 Peter 3.16). #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The more a person develops the mind and the understanding of hermeneutics (the science of interpreting the Scriptures), the more one will be able to understand the meaning and significance of the Scriptures. Unfortunately, many today apparently think that hard intellectual work is not needed to understand God’s propositional revelation to us. Instead, they believe that the Holy spirit will simply make know the meaning of a text if it is implored to do so. Tragically, this represents a misunderstanding of the Spirit’s role in understanding the Scriptures. In my view, the Spirit does not help the believer understand the meaning of Scripture. Rather, He speaks to the believer’s soul, convicting, comforting, opening up applications of His truths through His promptings. On the evening Christ gave Himself up for us, John 17 tells us, He prayed in succession for Himself, for His twelve disciples, and for all of us who would later believe. When He finished praying for His future bride, He went to the cross. Then came Hos death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His enthronement at the right hand of the Father, where He constantly makes intercession for us. Thus we understand that giving ourselves for our brides involves prayerful intercession. Men, do you pray for your wives with something more than, “Bless good Meghan in all she does”? If not, you are sinning against her and against God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Most Christian men who claim to love their wives never offer more than a perfunctory nod to their wives’ needs before God. Men, you ought to have a list of her needs, spoken and unspoken, which you passionately hold up to God out of love for her. Praying is the material work of a Christian husband! The most basic command is, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave up himself for her.” Men, we are divinely called to die for our brides, to take on her sufferings as our own, and to make intercession for her. You are supposed to be her ride or die man. When it is said that the readiness of the seeker determines the appearance of the master, this applies to the first fundamental initiation of one’s spiritual life. It does not mean that a master will come into one’s own town and seek one out, but that one will come into one’s life. And this may be brought about in various ways—as by the seeker oneself being led, either by Worldly circumstances or by one’s own seeking, out of one’s own town to the town or country where the master is living. The location of one’s spiritual guide will in part be the accident of one’s own geographical situation, for one will obviously be limited in one’s selection to possibilities and reputations in one’s own country or nation or race. The sheer physical and financial difficulties of traveling throughout the World—not to mention the obstacles of personal circumstance, family obligations, and ignorance of where to search and whom to approach in foreign lands, combine to set this limitation upon one’s inquiry and hence upon one’s opportunity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
It is foolish to seek holiness geographically or holy beings in particular places. I have found that one being may live in a Himalayan abode and be a scoundrel and another being may live in a Bowery slum and be a saint. Wherever the live, people always carry their own thoughts and their own selves with them. The Soul, which is the object of our quest, is within us. The Master, who is to guide us upon our quest, will appear whenever we are ready for one and wherever we happen to live—or else we will be led to one. There are beings in the New World and the Old World, not less wise and noble than each other. If we have not met them, “the fault, Dear Brutus is…in ourselves,” primarily in our unworthiness, and secondarily in our incapacity to recognize what is beneath the surface. All speculation upon the motives and the methods of the illuminate will avail little. The light by which one works is denied to ordinary beings. We should not try to bind one down to qualities which fit only those who grope in the dark or move in twilight. We should trust where we cannot see and wait patiently for the day of revilement, when we will find all made clear and all riddle solved to our satisfaction. It is an old truism in the Old World that it takes an adept to understand an adept, but the New World will have to learn this truth by bitter experiences with pseudo-adepts. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
There are many signs of one’s spiritual status in the dignity and composure of one’s bearing, the deliberateness and truthfulness of one’s speech, and the impressiveness of one’s tension-free face. Helter Skelter is a phrase taken from a song performed by a well-known rock music group. Charles Manson used it to characterize that state of confusion in which he kept his followers, and himself as well. In the state of helter-skelter nothing makes sense, and everything makes as much sense as anything else. Manson was able to use this ideology to brainwash his followers and make them believe they were not responsible for their actions and they were not doing anything wrong when the ended the life of an individual. He taught them they if harm came to a person by means of his follower’s hands, then it was meant to be, it was in divine order and they did no really harm the individual and the individual was still alive on a different plane of existence. Aldous Huxley, in one of his retrospective writings, commented on how, among the associates of his youth, the endless talk of meaninglessness—the meaninglessness of life and therefore of everything in it—was merely an excuse to permit them to do whatever they wanted. Their life was organized (or, more properly, disorganized) around their feelings and wayward thoughts, with their will in two. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
However, resolute action for the good requires that things make sense. You would not want someone caught up in helter-skelter to work on your lawn mower, do your gastrointestinal examination, nor work on your computer. Life makes sense only if you understand its basic components and how they interrelate to form the whole. Evil, on the other hand, thrives on confusion. God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14.33). Frankly, our visible Christian World is not too far from helter-skelter with reference to its understanding of the makeup of the person and therefore of the spiritual life and spiritual formation. We need to access the fullness of biblical teachings on these matters. We suffer far too much from the influence of a surrounding culture that thrives on confusions. (And therefore its denial that human beings have a nature.) This may seem like a harsh thing to say about our “Christian World,” and I am sorry to day it; but the issues here are too important to mince words. Accordingly, much of what we do in Christian circles with very good intentions—hoping, we say, to see steady, significant growth in Christlikeness—simply makes no sense and lead nowhere so far as substantive spiritual formation is concerned. What a brutal thing to say! However, we need to recognize this, or show why it is not the case. I hope we have taken significant first steps toward a clarity that can serve as a foundation for the effectual practice of Christian spiritual formation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. “As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgression from us,” reports Psalm 103.12. How far is the East from the West? If you start due north at any point on Earth, you would eventually cross over the North Pole and start going south, but that is not true when you go East or West. If you start West and continue in that direction you will always be going West. North and South meet at the North Pole, but East and West never meet. In a sense, they are an infinite distance apart. So when God says He removes our transgressions from us as far as the East is from the West, He is saying they have been removed an infinite distance from us. However, how can we get a handle on this rather abstract truth in such a way that it becomes meaningful in our lives? When God uses this metaphorical expression describing the extent of His forgiveness of our sin, He is saying His forgiveness is total, complete, and unconditional. God is saying He is not keeping score with regard to our sins. “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities,” reports Psalm 103.10. Yes, God actually says that! I know it seems too good to be true. I confess I almost hesitate to write those words because they are so foreign to our innate concepts of reward and punishment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
However, those gracious words are right in the Bible, and they are God’s words. How can God possibly do this? How can He so completely disregard our transgressions as to say He removes them an infinite distance from us? The answer is by His grace through Jesus Christ. God laid our sins on Christ and He bore the penalty we should have borne. Because of Christ’s death in our place, God’s justice is now completely satisfied. God can now, without violating His justice or His moral law, forgive us freely, completely and absolutely. He can now extend His grace to us; He can show favor to those who, in themselves, deserve only wrath. O Loving Wisdom of the living God, O living everlasting Word and everlasting Power of God the eternal Father—for everlasting is Thy birth, Who art the everlasting Son of God the everlasting Father, and art God; without Whom is nothing, by Whom are all things; in Whom consisteth whatever is; Who art God above us, and Man for our sakes; for Thou hast willed for us to be what we are: grant us what Thou hast promised; give to us, although unworthy, what Thou hast offered to all alike; that is, that Thy Passion may be our deliverance, and Thy Death our life, and Thy cross our redemption, and Thy Wound our healing; that being crucified with Thee, we may by Thy gift be lifted up on high to Thy Father, with Whom in bliss Thou livest and reignest. “And it is by faith that my fathers have obtained the promise that these things should come unto their brethren through the Gentiles; therefore the Lord hath commanded me, yea, even Jesus Christ,” reports Ether 12.22. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
O Source of All Good, what shall I render to three for the gift of gifts, then own dear Son, begotten, not created, my redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute, his self-emptying incomprehensible, his infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp. Herein is wonder of wonders: he came below to rise me above, was born like me that I might become like him. Herein is love; when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace, to raise me to himself. Herein is power; when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart he untied them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created. Herein is wisdom; when I was undone, with no will to return to him, and no intellect to devise recovery, he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost as man to die my death, to shed satisfying blood on my behalf, to work out a perfect righteousness for me. O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, and enlarge my mind; let me hear good tidings of great joy, and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore, my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose, my eyes uplifted to reconcile Father; place me with ox, mule, camel, goat, to look with them upon my redeemer’s face, and in him account myself delivered from sin; let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart, embrace him with undying faith, exulting that he is mine and I am his. In him thou hast given me so much that Heaven can give no more. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Oh, I Cannot Break Away I Must Have You Everyday as Regularly as Coffee or Tea!
When bad people combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Successful change requires: painstakingly laying a foundation; planning in incredible detail; tediously covering and recovering all the bases; continuously explaining and re-explaining; dealing with naysayers; playing politics; soothing egos; dispelling fears; cheerleading; troubleshooting; communicating; compromising; coaxing; cajoling; and ultimately, dragging a few stragglers kicking and screaming into the future. That is hard work. It is also leadership! And, the curious paradox is that when one accepts one’s self just as he or she is, then one has the ability to change. Many people are advocating members of society to get mental help, but no one is opening up with a testimony about their experience and what helped them. Drug therapy is not the only form of therapy. Sometimes all a person needs is someone to talk to and express what they are going through so they can feel like an accepted member of the population. Also, old theories about if you seem to have a problem with everyone, then you are likely the problem is an outdated hypothesis because tribalism and pack mentality has become a common expression for many groups in American culture. Therefore, some people are actually singled out and made to feel like misfits when nothing is actually wrong with them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
When the initial self-picture of someone has been in a therapeutic program is compared with those after therapy, it is found that after therapy the client sees himself or herself as changed in a number of ways. One feels one is more self-confident and self-reliant, understands oneself better, has more inner comfort, and more comfortable relationships with others. One feels less guilty, less resentful, less driven and insecure, and feels lees need for self-concealment. It is also an expectation that one will achieve greater congruence of self and ideal primary through alteration of their values, others through the alteration of self. Evidence supports this conclusion, and it appears that the concept of the self is what exhibits the greater change. Some change, however, does occur in the ideal self in the case of our client and the direction of this slight change is of interest. In other words, the self-deal has becomes less perfectly adjusted, or more attainable. It is to some degree a less punishing goal. We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden. Most people are willing to adapt not because they see the light but because they feel the heat. It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
Another finding in connection with therapy has to do with the “remembered self.” This remembered self turns out to be very different from the self-picture one gives at the time of entering therapy. Usually people need about eighteen months of therapy to see a significant change. In sorting of for the remembered self we have a crude objective measure of the reduction in defensiveness which occurs. One is usually able to give a considerably truer picture of the maladjusted and disturbed person that one was when he or she entered therapy, a picture which is confirmed by other evidence. In client-centered therapy our theory is that in the psychological safety of the therapeutic relationship the client is able to permit in one’s awareness feelings and experiences which ordinarily would be repressed, or denied to awareness. These previously denied experiences now become incorporated into the self. For example, a client who has repressed all feelings of hostility may come, during therapy, to experience one’s hostility freely. One’s concept of oneself then becomes reorganized to include this realization that one has, at times, hostile feelings towards others. One’s self-picture becomes to that degree a more accurate map or representation of the totality of one’s experience. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
The most significant change in a person’s life is a change of attitude. Right attitudes produce right actions. All change in involves problems, and all successful change involves solving those problems. If you do not tackle problems, you might have less conflict, but you do not get anywhere in terms of change. That is why risk-taking is important. Those who are successful at implementing change do not have fewer problems. The difference is they have a problem-solving attitude and a problem solving mechanism. During and after therapy there will be an increasing congruence between the self as perceived by the client and the client as perceived by a diagnostician. The assumption is that a skilled person making a psychological diagnosis of the client is more aware of the totality of the client’s experience patterns, both conscious and unconscious, than is the client. Hence if the client assimilates into one’s own conscious self-picture many of the feelings and experiences which previously one has repressed, then one’s picture of oneself should become more similar to the picture which the diagnostician has of one. Thus we may say that the objective evidence indicates that the client has become, in one’s self-perception and in one’s total personality picture, substantially the person one wished to become when one entered therapy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
The individuals who will succeed and flourish will also be masters of change: adept at reorienting their own and other’s activities in untried directions to bring about higher levels of achievement. They will be able to acquire and use power to produce innovation. You may have habits that weaken you. The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Advice is like the snow. The softer it falls, the deeper it sinks into the mind. Among the many ways of thus recoiling from competition, perhaps the most important is that by which the neurotic creates in one’s imagination such a distance from one’s real or alleged competitor that any competition appears absurd, and is thereby eliminated in consciousness. This distance may be achieved either by setting the other person on a pedestal high out of reach, or by putting oneself so far below all others that any competitive thoughts or attempts seems impossible and ridiculous. The latter process is called “belittling.” Belittling oneself may be a conscious strategy, practiced merely for reasons of expediency. If the disciple of a great painter has done a good picture but has reason to fear the begrudging attitude of one’s master, one may belittle one’s work in order to allay the master’s envy. Always imitate the behavior of winners when you lose. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
The neurotic person, however, has only the vague notion of a tendency to undervalue oneself. If one has done a good job one will seriously believe that others would have done better, or that one’s success was an accident and that one probably could not do so well again. Or, having done well, one may pick out some flaw, such as having worked too slowly, and use this to devaluate one’s entire accomplishment. A scientist may feel ignorant about questions concerning one’s own field, so that one’s friends have to remind one that one’s self has written about them. When asked a question which is unwise or unanswerable one will be inclined to react with a feeling of one’s own folly; when reading a book with which one dimly disagrees one will be inclined, instead of thinking it through critically, to infer that one is not intelligent enough to understand it. One may perhaps cherish the belief that one has managed to preserve a critical and objective attitude toward oneself. However, not only will such a person take one’s inferiority feelings at their face value; one will insist on their validity. In spite of one’s complaints about them and the sufferings they cause one, one is far from accepting any evidence to disprove them. If regarded as a highly competent worker one will maintain that one is being overvalued or that one has succeeded in bluffing others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
For instance, there was a girl I mentioned heretofore, who developed an inordinate ambition at school after the humiliating experience with her brother, was always the first in her class and was regarded by everyone as a brilliant student, but was still convinced in her own mind that she was stupid. Although a glance into a mirror or the attention paid by men might be enough to convince a woman that she is attractive, she may still cling with an iron conviction to the belief that she is unattractive. A person may be convinced until he is forty that he is too young to assert his opinion or take a lead, and after forty he may switch to a feeling that he is too old. A well-known scholar was continually amazed at the reverence shown him, and in his own feelings insisted on being an insignificant mediocrity. Compliments are discarded as empty flattery or as prompted by ulterior motives, and may even result in anger. Observations of this kind, which can be made almost without limit, show that inferiority feelings, perhaps the most common evil of our times, have an important function, and for that reason are maintained and defended. Their value consists in the fact that by lowering one’s self in one’s own mind and thereby putting one’s self below other people and checking one’s ambition, the anxiety connected with competitiveness is allayed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
For one young lady, this strange sense of cruelty and ugliness always imminent, ready to seize hold upon her, who was the exception, formed one of the deepest influences of her life. Wherever she was, a school, among friends, in the street, in the train, she instinctively abated herself, made herself smaller, feigned to be less than she was for fear that her undiscovered self should be seen, pounced upon, attacked by brutish resentment of the commonplace, the average Self. Incidentally is should not be overlooked that inferiority feelings may factually weaken one’s position for the reason that self-belittling leads to an impairment of self-confidence. A certain amount of self-confidence is a prerequisite for any achievement, whether it be in varying a standard recipe for salad-dressing, selling merchandise, defending an opinion, or making a good impression on a potential relative. A person with strong tendencies to belittle oneself may have dreams in which one’s competitors excel, or in which one is at a disadvantage. Since there is no doubt that one subconsciously wishes for a triumph over competitors such dreams might look like a contradiction of Dr. Freud’s contention that dreams represent wish fulfillments. Dr. Freud’s view must not, however, be taken too narrowly. If direct wish-fulfillment involves too much anxiety, the allaying of that anxiety will be more important than a direct fulfillment of the wish. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
Thus when a person who is afraid of one’s ambition has dreams in which one id defeated, one’s dreams are the expression not of a wish to fail but of a preference for failure as the lesser evil. A patient of mine was scheduled to give a lecture during a period of her treatment when she was desperately fighting to defeat me. She has a dream that I was giving a successful lecture and that she was sitting in the audience humbly admiring me. Again, an ambition teacher dreamed that one’s pupil was the teacher and that he failed to know his assignment. The degree to which self-belittling serves as a check on ambitions is shown also by the fact that the capacities that are belittled are usually the ones in which the individual desires most ardently to excel. If one’s ambition is of an intellectual character, intelligence is its instrument and hence is belittled. This connection is so usual that one may guess from the focus of the self-belittling tendency where the greatest ambitions are possessed. The ambiguities in the meaning of love, power, and justice have confusing consequences and produce new problems as soon as the relation of the three concepts to each other is considered. Love and power are often contrasted in such a way that love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. Powerless love and loveless power are contrasted. This, of course, is unavoidable if love is understood from its emotional side and power from its compulsory side. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
However, such an understanding is error and confusion. It was this misinterpretation which induced the philosopher of the “will-to-power” to reject radically the Christian idea of love. And it is the same misinterpretation which induces Christian theologians to reject the philosophy of the “will-to-power” in the name of the Christian idea of love. In both cases an ontology of love is missing and in the second case power is identified with social compulsion. In the same period the theological school which has been created by Albrecht Ritschl dominated the field of Protestant theology. The anti-metaphysical bias of this school caused it to contrast the love of God with His power in such a way that the power actually disappeared and God became identified with love in its ethical meaning. The consequence was an ethical theism which neglected almost completely the divine mystery and majesty. God as the power of being was discarded as a pagan invasion. The trinitarian symbolism was dissolved. The kingdom of God was reduced to the ideal of an ethical community. Nature was excluded because power excluded. And power was excluded because the question of being was excluded. For if the question of being is asked and concepts like love and power are seen in the light of the ontological question, the unity of their root meanings can become visible. Yet most important are the problems in social ethics which result from the confrontation of love and power. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
One could say that constructive social ethics are impossible as long as power is looked at with distrust and love is reduced to its emotional or ethical quality. Such a division leads to a rejection of or indifference to the political realm on the side of religion. And it leads to the separation of the political from the religious and the ethical and to the politics of mere compulsion on the political side. Constructive social ethics presuppose that one is aware of the element of love in structure of power and of the element of power without which love becomes chaotic surrender. It is the ontological analysis of love and power which must produce this awareness. The problems and confusions which characterize the discussion of love in its relation to power, characterize equally the discussion of love in its relation to justice. One does not usually contrast love with justice in the way in which one contrast love with power. However, it is commonly accepted that love adds something to justice that justice cannot do by itself. Justice, one says, demands that an inherited fortune is distributed in equal parts amongst those who have the same legal claim. However, love may induce one of the heirs to surrender one’s right to one of the other heirs. In this case one acts in a way which is not demanded by justice, but may be demanded by love. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Love transcends justice. This seems rather evident, but it is not! If justice is not limited to proportional distribution, the act of resignation might have been an act of non-proportional justice, or it might have been an act of injustice against oneself, as in the first act of Shakespeare’s King Lear, when Lear surrenders all his powers to his daughters. The relation of love to justice cannot be understood in terms of an addition to justice which does not change its character. Only an ontology of justice can describe the true relation of the root concepts. Another example supports this view. A man may say to another: “I know your criminal deed and, according to the demand of justice, I should bring you to trial, but because of my Christian love I let you go.” Through this leniency, which is wrongly identified with love, a person may be driven towards a thoroughly criminal career. This means that one has received neither justice nor love, but injustice, covered by sentimentality. One might have been saved by having been brought to trial after his first fall. In this case the act of being just would have been the act of love. In classical theology the tension between love and justice is symbolized in the doctrine of atonement as developed by Anselm of Canterbury. According to Anselm, God Himself must find a way to escape the consequences of His retributive justice which conflicts with His merciful love. He is subject to the law of justice which is given by Himself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
And this law would cause the eternal death of all beings in spite of His desire to save humans according to His love. The solution is the undeserved, substitutional death of the God-man, Jesus Christ. In spite of its theological weakness this remained the predominant doctrine in Western Christianity because of its psychological power. It implies the ontological insight, which it explicitly contradicts, that ultimately love must satisfy justice in order to be real love, and that justice must be elevated into unity with love in order to avoid the injustice of eternal destruction. However, this is not manifest in the legal form in which the doctrine is developed. O God, Who for us hast willed Thy Son to endure the gibbest of the Cross, that Thou mightiest drive away from us the power of the enemy; grant to us Thy servants to attain the grace of resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. “Our Lord, thy righteous will be done, for I know that thou workest unto the children of men accord to their faith,” reports Ether 12.29. O my God, thou fairest, greatest, first of all object, my heart admires, adores, loves thee, for my little vessel is as full as it can be, and I would pour out all that fullness before thee in ceaseless flow. When I think upon and converse with thee ten thousand delightful thoughts spring up, ten thousand sources of pleasure are unsealed, ten thousand refreshing joys spread over my heart, crowding into every moment of happiness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
I bless thee for the soul thou has created, for adorning it, sanctifying it, though it is fixed in barren soil; for the body thou hast given me, for preserving its strength and vigour, for providing senses to enjoy delights, for the ease and freedom of my limbs, for hands, eyes, ears that do thy bidding; for they royal bounty providing my daily support, for a full table and overflowing cup, for appetite, taste, sweetness, for social joys of relatives and friends, for ability to serve others, for a heart that feels sorrows and necessities, for a mind to care for my fellow-humans, for opportunities of spreading happiness around, for loved ones in the joys of Heaven, for my own expectations of seeing thee clearly. I love thee above the powers of language to express, for what thou art to thy beings. Increase my love, O my God, through time and eternity. O God, Who for our redemption hast received the Blood of Jesus Christ, destroy the works of the devil, and break through all the snares of sin; that those who have been created by a new birth may not be defiled by the old contagion. Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst stretch out Thine hands on the Corss, and redeem us by Thy Blood, forgive me a sinner, for none of my thoughts are hid from Thee. Pardon I ask, pardon I hope for, pardon I trust to have. Thou Who art pitiful and merciful, spare and forgive me. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
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Life is the Rose’s Hope While Yet Unblown the Reader of an Ever-Changing Tale!
You are rich beyond your wildest dreams! Treasures it, measure it, in units of love. We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. Learning to lead is, on one level, learning to manage change. A leader imposes (in the most beneficial sense of the word) one’s philosophy on the organization, creating or re-creating its culture. The organization then acts on that philosophy, carries out the mission, and the culture takes on a life of its own, becomes more cause than effect. However, unless the leader continues to evolve, to adapt and adjust to external changes, the organization will sooner or later fall. You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere. Think of accelerated change as an object hurtling toward you at tremendous speed. If you first spot it a mile away, its speed and the distance between you and it blur its nature; all you can see is an indistinct shape. As the object continues rushing toward you, you begin to discern a rough oblong shape, but you cannot determine much else about it. Is it a threatening enemy missile or a friendly vehicle you might ride toward the future? Quickly, it bears down on you. As you peer at it closely, you suddenly see handles on its side. An opportunity, not a danger! If you have focused well enough and soon enough, you can seize it, letting it whisky you forward well ahead of those who failed to focus on it in time. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Many people do not understand the concept of faith because they are still learning to believe. However, electricity had the possibility of being discovered in 400 A.D., but was not discovered until 1752. So that gives you an idea of how powerful can become as you develop it. Perhaps we will eventually have the power to manifest our blessings by believing they are possible. New ideas do not detach themselves gradually from the traditional concepts of energy by deeper reflection on them, but belongs to those intuitively apprehended ideas which, arising in other realms of a spiritual nature, as it were take possession of the mind and compel it to reshape the traditional conceptions in their own likeness. The question now arises: Whence this new idea that thrusts itself upon consciousness with such elemental force? And whence did it derive the power that could so seize upon consciousness that it completely eclipsed the multitudinous impressions of a first voyage to the tropics? These questions are not so easy to answer. However, if we apply our theory here, the explanation can only be this: the idea of energy and its conservation must be a primordial image that was dormant in the collective unconscious. Such a conclusion naturally obliges us to prove that a primordial image of this kind really did exist in the mental history of humankind and was operative through the ages. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
As a matter of fact, this proof can be produced without much difficulty: the most primitive religions in the most widely separated parts of the Earth are founded upon this image. These are the so-called dynamistic religions whose sole and determining thought is that there exists a universal magical power about which everything revolves. Many people misunderstand this idea of animism. In reality primitives do not mean, by their power-concept, souls or spirits at all, but something which the American investigator Lovejoy has appropriately termed “primitive energetics.” This concept is equivalent to the idea of soul, spirit, God, health, bodily strength, fertility, magic, influence, power, prestige, medicine, as well as certain states of feeling which are characterized by the release of affects. Among certain Polynesians mulungu—this same primitive power-concept—means spirit, soul, daemonism, magic, prestige; and when anything astonishing happens, the people cry out “Mulugu!” This power-concept is also the earliest form of a concept of God among primitives, and is an image which has undergone countless variations in the course of history. In the Old Testament the magic power glows in the burning bush and in the countenance of Moses; in the Gospels it descends with the Holy Ghost in the form of fiery tongues from Heaven. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
In Heraclitus magic power appears as World energy, as “ever-living fire”; among the Persians it is the fiery glow of “Haoma,” divine grace; among the Stoics it is the original heart, the power of fate. Again, in medieval legend it appears as the aura or halo, and it flares up like a flame from the roof of the hut in which the saint lies in ecstasy. In their visions the saints behold the Sun of this power, the plentitude of its light. According to the old view, the soul itself is this power; in the idea of the soul’s immortality the there is implicit its conversation, and in the Buddhist and primitive notion of metempsychosis—transmigration of souls—is implicit its unlited changeability together with its constant preservation. So this idea has been stamped on the human brain for aeons. That is why it lies ready to hand in the unconscious of every being. Only, certain conditions are needed to cause it to appear. These conditions were evidently fulfilled in the case of Benjamin Franklin. The greatest and best thoughts of beings shape themselves upon these primordial images as upon a blueprint. I have often been asked where the archetypes or primordial images comes from. It seems to me that their origin can only be explained by assuming them to be deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity. One of the commonest and at the same time most impressive experiences is the apparent movement of the Sun every day. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
We certainly cannot discover anything of the kind in the unconscious, so far as the known physical process is concerned. What we do find, on the other hand, is the myth of the Sun-hero in all its countless modifications. It is this myth, and not the physical process, that forms the Sun archetype. The same can be said of the phases of the Moon. He archetype is a kind of readiness to produce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas. Hence it seems as though what is impressed upon the unconscious were exclusively the subjective fantasy-idea aroused by the physical process. Therefore we may take it that archetypes are recurrent impressions made by subjective reactions. Naturally this assumption pushes the problem only further back without solving it. There is nothing to prevent us from assuming that certain archetypes exist even in animals, that they are grounded in the peculiarities of the living organism itself and are therefore direct expressions of life whose nature cannot be further explained. Not only are the archetypes, apparently, impressions of ever-repeated typical experiences, but, at the same time, they behave empirically like agents that tend towards the repetition of these same experiences. For when an archetype appears in a dream, in a fantasy, or in life, it always brings with it a certain influence or power by virtue of which it either exercises a numinous or fascinating effect, or impels to action. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in this World must first come to pass in the heart of America. Deep learning brings about personality change. In psychotherapy, the concept of a “cure” is entirely inappropriate, since in most of these disorders we are dealing with learned behavior, not with a disease. During and after therapy the client increases in attitudes of self-acceptance, and this is correlated with an increase in acceptance of others. We did not ask unanswerable questions as to what instruments would measure success or cure. We asked specific questions related to each hypothesis. What instrument can be used to measure the individual’s concept of self? What instrument will give a satisfactory measure of maturity of behavior? How can we measure the degree of an individual’s acceptance of others? While question such as these are difficult, operational answers are discoverable. Thus our decision in regard to criteria gave us much help in solving the whole problem of instrumentation of the research. Profound research indicates that changes occur in the perceived self of the client during and after therapy; there are constructive changes in the client’s personality characteristics and personality characteristics of the well-functioning person; there is change in the direction defined as personal integrations and adjustment; there are also changes in the maturity of the client’s behavior as observed by friends. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
No one learns to make right decision without being free to make wrong one. In each instance, the change we have observed in someone during and after therapy is significantly greater than that found in people who try to deal with their problems without seeking help. Findings indicate some people are misguided and become somewhat confused and ambiguous when they do not have the proper guidance. For instance, a boy found out he was adopted, ditched his father before entering the ballpark to see a baseball game, sold his ticket and went to meet with some man at the park at night. The boy thought was his biological father because in an email he had claimed to be. In the process, unbeknownst to him, he was about to be kidnapped, when the FBI intercepted and rescued the minor. The boy had no idea he was being preyed on. Prior to the incident, the teacher did notice a change in his personality, and held him after class prior to the incident, but the boy would not confess that anything was wrong. He had also been hanging out with unsavory youth and trying to impress them. Had the boy been in therapy, he would have been able to express his concerns and received proper guidance. Luckily the boy was returned home safely and the bad man was caught in the process, but he could have lost his life and a lot of taxpayer money was used to find him. The bright side, however, is the man will not be able to prey on other young kids. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing World. We must learn to listen. Sometimes change means doing things different. In regard to client-sponsored psychotherapy, at least, there is now objective evidence of beneficial changes in personality and behavior in directions which are usually regarded as constructive and these changes are attributed to the therapy. It is the adoption of multiple specific research criteria and the use of a rigorously controlled research design which makes it possible to make such a statement. If you are like I am, your heart may be saddened by what we have discussed. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must ask how we can become the kind of people who bring honor to Christ, to help turn the culture toward Him, and to be lights in the midst of darkness for our families, friends, churches, and communities. There is no simple answer to this question, but one thing is crystal clear. We must rededicate ourselves to being deeply spiritual people who it can truly be said that “Christ is formed in you.” And, given the times in which we live, we must obey Jesus’ admonition to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. Surrounded by a fragmented culture, how do we become deeply spiritual people who are wise and savvy, yet innocent and pure? How do we raise children, develop good marriages, serve as role models at work, and make an attractive impact on our communities? #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
More than ever before, we need what the Old Testament calls wisdom. The spiritually mature person is a wise person. And a wise person has the savvy and skill necessary to lead an exemplary life and to address the issues of the say in a responsible, attractive way that brings honor to God. Wisdom is the fruit of a life of study and a developed mind. Wisdom is the application of knowledge gained from studying both God’s written Word and His revealed truth in creation. If we are going to be wise, spiritual people prepared to meet the crises of our age, we must be a studying, learning community that values the life of the mind. Clearly, to become spiritually formed in Christ, a person of wisdom, requires that we follow Christ’s teaching in this critical area—and it was Christ who taught us to love the Lord our God with all our minds. The information of most relevance in the study of stigma has certain properties. It is information about an individual. It is about one more or less abiding characteristics, as opposed to the moods, feelings, or intents that one might have at a particular moment. The information, as well as the sign through which it is conveyed, is reflexive and embodied; that is, it is conveyed by the very person it is about, and conveyed though bodily expression. Information possessing all of these properties I here call “social.” Some signs that convey social information may be frequently and steadily available, and routinely sought and received; these signs may be called “symbols.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The social information conveyed by any particular symbol may merely confirm what other signs tell us about the individual, filling out our image of one in a redundant and unproblematic way. Some lapel buttons attesting to social club membership, are examples, as are male wedding rings, or the color of the sole of some women’s high heel shoes, in some contexts. However, the social information conveyed by a symbol can establish a special claim to prestige, honor, or desirable class position—a claim that might not otherwise be presented or, if otherwise presented, then not automatically granted. Such a sign is popularly called a “status symbol” might be more accurate, the former term being more suitably employed when a well-organized social position of some kind is the referent. Prestige symbols can be contrasted to stigma symbols, namely, signs which are especially effective in drawing attention to a debasing identity discrepancy, breaking up what would otherwise be a coherent overall picture, with a consequent reduction in our valuation of the individual. The shaved head of female collaborators in World War II is an example, as is an habitual solecism through which someone affecting middle class manner and dress repeatedly employs a word incorrectly or repeatedly mispronounces it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In addition to prestige symbols and stigma symbols, one further possibility is to be found, namely, a sign that tends—in fact or hope—to break up an otherwise coherent picture but in this cause in a beneficial direction desired by the actor, not so much establishing a new claim as throwing severe doubt on the validity of the virtual one. I shall refer here to disidentifiers. On example is the “good English” of an educated inner-city adult visiting the South; another is the bandana or loud boisterous conversations conducted outside the homes affected by some urban lower-class people. A study of illiterates provides another illustration: Therefore, when goal orientation is pronounced or imperative and there exists a high probability that definition as illiterate is a bar to the achievement of the goal, the illiterate is likely to “pass” as literate. The popularity in the group studied of windowpane lenses with heavy horn frames (“bop glasses”) may be viewed as an attempt to emulate the stereotype of the businessman-teacher-young intellectual and especially the high state jazz musician. A New York specialist in the arts of vagrancy provides still another illustration: After seven-thirty in the evening, in order to read a book in Grand Central or Penn Station, a person either has to wear horn-rimmed glasses or look exceptionally prosperous. Anyone else is apt to come under surveillance. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
On the other hand, newspaper readers never seem to attract attention and even the seediest vagrant can sit in Grand Central all night without being bothered if he or she continues to read a paper. Note that in this discussion of prestige symbols, stigma symbols, and disidentifiers, sighs have been considered which routinely convey social information. These symbols must be distinguished from fugitive signs that have not been institutionalized as information carriers. When such signs make claims to prestige, one can all them points; when they discredit tacit claims, one can call them slips. Some signs carrying social information, being present, first of all, for other reasons, have only an overlay of informational function. There are stigma symbols that provide examples: the wrist markings which disclose that an individual has attempted suicide pock marks of drug addicts; the handcuffed wrists of convicts in transit; or black eyes when worn in public by people, as writer on women of the evening suggests: “Outside [the prison were she now is] I had been in the soup with it. Well, you know how it is: the law sees a chick with a shiner, figures she is up to something. Bull figures maybe in the life. Next thing trails her around. Then maybe bang! Busted.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Other signs are designed by a person solely for the purpose of conveying social information, as in the case of insignia of military rank. It should be added that the significance of the underlay of a sign can become reduced over time, becoming, at the extreme, merely vestigial, even while the informational function of the activity remains constant or increases in importance. Further, a sign that appears to be present for non-informational reasons may sometimes be manufactured with malice aforethought solely because of its informing function, as when dueling scares were carefully planned and inflicted. Signs conveying social information vary according to whether or not they are congenital, and, if not, whether, once employed, they become a permanent part of the person. (Skin color is congenital; a brand mark or maiming is permanent but not congenital; a person’s head-shave is neither congenital nor permanent.) More important, impermanent signs solely employed to convey social information may or may not be employed to convey social information may or may not be employed against the will of the informant; when they are, they tend to be stigma symbols. Later it will be necessary to consider stigma symbols that are voluntarily employed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
It is possible for signs which mean one thing to one group to mean something else to another group, the same category being designated but differently characterized. For example, the shoulder patches that prison officials require escape-prone prisoners to wear can come to mean one thing to guards, in general negative, while being a mark of pride for the wearer relative to one’s fellow prisoners. The uniform of an officer may be a matter of pride to some, to be worn on every possible occasion; for other officers, weekends may represent a time when they can exercise their choice and wear mufti, passing as civilians. Similarly, while the obligation to wear the school cap in town may be seen as a privilege by some boys, as will the obligation to wear a uniform on leave by other ranks, still there will be wearers who feel that the social information conveyed thereby is a means of ensuring control and discipline over them when they are off duty and off the premises. So, too, during the eighteen hundreds in California, the absence of a pigtail (queue) on a Chinese man signified for Occidentals a degree of acculturation, but to fellow-Chinese a question would be raised as to respectability—specifically, whether or not the individual has served a term in prison where cutting off of the queue was obligatory; loss of queue was for a time, then, very strongly resisted. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Signs carry social information vary of course as to reliability. Distended capillaries on the cheek and nose, sometimes called “venous stigmata” with more aptness than meant, can be and are taken as indicating alcoholic excess. However, teetotalers can exhibit the same symbol for other physiological reasons, thereby giving rise to suspicions about themselves which are not justified, but with which they must deal nonetheless. A final point about social information must be raised; it has to do with the informing character of the “with” relationship in our society. To be “with” someone is to arrive at a social occasion in one’s company, walk with one down a street, be a member of one’s party in a restaurant, and so forth. The issue is that in certain circumstances the social identity of those an individual is with can be used as a source of information concerning one’s own social identity, the assumption being that one is what the others are. Being with some people alone, like with Paris Hilton, is a prestige symbol. In the extreme, perhaps, is the situation in criminal circles: a person wanted for arrest can legally contaminate anyone he or she is seen with, subjecting them to arrest on suspicion. (A person for whom there is a warrant is therefore said “to have smallpox” and his or her criminal disease is said to be “catching.”) In any case, an analysis of how people manage the information they convey about themselves will have to consider how they deal with the contingencies of being seen “with” particular others. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
By the late nineteenth century, etiquette books no longer had to give advice to people about suppressing bodily functions and being proper. In the early nineteenth century, diners still had to be reminded not to blow their noses on the tablecloth, not to spit food back into the serving dishes, not to pick their teeth with their knives, and not to urinate in front of ladies. As time passed, people learned enough to control themselves in public. The self-contained, modern, discreet person was invented in the late nineteenth century as a reaction to the loss of control inherent in modern, anonymous city life. The noteworthy element is not how quaint the Victorians were or how different, but how much more like us they are than any other people before them. To really appreciate the revolution in eating in the late nineteenth century, it would help to see a Victorian dining room with its pantry fully stocked and its food on the table. The nineteenth century saw the introduction and spread of brand-named foods, prepackaging, logos, and graphic labels. Before the Victorian era, food was either raised or grown at home or bought in bulk. The local general store or grocer had large sacks of sugar, beans, and flours; barrels of molasses and pickles; as well as spices such as pepper, cloves, and allspice. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
The grocer measured and weighed his waves into the customer’s containers and kept a tab, billing his or her accounts once a month. Milk, eggs, and fowl were purchased from a country farmer who brought them to market or, more likely, from a city dairyman who kept cows and chickens in town. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the quality of foods often got a lot worse. Railroads and urbanization supported the growth of the food business. Flour was milled closer to the source or closer to inexpensive transportation rather than closer to the consumer. It was commonly extended by unscrupulous companies with a measure of chalk dust or plaster. Tea was often stretched with iron filings, a profitable ingredient for a product sold by weight. Milk was often skimmed of valuable cream and sold as whole. Even when it was not, city cows often lived in multistory brick barns, were fed on rotten silage, and infected with tuberculosis. These consumptive Camilles of the cow Worldly hardly gave thick, white milk that Americans were used to. New York City’s milk was most often described as watery and bluish. By the late nineteenth century, there were strong reactions to the declining quality of food. You can change anything you want, but you cannot change everything you want. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
During the 1870s, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was hired to manage the Western Health Reform Institute which he renamed the Battle Creek Sanitarium. He believed in crispy foods to clean the teeth, uncooked fruit as God made it, and bran to encourage evacuation. “Bran does not irritate, it titillates,” reports Dr. Kellogg. His first commercial product was called Granola, but there was another product already on the market called Granula so he changed the name to Granose and sold 100,000 pounds in the first year. One of his patients was Charles Post. After nine months Post still has his ulcers, but he had learned the joy of food marketing. In 1895 in invented Postum, a coffee substitute, and, soon thereafter, a dry cereal called Elijah’s Manna. As grocers objected to the blasphemy, he renamed it Grape Nuts. Soon after he followed with Post-Toasties. Dr. Kellogg prescribed a diet high in grains and low in the ubiquitous salt pork on which most Americans subsisted. He was so successful that he packaged his corn flakes and advertised them heavily, urging brand-name loyalty as an assurance of purity. Post marketed his Grape Nuts and Post-Toasties in the same way—with a distinctive logo, testimonials from doctors and patients, and factory packaging. The National Biscuit Company put up billboards across America assuring consumers that “You Need a Biscuit” (Uneeda Biscuit) was packaged in a moisture-proof wrapping to ensure a pure, untainted, crisp product. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
At the same time, the Reverend Sylvester Graham was an evangelist for whole-wheat flour and developed a sweetened whole-wheat cracker (the Graham cracker) that was supposed to keep the consumer not only healthy, but also moral. Graham was both a Presbyterian minister and an agent of the Pennsylvania Temperance Society and marketed his new cracker to boarding schools as a suppressant of masturbation in boys. This was certainly creative advertising that even a modern advertising executive would admire. The greatest contributor among these health-food pioneers Gail Borden. City people were being poisoned by tainted milk every day. Borden discovered that by evaporating much of the water from milk and canning the result, the milk did not have to be refrigerated. The cows could live a healthy country life while the consumers could stay far away in the city, hence Borden’s famous slogan for Carnation milk: “from contented cows.” The condition upon which God hath given liberty to humans is eternal vigilance. God made the country, and people made the town. Be always sure you are right—then go ahead. Absence of occupation is not rest, a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Almighty and everlasting God, Who restores us by the blessed Passion of Thy Christ, preserve in us the works of Thy mercy; that by the celebration of this Mystery our lives may be continually devout; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, purify Thy family, and cleanse it from all contagion of wickedness; that the vessels which have been redeemed by their Lord’s Passion may never again be stained by the unclean spirit, but may be possessed by everlasting salvation; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Remember Thy compassions, O Lord, and sanctify with eternal protection Thy servants, for whom Christ Thy Son by His Blood appointed unto us the Paschal mystery; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who by the Passion of Thy Christ our Lord hast dissolved that hereditary death of the ancient sin, to which the whole race of Adam’s posterity had succeeded; grant that havng been made conformable unto Him, as we by necessity of nature have borne the image of the Earthly, so by the sanctification of grace we may bear the image of the Heavenly, even of Christ our Lord; Who with Thee we shall prosper and overcome all oppression. “And it came to pass that Orihah did walk humbly before the Lord, and did remember how great things the Lord had done for his father, and also taught his people how great things the Lord had done for their fathers,” reports Ether 6.30. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Lord of all being, there is one thing that deserves my greatest care, that calls forth my ardent desires, that is, that I may answer the great end for which I am made—to glorify thee who hast given me being, and to do all the good I can for my fellow beings; verily, life is not worth having if it be not improved for this noble purpose. Yet, Lord, how little is this the thought of humankind! Most beings seem to live for themselves, without much or any regard for thy glory, or for the good of others; they earnestly desire and eagerly pursue the riches, honours, pleasures of this life, as if they suppose that wealth, greatness, merriment, could make their immortal souls happy; but, alas, what false delusive dreams are these! And how miserable ere long will those be that sleep in them, for all our happiness consists in loving thee, and being holy as thou art holy. O may I never fall into the tempers and vanities, the sensuality and folly of the present World! It is a place of inexpressible sorrow, a vast empty nothingness; time is a moment, a vapour, and all its enjoyments are empty bubbles, fleeting blasts of wind, from which nothing satisfactory can be derived; give me grace always to keep in covenant with thee, and to reject as delusions a great name here or hereafter, together with all sinful pleasures or profits. Help me to know continually that there can be no true happiness, no fulfilling of thy purpose for me, apart from a life lived in and for the Son of thy Love. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Rancho Cordova, CA |
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NOW SELLING! Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse. Residence three is nearly 2,800 square feet, and comes in three different exterior architectural styles. One of my favorite is this Mid-Century Modern house by Cresleigh Homes reminds me of a Frank Lloyd Wright house. It is crisp and commanding, yet looks welcoming, like it is made for down-home hospitality. The star attractions is of course the balcony and angular roofline. Inside, though, the design is truly a hard worker with plenty of room to maneuver: the kitchen is anchored by the large great room, and expansive dining room, and there is a huge first floor master suite. Additionally on the first floor is a powder room and a decent sized foyer, and a mud room just off of the three car garage.
There is also a master bedroom on the second floor, a laundry room, two seondary bedroom, and the third bedroom opens up to the balcony. Do not miss the other extras throughout this home! Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District. You will find yourself in love with one of Cresleigh’s amazing designs. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/
There I Will be Just to Make Sure You Keep Your Heart Alone and Fancy and Free—No One Else Can Have it!
The World we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking. Experience has shown each one of us that reality is very easily able to deceive ourselves to believe something which later experience shows us is not so. How can I tell whether this tentative belief has some real relationship to observed facts? I can use, not one line of evidence only, but several. I can surround my observation of the facts with various precautions to make sure I am not deceiving myself. I can consult with others who have also been concerned with avoiding self-deception, and learn useful ways of catching myself in unwarranted beliefs, based on misinterpretations of observations. I can, in short, begin to use all the elaborate methodology which science has accumulated. I discover that stating my hypothesis in operational terms will avoid my blind alley and false conclusions. If, as a scientist, I like the way I have gone about my investigation, if I have been open to all the evidence, if I have selected and sued intelligently all the precautions against self-deception which I have been able to assimilate from others or to devise myself, then I will give my tentative belief to the findings which have emerged. I will regard them as a springboard for further investigation and further seeking. It has been suggested that one can rely upon one’s audience to accept minor cues as a sign of something important about one’s performance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
If in the last few years, you have not discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse, you may need to be give the kiss of life. Feedback is a convenient fact that has an inconvenient implication. By virtue of the same sign-accepting tendency, the audience may misunderstand the meaning that a cue was designed to convey, or may read an embarrassing meaning into gestures or events that were accidental, inadvertent, or incidental and not meant by the performer to carry any meaning whatsoever. In response to these communication contingencies, performers commonly attempt to exert a kind of synecdochic responsibility, making sure that as many as possible of the minor events in the performance, however instrumentally inconsequential these events may be, will occur in such a way as to convey either no impression or an impression that is compatible and consistent with the over-all definition of the situation that is being fostered. When the audience is known to be secretly skeptical of the reality that is being impressed upon them, we have been ready to appreciate their tendency to pounce on trifling flows as a sign life we have been less ready to appreciate that even sympathetic audiences can be momentarily disturbed, shocked, and weakened in their faith by the discover of a picayune discrepancy in the impressions presented to them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Some of these minor accidents and unmeant gestures happen to be so aptly designed to give an impression that contradict the one fostered by the performer that the audience cannot help but be startled from a proper degree of involvement in the interaction, even though the audience may realize that in the last analysis the discordant event is really meaningless and ought to be completely overlooked. The crucial point is not that the fleeting definition of the situation caused by an unmeant gesture is itself so blameworthy but rather merely that it is different from the definition officially projected. This difference forces an acutely embarrassing wedge between the official projection and reality, for it is part of the official projection that it is the only possible one under the circumstances. Perhaps, then, we should not analyze performances in terms of mechanical standards, by which a large gain can offset a small loss, or a large weight a smaller one. Artistic imagery would be more accurate, for it prepares us for the fact that a single note off key can disrupt the tone of an entire performance. You are what you are and where you are because of what has gone into your mind; you change what you are and where you are by changing what goes into your mind. To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
In regard to the findings of science, the subjective foundation is well shown in the fact that at times the scientist may refuse to believe one’s own findings. “The experiment showed thus and so, but I believe it is wrong,” is a theme which every scientist has experiences at some time or other. Some very fruitful discoveries have grown out of the persistent disbelief, by a scientist, in one’s own findings and those of others. In the last analysis one may place more trust in one’s total organismic reactions than in the methods of science. There is no doubt that this can result in serious error as well as in scientific discoveries, but it indicates again the leading place of the subjective in the use of science. Wading along a coral reef in the Caribbean this morning, I saw a large blue fish—I think. If you, quite independently, saw it too, then I feel more confident in my own observation. This is what is known as intersubjective verification, and it plays an important part in our understanding of science. If I take you (whether in conversation or in print or behaviorally) through the steps I have taken in an investigation, and it seems to you too that I have not deceived myself, and that I have indeed come across a new relationship which is relevant to my values, and that I am justified in having a tentative faith in this relationship, then we have the beginnings of Science with a capital S. It is at this point that we are likely to think we have created a body of scientific knowledge. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Actually there is there is no such body of knowledge. There are only tentative beliefs, existing subjectively, in a number of different persons. If these beliefs are not tentative, then what exists are strict and rigid doctrines, not science. If on the other hand, no one but the investigator believes the finding then this finding is either a personal and deviant matter, an instance of pathology, or else it is an unusual truth discovered by a genius, which as yet no one is subjectively ready to believe. When one repeats oneself in a redundant way, one is revealing one’s desire to be seen as a member of some group. However, others may not care. Reflections and interpretations may be experienced by other individuals as expressions of the message, “I do not really care about you, I care about my expense, or my comfort, or the rightness of my theories or reflections or interpretations.” Or, these same reflections and interpretations, whether awkward or apt, may be heard as repetitions of, “I wan you to be healthier, I want to help you, I am trying to be helpful.” I believe that trust and hope are not contributors to healing. Rather, they are the experienced aspect of a total organismic healing, or reintegration process. Trust and hope are indications that the healing or reintegration or transcendence process has been set in motion. Trust and hope do not cause healing. They are healing. We can look at healing from various perspectives. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
From a psychological standpoint, healing appears as a state of trust and hope. At a physiological level, it is revealed as changes in white-cell count or in some endocrinological changes. At a behavioral level, healing is manifested in growing vigor and relevance of responding. Continued distrust and hopelessness in a patient undergoing any kind of therapy may be regarded as indications that the disintegration process is unremitting. The patient’s acquiescence to determiners of one’s existence is persisting and may culminate in death or total withdrawal into psychosis. Anything a therapist does which invites an unwell person to trust, to be self-revealing, and to have hope that a better life is possible is therapeutic. The onset of these psychological states signifies that the healing process or desirable personality reorganization has already begun. For people in the healing, the helping, and the teaching professions, here is something most neglect. The most valuable experience I have had finding opportunities to grow and to have my growth confirmed, beyond training, that has maintained my growth edge, is contact with colleagues who are of goodwill and before whom I have not be afraid to be myself; that is, be like a patient, a pupil, a teacher, or a groping, bungling, well-intentioned person trying to make sense of what one is doing and wanting to benefit from somebody else’s experience. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Out of informal friendships and informal workshop meetings, more formal workshops such as those held by the American Academy of Psychotherapist evolved. At Academy workshops 50 or 75 therapists spend five days and nights, at each other—liking one another, hating one another, and sharing with one another what we do, what we do not do, why do we do it, and so on. If they do not have of this sort available to them, I think therapists stultify. If such are not available, then a therapist has to find someone one can trust, to tangle with, in order to avoid becoming smug, pompous, rude, and convinced that one has “the word.” One of the greatest dangers of being a teacher, a psychotherapist, a nurse, a minister, or anybody else involved in trying to help others change is the delusion that one “has made it,” that all-American fantasy. There is no one like a self-disclosing colleague to prod one out of such smug pomposity, and invite one back to the task. Change is an inevitable journey. All things are constantly changing, transforming, becoming, something different. Guiding change so that it is successful is what leadership is all about. Indeed, the measure of a leader may well be one’s capacity to understand and deal successfully with change—to stimulate it, shape it, guide it, manage it, and keep it going in the right direction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. Seek the rapids, not the calm of the lake. Take the calm to reflect and prepare for the rapids. If we face permanent white water, we will see the need for and experience change. People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those of us who are doing it. Americans always do the right thing after they try everything else first. When there is a discrepancy between an individual’s actual social identity and one’s virtual one, it is possible for this fact to be known to us before we normal contact one, or to be quite evident when one presents oneself before us. One is a discredited person, and it is mainly one I have been dealing with until now. As suggested, we are likely to give no open recognition to what is discrediting one, and while this work of careful disattention is being done, the situation can become tense, uncertain, and ambiguous for all participants, especially the stigmatized one. The cooperation of a stigmatized person with normal in acting as if one’s known differentness were irrelevant and not attended to is one main possibility in the life of such a person. However, when one is differentness is not immediately apparent, and is not known beforehand (or at least known by one to be known to others), when in fact one’s is a discreditable, and not a discredited, person, then the second main possibility in one’s life is to be found. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The issue is not that of managing tension generated during social contacts, but rather that of managing information about one’s failing. To display or not to display; to tell or not to tell; to let on or not to let on; to lie or not to lie; and in each case, to whom, how, when, and where. For example, while the mental patient is in the hospital, and when one is with adult members of one’s own family, one is faced with being treated as insane, when one knows this is not just. However, for the ex-mental patient the problem can be quite different; it is not that one must face prejudice against oneself, but rather that one must face unwitting acceptance of oneself of individuals who are prejudiced against persons of the kind one can be revealed to be. Wherever one goes one’s behavior will falsely confirm for the other that they are in the company of what in effect they demand but may discover they have not obtained, namely, a mentally untainted person like themselves. By intention or in effect the ex-mental patient conceals information about one’s real social identity, receiving and accepting treatment based on false suppositions concerning oneself. It is this second general issues, the management of undisclosed discrediting information about self, that I am focusing on in these notes, in brief, “passing.” He concealment of creditable facts—reverse passing—of course occurs, but is not relevant here. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
There are many other examples. Sometimes only a change of viewpoint is needed to convert a tiresome duty into an interesting opportunity. I knew a physician who was careful to refrain from using external symbols of her status, such as car-license tags, her only evidence of profession being an identification carried in her wallet. When faced with a public accident in which medical service was already being rendered the victim, or in which the victim was past helping, she would, upon examining the victim at a distance from the circle around one, quietly go her way without announcing her competence. In these situations, she was what might be called a female impersonator. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the World. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. The traditional view point is neither scientifically testable nor easily compatible with evolution. Unfortunately, this traditional understanding of the good life, freedom, community, and tolerance is not scientifically testable. Moreover, Dr. Darwin’s theory of evolution caused many to lose their belief in the existence of natures, human or otherwise. The concepts of unchanging essences and of complete discontinuities between every eidos (type) and all others make genuine evolutionary thinking impossible. I agree with those who claim that the essentialist philosophies of Aristotle and Plato are incompatible with evolutionary thinking. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The implications of moving species from the metaphysical category that can appropriately be characterized in terms of natures t a category for which such characterizations are inappropriate are extensive and fundamental. If species evolve in anything like the way that Dr. Darwin thought they did, then they cannot possibly have the sort of natures that the traditional philosophers claimed they did. If species in general lack natures, then so does Homo Sapiens as a biological species. If Homo sapiens lacks a nature, then no reference to biology can be made to support one’s claims about human nature. Perhaps all people are persons, share the same personhood, and so forth, but such claims must be explicated and defended with no reference to biology. Because so many moral, ethical, and political theories depend on some notion or other of human nature, Dr. Darwin’s theory brought into question these theories. The implications are not entailments. One can always dissociate Homo sapiens from human being, but the result is a much less plausible position. Things remain the same because it is impossible to change very much without changing most of everything. Nothing in the World is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Success is a journey, not a destination. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. When we think about the idea that is a person or group dissociates the species-specific designation Homo sapiens from the designation human being, with all of its attendant moral and theological implications (a being might presuppose a creator), then that person or group has a less plausible position. Why? Why should that which we see, hear, feel, taste, or touch (or observe through scientific method) have sway over any cultural debate, since the entire conclusion in the debate rests on a giant “if”—if a species evolved in anything like the way Dr. Darwin thought they did? Well, if naturalistic evolution is the story of how we came to be, then there is no human nature answering to a divine blueprint and no good life that expresses that nature. There are only accidentally formed individual human beings who are free to create whatever versions of happiness they wish. According to the modern view, the good life is the satisfaction of any pleasure or desire that someone freely and autonomously chooses for oneself. The successful person is the individual who has a life of pleasure and can obtain enough consumer goods to satisfy one’s desires. Freedom the right to do what I want, not the power to do what I by nature ought to. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Community gives way to individualism with the result that narcissism—an inordinate sense of self-love and self-centered involvement—is an accurate description of many people’s lives. If I am free to create my own moral Universe and version of the good life, and there is no right or wrong answer to what I should create, then morality—indeed, everything—ultimately exists to make me happy. When a person considers ending a pregnancy prematurely or physician-assisted suicide, the person’s individual rights are all that matter. Questions about virtue or one’s duty to the broader community simply do not arise. However, as a colleague informed me, death by suicide reflects poorly on the community, perhaps even more so than a murder. Tolerance has come to mean that no one is right and no one is wrong and, indeed, the very act of stating that someone else’s views are immoral or incorrect is now take to be intolerant (of course, from this same point of view, it is all right to be intolerant of those who hold to objectively true moral or religious positions). Once the existence of knowable truth in religion and ethics is denied, authority (the right to be believed and obeyed) gives way to rhetoric, the speech writer is replaced by the makeup man, and spirited but civil debate in the culture wars is replaced by politically correct special-interest groups who have noting left but political coercion to enforce their views on others, which has been the job of the TV news media especially in the twenty-first century. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
While the Christian faith clearly teaches that believers are to be involved as good citizens in the state, nevertheless, it is obvious why so many secularists are addicted to politics today because political power is a surrogate for a Higher Power. Once God died in the New World—that is, once the concept of God no longer informed the major idea—generating the centers of society turned secular—there would be turmoil and horrible secular wars unchecked by traditional morality because the state would come to be a surrogate god for many. Finally, individual rights have come to dominate our public discussion of mortal issues. The public square—those aspects of society where all citizens must interface regardless of personal views; for example, public schools, and government—has become unveiled: religious, moral, and political debate therein is no longer informed by a clear, robust vision of the moral life shared by most citizens and taken to be true and rational. Once objective duty, goodness, and virtue were abandoned under the guise of scientism and secularism, the only moral map that could replace objective morality is called minimalistic ethics—anything whatever is morally permissible provided only that you do not harm someone else. Many schools resist change while others avidly seek it. If we do not want our schools to atrophy and die, we need educational leaders who can bring about progress by daring to be change managers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down. The World changes faster than the people in it. Individual rights are important, and, for the Christian, they are grounded in the image of God and not in the state. In other words, the Christian believes that human rights are derived from the image of God in us; they do not ultimately come from the state. However, there are more fundamental questions of virtue and duty that are relevant to the overall development of a moral outlook. For example, the abortion debate should not be framed primarily as a debate about the right to life versus the right to choice Basically, it should be discussed in terms of this question: When faced with the question of abortion, what does a woman or a community committed to moral virtue and duty do? When issues of virtue and duty to others is brought to the foreground and rights are relegated to a secondary position in the moral context, the tenor of the debate changes drastically. How then was the Devil dressed? O, he was in his Sunday best; his coast was red, and his breeches were blue, and there was a hole where his tail came through. Until Christians can do a better job of seeing these issues and articulating them in terms of objective duty, the Jack Kevorkians will continue to win the debate (if that is what we should call the media rhetoric that surrounds the framing of moral dilemmas), precisely because the Kevorkians are on the side of individual rights. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
If the only morally relevant question to ask a patient is whether or not one freely and competently chooses physician-assisted suicide, then we are left with no moral categories in which to introduce more basic questions of duty and virtue. And this is where our secular society is at present, given its commitment to scientism that emerged into no small measure because a marginalized and inarticulate church withdrew into privatized religion as she welcomed the Torjan horse of anti-intellectualism within her walls. “I look out on Earth…lo, all is chaos; I look at Heaven…its light is gone; I look out on the mountains…they are trembling; and all the hills are swaying! I look out…lo, the sown land lies a desert; and the towns are all razed by the Lord’s rage. For thus has the Lord said: The whole land shall be desolate…and for this shall the Earth mourn and the Heavens above be black…I have purposed it and will not repent; neither will I turn back from it. At the noise of the horsemen and the archers the land is all in flight, beings taking refuge within woods and caves, and climbing upon the rocks. Every city shall be abandoned, and not a being dwell therein. You ruined creature, what will you do!” reports Jeremiah 4.23-30. From the moment when the divine soul succeeds in taking full possession of a being’s thought and feeling, will and flesh, one’s motives, words, acts, and desires become obscure and mysterious to other beings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
The World changes faster than the people in it. “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed. However, my kindness shall not depart from thee; neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that has mercy on thee!” reports Isaiah 54.10. A ship in port if safe, but that is not what ships are built for. “The foundations of the Earth do shake. Earth breaks to pieces, Earth is split in pieces, Earth shakes to pieces, Earth reels like a drunken man, Earth rocks like a hammock; under the weight of its transgression Earth falls down to rise no more! Life up your eyes to Heaven and look upon the Earth beneath: For the Heavens shall vanish away like smoke. And the Earth shall grow old like a robe; the World itself shall crumble. However, my righteousness shall be forever, and my salvation knows no end,” reports Isaiah 24.18-20. It is hard to speak after the prophets have spoken as they have in these pronouncements. Every word is like the stroke of a hammer. There was a time when we could listen to such words without much feeling and without understanding. There were decades and even centuries when we did not take them seriously. Those days are gone. Today we must take them seriously. For they describe with visionary power what the majority of human beings in our period have experienced, and what, perhaps in a not too distant future, all humankind will experience abundantly: “The foundations of the Earth do shake.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
The phrase, “Earth is split in pieces,” is no merely a poetic metaphor for us, but a hard reality. That is the religious meaning of the age into which we have entered. The Bible has always told us of the beginning and the end of the World. It speaks of eternity before the World was founded; it speaks of the time when God laid the foundations of the Earth; it speaks of the shaking of these foundations of the Earth; it speaks of the shaking of these foundations and of the crumbling of the World. In one of the later books, Second Peter, it says that “the Heavens will vanish with a crackling roar, and the elements will melt with fervent heat, the Earth also and the works therein shall be burnt up.” This is no longer vision; it has become physics. We know that in the ground of our Earth, and in the ground of everything in the World that has form and structure, destructive forces are bound. Laying the foundations of the Earth means binding these forces. When the unruly power of the smallest parts of our material World was restrained by cohesive structure, a place was provided in which life could grow and history develop, in which words could be heard and love be felt, and in which truth could be discovered and the Eternal adored. All this was possible because the fiery chaos of the beginning was transformed into the fertile soil of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
However, out of fertile soil of the Earth a being was generated and nourished, who was able to find the key to the foundation of all beings. That being was human. One has discovered the key which can unlock the forces of the ground, those forces which were bound when the foundations of the Earth were laid. One has begun to use this key. One has subjected the basis of life and thought and will to one’s will. And one’s willed destruction. For the sake of destruction one used the forces of the ground; by one’s thought and one’s work one unlocked and untied them. That is why the foundations of the Earth rock and shake in our time. Oh God of the Trinity, Whose Name is ineffable, Who purifies the cavern of human’s heart from vices, and makest it whiter than the snow; bestow on us Thy compassions; renew in our inward parts, we pray Thee, Thy Holy Spirit, by Whom we may be able to show forth Thy praise; that being strengthened by the righteous and princely Spirit, we may attain a place in the Heavenly Jerusalem; through Jesus Christ our Lord. An old man is not necessarily much wiser than a young one. Wisdom cannot be measured by the calendar. We should not respect the years, but their fruit. However, we are still supposed to respect our elders. If a being has found wisdom at the cost of one’s years, we should respect one. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
However, we should not fall into the concealed if persuasive fallacy of honoring advice when it comes from an elder and you know it is bad or unhealthy. When thinking of the self-actualized person, it also gives rise in many minds to the picture of a creature belonging to an extinct species, a boring creature with pompous speech and portentous manner. Yet the lack of the ability to laugh at oneself—and certainly the lack of any sense of humour at all—characterizes fools and not the self-actualized. “ And then shall my revelations which I have caused to be written by my servant john be unfolded in the eyes of all the people. Remember, when ye see these things, ye shall know that the time is at hand that they shall be made manifest in very deed. Therefore, when ye shall receive this record ye may know that the work of the Father has commenced upon all the face of the land. Therefore, repent all ye ends of the Earth, and come unto me, and believe in my gospel, and be baptized in my name; for one that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but one that believeth not shall be damned; and signs shall follow them that believe in my name. And blessed is one that is found faithful unto my name at the last day, for one shall be lifted up to dwell in the kingdom prepared for one from the foundation of the World. And behold it is I that hath spoken it. Amen,” reports Ether 4.16-19. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
O Supreme moving cause, may I always be subordinate to thee, be dependent upon thee, be found in the path where thou doest walk, and where thy Spirit moves, take heed of estrangement from thee, of becoming insensible to thy love. Thou dost not move beings like stones, but dost endue them with life, not to enable them to move without thee, but in submission to thee, the first mover. O Lord, I am astonished at the difference between my receivings and my deservings, between the state I am now in and my past gracelessness, between the Heaven I a bound for and the hell I merit. Who made me to differ, but thee? for I was no more ready to receive Christ than others; I could not have begun to love thee hadst thou not first loved me, or been willing unless thou hadst first made me so. O that such a crown should fit the head of such a sinner! such high advancement be for an unfruitful person! such high advancement be for an unfruitful person! such joys for so vile a rebel! Infinite wisdom cast the design of salvation into the mould of purchase and freedom; let wrath deserved be written on the door of hell, but the free gift of grace on the gate of Heaven. I know that my sufferings are the result of my sinner, but in Heaven both shall cease; grant me to attain this Heaven and be done with sailing, and may the gales of thy mercy blow me safely into harbour. Let thy love draw me nearer to thyself, wean me from sin, mortify me to this World, and make me ready for my departure hence. Secure me by thy grace as I sail across this stormy sea. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
ROCKLIN TRAILS
FINAL HOME REMAINS | Rocklin, CA | Mid $400,000’s

ONE HOME REMAINING!
Boasting an efficient floor plan with plenty of close space, this Modern, Midcentury Modern Doll House design offers some exciting surprises. The dining area is filled with natural light from a full-length window, while the kitchen area enjoys plenty of Sun and light from the expansive widows. A nice high ceiling and fireplace add to the coziness of the great room. The private master bedroom has both a walk-in closet and a master bathroom. The laundry room is conveniently located next to bedrooms 2 and 3. Plans also include an attached two-car garage in the rear of the house.
When we set out to design our new Rocklin Trails community, we didn’t start out by thinking about walls and windows and square footage. We began by thinking about long walks and family dinners and the rush to get your morning started. In short, we started thinking about life and how best to fit that life within the new homes that we build.
Rocklin Trails will inspire you to reinvent the way you think about outdoor living. Here, you’ll find a lifestyle inspired by walkability. Our paseo-fronting homes create beautiful green-space entries and an open environment, all without compromising privacy. Adjacent to the community, Rocklin Trails homeowners have access to a peaceful and natural creek-side walking trail and in just a short stroll, you’ll find the answers to many of your shopping, recreation and entertainment needs.
Within each of the eighty new homes in Rocklin, California, you’ll find thoughtful design to suit the needs of any generation and any lifestyle with energy efficiency and construction longevity at its core.
We invite you to imagine a new way to live – here at Rocklin Trails. https://cresleigh.com/new-homes-in-rocklin-california-rocklin-trails/
The Oceans’s Only Got Water, You Never Know Where You Stand!
It may well be absurd to believe that some poor individual has the potential to transcend a psychosis of 20 years’ standing; but if you do not have some such fools in the World, nothing new is discovered. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. If you esteem your own reputation, associate with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company. Various essences of good have thus been found and proposed as bases of ethical system. Thus, to be a mean between two extremes; to be recognized by a special intuitive faculty; to make the agent happy for the moment; to make others are well as another happy in the long run; to add to one’s perfection or dignity; to harm no one; to follow from reason or flow from universal law; to be in accordance with the will of God; to promote the survival of the human species on this planet—are so many tests, each of which has been maintained by somebody to constitute the essence of all good things or action so far as they are good. The goal is to seek an end to the mutilation of the fullness of truth. The course of history is nothing but the story of human’s struggles from generation to generation to find the more and more inclusive order. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Invent some manner of realizing your own ideals which will also satisfy the alien demands—that and that only is the path of peace. Following this path, society has shaken itself into one sort of relative equilibrium after another by a series of social discoveries quite analogous to those of science. Polyandry and polygamy and slavery, private warfare and liberty to kill, judicial torture and arbitrary royal power have slowly succumbed to actually aroused complaints; and though some one’s ideals are unquestionably the worse off for each improvement, yet a vastly greater total number of them find shelter in our civilized society than in the antiquated savage ways. An experiment of the most searching kind has proved that the laws and usages of the land are what yield the maximum of satisfaction to the thinkers take all together. The presumption in cases of conflict must always be in favor of the conventionally recognized good. There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total Universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as out intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the more life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
One knows that one must vote always for the richer Universe, for the good which seems most organizable, most fit to enter into complex combinations, most apt to be a member of a more inclusive whole. However, which particular Universe this is one cannot know for certain in advance; one only knows that is one makes a bad mistake the cries of the wounded will soon inform one of the fact. Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life’s evils, is set free in those who have religious faith. For this reason the strenuous type of character will on the battlefield of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall. However, a feeling itself, and not simply the way it is displayed on face and body, can be experiences as misfitting a situation in a surprising number of ways. For example, the case of a man in his thirties, who was suffering from a paranoid form of schizophrenia. He became ill in his early twenties. He has always presented a strange mixture of intelligence, wrong-headedness, and fantastic idea. He was an ordinary clerk, employed in a consulate. Evidently as a compensation for his very modest existence he was seized with megalomania and believed himself to be the Saviour (the Buffy complex). He suffered from frequent hallucinations and was at times very much disturbed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In quite periods the man was allowed to go unattended in the corridor of the mental facility. One day I came across him there, blinking through the window up at the Sun, and moving his head from side to side in a curious manner. He took me by the arm and said he wanted to show me something. He said I must look at the Sun with eyes half shut, and then I could see the Sun’s phallus. If I moved my head from side to side the Sun-phalls would move too, and that was the origin of the wind. In mythology, the so-called tube, is the origin of the ministering wind. For you will see hanging down from the disc of the Sun something that looks like a tube. And towards the regions westward it is as though there were an infinite east wind. However, if the other wind should prevail towards the regions of the east, you will in like manner see the vision veering in that direction. The Greek word for “tube,” means a wind-instrument, and the combination in Homer means “a thick jet of blood.” So evidently a stream of wind is blowing through the tube out of the Sun. The vision of my patient in 1906, and the Greek text first edited in 1910, should be sufficiently far apart to rule out the possibility of cryptomnesia (an implicit memory phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that a current thought or idea if a product of their own creation when, in fact, they have encountered it previously and then forgotten it) on his side and thought-transference on mine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
However, the obvious parallelism of the two visions cannot be disputed, though one might object that the similarity is purely fortuitous. In that case we should expect the vision to have no connection with analogous idea, nor any inner meaning. Yet, this expectation is not fulfilled, for in certain medieval paintings this tube is actually depicted as a sort of hose-pipe reaching down from Heaven under the robe of Mary. In it the Holy Ghost flies down in the form of a dove to impregnate the Virgin. As we know from the miracle of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost was originally conceived as a mighty rushing wind, “the wind that bloweth where is listeth.” In a Latin text we read: “Animo descenes per orbem solis tribuitur” (They say that the spirit descends through the disc of the Sun). This conception is common to the whole of late classical and medieval philosophy. I cannot, therefore, discover anything fortuitous in these visions, but simply the revival of possibilities of ideas that have always existed, that can be found again in the most diverse minds and in all epochs, and are therefore not to be mistake for inherited ideas. I have purposely gone into the details of this case in order to give you a concrete picture of that deeper psychic activity which I called the collective unconscious. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
We must distinguish three psychic levels: conscious. The personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious consists firstly of all those contents that became unconscious either because they lost their intensity and were forgotten or because consciousness was withdrawn from the (repression), and secondly of contents, some of them sense-impressions, which never had sufficient intensity to reach consciousness but have somehow entered the psyche. The collective unconscious, however, as the ancestral heritage of possibilities of representation, is not individual but common to all people, and perhaps even to all beings, and is the true basis of the individual psyche. Since the collective unconscious is common to all beings, archetypal manifestations can be demonstrated in the normal as well as the insane. Still, I believe there is no determiner which a being cannot get around, under, through, or over in order to pursue goals and values that have challenged one or that one has chosen to fulfill. Human’s potentials for survival, for adaptation, for rehabilitation, for recovery from infirmary, and for growth seems barely to be scratched. Our concepts of human’s limits have proven, century after century, to be too rigid. Humans continually exceed limits that science says are built into their tissue. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Humans have climbed Mount Everest, they orbit the Earth, they have survived death camps and slavery, and human recovery from illnesses deemed fatal. Thus, whenever I encounter a patient who is suffering from confining and crippling effects of childhood privations and trauma and finds challenges in one’s present existence overpowering, rather than despair with one, and pursue all the roots of pathology in one, I immediately begin to wonder how it would be possible to mobilize one’s spirit or one’s capacity to transcend the present circumstances which one has let grind one down. Maybe over the years I have just become more effective at communicating my faith in their potentials to the patients themselves; or maybe I have become more effective at infecting patients with the seeds of faith in themselves. A patient will say, “You seem to have had faith in me, so I looked, and I found faith in myself.” Maybe this is the factor in iatrogenic wellness—the strength of the healer’s faith in the potentials of the sufferer to transcend the limiting conditions of one’s existence. If this is true, it raises a fascinating question: On what factors is one’s faith in the other person’s potential to transcend limiting conditions dependent? I think that question is answerable—I do not quite know how, just now; but I think as a psychologists, we are duty bound to try to figure ways to measure the strength of a person’s conviction that the other person has the capacity to transcend determining circumstances. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
It may be that bad “witches,” or experts at producing iatrogenic illness, are the very ones who have either none of the faith that I am taking about, or the reverse faith. They may be absolutely convinced from their depths that people have no capacity for transcendence. Something is fishy when a person practices a profession and cannot be creative in it, when one continues to practice something the same way year after year. Either the person has been brainwashed, or one’s creative potentials were leached from one as one received one’s training. Let me put it in still another way. A therapist’s task is to promote wellness in another. One was trained for this task, and one begins it with a repertoire of techniques. One has learned to listen; that is very good. One has learned to make reflections of feeling and content. One has learned the art of relevant interpretation. This is one’s “bag of tricks,” the kit of tools one utilizes in hope that they will invite a patient into growing. About 60 percent of a therapist’s patents will accept one’s invitation to wellness, as one presents it. However, what about the 40 percent of the case load that decline? It used to be that when my techniques (invitations) did not work, I would simply repeat them. I would reflect feeling more vigorously and interpret more incisively. Nothing happened. I was being most noncreative. I was showing a kind of character disorder, by persisting in behavior that was not effective. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
By using repetitive methods, I was like the auto science engineer who knew how to do only three things—tighten nuts, turn screw, and connect wires. When someone brought in a car that would not run, one would turn every screw, tighten every nut, and connect every wire. The car still would not work. So one would find some more screws to turn, more nut to tighten, and more wires to connect. At the least, we would want the mechanic to try something else or to return our money. One wants responsible creativity from a practitioner. What is it about our methods of training therapists that seems so marvelously effective in drying up trainees; courage to be resourceful and creative in the arena of their commitment? Consider the ministry. Ministers seek to move people from a hellish existence to Heaven on Earth, to love their brothers and sisters and to end sinning. However, clergymen use few means to embody their commitment and their invitations. Maybe this is a good thing, that they seek to invite people to wholeness and goodness solely through sermons, home visits, pastoral counseling, and hospital visits. However, surely there are more ways than this that could be dreamed up. I will raise this question: Where are the creative potentials in the ministerial profession? What other ways might a minister employ to carry out one’s vocation—since, clearly, one’s present ways have not been very effective at humanizing beings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
We need to examine our training to see how it prevents us from being creative in carrying out our commitments. I think our training expresses a commitment, not to healing, but to loyal membership in a cult or elite. If we were trained for commitment to fostering wellness, then we could not help but become creative, because the knowhow built into us in our training would carry us only to the point of the first therapeutic impasse. Here, at the therapeutic impasse, is where commitment is tested: is the therapist committed to one’s “school’s” techniques—or to the patient’s growth? If to the latter, then one will be creative and inventive; one will display and embody the intentionality. If to the former, one will function like a cracked phonograph record, uttering the same invitation over and over, oblivious to the fact that it has been declined. People choose a mode of being as a response to others’ invitations or threats. They choose schizophrenic, or hysterical, or obsessional, or depressed being—for their parents, their spouse, or their friends. Part o this sick being is phoniness itself and part of the sick being is the organism’s response to a long career of inauthentic being. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work that is worth doing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Consciousness, instead of being the watchman over a dangerous and unpredictable lot of impulses, of which few can be permitted to see the light of day, becomes the comfortable inhabitant of a richly varied society of impulses and feelings and thoughts, which prove to be very satisfactorily self-governed when not fearfully or authoritatively guarded. Involved in the process of become oneself is a profound experience of personal choice. One realizes that one can choose to continue to hide behind a façade, or that one can take the risks involved in being oneself; that one is a free agent who has it within one’s power to destroy another, or oneself, and also the power to enhance oneself and others. Faced with this unobstructed eye of reality of decision, one chooses to move in the direction of being oneself. However, being oneself does not solve problems. It simply opens up a new way of living in which there is more depth and more height in the experience of one’s feelings; more depth and more range. One feels more unique and hence more alone, but one is so much more real that one’s relationships with others lose their artificial quality, become deeper, more satisfying, and draw more of the realness of the other person into the relationship. Another manner of understanding these learnings is that they are belated attempts to match symbols with meanings in the World of feelings, an undertaking long since achieved in cognitive realm. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Intellectually, we match carefully the symbol we select with the meaning which an experience has for us. Thus I say something happened “gradually,” having quickly (and largely unconsciously) reviewed such terms as “slowly, “imperceptibly,” “step-by-step,” and so forth, and rejected them as not carrying the precise shade of meaning of the experience. However, in the realm of feelings, we have never learned to attach symbols to experience with any accuracy of meaning. This something which I feel well up in myself, in the safety of an acceptant relationship—what is it? It is sadness, is it anger, is it regret, is it sorrow for myself, is it anger at lost opportunities—I stumble around trying out a wide range of symbols, until one “fits,” “feels right,” seems really to match the organismic experience. In doing this type of thing the client discovers that one has to learn the language of feeling and emotion as if one were an infant learning to speak; often even worse, one finds one must unlearn a false language before learning the true one. Let us try still one more way of defining this type of learning, this time by describing what it is not. It is a type of learning which cannot be taught. The essence of it is the aspect of self-discovery. With “knowledge” as we are accustomed to think of it, one person can teach it to another, providing each has adequate motivation and ability. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
However, in the significant learning which takes place in therapy, one person cannot teach another. The teaching would destroy the learning. Thus I might teach a client that it is safe for one to be oneself, that freely to realize one’s feelings is not dangerous and so forth. The more one learned this, the less one would have learned it in the significant, experiential, self-appropriating way. This latter type of learning is true subjectivity, and there can be no valid communication of it, or even about it. The most that one person can do to further it in another, is o create certain conditions which make this type of learning possible. It cannot be compelled. A final way of trying to describe this learning is that the client gradually learns to symbolize a total and unified state, in which the state of the organism, in experience, feeling, and cognition may all be described in one unified way. To make the matter even more vague and unsatisfactory, it seems quite unnecessary that this symbolization should be expressed. It usually does occur, because the client wishes to communicate at least a portion of oneself to the therapist, but it is probably no essential. The only necessary aspect is the inward realization of the total, unified, immediate, at-this-instant, state of the organism which is me. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
For example, to realize fully that at this moment the oneness in me is simply that “I am deeply frightened at the possibility at becoming something different is of the essence of therapy. The client who realizes this will be quite certain to recognize and realize this state of being when it recurs in somewhat similar form. One will also, in all probability, recognize and realize more fully some of the other existential feelings which occur in one. Thus one will be moving toward a state in which one is more truly oneself. One will be, in more unified fashion, that one organismically is, and this seems to be the essence of therapy. Modern American culture is largely secular, most people have little or no understanding of a Christian way of seeing the World, nor is a Christian Worldview an important participant in the way we as a society frame and debate issues in the public square. Three of the major centers of influence in our culture—the university, the media, and the government—are largely devoid of serious religious discussion. In fact, it is not unfair to say that university, media, and governmental leaders are often illiterate about how Christians see the World and why. This is evident, for example, in those rare cases when the major television news media try to feature a Christian perspective on abortion, the state, or anything else. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Usually, Christians watching the program feel misrepresented and misunderstood. More often than not, however, Christian perspectives are simply ignored and not covered at all. If a Martian were watching television before coming to Earth, he or she would get the idea that Americans are irreligious. Secularists tolerate religion as long as it remains a privatized perspective relative to a subgroup in society and as long as Christians do not assert that their views are objectively true and defend them accurately. The church is safe from vicious persecution at the hands of the secularist, as educated people have finished with stake-burning circuses and torture racks. No martyr’s blood is shed in the secular west. So long as the church knows her pace and remains quietly at peace on her modern reservation. Let the babes pray and sing and read their Bibles, continuing steadfastly in their intellectual retardation; the church’s extinction will not become by sword or pillory, but by the quiet death of irrelevance. However, let the church step off the reservation, let her penetrate once more the culture of the day and the face of secularism will change from benign smile to a savage snarl. God may lead one to seek and find another being who shall be His intermediary with one: His representative to one, His image for one. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
A knowledge worth understanding is not less important than a teacher worth seeking. If a seeker believes that one has achieved a certain extent of self-preparation and self-purification, if one is convinced of the desperate need of a master, and if one does not succeed in finding a worthy one, then let one pray for help in the matter. It is not enough to try to follow the counsel given by prophets, mystics, and sages, to look within. It is necessary also to look deep enough and long enough to get really worthwhile results. This applies just as much to the search for help as to the search for truth. Sometimes people under the Christian umbrella simply do not but into the idea of purity. They consider such teaching to be Victorian and puritanical. Victorian is not. Puritanical it gloriously is—for it is supremely Biblical. “It is God’s will that you should be holy; that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control one’s own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong one’s brother or sister or take advantage of one. The Lord will punish beings for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, one who rejects this instruction does not reject humans but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.3-8. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
If you are not convinced enough concerning the Biblical ethic, we must understand that it is based on Leviticus 19.2, where God says, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy”—a command which is given in the context of warnings against sexual deviation. I also want to point out that in 1 Thessalonians we are called to avoid sexual immorality and are three times called to be “holy.” To reject this is to sin against the Holy Spirit—the living presence of God—as the Thessalonians passage makes so clear. The human who carries on an act of impurity is not simply breaking a human code, nor even sinning against the God who at some time in the past gave one the gift of the Spirit. One is sinning against God who is present at that moment, against One who continually gives the Spirit. The impure act is an act of despite against God’s gift at the very moment it is being proffered. This sin is seen in its true light only when it is seen as a preference for impurity rather than a Spirit who is holy. Therefore, for a professed Christian to reject this teaching regarding sexual purity is to reject God, and this may indicate a false faith! Grace is not a matter of God’s making up the difference, but of God’s providing all the cost of salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ. Most people are trying to earn their way to Heaven an, despite earnest effort, some are falling short of bridging the awful chasm of sin separating them from God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The body is the focal point of our presence in the physical and social World. In union with it we come into existence, and we become the person we shall forever be. It is our primary energy source or strength—our personalized power pack—a place where we can even stand in defiance of God, at least for a while. And it is the point through which we are stimulated by the World beyond ourselves and where find and are found by others. Human personal relations cannot be separated from the body; and, on the other hand, the body cannot be understood apart from human relations. It is essentially social. Therefore our bodies are forever a part of our identities as persons. My body came from God through my parents, and they provided a social and spiritual context that, more than anything else, makes me that person I am. Thou Who didst bring home the lost sheep to the fold on Thy shoulders, Who wast appeased by the prayers and confession of the publican, do Thou, O Lord, be favourable also to Thy servants, do Thou graciously attend to their prayers. May Thy mercy, O Lord, we beseech Thee, be beforehand with Thy servants, and all their iniquities be blotted out by Thy seedy pardon; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “And the Lord said unto hum: Write these things and seal them up; and I will show them in mine own due time unto the children of men,” reports Ether 3.27. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
O God Whose will conquers all, there is no comfort in anything apart from enjoying thee and being engaged in thy service; Thou art All in all, and all enjoyments are what to me thou makest them, and no more. I am well pleased with thy will, whatever it is, or should be in all respects, and if thou bidst me decide for myself in any affair, I would choose to refer al to thee, for thou art infinitely wise and cannot do amiss as I am in danger of doing. I rejoice to think that all things are at thy disposal, and it delights me to leave them there. Then prayer turns wholly into praise, and all I can do is to adore and bless thee. What shall I give thee for all thy benefits? I am in a strait betwixt two, knowing not what to do; I long to make some return, but having nothing to offer, and can only rejoice that thou doest all, that none in Heaven or on Earth shares thy honour; I can of myself do nothing to glorify thy blessed name, but I can though grace cheerfully surrender soul and body to thee, I know that thou art the author and finisher of faith, that the whole work of redemption is thine alone, that every good work or thought found in me is the effect of thy power and grace, that thy sole motive in working in me to will and to do is for thy good pleasure. O God, it is amazing that being can talk so much about human’s creaturely power and goodness, when if thou didst not hold back every moment, we should be devils incarnate. This, by bitter experience, thou hast taught me concerning myself. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Corned Beef is Lost Without Cabbage, a Husband Should Have a Wife, and You Know that Life is so Peculiar!
We judge ourselves by what we are capable of doing: others judge us by what we have done. If you want to take your mission in life to the nest level, if you are stuck and you do not know how to rise, do not look outside yourself. Look inside. Do not let your fears keep you mired in the crowd. Abolish your fears and raise your commitment level to the point of no return, and I guarantee you that the Champion Within will burst forth to propel you toward victory. The old adage that “you do not really know what something is like until you experience it” holds for the subtle as well as the obvious and overt. You can no longer rely upon anyone to magically save you, only you can ultimately save yourself. It is not so much the kind of experience that matters, but its capacity to absorb, inspire, and enliven. Let your imagination go or throw your judgments aside for a time. See what happens when you trace that thought or feeling out. See if you can envision involving yourself in all those activities you dream about. What would such a scenario feel like in your stomach, chest, and throat? The more deeply one can describe one’s wish or fantasy, the more one can immerse oneself in its possibilities. And if envisioning the entire scenario seems difficult, then think about portions of that scenario. Like if buying a house is frightening to you, then just go tour a model home and see how you feel. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret. Practice being present and aware, especially in problematic situations. See if you can stay with the thoughts and feelings thar come up, even for the briefest moment. Also, sort through what is operating on you in stressful situations—what assumptions you make, how you approach or avoid certain things, and what inner vices you hear. Sometimes it may be helpful to observe how readily you give your power away in certain circumstances; or you may be impressed by your passive aggressive behavior. Virtually anything you perceive from this standpoint can be revelatory. As nonjudgmentally as possible, just watch the flow of your inner experiences, and neither try to categorize nor figure out those experiences. Simply from the time you take for yourself, and the needs, fears, and desires you feel will be unveiled. It may also help to try to make contact with and reflect on your own childhood, and visit the places and things that your children value. This may give you new opportunities to live. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Capitalism as a system in which harmony is created by ruthless competition between all individuals would appear to be a natural order if one could prove that the most complex and remarkable phenomenon, humans, are a product of the ruthless competition among all living beings since the emergence of life. The development of life from monocellular organisms to humans would seem to be the most splendid example of free enterprise, in which the best win through competition and those who are not fit to survive in the progressing economic system are eliminated. Cybernetic capitalism, with its gigantic centralized enterprises and its capacity to provide the workers with amusements and bread, is able to maintain control by psychological manipulation and human engineering. It needs a human who is very malleable and easily influences, rather than one whose instincts are controlled by fear of authority. At one time the ideal—at least for the middle classes—was independence, private initiative, to be “pilot of my airplane.” The contemporary vision, however, is that of unlimited consumption and unlimited control over nature. People are fired by the dream that one day they will completely control nature and thus be like God; why should there by anything in human nature cannot be controlled? #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Unless you have the will to prepare, the will to win is worth nothing. There is a sense of fear and hopelessness that pervades many people because of the ever-increasing dangers and that nothing is done to avert them. Many who have had faith in progress and had hoped for basic changes in human’s fate, instead of carefully analyzing the social process which led to their disillusionment, are taking refuge in the explanation that human’s nature must be responsible for this failure. Potentialities for conflict and suffering are inherent in human affairs, and attempts to completely abolish or mitigate suffering may appear to be a hopeless undertaking, at least a far more complicated one than the social revolutionaries had fancied them to be, partially due to competing addends, different political views and nature. However, the power to hold on in spite of everything, the power to endure—this is the winner’s quality. Persistence is the ability to face defeat again and again without giving up—to push on in the face of great difficulty, knowing that victory can be yours. Persistence mean taking pain to overcome every obstacle, and to do what is necessary to reach your goals. The direct outcome of the anxiety involved in neurotic competitiveness is a fear of failure and a fear of success. The fear of failure is in part an expression of the fear of being humiliated. Any failure becomes a catastrophe. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
A girl who had failed to know something she was expected to know at school not only felt inordinately ashamed, but felt also that the other girls in the class would despise and turn against her altogether. This reaction carries all the more weight since frequently occurrences of failures which factually have no connotation of failure, or are at mist immaterial—such as not getting the highest marks at school, or failing in some part of an examination, or giving a party which is not an extraordinary success, or not having been brilliant in conversation, in brief anything that falls short of excessive expectations. A rebuff of any kind, which, as we have seen, the neurotic reacts to with intense hostility, is likewise felt as a failure and therefore as a humiliation. This fear of the neurotic person may be greatly intensified by one’s apprehension that others will gloat over a failure because they know of one’s relentless ambition. What one dreads more than failure itself is failure after having shown in any way that one is competing, that one does indeed want success and has made efforts to attain it. One feels that a mere failure can be forgiven, might even arouse sympathy rather than hostility, but that once one has shown an interest in success one is surrounded by a horde of persecuting enemies, who lie in wait to crush one at any sign of weakness or failure. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The resulting attitudes vary according to the content of the fear. If the emphasis lies on the fear of failure as such, one will redouble one’s efforts or even become desperate in one’s attempts to avoid failure. Acute anxiety may emerge before crucial tests of one’s strength or ability, such as examinations or public appearances. If, however, the emphasis lies on the fear of others recognizing one’s ambition the resulting picture is exactly the opposite. The anxiety that one feels will make one appear to be disinterested and will lead one to make no efforts of any kind. The contrast in these two pictures is noteworthy, because it shows how two types of fear, which after all are akin, may produce two entirely different sets of characteristics. A person conforming to the first pattern will work frantically for examinations, but one of the second pattern will work very little and will perhaps conspicuously indulge in social activities or hobbies, thus showing to the World one’s lack of interest in the task. Usually the neurotic is not aware of one’s anxiety and is conscious only of its consequences. One may, for example, be unable to concentrate on work. Or one may have hypochondriacal fears, such as a fear of heart trouble from physical exertion, or of a nervous breakdown from mental overwork. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Or one may become exhausted after any exertion—when anxiety is involved in an activity it is likely to be exhausting—and will use this exhaustion to prove that efforts are injurious to one’s health and hence must be avoided. In one’s recoil from making any effort the neurotic may lose oneself in all sorts of diverting activities, from playing solitaire to giving parties, or one may take on an attitude that looks like laziness or indolence. A neurotic woman may dress badly, preferring to give the impression of no caring to dress well than to make the attempt to do so, because she feels the attempt would only expose her to ridicule. A girl who was unusually pretty, but was convinced that she was homely, did not dare to powder her nose in public because she expected people to think, “How ridiculous of that ugly duckling to make an attempt to look attractive!” Thus in general the neurotic will consider it safer not to do the things one wants to do. One’s maxim is: Stay in the corner, be modest, and most of all, do not be conspicuous. As Veblen has emphasized, conspicuousness—consumption—plays an important role in competition. Accordingly a recoil from competition has to put emphasis on the opposite, on the avoidance of conspicuousness. This implies sticking to conventional standards, staying out of the limelight, being no different from others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
If this recoiling trend is a predominant characteristic it results in not taking any risk. Needless to say, such an attitude brings with it a great impoverishment in life and a warping of potentialities. For, unless circumstances are usually favorable, the attainment of happiness or any kind of achievement presupposes taking risks and making efforts. Thus far we have discussed the fear of possible failure. However, this is only one manifestation of the anxiety involved in neurotic competitiveness. The anxiety may also take the form of a fear of success. In many neurotics anxiety concerning the hostility of others is so enormous that they are afraid of success, even if they feel certain of attaining it. The tendency to assume that the spiritual being was perfect in one’s youth and never made a mistake in one’s maturity, is common among one’s followers and passed on by them to the public—with the result that the latter stares at one with great awe as a rare phenomenon but does not dream that it is possible to follow in one’s footsteps to the same achievement. The truth is that one has one’s share of struggles and failures, that one was born with one’s own particular imperfections, and that one had to make the character and expand the consciousness which adored one’s later years. No one is perfectly fulfilled, completely virtuous, totally enlightened, on this physical plane. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The best enlightened beings and saints are so because of their inspiration’s source, which is beyond other being’s. However, the channel is still human, still limited, and still liable to colour what flows through. The body of every enlightened being is still human and shares the same limitations as other human bodies. This is why one suffers from the infirmary and pains to all flesh is heir. We may admire, respect, and pay homage to these beings without falling into the extravagance of regarding them as gods. It is a common error to believe that such a being is free from all limitations whatsoever and that the deliberate performance of miracles is not beyond one. However, the truth is that not only is one not allowed by the nature of circumstances to help but one is also surrounded by barriers in what one is able to do for those whom one does try to help. The belief that the adept can explain everything is a false one. It would be in better harmony with the facts, and mysticism would lose nothing not worth losing by it, if the representation of great mystics as demi-gods and infallible entities ceased. They are human beings and sometimes they make mistakes. No teacher can be all-knowing or all-powerful. Such attributes belong to God, not to humans. Most teachers commit errors and possess frailties. There is too often a tendency to regard one as more than human. It is true that in one sense and in one part of one’s inner being, one is. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
However, this is no reason to lose all balance and lavish adulation indiscriminately upon one. For in a number of ways one is still an ordinary being. Even the greatest of prophets may have one’s lesser moments, one’s lighter moods. Why not look at discoverable realities rather than unrealizable expectation? These beings, however high in development and however worthy of reverence, are still only mortals. They die like us, they get ill and suffer. They do not know everything. They are even fallible. Some hold views which are arguable at least, which have been dictated or influenced by local traditions, custom, or belief rather than by God. The presence of insight does not exempt a self-actualized person from one’s human needs. One continues one’s daily functions as before. It is great to seek out spiritual direction. One should find an authoritative source to instruct one in spiritual truth and to clear up one’s questions. Contrary to common belief, the teacher is not found in the inner psychic life first and then the discovery reflected in the outer physic fact before any real relationship can be established between the two. One must be found unshakably established in the innermost depths of the heart as a presence and in the background of the mind as a picture. There has arisen too much hard and exploitation from the teacher-seeking attitude to some. Firstly, the request for a teacher should arise from a deep, sustained, and urgent sense of needing such help—not merely for the sake of having one. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
And just as thought and feeling are inseparable, so volition is closely intertwined with them. To choose, one must have some object or concept before the mind and some feeling for or against it. There is no choice that does not involve both thought and feeling. On the other hand, what we feel and think is (or can and should be) to a very large degree a matter of choice in competent adult persons, who will be very careful about what they allow their mind to dwell upon or what they allow themselves to feel. This is crucial to the practical methods of spiritual formation. Unfortunately, the fact that feelings and thoughts are largely a matter of choice is not widely understood—especially as it concerns feelings. We speak of feelings as passions, and that is a word that implies passivity. However, we are in fact active in inviting, allowing, and handling our passions. So, what we have before us in our study of spiritual formation is the whole person, and the various basic dimensions of the human self are not separable parts. They are aspects thoroughly intermingled with each other in their natures and in their actions. Especially, on the present point, human life as a whole does not run by will alone. Far from it. Nevertheless, if it is to be organized at all, life must be organized by the will. It can only be pulled together from the inside. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
That is the function of the will or heart: to organize our life as a whole, and, indeed, to organize it around God. And of course, if one’s existence is to be even fairly tolerable to one’s self or those around, life must be organized, and organized well. Every civilization of any type has recognized this. A great part of the disaster of contemporary life is possessed in the fact that it is organized around feelings. People nearly always act on their feelings, and think it only right. The will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings. Christian spiritual formation today must squarely confront this fact and overcome it. “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus,” reports Romans 3.22-24. Ryan and Sue, could not afford to buy a house, and they found one for sale by a wealth man, who they owed a lot of money. The man knew their situations, cancelled their debt and gave them the house they desired, completely furnished, with utilities and maintenance paid for life. That is a picture of how God’s grace operates. The currency of our morality and good deeds is worth a lot in God’s eyes. Spiritual discipline means putting oneself back under the Law with a series of Draconian rules which we must try to life up to. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The legalistic heart says, “I will do this thing to gain merit with God.” The disciplined heart says, “I will do this thing because I love God and want to please Him.” There is an infinite difference between the motivation of legalism and discipline! We must train [discipline] ourselves to be Godly! If we confuse legalism and discipline, we do so to our soul’s peril. When we are fixed after God’s heart, it is imperative that we do not become dirty, leering people. Do not let a lustful fixation come over you that you cannot deny. When lust takes control, at this moment God loses all reality. Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God. We will also lose awareness of who we are—our holy call, our frailty, and the certain consequences of sin. This is what lust does! It has done it millions of times. God disappears to lust-glazed eyes. The truth demands some serious questions: Has God faded from view? Did you once see God in bright hues, but now His memory is blurred like an old sepia photograph? So you have an illicit fixation which has become all you can see? It the most real thing in your life your desire? If so, you are in deep trouble. The mind controlled by lust has an infinite capacity for rationalization. Progressive desensitization, relaxation, fixation, and rationalization can set one up for one of the great falls in history—and one’s degeneration. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Some sense activity is directly pleasing and displeasing quite apart from effects that are stored in experience and learned through behavior. The spirits possess something analogous to a sensing power and this power initiates some kinds of movement and governs them. Sensible heart is correctly defined as merely the effect of heat on the terrestrial spirits. Because air expands and contracts with changes of temperature, that air may have sense of heat and cold, a sense so subtle and exquisite as far to exceed the perception of the human touch. I think that the terrestrial spirits have a sense of heat and cold more exquisite still, were it not that it is impeded and deadened by the grossness of the body. All animate things internal motion not attributable to the influence of the external senses is controlled by the sensory power of spirit. The living spirit seems to have a sense of its own. All national things are endowed with powers of sensation. Because a sense is required to initiate any and all kinds of motion, nature is alive with senses. Sense and motion seems always to go together in the animate World, and this doctrine infers that there are senses in sticks and stones, which is why places have energy and vibrations. There are motions in inanimate things. Necessarily, there are many more motions in inanimate bodies than there are senses in animate, on account of the paucity of organs of sense. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Living beings, including animals, experience many kinds and varieties of pain and each involves motion. It is almost certain that there are as many motions in inanimate substances, though they do not enter the senses for want of animal spirit. Those things that are taught metaphorically in one part of Scripture, in other parts are taught more openly. They very hiding of truth in figures is useful for the exercise of thoughtful minds and as a defense against the ridicule of the impious, according to the words “Give not that which is holy to dogs,” reports Matthew 7.6. It is more fitting that divine truths should be expounded under the figure of less noble than of nobler bodies, and this for three reasons. Firstly, because thereby human’s minds are the better preserved from error. For then it is clear that these things are not literal descriptions of divine truths, which might have been open to doubt had they been expressed under the figure of nobler bodies, especially for those who could think of nothing nobler than bodies. Secondly, because this is more befitting the knowledge of God that we have in this life. For what God is nor is clearer to us than what He is. Therefore similitudes drawn from things farthest away from God form within us a truer estimate that God is above whatsoever we may say or thing of Him. Thirdly, because thereby divine truths are the better hidden from the unworthy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Every person has a need for Christ’s forgiveness and power, whether or not that person feels that need. However, anti-intellectualism has drained the church of its boldness in witnessing and speaking out about important issues in the places where ideas are granted. And for those who do have such courage, anti-intellectualism has created a context in which we Christians come off as shallow, defensive, and reactionary, instead of thoughtful, confident, and articulate. One evening a couple came to our home for dinner. During the meal the husband said almost nothing (except “Pass the lobster thermidor!”). Despite repeated attempts to engage him, the conversation took place primarily among the two wives and me. However, as the pumpkin cheesecake was being served, the topic of conversation turned to Victorian mansions, and from that point on we could hardly get a word in edgewise. Why? Victorian mansions were the man’s hobby. He owned two of them, knew how to build one from scratch, and truly was an expert on the subject. He had courage to speak up because he knew what he was talking about; he did not need to be defensive when someone differed with his viewpoint because he was confident about his knowledge. When people learn what they believe and why, they become bold in their witness and attractive in the way they engage others in debate or dialogue. When people take classes on Christian faith they feel more confident they are able to answers questions and are more comfortable talking about it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Being a Christian is no different than caring about Victorian architecture. There is nothing magic about being confident, articulate, and bold in either area. Knowing what you are talking about may be hard work, but it clearly pays off. Anti-intellectualism has not merely impacted the lives of believers within the heart of Christ. It has had has serious repercussion in the culture at large. As anti-intellectualism has softened out impact for Christ, so too has it contributed to the secularization of the culture. If the salt loses its saltiness, the meat will be impacted. In the aftermath of the Scopes trial in 1925, conservative Christianity was largely dismissed as an embarrassment among intellectual and cultural movers and shakers. As a result, we now live in one of the most secular cultures in history. We beseech Thee, O Lord, give a salutary effect to our fasting, that the mortification of our flesh may prove the nourishment of our souls; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who didst spare the Ninevites when they fasted for their sins; we humbly beseech Thee that in this our fast Thou wouldest, of Thine accustomed mercy, vouchsafe to us also Thy forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, if Thou shouldest determine to render to us what we deserve, we must sooner perish than endure our served punishment; we therefore pray Thee mercifully to forgive our wanderings; and that we may be able to be converted to Thy commandments, do Thou go before us with abundant mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Three in one, one in three, God of my salvation, Heavenly Father, blessed Son, eternal Spirit, I adore thee as one Being, one Essence, one God in three distinct Persons for bringing sinners to thy knowledge and to thy kingdom. O Father, thou hast loved me and sent Jesus to redeem me; O Jesus, thou hast loved me and assumed my nature, shed thine own blood to wash away my sins, wrought righteousness to cover my unworthiness; O Holy Spirit, thou hast loved me and entered my heart, implanted there eternal life, revealed to me the glories of Jesus. Three Persons and one God, I bless and praise thee, for loved so unmerited, so unspeakable, so wondrous, so mighty to save the lost and raise them to glory. O Father, I thank thee that in fullness of grace thou hast given me to Jesus, to be his sheep, jewel, portion; O Jesus, I thank thee that in fullness of grace thou hast accepted, espoused, bound me; O Holy Spirit, I thank thee that in fullness of grace thou hast exhibited Jesus as my salvation, implanted faith within me, subdued my stubborn heart, made me one with him forever. O Father, thou art enthroned to hear my prayers, O Jesus, thy hand is outstretched to take my petitions, O Holy Spirit, thou art willing to help my infirmities, to show me my need, to supply words, to pray within me, to strengthen me that I faint not in supplication. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
O Triune God, who commandeth the Universe, thou hast commanded me to ask for those things that concern thy kingdom and my soul. Let me live and pray as one baptized into the threefold Name. “And never have I showed myself unto humans whom I have created, for never have humans believed in me as thou hast. Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image. Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and humans have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh,” reports Ether3.15-16. We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy forgiving love, turn away what we deserve for our sins, nor let our offences prevail before Thee, but let Thy mercy always rise up to overcome them; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O, God, Who sufferest not that offenders should perish without being enabled to be converted and live, we beseech Thee to suspend the vengeance due to our sins, and mercifully grant that no dissembling on our part may increase our punishment, but rather that amendment may avail for our pardon; though Jesus Christ. Be present, O Lord, to our supplications; nor let Thy Merciful clemency be far away from Thy servants. Heal our wounds, forgive our sins, that being served from Thee by no iniquities, we may be able evermore to cleave to Thee our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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The Illuminate Has a Cosmic Outlook—One thinks and Feel for All Creatures No Less than for Oneself!
If we are to keep our feet on the ground, we must put some responsibility on our shoulders. Cherishing humanity is the mark of a civilized society. The best security blanket the World can have is beings who respect each other. It is important that we unite in the mightiest, the biggest arms race in history, a race to put our arms around the ones we love, around all our family. Let us embrace humanity with the love, courage, hope, respect, education, opportunity, and let the imperatives of our arms race fix our global priorities so that no being in the World shall in effect be denied the right to dream. For the lesson we teach today is not confined to the walls of our homes, once it is implanted in the hearts and the minds of the community, it can change the World. Yesterday you may have been discouraged, but today you see something you did not see before. Maybe this is what yesterdays are for. In the business World, financially troubled companies forced into bankruptcy have two options, popularly knows as Chapter 7 and Chapter 11, after the respective chapters in the federal bankruptcy code. Chapter 11 deals with what we could call a temporary bankruptcy. This option is chosen by a basically healthy company that, given time, can work through its financial problems. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Chapter 7 is for a company that has reached the end of its financial rope. It is not only deeply in debt, it has no future as a viable business. It is forced to liquidate its assets and pay off its creditors, often by as little as ten cents on the dollar. The company is finished. It is all over. The owners or investors lose everything they have put into the business. No one like Chapter 7 bankruptcy. How many of us declare spiritual bankruptcy and what kind? I suspect many of us declare temporary bankruptcy. Having trusted in Jesus Christ alone for our salvation, sometimes we lose faith because life seems hard and unfair, and we take sometime to sulk. However, then we are reminded that humans have free will and that Jesus Christ paid our debt of sins and secured for us the gift of eternal life. And that God has been working overtime to protect of from snares in life. There is nothing more we can do to earn our salvation, but behave righteously and follow the golden rule, which is to treat others like we want to be treated. Therefore, we subtly and maybe even unconsciously revert back to a working relationship with God in our Christian lives. We recognize that our best efforts can get us into Heaven, and they earn God’s blessings in our daily lives. After becoming more spirituality enlightened, we do away with obvious sins, and we see some beneficial changes in our lives. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
As a result of our increased faith and righteous behavior, we emerge from bankruptcy and pay our own way in the Christian life. It seems this sacred doctrine of faith is not a science. For every science proceeds from self-evident principles. However, sacred doctrines proceeds from articles of faith which are not self-evident, since their truth is not admitted by all: “For all beings not have faith,” reports 2 Thessalonians 3.2. Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science. And because we have faith, if we lost our faith for good, that would be Chapter 7 bankruptcy, something that it permanent. However, it is not our place to judge others who do not believe in God, we must never force our belief system on to others. Saving faith is begotten, nourished, protected, and strengthened because it is a sacred doctrine. Even when we backslide in our spiritual faith, or we fail to do what we should have done, we have not forfeited all blessings from God for some undetermined period of time. We are legalistic by nature, and we know that if we ask for forgiveness and repent, God will forgive us and add to our faith more virtues such as goodness, knowledge, self-control, and love. And we find the Bible is filled with exhortations to do good works and pursue the disciplines of spiritual growth. There is a time in our lives when we are saved. “For it is by grace you have been saved,” reports Ephesians 2.8. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Sanctification is our growth in Christlikeness. It is a progressive experience covering our entire Christian lives from salvation to glorification. Glorification occurs at the time we depart from this life to be with Christ. (Glorification actually achieves its complete fulfillment at the resurrection, of course, but even now those who are with Christ are described as “the spirits of righteous beings made perfect,” reports Hebrews 12.23.”) That is why sacred doctrine is nobler than a science for it deal with eternal bliss, to which is an ultimate end. All true Christians readily agree that justification is by grace through faith in Christ. And if we stop to think about it, we agree that glorification is also solely by God’s grace. Jesus purchased for us not only forgiveness of sins (justification) but also eternal life (glorification). Our concept of the Christian life is a justification based on grace, Christian life based on grace, and glorification based on grace. That is, the entire Christian life from start to completion is lived on the basis of God’s grace to us through Christ. The Christian’s total debt has been paid by Christ. The law of God and the justice of God have been fully satisfied. The debt of our sins has been marked “Paid in Full!” God is satisfied and so are we. We have peace with God, and we are delivered from a guilt conscience. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
We are brought into God’s Kingdom by grace; we are sanctified by grace; we receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; we are motivated to obedience by grace; we are called to serve and enabled to serve by grace; we receive strength to endure trials by grace; and finally, we are glorified by grace. The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God’s grace. Grace is God’s free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment. It is the love of God shown to the unlovely. It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him. Grace stands in direct opposition to any supposed worthiness on our part. To say it another way: Grace and works are mutually exclusive. “And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace,” reports Paul in Romans 11.6. Our relationship with God is based on either works or grace. There is never a works-plus grace relationship with God. Furthermore, grace does not first rescue us from the penalty of our sins, furnish us with some new spiritual abilities, and then leave us on our own to grow in spiritual maturity. “Rather, one who began a good work in you [by His grace] will [also by His grace] carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus,” reports Philippians 1.6. Therefore, after beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to obtain your goal by human effort? #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
A characteristic of the person who is living the process of the good life appears to be an increasing trust in one’s organism as a means of arriving at the most satisfying behavior in each existential situation. Again, let me explain what I mean. In choosing what course of action to take in any situation, many people rely upon guiding principles, upon a code of action laid down by some group or institution, upon the judgment of others (from wide and friends to Emily Post), or upon the way they have behaved in some similar past situation. Yet, as I observe the clients whose experiences in living have taught me so much, I find that increasingly such individuals are able to trust their total organismic reaction to a new situation because they discover to an ever-increasing degree that if they are open to their experience, doing what “feel right” proves to be a competent and trustworthy guide to behavior which is truly satisfying. The person who is fully open to one’s experience would have access to all of the available data in the situation, on which to base one’s behavior; the social demands, one’s own complex and possibly conflicting needs, one’s memories of similar situations, one’s perception of the uniqueness of this situation, and so on. The data would be very complex indeed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
However, one could permit one’s total organism, one’s consciousness participating, to consider each stimulus need, and demand, its relative intensity and importance, and out of this complex weighing and balancing, discover that course of action which would come closest to satisfying all one’s needs in the situation. An analogy which might come close to a description would be to compare this person to a giant electronic computing machine. Since one is open to one’s experience, all of the data from one’s sense impression from one’s memory, from previous learning, from one’s visceral and internal states, is fed into the machine. The machine takes all of these multitudinous pulls and forces which are fed in as data, and quickly computes the course of action which would be the most economical vector of need satisfaction in this existential situation. This is the behavior of our hypothetical person. The defects which in most of us make this process untrustworthy are the inclusion of information which does not belong to this present situation, or the exclusion of information which does. It is as when memories and pervious learnings are fed into the computations as if they were this reality, and not memories and learnings, that erroneous behavioral answers arise. Or when certain threatening experiences are inhibited from awareness, and hence are withheld from the computation or fed into it in distorted form, this too produces error. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
However, our hypothetical person would find one’s organism thoroughly trustworthy, because all of the available data would be used, and it would be present in accurate rather than distorted from. Hence one’s behavior would come as close as possible to satisfying all one’s needs—for enhancement, for affiliation with others, and the like. In this weighing, balancing, and computation, one’s organism would not by any means be infallible. It would always give the best possible answer for the available data, but sometimes data would be missing. Because of the elements of openness to experience, however, any errors, any following of behavior which was not satisfying, would be quickly corrected. The computations, as it were, would always be in process of being corrected, because they would be continually checked in behavior. Perhaps you will not like my analogy of an electronic computing machine. Let me return to the clients I know. As they become more open to all of their experiences, they find it increasingly possible to trust their reactions. If they feel like expressing anger they do so in a safe and constructive manner and find that this comes out satisfactorily, because they are equally alive to all of their other desires for affection, affiliation, and relationship. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
My clients are surprised at their own intuitive skill in finding behavioral solutions to complex and troubling human relationships. It is only afterward that they realize how surprisingly trustworthy their inner reactions have been in bring about satisfactory behavior. It appears that the person who is psychologically free moves in the direction of becoming a more fully functioning person. One is more able to live fully in and with each and all of one’s feelings and reactions. One makes increasing use of all one’s organic equipment to sense, as accurately as possible, the existential situation within and without. One makes use of all of the information one’s nervous system can thus supply, using it in awareness, but recognizing that one’s total organism may be, and often is, wiser than one’s awareness. One is more able to permit one’s total organism to function freely in all its complexity in selecting, from the multitude of possibilities, that behavior which in this moment of time will be most generally and genuinely satisfying. One is able to put more trust in one’s organism in this functioning, not because it is infallible, but because one can be fully open to the consequences of each of his or her actions and correct them if they prove to be less than satisfying. It is human’s own fault, however, if through failure to seek spiritual guidance or understanding, none is vouchsafed to one. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Jesus told of, “As, and it shall be given unto you.” When the pupil is ready, the Master appears. This means that such is the wonderful sensitivity of the mind, such is the reality of telepathic power, that when a being’s search for truth has reached a crisis, one will meet the being who or the source which can best resolve that crisis. However, the crisis itself must be filled with uncertainty and doubt, with helplessness and despair before the mysterious forces of God will begin to move toward one’s relief. It should seem to one them most momentous consequence that is shall be brought to a satisfactory end, if life in the future is to have any meaning for one at all. There must be a sense of inner loneliness so acute that the outer loneliness compares as nothing with it. There must be no voice within one’s World which can speak to one’s condition. This critical period must fill one’s mind with exaggeration of its own self-importance to such an extent as to blot out every other value from life. It will be at such an opportune moment, when one’s search for truth will be most intense and the required preparation for meeting its bearer most complete, that the bearer oneself will arise and bring into one’s night the joyful tidings of dawn. The influence of such a being or source at such a period is incalculable. If we recall the rare hours when we encountered the best persons, we there found ourselves. God’s greatest gift is a Teacher. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The seeker knows at last that even if one has not found the truth, one is at least on the way to finding it. One has begun to find harmony with oneself. If the strong yearning for truth be absent, a being may meet a thousand masters of the quest but one will neither recognize them for what they are nor experience any exaltation in their presence. This yearning must indeed be as strong as the hunger of a starving being or the desperation of a traveler lost in the desert. One’s desperate need drives one to go in search of help wherever one can find it. In obedience to this inner urge one should take a path which will lead one to the friendship of the few enlightened beings living in one’s time and bring one to their presence. As a result one is more able to experience all of one’s feelings, and is less afraid of any of one’s feelings; one is one’s own sifter of evidence, and is more open to evidence from all sources; one is completely engaged in the process of being and becoming oneself, and thus discovers that one is soundly and realistically social; one lives more completely in this moment, but learns that this is the soundest living for all time. One is becoming a more fully functioning organism, and because of the awareness of oneself which flows freely in and through one’s experience, one is becoming a more fully functioning person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Any view of what constitutes the good life carries with it many implications, and the view I have presented is no exception. I hope that these implications may be food for thought. One is free—to become oneself or to hide behind a façade; to move forward or to retrogress; to behave in ways which are destructive of self an others, or in ways which are enhancing; quite literally free to live or die, in both the physiological and psychological meaning of those terms. Yet as we enter this field of psychotherapy with objective research methods, we are, like any other scientist, committed to a complete determinism. From this point of view every thought, feeling, and action of the client is determined by what preceded it. There can be no such thing as freedom. The dilemma I am trying to describe is no different than that found in other fields—it is simply brought to sharper focus, and appears more insoluble. This dilemma can be seen in a fresh perspective, however, when we consider it in terms of the definition I have given of the fully functioning person. We could say that in the optimum of therapy the person rightfully experiences the most complete and absolute freedom. One wills or choose to follow the course of action which is the most economical vector in relationship to all the internal and external stimuli, because it is that behavior which will be most deeply satisfying. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
However, this is the same course of action which from another vantage point may be said to be determined by all the factors in the existential situation. Let us contrast this with the picture of the person who is defensively organized. One wills or chooses to follow a given course of action, but finds that one cannot behave in the fashion that one chooses. One is determined by the factors in the existential situation, but these factors include one’s defensiveness, one’s denial or distortion of some of the relevant data. Hence it is certain that one’s behavior will be less than fully satisfying. One’s behavior is determine, but one is not free to make an effective choice. The fully functioning person, on the other hand, not only experiences, but utilizes, the most absolute freedom when one spontaneously, freely, and voluntarily chooses and wills that which is also absolutely determined. I am not so naïve as to suppose that this fully resolves the issue between subjective and objective, between freedom and necessity. Nevertheless it has meaning for me that the more the person is living the good life, the more one will experience a freedom of choice, and the more one’s choices will be effectively implemented in one’s behavior. I believe it will be clear that a person who is involved in the directional process which I have termed “the good life” is a creative person. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Because one who is living the good life is a creative being, with one’s sensitive openness to one’s World, one’s trust of one’s own ability to form new relationships with one’s environment, one will be the type of person from whom creative products and creative living emerge. One would not necessarily be “adjusted” to one’s culture, and one would almost certainly not be a conformist. However, at any time an in any culture one would live constructively, in as much harmony with one’s culture as a balanced satisfaction of needs demanded. In some cultural situations one might in some ways be very unhappy, but one would continue to move toward becoming oneself, and to behave in such a way as to provide the maximum satisfaction of one’s deepest needs. Such a person would, I believe, be recognized by the student of evolution as the type most likely to adapt and survive under changing environmental conditions. One will be able to creatively make sound adjustments to new as well as old conditions. One will be a vanguard of human evolution. When dealing with the World, one holds no self-image of a flattering kind to buttress one’s ego, in which one prefers to remain inconspicuously—unless a particular work of service withdraws one outwardly from this humility. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Those who are deceived too quickly by appearances to take the trouble to try and penetrate them may find one a cold being. However, the truth is that one has feeling, not passion. There is dynamic power within one, but it is always impersonal and always calm. It is never used to gratify personal vanity or egoistic aggression. The self-actualized being knows more secrets than one ever tells, and knows, too, how to keep them well. The self-actualized being hears the answers of Life to the questions of humans where the latter hears nothing. It is impossible to forget the unflattering dignity of such a being, in whom all those littleness which betray mediocrity have been submerged and dissolved forever. Here at last is a being who stand out from the herd become of one’s essential goodness and complete integrity, one’s fine insight and lonely dignity. Faith and a disciplined mental life are not natural enemies. A well-formed mind held a place of honor. And it is believed that the Christian mind could be the best mind. Because the World we live in is full of influences that would shape the way we think—and consequently how we act and live—we need more rigorous discipline to be Christians and thinking people, not less. Love your God with all your mind in its spiritual formation line. Thought brings things before our minds in various ways (including perception and imagination) and enables us to consider them in various respects and trace out their interrelationships with one another. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Thought is that which enables our will (or spirit) to range far beyond the immediate boundaries of our environment and the perceptions of our sense. Though it one consciousness reaches into the depths of the Universe, past, present, and future, by reasoning and scientific thinking, by imagination and art—and also be divine revelation, which comes to us mainly in the form of thought. Feeling inclines us toward or away from things that come before our minds in thought. It involves a tone that is pleasant or painful, along with an attraction or repulsion with respect to existence or possession of what is thought of. How we feel about food, automobiles, relationships, positions, and hundred of other things illustrates this point. Notice that feeling and thought always go together. They are interdependent and are never found apart. There is no feeling without something being before the mind in thought and no thought without some optimistic or pessimistic feeling toward what is contemplated. What we call indifference is never a total absence of feelings, good or bad, but simply an unusually low degree of feeling, usually negative. The connection between thought and feeling is so intimate that the mind is usually treated as consisting of thought and feeling together. I shall do so here. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Of course the mind thus understood—or understood in any way you like—is a quite complicated aspect of the person, with numerous subdivisions built into both thought and feeling. In the ruined soul, the mind becomes a fearful wilderness and a wild intermixture of thought and feeling, manifested in willful stupidities, blatant inconsistencies, and confusions, often to the point of obsession, madness, or possession. This condition of mind is what characterizes our World apart from God. Satan, the prince of this World, hold sway over it. O Glorious, holy, Almighty God, Who being ever pitiful to the manifold wanderings of humankind, didst doubtless for this end guide the Magi, who dwelt in dark superstition, by the light of a star to Thy sacred cradle, that Thou mightiest kindle al beings who were walking in their own errors with the desires of knowing Thee; kindle us also, we pray Thee, with the saving ardour of love for Thee, that we who have already known Thee by The gracious illumination, may be enabled to cleave to Thee forever. Grant, O Almighty God, that we may be able continually to shake off the yoke of Egyptian servitude and sin, and to appear before Thy Majesty in our Heavenly country; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O Lord, to Thy faithful people that they may enter on the venerable solemnity of this fast with fitting piety, and go through it with undisturbed devotion; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolpHarris 17 of 18
Grant us, O Lord, to enter on the service of our Christian warfare with holy fasting; that as we are to fight against spiritual powers of wickedness, we may be fortified by the assistance of self-denial; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who by The Word dost marvelously work out the reconciliation of humankind; grant, both be subjected to Thee with all our hearts, and be united to each other in prayer to Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who in Thy deep counsel and foresight for humankind, hast appointed holy fasts, where by the hearts of the weak might receive salutary healing; do Thou purify our souls and bodies, O Saviour of body and soul, O loving Bestower of eternal happiness! through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let Thy gracious favour carry us through the fast which we have begun; that as we observe it by bodily discipline, so we may be able to fulfill it with sincerity of mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant to us, O Almighty God, that by the annual exercise of Lenten observances we may advance in knowledge of the mystery of Christ, and follow His mind by conduct worthy of our calling, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the assistance of Thy grace; that being intent, as becomes us, on fasting and prayer, we may be delivered from bodily and spiritual enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Yea, Lord, I know that thou speakest the truth, for thou art a God of truth, and canst not lie,” reports Ether 3.12. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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