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A little Agitation Gives Strength to Souls–Are You Going through a Dark Time in Your Life?

Your success and happiness are within you. As we have observed, psychodynamic theorists believe that an anxiety disorder develops when children come to fear their own id impulses and use ego defense mechanism to lessen the resulting anxiety. What distinguishes obsessive-compulsive disorder from other anxiety disorders, in their view, is that here the battles between anxiety-provoking id impulses and anxiety-reducing defense mechanisms is not buried in the unconscious but is played out in explicit and dramatic thoughts and actions. The id impulses usually take the form of obsessive thoughts, and the ego defenses appear as counterthoughts or compulsive actions. A woman who keeps imagining her mother suffering from a disaster, for example, may counter those thoughts with repeated safety checks throughout the house. According to psychodynamic theorists, three ego defense mechanisms are particularly common in obsessive-compulsive disorder: isolation, undoing, and reaction formation. People who resort to isolation simply disown their undesirable and unwanted thoughts and experience them as foreign intrusions. People who engage in undoing perform acts that are mean to cancel out their undesirable impulses. Those who wash their hands repeatedly, for example, may be symbolically undoing their unacceptable id impulses. People who develop a reaction formation take on a lifestyle that directly opposes their unacceptable impulses. A person may live a life of compulsive kindness and devotion to others in order to counter unacceptably aggressive impulses. Another may lead a life of chastity to counteract obsessive impulses involving pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

If people keep performing compulsive behaviours in order to prevent bad outcomes and ensure beneficial outcomes, can they not be taught that such behaviours are not really serving purpose? In a behavioural treatment called exposure and response prevention, clients are repeatedly exposed to objects or situations that produce anxiety, obsessive fears, and compulsive behaviours, but they are told to resist performing the behaviours they feel bound to perform. Because people find it very difficult to stop such behaviours, therapists often set an example. As the clients are repeatedly exposed to objects or situations that produce anxiety, obsessive fears, and compulsive behaviours, but they are told to resist performing the behaviours they feel bound to perform. Because people find it very difficult to stop such behaviours, therapists put themselves in the anxiety-producing situation without performing any compulsive actions, and then they encourage the clients to do the same. Some behavioural therapists further have people carry out self-help procedures at home. That is, they assign homework in exposure and response prevention, such as these assignments given to a person with a cleaning compulsion: Do not mop the floor of your bathroom for a week. After this, clean it within three minutes, using an ordinary mop. Use this mop for other chores as well without cleaning it. Buy a fluffy mohair sweater and wear it for a week. When taking it off at night do not remove the bits of fluff. Do not clean your house for a week. You, your husband, and children all have to keep shoes on. Do not clean the house for a week. Drop a cookie on the contaminated floor, pick the cookie up and eat it. Leave the sheets and blankets on the floor and then put them on the beds. Do not change them for a week. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Eventually this person was able to set up a reasonable routine for cleaning oneself and home. Exposure and response prevention has been offered in both individual and group therapy. Between 55 and 85 percent of clients with obsessive-compulsive disorder have been found to improve considerably with this approach. They also function better at home, socially, and at work. These changes continue to be observed for years. The effectiveness of this approach suggests that people with obsessive-compulsive disorder are like the superstitious man in the old joke who keeps snapping his fingers to keep elephants away. When someone points out, “But there are not any elephants around here,” the man replies, “See? It works!” One review concludes, “With hindsight, it is possible to see that the obsessional individual has been snapping one’s fingers, and unless one stops (response prevention) and takes a look around at the same time (exposure), one is not going to learn much of value about elephants.” The same studies and statistics indicate the limitations of exposure and response prevention. Few clients who receive the treatment overcome all their symptoms, and as many as one-quarter fail to improve at all. Also, the approach is of limited help to those who have obsessions but no compulsions. After all, the treatment makes its impact on obsessions by blocking closely linked compulsive acts. Finally, the favourable findings come mainly from studies of cleaning and checking compulsions. The effectiveness of this approach with other kinds of compulsions or with multiple compulsions is unclear. Painful thoughts—like the man in George Cruikshank’s painting The Blue Devils, some people may find unwanted thoughts particularly threatening and debilitating. According to cognitive theorists, their reactions to intrusive thoughts may set the stage for obsessive-compulsive disorder. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Some individuals become more and more convinced that one’s unpleasant intrusive thoughts are dangerous. As the person’s fear of such thoughts increase, the thoughts begin to occur more frequently and they, too, become obsessions. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder experience intrusive thoughts more frequently than other people, especially in times of stress, a difference that may be due to biological predisposition; they resort to more elaborate neutralizing strategies than other people when they try to stop unwanted thoughts; and they experience reductions in anxiety after using neutralizing techniques. Although everyone sometimes had undesired thoughts, only some people develop obsessive-compulsive disorder. Why do these individuals find such normal thoughts so disturbing to begin with? Researchers have found that this population tends to be more depressed than other people; to have exceptionally high standards of conduct and morality; to believe that their intrusive negative thoughts are equivalent to actions and capable of causing harm to themselves or others and to feel responsible for eliminating the imagined danger; and generally to believe that they can and should have perfect control over all their thoughts and behaviours. There is a signal hypothesis that holds that excessive alcohol or substance use is a sign of distress. The comorbidity of other psychological problems with drug and alcohol misuse is testimony to the validity of this hypothesis. Before these are discussed, it should be noted that drug use problems are highly comorbid with alcohol use problems: About half of all those who misuse hard drugs also suffer from alcohol dependence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Rates of alcoholism and other substance use disorders are very high among those with mood disorders. A study showed that rates of mood disorders are equal for men and women in the American Amish community, where the use of alcohol is prohibited. This suggests that alcoholism may mask depression in men in the general population, since men are thought to have about half the rate of depression than women do. In fact, there are very few people who have just drinking problems. Such individuals often have a number of related problems, such as depression and anxiety. In some cases, the drinking may be a misguided attempted to “cope” with these disorders, and in other cases, these other psychosocial problems may be consequences of problem drinking. Many patients with bipolar disorder also have substance use problems. About a quarter to half of all such patients have some substance use disorder. Substance use disorders are also highly comorbid with personality disorders. Almost 60 percent of all people with substance use disorders have comorbid personality disorder. The pattern of comorbidity with alcoholism and other substance use disorders reveals close associations with other disorders that have strong links to interpersonal relationship problems. One plausible account of this comorbidity may be that the substance use is secondary to the primary psychological problem, initiated in an effort to regulate and cope with a deteriorating interpersonal environment. Problems such as depression, anxiety, and personality disorders can rapidly decay interpersonal relationships. The feelings of loneliness, damaged self-esteem, and lack of direction that often accompany and follow the deterioration of interpersonal relationships may prompt some people to turn to substance use. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

In such instances, the substance use may be an attempt to regulate interpersonal interaction (exempli gratia, taking cocaine in effort to go out in public and have a good time) or to cope with feelings of emptiness and rejection (exempli gratia, drinking alcohol to “escape” dysphoric feelings). In other cases, substance use disorders may precede other psychological problems that stem from destroyed interpersonal relationships. Once substance use is initiated, some people continue and escalate it because of chemical addiction. However, it is virtually a foregone conclusion that as the substance use becomes more pervasive, interpersonal relationships are damaged and ultimately destroyed. This effect happens partly because excessive drug and alcohol use interferes with competent interpersonal behaviour; it focuses individuals almost exclusively on substance ingestion, at the expense of maintaining mutually rewarding relationships with other people. When this focus is taken to extremes, a person may steal from others to get money to buy drugs, lie, and become excessively abrasive. These behaviours reliably damage interpersonal relationships, and problems such as depression and anxiety may follow—not necessarily because of the substance use disorder per se, but because of the interpersonal consequences of the substance use. Consequently, much of the comorbidity between substance use disorders and other psychosocial problems may be explained by aversive interpersonal experiences. These are the experiences with the power and impact to link problems. At least a quarter of the population will experience significant problems with substance abuse or dependence in their lifetimes. This class of problems generally has its origins in adolescence, and substance use is currently on the rise in this cohort. Within the substance use disorders, alcoholism has received a great deal of interpersonally oriented research attention. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

People who are dependent on alcohol exhibit problems with some social skills, such as negative assertion and refusal of alcohol from others. However, these interpersonal skills deficits are not broad-based, and may be due to low motivation to use the skills than to not possessing them. Alcoholism has complex associations with family interactions. In some cases, alcoholism can bring positivity and stability to family troubles. Scientists are learning that alcoholism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, and that persons with certain subtypes of it are more inclined than others to have more severe family problems. In particular, those with episodic (vs. steady), high-antisociality (vs. low-antisociality), and stable-wet (vs. stable-dry or transitional alcoholism tend to have the most disrupted family environments and interactions. As in the family more generally, the marital relationship can influence and is influenced by spousal alcoholism. Alcoholics may harbour feelings of hostility and competitiveness toward their spouse. At the same time, drinking can in some cases activate positivity and problem solving in marital interaction. The marriages of those who drink at home tend to see more positive consequences of drinking than the marriages of those who drink outside the home. A great deal of attention has been paid to COAs (children of alcoholics) in both the scientific and lay press. Problems for COAs are thought to represent the interpersonally destructive consequences of parental alcoholism. Although they are clearly at risk for developing problem drinking themselves, COAs are not easily distinguished from non-COAs. When they are, a more general negative family environment mechanism may explain their troubles better than the specific effects of parental alcoholism do. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

The architecture for adult substance abuse or dependence is often intact by the end of adolescence, and is largely established through interpersonal interaction. Young people learn to use drugs and alcohol by observing their friends and family members perform the behaviours; this process is known as modeling. High levels of family-of-origin discord and interpersonal maltreatment may predispose young people to get involved with and continue to use drugs and alcohol. Undoubtedly, many such youths are self-medicating and seeking an escape from interpersonally inflicted trauma and drama. Although adolescents who are involved in substance use and misuse have some interpersonal problems of their own, these problems are in some cases the consequences of substance use. Some evidence also suggests that codependent interpersonal relationships can even maintain substance misuse. All those with habitual substance use, abuse, or dependence seek to alter their consciousness, and often to escape a negative mood state. No one is born with the knowledge or behavioural ability to use drugs and alcohol for these or other purposes. Rather, this knowledge and behaviour comes from interpersonal interaction. Drug and alcohol use is socially learned. The path from substance use to substance abuse and/or dependence is often strewn with the wreckage of destructive interpersonal interactions and relationships, such as conflict and hostility in families or origin and orientation, rejection by peers, sexual abuse, and marital discord. Alcohol and other substance abuse and dependence are both causes and consequences of interpersonal distress. However, to live your best life now, one must act on one’s will, not simply one’s emotions. Sometimes that means one has to take steps of faith even when one is hurting, grieving, or still reeling from some attack of the enemy. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Some people are sitting around waiting for God to change their circumstances. Then they are going to be happy; then they are going to have a good attitude; than they are going to give God praise. However, God is waiting on one to get up on the inside. To be an actualizing Christian. When one does one’s part, God will begin to change the things and work supernaturally in one’s life. Are you going through a dark time in your life? Perhaps someone deceived you, took advantage of you, or mistreated you, and now you are tempted to sit around acting foolish and ghoulish, mouring over what you have lost, thinking about how unfair it was, and how your life will never be the same. You need to change your attitude. You have to feel the success and happiness on the inside. Develop the mentality of a successful person and watch what God will begin to do. When you face adversity, do not be a crybaby. Do not be a complainer. Do not wallow in self-pity. Instead, have the attitude of a successful Christian. Jesus Christ is a lover of purity and the Giver of All Sanctity. A pure heart is the sort of thing He seeks. And in a place like that He likes to take His rest; a Chatsworth, as it were; that was Luke’s sentiment in Acts (7.49). Prepare of Jesus a dining room with some suitable furniture—that is how the Evangelist Mark recorded it (14.15), and He will make Passover with His Disciples and invite you to come. Jesus will be glad and come to you and remain for the celebration of the feast, but first you will have to scour the leaven from the room—Paul reminded the Corinthians to do just that in his First Letter (5.7)—and sweep out the inner room of one’s heart. Get rid of everything secular. Banish the sounds of the noisy vices outside. Then sit as solitary sparrow on a roof tile, as the Psalmist once put it (102.7), and stew about your regrets in—as the Prophet Isaiah described it so well (38.15)—the vinaigrettes of your soul. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Every loving Devout has already done this, prepared a Chatsworth; that is to say, the best, most beautiful spot for one’s own beloved Friend. Why? To show what great affections would greet the arrival of one’s Best Friend. Mark you, no preparation is ever perfect. Try though you do, there are still foreign particles about, and even if you were to spend a year doing it, there would still be dust in the air. taking into consideration Jesus Christ’s piety and grace, one would be permitted to approach His table. One would have to do it, though, as an indigent to a rich man, with nothing in one’s pockets and no way to repay the kindness other than to eat humble pie and give humble thanks. Just do what one can do and do it diligently, not out of habit or necessity, but with fear and reverence. With affection receive the Body of you Beloved Lord and God, who thought you were a worthy enough chap to receive a visit. Jesus is the One who called you, the One who ordered it to happen, who cleaned you up so nicely. Come and receive Jesus. If perchance Jesus should shed some grace of devotion on you, give thank to Him, your God. Not because you are worthy of it, but because He looks down with mercy on one’s pathetic state. If one does not have grace, but feels increasingly arid, insist on prayer, groan and beat your best, saying “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”; the Evangelist Matthew said something similar (7.7). And do not stop until you receive a morsel of medicinal grace. Without Jesus you are poor—not the other way around. One does not come to bless Christ, and make Christ feel good—it is the other way around. One comes to be sanctified by Christ and to be joined to Jesus Christ in friendship, and to be encouraged once again to do better; First Timothy yet again (4.14). Do not overlook this grace. Rather, prepare one’s heart with all diligence. Then bid one’s Beloved Friend to enter. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

It is important to note here that one should not only prepare oneself for devotion before Communion, but also save oneself solicitously after Communion. The recollection after should not be less than the preparation before, for the post-Communion glow is the best preparation for attaining major grace. Whoever flees from Communion back to the World for fear of missing some Worldly consolations loses what spiritual consolations have already been detailed to one. Beware of lengthy conversations. Remain by yourself in the church or chapel, and enjoy your special time with God, for you have Him whom the whole World cannot wrest from you. Jesus Christ is the One to whom you ought to give your complete self. That so that you may live not in yourself, but in Him—do that, and you can kiss care good-bye. You may be weary, and tired, worn down, and ready to give up. You may be saying, “I am never going to break this addiction. I have had it for so long. I would not even know how to function without it.” Or, “My income is so low, and my debts are so high; I do not see how my financial situation will ever get better.” Or, “I have been praying for years, but it does not look as though my children want to serve God.” “I have had about as much as I can take.” Do not allow yourself to wave the white flag of surrender. You must get out of that defeated mentality and start thinking and believing positively. Your attitude should be: I am coming out this situation successfully! I may have been sick for a long time, but I know this sickness did not come to stay. It came to pass. I may have struggled with this addiction for years, but I know my day of deliverance is coming. My children may not be doing right, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

You must show the enemy that you are more determined than he is. Make it known, “Even if I have to stand my whole lifetime, I am going to stand in faith! I am going to keep standing up on the inside, no matter how long it takes.” God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner. There is no reason for you to be perpetually living “under the circumstances,” always down, always discouraged. No matter how many times you get knocked down, keep getting back up. God sees your resolve. He seems your determination. And when you do everything you can do, that is when God will step in and do what you cannot do. Dear Lord in Heaven, I choose to rule my emotions, rather than allowing them to dominate me. Please help me to act on what I know is right and true according to Your Word, rather than on outward appearances, feelings, or discouraging information. With Your help, I will be successful! Many pray for good health and strength, but if they sneeze once, they say, “I believe I am taking the flu,” or “I must be taking a cold.” They have set a scriptural law in motion and it cancelled their prayer. Let me share a little secret with you that will stop 50 percent of your cold is you will do it consistently. Every time you sneeze say, “Thank God, I am taking healing. I have a choice; so I am taking healing.” “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life,” reports Deuteronomy 30.19. No one will snicker or laugh when you say, “I am taking the flu.” They will just reply, “Oh, poor thing.” However, when you say, “I am taking healing,” they will often say, “What has gotten into you?” Just reply, “The Word of God!” James says if you can control the tongue, that the body can be controlled. Your body is like a child—it will do anything you let it do. If you let it, it will be sick. The spirit of man on the inside is the one that should dominate the body. Christ redeemed you from the curse of poverty, sickness, and sin. (Galatians 3.13.) #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Some would reason that if we were redeemed from the curse of the Law, then everyone would be healed and no one would be sick; but that is not true. We are redeemed from sin; but not everyone is saved. They could be, but they have not acted on God’s Word to be delivered from sin. If you want to, you can still sin. According to the Word of Galatians 3.13, we have no more right to allow sickness and disease in our bodies than we do sin. It all comes from Satan! When the question arises which one is absolutely the best government, an insoluble question is being raised because it is indeterminate. Or, if you wish, it has as many good answers as there are possible combinations in the absolute and relative positions of the people. However, if asked by what sign it is possible to know that a given people is well or poorly governed, this is another matter, and the question of fact could be resolved. However, nothing is answered, since each wants to answer it in one’s own way. The subjects praised public tranquillity; the citizens praise the liberty of private individuals. The former prefers the security of possessions; the latter that of persons. The former has it that the best government is the one that is most severe; the latter maintains that the best government is the one that is mildest. This one wants crimes to be punished, and that one wants them prevented. The former think it a good thing to be feared by their neighbours; the latter prefer to be ignored by them. The one is content so long as money circulates; the other demands that the people have bread. Even if agreement were had on these similar points, would we be any closer to an answer? Since moral quantities do not allow of precise measurements, even if there were agreement regarding the sign, how could there by agreement regarding the evaluation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

For my part, I am always astonished that such a simple sign is overlooked or that people are of such bad faith as not to agree on it. What is the goal of the political association? It is the preservation and prosperity of its members. And what is the surest sign that they are preserved and prospering? It is their number and their population. Therefore do not go looking elsewhere for this much disputed sigh. All other things being equal, the government under which, without external means, without naturalizations, without colonies, the citizens become populous and multiply the most, is infallibly the best government. That government under which a populace diminishes and dies out is the worst. Calculators, it is not up to you. Count, measure, compare. We should judge on this same principle the centuries that merit preference with respect to the prosperity of the human race. Those in which letters and arts are known to have flourished have been admired too much, without penetrating the secret object of their cultivation, and without considering its devastating effect, and this was called by the inexperienced, when it was a part of servitude. Will we never see int eh maxims of books the crude interest that causes the authors to speak? No. Whatever they may say, when a country is depopulated, it is not true, despite its brilliance, that all goes well; and the fact that a poet has an income of hundred thousand livres is not sufficient to make his century the best of all. The apparent calm and tranquillity of the leader ought to be less of an object of consideration than the well-being of whole nations and especially of the most populous states. A hailstorm may devastate a few cantons, but it rarely causes famine. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Riots and civil ways may greatly disturb the leaders, but they are not the true misfortunes of the people, who may even have a reprieve while people argue over who will tyrannize them. It is their permanent condition that causes real periods of prosperity or calamity. It is when everything remains crushed under the yoke that everything decays. It is then that the leaders destroy them at will, where they bring about solitude they call it peace. When the quarrels of the great disturbed the kingdom of France, and the Coadjutor of Paris brought with one to the Parliament a knife in his pocket, this did not keep the French people from living happily and in great numbers in a free and decent ease. Long ago, Greece flourished in the midst of the cruelest wars. Blood flowed in waves, and the whole country was covered with men. It seemed, says Machiavelli, that in the midst of murders, proscriptions, and civil wars, our republic became more powerful; the virtue of its citizens, their mores, and their independence did more to reinforce it than all its dissension did to weaken it. A little agitation gives strength to souls, and what truly brings about prosperity for the species is not so much peace as liberty. At the same time, we see equally powerful fingers clawing at the nation-state from above. The Third Wave has brought new problems, a new structure of communications, and new actors on the World stage—all of which drastically shrink the power of the individual nation-state. Just as many problems are too small or localized for national governments to handle effectively, new owns are fast arising that are too large for any nation to cope with alone. “The nation state, which regards itself as absolutely sovereign, is obviously too small to play a real role at the global level,” writes the French political thinker, Denis de Rougement. “No one of our 28 European states can any longer by itself assure its military defense and its prosperity, its technological resources, the prevention of nuclear wars and of ecological catastrophes.” Now can the United States of American, Russia or Japan. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Tightened economic linkages between nations make it virtually impossible for any individual national government today to manage its own economy independently or to quarantine inflation. The ever-swelling bubble of Euromoney, for example, as suggested earlier, is beyond the power of any individual nation to regulate. National politicians who claim their domestic policies can “halt inflation” or “wipe out unemployment” are either naïve or lying, since most economic infections are now communicable across national boundaries. The economic shell of the nation-state is now increasingly permeable. Furthermore, national borders that can no longer contain economic flows are even less defensible against environmental forces. If Swiss chemical plants dump wastes into the Rhine, the pollution flows through Germany, though Holland, and ultimately into the North Sea. Neither Holland nor Germany can, by itself, guarantee the quality of its own waterways. Oil tanker spills, air pollution, inadvertent weather modification, the destruction of forests, and other activities often involve side effects that sweep across national borders. Frontiers are now porous. The new global communications system further opens each nation to penetration from the outside. Canadians have long resented the fact that some 90 United States of American television stations along the border telecast programs to Canadian audiences. However, this Second Wave form of cultural penetration is minor compared with that made possible by Third Wave communications systems based on satellites, computers, teleprinters, interactive cable systems, and dirt-cheap ground stations. “One way to ‘attack’ a nation,” writes United States Senator George S. McGovern, “is to restrain the flow of information—cutting off contact between the headquarters and overseas branches of a multinational firm…building information walls around a nation…A new phase is entering the international lexicon—‘information sovereignty.’” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Yet it is questionable how effectively nation borders can be sealed off—or for how long. For the shift of the Third Wave’s industrial base has required the development of a highly ramified, sensitive, wide open “neural network” or information system, and attempts by individual nations to dam up data flows may interfere with rather, than accelerate, their own economic development. Moreover, each technological breakthrough provides yet another way to penetrate the nation’s outer shell. All such developments—the new economic problems, the new environmental problems, and the new communications technologies—are converging to undermine the position of the nation-state in the global scheme of things. What is more, they come together at precisely the moment when potent new actors appear on the World scene to challenge national power. Those who feel that economic reform is the most urgent duty facing humanity have usually opposed the mystical movement. They have done so on the grounds that it diverts attention from the real (that is, the economic) issues, that it enfeebles the urge towards social improvement and individual ambition, and that it leads to sleepy, dreamy complacency. Karl Marx’s criticism of religion, that it had become a mere appendix of bourgeois thought, had some truth in it for his own times. However, today, many religious leaders have been aroused to the danger and are sincerely striving to bring the social order into line with religious ethics. They are no longer falsifying religious ethics by striving to bring them into line with the social order. Yet the solution Communists offer is philosophically unsatisfactory for it is born out of crude materialism, based on venomous class hatred, and stiffened by bureaucratic tyranny. Their ultimate aim, however, is a good one only insofar as it is the elimination of capitalism’s defects, such as avoidable unemployment, extreme poverty, and social injustices, but their means and methods are very bad. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

There is only one real capitalist—Nature—one real proprietor of the Earth and all that therein is, and consequently all the children of the Earth are its rightful heirs. We usually forget that we have no ethical right to possess what we have not toiled for. This is overlooked by society as a whole and we, as individuals, take shelter beneath the common sin. For sin it is, albeit only one of omission. Those, however, who have cast aside the conventional view can see it for what it is. That which this Earth produces is for all. Every human has one’s birthright in what it stores or gives forth, although not an equal birthright to every other human. This, surely, is Nature’s view, although humans in their ignorance have developed other ideas upon the matter and so brought great misery upon their fellows and great nemesis upon themselves. The World is for our temporary use and does not constitute our eternal property. Whoever thinks outside—whether it be a single individual or a community of individuals called a “nation”—and excludes all others from consideration, whoever thinks one has a full right to eat whilst others have a full right to starve, whoever cannot identify oneself with the suffering people of one’s own or another country, will be tutored by pain and instructed by loss. We are all stewards, not proprietors, and own nothing in reality. This was pithily expressed by a highly advanced Jesus Christ. Many people, who are rich landlords, complain of being robed of some jewels, money, and other property, and perhaps Nature regards them also as thieves. If the true Master made His claim, how would they think on, with what shame, all that fierce talk of thine and mine, the World He fashioned so divine. What could they answer did He says, “When did I give my World away?” However, there is great distance from such abstract reflections to the concrete realities of contemporary social and economic life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

The whole structure of laws and rights is based on these realities. And this is as it should be, for humanity, as its present stage of evolution, can best express itself and serve itself in that way. The anarchist would ignore them because he is one-sided and the Communist would violate them because he is unscrupulous. Philosophy does not object to anu effort to remold society for the common welfare, but welcomes it. No amount of academic sophistry can justify a system which permits the few to have more food than they can eat and forces the many to have less food than they need to eat. No amount of legal enactment can justify the ownership of a hundred thousand acres of land merely because five hundred year earlier some ancestor seized it. These ancient wrongs must be redressed. Both altruistic sentiment and political strategy—no less Universal Law adjustment—demand such a revision, although the attempt to do so by violent means would introduce far worse wrongs. In this momentous task, we have to prepare a blueprint—not of the ideal State which we would like to see arise, but of the actual State which can arise under the given circumstances. This means that we must follow a middle path. Any other way will be either too realistic or too idealistic and will lead to failure. For we must find not only what is theoretically right but also what is practically possible. We cannot and we ought not do away wildly, abruptly, and violently with our social environment. Without it we would be savages. Those vanished humans of the past had to learn arduously how to live on earth, how to adapt themselves to it. Think of what it would mean to be born into a World where no houses existed, no land was cultivated, no roads had been made, no machines invented, no knowledge known! All these and infinitely more exist today and constitute our surroundings, our civilization; but they did not spring up in a single night. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Civilization, advancement and technology are the inheritance which we own to long trailing of African, Egyptian, Asiatic, and European ancestors living and working and dying for countless centuries. They are our own racial past. We cannot dismiss this legacy without descending anew to the most barbarous existence. There are grave defects in this environment, it is true, but the young rebel who wishes to tear everything down in order to remove these defects, will also remove treasures bought at a price which will take the toil of millions through centuries to pay again. The past efforts of humans appear in our present environment. Let us use it, but use it wisely. It is here to serve us. We need not be afraid to improve and alter it. Unbalanced hot-heads who say that such improvement and such alteration is only possible through compete destruction of what is the present order so that what may be shall rise on its ruins, have misread history. However, there is a right as well as a wrong way of doing this. The only proper way is by persuasion, by the persuasion and education of social conscience and by the uplift of social morality to loftier standards. Such reforms can be brought about only in an atmosphere of goodwill and calmness, not in an atmosphere of hatred and brutality. Humans must choose which God one will serve, the God of hatred or the God of love, for one cannot serve both. One must effect these changes not by brutality or by blood, but by the gentler persuasions of reason and goodwill, slower though they necessarily are. Wisdom prefers to see needed reforms and overdue changes brought by peaceful and not violent means, by the acknowledgement of their ethical need rather than by submission to materialistic values. During the Glimpse of God, one feels that one has travelled close to one’s journey’s end, to the fulfilment of one’s highest purpose. The quest has suddenly become easy and pleasant. However, alas! after the rainbow fades and vanishes, one is forced to recognize that one had far yet to go, that what one experienced was only a passing glimpse and not the final goal. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

If one cannot keep this higher consciousness, it is because one’s lower and Earthly nature is strong enough to raise again and block the way. When the purification lessons are learned it will then be possible for one, by self-effort and self-development, to regain this experience—at first temporarily and occasionally, but if one works correctly and Grace sanctions, permanently. In each of these glimpses, one’s quest attains a minor climax, for each is a step toward full illumination. It is a kind of pre-vision in which one sees, as Moses saw the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land toward which one journeys. It is a mistake to regard it as final illumination when it is in fact only one of many stages toward final illumination, and that should remind us that this society can better than it is, but we have to want to be better. We have to want to reform. We have to want to be kind. We have to want to help, not exploit others. It calls for a renovation of the human mind and soul, not the human home. Your home can be laced with gold and diamonds, but what does it matter if your soul is condemned to rot in Hell for all eternity? Glory be to God for dappled things—for skies of couple-colour as brinded cow; for rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; fresh-firecoal chestnuts falls; finches’ wings; landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; and all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) with swift, slow; sweat; sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him. Hear, O America: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be His glorious kingdom for ever and ever. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart. Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thy house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy house and upon thy gates. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Many People Wanted the Pleasure of an Invitation to a Séance!
Perplexity is leavened by extravagant Victorian beauty, and no casual visitor can see it all. Palatial elegance unfolds with each turn along every path of exploitation of the catacomb. One gazes through oval lens windows now only magnifying the pandemonium of Winchester Boulevard; through them, over a century ago, imagine the warm summer evenings, as Sarah Winchester admired her quiet gardens steeped in the low western sunshine; the bird singing loud in the hawthorn and sycamore of her deer park, the cascading fountains spouting holy water, and the peaceful blossoming orchards vesper calm upon all things. The best tea-things were set out in her best parlour. There was usually a bunch of roses on the table, and Mrs. Winchester was dressed in her light blue muslin, with a rose in her hair. She would arise before her guests like a picture, with the sunshine flickering about her dark hair. She was very sweet, tender and gentle. Many people wanted the pleasure of an invitation to a séance in the Blue Séance Room. Mrs. Winchester would gather together many birds of alien feather. A humans’ own suffering mind must be, of all moral food, the most poisonous for one to feed on. Surround a scorpion with fire and it stings oneself to death. Throw a diseased soul entirely upon its own resources and moral suicide result. It was a principle with Mrs. Winchester to oppose bullying. She believed we were here on this Earth for a definite purpose–and God’s duty plain to any human who wills to read it. There may be disembodied spirits who seek to distress or annoy where they can no longer control. If there are, hers, which is not yet divorces from its means to material action, declines to be influenced by any irresponsible whimsy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Mrs. Winchester was very happy in her new home. She had been used to keeping her father’s house since her early girlhood days, and her shortly lived matronly duties came very easy to her. The expansive Victorian mansion, with its neat furniture and fresh dimity draperies, 160 rooms, 10,000 windows, nine kitchens, and 47 fireplaces was the pretties thing possible in the way of rustic interiors; the estates was like a temple dedicated to some Heavenly divinity, and Mrs. Winchester took a natural womanly pride in this bright home. She had come from a good house; but this was quite her own. For 38 years, 1884-1922, the sound of saw and hammer never ceased. Commonly, 16 carpenters were employed at one time, some having worked for 20 years without changed. They produced the largest, most complicated and exclusively private residents in the United States of America. There are five different heating systems and three elevators, one hydraulic and two electric. Some of the 13 bathrooms lacked privacy; they have clear glass doors! One rambling room has four fireplaces and five hot-air registers. A spiral stairway has 42 steps, each two inches high. Other stairways melt into blank walls. A second story door opens into the great outdoors and a 20-foot step. A linen closet has the area of a three-room apartment; a nearby cupboard is less than one-inched deep. A skylight is placed in the middle of a room, in the floor! Another floor is a series of trap-doors. The visitor must stoop through one door to enter, the next gives clearance for an eight-foot giant. Many stairway turn posts are upside down. Entire walls are built entirely of half-inch, “half-round” strips. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Everywhere prevail that uncanny deference to the number 13; 13 stairsteps, 13 hangers in a closet, 13 wall panels, 13 lights in the chandeliers, 13 windows to a room and if necessary to make that number, some placed in an inside wall. One of the guests at this séance was Ludwig Leichhardt. He thought of men and women who had died of a fever the previous year, and the spirits told him to depart for “people who had wished to live, for whom life was full of duties and household joys; whose loss left wide gaps among their kindred, not to be filled again upon this Earth.” Ludwig felt a dull blankness of his existence which he felt—an utter emptiness and hopelessness; nothing to live for in the present, nothing to look forward to in the future. He bragged about how much capital he had in the Bank of Italy and how he could provide Mrs. Winchester with a comfortable life. However, this was to be his last day as a guest at the Winchester mansion. His two great sea chests, containing his clothes, books, and other property had gone to San Francisco by that evening’s luggage train. His last memory of the Winchester would be Mrs. Winchester’s bright tender face looking at him compassionately, as she had looked the day she broke his heart. After the death of her husband and daughter, Mrs. Winchester remained celibate and never remarried. Precious moments went by, and Ludwig pushed his teacup away with a listless air. He got up presently and showed him she to the exit of the mansion, after a brief good evening to all. The sun was low by this time, and the western sky flooded with an orange light. The garden was abloom with roses and honeysuckle. Ludwig Leichhardt fancied her should never look upon such flowers or such a garden again. The mansion seemed to grow dark all at once when he was gone. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Adam Worth had also been at the séance that evening and did not seem to care for the tea. Ludwig promised to write Mrs. Winchester to let her know he was safe. The sun had gone down, and there was a long line of crimson yonder in the west above the edge of the estate. All the guest prepared to leave and Mrs. Winchester retired to her chambers for the evening. While laying in bed, Mrs. Winchester heard a bang on a door with a sounding slap. She figured it was just a piece of stupid discourtesy and went back to sleep. The following morning, she swore that one of the rooms on the second floor was not empty—and was quite upset about it—said there was some infernal influence at work in her home. To satisfy her curiosity, she asked her butler Henry to open the door. The light was dim in the room and Mrs. Winchester paused in the corridor outside. His eyes glistened. His features relaxed, and he gave a short sigh, “the room is empty,” said Henry. With some stir of curiosity, Mrs. Winchester slipped out, but had a certain vague wonder in her mind. As she heard, the medium from the night before in the parlour was struggling on the floor, in what looked like an epileptic fit. Mrs. Winchester walked deliberately back to the closed door, as Henry went to hold the medium from doing any injury to herself. Huddled against the massive end wall, and half embedded in it, as it seemed, there lay a shadow. Looking closely, Mrs. Winchester saw that the trap door was not only firmly bolted, but screwed into its socket. She strode off in a fume. She was in an odd frame of mind, and for long moved her sitting-room to and fro, too restless to go to bed, or, as an alternative, to settle down to a book. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
She could not whistle her mind from the chase of a certain graveyard will-o’-wisp; and on it went stumbling and floundering through bog and mire, until she fell into a state of collapse, and was useful for nothing else. She went to bed and to sleep without difficulty, but was conscious of herself all the time, and of a shadowless horror that seemed to come stealthily out of the corners and to bend over and look at her, and nothing but a curtain or a hanging coat when she started and stared. Over and over again this happened, and Mrs. Winchester’s temperature rose by leaps, and suddenly she saw that is she failed to assert herself, and promptly, fever would leap her in a consuming fire. Then in a moment she broke into a profuse perspiration, and sank exhausted into delicious unconsciousness. Morning found her restored to vigour, but still the with flutter of curiosity in her brain. It worked there all day, and for many subsequent days, and at last it seemed as if her every faculty were honeycombed with its ramifications. Then “this will not do,” Mrs. Winchester thought, but still the tunnelling process went on. As the curious devil mastered her, she grew into such harmony with it that she could shut her eyes no longer to the true purpose of its insistence. It was the closed room about which her thoughts hovered like crows circling round carrion. In the dead waste and middle of a certain night, Mrs. Winchester awoke with a strange, quick recovery of consciousness. There was the passing of a single expiration, and she had been asleep and was awake. She had gone to bed with no sense of premonition or of resolve in a particular direction; she sat up a monomaniac. It was as if, swelling in the silent hours, the tumour of curiosity had come to a head, and in a moment, it was necessary to operate upon it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
She made no excuse for her then condition. Mrs. Winchester was convinced she was the victim of some undistinguishable force, that she was an agent under the control of the supernatural. Some thought had been in her mind of late in her position it was her duty to unriddle the mystery of the closed room door. However, time went by. The new year came, and still there was no letter from Ludwig Leichhardt. However, early in January, Henry, the butler came home from the Bank of Italy one afternoon, and told Mrs. Winchester she need not worry herself about her old friend any longer. “Ludwig Leichhardt is safe enough, mistress,” he said. “I was talking to Gilbert, the cashier at the Bank of Italy, this morning, and he told me that Leichhardt wrote to them for $2,000.00 last October from San Francisco, and he has written $1,000.00 more since. He is buying land somewhere—I forget the name of the place—and he’s well and hearty, Gilbert tells me.” However, a sense of fear and constriction was upon Mrs. Winchester. “Well, I’m afraid I’m rather fanciful, Henry; but I could never explain to you what a strange feeling came over me the night Ludwig Leichhardt went away from this estate. It was after I had said goodbye to him, and he had gone back into the mansion, where all was dark and quiet. I sat in the parlour thinking of him, and it seemed as if a voice was saying in my ear that I, nor anyone that care for hum, would ever seen Ludwig Leichhardt again. There wasn’t any such voice of course, you know, Henry, but it seemed like that in my mind; and whenever I’ve thought of poor Ludwig Leichhardt since that time, it has seemed to me like thinking of the dead. Often and often I’ve said to myself, ‘Why, Sarah, you silly thing, you ought to know that he’s safe enough in San Francisco. Ill news travels fast; and if there’d be anything wrong, we should have heard of it somehow.’ But, reason with myself as I would, I have never been able to feel comfortable about him; and thank God for your good news, Henry, and thank you for bring it to me. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
It has been very unkind of Ludwig not to write. She could not forgive him for his neglect, glad as she was to know he was safe. Then Mrs. Winchester paused for a moment, and confessed, the quick pant of fear seemed to come from her lips. There were sounds about her—the deep breathing of an imprisoned man. She returned to the locked door, and hurriedly flung it open. An acrid whiff of dust assailed her nostrils as she stepped back a pace and stood expectant of anything—or nothing. What did she wish, or dread, or foresee? The room was rather a large one; an old-fashioned room, with a low ceiling crossed by heavy means; half parlour, half kitchen, with a wide-open fireplace at one end, on which the logs had burnt to a dullish red. There was the old chintz-covered armchair. Mrs. Winchester had been sitting with her face towards the open window, looking absently out at the garden, where daffodils and early primroses glimmered through the dusk. She stood to pick up her blueprints, which had fallen to the ground. She was standing folding this in a leisurely way, when she looked towards the fireplace, and gave a little start at seeing that the armchair was no longer empty. “Why, Henry,” she cried, “how quietly you must have come into the place! I never heard you.” There was no answer, and her voice sounded strange to her in the empty room. “Henry!” she repeated, a little louder; but the figure in the chair neither answered nor stirred. Then a sudden fright seized her, and she knew that it was not her butler. The room was almost dark; it was quite impossible that she could see the face of that dark figure seated in the armchair, with the shoulders bent a little over. Yet she knew, as well as ever she had known anything in her life, that it was not the butler Henry. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
She went slowly towards the fireplace, and stood within a few paces of that strange figure. A little flash of light shot up from the candle, and shone for an instant on the face. It was Ludwig Leichhardt! Mrs. Winchester tried to speak to him; but the words would not come. And yet it was hardly so appalling a thing to see him there that she need have felt what she did. San Francisco was not too far from San Jose that a man may not cross the Bay and drop in upon his friend unexpectedly. The candle’s flame got bigger, lighting up the entire room. The chair was empty. Mrs. Winchester uttered a loud cry, and Henry entered the room. “Why, Mrs. Winchester! What’s amiss?” he said. She ran to him, sobbing hysterically, and then calming herself with an effort, told him how she had seen Ludwig’s ghost. “Why Mrs. Winchester,” Henry replied. “Ludwig Leichhardt is safe in San Francisco. It was a shadow that took the shape of your old friend, to your fancy. It’s easy enough to fancy such a thing when your mind’s full of anyone.” Ill and shaken, yet fearing death as she had never dreaded it before, Mrs. Winchester said, “It was no fancy. Ludwig Leichhardt is dead, and I have seen his ghost. I’ve a feeling that he never got to San Francisco alive, Henry,” she said. “I can’t explain how it is, but I’ve a feeling that it was so.” Mrs. Winchester spent the rest of that horrible night huddled between her crumpled sheets, fearing to look forth, fearing to think. She knew the letters had been forgeries, and could not forget the madness and the terror in learning to walk the unvext paths of placid souls. She was left with nothing but an aimless scurrying terror and the black swarm of thoughts, so that she verily fancied her reason would give under the strain. Yet she had more to endure and to triumph over. Near morning she fell into a troubled sleep, throughout which the drawn twitch of muscle seemed an accent on every word of ill-omen she had ever spelt out of the alphabet of fear. If her body rested, her brain was an open chamber for any toad of ugliness that listed to “sit at squat” in. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Mrs. Winchester tried to convince herself that the thing she had seen was only a trick of her imagination. Another month went by, and again in the twilight the same figure appeared to her. It was standing this time, with one arm leaning on the high mantlepiece; standing facing her as she came back to the room, after having quitted it for a few minutes for some slight household duty. There was a fire burning in the fireplace. The logs were burning with a steady blaze that lit up the well-known figure and unforgotten face. Ludwig Leichardt was looking at her with an expression that seemed half reproachful, half beseeching. He was very pale, much paler than she had ever seen him in life; and as he looked, she standing just within the threshold of the door, she saw him lift his hand slowly and point to his forehead. The firelight showed her a dark red stain upon the left temple, like the mark of a contused wound. She covered her face with her hands, shuddering and uttering a little cry of terror, and then dropped half fainting upon a chair. When she uncovered her face the room was empty, there was a pool of blood on the floor, and the firelight shining cheerily upon the walls, no trace of that ghostly visitant. This time Mrs. Winchester brooded over the thoughts of the thing she had seen, firmly believing that she had looked upon the shadow of the dead, and that there was some purpose to be fulfilled by that awful vision. In the day, she had the room boarded up. The thought of this was almost always in her mind; in the dead silence of the night, she would often lie awake for hours thinking of Ludwig Leichhardt. Mrs. Winchester knew he had been waylaid and murdered. He had a good deal of money about him. Suddenly Mrs. Winchester woke to the fact that there was a knocking at her door—that there had been for some little time. She cried, “Come in!” finding a weak restorative in the mere sound of her own human voice; then remember the keys was turned, bade the visitor wait until she could come to him. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Scrambling, feeling dazed and white-livered, out of bed, Mrs. Winchester opened the door, and met one of the gentlemen on the threshold. The man looked scared, and his lips, she noticed, were set in a somewhat boding fashion. “Come you come at once, Mrs. Winchester?” he said, “There’s summat wrong with Ludwig Leichhardt. She had now a settled conviction that some untimely fate had befallen her old friend, and that the letters from San Francisco were forgeries. Gilbert from the Bank of Italy compared the signature cards and determined that the drafts and letters were forgeries. There was one thing noticeable in the San Francisco letters—they were all exactly alike, line for line, curve for curve. This rather discomposed Gilbert; for it is a notorious fact that a man rarely signs his name twice in exactly the same manner. There is almost always some difference. Before the month was out, Ludwig Leichhardt’s ghost appeared for the third time to Mrs. Winchester. In the Tender June twilight. She was thinking of her old friend as she walked along the shadowy winding path of the deer park on her estate. It was just such a still, peaceful evening as that upon which he had stood on the edge of the common looking back at her, and waving his hand, upon that last well remembered night. He was so much in her thoughts, and the conviction that he had come from among the dead to visit her was so rooted in her mind, that she was scarcely surprised when she looked up presently, and saw a tall familiar figure moving slowly among the trees a little way before her. There seemed to be an awful stillness in the wood all at once, but there was nothing awful in that well-known figure. She tried to overtake it; but it kept always in advance of her, and at a sudden turn in the path she lost it altogether. The trees grew thicker, and there was a solemn darkness at the spot where the path took this sharp turn, and on one side of the narrow footpath there was a steep declivity and a great hollow, made by a disused gravel pit. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
She went to her mansion quickly enough, with a subdued sadness upon her, and told Henry what had happened to her. Nor did she rest until there had been a search made on the extensive grounds for the body of Ludwig Leichhardt. They searched and found him lying at the bottom of the gravel pit, half buried in loose sand and gravel, and quite hidden by a mass of furze and bramble that grew over the spot. There was an inquest, of course. The tailor who had made the clothes found upon the body identified them, and swore to them as those he had made for Ludwig Leichhardt. The pocket were all empty and turned inside out. There could be little doubt the Ludwig Leichhardt had been waylaid and murdered for the sake of the money he carried upon him that night. His skull had been shattered by a blow from a jagged stick on the left temple. The stick was found laying at the bottom of the pit a little way from the body, with human hair and stains of blood upon it. Ludwig Leichhardt had never left San Jose. It was later determined that Adam Worth had killed Ludwig Leichhardt and took his money. The Bank of Italy refunded the withdraws. Adam Worth was ultimately apprehended, with some of Ludwig Leichhardt’s property still in his possession, and he was deeply in debt. The final examination resulted in a verdict of willful murder, tried, found guilty and hung. Ludwig Leichhardt had executed a few days before his intended departure, bequeathing all he possessed to Sarah Winchester—the interest for her sole use and benefit, the principal to revert to her estate after her death. Mrs. Winchester often sits beside that quiet resting place in the spring twilight; but she had never seen Ludwig Leichhardt’s ghost since that evening in the deer park, and she knew she never would see it again. She shook with an awful thankfulness at sight of the pitfalls she had skirted and escaped—of the demon she witlessly had baffled. The joy of life was in her heart again, but chastened and made pitiful by experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
You are aware that evil spirit beings operating through humans in positions of authority and influence are the real motivators in human society? Yes, this is exactly what the Christian Bible teaches! Perhaps this concept seems strange to you, almost like an outmoded superstition, but the Bible definitely states that Satan in the “god of this age,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.4, and that he is the leader of a well-organized army of beings invisible to humans but very active among them. Paul tells us in Ephesians, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. These words indicate that evil spirits are organized into a military-like structure. The “principalities” are the highest ranking officers under Satan, the “powers” are officials of somewhat lower standing, and the “rulers of the darkness of this World” seem to be a special band of evil spirits whose sphere of influence includes the leaders of human government. The phrase “spiritual wickedness is high places” is better translated “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the Heavenly places,” and makes reference to the myriads of demonic hordes. They are all under the direction of Satan, who is not only named the “god of this age,” but also is called “the prince of the power of the air,” reports Ephesians 2.2. The Scriptures often speak of a close relationship between these evil spiritual and the “World.” In the Ephesians passage quoted above, you will remember that these spirit beings are called “the rulers of the darkness of this World.” The apostle John also refers to the World, and it is significant that he considers it to be the Christian’s enemy. “Love not the World, neither the things that are in the World. If any human love the World, the love of the Father is not in one. For all that is in the World, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Farther, but is of the World. And the World passeth away, and the lust of it; but one that doeth the will of God abideth forever,” reports 1 John 2.15-17. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
In addition, the same apostle declared that one who is “born of God overcometh the World,” reports 1 John 5.4, and also that “the whole World lieth in wickedness,” reports 1 John 5.19. James, the brother of Jesus, declared in his epistle, “Whosoever therefore, will be a friend of the World, is the enemy of God,” reports James 4.4. Before we can gain a full understanding of what this means, we must answer the following questions: What is this World, which if loved causes us to lose God’s friendship? What does the Bible mean when it says that the whole World “lieth in wickedness”? Certainly the Bible is not saying that Christians should not love the World of nature, nor is it implying that every person who is not a Christian is an enemy to be overcome. In fact, the Scriptures often state that the glory of God is revealed in the natural World, and it specifically instructs believers not to antagonize other people, but to love them. No, the material Universe in which we live is not opposed to us, and we are not to consider the people who inhabit the Earth as our enemies. The “World” referred to by John and James is the moral and spiritual system we call human society. Humankind, which has rejected God’s revelation, has devised explanations of life, moral standards, and principles of conduct based upon human knowledge only. Humans, on the whole, operate on erroneous principles, selfish desires, improper motives, and unworthy standards of value. The sciences, the arts, politics, and entertainment are all dominated by a humanistic approach to life which draws humans away from God and makes humans the “measure of all things.” If the period of treated of in the essay from the commencement of the seventeenth century to the Restoration of Charles II, be barren of witchcraft proper, it must at least be admitted that it is prodigal in regard to the marvellous under various shapes and forms, from which the hysterical state of the public mind can be fairly accurately gauged. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The rebellion of 1641, and the Cromwellian confiscations, that troubled periods when the county was torn by dissention, and ravaged by fire, sword, and pestilence, was aptly ushered in by a series of supernatural events which occurred in the country Limerick. A letter dated the 13th August 1640, states that “for news we have the strangest that ever was heard of, there inchantments in the Lord of Castleconnell’s Castle four miles from Lymerick, several sorts of noyse, sometymes of drums and trumpets, sometimes of other curious musique with Heavenly vouces, then fearful screeches, and such outcries that the neighbours near cannot sleepe. Priests have adventured to be there, but have been cruelly beaten for their paynes, and carryed away they knew not how, some two miles and some four miles. Moreover were seen in the like manner, after they appear to the view of the neighbours, infinite number of armed men on foote as well as on horseback. One thing more [id est something supernatural] by Mrs. Mary Burke with tweleve servants lyes in the hose, and never one hurt, onley they must dance with them every night; they say, Mrs. Mary come away, telling her she must be wife to the inchanted Earl of Desmond. Uppon a Mannour of my Lord Bishoppe of Lymerick, Loughill, hath been seen upon the hill by most of the inhabitants aboundance of armed men marching, and these seene many tymes—and when they come up to them they do not appear. These things are very strange, if the cleargie and gentrie say true.” During the rebellion an appalling massacre of Protestants took place at Portadown, when about a hundred persons, men, women, and children, were forced over the bridge into the river, and so drowned; the few that could swim, and so managed to reach the shore, were either knocked on the head by the insurgents when they landed, or else were shit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
It is not a matter of surprise that this terrible incident gave rise to legends and stories in which anything strange or out of the common was magnified out of all proportion. Accord to one deponent there appeared one evening in the river “a vision or spirit assuming the shape of a woman, waist high, upright in the water, naked with [illegible] in her hand, her hair dishevelled, her eyes seeming to twinkle in her head, and her skin as white as snow; which spirit seeming to stand upright in the water often repeated the word Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! Also, Robert Maxwell, Archdeacon of Down, swore that the rebels declared to him, (and some deponents made similar statements) “that most of those that were thrown from the bridge were daily and nightly seen to walk upon the River, sometimes singing Psalms, sometimes brandishing of Swords, sometimes screeching in a most hideous and fearful manner.” Both these occurrences are capable of a rational explanation. The supposed spectre was probably a poor, bereaved woman, demented by grief and terror, who stile out of her hiding-place at night to bewail the murder of her friends, while the weird cries arose from the half-starved dogs of the country-side, together with the wolves which abounded in Ireland at that period, quarrelling and fighting over the corpses. Granting the above, and bearing in mind the credulity of all classes of Society, it is not difficult to see how the tales originated; but to say that, because such obviously impossible statements occur in certain despsitions, the latter are therefore worthless as a whole, is to willfully misunderstand the popular mind of the seventeenth century. We have the following on the testimony of the Rev. George Creighton, minister of Virginia, Co. Cavan. He tells us that “drivers women brought to his House a young woman, almost naked, to whom a Rogue came upon the way, these women being present, and required her to give him her mony, or else he would kill her, and so drew his sword; her answer was, You cannot kill me unless God gives you leave, and His will be done. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
“Thereupon the Rogue thrust three times at her naked body with his drawn sword, and never pierced her skin; whereat he being, as it seems, much confounded, went away and left her.” A like story comes from the other side: “At the taking of the Newry a revel being appointed to be shot upon the bridge, and stripped stark-naked, nothing withstanding the musketeer stood within two yards of him, and shot him in the middle of the back, yet the bullet entered not, nor did him any more hurt than leave a little black spot behind it. This many hundreds were eye-witnesses of. Divers of the like have I confidently been assured of, who have been provided of diabolical charms.” Similar tales of persons bearing charmed lives could not doubt be culled from the records of every way that has been fought on this planet of ours since History began. The ease with which the accidental or unusual was transformed into the miraculous at this period is shown by the following. A Dr. Tate and his wife and children were flying to Dublin from the insurgents. On their way they were wandering over commons covered with snow, without any food. The wife was carrying a sucking child, John, and having no milk to give it she was about to lay it down in despair, when suddenly “on the Brow of a Bank she found a Suck-bottle with sweet milk in it, no Footsteps appearing in the snow of any that should bring it thither, and far from any Habitation; which preserved the child’s life, who after became a Blessing to the Church.” The Dr. Tate mentioned above was evidently the Rev. Faithful Tate, D.D., father of Nahum Tate of “Tate and Brady” fame. Much of what has passed current in the New World as White (id est, permissible) Magic is only a disguised goeticism, and may of the resplendent angels invoke with the divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The popular conceptions concerning the diabolical spheres, which have been all accredited by magic, may have been gross exaggerations of fact concerning rudimentary and perverse intelligences, but the willful viciousness of the communicants is substantially untouched thereby. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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Does the Cause of Lunacy Lie in the Heavens or in Our Minds?

If you do not run your own life, somebody else will. Your children need your presence more than your presents because the hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any. It would hardly be accurate to day that we live now in a period of great enlightenment or dependable treatment of mental disorders. In fact, some recent surveys found that 43 percent of respondents believe that people bring on mental disorders themselves, 35 percent consider such disorders to be caused by sinful behaviours, and 19 percent point to the lack of willpower or self-discipline as a cause. Nevertheless, the last 70 years have brought major changes in the ways clinicians understand and treat abnormal functioning. There are more theories and types of treatment, more research studies, more information, and, perhaps for these reasons, more disagreements about abnormal functioning today than at any time in the past. In some ways the study and treatment of psychological disorders have made great strides, but in other respects clinical scientists and practitioners are still struggling to make a difference. Primitive societies believed that the moon had magical, mystical powers and that its changes portended events of many kinds. The moon supposedly had the power to impregnate women, to make plants grow, and to drive people crazy. Later societies also credited the power of the moon to affect behaviour, and they applied the terms “lunatic” and “lunacy” to the person and the behaviour to capture their lunar, or moonlike, qualities. Even today many institutions and people believe that behaviour is affected by the phases of the moon. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Anecdotal evidence abounds: police officers have sometimes noted more violent and bizarre crimes during the full moon, and certain hospitals have claimed to experience an increase in births. One hospital even linked the full moon to the onset of ulcers and heart attacks. A Wall Street brokers for years used the schedule of the moon as a guide in giving investment advice—successfully. A number of scientists have advanced theories to explain a lunar effect on human behaviour. Some say that since the moon causes the tides of the oceans, it is reasonable to expect that it has a similar effect on the bodily fluids of human beings, whose composition is more than 80 percent water. The increase in births might therefore be explained by the force of the moon on the expectant mother’s amniotic fluid. Similar tidal and gravitational effects have been used to explain the apparent increases in bizarre behaviour during full moons. One team of researchers has noted that a full moon seemed to have a greater impact on behaviour in the past than in current times and has attributed this difference to the lack of electricity in years past. Before the advent of artificial light, they argue, full moons were a significant source of illumination that disrupted the sleep-wake cycle. This tended to cause sleep deprivation and, consequently, psychological disturbances. Still other researchers have tried to determine whether the activity of the moon is in fact related to human behaviour by calculating the precise number of births, crimes, and unusual behaviours that occur during full moons. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Some of these investigators have indeed found an association between full moons and unintentional poisonings, aggression, absenteeism, and crime. Other researchers, however, have found no relationship between full moons and increases in violence in mental health settings, suicides, car accidents, or people seeking help for anxiety or depression. Even if an association exists, skeptics have noted that it may simply be due to people’s own expectations. That is, because certain persons expect to be influenced by a full moon, they may be more attentive and responsive to their internal sensations or desires at that time. To test this interpretation, researchers recently examined the effects of moon phases on animals who presumably have little self-awareness. One group of researchers found a significant increase in the number of people who visited emergency rooms with animal bites during full moons in a small British town, suggesting that unusual animal behaviour may indeed be affected by the moon. However, other researchers—who conducted studies with other animals, breeds, and towns—found no increase in animals bites during full moons. And so the debated continues as scientists and philosophers alike try to determine whether the cause of lunacy does indeed lie in the Heavens or our minds. How are people with severe disturbances cared for? In the 1950s researchers discovered a number of new psychotropic medications—drugs that primarily affect the brain and alleviate many symptoms of mental dysfunctioning. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

These medications include the first antipsychotic drugs, to lift the mood of depressed people; and antianxiety drugs, to reduce tension and worry. When given these drugs, many patients who had spent years in mental hospitals began to show signs of improvement. Hospital administrators, encouraged by these results and pressured by a growing public outcry over the terrible conditions in public mental hospitals, began to discharge patients almost immediately. Since the discovery of these medications, mental health professionals in most of the developed nations of the World have followed a policy of deinstitutionalization, releasing hundreds of thousands of patients from public mental hospitals. On any given day in 1955, close to 600,000 people were confined in public mental institutions across the United States of America. Today the daily patient population in the same kinds of hospitals is around 60,000. In short, outpatient care has now become the primary mode of treatment for people with severe psychological disturbances as well as for those with moderate problems. Today when severely impaired people do need institutionalization, they are usually given short-term hospitalization. Ideally, they are then given outpatient psychotherapy and medication in community programs and residences. Community mental health approach is an emphasis on social care for people with severe psychological disturbances. The approach has been helpful for many patients, but too few community programs are available to address current needs in the United States of America. As a result, hundreds of thousands of persons with severe disturbances fail to make lasting recoveries, and they shuffle back and forth between the mental hospital and the community. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

After release from the hospital, patients at best receive minimal care and often wind up living in decrepit rooming houses or on the streets. In fact, only 40 percent of persons with severe psychological disturbances currently receive treatment of any kind. At least 100,000 individuals with such disturbances are homeless on any given day; another 135,000 or more are inmates of jails and prisons. Their abandonment is truly a national disgrace. How are people with less severe disturbances treated? The treatment picture for people with moderate psychological disturbances has been more positive than that for people with severe disorders. Since the 1950s, outpatient care has continued to be the preferred mode of treatment for them, and the numbers and types of facilities that offer such care have expanded to meet the need. Before the 1950s, almost all outpatient care took the form of private psychotherapy, an arrangement by which an individual directly pays a psychotherapist for counseling services. This tended to be an expensive form of treatment available only to the wealthy. Since the 1950s, however, most healthy insurance plans have expanded coverage to include private psychotherapy, so that it is now also widely available to people with modest incomes. In addition, such as community mental healthy centers, crisis intervention centers, family service centers, and other social service agencies. The new settings have spurred a dramatic increase in the number of persons seeking outpatient care for psychological problems. Nationwide surveys suggest that one of every six adults and one of every five children between the ages of 9 and 17 now receive some form of mental health service in the course of a year. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Outpatient treatments are also becoming available for more and more kinds of problems. When Dr. Freud and his colleagues first began to practice, most of their patients suffered from anxiety or depression. These problems still dominate therapy today; almost half of all clients suffer from them. However, people with other kinds of disorders are also receiving therapy. In addition, at least 25 percent of clients enter therapy because of milder problems in living, problems with marital, family, job, peer, school, or community relationships. Yet another change in outpatient care since the 1950s has been the development of programs devoted exclusively to one kind of psychological problem. We now have, for example, suicide prevention centers, substances abuse programs, eating disorders programs, phobia clinics, and sexual dysfunction programs. Clinicians in these programs have the kind of expertise that can be acquired only by concentration in a single area. One caustic interpersonal phenomenon that has received considerable interest in the literature on eating disorders is childhood sexual abuse. A common form of abuse reported by people with eating disorders childhood sexual abuse, represents a gross violation of boundaries, particularly when perpetrated in the family context. This abuse often causes guilt, confusion, repulsion, and distrust of others. These potentially vicious psychosocial repercussions can make intimate relations later in life very difficult. Contrasting findings and possible explanations—there is at least some evidence to suggest that histories of sexual abuse are more common among those with eating disorders, especially bulimia nervosa, than what would be expected by chance alone. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

However, after numerous studies on the topic, findings remain mixed. For example, some estimates indicate that rates of childhood sexual abuse run as high as 70 percent among patients with eating disorders. One study of such patients found that 65 percent has experienced physical abuse, 28 percent has been sexually abused, and 23 percent had been raped. These statistics are shocking both for their indication of what appear to be extremely high prevalence rates of childhood sexual abuse among persons with eating disorders, and for their stark contrast to other epidemiological estimates indicating a far lower occurrence of sexual abuse in the background of such persons. For example, two reviews concluded that there was no evidence of higher rates of eating disorders among sexually abused versus nonabused women. Furthermore, one study found that among normal-weight women with bulimia nervosa, only 7 percent included a history of sexual abuse involving physical contact. Since it is estimated that the prevalence of sexual abuse in the general female population is 27 percent, it appears as if sexual abuse was less prevalent in the sample than in the general population. To complicate matters further, still another review found that rates of sexual abuse were no higher among those with eating disorders than among those in the general population. What conclusions can be drawn from the literature on childhood sexual abuse and eating disorders? First, some of the variance in these prevalence estimates can be explained by wildly discrepant operationalizations of “sexual abuse.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Second, the samples on which these estimates are based are also nonequivalent. For example, it is reasonable to expect a greater history of childhood sexual abuse in clinical samples than in samples with eating disorders drawn from the general population. Third, there is some consensus that childhood sexual abuse is neither necessary nor sufficient for the development of eating disorders in later life. This may explain the high rates of sexual abuse in some samples, and the lower rates in others. “One that covers one’s sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy,” reports Proverbs 28.13. Abuse tends to happen and it should not. A few decades ago, several American companies authorized by the U.S. government attempted to bury toxic-waste products underground. They filled large mental containers with chemical waste and other life-threatening products, sealed the drums tightly, and buried them deep down below the topsoil. They thought that was the end of it. Within a short time, however, many of the containers began to leak and the toxic waste started seeping to the surface, causing all sorts of problems. In some locations, it killed off the vegetation and ruined the water supply. People had to move out of their homes. What went wrong? They tried to bury something that was toxic. They never dreamed that the materials they were attempting to bury were so powerful that they were too toxic for the containers to hold. They did not imagine that one day those contaminants would resurface, and they would have to deal with the problem all over again. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, this time, the toxic materials would be dispersed and much more difficult to deal with. Had they disposed of them properly in the first place, they would not have had this terrible problem. It is the same with us. When somebody hurts us, someone does us wrong, instead of letting it go and trusting God to make it up to us, we bury it deep down inside. We attempt to cram unforgiveness, resentment, anger, and other destructive responses into our “leakproof” containers. We seal those lids tightly, but unfortunately, just as that toxic waste tends to resurface, one day the things you have tamped into your subconscious or buried deeply in the recesses of your heart will rise to the surface and begin to contaminate your life. We cannot live with poison inside us and not expect it to eventually do us harm. Forgiveness is the key to being free from toxic bitterness. Forgive the people who hurt you. Forgive the boss who did you wrong. Forgive the friend who betrayed you. Forgive the patent who mistreated you when you were younger. Do not let the root of bitterness grow deeper and continue to contaminate your life. What does this toxic waste look like in our lives? For some people, it seeps out as anger. In other people, it smells like depression. For others, it reeks of low self-esteem. It can show up in many different ways, sometimes doing damage before we even realize it has reappeared. One can have success on the outside, but if one is bitter on the inside, it is going to spoil and taint every success. One must deal with the inside first, then one can really be happy. Then one can experience true, untainted, unalloyed success in one’s life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

You may think forgiveness is too hard. However, you are not forgiving for their sake, you are forgiving for your sake. You are forgiving so that poison does not continue to contaminate your life. If someone has done you a great wrong, do not allow them to continue to hurt you by hanging on to it. You are not hurting them at all. You are hurting yourself. It is the laden bough that hangs low, and the most fruitful Christ who is the most humble. In American culture, there is a taboo against vulnerability, especially from dominant personalities. Seldom can we allow ourselves such phrases as “I am unsure,” “I feel vulnerable,” “I feel hurt,” or “I feel helpless.” And yet we all have these feelings from time to time. We all feel anxious, sacred, helpless, or weak. In our culture, where competition, individuality, and performance reign supreme, it is no surprise that any sense of weakness is repressed from awareness. Yet, when a part of us that is quite real is pushed out of consciousness, we are more vulnerable than ever because we lose touch with our core being. Then our energies are diverted into presenting a false self to the World. We even believe that this ideal self—secure, flawless, and capable in all situations—is our real self. This kind of vanity is the real target of the scriptural “pride goeth before destruction,” reports Proverbs 16.18. Surrender to God and understand that God is the Ground of Being. This powerful experience will enable one to get in touch with a power greater than oneself, the Supreme Being. Father, I know when I forgive those who hurt me, it pleased You. Please help me to recognize that forgiveness of others is in my best interest. “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but one who trusts in, relies on, and confidently leans on the Lord shall be compassed about with mercy and with lovingkindness. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you [uncompromisingly] righteous [you who are upright and right standing with Him]; shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” reports Psalm 32.10-11. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

We have here two very distinct moral persons, namely the government and the sovereign, and consequently two wills, one in relation to all the citizens, the other only for the members of the administration. Thus, although the government can regulate its internal administration as it chooses, it can never speak to the people except in the name of the sovereign, that is to say, in the name of the populace itself. This is something not to be forgotten. The first societies governed themselves aristocratically. The leaders of families deliberated among themselves about public affairs. Young people deferred without difficulty to the authority of experience. This is the origin of the words priests, ancients, senate and elders. The natives of North America still govern themselves that way to this day, and are very well governed. However, to the extent that inequality, wealth or power was preferred to age, and aristocracy became elective. Finally, the transmission of the father’s power, together with his goods, to his children created patrician families; the government was made hereditary, and we know of senators who were only twenty years old. There are therefore three sorts of aristocracy: natural, elective and hereditary. The first is suited only to some people; the third is the worst of any government. The second is the best; it is aristocracy properly so-called. In addition to the advantage of the distinction between the two powers, aristocracy has that of the choice of its members. For in popular government all the citizens are born magistrates; however, this type of government limits them to a small number, and they become magistrate only through elections, a means by which probity, enlightenment, experience, and all the other reasons for public preference and esteem are so many new guarantees of being well governed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Furthermore, assemblies are more conveniently held, public business better discussed and carried out with more orderliness and diligence, the reputation of the state is better sustained abroad by venerable senators than by a multitude that is unknown or despised. In a word, it is the best and most natural order for the wisest to govern the multitude, when it is certain that they will govern for its profit and not for their own. There is no need for multiplying devices uselessly or for doing with twenty thousand men what one hundred hand-picked men can do even better. However, it must be noted here that the corporate interest begins to direct the public force in less strict a conformity with the rule of the general will, and that another inevitable tendency removes from the laws a part of the executive power. With regard to the circumstances that are specifically suitable, a state must not be so small, nor its people so simple and upright, as is the case in a good democracy. Now must a nation be so large that the leaders, scattered about in order to govern it, can each play the sovereign in one’s own department, and begin by making themselves independent in order finally to become masters. However, if aristocracy requires somewhat fewer virtutes than popular government, it also demands others that are proper to it, such as moderation among wealthy and contentment among the poor. For it appears that rigorous equality would be out of place here. It was not observed even in Sparta. Moreover, if this form of government carries with it a certain inequality of fortune, this is simply in order that in general the administration of public business may be entrusted to those who are best able to give all their time to it, but not, as Aristotle claims, in order that the rich may always be given preference. On the contrary, it is important that an opposite choice should occasionally teach people that more important reasons for preference are to be found in a man’s merit than in one’s wealth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Neither is our image of evolution—or, for that matter, evolution itself what it used to be. Biologist, archaeologist, and anthropologists, attempting to unravel the mysteries of evolution, similarly find themselves in a bigger and more complex World than previously imagined and are discovering that laws once regarded as universal in application are actually special cases. Since Dr. Darwin, biologists have gradually developed a chart of the mechanism of evolution, called natural selection. On that basis attempts have often been made to portray all evolution—cosmic, chemical, cultural, ideological, social—as governed by a similar selection mechanism. However, such understandings seem doomed, inasmuch as the rules change at every plane. Even on the biological plane, rules once thought to apply across the board are in question. Thus scientists are being forced to ask whether all biological evolution is a response to variation and natural selection or whether, at the molecular level, it may depend instead on an accumulation of variations which result in “genetic drift” without the operation of Darwinian natural selection. Says Dr. Motoo Kimura of the National Institute of Genetics in Japan, evolution at the molecular level appears to be “quite incompatible with the expectations of Neo-Darwinism.” Other long held assumptions are being shaken as well. Biologist have told us that eukaryotes (human beings and most other forms of life) are ultimately descended from simpler cells called prokaryotes (among which are bacteria and algae). Fresh research is now undermining that theory, leading to the unsettling notion that the simpler life forms may have descended from the more complex. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Furthermore, evolution is supposed to favour adaptations that enhance survival. Yet we are now finding striking examples of evolutionary developments that seem to confer long-term benefit—at the cost of short-term disadvantage. Which does evolution favour? Then there is the startling news from, of all places, the Grant Park Zoon in Atlanta, where the chance mating of two species of ape with two quite different sets of chromosomes has produced the first known hybrid ape. Even though researchers are unsure whether the hybrid will be fertile, her bizarre genetics lend support to the idea that evolution may occur in leaps and bounds as well as through the accretion of small changes. Indeed, instead of seeing evolution as a smooth process, many of today’s life scientists and archaeologists are studying the “theory of catastrophes” to explain “gaps” and “jumps” in the multiple branches of the evolutionary record. Others are studying small changes that may have been amplified through feedback into sudden structural transformations. Heated controversies divide the scientific community over every one of these issues. However, all such controversies are dwarfed by a single history-changing fact. By 1957, as the first string of the Third Wave were being felt, Dr. Arthur Kornberg learned how DNA reproduced itself. Since then, as one popular summary describes the sequences “We have cracked the DNA code. We have learned how DNA transmits its instructions to the cell. We have analyzed chromosomes to determine genetic function. We have synthesized a cell. We have fused cells from two different species. We have isolated pure human genes. We have ‘mapped’ genes. We have synthesized a gene. We have changed the heredity of a cell.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Today genetic engineers in laboratories around the World are capable of creating entirely novel life forms. They have end-run evolution itself. Second Wave thinkers conceived of the human species as the culmination of a long evolutionary process; Third Wave thinkers must now face the fact that we are the designers of evolution. Evolution will never look the same. Like the concept of nature, evolution too is in the process of being drastically reconceptualized. With Second Wave ideas about the nature and evolution both changing, it is hardly surprising that we are also sharply re-evaluating Second Wave ideas about progress. The industrial period was characterized by a facile optimism that saw each scientific breakthrough or “new improved product” as evidence of an inevitable advance toward human perfection. Since the mid 19050’s, when Third Wave began battering Second Wave civilization, few ideas have taken as rough a beating as this cheery creed. The “beats” of the fifties and the hippies of the sixties made pessimism about the human condition, not optimism, a pervasive cultural theme. These movements did much to replace knee-jerk optimism with knee-jerk despair. Soon pessimism because positively chic. Hollywood movies of the 1950’s and 1960’s, for example, replaced the jut-jawed heroes of the 1930’s and 1940’s with alienated antiheroes—rebels without a cause, stylish gunmen, dope pushers with charm, angst-ridden motorcyclists, and hard, inarticulate (but soulful) punk. Life was a game nobody won. Fiction, drama, and art also took on a graveyard hopelessness in many Second Wave nations. By the early fifties, Camus had already defined the themes that countless novelists would subsequently purse. A British critic summed these up as: “Man is fallible, political theories are relative, automatic progress is a mirage.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Even science fiction, once filled with utopian adventures, turned bitter and pessimistic, generating countless poor imitations of Huxley and Orwell. Technology, instead of being portrayed as the engine of progress, increasingly appeared as a juggernaut destroying both human freedom and the physical environment. For many environmentalists, indeed, “progress” became a dirty word. Weighty volumes poured into the bookshops, bearing titles like The Stalled Society, The Coming Dark Age, In Danger of Progress, or The Death of Progress. As Second Wave society lurched into the seventies, The Club of Rome report on The Limits to Growth set a funereal tone for much of the decade that followed, with its projections of catastrophe for the industrial World. Upheavals, unemployment, and inflation intensified by the pandemic of 2020, adding to the spreading pall of pessimism and the rejection of the idea of the idea of inevitable human progress. Former Governor of California, Jerry Brown, spoke about the future being filled with “darkness and massive debt,” as he was leaving office, and the decline of the West—sending yet another frisson of fear down a good many spines. Whether such despair was, or is, justified remains for each reader to decide. One thing is clear, however: the notion of inevitable single-track progress, another pillar of indust-reality, is finding fewer takers as the start of the Fourth Wave civilization is looming close. There is fast a fast-spreading recognition around the World that progress can no longer be measure in terms of technology or material standards of living alone—that a society that is morally, aesthetically, politically, or environmentally degraded is not an advance society, no matter how rich or technically sophisticated it may be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

In fact, we are moving toward a far more comprehensive notion of progress—progress no longer automatically achieved and no longer defined by material criteria lone. We are also less inclined to think of societies as moving along one track, each society traveling automatically from one cultural way-station to the next, one more “advanced” than another. There may be many branch lines, as it were, rather than a single roadbead, and societies may be able to achieve comprehensive development in a variety of ways. We are beginning to think of progress as the flowering of a tree with many branches extending into the future, the very variety and richness of human cultures serving as a measure. In this light, today’s shift toward a more diverse, de-massified World may itself come to be seen as an important forward leap—analogous to the tendency toward differentiation and complexity so common in biological evolution. Whatever happens next, it is unlikely that the culture will ever again return to the naïve, unilinear, Pollyannish progressivism that characterized and inspired the Second Wave era, unless we discover another planet we can live on and start over. Nonetheless, the past decades, therefore, have witnessed a forced reconceptualization of nature, evolution, and progress alike. These concepts, however, were in turn based on still more elemental ideas—our assumptions about time, space, matter, and causality. And the Third Wave is dissolving even these assumptions—the intellectual glue that held the Second Wave civilization together. So start the face with all deliberate speed, and try not to flop. Through frequent prayers and confessions and the sacred reception of Jesus Christ’s Host, we can get wind again and rejoin the race. If one does not do this or something like it soon, one will just never have the strength to stay on the course. Be partaker and heir of Eternal Glory. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
From adolescence on—the Author of Genesis knew this (8.21)—the senses of Humankind are prone to evil, and unless Divine Medicaments help, Humankind will go to the dogs; that is to say, proceed from the lesser sins to the greater. That is how Holy Communion pulls one back from evil and pushes one toward good. As long as your soul is entrapped, or enshrined in your mortal body, it travels through life as a part of Jesus Christ; that is as Paul put in in Second Corinthians (5.6). Therefore, your soul should be mindful of God Himself from time to time and receive its beloved Friend with a devout mind. Blessed is the soul that is finally prepared itself to receive Jesus Christ, the Lord God, with devotion! In return, He will fill that soul with spiritual joy! Happy is the mind that receives the Great Lord, welcomes as guest, receives a congenial companion, accepts a faithful friend, embraces a noble bachelor in front of a party of friends, a Friend of friends! May Heaven with all its pendants and Earth with all its ornaments pause in their tinkling orbits for a moment to homage to Jesus Christ, our Sweetest Friend! Whatever praise seeps or grace drips from the largesse of His Comedown, it is only spillage from His Ever-flowing Fount. As the Psalmist has sung, “There is no accounting for Your Wisdom” (147.5). Our hope in the Atonement empowers us with eternal perspective. Hope is an emotion which brings richness to our everyday lives. It is defined as “the feeling that events will turn out for the best. When we exercise hope, we look forward with desire and reasonable confidence. As such, hope brings a certain calming influence to our lives as we confidently look forward to future events. Sometimes we hope for things over which we have little or no control. We hope for good weather. We hope for an early spring. We hope our favourite sports team will win the World Cup, Super Bowl, or the World Series. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Such hopes make our lives interesting and can often lead to unusual, even superstitious behaviour. Other times our hopes can lead to dreams which can inspire us and lead us to action. If we have the hope to do better at work, that hope can be realized by dedicated work and sacrifice. If we have the hope to play on a winning team, that hope can lead to consistent practice, dedication, teamwork, and ultimately success. Hope can inspire dreams and spur us to realize those dreams. Hope alone, however, does not cause us to succeed. Many honourable hopes have gone unfulfilled, shipwrecked on the reefs of good intentions and laziness. Our hope in the Atonement empowers us with eternal perspective. Such perspective allows us to look beyond the here and now on into the promise of the eternities. We do not have to be trapped in the narrow confines of society’s fickle expectations. We are free to look forward to celestial glory, sealed to our family and loved ones. “Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity. And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither can ye if we have no hope,” reports Moroni 10.20-21. Faith is rooted in Jesus Christ. Hope centers in the Atonement. Charity is manifest in the pure love of Christ. These three attributes are intertwined like strands in a cable and may not always be precisely distinguished. Together they become our tether to the celestial kingdom. “Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all humans,” reports 2 Nephi 31.20. This hope has lead humans through the ages to do remarkable things. It is my prayer that our hopes will lead to the fulfillment of our righteous dreams. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

I particularly pray our hope in the Atonement will strengthen our faith and charity and give us an eternal perspective of our future. May we all have this perfect brightness of hope. Lord, I come today seeking a financial breakthrough and your supernatural blessing. I know God that you are moving things and working all things together for my good. God, create an opening of your abundant supernatural supply. Break the curse of poverty and lack. And I thank You for all the blessings you have bestowed already. O Father the hem of whose garment is in the sky, whose grace falls from His glance, who gives life from the touch of one finger. O Father whose hair is the willow, whose breath is the riversong, who lopes through the milky way, baying, stars going out, O Lord whose deathshead holds a thousand eyes eye socket black imploded stars, who trails frail as a northern virgin on the mist, O Lord flying your bright drops to us, emblems of your love, throw your green scarf on the battered Earth once more. O smile, disrobe for us, unveil your eyes. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy king. We sanctify Thy name on Earth even as it is sanctified in the Heavens above, as described in the vision of Thy prophet: And the seraphim called one unto another saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole Earth is full of His glory. Whereupon the angles declare; Blessed be the glory of God from His Heavenly abode. And as it is written in the holy Scripture: The Lord shall reign forever; Thy God, O Zion, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah! Unto all generations we will declare Thy greatness and to all eternity we will proclaim Thy holiness. Our mouth shall ever speak Thy praise, O our God, for Thou art a great and holy God and King. Blessed Art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy King. Thou endowest humans with knowledge and teachest mortal humans understanding. O great us knowledge, understanding, and discernment. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who bestowest knowledge upon humans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Do Not Leave Me. See How Hard I am Trying! Are I Not Cute?

If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It is the ultimate hustle. As 1800 approached, the treatment of people with mental disorders began to improve once again. Historians usually point to La Bicetre, and asylum in Paris for male patients, as the first site of asylum reform. In 1793, during the French Revolution, Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) was named the chief physician there. He argued that the patients were sick people whose illness should be treated with sympathy and kindness rather than chains and beatings. He unchained them and allowed them to move freely about the hospital grounds, replaced the dark dungeons with sunny, well-ventilated rooms, and offered support and advice. Dr. Pinel’s approach proved remarkably successful. Patients who had been shut away for decades were now enjoying fresh air and sunlight and being treated with dignity. Many improved greatly over a short period of time and were released. Dr. Pinel later brought similar reforms to a mental hospital in Paris, France for female patients, La Salpetriere. Jean Esquirol (1772-1840), Dr. Pinel’s student and successor, went on to help establish 10 new mental hospitals that operated on the same principles. Meanwhile an English Quaker named William Tuke (1732-1819) was bringing similar reforms to northern England. In 1796 he founded the York Retreat, a rural estate where about 30 mental patients lived as guests in quiet country houses and were treated with a combination of rest, talk, prayer, and manual work. “For God has done what the Law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, [God] condemned sin in the flesh [subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power over all who accept that sacrifice],” reports Romans 8.3. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
The spread of moral treatment—the methods of Dr. Pinel and Mr. Tuke, called spectful techniques, caught on throughout Europe and the United States of America. Patients with psychological problems were increasingly perceived as potentially productive human beings whose mental functioning had broken down under stress. They were considered deserving of individual care, including discussions of their problems, useful activities, work, companionship, and quiet. The person most responsible for the early spread of moral treatment in the United States of America was Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), an eminent physician at Pennsylvania Hospital. Limiting his practice to mental illness, Dr. Rush developed innovative, humane approaches to treatment. For example, he required that the hospital hire intelligent and sensitive attendant to work closely with patients, reading and talking to them and taking them on regular walks. He also suggested that it would be therapeutic for doctors to give small gifts to their patients now and then. Dr. Rush, widely considered the father of American psychiatry, also wrote the first American treatise on mental illness and organized the first American course in psychiatry. Dr. Rush’s work was influential, but it was a Boston Schoolteacher named Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) who made humane care a public and political concern in the United States of America. In 1841 Mrs. Dix had gone to teach Sunday school at a local prison and been shocked by the conditions she saw there. Before long, her interest in prison conditions broadened to include the plight of poor and mentally ill people throughout the country. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
A powerful campaigner, Mrs. Dix went from state legislature to state legislature speaking of the horrors she had observed and calling for reform. Similarly, she told the Congress of the United States of America that mentally ill people across the country were still being “bound with galling chains, bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls attached to drag chains, lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods and terrified beneath storms of execration and cruel blows.” From 1841 until 1881, Mrs. Dix fought for new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders. Each state was made responsible for developing effective public mental hospitals. Mrs. Dix personally helped established 32 of these state hospitals (state-run public mental institutions in the United States of America), all intended to offer moral treatment. Similar hospitals were established throughout Europe. The Decline of moral treatment—as we have observed, the treatment of abnormality has followed a crooked path. Over and over again, relative progress has been followed by serious decline. Viewed in this context, it is not surprising that the moral treatment movement began to decline toward the end of the nineteenth century. Several factors were responsible. One was the speed with which the moral movement had spread. As mental hospitals multiplied, severe money and staffing shortages developed, recovery rates declined, and overcrowding in the hospitals became a major problem. Under such conditions it was often impossible to provide individual care and genuine concern. Another factor was the assumption behind moral treatment that if treated with humanity and dignity, all patients could be cured. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

For some, being treated with compassion and respect was indeed sufficient. Others, however, needed more effective treatments than any that had yet been developed. Many of these people remained hospitalized until they died. An additional factor contributing to the decline of moral treatment was the emergence of a new wave of prejudice against people with mental disorders. As more and more patients disappeared into large distant mental hospitals, the public came to view them as strange and dangerous. In turn, people were less open-handed when it came to making donations or allocating government funds. Moreover, many of the patients entering public mental hospitals in the United States of America in the late nineteenth century were impoverished foreign immigrants, whom the public had little interest in helping. By the early years of the twentieth century, the moral treatment movement had ground to a halt in both the United States of America and Europe. Public mental hospitals were providing only custodial care and ineffective medical treatments and were becoming more overcrowded every year. Long-term hospitalization became the rule once again. Beware of the evil eye—a number of demonological explanations for abnormal behaviour continue in today’s World. In rural Pakistan, for example, many parents apply special makeup around the eyes of their young children, as their ancestors have done for centuries. A paste of hazelnut powder and several oils, known as surma, is applied partly to protect the eyes from the smoke given off by home heating fires and partly to cool and clean the eyes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

However, another less acknowledged reason is to ward off nazar, the “evil eye,” thought to be responsible for the many deaths among the infants and for poor health and behavioural problems in those who survive. The American Psychiatric Association recognizes two distinct subtypes of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Obesity is currently considered more of a medical condition than a mental health problem. The defining features of anorexia nervosa include a refusal to maintain a normal body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a disturbance in body image and perception. Bulimia nervosa is defined by recurrent episodes of uncontrolled binge eating, inappropriate compensatory behaviours to control weight gain (exempli gratia, self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives or diuretics), and an undue influence of body shape and weight on self-evaluations. A chief difference between the two disorders is that individuals with bulimia nervosa are able to maintain their body weight at or above normally prescribed levels, whereas those with anorexia nervosa have a body weight below 85 percent of what is expected. Similar to depression and alcoholism, eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, have a lethal component. The long-term mortality for those afflicted with anorexia nervosa is estimated to be over 10 percent. The standardizes mortality ratio (observed mortality divided by expected mortality) for people with eating disorders is 3.6 for people under 20 years of age, 9.9 for those aged 20-29, and 5.7 for those over age 30. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

Among females, the lifetime prevalence of anorexia nervosa has been estimated at 0.5 percent, and 1.3 percent for bulimia nervosa. The descriptions of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023). The description of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023) contain references to interpersonal problems. Associated features of anorexia nervosa include social withdrawal and lessened interest in pleasures of the flesh; episodes of binge eating associated with bulimia nervosa are often triggered by interpersonal stressors. Research on interpersonal relationships and eating disorders has been typical of the work on interpersonal relationships and mental healthy more generally. The recognition of some type of relational difficulty associated with the disorder predates current investigations by at least a century and a quarter. One of Lasegue’s more notable contributions was the suggestion of “prentectomy”—hospitalization of the patients to remove them from exacerbating parental forces. Family-of-origin relationships in particular have been a focal point in this line of work. Finally, the proliferation of studies on this associated feature of eating disorders has been particularly evident over the past 50 years. In one longitudinal investigation, patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa were followed for a period of 5 years. Among the most notable features of those who did not recover over the course of the investigation (53 percent) were unsatisfactory family-of-origin relationships and problems with making personal contacts outside the family. Findings such as these are suggestive of the important role played by social relationships in the course of the disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

As noted above, research emanating from the interpersonal paradigm has sought to understand eating disorders largely through a focus on family-of-origin experiences. Extreme levels of family adaptability and cohesion, family expressed emotion (EE), inappropriate parental pressure, low parental care, parental overinvolvement, sexual abuse, and battles for control are dominant themes in the family histories of people with eating disorders. Some models and theories suggest that these family-of-origin processes play a critical role in the development of these disorders. Some problems with interpersonal communication may be secondary to these pathological family processes. In particular, there is some evidence linked childhood sexual abuse to a failure to develop adequate social skills, which in turn contributes to the development of eating disorders. Recent studies on the general personal relationships of people with eating disorders are also suggestive of interpersonal difficulties. Interpersonal rejection and distressed personal relationships are common problems in this population. Findings on family-of-origin experiences show that among those who are married, there is a strong association between eating disorders and marital distress. Like so many other psychological problems, eating disorders are situated in a network of other psychological problems with which they coexist, such as depression, borderline personality disorder (BPD), substance use disorders, and anxiety disorders. In the family-of-orientation experiences in eating disorders, there are family process variables. There is a dysfunctional interaction pattern among families of patients with anorexia nervosa. The interaction in these families often minimized conflict, with a rigid, nonadaptable style. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
These interactions were argued to be entwined with the symptoms of the disorder. Other family systems researchers and clinicians also saw eating disorders as built into and around family relations. Significant others usually interact with the bulimic in ways that exaggerate relationship characteristics that were present, but in a more subtle form, before the bulimia was revealed. The bulimia becomes a symptom around which the whole family revolves. While it may appear to be the individual’s problem, bulimia is a signal that the environment is not meeting one’s needs. In a family system perspective, disordered eating is understood to be caused and maintained by a family’s interpersonal behaviour, which itself is assumed to be influenced by the disordered eating of one of its members. Family process variables continue to receive a great deal of attention from those who seek to explain the origins and course of eating disorders. Examples of this can be found in the investigations on family cohesion and family adaptability. System-oriented researchers have emphasized these variables as two dimensions of family relationships that are crucial to healthy family functioning, provided that neither one is too extreme. Multiple studies indicate that eating disorders are associated with perceptions of low family cohesion. Although this finding has been relatively stable across child and parent reports, children with eating disorders give lower ratings of their families’ cohesiveness than their parents do. Generally, daughters’ ratings of family interaction have more diagnostic utility for predicting their eating disorders than mothers’ and especially fathers’ ratings do. Regardless of which family member’s perception is actually “correct,” the fact that a parent and a child with an eating disorder differ in their view of the family’s cohesiveness is perhaps itself diagnostically significant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

Investigations of family adaptability have yielded less consistent results than those of cohesion. Some evidence indicates a negative association between family adaptability and symptoms of eating disorders. However, a study found more chaos, less organization, and more poorly defined boundaries in the family, all suggestive of pathologically high level of adaptability, among patients with eating disorders. In most studies, the families appeared to be extreme in their adaptability (either too much or too little) indicating potentially detrimental family relations. As in schizophrenia, family EE is emerging as an important family process variable in eating disorders. Investigation indicated that aspects of maternal EE during the interactions of patients with eating disorders and their families explained 28-34 percent of the variance in the patients’ eventual outcome and response to therapy. The extent to which mothers made openly critical comments during family interaction assessment was a stronger predictor of patients’ outcomes than a host of other impressive predictors, such as premorbid body weight, duration of illness, body mass index, and age at onset. Inappropriate parental pressure is a phenomenon that may be particularly prominent in families of people with eating disorders. When compared to both psychiatric controls and nonpsychiatric controls, one sample of patients with eating disorders experienced excessive pressure from parents. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

This phenomenon is described as “gender-inappropriate pressure, age-inappropriate pressure, and inappropriate to the child’s abilities…the adolescents felt that they had been forced into an exaggerated feminine style of behaviour, that their parents had discussed topis (such as parental pleasures of the flesh) before the adolescents were prepared to deal with such subjects, and that the adolescents had been made to engage in activities which reflected their parents’ ambitions rather than their own. This leaves an adolescent in a state of conflict between premature exposure to the World of adults and anxiety over what is involved in that World, such as sexuality and high levels of achievement. Perhaps by exerting control over their own eating, adolescents may gain some feeling of mastery or control over this conflict. The families of patients with eating disorders identified four mechanisms by which family members contributed to the eating disorders, two of which are indicative of inappropriate parental pressure: high emphasis on achievement/perfection and overconcern with beauty/appearance/thinness. In American society, it is easy to locate very young children involved in competitive activities such as gymnastics, figure skating, ballet, and beauty contests. When 3- and 4- year-olds are seriously involved in such endeavours, it is difficult to avoid wondering about whose ambition is being pursued. In cases where the motivation come largely from the parents, and where the activity places an emphasis on physical appearance, the risk for later development of eating disorders is serious. Excessive parental pressure may also engender a sense of perfectionism among children. Perfectionism involves both self-oriented aspects (expecting the self to be perfect) and socially prescribed aspects (perceiving that other expect perfection). #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Perfectionism has proven to be a risk factor for bulimia nervosa, particularly for women who are otherwise low in self-esteem. By pressuring their children to achieve, parents may inadvertently convey the attitude that anything less than “perfect” is a failure. Children who harbour such an attitude, and then perceive that they are not meeting some perfect standard of weight or body image, may engage in binge eating as an escape response to their painful self-awareness, which is then corrected with purging. Other family process variable that have been implicated in eating disorders include disturbed affective expression, low levels of family communication, lack of parental care, excessive parental overprotectiveness and intrusiveness, and excessive parental control. This last variable has particular significance, in that that symptoms of eating disorders may be overt manifestations of a struggle for control. Particularly among women with eating disorders and a history of sexual abuse, an external locus of control (id est, feeling little personal control over one’s fate) is common. Although the struggle for control may originally be with the parents, there is no reason to believe that it may extend to others with whom such women are in relationships. The rather paradoxical nature of some of these family processes in eating disorders is nicely illustrated. It was found that parents of patients with anorexia nervosa were simultaneously more nurturing and comforting, but also more ignoring and neglecting of their daughters, than were parents of either healthy controls or patients with bulimia nervosa. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

In contrast, the patients with bulimia nervosa and their parents showed signs of hostile enmeshment. These mixed messages create ambivalence about separation for daughters with anorexia nervosa. “Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, nor height not depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 8.37-39. We all make mistakes, but God does not disqualify us simply because we have failed. He is the God of forgiveness. Even if you have missed your journey, God will always find a way to get you to a position of success. Some people have made some serious mistakes; they have done some things that were not the best for their life, and now they are living in guilt, condemnation, or with a sense of disqualification and disappointment and disillusionment. Several individuals feel they are in a trap house. The way to escape the trap house and trap spouse is to seek and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness, and move on with one’s life. Let go of the condemnation of the past mistakes. Seek God’s forgiveness, pick up the pieces and move on. God still have a great future for you. Keep on striving for success, continue, expect, endure in the face of opposition. Be persistent. Do not leave until you receive. Be just that stubborn about things that are significance to you, as long as it is safe and a rational desire. Have a persistent faith. True faith asks and receives. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Persistent faith is faith that receives or takes from God. Faith takes This is what Jesus Christ is telling us. “Ask once and you receive.” That is consistent with Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Receive and keep on receiving every time you ask. If you child asks you for food, you would it to him or her. You would not make one ask a hundred more times, then change your mind The enemy would like for you to believe that is what God is like. That kind of thinking will lead one into error and hold one in bondage. The adversary wants to twist the Word and distort your image of God. Jesus Christ said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh recieiveth.” Jesus Christ said it, ad you can be sure Jesus meant what He said. Father, today I receive Your mercy and forgiveness. Despite my past, I believe You still have great things in store for me. Teach me how to shake off disappointment, guilt, or condemnation and live today in an attitude of faith. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” reports 1 John 1.9. The intellect, uncontrolled by intuition and unguided by revelation, has spawned the two great masters of our time—Science holding the atom bomb and Communism holding the revolution. Science, which is the last century promised so much, gave us the terrible problem of atomic war instead. Its ardent advocates pointed at it only yesterday as the road to our salvation. Today it has become the road to our destruction. This is not to say that it was a false light, but that we mistook its proper place and claimed too much for its human possibilities. We let it run away with us and our religion. We lost ourselves and our bearings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

The atom bomb made us regard Nature as self-operative in a solely mechanical way. It left life on Earth without spiritual meaning, without moral purpose. Communism is another Heaven-promising panacea which has helped to make this Earth a little hell. If it accepts the leadership of humans, such as Communists, who regard conscience as a disease, there can be no worthwhile future for humanity. The Communist insensibility in practice to human suffering accords ill with its vaunted idealism in theory. Communism’s twisted ethic of wild hatred, its hard cruel face, its blind slavish obedience to a brutal organization which cares more for itself than for the workers it was supposed to save, its insane preachments against religion and denial of life beyond matter, have brought enough suffering to makes claims sound absurdly exaggerated. However, the intellectual movement which produced Science and the social movement which produced Communism will not continue unchecked. They are approaching the utmost limit possible. The violent materialism for which they are responsible will culminate in the next Armageddon, which will not only end them, but also end the epoch itself. In order to lay out the general cause of the difference, a distinction has to be made here between the prince and the government. The body of the magistrates can be made up of a larger or smaller number of members. We have said that the ratio of the sovereign to the subjects was greater in proportion as the populace was more numerous, and by a manifest analogy we can say the same thing about the government in relation to the magistrates. Since the total force of the government is always that of the state, it does not vary. Whence it follows that the more of this force it uses on its own members, the less that is left to it for acting on the whole populace. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

Therefore, the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. Since this maxim is fundamental, let us attempt to explain it more clearly. We can distinguish in the person of the magistrate three essentially different wills. First, the individual’s own will, which tends only to its own advantage. Second, the common will of the magistrates which is uniquely related to the advantage of the price. This latter can be called the corporate will, and is general in relation to the government, and particular in relation to the state, of which the government form a part. Third, the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the state considered as the whole and in relation to the government considered as part of the whole. In a perfect act of legislation, the private or individual will should be nonexistent; the corporate power will proper to the government should be very subordinate; and consequently the general or sovereign will should always be dominant and the unique rule of all the others. According to the natural order, on the contrary, these various wills become more active in proportion as they are the more concentrated. Thus the general will is always the weakest, the corporate will has second place, and the private will is first of all, so that in the government each member is first oneself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen—a gradation directly opposite to the one required by the social order. Granting this, let us suppose the entire government is in the hands of one single human. In that case the private will and the corporate will are perfectly united, and consequently the latter is at the highest degree of intensity it can reach. However, since the use of force is dependent upon the degree of will, and since the absolute force of the government does not vary one bit, it follows that the most active of governments is that of one single human. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
On the other hand, let us suppose we are uniting the government to the legislative authority. Let us make the sovereign the prince and all the citizens that many magistrates. Then the corporate will, confused with the general will, will have no more activity than the latter, and will leave the private will all its force. Thus the government, always with the same absolute force, will have it minimum relative force or activity. These relationships are incontestable, and there are still other considerations that serve to confirm them. We see, for example, that each magistrate is more active in one’s body than each citizen is in one’s, and consequently that the private will has much more influence on the acts of the government than on those of the sovereign. For each magistrate is nearly always charged with the responsibility for some function of government, whereas each citizen, taken by oneself, exercises no function of sovereignty. Moreover, the more the state is extended, the more its real force increases, although it does not increase in proportion to its size. However, if the state remains the same, the magistrates may well be multiplied without the government acquiring any greater real force, since this force is that of the state, whose size is always equal. Thus the relative force or activity of the government diminishes without its absolute or real force being able to increase. It is also certain that the execution of public business becomes slower in proportion as more people are charged with the responsibility for it; that in attaching too much importance to prudence, too little importance is attached to fortune, opportunities are missed, and the fruits of deliberation are often lost by dint of deliberation. I have just proved that the government becomes slack in proportion as the magistrates are multiplied; and I have previously proved that the more numerous the people, the greater should be the increase of repressive force. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

Whence it follows that the ratio of the magistrate to the government should be the inverse of the ratio of the subjects to the sovereign; that is to say, the more the state increases in size, the more the government should shrink, so that the number of leaders decreases in proportion to the number of people. I should add that I am speaking here only about the relative force of the government and not about its rectitude. For, on the contrary, the more numerous the magistrates, the more closely the corporate will approaches the general will, whereas under a single magistrate, the same corporate will is, as I have said, merely a particular will thus what can be gained on the one hand is lost on the other, and the art of the legislator is to know how to determine the point at which the government’s will and force, always in a reciprocal proportion, are combined in the relationship that is most advantageous to the state. What has gone almost unnoticed is not merely a change in the patterns of participation in the market but, even more fundamentally, the completion of the entire historical process of market-building. This turning point is so revolutionary in its implications, yet so subtle, that capitalist and Marxist thinkers alike, lost in their Second Wave polemics, have scarcely noticed its signs. It fits into neither of their theories and thus has remained undetectably by them. The human race has been busy constructing a Worldwide exchange network—a market—for at least 10,000 years. In the past 360 years, ever since the Second Wave began, this process has roared forward at very high speed. Second Wave civilization “marketized” the World. Today—at the very moment when prosuming begins to rise again—this process is coming to and end. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

The immense historical meaning of this cannot be appreciated unless we are clear about what a market exchange network is. It helps to imagine it as a pipeline. When the industrial revolution burst forth on the Earth, launching the Second Wave, very few people on the planet were tired into the money system. Trade existed but only the peripheries of society were touched by it. The various networks of jobbers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, bankers, and other elements of the trade system were small and rudimentary—providing only a few narrow pipelines through which goods and money might flow. For 360 years we poured Earth-cracking energies into building this pipeline. In was accomplished in three ways. First the merchants and mercenaries of the Second Wave civilization spread around the globe, inviting or coercing new populations to enter the market—to produce more and prosume less. Self-sufficient African tribesmen were induced or compelled to grow cash crops and dig copper. Asian who once grew their own food were put to work on plantation instead, trapping rubber trees to put tires on automobiles. Latin Americas began growing coffee for ale in Europe and the Untied States of America. With each such development the pipeline was built or further elaborated and more and more populations drawn into dependence on it. The second way in which the market expanded was through the increasing “commoditization” of life. Not only were larger populations enmeshed in the market but more and more goods and services were designed for the market, requiring a continual enlargement of the “channel capacity” of the system—a widening, as it were, of the diameter of the pipes. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

Finally, the market expanded in another way. As society and the economy grew more complex, the number of transactions required for, say, a single bar of soap to pass from producer to consumer multiplied. The more intermediaries, the more ramified the maze of channels or pipes became. This growing elaborateness of the system was itself a form of further development, like the addition of still more special tubes and values to a pipeline. Today all these forms of market expansion are reaching their outer limits. Few populations still remain to be brought into the market. Only a handful of the remotest people remain untouched by the market. Even the hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers in poor countries are at least partially integrated into the market and the accompanying money system. What remains, therefore, is a mopping-up operation at best. The market can no longer expand by engulfing vast new populations. The second form of expansion is still at least theoretically possible. With imagination, we can still, no doubt, think up additional services or goods to sell or barter. However, it is precisely here that the rise of the prosumer becomes significant. The relationships between Sector A and Sector B are complex, and many of the activities of prosumers depend on the purchase of materials or tools from the market. However, the rise of self-help, in particular, and the de-marketization of many goods and services suggests that here, too, the end of the process of marketization may be insight. Lastly, the increasing elaborateness of the “pipeline”—the growing complexity of distribution, the interpolation of more and more middlemen—also appears to be reaching a point of no return. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The costs of exchange itself, even as conventionally measured, are now outrunning the costs of material production in many fields. At some point this process reaches a limit. Computers, meanwhile, and the emergence of a prosumer-activated technology both point to smaller inventories and simplified, rather than more complex chains of distribution. Once again, therefore, the evidence points to the end of the process of marketization, if not in our time, then soon after. If our “pipeline project” is nearing completion, what might this mean for our work, our values, and our psyches? A market, after all, does not consist of the steal or shoes or cotton or canned food that flows through it. The market is the structure through which such goods and services are routed. Moreover, it is not simply an economic structure. It is a way of organizing people, a way of thinking, an ethos, and a shared set of expectations (exempli gratia, the expectation that goods purchased will indeed be delivered). The market is thus as much a psychosocial structure as an economic reality. And its effects far transcend economics. By systematically interrelating billions of people to one another, the market produced a World in which no one had independent control over one’s destiny—no person, no nation, no culture. It brought with it the belief that economics and economic motivation were the primary forces in human life. It fostered a view of life as a succession of contractual transactions, and of society as bound together by the “marriage contract” or the “social contract.” Marketization thus shaped the thoughts and values, as well as the actions, of billions and set the tone of Second Wave civilization. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

It took an enormous investment of time, energy, capital, culture, and raw materials to create a situation in which a purchasing agent in South Carolina could do business with an unseen and unknown clerk in South Korea—each with one’s own abacus or computer, each with an internalized image of the market, each with a set of expectations about the other, each performing certain predictable acts because both have been life-trained to play certain prespecified roles, each part of a giant global system involving millions, indeed billions, of others. One might plausibly argue that the construction of this elaborate structure of human relationships, and its explosive diffusion around the planet, was the single most impressive achievement of Second Wave civilization, dwarfing even its spectacular technological achievements. The step-by-step creation of this essentially sociocultural and psychological structure for exchange (quite apart from the torrent of goods and services that flowed through it) can be likened to the building of the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman aqueducts, the Great Wall of China, and the medieval cathedrals, combined and multiplied a thousandfold. This grandest construction project of all history, the laying into place of the tubes and channels through which much of the economic life of civilization pulsed and flowed, gave Second Wave civilization everywhere its inner dynamism and propulsive thrust. Indeed, if this now dying civilization can be said to have had a mission at all, it was to marketize the World. Today that mission is almost fulfilled. The heroic age of market-building is over—to be replaced by a new phase in which we merely maintain, renovate, and update pipeline. We will undoubtedly have to redesign important pieced of it to accommodate radically increased flows of information #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
The system will increasingly depend on electronics, biology and new social technologies. This, too, will no doubt require resources, imagination, and capital. However, compared with the exhausting effort of Second Wave marketization, this renewal program will absorb a far smaller fraction of our time, energy, capital, and imagination. It will use less, not more, hardware and fewer, not more people than the original process of construction. However complex conversion process to be, marketization will fail to be the central project of the civilization. More and more people are seeking intimacy, personality, and humanity. The Third Wave is therefore producing history’s first “transmarket” civilization. By trans-market I do not mean a civilization without exchange networks—a World thrown back into small, isolated, completely self-sufficient communities unable or unwilling to trade with one another. I do not mean a move backward. By “trans-market” I mean a civilization that is dependent on the market but is no longer consumed by the need to build, extend, elaborate, and integrate this structure. A civilization able to move on to a new agenda—precisely because the market has already been laid in place. And just as no one living in the sixteenth century could have imagined how the growth of the market would change the World’s agenda in terms of technology, politics, religion, art, social life, law, marriage, or personality development—so too it is extremely difficult for us today to envision the long-range effects of the end of marketization Yet these are likely to radiate into every cranny of our children’s lives, if not our own. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The marketization project exacted a price. Even in purely economic terms this price was enormous. As the productivity of the human race rose during the past three hundred years, a significant part of that productivity—in both sectors—was set aside and allocated to the market-building project. With the basic construction task now virtually complete, the enormous energies previously poured into building the World market system become available for other human purposes. From this fact alone will flow a limitless array of civilization changes. New religions will be born. Works of art on a hitherto unimagined scale. Fantastic scientific advances. And, above all, wholly new kinds of social and political institutions. What is at stake today is more than capitalism or socialism, more than energy, food, population, capital, raw material, or jobs; what is at stake is the role of the market in our lives and the future of civilization itself. This, at its core is what the rise of the prosumer is about. Change in the deep-structure of the economy is part of the same wave of interrelated changes now striking our energy base, our technology, or information system, and our family and business institutions. These are intertwined, in turn with the way we view the World. And in this sphere, too, we are undergoing an historic upheaval. For the entire World view of industrial civilization—indust-reality—is not being revolutionized. Excerpt from an article in a Czech magazine on contemporary Czech literature: “Those ideals which were formerly given to the World by prophets of religion, headed by Jesus the Nazarene, are now practically applied by scientific socialists beginning with Karl Marx.” Such is the plausible self-deception into which so many intellectuals have fallen. This quotation shows a grave lack of understanding of religion, of the prophets, and especially of Jesus. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

This distance between the Nazarene and the author of the First Communist Manifesto is not merely horizontal, it is vertical. The two men stand on different levels, belong to different Worlds. The presence of hatred as one of its animating ingredients is a moral disadvantage to any social movement. This is one reason why modern Communism is built on an unsure foundation. From the Center Galactic Source which is everywhere at once, may everything be known as the light of mutual love. O Hidden Life vibrant in every atom; O Hidden Light! shining in every creature; O Hidden Love! embracing all in Oneness; may each who feels oneself as one with Thee, know one is also one with every other. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. When I call upon the Lord, ascribe greatness unto our God. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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Nothing Ever Turns Out Right! Somebody Take Care of Me! God, Why Not Make Everything O.K.?
Such great devotion was in vogue in the days the Ark of God was being built, as was remembrance of divine praise at the Ark of the Covenant. However, that was then, and this is now. Should I not, and indeed the rest of the Christian population, have more reverence, more devotion, in the presence of the Mystery and in the reception of Sacrament? Every year, any number of Christians go to great pains to visit as many shrines as they can, there to ay respects to the relics of the Saints and to hear of the wonders worked through the Saints’ intercession. Of course, the pilgrims reverence with their lips the holy bones resting on silk and cased in gold, but they also gawk at the sumptuousness of the churches housing the shrines. You know what is wrong with this picture? Right in front of one, on this very altar, without one’s having to lift a finger, let alone a foot, God is alive and well. That is to say, God, Holy of Holies, Creator of Humankind, and Lord of Angels. However, if I wonder what the dearest Lord and Friend has against pilgrimage? Perhaps this flurry of activity seems holy at first, but in reality it is a curiosity that plagues all Humankind. That is to say, there is a certain freshness that comes with hithering and thithering, with seeing new things in toxic places. However, when people tally up the expense of pilgrimaging, they have paid too much for too little. That is to say, the fruit of a pilgrimage is conversion, reform of life. However, that seems to have taken a back seat in their minds, if not their souls; they have preferred happy times in holy places to the True Contrition they could find at home, at the Winchester, the shrine where their soul resides. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Here and now, in the Sacrament of the Altar, He is totally present, Jesus, Man and Christ. Right here, within one’s grasp, Eternal Salvation awaits, to be harvested just as often one undertake Communion with dignity and devotion. Pilgrims, beware! The paths to this shrine are rocky, and slippery are the pavers marked Levity, Curiosity, and Sensuality; for true cobbles, rely only on Firm Faith, Devout Hope, and Sincere Charity. O God, Invisible Creator of the World, how wondrously You treat us! How sweetly and graciously You carry on with Your chosen—these are the people You have invited to join you in Your Sacrament! Yes, I know You low opinion of Us Devouts, but I just have to say that the Sacrament has a special appeal to our hearts. We are truly faithful friends of Yours, and we have planned our whole lives around reformation of soul. As a result, we frequently receive this Most Worthy Sacrament, and from it we derive the great grace of devotion and the love of virtue. O admirable yet hidden grace of the Sacramento, only the faithful of Christ have known it well! The faithless and the sinful, however, have no experience to match it. Every relation is based either on quantity, a double and half; or on action and passion, as the doer and the deed, the father and the son, the master and the servant, and the like. Now as there is no quantity in God, for He is great without quantity, as Augustine says (De Trin. I, !) it follows that a real relation in God can be based only on action. Such relations are not based on the actions of God according to any extrinsic procession, forasmuch as the relations in God can be understood only in regard to those actions according to which there are internal, and not external, processions in God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

These processions are two only, as above explained, one derived from the action of the intellect, the procession of the Word; and the other from the action of the will, the procession of love. In respect of each of these processions two opposite relations arise; one of which is the relation of the person proceeding from the principle; the other is the relation of the principle Himself. The procession of the Word is called generation in the proper sense of the term, whereby it is applied to living things. Now the relation of the principle of generation in perfect living beings is called paternity; and the relation of the one proceeding from the principle is called filiation. However, the procession of Love has no proper name of its own; and so neither have the ensuing relations a proper name of their own. The relation of the principle of this procession is called spiration; and the relation of the person proceeding is called procession: although these two names belong to the processions or origins themselves, and not to the relations. In those things in which there is a difference between the intellect and its object, and the will and its object, there can be a real relation, both of science to its object, and of the willer to the object willed. In God, however, the intellect and its object are one and the same; because by understanding Himself, God understands all other things; and the same applies to His will and the object that He wills. Hence, it follows that in God these kinds of relations are not real; as neither is the relation of a thing to itself. Nevertheless, the relation to the word is a real relation; because the word is understood as proceeding by an intelligible action; and not as a thing understood. For when we understand a stone; that which the intellect conceives from the thing understood, is called the word. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Intelligible relations in ourselves are infinitely multiplied, because a human understands a stone by one act, and by another act understands that one understands the stone, and again by another, understands that one understands this; thus the acts of understanding are infinitely multiplied, and consequently also the relations understood. This does not apply to God, inasmuch as He understand all things by one act alone. Ideal relations exist as understood by God. Hence it does not follow from their plurality that there are many relations in God; but that God knows these many relations. Equality and similitude in God are not real relations; but are only logical relations. The way from one term to another and conversely in the same; nevertheless the mutual relations are not the same. Hence, we cannot conclude that the relation of the father to the son is the same as that of the son to the father; but we conclude this of something absolute, if there were such between them. “Let one gives one’s cheek to the One Who smites one [even through His human agents]; let one be filled [full] with [men’s] reproach [in meekness]. For the Lord will not cast off forever!,” reports Lamentations 3.30-31. What are the signs whereby one shall know that this is an authentic glimpse of reality? First, it is and shall remain ever present. There is no future in it and no past. Second, the pure spiritual experience comes without excitement, is reported without exaggeration, and needs no external authority to authenticate it. The glimpse also does in part for a human what initiation did in some ancient mystical institutions. It sets one on the road of a new life, a life more earnestly and more consciously devoted to the quest of Overself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

The glimpse silently bids one dedicate, or rededicate anew, the remainder of one’s life on Earth to this undertaking. It is a baptism with inner light more far-reaching than the baptism with physical water. The motives and reactions of a spiritually intuitive human will necessarily be on a higher level than those of a human driven by animal and Worldly compulsions only. And once you are reborn in the heart, life will become what it should be—the realization that you are outworking a higher destiny than the merely personal one. Another noteworthy mark of the true glimpse is its purificatory effect. This is usually temporary but in a few cases it has been permanent. When one has this first unprecedented experience, when one knows and feels that one is a part of divine being, one is born “in Christ.” However, it is not for one to stand at street corners and announce to the multitude that one has had this glimpse. The sustained consciousness of the Overself puts its mark upon a human’s face. They are humans with “the shine” on their faces, like the one who descended from Sinai. One emerges from the old human that one was, from the ego-ridden nature, as a snake emerges from its old skin. The old self which one has left behind and which once so occupied one’s interest now seems ugly, bad, and dull. So great is the change in one that it also seems like a stranger, not entitled to bear one’s name. However synical and blasé may have been one’s attitude in earlier days, it will yield to and melt in the sunny light of this second birth. Those who have experienced a glimpse of this blessed Reality or, better, established themselves in it, may share its atmosphere with others in silent communion. However, on a lesser level, they may also share with the in phrased speech the thoughts it provokes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

The more one becomes familiar with this experience, the easier one can describe it. One who has been touched by the goodness comes out of one’s sleep, says the Old World wisdom. For one has a knowledge which appears as a special and unusual kind of awareness that escapes most other people. There comes a time when out of the silence within oneself there comes the spiritual guidance which one needs for one’s further course. It comes sometimes as a delicate feeling, sometimes as a strong one, sometimes in a clearly formulated message, and sometimes out of the circumstances and happenings themselves. Not only does it tell one and teach one, but sometimes it does the same for others. Such is the effect of the Divine Life now working increasingly within one. You are saved the moment this divine power takes possession of you, but not otherwise. The dictionary defines an eccentric as a person who deviates from common behaviour patterns or displays odd or whimsical behaviour. However, how can we separate a psychologically healthy person who has unusual habits from a person whose oddness is a symptom of psychopathology? For years, little research was done on eccentrics, but some recent studies and reviews seem to have started the ball rolling. For example, the researcher David Weeks studied 1,000 eccentrics over a 10-year period and was able to pin-point 15 characteristic common to them. Altogether, he estimates that as many as 1 in 5,000 persons may be “classic, full-time eccentrics.” Men and women seem equally prone to such patterns. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Weeks suggests that eccentrics do not typically suffer from mental disorders. Whereas the unusual behaviour of persons with mental disorders is thrust upon them and usually causes them suffering, eccentricity is chosen freely and provides pleasure. In short, eccentrics know they are different and glory in it. Similarly, the thought process of eccentrics are not severely disrupted, and they do not leave the person dysfunctional. In fact, it was also discovered the eccentrics actually had fewer emotional problems than the general population. Perhaps being an “original” is good for mental health. The eccentrics in his study also seemed physically healthier than others, visiting a doctor only once every eight years on average. Weeks concludes that most eccentrics, despite their deviant behaviour—perhaps even because of it—are happy, well-adjusted, and joyful people. According to Weeks, the following 15 qualities (in descending order of importance) are characteristic of eccentrics. The first 5 are the most definitive, but possessing any 10 may qualify a person as an eccentric: Nonconforming, creative, strongly curious, idealistic, happily obsessed with a hobby (often more than one), aware from early childhood of being different from others, intelligence, opinionated and outspoken, noncompetitive, unusual eating or living habits, not interested in the opinions or company of others, mischievous sense of humour, single, eldest or only child, bad speller. Are you eccentric? #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Once clinicians decide that a person is indeed suffering from some form of psychological abnormality, they seek to treat it. Treatment, or therapy is a procedure designed to change abnormal behaviour into more normal behaviour; it, too, requires careful definition. For clinical scientists, the problem is closely related to defining abnormality. Therapy has three essential features: A sufferer who seeks relief from the healer. A trained, socially accepted healer, whose expertise is accepted by sufferer and one’s social group. A series of contact between the healer and the sufferer, through which the healer, often with the assistance of a group, tries to produce certain changes in the sufferer’s emotional state, and behaviour. Some clinicians view abnormality as an illness and so consider therapy a procedure that helps cure the illness. Others see abnormality as a problem in living and therapists as teachers of more functional behavior and thought. Clinicians even differ on what to call the person undergoing therapy: those who see abnormality as an illness speak of the “patient,” while those who view it as a problem in living refer to the “client.” Because both terms are so common, many use them interchangeably. Despite their differences, most clinicians do agree that large numbers of people need therapy of one kind or another. People with histrionic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as HPD) exhibit a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking. Their social interactions are characterized by inappropriately seductive or provocative behaviour, rapidly shifting and shallow emotions, excessively impressionistic speech that is lacking in detail, and self-dramatization. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Persons with HPD tend to use physical appearances to draw attention to themselves, consider relationships to be more intimate than they really are, and are rather easily influenced by other people. These persons are resistant to being pushed into the background, and want to be made to feel special, with a tendency toward anger and jealousy when not acknowledged. Using a Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour, it has been discovered that people with HPD wish for active love and protection while harbouring a fear of being ignored by others. Unquestionably, the interpersonal theatrics of these people are cries for attention, and most of their symptoms are in the service of this primary goal. A distinctive quality of HPD is its inherent interpersonal quality: Interaction with others is required for expression of the disorder. Obviously something is seriously awry on the interpersonal terrain of persons with HPD. Although such people are often judged to be more physically attractive than their nondisordered peers, this physical attractiveness is associated with a greater reliance on immature defense mechanisms, such as projection and regression. These findings suggest a pattern of superficial relations based on gaining attention through physical attractiveness, in the absence of any well-developed interpersonal coping and problem-solving skills. Compared to healthy controls, persons with HPD score lower in assertiveness involving pleasures of the flesh despite their flirtations, and exhibit more phobic attitudes toward pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Expectedly, the subjects with HPD in this study also reported lower martial satisfactions than controls. These same respondents indicated relatively high levels of preoccupation with pleasures of the flesh, along with boredom and dysfunction with pleasures of the flesh. In a unique study with gay men, Johnson et al. (2000) found that symptoms of HPD were negatively correlated with receiving social support, and positively correlated with interpersonal conflict and loneliness. In an epidemiological study, it would found that the prevalence rate of HPD was about five times higher in divorced and separated persons than in people who were married. Looking back at the early interpersonal experiences of people with HPD, one sees a pattern of turmoil. For example, sexual abuse is often evident in the early home environments of such individuals. In a similar study, people with Cluster B (dramatic-emotional”) personality disorders (id est, antisocial personality disorder, BPD, HPD, and NDP) indicated that they experienced a pattern of parental overprotection coupled with lower parental care. Although parental overprotection and sexual abuse may appear antithetical at first glance, each is indicative of poor boundary regulation. Other family-of-origin processes that are related to HPD include high achievement orientation, an intellectual/cultural orientation, and high levels of parental control. What cases HPD? Undoubtedly this disorder, like other personality disorders, grows out of an amalgamation of temperament (which comes from genetic predisposition) and character (which is the developing aspect of one’s personality that is shaped by experience). #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

The character of people with HPD may be strongly tied to interpersonal interactions. Experts believe that this disorder is often preceded by rare parental punishment and unpredictable parental rewarding, resulting in the creation of behaviours that are directed toward securing rewards, developing a sense of personal competence, and seeking approval for approval’s sake. In developing this social learning hypothesis, it has been noted that when parents offer approval on a variable schedule, the child who will later develop HPD becomes frustrated, and learns to exaggerate one’s behaviours in the service of obtaining compliments and affection. Unless the parents recognize this conduct for what it is worthy, a vicious cycle is established in which the child performs increasingly dramatic and caricatured behaviours to secure positive responses from one’s parents. Like other old habits the die heard, this pattern of conduct is carried over beyond the childhood home to adult interpersonal relations. Psychodynamic theories of HPD originally characterized the disorder as hysterical personality. It was believed that the symptoms are the results of childhood sexual abuse. Traumatic memories of the abuse were assumed to be repressed. The strong tendencies toward repression were thought to explain the vague and shallow cognitive pattern that is so characteristic of people with HPD. From the psychodynamic perspective, the sexualization of social interactions in HPD is a defense against the fear of sexual aggression and victimization. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
By summoning that which is feared, persons with HPD may develop a sense of mastery over this fear by replacing it with attraction. This psychodynamic perspective, notwithstanding its dubious falsifiability, clearly locates the origin and consequences of the disorder in interpersonal experiences. Somewhere in between the social learning and psychodynamic hypothesis, is the pathogenic hypothesis, based on the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour. There are three identifiable early interpersonal experiences that figure prominently in the pathogenesis of HPD. First, these people were often loved for their good looks and entertainment value as children. Second, as children, these people quickly learned that physical appearance and charm were functional for getting what they wanted from others. Finally, their early family environments were unpredictable and chaotic. However, it was this very chaos that kindled a sense of drama in their families, in which these children could play a role. People with HPD conduct their lives in a frantic search for attention, trapped between the exploitation of sexuality and flirtation to gain this attention, and fear of its eventuality. Their interpersonal theatrics, emotional flightiness, and shallow cognitive style may have their origins in early family experiences. Proponents of both social learning and psychodynamic hypotheses converge on the belief that family dynamics such as parental boundary violation (manifested in sexual abuse and overportectivness) and inconsistent parental reinforcement set in motion the patterns of emotion, cognition, and social behaviour that are characteristic of HPD. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
People become more psychologically healthy (fully functioning, self-actualizing), they become more tolerant of “opposites” within themselves, and become more able to accept others with all their uniqueness. Others may have mistreated you, somebody may have walked out on you, or maybe you prayed fervently, yet God did not answer your prayer the way you had anticipated. That is over and done. You cannot change the past; there is nothing you can do about it now. However, you must make a decision. Are you going to relive all those painful memories, or are you going to stay in an attitude of faith? You must walk out of any emotional bondage in which you have been living. Nobody can do it for you. You must rise up out of those ashes. You must forgive the people who have hurt you. You have to release all those hurts and pains. Leave the past behind. When you go through situations you do not understand, do not become bitter. Do not question God. Learn to just wash your face, keep a good attitude, and move on. Get ready for the new things God has in store for you. If you will stay in an attitude of faith and success, God has promised that He will turn those emotional wounds around. He will use them to your advantage, and you will come out better than you would have had they not happened to you. Humans alone, of all the creatures of the Earth, can change their own pattern. Humans alone are the architect of their destiny. The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Christians often think in terms of opposites—right/wrong, good/bad, sinful/goodness—instead of the principle of transcendence of opposites. The actualizing Christian learns to transcend these opposites. Openness to experience all that one is can be expressed as follows: I am neither good nor bad, I am both. I am neither spiritual nor sensual, I am both. I am neither generous nor selfish, I am both. I am neither honest nor dishonest, I am both. I am neither a saint nor a sinner, I am both. However, God accepts me, forgives me, and loves me just as I am. And I can accept, forgive, and love myself and others. The testimony of the actualizing Christian is not that one is perfect, but rather that one is being perfected by the healing love and power of God. The process of being made whole involves gradual transformation of one’s entire being. Every polarity has both manipulative and actualizing alternatives. To be consistently actualizing, a person must learn to transform manipulative behaviours into actualizing counterparts. On the strength polarity, the egocentric manipulative tactics of striving and achieving need to be transformed into interpersonal qualities of cooperating and contributing. The latter two actualizing qualities have a respect and sensitivity that the manipulative forms do not possess. Cooperating with others in a sharing way allows us to express our own strengths while at the same time seeking the common good. Contributing is not something that is grasped at or forced, but rather is a reflection of our true capabilities. Our attitude becomes cooperative rather than competitive. We give up the attempt to be omniscient and omnipotent. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

When we function in this way, we do not feel threatened by someone else’s contributions or accomplishments. We are also quick to admit our deficiencies and to integrate our strengths with the contributions of others. This is the basis for the virtue of courage or realistic self-confidence. On the weakness polarity, withdrawing and avoiding need to be transformed into feeling vulnerable and empathizing. The actualizing Christian learns that one can honestly share feelings of inadequacy, fear, or helplessness. In sharing feelings of vulnerability, a person becomes more accepting and tolerant of others, and hence more empathetic. Herein lies the virtue of humility. Some years ago, my great grandmother went back home to Sweden for the first time in thirty years. Late one night we received a concerned phone call from her during which she said that the Gripsholm, the boat she was supposed to return on, had collided in New York Harbor with the Andrea Dorea, an Italian ship. We discussed her alternatives, and it seemed the only things she could do would be to take her first airplane trip. This may not seem like a large accomplishment these days, but for my mother, who was over seventy years old, this was a fearful and difficult task. The next day she bravely climbed the steps of the huge 707, turned the corner, and sat down in her seat—which happened to be next to Eleanor Roosevelt! Eleanor Roosevelt was an empathetic woman who herself had suffered much in her life. So immediately her empathy expressed itself to my great grandmother, who obviously was somewhat shaken at being on her first plane trip. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The Worldly, yet gentle woman pulled a rose from the bouquet the Swedish government had given her on departure—and gave it to my great grandmother. Great grandmother was deeply moved by this gesture and immediately felt vulnerable and open to this beautifully warm woman. During the next five hours on their journey to America, the two of the chattered together like neighbours over the back fence, as my great grandmother often did with her friends in Rockford, Illinois. Elanor Roosevelt is an example of a truly humble person. Since she was genuinely away of her own feelings of vulnerability, she could reach out to others, including my mother, with a special warmth and sensitivity. On the love polarity, the manipulative patterns of pleasing and placating are transformed into the actualizing traits of affirming and caring. There is a freedom to praise and nurture both oneself and others. Built into the combination of affirming and caring the firmness and warmth. From these qualities emerge the virtue of compassion, a sure mark of the actualizing Christian. From the anger polarity arise asserting and expressing, the actualizing counterparts of blaming and attacking. The person who expressed anger graciously and diplomatically exhibits the virtue of confrontation with caring, or “speaking the truth in love.” There is a real wisdom built into the warp and woof of human nature. It is as though God intended a sensitive set of checks and balances in order to create a reliable source of guidance and inspiration within each person. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Love that is expressed fully bring qualities of tenderness, caring, and nurturing into the World. However, to find its finest balance, love must be offset with a certain firmness and power that is captured in the feeling of anger. Anger provides the energy for confronting the World in a caring way. Likewise, the feelings of strength and weakness both balance and check each other. From strength a person derives a certain air of confidence, boldness, and dignity. However, with the balancing effect of weakness, the virtue of humility is added; so one can express strength in gentle and humble ways. It is our belief that as one becomes more balanced in expressing these behavioural opposites, one will experience a connectedness to others and to God in a warmhearted, open and sharing way. Connectedness if the key to understanding others and growing with them in mutually supportive ways. Heavenly Father, I admit that sometimes I am more surprised when You do answer my prayers than when You do not. I know that I do not deserve Your kindness, that like Prince Lestat, I have made some bad decisions, done wrong, and deserve nothing. However, thank You for loving me even through my mistakes, failures, and wrong choices. Please help me, Father, to trust You through my disappointments. The practice of prayer, when done as an exercise can harmonize cosmic energies, so that the will of God will manifest in your life naturally. While praying for good things and thanking God, mentally direct the energy towards your general surrounding so you can mentally connect it with the cosmic life-force. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Remember that the purpose of this lengthened prayer is not only to empty your temple of negative energy, but also to empty your environmental of bad energy. It will help to empty the mind of its tumult and the nerves of their agitation, and focus on your prayer as deeply as possible. Until you learn to build your faith, you may want to repeat your prayer, in different ways, until you learn how to expand your conversations with God and Jesus. Imagine a steam of golden-white energy being drawn from the Holy Trinity and radiated throughout the body. This enables one to better receive cosmic current of life-force. It also strengthens the power of self-control, of disciplining the body. “Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; for consider how great are the things He has done for you. However, if you still do wickedly, both you and your king shall be swept away,” reports 1 Samuel 12.24-25. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” reports Matthew 6.13. Most people believe that the Lord sends the trials, tests, and temptations of life. If the trails and temptations come from God, I wonder why Jesus said to pray that you enter not into? If God knows everything and we know the Word says God has all knowledge, then I wonder why God would have to try and test us to find out what we would do in a certain situation. The Word also says that Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. (Hebrews 12.2.) Now since Jesus has authored our faith, God does not need to try it. He knows it will work. The enemy is the one trying our faith. Jesus said, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
What evil is Jesus Christ talking about? The evil and trials and temptations. We can rise to a new level of faith when we realize that it is the thief that steals, kills and destroys. It is Jesus that gives life abundantly. When you draw the battle line, you will have 50 percent of the battle won. This will set you at liberty in your prayer life. You can use your faith shield to quench every fiery dart of the adversary. However, if God put it on you, until you determine the cause, you cannot use your faith. You cannot believe the thing will go away. The enemy suggests that God might be using this to perfect you. It sounds logical, but it is stronghold of the adversary. Now let me refresh your memory in this area. In the 8th chapter of Luke, verse 22, Jesus said to the disciples, Let us go over unto the other side, then He fell asleep in the back of the ship. A storm of wind arouse on the lake and waves were lapping into the boat. The disciples began to say, Master, we perish. Jesus Christ arose and rebuked the wind and the sea. Then He asked them, “Where is your faith?” Was that storm sent of God to try their faith? No. That storm was designed by the adversary to get the Word out of them and it worked well. “The ones alone the path are those who have the Word sown [in their hearts], but when they hear, the adversary comes at once and [by force] takes away the message which is sown in them,” reports Mark 4.15. They told Jesus what the devil said. The devil had told them that they would all drown. However, Jesus said, “We are going to the other side.” His Words did not abide in them. In 1 John 3.8, we find that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. If the storm was of God, then Jesus came to undo everything that the enemy was doing. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Jesus Christ rebuked the wind because the storm had been caused by the enemy. He has perverted nature and used the atmosphere to bring floods, storms and tornadoes. However, headlines proclaim, God Visited Our City Last Night With a Tornado. No greater lie has ever been told! When lightning struck a certain plant in Arkansas, it blew up, killing several people and injuring many others. The newspapers called it an act of God. No bigger lie has ever been told. Those things are perversions of nature. The Enemy has perverted the things God created for good. Genesis 1.31 says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Lightning was what killed Job’s cattle. The King James calls it “fire from Heaven.” One translation says “lightning.” In other words, the enemy used the elements of the Earth and atmosphere to destroy Job’s cattle. However, Job said The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, which is actually recorded in the Bible. However, Job was not under the anointing when he said it. He was deceived. He thought it was God but you can plainly read in Job, chapter 1, that it was the adversary who had caused Job’s problems. If you believe that God brings these things on you, you cannot use your faith to get rid of them. There is no place in the Bible where it says, “Take the shield of faith and quench all the fiery darts of God!” You would not dare pray for deliverance from something God is using to perfect you. However, when you get the battle line drawn and see that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy and that Jesus came to give us abundant life, then you can use your faith. You will be able to pray accurately. You can come against the evil forces and prevail. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked (Ephesians 6.16). #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
When we have financial problems, most of the time it is the enemy’s work. Sometimes it is our own fault. It is not God, trying to teach us something! When we have problems in areas of the physical body, it is an attack of the enemy, because Jesus said for us to pray, Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. God’s will is that we walk in health on this Earth and that is the way we should pray. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as they soul prospereth (3 John 2). O Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the World, hear me! I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy—myself. Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me besides the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake. Ye, though I walk through the Sacramento valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Humans in twenty-first century have been cut adrift in a rudderless yacht on an uncharted sea. Abnormal psychological functioning is deviant, but deviant from what? Sometimes people’s behaviours, thoughts, and emotions are different from those that are considered normal in our place and time. We do not expect people to cry themselves to sleep each night, wish themselves dead, or obey voices that no one else hears. In short, behaviour, thoughts, and emotions are deemed abnormal when they violated a society’s ideas about proper functioning. Each society established norms—explicit and implicit rules for proper conduct. Behaviour that violates legal norms is called criminal. Behaviour, thoughts, and emotions that violate norms of psychological functioning are called abnormal. Judgments of abnormality vary from society to society. A society’s norms grow from its particular culture—its history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts. A society that values competition and assertiveness may accept aggressive behaviour, whereas one that emphasizes cooperation and gentleness may consider aggressive behaviour unacceptable and even abnormal. A society’s values may also change over time, causing its views of what is psychologically abnormal to change as well. In Western society, for example, a woman’s participation in the business World was widely considered inappropriate and strange one hundred and twenty years ago. Today the same behaviour is valued. Judgements of abnormality depend on specific circumstances as well as on cultural norms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Many painful human experiences produce intense reactions—largescale catastrophes and disasters, assaults, child abuse, war, terminal illness, chronic pain. Is there an “appropriate” way to react to such things? Should we ever call reactions to them abnormal? Even functioning that is considered unusual does not necessarily qualify as abnormal. According to many clinical theorists, behaviour, ideas, or emotions usually have to cause distress before they can be labeled abnormal. Should we consider that feelings of distress must always be present before a person’s functioning can be considered abnormal? Not necessarily. Some people who function abnormally maintain a beneficial frame of mind. Abnormal behaviour tends to be dysfunctional; that is, it interferes with daily functioning. It so upsets, distracts, or confuses people that they cannot care for themselves properly, participate in ordinary social interactions, or work productively. Some people have to quit their jobs, leave their families, and are prepared to withdraw from the productive lives they once lead. Here again one’s culture plays a role in the definition of abnormality. Our society hold that it is important to carry out daily activities in an effective, self-enhanced manner. The behaviour of some people is considered abnormal and undesirable, whereas others, who continue to perform well in their jobs and enjoy fulfilling relationships, would probably be considered simply unusual. Then again, dysfunction alone does not necessarily indicate psychological abnormality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

Some people fast or in other ways deprive themselves of things they need as a means of protesting social injustice. Far from receiving a clinical label of some kind, they are widely viewed as admirable people—caring, sacrificing, even heroic. Perhaps the ultimate in psychological dysfunctioning is behaviour that becomes dangerous to oneself or others. Individuals whose behaviour is consistently careless, hostile, or confused may be placing themselves or those around them at risk. Although danger is often cited as a feature of abnormal psychological functioning, research suggests that it is actually the exception rather than the rule. Despite popular misconceptions, most people struggling with anxiety, depression, and even bizarre thinking pose no immediate danger to themselves or to anyone else. If the concept of abnormality depends so heavily on social norms and values, it is no wonder that efforts to define psychological abnormality typically raise as many questions as they answer. Ultimately, each society selects general criteria for defining abnormality and then uses those criteria to judge particular cases. Noting society’s role in the process, the whole concept of mental illness may be considered invalid, a myth of sorts. The deviations that society calls abnormal are simply “problems in living,” not signs of something wrong within the person. Societies invent the concept of mental illness so that they can better control or change people whose unusual patterns of functioning upset or threaten the social order. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Even if we assume that psychological abnormality is a valid concept and that it can indeed be defined, we may be unable to apply our definition consistently. If a behaviour—excessive use of alcohol among college students, says—is familiar enough, the society may fail to recognize that it is deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous. Thousands of college students throughout the United States of America are so dependent on alcohol that it interferes with their personal and academic lives, causes them great discomfort, jeopardizes their health, and often endangers them and the people around them. Yet their problem often goes unnoticed, certainly undiagnosed, by college administrators, others students, and health professionals. Alcohol is so much a part of the college subculture that it is easy to overlook drinking behaviour that has become abnormal. Conversely, a society may have trouble distinguishing between an abnormality that requires intervention and an eccentricity, or marked individuality, with which others have no right to interfere. From time to time we see or hear about people who behave in ways we consider strange, such as a man who lives alone with two dozen cats and rarely talks to other people. The behaviour of such people is deviant, and it may well be distressful and dysfunctional, yet many professionals think of it as eccentric rather than abnormal. In short, while we may agree to define psychological abnormalities as patterns of functioning that are deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and sometimes dangerous, we should be clear that these criteria are often vague and subjective. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

When is a pattern of behaviour deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous enough to be considered abnormal? The question may be impossible to answer. Few of the current categories of abnormality that we will deal with are as clear-cut as they may seem, and most continue to be debated by clinicians. Furthermore, the term “mental illness” has been out of fashion since the late nineteenth century, the more politically correct term is “dysfunctional.” The term mental illness for a lot of people is scary. Some people fear that if they admit they have some dysfunctional aspect of their behaviour that they will be locked up in a lunatic asylum and that medical history will follow them all their lives and stigmatize them, making it impossible to have gainful employment. However, “It is not just people who cannot find a job, or cannot fit in society that struggle with depression sometimes,” says Jared Padalecki. It is significant that Communist leaders like Lenin despised all schools of spiritual thought, denounced religion, and scored metaphysical reflection. This is now the nominal inheritance of half the World, most particularly the so-called workers’ class. If social justice means that every human, however deprived one’s background, should have a chance to develop oneself and to better one’s standards of living, then it is certainly a good thing. However, if it means the forced regimentation of everyone, the compulsory equalization of everything, the denial of individuality and the destruction of freedom, then it is surely a bad thing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

If we only pause to consider that half the entire human race has fallen under the enforced leadership and tyrannical domination of those who would limit humans to their ego and reality to matter, we may see how urgently necessary is an arrest to this downward trend. The World is in a state of a spiritual crisis. Where the physical body is cherished as the sole reality and made the sole basis for social and political reform, where hate-driven humans advocate physical violence as the sole means of effecting progress, be sure of the presence of evil forces, dangers to society, ignorant opponents of truth, and enemies of the Light. It is very meaningful that the filthy abuse which some tyrants put into their writings against idealists is no longer living psychologist and philosophers in the utter blindness which was left to them. More and more they begin to question the nature of consciousness as well as its relationship to the external World, more and more they investigate borderland experiences like telepathy and hypnotism. On the question of consciousness’ relationship to the brain they are now arguing quite widely, but, for obvious reasons, they remain unable to come to definitive conclusions on which all could agree. They are not satisfied with the completely materialistic answer and yet dare not venture into the purely mentalistic one. Meanwhile they go on debating, and so long as this continues, it is spiritually much healthier than their state of sixty years ago. Problems are being stated and solutions are being discussed. If people with an unenlightened inheritance overshadows it all, that cannot be helped in a totalitarian Communist country. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

At the present stage of history the truth must be left out in such a land, but it cannot be left out forever. Out of all their mental and verbal activity, the people will have to draw a little nearer to it intellectually. What is happening on a deeper plane is outside their knowledge. No materialistic organization of society can prevent the appearance and development of spirituality in the individual, but it can create the conditions which will obstruct the appearance or hinder the development of spirituality. Narcissistic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as NPD) has to be one of the most interpersonally obnoxious of the personality disorder. People with NPD have an exaggerate sense of self-worth and entitlement, coupled with a nearly insatiable thirst for attention and acclaim. Symptoms include a grandiose sense of self-importance, preoccupations with fantasies of success and power, a belief that the self is special and should only be associated with other high-status and powerful people, a need for excessive admiration, a voracious sense of entitlement, exploiting others for personal benefit, lack of empathy, envy of others, or a belief that others envy the self, and arrogance. The negative effects of this behaviour on others, as well as the wrongfulness of exploiting others for personal gain, are obscured by the arrogance of the individual. On a psychosocial level, the person with NPD wishes for active love and protection, while simultaneously fearing blame, being ignored, or being controlled by others. The constitution of NPD dramatically interferes with the development and maintenance of intimate interpersonal relationships. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

Based on clinical observations, several destructive interpersonal motifs have been noted to be expressed by people with NPD. One of these is a pursuit of metamorphosis—that is, a fantasy that association and intimacy with powerful others will bring transformation and evolution from inferiority and insecurity. In the core of every narcissistic personality there exists, more or less pronounced, experience of insecurity and inferiority. A second motif is selective interpersonal repulsion, or a loathing and systematic persecution of those on whom persons with NPD project their own conflicts. When such a person recognizes some unacceptable aspect of one’s own self in another individual, this individual must be cast off and put down. Finally, the pathological intolerance of criticism is a result of the doubly noxious nature of criticism for a person with NPD. Criticism serves to threaten the person’s sense of grandiosity, and intensify the person’s internal experience of inferiority and insecurity. Consequently, the person will respond to criticism with aggression and rage. It scarcely bears mentioning that those with NPD rarely develop satisfying and close personal relationships. Part of this problem stems from these individuals’ hostility and devaluation of others. This constitutes the so-called “narcissist’s dilemma”: holding other in contempt while simultaneously relying on them for positive regard and affirmation. Symptoms of NPD are negatively associated with receiving social support from others, and positively associated with loneliness and conflict with others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Nevertheless, individuals with NPD may feel that there are a lot of people available who think very highly of them. Among married people, NPD is associated with domestic violence, and interest in extramarital relations. Among the important components of the interpersonal troubles experienced by those with NPD are the negative reactions of others to their conduct. When subjects in two studies viewed a person with NPD presented on DVD, they reacted with rejection and a negative mood. These findings are reminiscent of those in the literature on depression indicating that depressed people irritate others and elicits rejection from them. Although people with NPD are probably rejected for different reasons, the end results are similar to those experienced by depressed persons: loneliness, a lack of social support, and conflictual interactions with others. Rejection from others may cause great aggravation for some persons with NPD, while being of virtually no concern to others. NPD exists on a continuum ranging from an oblivious subtype to a hypervigilant subtype. Whereas a person with the oblivious subtype has no awareness at all of one’s impact on other people, the individual with the hypervigilant subtype is on the lookout for any sign of criticism or put-down from others. The interpersonal rejection that often follows in the wake of interpersonal interactions must surely contribute to substantial aggravation for the person with the hypervigilant NPD. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

Perhaps the most scientifically plausible account of the etiology of NPD is based on social learning theory; it places origins of the disorder in excessive and unconditional parental valuation and attention to the point of worship. In such an interpersonal context, the parents are viewed as devoting themselves so fully to caring for their child and making one feel special that they sublimate their own needs to those of the child. Consequently, the child fails to develop an awareness or appreciation for the needs of other people. Years of living in such an environment also result in an unjustified sense of self-worth that must constantly be reinforced and polished in the face of any potential failure. This social learning phenomenon is identified by a combination of selfless, noncontingent love and adoration from the family; parental deference to the child; and an ever-present threat of al fall from grace in the pathogenesis of NPD. This account has considerable face validity for explaining the sense of grandiosity and lack of empathy that characterize this disorder. Although a social learning account of NPD enjoys some popularity and acceptance, psychodynamic accounts of the disorder are especially prevalent, and also point to early interpersonal experiences in its etiology. Within this literature there exists something of a controversy. Accordingly, self-psychological perspective, NPD is a manifestation of arrested development. An egocentric sense of grandiosity is seen as a normal part of early development. At this point in time, the child expects total nurturance and caring from parents, and develops selfobjects, which are images of other people as they relate to the self. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

Eventually, the infant begins to feel vulnerable upon becoming aware of the parents’ shortcomings. The child then defensively idealizes the parents and returns to a sense of self-grandiosity. These are sources of strength for the child when dealing with an uncertain World. Normally, this narcissism gives way to empathy and more realistic appraisals of the self and others. However, when maternal empathy and confirmation are defective, the grandiose self perseveres as a defense against the vulnerabilities inherent in life. NPD may also be a compensation for early emotional deprivation and unempathic mothering. This causes the child to feel unloved, resulting in rage being projected onto one’s parents. As a defense, the child develops a grandiose self by combining aspects of the self that are admired by the parents, a fantasized version of the self, and an idealized version of the parents. There is also a focus on simultaneous feelings of inferiority and grandiosity in NPD. There may additionally be some oral rage, a powerful aggression originally directed at caregivers who did not provide unconditional love and approval, as a casual agent in NPD. One may need to focus more on pathological psychosocial development in the etiology of NPD, and conclude arrested development to fully understand the condition. NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) involves a grandiose sense of self, interpersonal arrogance and exploitation, a desire for excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy. The interactions of a person with NPD are marked by the quest for metamorphosis (rising above inferiority via association with powerful others), selective interpersonal repulsion, and pathological reactions to even the slightest criticism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

Obviously these traits and qualities render intimate interpersonal relationships nearly impossible. People with NPD are trapped between a need for other people to give them attention and admiration, and contempt for others. Their interpersonal lives are marked by conflict, loneliness, and rejection from others. A social learning hypothesis holds that this personality disorder is the result of excessive parental adoration and attention. Psychodynamic accounts of NPD also stress early parent-child relations, focusing on arrested or pathological development of the self image in relation to others. If one is serious about being well, if one really wants to be made physically and emotionally whole one must get up and get moving with one’s life. Do not lay around feeling sorry for one’s self. Do not make excuses; do not blame other people or circumstances that disappointed one. Instead, start forgiving the people who hurt one. Trust God, get up, and step into the great future He has for you. Today can be a turning point in your life, a season of new beginnings. Refuse to in a state of victimhood. Thing happen to us and we may never know why. However, do not use that as an excuse to sulk and be full of doom and gloom. Just because we do not know the answers does not mean that they do not exist. One has simply not discovered them yet. Trust God to workout the things one does not understand. God has your best interests at heart. That is faith, and that is the attitude that God honours. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If you want to live your best life and become a success, you have to work hard and have faith in God. In God’s salutary presence no indecent thought, no unhealthy distraction, shall ever rear its ugly head. Why? Because one is about to welcome into one’s heart and hearth, however humble it may be, not an Angel, but the Lord of Angels. What a difference a distance makes! There is a World of distance between the Ark of the Covenant and its holy contents; between God’s unstainable Body and its unspeakable Virtue; between a sacrifice required by the Old Law and the Sacrifice of sacrifices required by the New Law; that is to say, the one prefigures the other, and the new bread that is host to God’s body completes the sacrifice. Every free action has two causes that come together to produce it. The one is moral, namely the will that determines the act; the other is physical, namely the power that executes it. When I walk toward an object, I must first want to go there. Second, my feet must take me there. A paralyzed mand who want to walk or an agile man who does not want to walk will both remain where they are. The body politic has the same moving causes. The same distinction can be made between the force and the will; the one under the name legislative power and the other under the name executive power. Nothing is done and ought to be done without their concurrence. We have seen that legislative power belongs to the people and can belong to it alone. On the contrary, it is easy to see, by the principles established above, that executive power cannot belong to the people at large in its role as legislator or sovereign, since this power consists solely of particular acts that are not within the province of the law, nor consequently of the sovereign, none of whose acts can avoid being laws. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Therefore the public force must have an agent of its own that unifies it and gets it working in accordance with the directions of the general will, that serves as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, and that accomplishes in humans. This is the reason for having a government in the state, something often badly confused with the sovereign, of which it is merely the minister. What then is the government? An intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with the execution of the laws and the preservation of liberty, both civil and political. The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say, governors, and the entire body bears the name prince. Therefore those who claim that the act by which a people submit itself to leaders is not a contract are quite correct. It is absolutely nothing but a commission, an employment in which the leaders, as simple officials of the sovereign exercise in its own name the power with which it has entrusted them. The sovereign can limit, modify, or appropriate this power as it pleases, since the alienation of such a right is incompatible with the nature of the social body and contrary to the purpose of the association. Therefore, I call government or supreme administration the legitimate exercise of executive power; I call prince or magistrate the human or the body charged with that administration. The willing seduction of the consumer into production has staggering implications. To understand why, it helps to remember that the market is premised on precisely the split between producer and consumer that is now being blurred. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
An elaborate market was not necessary when most people consumed what they themselves produced. It only became necessary when the task of consumption was separated from that of production. Conventional writers define the market narrowly as a capitalist, money-based phenomenon. Yet the market is merely another word for an exchange network, and there have been (and still are) many different kinds of exchange networks. In the West the most familiar to us is the profit-based, capitalist market. However, there are also socialist markets—exchange networks through which the goods or services produced by Ivan Ivanovich in Smolensk are traded for goods or services turned out by Johann Schmidt in East Berlin. There are markets based on money—but also markets based on barter. The market is neither capitalist nor socialist. It is a direct, inescapable consequence of the divorce of producer from consumer. Whenever this divorce occurs the market arises. And wherever the gap between consumer and producer narrows, the entire function, role, and power of the market is brought into question. The rise of presuming today, therefore, begins to change the role of the market in our lives. It is too early to know where this subtle but significant thrust is taking us. Certainly the market is not going to go away. We are not going to go back to premarket economies. What I have called Sector B—the exchange sector—is not going to shrivel up and vanish. We will, for a long time to come, continue to be heavily dependent upon the market. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

Nevertheless, the rise of presuming points strongly toward a fundamental change in the relationships between Sector A and Sector B—a set of relationships that Second Wave economist have until now virtually ignored. For presuming involves the “de-marketization” of at least certain activities and therefore a sharply altered role for the market in society. It suggests an economy of the future unlike any we have known—an economy that is no longer lopsidedly weighted in favour of either Sector A or Sector B. It points to the emergence of an economy that will resemble the First Wave nor Second Wave economics, but will, instead, fuse the characteristics of both into a new historic synthesis. The rise of the prosumer, powered by the soaring cost of many paid services, by the break down of Second Wave service bureaucracies, by the availability of Third Wave technologies, by the problems of structural unemployment, and by the many other converging factors, lead to a work-styles and life arrangements. If we permit ourselves to speculate, bearing in mind some of the shifts described earlier—such as the move toward de-synchronization and part-time paid work, the possible emergence of the electronic cottage, or the changed structure of family life—we can begin to discern some of these lifestyle changes. Thus we are moving toward a future economy in which very large numbers never hold full-time paid jobs, or in which “full-time” is redefined, as it has been in recent years, to mean a shorter and shorter workweek or work year. (In Sweden, where a law guaranteed all workers five weeks of paid vacation regardless of age or length of service, a normal work year was considered to be 1840 hours. In fact, absenteeism has run so high that a more realistic average per worker is 1600 hours per year.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Large numbers of workers already do paid work for what averages out to only three of four says a week, or they take six months or a year off to pursue educational or recreational goals. This pattern may well grow stronger as two-paycheck households multiply. More people in the paid labour market-higher “labour participation rates,” as the economist put it—may very well go with reduced hours per worker. This casts the whole question of leisure into a new light. Once we recognize that much of our so-called leisure time is, in fact, spent producing goods and services for our own use—prosuming—then the old distinction between work and leisure falls apart. The question is not work versus leisure, but paid work for Sector B versus unpaid, self-directed, and self-monitored work for Sector A. In the Third Wave context new lifestyles based half on production exchange, half on production for use, become practical. Such lifestyles were, in fact, common in the early days of the industrial revolution among farm populations who were slowly being absorbed into the urban proletariat. For a long transitional period millions of people worked part-time in factories and part-time on the land, growing their own food, buying some of their necessities, making the rest. This pattern—but with twenty-first century technology for goods and food production, as well as immensely enhanced self-help methods for the production of many services. Instead of a dress pattern, for example, tomorrow’s prosumer might well buy a computer program the powers a “smart” electronic sewing machine. Even the clumsiest househusband, with such a computer program, could make his own custom-fitted shirts. Mechanically inclined tinkers could do more than tune up their autos. They could actually half-build them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

It is always possible for the customer to program one’s own specifications into the auto manufacturing process via computer and telephone and have the car delivered to one’s house without even going to the dealership. One can also easily picture a generation brought up on part-time paid work as the norm, eager to use their own hands, equipped with many inexpensive mini-technologies in the home, forming a sizeable segment of the population. This is already happening in China. They are replicating and creating electronics and selling them to Americans for a much more affordable price. Some of these machines are made for China so they instructions are in Chinses are well as the settings on the machine, but when you are getting them at a discounted price, it is worth your time to do the research and figure out what the machine is saying. Half in the marker, half out, working intermittently rather than all year round, taking a year off now and then, they might well earn less—but compensate by supplying their own labour for many tasks that now cost money, thus mitigating the effects of inflation. American’s Mormons offer another clue to possible future lifestyles. Many Mormon stakes—a stake corresponds to, say, a Catholic diocese—own and operate their own farms. Members of the sake, including urban members, spend some of their free time as volunteer farmers growing food. Most of the produce is not sold but stored for emergency use or distributed to Mormons in need. There are central canning plants, bottling facilities, and grain elevators. Some Mormons grow their own food and take it to the cannery. Others actually buy fresh vegetables at the supermarket, then take them to the local cannery. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Says a Salt Lake City Mormon, “My mother will buy tomatoes and can them. Her relief ‘society,’ the women’s auxiliary society, will have a day and they all go and can tomatoes for their own use.” Similarly, many Mormons not only contribute money to their church but actually perform volunteer labour—construction work, for example. None of this is to suggest that we are all going to become members of the Mormon church, or that it will be possible in the future to re-crate on a wide scale the social and community bonds one finds in this highly participatory yet theologically autocratic group. However, the principle of production for self-use, either by individuals or by organized groups, is likely to spread farther. Given home computers, given seeds genetically designed for urban or even apartment agriculture, even cheap home tools for working plastic, given new materials, adhesives, and membranes, and given free technical advice available over the Internet, mobile phones, telephone lines, with instructions flickering on the TV or computer screen, it has become possible to create lifestyles that are more rounded and varied, less monotonous, more creatively satisfying, and less market-intensive than those that typified Second Wave civilization. It is still too early to know how far this shift of activity from exchange in Sector B to presumption in Sector A will go, how the balance between these sectors will vary from country to country, and which particular lifestyles will actually emerge from it. What is certain, however, is that any significant change in the balance between production for use and production for exchange will set off depth charges under our economic system and our values as well. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Whoever was the first to make the analogy between caterpillars and butterflies and death and resurrection—old life and new life—must have had a “butterfly experience.” Knots being untied; tight jar libs being loosened—it is freedom. It is freeing. It is the slow motion experience of leaping through a meadow with arms and legs in tune with rhythm of life. However, somehow the butterfly says it best, become of the cocoon experience. People seem to have more than one go-round with the cocoon. How did it start for me this time? Why did it start? I was happy as a caterpillar. Just a bit confined, that is all. I viewed myself, and others did, as fuzzy-wuzzy, problem free, happily married, financially secure, basking in the love of God…but I was content. I did not know myself. Actually, I did not even know that I did not know myself. And certainly did not own my feelings. I had to move away from all those who unknowingly kept me as a pet caterpillar to learn the true situation. And what is why I ended up here in the New World. Things have happened fast, which I like. However, becoming a new nation has been a difficult, thrilling, labourious, joyous, arduous, and climatic year. There have been so many significant encounters. Every century and generation I have learned so much. However, several things were of major importance. Almost a passing comment by Dr. James McCune Smith tuned a trickle into a flood last fall when he said, “American, I sensed a lot of tension in you the first time we met.” I could hardly believe it. Everybody knew I was the land of opportunity, where one could achieve anything, they put their mind to, no matter who they are. I was not tense…how could he say that? #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
I was building colonies, hosting thanksgiving, emancipating human being with religious freedom and human rights, establishing child labour laws, building free centers of public education, creating factories that raised the standard of living, producing crops, fostering livestock, and giving constant attention to the beings of my land by providing them with some of the best weather in the World. Tense…tense! How true! I had to face it. And so began a whole chain of discoveries. I thought I was relaxed and learned myself I was tense. I thought I was well-adjusted and learned that I did not even know myself. I thought I was loving and learned that I was often indifferent. I thought I was social and learned that I was withdraw. On an optimistic note, I thought I was dumb and learned I was intelligent. At an earlier point in my Christian life, it would have seemed unspiritual to consider these things. However, somewhere bear the beginning of this century, I experience a glorious assurance that God was in fact the One who led me to this point—and He was the one leading me through! For some reason, it seems that it is almost over. Or maybe it is the beginning of a new era building on what I have learned. I do know that I am more excited about life. I love my land and its inhabitants more than ever before. And I am more open to forming friendships with new pilgrims. Most of all, I feel more comfortable being myself. In these centuries of growth I have come in touch with my own worth and potential. Simply becoming aware was a great part of the answer. Perhaps that is because I wanted the change. I really do want to be a transparent nation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
For now all I can say is that something deep is happening within me—and I love what is happening. Rather than focusing on why certain things happen to me or to those I love, I choose to focus on You, Father, who You are, and what You have promised to do in my life as I trust You. I want to be better; I want to be healed from anything that would keep me locked in the past. Today, I will step into that great future You have for me. I pelage my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. To all that is brief and fragile, superficial, unstable, to all that lacks foundation argument or principles; to all that is light, fleeting, changing, finite to smoke spirals, wand roses, to sea foam, and mists of oblivion…to all that is light in weight for itinerants on this transient Earth, somber, raving, with transitory words, and premium cranberry juice, I toast. May God be mindful of the souls of all our brothers, departed members of the house of America who sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of the Holy Name and the honour of America. Please grant that their heroism and self-sacrificing devotion find response in our hearts and the purity of their souls be reflected in our lives. Many their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life, an everlasting blessing among us. Amen. O merciful God who dwellest on high and art full of compassion, please grant perfect rest beneath the shelter of Thy divine presence among the holy and pure who shine as the brightness of the firmament, to our dear departed who have gone to their eternal home. May their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Grant that their memories ever inspire us to noble and consecrated living. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Haunted by a Counteracting Spell—My Whole Soul Withering!
God created man He committed Lucifer a position of authority in relation to the Earth and its surrounding planets. For this reason, Satan is called the “god of this World” in the New Testament. This angelic creature of surpassing beauty and intelligence, however, initiated a rebellion against God. This explains the entrance of sin, suffering, and death into a universe which had been “good” as it came from God’s creative hand. The Scriptures do not attempt to tell us why God permitted sin to invade His World, for His reasons are among the “secret things” which “belong unto the Lord our God,” reports Deuteronomy 29.29. We cannot fully understand how or why an infinitely holy God brought about the possibility of evil, nor can we explain the origin of pride and rebellion against Him. However, by faith we are assured that God is holy, wise, and loving. Our confidence in Him enables us to believe that behind His permission of sin, suffering, and death lies infinite holiness, wisdom, and goodness. The Bible simply affirms that the angel Lucifer, now called Satan, became proud and rebelled against his Maker. Lucifer, the daystar, succumbed to pride and revolted against God. Apparently many angels joined in the rebellion, for the Bible speaks of “angels that sinned,” reports 2 Peter 2.4, “angels who kept not their first estate,” reports Jude 6, and Revelation 12.4 in figurative language describes the red dragon (Satan) as pulling down a third of the stars (angels) from Heaven with his tail. Satan and his followers have been cast out of Heaven to Earth. They hate God and His people, and have neither desire for nor hope of salvation. The terms “evil” and “foul” are sometimes used to describe the evil spirits who make up Satan’s army. Even the name “Satan” means adversary, and the word “devil” portrays him as one who accuses or criticizes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

The fall of Lucifer made him an implacable enemy of God, a false accuser, and a liar whose every activity is marked by deceitfulness. The devil today is the leader of a vast host of evil spirits who are organized into a military-like structure. However, remember that Satan, though intelligent and powerful, is not omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. He can be in only one place at a time, but his myriads of assistants can largely make up for his inherent finiteness. With their help he tries to lead people into sinful practices and introduces false doctrine into the professing church. Though fallen humanity possess an evil nature, many of the completely inhuman and unnatural evils of society are at least in part traceable to the devil and his evil spirits. The widespread confusion and strife within the realm of professing Christendom is also partly due to Satanic activity. Evil spirits seek to divide and corrupt the church. However, remember, Satan was originally sinless and the most glorious of all created beings. In 1324 A.D., Dame Alice Kyteler (such apparently being her maiden name), the facile princeps of Irish witches, was a member of a good Anglo-Norman family that had been settled in the city of Kilkenny for many years. The lady in question must have been far removed from the popular conception of a witch as an old woman of striking ugliness, or else her powers of attraction were very remarkable, for she had succeeded in leading four husbands to the alter. She had been married, first, to William Outlawe of Kilkenny, banker; secondly, to Adam le Blund of Callan; third, to Richard de Valle—all of whom she was supposed to have got rid of by poison; and fourthly, to Sir John le Poer, whom it was said she deprived of his natural senses by philtres and incantations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
The Bishop of Ossory at this period was Richard de Ledrede, a Franciscan friar, and an Englishman by birth. He soon learnt that things were not as they should be, for when making a visitation of his diocese early in 1324 he found by an Inquisition, in which were five knights and numerous nobles, that there was in the city a band of heretical sorcerers, at the head whom was Dame Alice. The following charges were laid against them. They had denied the faith of Christ absolutely for a year or a month, according as the object they desired to gain through sorcery was of greater or less importance. During all that period they believed in none of the doctrines of the Church; they did not adore the Body of Christ, nor enter a sacred building to hear mass, not make sure of consecrated bread or holy water. They offered in sacrifice to demons living animals, which they dismembered, and then distributed at cross-roads to a certain evil spirit of low rank, named the Son of Art. They sought their sorcery advice and responses from demons. In their nightly meetings they blasphemously imitated the power of the Church by fulminating sentences of excommunication, with lighted candles, even against their own husbands, from the sole of their foot to the crown of their head, naming each part expressly, and then concluded by extinguishing the candles and by crying Fi! Fi! Fi! Amen. In order to arouse feelings of love or hatred, or to inflict death or disease on the bodies of the faithful, they made use of powders, unguents, ointments, and candles of fat, which were compounded as follows. They took the entrails of cocks sacrificed to demons, certain horrible worms, various unspecified herbs, dead men’s nails, the hair, brains, and shreds of the cerement of boys who were buried unbaptized, with other abominations, all of which they cooked, with various incantations, over a fire of oak-logs in a vessel made out of the skull of a decapitated thief. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

The children of Dame Alice’s four husbands accused her before the Bishop of having killed their fathers by sorcery, and of having brought on them such stolidity of their senses that they bequeathed all their wealth to her and her favourite son, William Outlawe, to the impoverishment of the other children. They also stated that her present husband, Sir John le Poer, had been reduced to such a condition by sorcery and the use of powders that he had become terribly emaciated, his nails had dropped off, and there was no hair left on his body. No doubt he would have died had he not been warned by a maid-servant of what was happening, in consequence of which he had forcibly possessed himself of his wife’s keys, and had opened some chests in which he found a sackful of horrible and detestable thing which he transmitted to the bishop by the hands of two priests. The said dame had a certain demon, an incubus, named Son or Art, or Robin son of Art, who had carnal knowledge of her, and from who she admitted that she had received all her wealth. This incubus made its appearance under various forms, sometimes as a cat, or as a hairy black dog, or in the likeness of an African, accompanied by two others who were larger and taller than he, and of whom one carried an iron rod. Dame Alice was declared to be a sorceress, magician, and heretic, and it was demanded that she should be handed over to the secular arm and have her goods confiscated as well. One of Dame Alice’s accomplices was Petronilla of Meath, she was made the scapegoat for her mistress. The Bishop had her flogged six times, and under the repeated application of this form of torture she made the required confession of magical practices. She admitted the denial of her faith and the sacrificing to Robert, son of Art, and as well that she had caused certain women of her acquaintance to appear as if they had goats’ horns. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
She also confessed that at the suggestion of Dame Alice she had frequently consulted demons and received responses from them, and that she had acted as a “medium” (mediatrix) between her and the said Robert. She declared that although she herself was a mistress of the Black Art, yet she was as nothing in comparison with the Dame from who she had learnt all her knowledge, and that there was no one in the World more skillful than she. Petronilla of Meath also stated that William Outlawe deserved death as much as she, for he was privy to their sorceries, and for a year and a day had worn the devil’s girdle round his body. When rifling Dame Alice’s house there was found “a wafer of sacramental bread, having the devil’s name stamped thereon instead of Jesus Christ, and a pipe of ointment wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed.” Petronilla was accordingly condemned to be burnt alive, and the execution of this sentence took place with all due solemnity in Kilkenny on 3rd November 1324. Dame Alice fled the country. “With regard to the other heretics and sorcerers who belonged to the pestilential society of Robin, son of Art, the order of law being preserved, some of them were publicly burnt to death; others, confessing their crimes in the presence of all the people, in an upper garment, are marked back and front with a cross after they had abjured their heresy, as is the custom; others were solemnly whipped through the town and the market-place; others were banished from the city and diocese; others who evaded the jurisdiction of the Church were excommunicated; while others again fled in fear and were never heard of after. And thus, by the authority of Holy Mother Church, and by the special grace of God, that most foul brood was scattered and destroyed.” Possibly Dame Alice and her associated actually practiced magical arts, and if so, considering the period at which it occurred, some can see why the Bishop took the steps he did. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
However, others suspect such baser motives as greed of gain and desire for revenge. John XXII was elevated to the Papacy. The attitude of that Pope towards magical arts was no uncertain one. He believed himself to be surrounded by enemies who were ever making attempts on his life by modelling images of him in wax, to be subsequently thrust through with pins and melted, no doubt; or by sending him a devil enclosed in a ring, or in various other ways. Consequently in several Bulls he anathematized sorcerers, denounced their ill-deeds, excited the inquisitors against them, and so gave ecclesiastical authorization to the reality of the belief in magical forces. Indeed, the general expression used in the Bull Super illius specula might be applied to the actions of Dame Alice and her party. He says of certain persons that “they sacrificed to demons and adore them, making or causing to be made images, rings, and so forth, with which they draw the evil spirits by their magical art, obtain responses from them, and demand their help in performing their evil designs.” Heresy and sorcery were now identified, and the punishment for the former was the same as that for the latter, burning at the stake and confiscation of property. The attitude of this Pontiff evidently found a sympathizer in Bishop de Ledrede, who deemed in necessary to follow the example set by Head of the Church, with what results we have already shown: thus we find In Ireland a ripple of the wave that swept over Europe at this period. It is very probable, too, that there were many underlying local causes of which we can know little or nothing; the discontent and anger of the disinherited children at the loss of the wealth of which Dame Alice had bereft them by her exercise of “undue influence” over her husbands, family quarrels, private hatreds, and possibly national jealousy helped to bring about one of the strangest series of events in the chequered history of Ireland. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s arrival was a sensational event. The Santa Clara Valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; they those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activity that mushroomed an eight-room farm house into a 26-room mansion, the first six months. Here was game for all! They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like-but everyone enjoyed. Talk begat rumors and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanada Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. There had been a thunderstorm in the valley. Every door was shut, every dog in its kennel, every rut and gutter a flowing river after the deluge of rain that had fallen. Up at the Winchester mansion, which seemed to be supernaturally growing, the fawns on the estate were venturing their timid heads from behind the trunk of trees, and Mrs. Winchester has risen from her knees, and was putting back her prayer-book on the self. In the garden, April roses, unwieldy with their full-blown richness, and saturated with rain, hung their heads heavily to the Earth; others, already fallen, lay flat upon their blooming faces on the path, where Agnus, Mrs. Winchester’s maid, would fund them, when going on her morning quest of rose-leaves for her lady’s pot-pourri. Ranks of white lilies, just brought to perfection by today’s sun, lay dabbled in the mire of flooded mould. Tears ran down the amber cheeks of the plums on the south wall, and not a bee had ventured out of the hives, though the scent of the air was sweet enough to tempt the laziest drone. The sky was still lurid behind the boles of the upland oaks, but the birds had begun to dive in and out of ivy that wrapped up the mansion. This thunderstorm took place more than a century ago, and must remember that Mrs. Winchester was dressed in the fashion of that time as she walked out from behind the squire’s chair, now that the lightning was over, and, with many nervous glances towards the window, sat down before the tea-urn, and the muffins. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
We can picture her fine lace cap, with its peachy ribbons, the frill on the hem of her cambric gown just touching her ankles, her embroidered stockings, the rosettes on her shoes, but not so easily the lilac shade of her mild eyes, the satin skin, which still kept its delicate bloom, though wrinkled with advancing age, and the pale, sweet, puckered mouth, that time and sorrow had made angelic while trying vainly to deface its beauty. The room in which she sat was a pleasant old-fashioned drawing-room, with a spider-glass window, carpet, tawny wreath on the pale blue; blue flutings on the walls, and faint gilding on the furniture. A huge urn, crammed with roses, in the open bay-window, through which came delicious airs from the garden, the twittering of birds settling to sleep in the ivy close by, and occasionally the pattering of a flight of rain drops, swept to the ground as a bough bent in the breeze. The urn on the table was ancient silver, and the china rare. There was nothing in the room for luxurious ease of the body, but everything of delicate refinement for the eye. At this moment a rolling sound struck upon the ears. The lady rose from her seat trembling, and folded her hands together, while the tea-urn flooded the tray. Presently pretty Agnus of the rose-leaves appeared at the door in flutter of blue ribbons. “Please, madam, a lady has arrived, and says she is expected. She asked for her apartment, and I put her into the room that was got ready of Miss Marriot. And she sends her respects to you, madam, and she will be down with you presently.” Hardly had she spoken when the door again opened, and the stranger appeared—a small creature, whether a girl or a woman it would be hard to say—dressed in a scanty black silk dress, her narrow shoulders covered with a white muslin pelerine. Her hair was swept up to the crown of her heard, all but a little fringe hanging over her low forehead with an inch of brows. Her face was brown and thin, eyes black and long, with blacker settings, mouth large, sweet, and melancholy. She was all head, mouth, and eyes; her nose and chin were nothing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
This visitor crossed the floor hastily, dropped a courtesy in the middle of the room, and approached the table, saying abruptly, with a soft Italian accent: “Madam, I am here. I am come to play your organ.” “The organ!” gasped Mrs. Winchester. “Yes, the organ,” said the little stranger lady, playing on the back of a chair with her finger, as if she felt notes under them. “It was but last week that the handsome signor, your son, came to my little house, where I have lived teaching music since my English father and my Italian mother and brothers and sisters died and left me so lonely.” Here the fingers left off drumming, and two great tears were brushed off, one from each eye with each hand, child’s fashion. However, the next moment the fingers were at work again, as if only whilst they were moving the tongue could speak. “Your son,” said the little woman, looking trustfully at Mrs. Winchester, while a bright blush shone through her brown skin, “he often came to see me before that, always in the evening, when the sun was warm and yellow all through my little studio, and the music was swelling my heart, and I could play out grand with all my soul; then he used to come and say, ‘Hurry, little Bianca, and play better, better still. I have work for you to do by-and-by.’ Sometimes he said, ‘Brava!’ and sometimes he said ‘Eccellentissima!’ but one night last week he came to me and said, ‘It is enough. Will you swear to do my bidding, whatever it may be?’ Here the black eyes fell. And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Now you are my betrothed.’ And he said, ‘Pack up your music, little Bianca, and go off to San Jose to my American mother, who has an organ in her house which must be played upon. If she refuses to let you play, tell her I sent you, and she will give you leave. The spirits are always high and about. You must play all day, and you must get up in the night and play. You must never tire. You are my betrothed, and you have sworn to do my work.’ I said, ‘Shall I see you there, signor?’ And he said, ‘Yes, you shall see me there.’ I said, ‘I will keep my vow, signor.’ And so, madam, I am come.’” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The soft foreign voice left off talking, the finger left off thrumming on the chair, and the little stranger gaze in dismay at her auditor, pale with agitation. “You are deceived. You make a mistake,” said Mrs. Winchester. “My son—” began Mrs. Winchester, but her mouth twitched, her voice broke, and she looked piteously. “Yes, yes, said the little foreigner. “If you have though him dead have good cheer, dear madam. He is alive; he is well, and strong, and handsome. But one, two, three, four, five’ (on the fingers) “days ago he stood by my side.” “It is some strange mistake, some wonderful coincidence!” said Mrs. Winchester. “Let me take you to the gallery,” murmured the mother of this son who was thus dead and alive. “There is yet light to see the pictures. She will not know his portrait.” The bewildered wife led her strange visitor away to the long gloomy room at the west side of the mansion, where the faint gleams from the darkening sky still lingered on the portraits of the Winchester family. “Doubtless he is like this,” said the madam, pointing to a fair-haired young man with a mild face, a cousin of Mr. Winchester, who had been lost at sea. But Bianca shook her head and went softly on tiptoe from one picture to another, peering into the canvas, and still turning away troubled. However, at last a shriek of delight stated the shadowy chamber. “Ah, here he is! See, here he is, the noble signor, the beautiful signor, not half so handsome as he looked five days ago, when talking to poor little Bianca! Dear sir and madam, you are now content. Now take me to the organ, that I may commence to do his bidding at once.” Mrs. Winchester said faintly, “How old are you, girl?” “Eighteen,” said the visitor impatiently, moving towards the door. “And my son has been dead for fifty-four years. That is his father. We tried to have another child after the tragic death of our daughter, but I miscarried,” said Mrs. Winchester. Up the grand staircase the little woman followed Mrs. Winchester. The mansion was fitted with much great luxury and richness. The appointments of the mysterious Grand Ballroom was built almost entirely without nails. It cost over $9,000 (2021 inflation adjusted $242,038.24) to complete at the time when an entire house could be built for less than $1000 (2021 inflation adjusted $26,893.14)! #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The silver chandelier from Germany illuminated the room quite well, the was a robust fire blazing in the fireplace, and the walls, floors, and ceiling were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. The most curious elements of the Grand Ballroom are the two leaded stained-glass windows, each inscribed with a quote from Shakespeare. Ironically, the ballroom was never used to hold a ball. Mrs. Winchester had invited a celebrated orchestra from San Francisco to perform at her home, but scheduling conflicts prevented the visit. The spirit must have known Mrs. Winchester wanted to hear live music. The appointments of this room announced it the sanctum of a woman who depended for the interest of her life upon resources of intellect and tastes. However, with all the luxury in the Grand Ballroom, what stood out most to Bianca was nothing but a morsel of biscuit that was laying on a plate. “May I have it?” said she eagerly. “It is so long since I have eaten. I am hungry.” Mrs. Winchester sat Bianca down and told her how she lost the baby. “There was a party of men, who named themselves the “Devil’s Club,” and they were in the habit of practising all kinds of unholy pranks in the country. They had midnight carousings on the tombstones in the Grove Street Cemetery; they carried away helpless old men and children, who they tortured by making believe to bury them alive; mock feast. On one occasion there was a very sad funeral from the village. The corpse was carried into the church, and prayers were read over the coffin, the chief mourner, the aged father of the dead man, standing weeping by. In the midst of this solemn scene the organ suddenly pleaded forth a profane tune, and a number of voices shouted a drinking chorus. A groan of execration burst from the crowd, the clergyman turned pale and closed his book, and the old mad, the father of the dead, climbed the altar steps, and, raising his arms above his head, uttered a terrible curse. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
“He said that if Mr. Winchester did not give him the ‘Colt,’ that his family would meet with tragedy. The Colt is a legendary gun that was created in 1835, during the appearance of Halley’s Comet, and the chamber could hold 13 bullets. It was made by a blacksmith who tinker with the occult. In German tradition, the blacksmith ends his work on Saturday by striking his anvil, chaining the Devil for another week. So anyway, he cursed Mr. Winchester to all eternity, he cursed the organ he played, that it might be dumb henceforth, except under the fingers that had now profaned it, which, he prayed, might be forced to labour upon it till they stiffened in death. And the curse seemed to work, for the organ stood dumb in the church from that day, except when I purchased it and put it in my Grand Ballroom as a reminder of my miscarried son. William used to hammer away at the organ so many laborious hours. He only stopped when our daughter was born, but shortly after birth she passed away. William went back to locking himself up in the ballroom with the organ, but one day I hid myself among the curtains, and saw him withering on his seat, and heard him groaning as he strove to wrench his hands from the keys, to which they flew back like a needle to a magnet. It was soon plainly to be seen that he was an involuntary slave to the organ; but whether through madness that had grown within himself, or by some supernatural doom, having its cause in the old man’s curse, we did not dare to day. By-and-by there came a time when I was wakened out of my sleep at nights by the rolling of the organ. He wrought now night and day. Food and rest were denied him. His face got haggard, his bread grew long, his eyes started from their sockets. His body became wasted, and his cramped fingers like the claws of a bird. He groaned piteously as he stooped over his cruel toil. I was afraid to go near him. I tried to put wine and food between his lips, while the tortured fingers crawled over the keys; but he only gnashed his teeth; I retreated from him. At last, one dreadful hour, we found him a ghastly corpse on the ground before the organ. The doctor said he died from tuberculosis.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

“From that hour the organ was dumb to the touch of all human fingers. I had it shipped here when I moved to the Santa Clara Valley and built this beautiful room for it. Many, unwilling to believe the story, made preserving endeavours to draw sound from it, in vain. However, when the darkened empty room was locked up and left, we heard as loud as ever the well-known sounds humming and rolling through the walls. Night and day the tones of the organ boomed on as before. It seemed that the doom of the wretched man was not yet fulfilled, although my family rests in the cemetery. As time went on, the curse of this perpetual music was not removed from the house. Servants refused to stay about the place. Visitors shunned it. I left this house for several years, and returned; left it, and returned again, to find my ears still tortured and my heart rung by the unceasing persecution of terrible sounds. At last, but a few months ago, a holy man was found, who locked himself up in the cursed and mysterious Grand Ballroom for many days, praying and wrestling with the demon. After he came forth and went away the sounds ceased, and the organ was heard no more. Since then there has been peace in the house. And now, Bianca, your strange appearance and your strange story convinces me that you are a victim of a ruse of the Evil One. Be warned in time, and place yourself under the protection of God, that you may be saved from the fearful influenced that are at work upon you.” Little Bianca went fast asleep, her hands spread before her as if she played an organ in her dreams. “We will save you from your horrible fate!” Mrs. Winchester whispered, and had the butler carry the girl to bed. In the morning, Bianca was gone. Mrs. Winchester found the girl’s chambers empty. “She is just a wild thing,” thought Mrs. Winchester, “as would rush out at sunrise to hear the larks!” and she went forth to look for her in the meadows, behind the fruit orchard in the estate’s deer park, and found nothing. She returned, her quest had been unsuccessful. The little international girl had vanished. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

A second search after breakfast proved also fruitless, and towards the evening there was panic and distress. Mrs. Winchester sat in the palour. The servants, with pale faces, were huddled together in whispering groups. The haunted organ was booming and roaring again through the mansion. Mrs. Winchester hastened to the fatal Grand Ballroom, and there, sure enough, was Bianca, perched upon the high seat before the organ, beating the keys with her small hands, her slight figure swaying, and the evening sunshine playing about her weird head. Sweet unearthly music she wrung from the groaning heart of the organ—wild melodies, mounting to rapturous heights and falling to mournful depths. She wandered from Mendelssohn to Mozart, and from Mozart to Beethoven. Mrs. Winchester stood fascinated awhile by the ravaging beauty of the sounds she heard, but, rousing herself quickly, put her arms around the musician and forced her away from the mysterious Grand Ballroom. Bianca returned the next day, however, and was not so easily coaxed from her post again. Day after day she laboured at the organ, growing paler, and thinner, and more weird-looking as time went on. “I worked so hard,” she said to Mrs. Winchester. “The signor, your son, is he pleased? Asked him to come and tell me himself if he is pleased.” Mrs. Winchester got ill and took to her bed. The butler swore at the young international star and roamed abroad. Agnus was the only one who stood by to watch the fate of the little organist. The curse of the organ was upon Bianca; it spoke under her hand, and her hand was its slave. At last she announced rapturously that she had a visit from the brave signor, who had commanded her industry, and urged her to work yet harder. After that she ceased to hold any communication with the living. Time after time Agnus wrapped her arms about the frail thing, and carried her away by force, locking the door of the fatal chamber. However, locking the chamber and burying the key were of no avail. The door stood opened again, and Bianca was labouring on her perch. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

One night, wakened from her sleep by the well-known humming and moaning of the organ, Mrs. Winchester dressed and hastened to the unholy room. Moonlight was pouring down the staircase and cascading on the stained-glass windows. It shone on the marble bust of the late Mr. Winchester, that stood in the niche above Mrs. Winchester’s sitting-room door. The Grand ballroom was full of it when Mrs. Winchester pushed open the door and entered—full of pale blue moonlight from the window, mingled with another light, a dull lurid glare which seemed to center round like a dark shadow, like the figure of a man standing by the organ, and throwing out in fantastic relief the slight form of Bianca writhing, rather than swaying, back and forward, as if in agony. The sounds that came from the organ were broken and meaningless, as if the hands of the player lagged and stumbled on the keys. Between the intermittent chords low moaning cries broke from Bianca, and the dark figure bent towars her with menacing gestures. Trembling with the sickness of supernatural fear, yet strong of will, Mrs. Winchester walked forward with the lurid light, and was drawn into its influence. It grew and intensified upon her, it dazzled and blinded her at first; but presently, by a daring effort of will, she raised her eyes, and beheld Bianca’s face convulsed with torture in the burning glare, and bending over her the figure and the features of William Winchester! Smitten with horror, Mrs. Winchester did not even lose her presence of mind. She wound her strong arms around the wretched girl and dragged her from her seat and out of the influence of the lurid light, which immediately paled away and vanished. She carried her to her own bed, where Lisa lay, a wasted wreck, raving about the cruelty of the pitiless signor who would not see that she was labouring her best. Her poor cramped hands kept beating the coverlet, as though she were still at her agonizing task. Mrs. Winchester prayed a way might be shown by which to put an end to this curse. She prayed for Bianca, and then, thinking that the girl rested somewhat, stole from the room. She thought that she had locked the door behind her. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
She went to the blue séance room with a pale, resolved face, and, without consulting anyone, sent to the village for a bricklayer. Afterwards she sat by the foreman, and explained to him what was to be done. Presently, Mrs. Winchester went to the door of Bianca’s room, and hearing no sound, thought the girl slept, and stole away. By-and-by she went downstairs, and found that the bricks had arrived and the foreman already begun his task of building up the Grand Ballroom door. He was a swift workman, and the mysterious ballroom was soon sealed safely with stone and mortar. A few hours went by and no one had seen Bianca. The house was searched, upstairs and downstairs, in the garden, in the grounds, in the fields and meadows. No Bianca. Mrs. Winchester made inquiries everywhere; she pondered and puzzled over the matter. In the weak, suffering state the girl was in, how far could she have crawled. Meanwhile, the mansion was still growing by leaps and bounds from 8 room, to 26 room, a nine-story tower, 156 more rooms, as if it was under construction by legions of ghosts. A few years went by, and still no one had seen Bianca. When one night, Angus decided to quit. “I love you dearly, and it breaks my heart to go away, but the organ…I am frightened out of my life, I cannot stay, Mrs. Winchester.” “Who has heard the organ, and when?” asked Mrs. Winchester, rising to her feet. “Please ma’am, I heard it years ago, the night you went away—the night after the door was built up. I heard it again this morning.” “No,” said Mrs. Winchester; “it is only the wind.” However, as pale as death she flew down the stairs and laid her ear to the yet mortar. All was silent. There was no sound but the monotonous sough of the wind in the trees outside. The Winchester mansion was shut up and deserted for many years. At night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled regularly at midnight to summon incoming flights of spirits. Later it rolled again to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchers. However, once a week these departed one relaxed and faced in the Great Ballroom. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
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A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle .

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