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But of All Plagues, Good Heaven, Thy Wrath Can Send, Save Me, Oh, Save Me, from the Candid Friend!
With all the changes and challenges you face each day, there is never been a greater need to take the time to determine your priorities, and then with renewed focus, align your daily actions with your purpose or goals. Since you cannot know it all or do it all, it is vital that you learn to take the time to contemplate what it is you need to know and what you need to do. And keep in mind, the art of being wise is to know what to overlook. For what do we give thanks? Are there limits to giving thanks? Our text says—“In everything give thanks!” This does not mean—give thanks for everything, but give thanks in every situation! There are no limits to situations in which to thanks, but there are limits to thing for which thanks can be expressed. This is again a question the answer to which might lead us into a new understanding of the human predicament. In the letter to 1 Timothy 4.4 we read—“For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayers.” In these words, thanksgiving receives a new function. It consecrates everything created by God. Thanksgiving is consecration; it transfers something that belongs to the secular World into the sphere of the holy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Thanksgiving is not transformed, as superstition in and outside of Christian beliefs would transform it, but it is elevated to represent the divine. It has become a bearer of grace. Therefore, we say “grace” when we give thanks for our daily food, and thus consecrate it. Every created thing can be a bearer of holiness, an object of thanks, of consecration. There are no limits to thanksgiving in this respect. We can give thanks for our bodily and our mental powers, for the darkness of our unconscious as well as for the light of our consciousness, for the abundance of nature and the creations of history, for everything that is and manifests its power of being. We can give thanks for all these despite their rejection by those who, through World-hating asceticism and fanatical puritanism, blaspheme the God of creation. Everything for which we can give thanks with a good conscience is consecrated by our thanks. This is not merely a profound theological insight; it is also a practical standard in situations where we are uncertain about accepting it, we can give thanks for it, we witness to its goodness as crated. In giving thanks seriously, we consecrate it to the holy source of being from which it comes. And we even take the risk that Protestant Christians must take—that their conscience may fall into error and consecrate something which should be rejected. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
One reason we have this new attitude toward sin and God’s law is that we “died” to the law. Such a statement may sound strange after we have learned insistently about the importance of God’s law as a moral rule in the believer’s life. However, through the law reveals God’s moral will for us, the law in itself has no power to enable us to obey it. Because the law commands obedience without providing any enabling power, it is in this sense a course of bondage. And because we were hostile to God’s law prior to our salvation (The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so, reports Romans 8.7), it was also a source of provocation to us. Instead of being a means of obedience to God, the law actually provoked us and incited us to sin (What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have know what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law has not said, “Do not covert.” However, sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead, reports Romans 7.7-8). Such a human’s actions, however much they outwardly appear to be like those of other beings, are done under the impulsion of a higher will than the personal. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
“So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to one who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. However, now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code,” reports Romans 7.4-6. “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin,” reports Romans 3.20. “For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace,” reports Romans 6.14. “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law,’” reports Galatians 3.10. From these passages we understand that we died to the observance of the law as a requirement for attaining righteousness before God. We died to the curse and condemnation that resulted from our inability to perfectly keep the law. Then we see in Romans 6.14 that being under the law is opposite of being under grace. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Because of our sin against the law, being under law implied the wrath of God, whereas grace implies forgiveness and favour. Law implies a broken relationship with God, whereas grace implies a restored relationship with Him. So when Paul said we died to the law, he meant we died to that entire state of condemnation, curse, and alienation from God. The most important thing for us to see in our death to the law, however, is the purpose of our death. We died to the law in order that we might live in the realm of grace. We died to the law that we might bear fruit to God. And according to Romans 7.6, we died that we might “serve [God] in the new ways of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code [the law].” The new way of the spirit is not a new and less rigorous ethic than the old way of the written code. The difference does not lie in the content of the moral will of God. Since that is a reflection of the holy character of God, it cannot change. Rather, the difference lies in the reason to obey and in the ability with which to obey. Verse 6 gets right to the heart of what it means to live by grace. For serving in the new way of the Spirit is the same as living by grace instead of by works. Although it is clearly God’s design that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, far too many Christians still serve in the old way of the law. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
There are no limits to giving thanks in the whole of creation. However, are there not limits in our life? Can we honestly give thanks for the frustrations, accidents, and infirmaries that strike us? We cannot in the moment when they take hold of us. Here is one of the many situations where piety can degenerate into dishonesty. For we rightly resist such evils. We want to remove them; we are often angry against our destiny and its divine ground. And there are depths of suffering, bodily and mental, in which even the question of thanking or not thanking does not appear. Out of the depths the psalmist cries to God; he does not thank Him. This is honest, realistic—a realism born out of the awareness of the divine presence. And I believe that at some time in our lives all of us have had experiences that were nothing but evil when they happened, but that became a good later and the object of honest thanks. And we also cannot give thanks for our own acts that make us guilty or for those that make us good. We cannot give thanks for that which makes us guilty; and sometimes things for which we have given thanks become evil by our own guilt. Nor should we give tanks for that in us which makes us good. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The thanks of the pharisee for one’s good work is an outstanding example of thanks which should not be given. In reality, one does not thank God when one is thankful for one’s own goodness, but thanks oneself. How many of us thank ourselves when we give thanks to God! However, one cannot thank oneself, because the sacrifice of thanking, if given to oneself, ceases to be a sacrifice. Thanks to oneself is not thanks, even when prayers of thanks to God are hidden ways of thanking oneself, as after work well done or success achieved by great toil. It I a surprising experience to read the Bible, and especially the last third of the books of Psalms, with the questions of thanks in one’s mind. One discovers that the praise of God fills page after page in which the misery of all beings, including the writers of those books, is also most drastically described. Reading them, we feel as though we walk in another realm. We cannot reproduce in ourselves what is happening to these beings. (We are not in the mood of praising, hardly in the mood of thanking.) We look into the depth of our predicament and do not see much reason for praise and thanks. And if we think that it is our duty to God to thank Him, of if we participate in church services that include praise and thanks, we do not feel that we have truly expressed our state of mind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Although this experience of not feeling that we have truly expressed our state of mind is not invariable, it is a predominant trait of our religious situation. It expresses itself in the messages of our best present preachers and theologians. It is a dominating theme of our great poets and philosophers. We are not called to pas judgment on these beings. We have a part in them. They express us as they express themselves. And we should thank those who do it seriously, and often out of deep spiritual suffering. The differences of our situation from that of former periods becomes visible when we read about the passion and intensity with which the members of the early church gave thanks for the gift of the Christian message in a World of pagan glory, disintegration and despair. Is the same passion and intensity in us when we give thanks for the gift of God which is the Christ and His church? Who can honestly answer “yes”? And do we not sense the same difference when we read how the fighters of the Reformation thanked God for the rediscovery of the good news of the divine acceptance of those who are sinners? Is the same infinite concern in us as was in them? Who can honestly answer “yes”? We must therefore be grateful to those who express our present situation honestly. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
When I am not prized and appreciated, I not only feel very much diminished, but my behaviour is actually affected by my feelings. When I am prized, I blossom and expand, I am an interesting individual. In a hostile or unappreciative group, I am just not much of anything. People wonder, with very good reason, how did he ever get a reputation? I wish I had the strength to be more similar in both kinds of groups, but actually the person I am in a warm and interested group is different from the person I am in a hostile or cold group. Thus, prizing or loving and being prized or loved is experienced as very growth enhancing. A person who is loved appreciatively, not possessively, blooms and develops one’s own unique self. The person who loves nonpossessively is oneself enriched. There is some consolation: We are not separated from the ever active presence of God, and we can become aware of it in every moment. Our hearts can become filled with praise and thanks without the use of words; and sometimes we may also find those words of praise and thanks. However, this is not the first step, and, often, not even the last. Let us not follow those who use what is called the present religious revival to force us back into forms of prayer and thanks that we cannot honestly accept, or that produce joy and thanks through self-suggestion. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The repetition of the words that reinforce class consciousness make the mind one coherent conviction. People become so wrapped up in explanations that their social construction of reality becomes deep—so deep that their fictious responses seem natural. These psychological revolutions that are formed create confusion because they are not natural nor heart felt. Therefore, let us keep ourselves open to the power that carries our life in every moment, that is here and now, that comes to us through nature and through the message of Jesus as the Christ. May we keep open to it, so that we may be filled with silent gratefulness for the power of being which is in us. And then perhaps words of thanks, words of sacrifice and consecration, may come to our tongues, so that we again may give thanks in truth and honesty. Almighty God! We raise our hearts to Thee in praise and thanks. For we are not by ourselves and nothing is ours except what Thou hast given us. We are finite; we did not bring anything into our World; we shall not take anything out of our World. Thou hast given us the life which is ours so long as it is Thy will. We thank Thee that we have being, that we share in the inexhaustible riches of life, in the smallest and in the largest part of it. We praise Thee when we feel strength in body and soul. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
We give thanks to Thee when joy fills our hearts. We are gratefully aware of Thy presence, be it in silence, or in words. Awaken us to such awareness when our daily life hides Thy presence from us, when we forget how near Thou art to us in every place and in every moment, nearer than any other being is to us, nearer than we are to ourselves. Let us not turn aware from Thy giving and creating presence to the things Thou hast given us. Let us not forget the Creator behind the creation. Keep us always ready for the sacrifice of giving thanks to Thee. Thine is what we are and have. We consecrate it to Thee. Receive our thanks when we say grace, consecrating our food and with it all that we receive in our daily life. Prevent us from using empty words and forms when we give thanks to Thee. Save us from routine and mere convention when we dare to speak to Thee. We thank Thee when we look back at our life, be it long or short, for all that we have met in it. And we thank Thee not only for what we have loved and for what gave us pleasure, but also for what brought us disappointment, pain and suffering, because we now know that it helped us to fulfill that for which we were born. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
And if new disappointments and new sufferings takes hold of us and words of thanks die on our tongues, remind us that a day may come when we will be ready to give thanks for the dark road on which Thou hast led us. Our words of thanks are poor and often we cannot find words at all. There are days and months and years in which we were or are still unable to speak to Thee. Give us the power, at such times, to keep our hearts open to the abundance of life, and in silent gratefulness, to experience Thy unchanging, eternal presence. Take the silent sacrifice of a heart when words of thanks become rare in us. Accept our silent gratefulness and keep our hearts and our minds open to Thee always! We thank Thee for what Thou hast given to this nation far beyond the gifts to any other nation! Let us remain thankful for it, so that we may overcome the dangers of shallowness of life and emptiness of heart that threaten our people. Prevent us from turning Thy gifts into causes of injury and self-destruction. Let a grateful mind protect us against national and personal disintegrations. Turn us to Thee, the source of our being, eternal God! Amen. An Angel tells Nephi of the blessings and cursings to fall upon the Gentiles—there are only two churches: the Church of the Lamb of God and the church of the devil—than Saints of God in al nations are persecuted by the great and abominable church—the Apostle John will write concerning the end of the World. About 600-592 Before Christ. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
“And it come to pass, that is the Gentiles shall hearken unto the Lamb of God in that day that He shall manifest Himself unto them in word, and also in power, in very deed, unto the taking away of their stumbling blocks—and harden not their hearts against the Lamb of God, they shall be numbered among the seed of thy father’ yea, they shall be numbered among the house of Israel; and they shall be a blessed people upon the promised land forever; they shall be no more brought down into captivity; and the house of Israel shall no more be confounded. And that great pit, which hath been digged for them by that great and abominable church, which was founded by the devil and his children, that he might lead away their souls of humans down to hell—yea, that great pit which hath been digged for the destruction of humans shall be filled by those who digged it, unto their utter destruction, saith the Lamb of God; not the destruction of the soul, save it be the casting of it into that hell which hath no end. For behold, this is according to the captivity of the devil, and also according to the justice of God, upon all those who will work wickedness and abomination before him. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
“And it came to pass that the Angel spake unto me, Nephi saying: Thou hast beheld that if the Gentiles repent it shall be well with them; and thou also knowest concerning the concering the covenants of the Lord unto the house of Israel; and though also hast heard that whoso repenteth not much perish. Therefore, wo be unto the Gentiles if it so be that they harden their hearts against the Lamb of God. For the time cometh, saith the Lamb of God, that I will work a great and a marvelous work among the children of humans; a work which shall be everlasting, either on the one hand or on the other—either to be the convincing of them unto peace and life eternal, or unto the deliverance of them to the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds unto their being brought down into captivity, and also into destruction, both temporally and spiritually, according to the captivity of the devil, of which I have spoken. And it came to pass that when the Angel has spoke these words, he said unto me: Rememberest thou covenants of the Father unto the house of Israel? I said unto him, Yea And it came to pass that he said unto me: Look, and behold that great and abominable church, which is the mother of abominations, whose founder is the devil. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
“And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belondeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church , which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the Earth. And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the whore of all the Earth, and she sat upon many waters; and she had dominion over all the Earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people. And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon the face of the Earth; and their dominions upon the face of the Earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw. And it came to pass that I beheld that the great mother of abominations did gather together multitude upon the face of all the Earth, among all the nations of the Gentiles, to fight against the Lamb of God. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the Earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
“And it came to pass that I beheld that the wrath of God was poured out upon that great and abominable church, insomuch that there were wars and rumors of wars among all the nations and kindreds of the Earth. Ans as there began to be wars and rumors of wars among all the nations which belonged to the mother of abominations, the Angel spake unto me, saying: Behold, the wrath of God is upon the mother of harlots; and behold thou seest all these things—and when they day cometh that the wrath of God is poured out upon the mother of harlots, which is the great and abominable church of all the Earth, whose founder is the devil, then at that day, the work of the Father shall commence, in preparing the way for the fulfilling of his covenants, which he hath made to his people who are of the house of Israel. And it came to pass that the Angel spake unto me, saying: Look! And I looked and beheld a man, and he was dressed in a white robe. And the Angel said unto me: Behold one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Behold, he shall see and write the remainder of these things which have been. And he shall also write concerning the end of the World. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
“Wherefore, the things which he shall write are just and true; and behold they are written in the book which proceeded out of the mouth of the Jew, or, at the time the book proceeded out of the mouth of the Jew, the things which were written were plain and pure, and most precious and easy to the understanding of all people. And behold, the things which this apostle of the Lamb shall write are many things which thou hast seen; and behold, the remainder shalt thou see. However, the things which thou shalt see hereafter thou shalt not write; for the Lord God hath ordained the apostle of the Lamb of God that he should write them. And also others who have been, to them hat he shown all things, and they have written them; and they are sealed up to come forth in their purity, according to the truth which is in the Lamb, in the own due time of the Lord, unto the house of Israel. And I, Nephi, heard and bear record, that the name of the apostle of the Lamb was John, according to the words of the Angel. And behold, I, Nephi, am forbidden that I should write the remainder of the things which I saw and heard; wherefore the things which I have written sufficeth me; and I have written but a small part of the things which I saw. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“And I bear record that I saw the things which my father saw, and the Angel of the Lord did make them known unto me. And now I make an end of speaking concerning the things which I saw while I was carried away in the Spirit; and if all the things which I saw are not written, the things which I have written are true. And thus it is. Amen,” reports 1 Nephi 14.1-30. Pray continually, and in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. Is continual prayer possible? Yes and no. It is, of course, impossible to carry on a running dialogue while we are working or at other times, but the prayer called for here is not so much the articulation of words as the posture of the heart. There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we can be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. However, deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship, and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings. The time of business does not differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different cuisines, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were on my knees. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
My heart is ever lifted up to God at all times and in all places. In this I am never hindered, much less interrupted, by any person of thing. In retirement or company, in leisure, business, or conversation, my heart is ever with the Lord. Whether I lie down or rise up, God is in all my thoughts; I walk with God continually, having the loving eye of my mind still fixed upon God, and everywhere seeing God that is invisible. Thus, we see that a life of continual prayer is not only possible, but some actually live it out. Understand that this life is not meant just for some, or for a spiritual elite, but for all of us. Continual prayer is God’s will for every Christian, no exceptions. I can do it; you can do it. Business people, students, young parents—all can do it. We are to have a perpetual inner dialogue with God. We must always be looking up, even when driving to work or mowing the lawn. Almighty and everlasting God, be Thou present to our duties, and grant the protection of Thy presence to all that dwell in this house; that Thou mayest be known to be the Defender of Thy family, and the Inhabitant of this dwelling; through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour and Redeemer, my we be granted entrance into Heaven and always remain at God’s side. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Hear us, holy Lord, Father Almighty, everlasting God, and be pleased to send Thy holy Angel from Heaven, to guard, cherish, protect, visit, and defend all who dwell in this habitation; through Jesus Christ our Lord may all of us be blessed and receive eternal life. O Spirit of God, help my infirmities; when I am pressed down with a load of sorrow, perplexed and knowing not what to do, slandered and persecuted, made to feel the weight of the cross, help me, I pray Thee. If Thou seest in me any wrong thing encouraged, any evil desire cherished, any delight that is not Thy delight, any habit that grieves Thee, any nest of sin in my heart, then grant me the kiss of Thy forgiveness, and teach my feet to talk the way of Thy commandments. Deliver me from carking care, and make me a happy, holy person; help me to walk the separated life with firm and brave step, and to wrestle successfully against weakness; teach me to laud, adore, and magnify Thee, with the music of Heaven, and make me a perfume of praiseful gratitude to Thee. I do not crouch at Thy feet as a slave before a tyrant, but exult before Thee as a child with a father. Give me power to live as Thy child in all my actions, and to exercise family-ship by conquering self. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Preserve me from the intoxication that comes of prosperity; sober me when I am glad with a joy that comes not from Thee. Lead me safely on to the eternal kingdom, not asking whether the road be rough or smooth. I request only to see the face of Him I love, to be very content with bread to eat, with raiment to put on, if I can be brought to Thy house in peace. Then the events of this wide World I would seize like a strong giant, and my spirit teaze till at its shoulders it should proudly see wings to find out an immortality. Stop and consider! Life is but a day; a fragile dew-drop on its perilous way from a tree’s summit; a poor Indian’s sleep while his boat hastens to the monstrous steep of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan? Life is the rose’s hope while yet unblown; the reading of an ever-changing tale; the light uplifting of a maiden’s veil; a pigeon tumbling in clear Summer air; a laughing school-boy, without grift or care, riding the springy branches of an elm. O for ten years, that I may overwhelm myself in posey; so I may do the deed that my own soul has to itself decreed. Then will I pass the countries that I see in long perspective, and continually taste their pure fountains. The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one; yet the light of the bright World dies with the dying Sun. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
First the realm I will pass of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass, feed upon apples red, and strawberries, and choose each pleasure that my fancy sees; catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places, to woo sweet kisses from averted faces—play with their finger, touch their shoulders white into a pretty shrinking with a bite as hard as lips can make it: till agreed, a lovely tale of human life we will read. And one will teach a tame dove how it best may fan the cool air gently over my rest; another, bending over her nimble tread, will set a green robe floating round her head, and still will dance with ever varied ease, smiling upon the flowers and the trees: another will entice me on, and on through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon; till in the bosom of a leafy World we rest in silence, like two gems up curled in the recesses of a pearly shell. We beseech Thee, O Lord, make Thy servants always to join together in seeking Thee with their whole heart, to serve Thee with submissive mind, humbly to implore Thy mercy, and perpetually to rejoice in Thy blessings; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Stretch forth, O Lord, Thy mercy over Thy servants, even the right hand of Heavenly help; that they may seek Thee with their whole heart, and obtain what they rightly ask for; thought Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Watch the Walkthrough of Residence #2
Have I Ever Loved Anyone? I Do Not Really think I Have Ever Loved Anyone!
May we never let the things we cannot have, or do not have, or should not have, spoil our enjoyment of the things we do have and can have. As we value our happiness, let us not forget it, for one of the greatest lessons in life is learning to be happy without the thing we cannot or should not have. “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks,” reports 1 Thessalonians 5.16-18. “In everything give thanks.” These are the words that we want to make the center of our meditation. Do we need this admonition? Is not “thank you” one of the most frequently employed phrases in our language? We use it constantly for the smallest services performed, for a friendly word, for every word praising ourselves and our acts. We use it whether we are grateful or not. Saying thanks has become a form that is employed with or without feeling. When we mean it, we must therefore say it with great emphasis and in strong words. Anyone who observes the behavior of religion groups—ministers as well as laymen—is familiar with their inclination to say “thank you” to God almost as often as to their neighbors. It seems important, therefore, to ask the reason for this behavior towards humans and God. Why do we thank? What does it mean to give thanks and to receive thanks? Can this event of our daily life, and of daily religious life, be understood in its depth and elevated above automatic superficiality? #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
If this proves possible, we might discover that the simple “thank you” can tell us much about what we are withing ourselves and our World. We might find that one of the most used and abused words of our language can become a revelation of the deeper levels of our being. When we ponder the experiencing and giving of love, which is related to giving thanks, I think of one governmental executive in a group in which I participated, a man with high responsibility and excellent technical training as an engineer. At the first meeting of the group he impressed me, and I think others, as being cold, aloof, somewhat bitter, resentful, and cynical. When he spoke of how he ran his office, it appeared that he administered it by the book, without any warmth or human feeling. In one of early sessions he was speaking of his wife, and a group member asked him, “Do you love your wife?” He paused for a long time and the questioner said, “O.K. That is answer enough.” The executive said, “No. Wait a minute. The real reason I did not respond was that I was wondering, ‘Have I ever loved anyone?’ I do not really think I have ever loved anyone.” A few days later, he listened with great intensity as one member of the group revealed many personal feelings of isolation and loneliness and spoke of the extent to which he had been living behind a façade. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
The next morning the engineer said, “Last night I thought and thought about what he told us. I even wept bit myself. I cannot remember how long it has been since I have cried, and I really felt something. I think perhaps what I felt was love.” It is not surprising that before the week was over, I had thought through different ways of handling his growing son, on whom he had been placing very rigorous demands. He had also begun to really appreciate the love his wife had extended to him—love that he now felt he could in some measure reciprocate. Because of having less fear of giving or receiving beneficial feelings, I have become more able to appreciate individuals. I have come to believe that this ability is rather rare; so often, even with our children, we love them to control them rather than loving them because we appreciate them. One of the most satisfying feelings I know—and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other person—comes from appreciating this individual in the same way that I appreciate the Sun changing angles in the sky. If I can let them be, people are just as wonderful as what we call Sunsets. In fact, perhaps the reason we can truly appreciate a Sunset is that we cannot control it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
When I look at a Sunset as I did the other evening, I do not find myself saying, “Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and use a little more pink in the cloud color.” I do not do that. I do not try to control a Sunset. I watch it with awe as it unfolds. When I can appreciate my staff member, my son, my daughter, my friends, in this same way, I like myself best. I believe this is an attitude of the self-actualized; for me it is a most satisfying one. It is important not to seek any reward, not even being reborn in a paradise. We must seek the welfare of humanity. I seek to enlighten those who harbor wrong thoughts. I cannot help teaching confidence in the laws of life or expressing joy in the inspiration of life. One cannot help making strong affirmations of the Soul’s dominion and power. One is exultant because one is in harmony with the Universe. Saying thanks is not always merely a form of social intercourse. Often we are driven by real emotions; we are almost compelled to thank someone, whether one expects it or not. And sometimes our emotion overpowers us and we say thanks in words much too strong for the gift we have received. This is not dishonest. It is honestly felt in the moment. However, soon afterwards we feel somehow empty, somehow ashamed—not much perhaps, but a little! #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Occasionally, it also happens that for one moment we feel abundantly grateful. However, since for external reasons, we have no immediate opportunity to express our thanks, we forget it and it never reaches the one to whom we are grateful. Of the ten lepers who were held by Jesus probably none was without abundant gratefulness to Jesus, but only one returned from the priests who whom they had shown themselves to thank Jesus. And Jesus was astonished and disappointed. I have suggested way in which the performance of an individual accentuates certain maters and conceals others. If we see perception as a form of contact and communion, then control over what is perceived is control over contact that is made, and the limitation and regulation of what is shown is a limitation and regulation of contact. There is a relation here between informational terms and ritual ones. Failure to regulate the information acquired by the audience involves possible disruption of the projected definition of the situation; failure to regulate contact involves possible ritual contamination of the performer. It is a widely held notion that restrictions placed upon contact, the maintenance of social distance, provide a way in which awe can be generated and sustained in the audience, in which the audience can be held in a state of mystification in regard to the performer. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
How far it is possible for a person to work upon others through a false idea of oneself depends upon a variety of circumstances. As already pointed out, the person may be a mere incident with no definite relation to the idea of one, the latter being a separate product of the imagination. This can hardly be except where there is no immediate contact between leader and follower, and partly explains why authority, especially if it covers intrinsic personal weakness, has always a tendency to surround itself with forms and artificial mystery, whose object is to prevent familiar contact and so give the imagination a chance to idealize. The discipline of armies and navies, for instance, very distinctly recognizes the necessity of those forms which separate superior from inferior, and so help to establish an unscrutinized ascendency in the former. In the same way manners are largely used by people of the World as a means of self-concealment, and this self-concealment serves, among other purposes, that of preserving a sort of ascendancy over the unsophisticated. One night the King of Norway told me of his difficulties in face of the republican leanings of the opposition and how careful in consequence he had to be in all he did and said. He intended, he said, to go as much as possible among the people and thought it would be popular if, instead of going in an Ultimate Driving Machines, he and Queen Maud were to use the tramways. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
I told him frankly that I thought this would be a great mistake as familiarity bred contempt. As a naval officer he would know that the captain of a ship never had his meals with the other officers but remained quite aloof. This was, of course, to stop any familiarity with them. I told him that he must get up on a pedestal and remain there. He could then step off occasionally and no harm would be done. The people did not want a King with whom they could hob-nob but something nebulous like the Delphic oracle. The Monarchy was really the creation of each individual’ brain. Every person liked to think what one would do, if one was King. People invested the Monarch with every conceivable virtue and talent. If they saw the King going about like an ordinary man in the street, they were bound therefore to be disappointed. The logical extreme implied in this kind of theory, whether it is in fact correct or not, is to prohibit the audience from looking at the performer at all, and at times when celestial qualities and powers have been claimed by a performer, this logical conclusion seems to have been put into effect. Of course, in the matter of keeping social distance, the audience itself will often co-operate by acting in a respectful fashion, in awed regard for the sacred integrity imputed to the performer. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
To act upon the second of these decisions corresponds to the feeling (which also operates elsewhere) that an ideal sphere lies around every human being. Although differing in size in various directions and differing according to the person with whom one entertains relations, this sphere cannot be penetrated, unless the personality value of the individual is thereby destroyed. A sphere of this sort is placed around humans by their honor. Language very poignantly designates an insult to one’s honor as “coming too close,” the radius of this sphere marks, as it were, the distance whose trespassing by another person insults one’s honor. The human personality is a sacred thing; one does not violate it nor infringe its bounds, while at the same time the greatest good is in communion with others. It must be made quite clear, in contradiction to the implications that awe and distance are felt toward performers of equal an inferior status as well as (albeit not as much) toward performers of superordinate status. Whatever their function of the audience, these inhibitions of the audience allow the performer some elbow room in building up an impression of one’s own choice and allow one to function, for one’s own good or the audience’s, as a protection or a threat that close inspection would destroy. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The matter which the audience leave alone because of their awe of the performer are likely to be the matters about which one would feel shame were a disclosure to occur. We have, then, a basic social coin, with awe on one side and shame on the other. The audience sense secret mysteries and powers being the performance, and the performer sense that one’s chief secrets are petty ones. As countless folk tales and initiation rites show, often the real secret behind the mystery is that there really is no mystery; the real problem is to prevent the audience from learning this too. Not only are we driven by a deep emotion to give thanks, but we also have a profound need to receive thanks when we have given ourselves in either a large or small way. When thanks is not forthcoming, we feel a kind of emptiness, a vacuum in that place of our inner being which the words or acts of thanks should fill. However, just as we feel ashamed when we use too strong an expression of gratitude, we feel uneasy when we receive it and we refuse to accept it, whether we say or not. It is always difficult to receive thanks without some resistance. The American reply, “you are welcome,” or the German reply, “please,” expresses the refusal to accept thanks without hesitation. “Do not mention it” is the simplest expression of this resistance to accept thanks, which, however, we do accept at the same time. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
These uncertainties in the simple act of giving or receiving thanks teach us something about our relationship to others, and our predicament. In every act of giving or receiving thanks, we accept or reject someone, and we are accepted or rejected by someone. Such acceptance or rejection is not always noticed, either by ourselves or by the other. If we are sensitive, we often feel it and react with joy or sorrow, with shame or pride, and mostly with mixtures of these emotions. A simple “thank you” can be an attack or a withdrawal. It can be the expression of giving someone a place within us, or a successful way of protecting ourselves from someone’s attempt to find a place with us. A word of thanks can be a complete rejection of one whom we thank, or it can be the unlocking of one’s and our hearts. However, probably in most cases, it is a polite form of stating that one whom we thank does not really concern us very much. The fiftieth Psalm says—“Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,” and “One who brings thanksgiving as one’s sacrifice honors me.” Here the original meaning of thanks shines through. Giving thanks is a sacrifice. Here the literal meaning of “thanksgiving” is felt. Thank is expressed through sacrificial acts. Valuable objects are removed from their ordinary use and given to the gods. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
It is an acknowledgement of the fact that humans did not create themselves, that nothing belongs to them, that vulnerable one was thrown into the World and vulnerable one will be thrust out of it. What one has is given to one. In the act of sacrifice one expresses one’s awareness of this destiny. One gives a part of what is given to one, but something that is ultimately not one’s own. In sacrificing thanks one witnesses to one’s finitude, to one’s trasitoriness. Every serious giving of thanks implies a sacrifice, an acknowledgment of one’s finitude. A person who is able to thank seriously accepts that one is creature, and, in acceptance, one is religious even though one denies religion. And a person who is able to accept honest thanks without embarrassment is mature. One knows one’s own finitude as well as that of the other, and one knows that the mutual sacrifices of thanks confirms that one and the other are creatures. In chapter 13, of The Book of Mormon, Nephi sees in vision the church of the devil set up among the Gentiles, the discovery and colonizing of America, the loss of many plain and precious parts of the Bible, the resultant state of gentile apostasy, the restoration of the gospel, the coming forth of latter-day scripture, and the building up of Zion. About 600-592 Before Christ. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Remember Thy congregation, O Lord, which Thou hast created from the beginning; forget not the Church which of old times Thou hast predestinated in Christ; be mindful of Thy mercy, look upon Thy covenant, and bless us continually with the promise of freedom. “And it came to pass that the Angel spake unto me, saying: Look! And I looked and beheld many nations and kingdoms. And the Angel said unto me: What beholdest thou? And I said: I behold many nations and kingdoms. And he said unto me: These are the nations and kingdoms of the Gentiles. And it came to pass that I saw among the nations of the Gentiles the formation of a great church. And the Angel said unto me: Behold the formation of a church which is most abominable above all other churches, which slayeth the saints of God, yea, and tortureth them and bindeth them down, and yoketh them with a yoke of iron, and bringeth them down into captivity. And it came to pass that I beheld this great and abominable church; and I saw the devil that he was founder of it. And I also saw gold, and silver, and silks, and scarlets, and fine-twined linen, and all manner of precious clothing; and I saw many harlots. And the Angel spake unto me, saying: Behold the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the scarlets, and the fine-twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
“And also for the praise of the World do they destroy the saints of God, and being them down into captivity. And it came to pass that I looked and beheld many waters; and they divided the Gentiles from the seed of my brethren. And it came to pass that the Angel said unto me: Behold the wrath of God is upon the seed of my brethren. And I looked and beheld a man among Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land. And I came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters. And it came to pass that I beheld many multitudes of the Gentiles upon the land of promise and I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren; and they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten. And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles, and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance; and I beheld that they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people before they were slain. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles who had gone forth out of captivity did humble themselves before the Lord; and the power of the Lord was with them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
“And I beheld that their mother Gentiles were gathered together upon the waters, and upon the land also, to battle against them. And I beheld that the power of God was with them, and also that the wrath of God was upon all those that were gathered together against them to battle. And I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles that had gone out of captivity were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations,” reports 1 Nephi 13.1-19. The blessed possess these three things in God; because they see Him, and in seeing Hi, possess Him as present, having the power to see Him always; and possessing Him they enjoy Him as the ultimate fulfilment of desire. God is called incomprehensible not because anything of Him is not seen; but because He is not see as perfectly as He is capable of being see; thus when any demonstrable proposition is known by probable reason only, it does not follow that any part of it is unknow, either the subject, or the predicate, or the composition; but that it is not as perfectly known as it is capable of being known. The whole is comprehended when it is seen in such a way that nothing of it is hidden from the seer, or when its boundaries can be completely viewed or traced; for the boundaries of a thing are said to be completely surveyed when the end of the knowledge of it is attained. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The word “wholly” denotes a mode of the object; not that the whole object does not come under knowledge, but that the mode of the object is not the mode of the one who knows. Therefore one who sees God’s essence, sees in Him that He exists infinitely, and is infinitely knowable; instance, a person can have a probable opinion that a proposition is demonstrable, although one does not know it as demonstrated. The indwelling Holy Spirit, through His superior intimate knowledge, both prays for us and joins us in our praying, infusing His prayers into ours so that we pray in the Spirit. Jude 20 challenges us to cultivate and experience this wonderful Spirit-wrought phenomenon: “But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.” Praying in the Spirit is the will of God, and what God wills He empowers as we let Him. Two supernatural things happen here: First, the Holy Spirit tells us what we ought pray for. Apart from the Spirit’s assistance, our prayers are limited by our own reasons and intuition. However, with the Holy Spirit’s help they become informed by Heaven. As we seek the Spirit’s help, He will speak to us through His Word, which conveys His mind regarding every matter of principle. Thus, in Spirit-directed prayer we thin God’s thoughts after Him. His desires will become our desires, His motives our motives, His ends our ends. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Further, as God shows our hearts which matter to pray for, He gives us the absolute conviction they are God’s will. The very fact hat God lays a burden of prayer on our hearts and keeps us praying is prima facie evidence that He purposes to grant the answer. When asked if he really believed that two men for whose salvation he had prayed for over fifty years would be converted, George Muller of Bristol replied, “Do you think God would have kept me praying all these years if He did not intend to say them?” Both men were converted, one shortly before, the other after Muller’s death. Such confident direction in one’s prayer life is not unusual. I had a similar conviction regarding my brother, who came to Christ after I had been praying for him for ten years! When God’s people truly pray in the Spirit, they receive similar direction and conviction, not only about people, but about events and projects and even whole nations. The second benefit or praying in the Spirit is that it supplies the energizing of the Holy Spirit for prayer, infusing tired, even infirm, bodies and elevating the depressed to pray with power and conviction for God’s work. People, learn to pray in the Spirit! To help myself to do this, I have written ‘Pray in the Spirit” at the top of my prayer list as a constant reminder to patiently wait on the Lord, asking the Spirit to give me prayers. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Prayers is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God has promised, or according to the Word of God, for the good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God. Let us learn to pray in-Spirited prayer using the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit. The natural desire of the rational creature is to know everything that belongs to the perfection of the intellect, namely, the species and the genera of things and their types, and these everyone who see the Divine essence will see in God. However, to know other singulars, their thoughts and their deeds does not belong to the perfection of the created intellect nor does its natural desire go out to these things; neither, again, does it desire to know things that exist not as yet, but which God can call into being. Yet if God alone were seen, Who is the Fount and principle of all being and of all truth, He would so fill the natural desire of knowledge that nothing else would be desired, and the seer would be completely beatified. Unhappy is the person who knows all these (id est all creatures) and knoweth not Thee! but happy whoso knoweth Thee although he know not these. And whoso knoweth both Thee and them is not the happier for them, but for Thee alone. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Complex personhood means that even those who haunt our dominate institutions and their systems of value are haunted too by things they sometimes have names for and sometimes do not. At the very least, complex personhood is about conferring the respect on others that comes from presuming that life and people’s lives are simultaneously straightforward and full of enormously subtle meaning. When seeking to understand justice, it is first important to begin from the simple premise, that power, personhood, and social relations are complex, contested, and often, fragile. By addressing social relations, we seek to put into focus the relationships between people and everyday life. Human nature is frequently constructed in binary terms—good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, selfish vs. self-interested—but, as theorists will argue, human nature is far more complex and dynamic than any dichotomy. We emphasize that human nature is complicated and discussion of human nature may be explicit and implicit and that human nature if one of many beginning points for deconstructing notions of justice and injustice. The means to that end are not all directly under my control, for some are the actions of God toward me and in me. However, some are directly under my control. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Sovereign Commander of the Universe, I am sadly harassed by doubts, fears, unbelief, in a felt spiritual darkness. My heart is full of evil surmisings and disquietude, and I cannot act faith at all. My Heavenly pilot has disappeared, and I have lost my hold on the rock of ages; I sink in deep mire beneath storms and waves, in horror and distress unutterable. Help me, O Lord, to throw myself absolutely and wholly on Thee, for better, for worse, without comfort, and all but hopeless. Give me peace of soul, confidence, enlargement of mind, morning joy that comes after night heaviness; water my soul richly with divine blessings; grant that I may welcome Thy humbling in private so that I might enjoy Thee in public; give me a mountain top as high as the valley is low. Thy grace can melt the worst sinner, and I am as vile as he; a trophy of redeeming power; in my distress let me not forget this. All-wise God, Thy never-failing providence orders every event, sweetens every fear, reveals evil’s presence lurking in seeming good, brings real good out of seeming evil, makes unsatisfactory what I set my heart upon, to show me what a short-sighted creature I am, and to teach me to live by faith upon Thy blessed self. Out of my sorrow and night give me the name Naphtali—“satisfied with favour”—help me to love Thee as Thy child, and to walk worthy of my Heavenly pedigree. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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The Universe is Not Hostile, Nor Yet is it Friendly—it is Simply Indifferent!
I still believe that Joseph Barbera and William Hanna made the best cartoons ever when they formed Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. Charlotte’s Web, The Flintstones, The Snorks, The Jetsons, The Smurfs, Scooby-Doo, Yogi Bear, Casper’s First Christmas, Richie Rich, Jonny Quest, and many more wonderful cartoons I enjoyed as a kid. One has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, worked hard, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent beings and the love of all kinds of people; who has filled one’s niche and accomplished one’s task; who leaves the World better than one found it, whether by an improved garden, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of Earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave them the best one had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction. But we ask—how can we possess such wisdom? In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom says—“I was…rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited World and delighting in the sons of men…and now, my sons, listen to me…one who finds me, find life…but all who hate me love death.” To aspire to wisdom, or to despise it, is a matter of life and death. This could never be said of knowledge in the ordinary sense of the word. Those who know much and do not have life because of their knowledge, and those who know little; and do not try to learn much, do not prove that they love death. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Wisdom is a matter of life and death because it is more than knowledge. It can be united with knowledge, but it can also stand alone. It belongs to a dimension which cannot be reached by scholarly endeavour. Wisdom is insight into the meaning of one’s life, into its conflicts and dangers, into its creative and destructive powers, and into the ground out of which it comes and to which it must return. Therefore, the preachers of wisdom tell us that the first step in acquiring it is the fear of God and the awareness of the holy. Such words can easily be misunderstood. They do not command subjection to a god who arouses fear. Nor do they advise us to accept doctrines about him. Suh a command and such advice would lead us straight away from wisdom and not towards it. However, our text says that there cannot be wisdom without an encounter with the holy, with that which creates awe, and shake the ordinary way of life and thought. Without the experience of awe in face of the mystery of life, there is no wisdom. Most removed from wisdom are not those who are driven by desire for pleasure or power, but those brilliant minds who have never encountered the holy, who are without awe and know nothing sacred, but who are able to conceal their ultimate emptiness by the brilliant performances of their intellect. No wisdom shines through knowledge of many people who play a great role in our academic and non-academic society. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The wisdom at which God looks in the creation of the World, the eternal wisdom, calls them fools. There is a distortion of the 1 Corinthians 1-2. Two frequently cited but misunderstood texts relevant to the Christian mind are 1 Corinthians 1-2 and Colossians 2.8. In 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, Paul argues against the wisdom of the World and reminds his readers that he did not visit them with persuasive words of wisdom. Some conclude from this that human reasoning and argument are futile, especially when applied to evangelism. There are several problems with this understanding of the passage. For one thing, if it is in fact an indictment against argumentation and reasoning, then it contradicts Paul’s own practice in Acts and his explicit appeal to the argument and evidence on behalf of the Resurrection in the very same epistle (1 Corinthians 15). Second, this passage is more accurately seen as a condemnation of the false, prideful use of reason, not of reason itself. It is hubris (pride) that is in view, not nous (mind). God chose foolish (moria) things that were offensive to human pride, not to reason properly used. For example, the idea of God being crucified was so offensive that the Greek spirit would have judged it to be morally disgusting. The passage may also be a condemnation of Greek rhetoric. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Greek orators prided themselves in possessing persuasive words of wisdom, and it was their practice to persuade a crowd of any side of an issue for the right price. They did not base their persuasion on rational considerations but on speaking ability, thus bypassing issues of substance. Paul is most likely contrasting himself with Greek rhetoricians. If so, then Paul is arguing against evangelists who spend all of their time working on their speaking techniques yet fail to address the minds of unbelievers in their gospel presentations! Paul could also be making the claim that the content of the gospel cannot be deduced by pure reason from some set of first principles. No one could start off with an abstract concept of a first mover and deduce that a crucifixion would happen from this information alone. Thus, the gospel could never have been discovered by pure deductive reason from self-evident first principles, but had to be revealed by the biblical God who acts in history. Paul was insistent that the intellect could assess whether nor not there was sufficient evidence to judge that God had so acted (1 Corinthians 15). So we cannot conclude from this passage that using reason is futile. The distortion of Colossians 2.8—in this passage, Paul says, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this World rather than on Christ.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Some take the distortion of Colossians 2.8 to be a command to avoid secular studies, especially philosophy. However, upon close inspection of the structure of the verse, it become clear that philosophy in general was not the focus. Rather, it is a certain sort of philosophy—hollow and deceptive philosophy. In the context of Colossians, Paul was warning the church not to form and base doctrinal views according to a philosophical system hostile to orthodoxy. His remarks were a simple waring not to embrace heresy; in context, they were not meant to represent his views of philosophy as a discipline of study. In fact, one of the best ways to avoid hollow and deceptive philosophy is to study philosophy itself, so you can learn to recognize truth from error, using Scripture and right reason as a guide. His is exactly what Paul himself did. Colossians reveals an apostle who was entirely familiar with the type of proto-Gnostic philosophy threatening Colossians believers, who possessed a thorough knowledge of that philosophical system and an ability to point out its inadequacy. And remember, Paul himself cited pagan philosophers approvingly in Acts 17.28. “’For in him we live and move and have our own being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring,’” reports Acts 17.28. Neither of these texts should dampen our enthusiasm to cultivate a Christian mind or use reason in our Christian walk. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
One who has encountered the mystery of life has reached the source of wisdom. In encountering it with awe and longing, one experiences the infinite distance of one’s being from that which is the ground of one’s being. One experiences the limits of one’s being, one’s finitude in the face of the infinite. One learns that acceptance of one’s limits is the decisive step towards wisdom. The fool rebels against the limits set by one’s finitude. One wants to be unlimited in power and knowledge. One who is wise accepts one’s finitude. One knows that one is not God. There is an area of my learning in interpersonal relationships—one that has been slow and painful for me. When I can let in the fac, or permit myself to feel that someone cares for, accepts, admires, or prizes me, I feel warmed and fulfilled. Because of elements in my past history, I suppose, it has been very difficult for me to do this. For a long time I tended almost automatically to brush aside any optimistic feelings aimed in my direction. My reaction was, “Who, me? You could not possibly care for me. You might like what I have done, or my achievements, but not me.” This is one respect in which my own therapy helped me very much. I am not always able even not to let in such warm and loving feelings from others, but I find it very releasing when I can do so. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
I know that some people flatter me in order to gain something for themselves; some people praise me because they are afraid to be hostile. However, I have come to recognize the fact that some people genuinely appreciate me, like me, love me, and I want to sense that fact and let it in. I think I have become less aloof as I have been able to take in and soak up those loving feelings. I feel enriched when I can truly prize or care for or love another person and when I can let that feeling flow out to the person. Like many others, I used to fear being trapped by letting my feelings show. “If I care for him, he can control me.” “If I love her, I am trying to control her.” I think that I have moved a long way toward being less fearful in this respect. Like my clients, I too have slowly learned that tender, beneficial feelings are not dangerous either to give or to receive. To illustrate what I mean, I would like again to draw an example from a recent basic encounter group. A woman who described herself as “an out spoken, sensitive, hyperactive individual” whose marriage was on the rocks, and who felt that life was just not worth living said, “I had really buried under a layer of concrete many feelings I was afraid people were going to laugh at or stomp on which, needless to say, was working all kinds of hell on my family and me. I had been looking forward to the workshops with my last few crumbs of hope—it was really a needle of trust in a huge haystack of despair.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
She spoke of some of her experiences in the group and added, “The real turning point for me was a simple gesture on your part of putting your arm around my shoulder, one afternoon when I had made some crack about you not really being a member of the group—that no one could cry on your shoulder. In my notes I had written, the night before, “My God, there is no man in the World who love me.” You seemed so genuinely concerned the day I fell apart, I was overwhelmed…I received the gesture as one of the first feelings of acceptance—of me, just the unenlightened way I am, sensitivities and all—that I had ever experienced. I have felt needed, loving, competent, furious, frantic, anything and everything but just plain loved. You can imagine the flood of gratitude, humility, almost release, that swept over me. I wrote, with considerable joy, “I actually felt love. I doubt that I should soon forget it.” This woman, of course, was speaking to me, and yet in some deep sense she was also speaking for me. I too have had similar feelings. Those of one’s followers who expect one to behave with impeccable propriety and are ready to leave and follow someone else if one does not will either be victims of, or gainers by their own judgment. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
If the teacher is really unified with God, any judging of one done by external standards will be only partly applicable. There is a point where neither one’s character nor one’s motives can be correctly measured by such standards, and beyond which they may be quite misleading. The mystical and cultist circles which talk much about these matters use the name “Master” to trail such an accumulation behind it of falsified facts, superstitious ntions, and nonsensical thinking, that it is needful to be on guard for semantic definitions whenever this term is heard. The mistake that some followers make is to fail to see that their demigod is recognizably human. The mistake that most non-followers make is to fail to see that one is, in one’s best moments, superhuman. The excessively critical attitude which seeks to find a flaw in a holy being and soon succeeds is as foolish as the excessively devout attitude which pronounces one perfect and continuously faultless. This hostility of the one leads to imbalance; the naivete of the other leads to expectancy. The holy being is still a human subject to limitations of one’s species. In order to minimize the risks, experiential confrontation must be done carefully, artfully, and with deep sensitivity to its effects. Use of the first person singular, for example, can minimize unwarranted overtones of accusation or punishment. The statements “I believe you can do more,” or “I do not but what you are saying” serve to illustrate this contention. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Posing confrontations in the form of questions or descriptions can also enhance their impact. “You are scared out of your wits,” may reflect how a “hail-fellow-well-met” client felt! Alternatively, I often challenge clients to differentiate between cannot and will not at given junctures. “You mean you will not respond to that job offer,” I suggested to a client invested in her inadequacy; “You mean you will not make time in your day for a lunch break,” I remarked to another client invested in his invincibility. It is sometime useful, finally, to appraise clients of the difficulty of confronting their resistances, especially when those resistance are threatened with extinction. “A part of you is doing everything it can to keep you where you were,” I tell clients in such circumstances. “The most you can do is realize this and look at what is suggests.” To this, all humankind’s literature about wisdom is a witness. Wisdom is the acknowledgment of limits; it is the awareness of the right measure in all relations of life. However, in saying this, one must protect wisdom against a dangerous distortion of its meaning—the confusion of wisdom with philistine avoidance of radical decisions, with clever compromises and shrewd calculations of usefulness, all of which is far removed from the wisdom that comes upon us in the awe-inspiring encounter with the holy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
We need only look at the great figures in whom people of all periods and cultures recognized wisdom, the people who gave new laws to their nations, the teachers of new ways of life for continents, the people who withdrew to the deserts of nature and the deserts of the soul to return with abundance. None of them kept to the middle of the road; they had to find new roads in the wilderness. You cannot find wisdom in those who always avoid radical decisions and adjust themselves to the given situation, the conformists who have decided to accept the accepted opinion of society. Wisdom love the children of men, but she prefers those whom come through foolishness to wisdom, and dislike those who keep themselves equally distant from foolishness and from wisdom. They are the real fools, she would say, because they were never shaken by an encounter with the mystery of life, and therefore never able to see the unity of creation and destruction in the working of the divine wisdom. In those, however, who have recognized this working of wisdom, and become wise by it, artificial limits are broken down, often with great pain, and the real limits, the true measures, are found. When wisdom comes to humans, that is what happens. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Therefore, wisdom comes to all humans, and not only to those who are learned. You can find quiet and often great wisdom among very simple people. There may be wise ones among those with who you live, and those with whom you work, and those whom you encounter as strangers in crowded streets. There is wisdom in mothers and lonely women, in children and adolescents, in shepherds and cabdrivers; and sometimes there is wisdom all in those who can have much learning. They all prove their wisdom by creatively accepting their limits and their finitude. However, who can accept one’s finitude? Who can accept that one is threatened by the vicissitudes of life, by infirmary, by death? Who can take into oneself the deep anxiety of being alive without covering it up with pleasure and activity? In the book of Job, which powerfully expresses the mystery of life, the question is asked and an answer given that is not an answer in the ordinary sense of the word. Only in the confrontation with eternal wisdom in all its darkness and inexhaustible death can humans accept the misery of one’s finitude, even if it is as extreme as Job’s. In our encounter with the holy, facing with awe the ultimate mystery of life, we experience a dimension of life that gives us the courage and the strength to accept our limits and to become wise through this acceptance. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The created light is necessary to see the essence of God, not in order to make the essence of God inteligible, which is off itself intelligible, but in order to enable the intellect to understand in the same way as a habit makes a power abler to act. Even so corporeal light is necessary as regards external sight, inasmuch as it makes the medium actually transparent, and susceptible of colour. Nephi sees the Spirit of the Lord and is shown in vision the tree of life—he sees the mother of the Son of God and learn the condescension of God—he sees the baptism, ministry, and crucifixion of the Lamb of God—he sees also the call and ministry of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb About 600-592 Before Christ. “For it came to pass after I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high mountain, which I have never before set foot. And the Spirit said unto me: Behold, what desirest thou? And I said; I desire to behold the things which my father saw. And the spirit said unto me: Believest thou that thy father saw the tree of which he hath spoken? And I said: Yea, thou knowest that I believe all the words of my father,” reports Nephi 11.1-5. This light is required to see the divine essence, not as a similitude in which God is seen, but as a perfection of the intellect, strengthening to see God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Therefore it may be said that this light is to be described not as a medium in which God is seen, but as one by which He is seen; and such a medium does not take away the immediate vision of God. “And when I have spoken these words, the Spirit cried with a loud voice, saying: Hosanna to the Lord, the most high God; for he is God over all the Earth, yea, even above all. And blessed thou believest in the Son of the most high God; wherefore, thou shalt behold the things which thou hast desired. And behold this thing shall be given unto three for a sign, that after thou hast beheld the tree which bore the fruit which they father tasted, thou shalt also behold a man descending out of Heaven, and him shall ye witness; and after ye have witnessed him ye shall bear record that it is the Son of God. And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me: Look! And I looked and beheld a tree; and it was like unto the tree which my father had seen; and the beauty thereof was far beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty and the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow. And it came to pass after I had seen the tree, I said unto the Spirit: I behold thou hast shown up me the three which is precious above all. And he said unto me: What desirest thou?” reports 1 Nephi 11.6-10. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The disposition to the form of fire can be natural only to the subject of that from. Hence the light of glory cannot be natural to a creature unless the creature has a divine nature; which is imposible. However, by this light the rational creature is made deiform. “And I said unto him: To know the interpretation thereof—for I spake unto him as a man speaketh; for I beheld that he was in the form of a man; yet nevertheless, I knew that it was the Spirit of the Lord; and he spake unto me as a man speaketh with another. And it came to pass that he said unto me: Look! And I looked as if to look upon him, and I saw him not; for he had gone from before my presence. And it came to pass that I saw the Heavens open; and an Angel came down and stood before me; and he said unto me: Nephi, what beholdest thou? And I said unto him: A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins. And he said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God? And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things. And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh. And it came to pass that I beheld that she was carried away in the Spirit; and after she had been carried away in the Spirit for the space of time the Angel spake unto me saying: Look! #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
“And I looked and behold the virgin again bearing a child in her arms. And the Angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father! Knowest thou the meaning of this tree which thy father saw? And I answered him, saying: Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore it is the most desirable above all things. And he spake unto me, saying: Yea, and the most joyous to the soul, reports 1 Nephi 11.11-23. “In Thy light we shall see light,” reports Psalms 35.10. Everything which is raised up to what exceeds its nature, must be prepared by some disposition above its nature. However, when any created intellect sees the essence of God, the essence of God itself become the intelligible form of the intellect. Hence it is necessary that some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height. It is necessary that the power of understanding should be added by divine grace. Now this increase of the intellectual powers is called the illumination of the intellect, as we also call the intelligible object itself by the name of light of illumination. And this is the light spoken of in the Apocalypse (Apoc. 21.23): “The glory of God hath enlightened it; the society of the blessed who see God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
By this light the blessed are made “deiform”—id est like to God, according to saying: “When He shall appear we shall be like to Him, and because we shall see Him as He is,” reports 1 Jon 3.2. “And fater he had said these words, he said unto me: Look! And I looked, and I beheld the Son of God going forth among the children of men; and I saw many fall down at his feet and worship him. And it came to pass that I beheld that the rod of iron, which my father had seen, was the word of God, which led to the fountain of living waters, or to the tree of life; which waters are a representation of the love of God. And the Angel said unto me again; Look and behold the condescension of God! And I looked and beheld the Redeemer of the Redeemer of the World, of whom my father had spoken; and I also beheld the prophet who should prepare the way before him. And the Lamb of God went forth and was baptized of him; and after he was baptized, I beheld the Heavens open, and the Holy Ghost come down out of Heaven and abide upon him in the form of a dove. And I beheld that he went forth ministering unto the people, in power and great glory; and the multitudes were gathered together to hear him; and I beheld that they cast him out from among them. And I also beheld twelve others following him. And it came to pass that the Angel spake unto me again, saying: Look! #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
“And I looked, and I beheld the Heavens open again, and I saw Angels descending upon the children of men; and they did minister unto them. And he spake unto me again, saying: Look! And I looked, and I beheld the Lamb of God going forth among the children of men. And I beheld multitudes of people who were sick, and who were afflicted with all manner of diseases, and with devils and unclean spirits; and the Angel spake and showed all these things unto me. And they were healed by the power of the Lamb f God; and the devils and the unclean spirits were cast out. And it came to pass that the Angel spake unto me again, saying: Look! And I looked and beheld the Lamb of God, that he was taken by the people; yea, the Son of the everlasting God was judged of the World; and I saw and bear record. And I, Nephi, saw that he was lifted upon the cross and slain for the sins of the World. And after he was slain I saw the multitudes of the Earth, that they were gathered together to fight against the apostles of the Lamb; for thus were the twelve called by the Angel of the Lord. And the multitude of the Earth was gathered together; and I behold that they were in a large and spacious building, like unto the building which my father saw. And the Angel of the Lord sapke unto me again, saying: Behold the World and the wisdom thereof; yea, behold the house of Israel hath gathered together to fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“And it came to pass that I saw and bear record, that the great and spacious building was the pride of the World; and it fell, and the fall thereof was exceedingly great. And the Angel of the Lord spake unto me again, saying: Thus shall be the destruction of all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, that shall fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb,” reports 1 Nephi 11.23-36. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to guide Thy Church with Thy perpetual governance; that it may walk warily in times of quiet, and boldly in times of trouble; through our Lord. O Lord, Thou knowest my great unfitness for service, my present deadness, my inability to do anything for Thy glory, my distressing coldness of heart. I am weak, ignorant, unprofitable, and loathe and abhor myself. I am at a loss to know what thou wouldest have me do, for I feel amazingly deserted by thee, and sense thy presence so little; Thou makest me possess the sins of my youth, and the dreadful sin of my nature, so that I feel all sin, I cannot think or act but every motion is sin. Return again with showers of converting grace to a poor gospel-abusing sinner. Help my soul to breathe after holiness, after a constant devotedness to Thee, after growth in grace more abundantly every day. The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
O Lord, I am lost in the pursuit of this blessedness, and am ready to sink because I fall short of my desire; help me to hold out a little longer, until the happy hour of deliverance comes, for I cannot lift my soul to Thee if Thou of Thy goodness bring me not nigh. Help me to be diffident, watchful, tender, lest I offend my blessed Friend in thought and behaviour; I confide in Thee and lean upon Thee, and need Thee at all times to assist and lead me. O that all my distresses and apprehensions might prove but Christ’s school to make me fit for greater service by teaching me the great lesson of humility. May Thy Word, O Lord, Which endureth for ever in Heaven, abide continually in the Temple of Thy Church; that the presence of the Inhabitant may be an unfailing glory to the habitation; through Thy mercy and love. Remember Thy congregation, O Lord, which Thou hast created from the beginning; forget not the Church of old time Thou hast predestinated in Christ; be mindful of Thy mercy, look upon Thy covenant, and bless us continually with the promised freedom. The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for. There is no greater grief than to recall a time of happiness when in misery. However, the marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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I am in Earnest—I Will Not Equivocate—I Will Not Excuse—I Will Not Retreat a Single Inch—And I Will Be Heard!
One who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide one through the maze of the most busy life. However, where no plain is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign. Learn to value your time alone—when you value something you are keener to protect it. Inside of each one of us is a place where we live all alone and that is where one renews one’s springs that never dry up. We hardly have a compete catalogue of culturally codified heroics, but it is a god representation of the ideologies that have taken such a toll of life; in many examples of masses of human lives there have been piled up order of the cultural transcendence to be achieved. And there is noting “perverse” about it because it represents the expression of the fullest expansive life of the heroic being. We can talk for a century about what causes human aggression; we can try to find the spring in animal instincts, or we can try to find them in bottled-up hatreds due to frustration or in some kind of miscarried experiences of early years, of poor child handling and training. All these would be true, but still trivial because people kill out of joy, in the experience of expansive transcendence over evil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
This poses an immense problem for social theory, a problem that we have utterly failed to be clear about. If people end the lives of others out of a heroic joy, in what direction do we program for improvements in human nature? If humans work evil out of the impulse to righteousness and goodness, what are we going to improve? If people are aggressive in order to expand life, if aggression in the service of life is human’s highest creative act, what kind of child-rearing programs are we going to promote? If we were to be logical, these childhood programs would have to be something that eliminates joy and heroic self-expansion in order to be effective for peace. And how could we ever get controlled child-rearing programs without the most oppressive social regulations? The cataloguing of maddening dilemmas such as these are, for utopian thought, could probably be continued to fill a whole book let me ass mere a few more. We know that to be human is to be neurotic in some ways and to some degree; there is no way to become an adult without serious twisting of one’s perceptions of the World. Even more, it is not the especially twisted people who are most dangerous: coprophiliacs are harmless, people who physically force others into pleasures of the flesh do not do the damage to life that idealistic leaders do. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Also, leaders are a function of the “normal” urges of masses to some large extent; this means that even psychically disabled leaders are an expression of the widespread urge to heroic transcendence. Dr. Strangelove was surely a psychic cripple, but he was not an evil genius who moved everyone around him to his will; he was simply one cleaver computer in a vast idealistic program to guarantee the survival of the “free World.” Today we are living the grotesque spectacle of the poisoning of the Earth by the nineteenth-century hero system of unrestrained material production. This is perhaps the greatest and most pervasive evil to have emerged in all of history, and it may even eventually defeat all of humankind. Still there are no “twisted” people whom we can hold responsible for this. I know all this is more or less obvious, but it puts our discussion on the proper plane; it teaches us one great lesson—a pill that for modern humans may be the bitterest of all to swallow—namely, that we seem to be unable to approach the problem of human evil from the side of psychology. Dr. Freud, who gave us the ideal of the psychological liberation of humans, also gave us many glimpses of its limitations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
I am not referring here to Dr. Freud’s cynicism about what people may accomplish because of the perversity of their natures, but rather his admission that there is no dependable line between normal and abnormal in affairs of the human World. In the mist characteristic human activity—love—we see the most distorted reality. Talking about the distortions of transference-love, Dr. Freud says: “It is to a high degree lacking in regard for reality, is less sensible, less concerned about consequences, more blind in its estimation of the person loved, then we are willing to admit of normal love.” And then he is forced to take most of this back, honest thinker that he is, by concluding that: “We should not forget, however, that it is precisely these departures from the morn that make up the essential element in the condition of being in love.” In other words, transference is the only ideality that humans have. It was no news to Dr. Freud that the ability to love and to believe is a matter of susceptibility to illusion. He prided himself on being a stoical scientist who had transcended the props of illusion, yet he retained his faith in science—in psychoanalysis—as his particular hero system. This is the same as saying that all hero systems are based on illusion except one’s own, which is somehow in a special, privileged place, as if given in nature herself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Rank got right at the heart of Dr. Freud’s dilemma: “Just as he himself could so easily confess his agnosticism while he had created for himself a private religion, it seems that, even in his intellectual and rational achievements, he still has to express and assert his irrational needs by at least fighting for and about his rational ideas.” This it perfect. It means that Dr. Freud, too, was not exempt from the need to fit himself into a scheme of cosmic heroism, an immortality ideology that had to be taken on faith. This is why Rank saw the need to go “beyond psychology:” it cannot by itself substitute for a hero system unless it is—as it was for Dr. Freud—the hero system that guaranteed him immortality. This is the meaning of Rank’s critique of psychology as “self-deception.” It cannot contain the immortality urge characteristic of life. It is just another ideology, which is gradually trying to supplant religious and moral ideology, but is only partially qualified to do this, because it is a preponderantly negative and disintegrating ideology. In other words, all that psychology has really accomplished is to make the inner life the subject matter of sciences, and in ding this it dissipated the idea of the soul. However, it was the soul which once linked human’s inner life to a transcendent scheme of cosmic heroism. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Now the individual is stuck with oneself and with an inner life that one can only analyze away as a product of social conditioning. Psychological introspection took cosmic heroics and made them self-reflective and isolated. At best it gives the person a new self-acceptance—but this is not what humans want or need: one cannot generate a self-created hero system unless one is mad. Only pure narcissistic megalomania can banish guilt. It was on the point of guilt, as Rank saw, that Dr. Freud’s system of heroism fell down. He admonishes Dr. Freud with the didactic mocking of one who possesses a clearly superior conceptualization: “It is with his therapeutic attempt to remove the guilt by tracing it back ‘causally’ to the individual’s childhood that Dr. Freud steps in. How presumptuous, and at the same time, naïve, is this idea of simply removing human guilt by explaining it casually as ‘neurotic!’” Exactly. Guilt is a reflection of the problem of acting in the Universe; only partly is it connected to the accidents of one’s birth and early experience. Guilt, as the existentialists put it, is the guilt of being itself. It reflects the self-conscious animal’s bafflement at having emerged from nature, at sticking out too much without know what for, at not being able to securely place oneself in an eternal meaning system. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
How presumptuous of psychology to claim to be able to handle a problem of these dimensions. It all culminates once again in a recognition of the magnitude of the problem of cosmic heroism. All neurosis is vanity. Neurosis, in other words, reflects the incapacity of the individual to heroically transcend oneself; when one tried in one way or another, it is plainly vain. We are back again to a famous fruit of Rank’s work too, one insight that neurosis “is at the bottom always only incapacity for illusion.” However, we are back to it with a vengeance and with the broadest possible contemporary understanding. Transference represents not only the necessary and inevitable, but the most creative distortion of reality. Reality for humans is something one must imagine, search out in the eyes of one’s fellows, with their gleam of passionate dedication. This is also what Karl Jung intimates about the vitality of transference when he calls it “kinship libido.” This means that people join together their individual pulsations in a gamble toward something transcendent. Life imagines its own significance and strains to justify its beliefs. It is as though the life force itself needed illusion in other to further itself. Logically, then, the ideal creativity for humans would strain toward the grandest illusion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
One of the greatest difficulties for people lays in dealing with their negative feelings. We are voluntarily submitting ourselves to emotions of which we cannot really approve of, and we sometimes write down fantasies which often strike us as nonsense, and towards which we have strong resistances. For as long as we do not understand their meaning, such fantasies are a diabolical mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. It costs some of us a great deal to undergo them, but we have been challenged by fate. Only by extreme effort are we finally able to escape from the labyrinth. In order to grasp the fantasies which are stirring in us “underground,” we may know that we have to let ourselves plummet down into them, as it is. We could not only feel a violent resistance to this, but a distinct fear. For many are afraid of losing command of oneself and becoming a prey to the fantasies—and as a psychiatrist I realized only too well what that meant. After prolonged hesitation, however, I saw that there was no other way out. We have to take the chance, have to try to gain power over them; for if we do not, they run the risk of gaining power over us. A cogent motive for making the attempt is the conviction that I could not expect of my patients something I did not dare to do myself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The excuse that a helper stood at their side would not pass muster, for I was well aware that the so-called helper—that is, myself—could not help them unless he knew their fantasy material from his own direct experience, and that at present all he possessed were a few theoretical prejudices of dubious value. This idea—that I was committing myself to a dangerous enterprise not for myself alone, but also for the sake of my patients—helped me over several critical phases. Now I would like to cite the example of a sadist who did much worse things than just control others: Heinrich Himmler. I am going to read you a short letter that he wrote to a high-ranking SS officer, Count Adalbert Kottulinsky. “Dear Kottulinsky, You have been very ill with a serious heart ailment. In the interests of your health, I am hereby ordering you to stop smoking completely for the nest two years. After these two years are up you may submit to me a physician’s report on the state of your health. On the basis of that report I will decide whether you may resume smoking or not. Heil Hitler!” That is not only exerting control over another person but humiliating him as well. Himmler treats this adult like a stupid schoolboy. He writes in a way deliberately designed to humiliate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Himmler assumes control over Kottulinsky. He does not even let the doctor do the controlling and make the decision on whether Kottulinsky may or may not smoke again. Himmler arrogates this decision to himself. Another trait of the bureaucrat as sadist is that one treats people like things. They become objects. One does not relate them as human beings. Another characteristic is that only helpless individuals waken one’s sadistic interest, not ones who can defend themselves. Also, many sadists are people who themselves suffered abuse, still talk about it like it is still happening, and want to inflict that pain onto others, which is why some are still talking about historic events as if they are current. A sadist up against a superior is usually cowardly, but someone who is helpless or can be made helpless—a child, a sick person, or, in certain political circumstances, a political opponent—those are the people who incite the sadist. One does not feel pity, as any normal person does, nor does one share the normal person’s revulsion at the very idea of hitting someone who is defenseless. On the contrary, helplessness is the quality that stimulates the sadist, because it puts the possibility of absolute control within one’s reach. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Another trait of the sadist in bureaucrat’s clothes is an excessive preoccupation with order. Order is everything. Order is the only sure thing in life, the only thing over which we can exert complete control. People with an excessive need for order are usually people who are afraid of life, because life is not orderly. It brings surprises; spontaneity is crucial to it. The only thing we can be sure of is death, but what life brings is always something new. The sadistic individual, though, who cannot relate to others and who sees everyone and everything in life as mere objects, that kind of person hates anything living, because it poses a threat to one. However, one love order. It was therefore characteristic for Himmler to keep a diary—for ten years starting with his fourteenth year—filled with the most banal of entries. He notes how many rolls he ate, whether his train arrived on time or not. Every last little thing he did had to be recorded. Even as a young man he kept records of his correspondence in which he noted every letter he wrote or received. That is order. And we should add that it is the orderliness of a certain type, the orderliness of the old-fashioned bureaucrat for whom life means nothing but order and rules mean everything. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
It is interesting to note in this context that when Eichmann was asked in Jerusalem whether he felt any guilt—he was interrogated by a very humane psychiatrist, and he apparently felt he could speak quite freely—he said yes, he did have some guilt feelings. And when asked what it was he felt guilty about, he replied; For having played hooky from school twice when he was a boy. That was not very clever of him as a defendant in the situation he was in. If he had wanted to be clever he could have said he felt guilty because he had ended the life of so many people. However, he was perfectly honest, and it was quite natural for him to think of an indigence when he had broken the rules. For the bureaucrat, there is only one sin, and that is to violate the established order, to break the established rules. It would seem that the soul is human. For it is written in 2 Corinthians 4.16, “Though our outward person is corrupted, yet the inward person is renewed day by day.” However, that which is within humans is the soul. Therefore the soul is the inward person. Further, the human soul is a substance. However, it is not a universal substance. Therefore it is a particular substance. Therefore it is a “hypostasis” or a person; and it can only be a human person. Therefore the soul is a human; for a human person is a man. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
However, when we reflect deeper, it is clear to see that humans are not a mere soul, nor a mere body; but both soul and body. First, that human is a soul; though this particular human, Sokrates, for instance, is not a soul, but composed of soul and body. I say this, forasmuch as some held that the form alone belongs to the species; while matter is part of the individual, and not the species. This cannot be true; for to the nature of the species belongs what the definition signifies; and in natural things the definition does not signify the form only, but the form and the mater. Hence in natural things the matter is part of the species; not indeed, signate matter, which is the principle of individuality; but the common matter. For as it belongs to the notion of this particular human to be composed of this soul, of this flesh, and of these bones; so it belongs to the notion of humans to be composed of soul, flesh, and bones; for whatever belongs in common to the substance of all the individuals contained under a given species, must belong to the substance of the species. It may also be understood in this sense, that this soul is the man; and this could be held if it were supposed that the operation of the sensitive soul were proper to it, apart from the body; because in that case all the operations which are attributed to man would belong to the soul only; and whatever performs the operations proper to a thing, is that thing; wherefore that which performs the operations of a human is a human. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
However, we have shown that sensation is not the operation of the soul only. Since, then, sensation is an operation of man, but not proper to him, it is clear that man is not a soul only, but something composed of a soul and body. Plato, through supposing that sensation was proper to the soul, could maintain humans to be a soul making use of the body. A thing seems to be chiefly what is principal in it; thus what the governor of a states does, the state is said to do. In this way sometimes what is principal in man is said to be man; sometimes, indeed, the intellectual part which, in accordance with truth, is called “inward” man; and sometimes the sensitive part with the body is called man in the opinion of those who observation does not go beyond these senses. And this is called the “outward” man. Not every particular substance is a hypostasis or a person, but that which has the complete nature of its species. Hence a hand, or a foot, is not called hypostasis, or a person; nor, likewise, is the soul alone so called, since it is part of the human species. O God of love and peace, Who for the salvation of humankind did endure to be hanged on a Cross, and did pour forth Thy Blood for our redemption; favourably and benignantly receive my prayers, and bestow on my Thy mercy; that when Thou shalt command me to depart from the body, the enemy may have no power over me, but the Angel of peace may place me among Thy Saints and elect, where light abides and life reigns, World without end. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Nephi writes of the things of God—Nephi’s purpose is to persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham and be saved. About 600-592 Before Christ (BC). “And now I, Nephi, do not give the genealogy of my fathers in this part of my record; neither at any time shall I give it after upon these plates which I am writing; for it is given in the record which has been kept by my father; wherefore, I do not write it in this work. For it sufficeth me to say that we are descendants of Joseph. And it mattereth not to me that I am particular to give a full account of all the things of my father, for they cannot be written upon these plates, for I desire the room that I may write of the things of God. For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade people to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved. Wherefore, the thing which are pleasing unto the World I do not write, but the things which are pleasing unto God and unto those who are not of the World. Wherefore, I shall give commandment unto my seed, that they shall not occupy these plates with things which are not of worthy unto the children of humans,” reports 1 Nephi 6.1-6. The height of devotion is reached when reverence and contemplation produce passionate worship, which in turn breaks forth in thanksgiving and praise in word and song. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
I had vehement longings of soul after God and Christ, and after more holiness, wherewith my heart seemed to be full, and ready to break. I spent most of my time in thinking of divine things, year after year; often walking alone in the woods, and solitary places, for deep prayers, soliloquy, and prayer, and converse with God; and it was always my manner, at such times, to sing forth my contemplations. Prayer seemed to be natural to me, as the breath by which the inward burnings of my heart vents. Bach’s music is universally regarded as Christian mediation transposed into musical form. The hymns and spiritual songs of the Church are the richest sources of poetic praise set to music, with words by the likes of Bernard of Clairvaux, Paul Gerhardt, Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, George Herbert, and Jon Donne. “A palace to every song you have ever heard and been unable to endure without tear? The marble shines in the Sun. Such richness as this cannot be made by human hands. This is the temple of Heaven,” (page 58 of Violin by Anne Rice). Lord, I love You, and I thank You for this World. Lord, glorify Your name through me. May the mind of Christ my Saviour live in me from day to day, by His love and power controlling all I do and say. We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, and long to feast upon Thee still, we bring of Thee, the Fountainhead, and thirst our souls from Thee to fill. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
“Mozart was always my happy guardian, the Little Genius, I called him, Master of His Choir of Angels, that is Mozart; but Beethoven is the Master of my Dark Heart, the captain of my broken life and all my failures. This is relentless music. This person is not going to give up. Onward, upward, forward, it does not matter now—woods, trees, it does not matter. All that matters is that you walk…and when there comes just a little bit of happiness again—the sweet exultant happiness of the plateau—it is caught up this time in the advancing steps. Because there is no stopping. Magnificent assurances the Beethoven tried to make, it seemed, to all of us, that everything would someday be understood and this life was worth. It even seemed all right for the Little Genius, Mozart perhaps, the bright safe glow of Angels chattering and laughing and doing back flips in celestial light. Death is not death as I once thought, when fear was trampled underfoot. Broken hearts do best forever beating upon the wintry windowpane. It struck me—a great formless thought, unable to take shape in this atmosphere of slow lovely embracing music—that that was the power of the violin, that it sounded human in a way that we humans could not! It spoke for us in a way that we ourselves could not. Ah, yes, and that is what all the pondering and poetry has always been about. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“It seemed the rain and this music would kill me. I would die quiet without a protest. But I only dreamed, sliding down down into a fullblown illusion as if it had been waiting for me. For surely I was dreaming. I had to be. But I was here, imprisoned in this, as if transported body and soul into it, and something in me sang, do not let it be a dream. I thought again very specifically of him, the ghost, refurbishing in my imagination his slender tall figure and the violin which he had held, and trying as best as my unmusical mind could do to recall the melodies he had played. A ghost, a ghost, you have seen a ghost I thought. The crows was magnetized by him; they were so totally in his thrall that I went unnoticed. I only want you, you of all people, you who worship these names as if they were household saints—Mozart, Beethoven—I want you to know I knew them! These higher notes were to thin and pure, so bright yet sad. I lifted the violin, and brought the bow down in a searing cry over the E string, the high string, the metal sting, maybe all song is a form of crying out, and organized scream; a violin as it reached for a magic pitch is as sharp as a siren,” (Pages: 6, 7, 11, 25, 51, 55, 56, 75, 113, 122, 151, 155 of Violin by Anne Rice). So holiness or sanctification is more than just our standing before God in Christ. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
It is an actual conformity within us to the likeness of Christ begun at the time of our salvation and completed when we are made perfect in His presence. This process of gradually conforming us to the likeness of Christ begins at the very moment of our salvation when they Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us and to actually give us a new life in Christ. We call this gradual process progressive sanctification, or growing in holiness, because it truly is a growth process. The holiness we have in Christ is purely objective, outside of ourselves. It is the perfect holiness of Christ imputed to us because of our union with Him, and it affects our standing before God. God is pleased with us because He is pleased with Christ. Progressive sanctification is subjective or experiential and is the work of the Holy Spirit within us imparting to us the life and power of Christ, enabling us to respond in obedience to Him. Bot aspects of sanctification, however, are gifts of God’s grace. We do not deserve our holy standing before God, and we do not deserve the Spirit’s sanctifying work in our lives. Both come to us by His grace because of the merit of Christ. Progressive sanctification begins in us with an instantaneous act of God at the time of salvation. God always gives justification and this initial imparting of sanctification at the same time. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Th author of Hebrews described this truth in this way: “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” Then he added, “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more,” reports Hebrews 10.16-17. God promises to put his laws in our hearts and write them on our minds. That is sanctification in principle or, as I like to express it, sanctification begun. Then he promises to remember our sins no more. That is justification. Note that sanctification and justification are both gifts from God and expressions of His grace. Though they are each distinct aspects of salvation, they can never be separated. God never grants justification without also giving sanctification at the same time. I think of justification and sanctification as being like the jacket and pants of a suit. They always come together. A friend once wanted to give me a suit. He took me to a clothing store, and I walked out with a jacket and matching pants—a complete suit. Neither the jacket nor the pants alone would have been sufficient. I needed both to have the suit that my friend wanted to give me. Sometimes we think of salvation as more like a sports coat and a pair of slacks. We think God gives us the sports coat of justification by His grace, but we must “buy” the slacks of sanctification by our own efforts. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
However, salvation is like a suit. It always comes with the jacket of justification and the pants of sanctification. God never gives one without the other because both are necessary to have the complete suit of salvation. The personal traits of the spiritual guide may repel the seeker. Yet if no one else is available who has the same knowledge, it is the seeker’s duty to repress one’s repulsions and enter into the relationship of a pupil. If one does not, then one pays a heavy price for one’s surrender to personal emotion and sensual superficiality. If walking in secret, a master would not necessarily be recognized as such, not even by those who are looking for one and have real all the books about one. That a person wearing quite ordinary clothes whose face was clean shaven, whose hair was quite average length, could be an adept is much less likely to be thought by most persons, then one who was theatrical-looking and conspicuously dressed. In the Worldly life a successful person usually seeks to give others the impression of one’s success but in the spiritual life an unassuming person may be a great master. The aspirant is not ordinarily in a position to judge what illumination really is, and who is a full illuminate being. One can only form theories about the one and use one’s imagination about the other. We feel and know that we are all eternal. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. Thou art worthy, Thou art worthy, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, glory, and honour, glory and honour and power; for Thou hast created, hast all things created, Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are created: for Thou art worthy, O Lord. I love you, Lord and I lift my voice to worship you, oh my soul rejoice. Take joy, my king in what you hear may it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear. Oh Lord, I am a shell full of dust, but animated with an invisible rational soul and made anew by an unseen power of grace; yet I am no rare object of valuable price, but one that has nothing and is nothing, although chosen of Thee from eternity, given to Christ, and born again; I am deeply convinced of the evil and misery of a sinful state, of the vanity of creatures, but also of the sufficiency of Christ. When Thou would guide me I control myself. When Thou would be sovereign I rule myself. When Thou would take care of me I suffice myself. When I should depend on Thy providings I supply myself, when I should submit to Thy providence I follow my will, when I should study, love, honour, trust Thee, I serve myself; I fault and correct Ty laws to suit myself; instead of the I look to a human’s approbation, and am by nature an idolater. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Lord, it is my chief design to bring my heart back to thee. Convince me that I cannot be my own God, or make myself happy, nor my own Christ to restore my joy, nor my own Spirit to teach, guide, rule me. Help me to see that grace does this by providential affliction, for when my credit is good Thou does cast me lower, when riches are my idol Thou does turn it into bitterness. Take away my roving eye, curious ear, greedy appetite, lustful heart; show me that none of these things can heal a wounded conscience, or support a tottering frame, or uphold a departing spirit. Then take me to the cross and leave me there. God’s ultimate goal for us, however, is that we truly be conformed to the likeness of His Son in our person as well as in our standing. This goal is expressed in Romans 8.29: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the first born among many brothers.” All though the New Testament we see this ultimate end in view as the writers speak of salvation. For example, Paul said that Jesus “gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good,” reports Titus 2.14. Jesus did not die just to save us from the penalty of sin, nor even just to make us holy in our standing before God. He died to purify for Himself a people eager to obey Him, a people eager to be transformed into His likeness. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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For within You is the Light of the World—the Only Light that Can be Shed Upon the Path!
Do not say you do not have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Harriet Tubman, Robert E. Lee, Empress Dowager Cix, Michelangelo, Aaliyah, Thomas Jefferson, Kobe Bryant, and Albert Einstein. Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them work, family, health, friends, and spirit—and you are keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. However, the other four balls—family, health, friends, and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance. If this seems to you a little too sentimental or overdrawn, I would like to share with you an experience I had recently in a basic encounter group with fifteen persons in important executive posts. Early in the very intensive sessions of the week they were asked to write a statement of some feeling or feelings which they were not willing to share with the group. These were anonymous statements. One man wrote, “I do not relate easily to people. I have an almost impenetrable façade. Nothing gets in to hurt me but nothing gets out. I have repressed so many emotions that I am close to emotional sterility. This situation does not make me happy, but I do not know what to do about it. Perhaps insight into how others react to me and why will help.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
This clearly a message from a dungeon. Later in the week a member of the group identified himself as the man who had written that anonymous message, filling out in much greater detail his feelings of isolation, of complete coldness. He felt that life had been so brutal to him that he had been forced to live without feelings, not only at work but also in social groups and, saddest of all, with his family. His gradual achievement of greater expressiveness in the group, of less fear of being hurt, of more willingness to share himself with others, was a very rewarding experience for all of us who participated. When, in a letter a few weeks later asking me about another matter, he also included this paragraph: “When I returned from [our group] I felt somewhat like a youth who had been seduced but still wound up with the feeling that it was exactly what I had been waiting for and needed! I am still not quite sure who was responsible for the seduction—you of the group, or whether it was a joint venture. I suspect it was the latter. At any rate, I want to thank you for what was a meaningful and intensely interesting experience.” I was both amused and pleased by this admission. I think it is not too much to say that because of several of us in the group were able genuinely to hear him, he was released from his dungeon and came out, at least to some degree, into the sunnier World of warm interpersonal relationships. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Too many seekers create a supernatural halo around the master’s personality. Too many wrap it in dramatic and romantic garb. Too many expect too much from the first meeting with the individual. The consequence of all this is often a tremendous emotion let-down, and unreasonable disappointment after the reality of an actual meeting, and they lose their balance altogether. It is inevitable that a close-up view of the master will not prove so striking as a long-range one seen through romantic glasses. From a distance it is easy to bestow admiration and feel awe for a being they have almost turned into a deity. However, drawn into close contact with one it is just as easy to swing in the opposite direction and turn the master into a human. They do not notice how brief is their firsthand acquaintance with one, how few are the appearances that constitute the data for their conclusions, how conceited it is for spiritual pygmies to think they understand a spiritual titan. Because what they appear to have found does not correspond with the mental image they have previously conceived of one, one is judged to be no master at all. Nor are these the only reasons for such a failure. Equally important is the fact that such a meeting, or the period immediately following it, becomes the signal for opposition by adverse force. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Evil spirits may find their opportunity just then to lead one astray, mischievous ones may try to bewilder one’s mind, or lying ones may give untrue suggestions to one. One’s own weaknesses of character and faultiness of judgement may become greatly magnified and foist an absurdly wrong estimate of the master upon one. One may even feel personal antagonism toward the master. All this is of course a test for one. If one thinks one is judging whether this person is fit to be one’s master, life in its turn is judging whether one is fit to have such a master. Here then are some of the answers to the question, “Why, if we concede that the adepts have a right to hide from the multitude, do they also seem to hide from the earnest seeking few?” The adepts are confident that those individuals who are really ready for them will meet them when the right time comes. They know that this will happen not only under the direct working of karma, not only under the impulsions of the seeker’s own higher self, but also under the wise laws which govern the quest itself. These are high and hard truths. However, they are the realities of life, not dreams for those who like to be self-deluded. Whoever rejects them for such a reason does so at the risk of being harshly shocked into awakening one day. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
They approach such a being with a kind of awe, if not reverence. It may or may not be justifiable: that depends first, one the being’s quality and second, on one’s mood. It needs clear eyes to see the truth about these spiritual teachers, eyes such as both their ardent followers and intolerant critics do not possess. Most people are simply not competent to select a guru properly; they are too governed by outer appearances, physical impression, and emotional reactions. An attitude is an expectation, and enduring selectivity in central action which, because of its enduring quality, can steer the organism in directions which experiences have determined to be in the animal’s interest. There is central reinforcement of sensory processes: It seems that there can be no explanation of learning and problem-solving in any mammal without reference to the persisting central neural influence that sustains activity in one particular direction. Even in a bird, learning continually shows this selective responsiveness to one aspect or part of the environment. In higher forms, where expectancy has been most clearly demonstrated, it seems often to be organized by an expectancy of a particular reward or goal. This is clearly not sensory but a conceptual process (to which, however, sensation must continually contribute). #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Persisting central neural influence well defines what attention is. Established conceptual structure can, through reverberation, cause certain messages to have particular impact, more than others: the attention has been directed. Central organization can be so strong that we attend only to what we expect to see—we do not attend to what we do not expect to see. There is something wrong with the three statements: Paris in the the Spring, Once in a a lifetime, Bird in the the hand. (The puzzled reader is requested to read the statements aloud.) Incidentally this is a good example of not seeing something which is there to see, without there being any repression—a point which will become important soon. In the higher animals, expectancy = meaning, and meaning can refer to the process by which an enduring structure causes us to expect and search for (that is give our attention to) particular events in otherwise ambiguous stimulus situations. In identifying triangles for the purpose of counting them, we have to focus on lines which but a moment ago we had to ignore. We have to stop the eye from travelling more than halfway along lines which but a moment ago the eye pursued to the end. Lines can be organized into figures in one way, or in another way, or not at all. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
We may draw the conclusion that something in us creates the perception of triangles out of what is not immediately apparent as a collection of triangles, or, to put this in different language, that something in us makes concepts apparent to us where these are not immediately obvious; and that we select, search for, attend to certain things we have set ourselves to pay attention to. The exercise also helps us to realize how much percepts and concepts slip and slide into one another. Another exercise is to look at a box divided into triangles: can the reader see the letter X? The letters E? N? Z? How many other letters can the reader see in the figure? If we think of each letter as a different concept, we can see that concepts are loess tidy, less clearly bounded, less neatly separable from each other, more overlapping, more blurry, then the inner objects and relationships are. This will also become very important later in our narrative. One more example, to demonstrate just how powerful the steering, directing, and motivating aspect of central functioning can be. Reversible figures can often show two different pictures in one image, depending on what the audience focuses on. To make the meaning change from the one to the others, we make ourselves attend to (focus on) a bit of the picture which we know to belong to the meaning we want to evoke—this activates a system of associated structures and the whole reverses itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
No wonder that this propensity of the human mind is used to systematize tests for differences in personality or mood. The subject is presented with simple pictures or inkblots and required to make up stories about them. The stimulus materials tend to be interpreted differently by different individuals and thus reflect their learning history, personality traits, and emotional preoccupations. In short the responses given by the subject reveal the sets [id est attitudes] one has built up during one’s life history, and the influences these have on one’s present perceptions. Under the heading of words like “values,” “interests,” and “expectancies,” we encounter the influences of set upon selective perceiving. This is not exactly the way psycho-analytically minded people tend to approach a person’s reactions. They rend on the whole to think of symbols as acquired through a process of internalization. To this we will return to at a later time. We have constructed a perceptual and conceptual apparatus which can direct behaviour. We must now look more closely at the directing process. Values, interest, and expectancies point the way—we must look for yet higher levels of organization and yet more central functions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
When rules about how to feel and how to express feelings are set by management, when workers have weaker rights to courtesy than customers do, when deep and surface acting are forms of labour to be sold, and when private capacities for empathy are warmth are put to corporate uses, what happens to the way a person relates to one’s feelings or to one’s face? “If they could have turned every one of us into sweet quiet Southern Belles with velvet voices like Rosalyn Carter, this is what they would want to stamp out on an assembly line. Our smiles are not just painted on. So smile your way,” reports Reese Witherspoon. “When you see them receiving fans with that big smile, I do not think it means anything. They have to do that. It is part of their job. But now if you get into a conversation with a celebrity….well…no…I guess they have to do that too,” reports Paul Brunton. When worked-up warmth becomes an instrument of service work, what can a person learn about oneself from one’s feelings? And when a worker abandons one’s work smile, what kind of bond remains between one’s smile and oneself? Display is what is sold, but over the long run display comes to assume a certain relation to feeling. As enlightened management realizes, a separation of display and feeling is hard to keep over long periods. A principle of emotive dissonance, analogous to the principle of cognitive dissonance, is at work. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Maintaining a difference between feeling and feigning over the long run leads to strain. We try to reduce this strain by pulling the two closer together either by changing what we feel or by changing what we feign. When display is required by the job, it is usually feeling that has to chance; and when conditions estrange us from our face, they sometimes estrange us from feeling as well. Take the case of major movie stars. Corporate logic in Hollywood and streaming services creates a series of links between competition, market expansion, advertising, heightened audience expectations about rights to display, and company demands for acting. When conditions allow this logic to work, the result is a successful transmutation of the private emotional exchange–feeling rules, surface acting, and deep acting—are now arranged in a different way. If moves from stage to movie screen (act as if the movie screen were your own living room) as does the actress or actor’s use of emotion memory. Private use gives way to corporate use. In the movie industry of the 1950s and 1960w, a remarkable transmutation was achieved. However, certain trends, we will discuss later, led this transmutation to fail in the early 1970s. An industry speed-up and a stronger union hand in limiting the company’s claims weakened the transmutation. There was a celebrity slow down. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Worked-up warmth of feeling was replaced by put-on smiles. Those who sincerely wanted to make the deeper offering found they could not do so, and those who all along had resisted company intrusions of the self, came to feel some rights to freedom from it. The lost of truly Hollywood glam caused a loss of profits and prestige. When the transmutation succeeded, the celebrity was asked to take pride in making an instrument of feeling. When it collapsed, celebrities came to see that instrument as overused, underappreciated, and susceptible to damage. When a person has attained a stage of perfection one may truly rest, for Nature has achieved her task in one. Yet, if one chooses the path of self-actualization one must henceforth work harder than ever before! For one must now work incessantly through repeated rebirths for the enlightenment of others. Whether or not a person will serve humanity after one attains self-realization is not an attitude one can completely decide upon or predetermine before one attains it. For the matter is then surely taken out of one’s hands altogether. The question whether one shall share one’s knowledge with others or withhold it from them, will not be a real one to one. Its answer was settled long before, by destiny, by one’s character, by one’s past, by the World-idea. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Helping others to attain what one has attained, guiding seekers to reach safely the glorious summit where one now stands, is not decided for one by personal temperament or choice but by the overpowering sense of a primary and paramount duty. For within you is the light of the World—the only light that can be shed upon the Path. If you are unable to perceive it within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere. It is beyond you; because when you reach it you have lost yourself. It is unattainable because it forever recedes. You will enter the light but you will never touch the Sun. Do not desert the great orphan Humanity. Remain here and help others reach that threshold. Thus by one’s altruistic activity, deep and meaningful prayers, and intellectual penetration one continuously earns a title to that utter absorption of one’s ego in the unutterable Absolute which is Heaven, but by one’s continuous self-giving for suffering humankind one never actually attains this goal. This extraordinary situation may be represented mathematically by the asymptote—a line which is drawn on a graph to approach nearer and nearer to a given curve but which never actually touches it within a finite distance. Only a person who feels with and for fellow creatures will dare to make such a tremendous sacrifice of the supreme peace which one has won. How much more generous, how nobly grander is this example of ever-active altruistic service than that of ever-idle prayerful reclusiveness! #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
All are to be judged by the theological norm. No statement in any source is infallible. No council or pope or biblical excerpt is, as such, a standard. Yet all are sources insofar as they speak of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ. The biblical message would not have become a message for anyone, including the theologian oneself, without the experiencing participation of the Church and of every Christian. In this sense, tradition is valuable, though by no means normative in its own right. Like the Bible itself, it may be the occasion for perceiving the theological norm, whatever the power of the New Being is sensed in it. This follows logically from the nature of the theological norm. Catholic theology would consider traditional elements as normative only insofar as they share in the power of the New Being. However, no theologian would rely on oneself alone to discern that power; one would trust the collectivity of the faithful appeal to the totality of Christian experience. At the very heart of adoration is contemplation. Numerous Psalms call us to contemplate God as seen in His creation. They never suggest that God is in His creation, but that His excellencies can be seen in His created works. The glory of God, is visible though the visual medium of a great thunder and lightning storm. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Psalm 19 begins with these majestic words: “The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge,” repots vv.1, 2. Listen to God speak through his macrocosm, says the Psalmist! Celebrate God’s omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence in the microcosm of the human mind and body. Nature radiates and breathes the glory of God. If we take notice, the very trees do this. Have you seen your backyard tree for what it is: full of light, each cell shining with light, so bright they take your breath away, and opens up your heart to the wonder of God. Hebrews 10.10, 14 helps us see this objective aspect of sanctification—the holiness we have in Christ alone. Verse 10 reports, “And by that will [of God], we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Not that we have been made holy. This speaks of a completed work. The emphasis here is on the holiness we have in Christ through His once-for-all sacrifice. Verse 14, on the other hand, reports, “By one sacrifice He [Christ] has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” This verse mentions being made holy—the work of the Holy Spirit in progressive sanctification. However, this verse also refers to our completed, objective sanctification in Christ when it speaks of those He has made perfect forever. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
So, in one aspect of sanctification you are already holy because Christ’s holiness is imputed to you. You have been made perfect forever. In another aspect, you are being made holy day by day through the work of the Holy Spirit imparting Christ’s life to you. You have been made perfect forever. In another aspect, you are being made holy day by day though the work of the Holy Spirit imparting Christ’s life to you. Holiness should be an objective for your daily life. However, to live by grace, you must never, never look to the work of the Holy Spirit in you as the basis for your relationship with God. You must always look outside of yourself to Christ. You will never be holy enough through your own effect to come before God. You are holy enough through your own efforts to come before God. You are holy only through Christ. Two parallel passages in Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and Colossians should encourage all of us: “For Christ chose us in Him before the creation of the World to be holy and blameless in his sight,” reports Ephesians 1.4. And, “However now one has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation,” reports Colossians 1.22. The vision of life in the kingdom through reliance upon Jesus makes it possible for us to intend to live in the kingdom as He did. We can actually decide to do it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Of course living in the kingdom of Heaven means first of all to trust Christ, rely on him, to count on Him being the Anointed One, the Christ. It is through Him that the revelation and the gift of the kingdom come to us individually. If we do not count on Christ as “the One,” we will have no adequate vision of the kingdom or of life therein and no way to enter it. He is key to open the doors of Heaven; he is the way to the right path. Fins another whoever can. Consentingly, we intend to live in the kingdom of God by intending to obey the precise example and teaching of Jesus. This is the form that trust in him takes. It does not take the form of merely believing things about Him, however true they may be. Indeed, no one can actually believe the truth about Christ without trusting Him by intending to obey Him. It is a mental impossibility. To think otherwise is to indulge a widespread illusion that now smothers spiritual formation in Christlikeness among professing Christians and prevents it from naturally spreading Worldwide. If only Christains would live according to their belief in the teaching of Jesus, we all would become Christians. We know what this means, but the dismaying truth is that the Christians are living according to their belief in the teachings of Jesus. And clearly many of them do not believe him! #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Moreover, knowing the right answers—knowing which ones they are, being able to identify them—does not mean we believe them. To believe them, like believing anything else, means that we are set to act as if they (the right answers) are true and that we will do so in appropriate circumstances. And acting as if the right answers are true means, in turn, that we intend to obey the example and teachings of Jesus the Anointed. If we believed Christ is who His people through the ages have declared Him to be, what else would be intend? Perhaps the hardest things for sincere Christians to come to grips with is the level of real unbelief in their own life: the unformulated skepticism about Jesus that permeates all dimensions of their being and undermines what efforts they do make toward Christlikeness. The idea that you can trust Christ and not intend to obey Him is an illusion generated by the prevalence of an unbelieving “Christian culture.” In fact, you can no more trust Jesus and not intend to obey hum than you could trust your doctor and your auto science engineer and not intend to follow their advice. If you do not intend to follow their advice, you simply do not trust them. Period. (Of course in this case you might well have good reason.) Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come up to the ears of Thy gracious mercy; do not cut us off in the midst of our days, but grant us, as those who make for a well-known goal, to finish our course of holy living; and by a hearty pursuit of sanctification in the few days of our present life, to win the eternal kingdom of glory. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
O God the Father, of Heaven; have mercy upon the soul of Thy servant. “Nevertheless I went forth, and as I came near unto the house of Laban I a man, and he had fallen to the Earth before me, for he was drunken with wine. And when I came to him I found that it was Laban. And I behold his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt therefore was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was the most precious steel. And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should end the life of Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shruck and would that I might not slay him. And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property. And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bright forth his righteous purposes. It is better than one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief. And now, when I, Nephi, had heard these words, I remembered the word of the Lord which he spake unto me in the wilderness, saying that: Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments, they shall prosper in the land of promise. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“Yea, and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord according to the law of Moses, save they should have law. And I also knew that the law was engrave upon the plates of brass. And again, I knew that the Lord had delivered Laban into my hands for this cause—that I might obtain the records according to his commandments. Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword. And after I had smitten off his head with his own sword, I took the garments of Laban and out them upon mine own body; yes, even every whit; and I did gird on his armour about my loins. And after I had done this, I went forth unto the treasury of Laban. And as I went forth towards the treasury of Laban, behold, I saw the servant of Laban who had the keys of the treasury. And I commanded him in the voice of Laban, that he should go with me into the treasury. And he supposed me to be his master, Laban, for he hold the garments and also the sword girded about my loins. And he spake unto me concerning the elders of the Jews, he knowing that his master Laban, had been out by night among them. And I spake unto him as if it had been laban. And I also spake unto him that I should carry the engravings, which were upon the plates of brass, to my elder brethren, who were without walls. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And I also bade him that he should follow me. And he, supposing that I spake of the brethren of the church, and I was truly that Laban whom I had slain, wherefore he did follow me. And he spake unto me many times concerning the elders of the Jews, as I went forth unto my brethren, who were without the walls. And it came to pass that when Laman saw me he was exceedingly frightened, and also Lemuel and Sam. And they fled from before my presence; for they supposed it was Laban, and that he had slain me and had sought to take away their lives also. And it came to pass that I called after them, and they did hear me; wherefore they did cease to flee from my presence. And it came to pass that when the servant of Lagan beheld my brethren he began to tremble, and was about to flee from before me and return to the city of Jerusalem,” reports 1 Nephi 3.7-31. Holy Lord, how little repentance there is in the World, and how many sins I have to repent of! I am troubled for my sin of passion, for the shame and horror of it as an evil; I purpose to give way to it no more, and come to thee for strength to that end. Most people give vent to anger frequently and are overcome by it, bringing many excuses and extenuations for it, as that it occurs suddenly, that they delight not in it, that they are sorry afterwards, that Godly people commit it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
They thus seek peace after outburst of passion by entre forgetfulness of it, or, by skinning over their wound, they hope for healing without peace in Christ’s blood. Lord God, I know that my sudden anger arises when things cross me, and I desire to please only myself, not Christ; there is in all wrongs and crosses a double cross—that which crosses thee; in all good things there is somewhat that pleases me; somewhat the pleases thee; my sin is that my heart is pleased or troubled as things please or trouble me, without my having a regard to Christ; thus, I am like Eli, the subject of punishment for not rebuking sin; whereas I should humbly confess my sin and fly to the blood of Christ for pardon and peace. Give me, then, repentance, true brokenness, lasting contrition, for these things Thou wilt not despise in spite of my sin. To give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and not ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do Thy will. Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. Love and time—those are the only two things in all the World and all of life that cannot be bought, but only spent. The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in 5 words: “I did not have time.” #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Mills Station at Cresleigh Ranch | Residence 2
Vaulted ceilings and loft space await you at #MillsStation Residence 2! We especially love how open the great room is with all that light. 😍
Looking to make a move? Our sales offices are open by appointment only, but model homes are available for viewing. Head to our website to find contact info for each community. Link in bio! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-2/
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When He Had Opened the Seventh Seal, there Was Silence in Heaven About the Space of Half an Hour!
Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of balances that are liable to change suddenly, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act. People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. One can listen like a brick wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer. The greatest git one can give another is the purity of one’s attention. It would seem that the soul is a body. For the soul is the moving principle of the body. Nor does it move unless it is moved. First, because seemingly nothing can move unless it is itself moved, since nothing gives what it has not; for instance, what is not hot does not give heat. Secondly, because if there by anything that moves and is not moved, it must be the cause of eternal, unchanging movement; and this does not appear to be the case in the movement of an animal, which is caused by the soul. Therefore the soul is a mover moved. However, every mover moved is a body. Therefore the soul is a body. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Further, all knowledge is caused by means of a likeness. However, there can be no likeness of a body to an incorporeal thing. If, therefore, the soul were not a body, it could not have knowledge of corporeal things. Further, between the mover and the moved there must be contact. However, contact is only between bodies. Since, therefore, the soul moves the body, it seems that the soul must be a body. On the contrary, the soul is simple in comparison with the body, in as much as it does not occupy space by its bulk. To seek the nature of the soul, we must premise that the soul is defined as the first principle of life of those things which live: for we call living things “animate,” [is est having a soul] and those things which have no life, “inanimate.” Now life is shown principally by two actions, knowledge and movement. The philosophers of old, not being able to rise above their imagination, supposed that the principle of these actions was something corporeal: for they asserted that only bodies were real things; and that what is not corporeal is nothing: hence they maintained that the soul is something corporeal. This opinion can be proved to be false in many ways; but we shall make use of only one proof, based on universal and certain principles, which shows clearly that the soul is not a body. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
It is manifest that not every principle of vital action is a soul, for then the eye would be a soul, as it is a principle of vision; and the same might be applied to the other instruments of the soul; but it is the first principle of life, which we call the soul. Now, though a body maybe a principle of life, as the heart is a principle of life in an animal, yet nothing corporeal can be the first principle of life. For it is clear that to be a principle of life, or to be a living thing, does not belong to a body as such; since, if that were the case, every body would be a living thing, or a principle of life. Therefore a body is competent to be a living thing or even a principle of life, as “such” a body. Now that it is actually such a body, it owes to some principle which is called its act. Therefore the soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body; thus heat, which is the principle of calefaction, is not a body, but an act of a body. As everything which is in motion must be moved by something else, a process which cannot be prolonged indefinitely, we must allow that not every mover is moved. For, since to be moved is to pass from potentiality to actuality, the mover gives what it has to the thing moved, inasmuch as it cases it to be in act. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
However, there is such a mover which is altogether immovable, and not moved either essentially, or accidentally; and such a mover can cause an invariable movement. There is, however, another kind of mover, which, though not moved essentially, is moved accidentally; and for this reason it does not cause invariable movement; such a mover, is the soul. There is, again, another mover, which is moved essentially—namely, the body. And because the philosophers of the old believed that nothing existed but bodies, they maintained that every mover is moved; and that the soul is moved directly, and is a body. The likeness of a thing known is not necessity actually in nature of the knower; but given a thing which knows potentially, and afterwards knows actually, the likeness of the thing known must be in the nature of the knower, not actually, but only potentially; thus colour is not actually in the pupil of the eye, but only potentially. Hence it is necessary, not that the likeness of corporeal things should be actually in the nature of the soul, but that there be a potentiality in the soul for such a likeness. However, the ancient philosophers omitted to distinguish between actuality and potentiality; and so they held that the soul must be a body in order to have knowledge of a body; and that it must be composed of the principles of which all bodies are formed in order to know all bodies. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
There are two kinds of contact; of “quantity,” and of “power.” By the former a body can be touched only by a body; by the latter a body can be touched by an incorporeal thing, which moves that body. Scripture repeatedly acknowledges the existence of natural moral law: true moral principles rooted in the way God made things, addressed to humans as humans (instead of to humans as a believing member of the kingdom of God) and knowable by all people independently of Bible (Job 31.13-15, Romans 1-2). Among other things, what this means is that believers need not appeal to Scripture in arguing for certain ethical positions, say, in legal debates. Indeed, in my own view, the church is to work for a just state, not a Christian state of theocracy. We are not to place the state under Scripture. However, if this is true, where is the source of moral guidance for the state to be just and to punish wrongdoers as Romans 13.1-7 teachers? The answer is the natural moral law. God has revealed enough of His moral law in the creation for the state to do its job. The church preach to unbelievers what Scriptures says about some topic, but when believer argue for their views in the public square of defend them against those who do not accept the Scripture, they should use general principles of moral argument and reasoning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
This is precisely what the prophet Amos did. In chapters 1 and 2 of the Book of Amos, he denounced the moral behaviour of several people-groups outside of Israel, and he never once appealed to Scripture. Instead, he was content to rest his case with an appeal to self-evident moral principles in the natural law, which he assumed were known by those without Scripture. However, when he turned to rebuke the people f Israel, for the first time he said that they had violated the “law of the LORD” as reported in Amos 2.4, knowing that they had a familiarity with Holy Scripture. Amos appeared to common ground in all these cases, just as Jesus did in reasoning with he Sadducees, as reported in Matthew 22.23-33 and Paul in evangelizing the Greeks, as reported in Acts 17.16-31. The second aspect of scriptural teaching about extrabiblical knowledge is, Scripture shows people qualified to minister in God’s name in situations that required them to have intellectual skills in extrabiblical knowledge. In Daniel 1.3-4, 2.12-13, 5.7, we see Danial and his friends in a position to influence Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, only because they showed “intelligence in every branch of wisdom.” These men had studied and learned Babylonian science, geometry, and literature. And because of this, they were prepared to serve when the occasion presented itself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
I remembering being in a meeting with Dr. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, shortly after Ronald Reagan had been elected president. Dr. Bright came into the meeting late because President Reagan had called to ask him to confer with other evangelical leaders in order to suggest a list of qualified evangelicals to serve in his presidential cabinet. With sadness in his heart, Dr. Bright said that after numerous phone conversations with other evangelical leaders, they had concluded that there simply were not many evangelicals with the intellectual and professional excellence for such a high post. C. Everett Koop was all they could think of and, as we know, Mr. Koop got the position of surgeon general. Had evangelicals valued the study of extrabiblical knowledge the way Daniel and his friends did, things may have turned out quite differently. How, then, should this attitude toward extrabiblical intellectual training inform parents and youth groups when they prepare Christian teenagers to go to college and tell teens why college is important? According to various studies, increasing numbers of college freshmen, on the advice of parents, say their primary goal in going to college is to get a good job and ensure a secure financial future for themselves. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The goal of higher education for career advancement and a successful future, this parallels a trend in the same students toward valuing a good job more than developing a meaningful philosophy of life. Given this view of a college education, it is clear why the humanities have fallen on hard times. It is equally clear why the level of our public discourse on topics central to the culture wars is so shallow, since it is precisely the humanities that train people to thin carefully about these topics. What is not so clear is why Christians, with a confidence in the providential care and provision of God, would follow the secular culture in adopting this approach to college. How different this approach is compared to the value of a college education embraced by earlier generations of Christians: A Christian goes to college to discover one’s vocation—the area of service to which God has called one—and to develop the skills necessary to occupy a section of the cultural, intellectual domain in a manner worthy of the kingdom of God. A believer also goes to college to gain general information and the habits of thought necessary for developing a well-structured soul suitable for a well-informed, good citizen of both Earthly and Heavenly kingdoms. If the public square is naked, it may be because Christians have abandoned the humanities due to a sub-biblical appreciation for extrabiblical knowledge. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Some people pledge themselves to the spiritual service of ignorant unawakened humankind. For this ideal one sacrifices oneself to the point of stopping one’s own liberation just when it is about to be realized. One who is delivered from sin and free from illusion, who is emancipated from suffering for all time because the flesh can catch one no more, has earned the right to infinite rest in the eternal life. However, one has also the power to choose otherwise. One may stop at its very threshold and renounce the reward it offers. Since the phenomenal World has nothing to offer one, the only reason for such a choice can be compassionate thought for the benighted creatures one is about to leave behind. If one refrains from the final mergence into the kingdom of Heaven, it is not only because one wants to be available for the enlightenment of one’s more hapless fellows, but also because one knows that one has been in a Heavenly state from the beginning and has never left it. Among those who have attained this higher life, who feel its power and sense its peace, there are some who wish that others shall attain it too. We say some for the very powerful reason that not all are able to find it in their hearts to return to this bleak Earth of ours, with its unwellness and morbidity, its sins and sufferings, its evil and ignorance, when there stretches invitingly before them the portals of a diviner World, with its sublime harmony and beauty, its burden-free peace and goodness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The greatest sacrifice a being can offer is that of wisdom, which means simply that the enlightened person should give oneself and use one’s wisdom for the benefit of others. This is also why the greatest charity is to give the truth to humankind. Therefore, the noblest self-actualized beings give themselves secretly and concentratively to a few or openly and widely to the many to enlighten, guide, and inspire them. They know that this twofold way is the one in which to help humankind, that public work is not enough, that those who wish to do not only the most widespread good in the time open to them but also the most enduring good, must work deeply and secretly amongst a few who have dedicated themselves to immediate or eventual service in their own turn. Thus, compassion is rendered more effective through being guided by intelligence. To the few in the inner circle, the self-actualized transmits one’s best thought, one’s hidden knowledge, one’s special grace, one’s most mystical power. How grand is the service such a sage can render all those who accept the light of one’s knowledge! Then indeed is one, in Shakespeare’s phrase, “The star to every wandering barque.” Do not fall into the error of believing that, if one speaks openly these doctrines to others, or writes of them publicly, one is seeking to make proselytes. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The religious missionary eagerly seeks to proselytize, but the philosophic expounder cannot. This is because one is not governed by the emotional desire to witness a large number of conversations but by the clear understanding of evolutionary operations—an understanding which enables one to see what is and is not possible, what is and is not suitable, at each stage of those operations. One is not, like the missionary, seeking any personal satisfaction by making an emotional or intellectual conquest. The illuminate has a cosmic outlook. One thinks and feels for all creatures no less than for oneself. So you think that these ancient illuminati, full of high intimations and carrying great lights in their hands, appeared before the World out of their silence and solitude to suffer its ridicule and contempt because they wished to brag about themselves or to amaze them? They came because they dared not disobey compassion’s call save at the pain of being false to all that they knew to be true. The self-actualized makes the highest conceivable sacrifice in willing to return to Earthly life for times without end solely for the benefit of all creatures. People sometimes ask why anyone should give up even a part of one’s time to unpaid service. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
However, the truth is that the self-actualized is always paid by the friendship and gratitude, the trust and affection, which those one has helped return one. And if it be further said that these are mere intangibles which do not pay for the time and energy one gives, the answer is that they often are convertible into the most tangible of things. For if one is in real need of a home, a machine, a piece of domestic furniture, or a form of personal service, one has only to express that need and those whom one has helped will provide it. Nay, there are times when one need not even express it, when the silent magic of thought will prompt someone to offer the provision quite spontaneously and voluntarily. Anyway, the self-actualized does not give one’s service with any thought about the getting or non-getting of rewards. One gives it because one thinks it right to do so and because one enjoys the satisfaction of giving a helping hand to the spiritually needy. One is doing what one likes. Now we have to take a closer look at what we mean by specifically human aggression. The first is, biologically programmed type, the same defensive mechanism that in animals. The latter type takes the form of human cruelty on the one hand and, on the other, of that passionate enmity toward life, that hatred of life what we call necrophilia. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The biologically programmed human aggressiveness, which is identical to animal aggression is relatable because the animal’s neurophysiological organization, which is the same in humans, makes it react aggressively if its vital interests are threatened. A human being responds the same way. However, in humans the reaction, this reactive or defensive aggressiveness, is much more extensive. There are three reasons. One is that the animal experiences only present threats. All it knows is: “At this moment I am threatened.” The human being, with their mental powers, can imagine the future. Consequently, one can experience a threat that may not exist now but may well exist in the future. One therefore reacts aggressively not only to threats existing at the moment but also to one’s future. That provides the reactive aggression with a much larger field in which to function, for the number of human beings is very large, as is the number of situations in which a threat to them may exist in the future. Another reason why reactive aggression has a larger playground in humans is that humans are subject to suggestion while animals are not. You can convince a human being that one’s life or one’s freedom is threatened. You use words and symbols to do that. An animal cannot have its “brain washed,” because it lacks the symbols, the words, essential to brainwashing. It makes no difference to one’s reactions that one only believes oneself threated. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
I do not have to speak at any length about the many cases in which wars were made possible because people had been made to believe they were threatened. The power of suggestion had created the aggressiveness needed to drive people into battle. Then there is still a third and final reason. A human being has special interests that are closely linked to the values, ideals, and institutions which one identifies. An attack on the ideals or persons central to one’s life, on the institutions that are scared to one, can be as threatening to one as an attack on one’s life or on one’s source of food. Any number of things can be so precious to one: the idea of freedom, the idea of honour, one’s parents, one’s father, one’s mother, in some cultures one’s ancestors, the state, the flag, the government, religion, God. Any of those values, institutions, or ideals may be as important to one as one’s own physical existence. If they are threatened, one reacts with hostility. If we put all three factors together, we can understand why defensive hostility in humans is so much more extensive than it is in animals, even through the mechanism in which it is based is identical in human and animal. Humans experience many more threats, or experiences more things as threats, than the animal possibly can. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
If we have put off admitting our sins to God, confession may need to come first in our devotional time. There is also the probability that during Scriptural meditation, or even during adoration, further hidden sins will come to light. So our moments of devotion may be filled with repeated confession. It is instructive to notice that Psalm 139, which systematically contemplate God’s omnipotence and omniscience, ends with a prayer for divine investigation of the Psalmist’s soul: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting,” reports Psalm 139.23, 24. Likewise, as Isaiah was worshipped he cried out in confession, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live along a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty,” reports Isaiah 6.5. If you are concerned about our own spiritual formation of that of others, this vision of the kingdom is the place we must start. Remember, it is the place where Jesus started. It was the gospel he preached. He came announcing, manifesting, and teaching the availability and nature of the kingdom of the Heavens. “For I was sent for this purpose,” reported in Luke 4.43. That is simply a fact, and if we are faithful to it, do justice to it in full devotion, we will find our feet firmly planted on the path of Christian spiritual formation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Scripture speaks both of holiness we already possess in Christ before God and a holiness in which we are to grow more and more. The first is the result of the work of Christ for us; the second is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in us. The first is perfect and complete and is ours the moment we trust Christ; the second is progressive and incomplete as long as we are in this life. The objective holiness we have in Christ and the subjective holiness produced by the Holy Spirit are both gifts of God’s grace and are both appropriated by faith. However, the perfect holiness we have in Christ is the answer to our dilemma of how we can appear daily before a perfectly holy God, when even our best deeds are stained and polluted. Our lack of understanding of the distinction between the holiness we do have in Christ and the holiness we want to find in ourselves caused some to say that we mistakenly hope to find in ourselves something that can be found in Christ alone. The kingdom of God is the range of God Himself, from everlasting to everlasting (Psalm 103.17; see also Psalm 93.1-2; Daniel 4,3; 7.14; and so on). The planet Earth and its immediate surroundings seem to be the only place in creation where God permits His will to be not done. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Therefore we pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven,” and hope for the time when that kingdom will be completely fulfilled even on Earth (Luke 21.31; 22.18)—where in fact it is already present (Luke 17.21; John 18.36-37) and available to those who seek it with all their hearts (Matthew 6.13; 11.12; Luke 16.16). For those who do so seek it, it is true even now that “all thing work together for their good,” reports Romans 8.28, and that nothing can cut them off from God’s inseparable love and effective care (Romans 8.35-39). That is the nature of a life in the kingdom of the Heavens now. “And behold, it is wisdom in God that we should obtain these records, that we may preserve unto our children the language of our fathers; and also that we may preserve unto them the word which have been spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets, which have been delivered unto them by the Spirit and power of God, since the World began, even down unto this present time. And it came to pass that after this manner of language did I persuade my brethren, that they might be faithful in keeping the commandments of God. And it came to pass that we went down to the land of our inheritance, and we did gather together our gold, and our silver, and our precious things. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“And after we had gathered these things together, we went up again unto the house of Laban. And it came to pass that we went into Laban, and desired him that he would give unto us the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass, for which we would give him our gold, and our sliver, and all our precious things. And it came to pass that when Laban saw our property, and that it was exceedingly great, de did lust after it, insomuch that he thrust us out, and sent his servants to slay us, that he might obtain our property. And it came to pass that we did flee before the servants of Laban, and were obliged to leave behind our property, and it fell into the hands of Laban. And it came to pass that we fled into the wilderness, and the servants of Laban did not overtake us, and we hid ourselves in the cavity of a rock,” reports 1 Nephi 3.19-28. O God, Who in Thy loving-kindness dost both begin and finish all good things; grant that as we glory in the beginnings of Thy grace, so we may rejoice in its completion; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O Lord, when the World’s unbelievers reject thee, and are so forsaken by thee that thou calls them no more, it is to Thine own Thou does turn, for in such seasons of general apostasy they in some measure backslide with the World. O how free is Thy grace that reminds them of the danger that confronts them and urges them to persevere in adherence to Thyself! #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
I bless thee that those who turn aside may return to thee immediately, and be welcomed without anything to commend them, notwithstanding all their former backslidings. I confess that this is suited to my case, for of late I have found great want, and lack of apprehension of divine grace; I have been greatly distressed of soul because I did not suitably come to the fountain that purges away all sin; I have labored too much for spiritual life, peace of conscience, progressive holiness, in my own strength. I beg thee, show me the arm of all might; give me to believe that Thou can do for me more than I ask or think, and that, though I backslide, Thy love will never let me go, but will draw me back to Thee with everlasting cords; that Thou does provide grace in the wilderness, and can bring me out, leaning on the arm of my Beloved; that Thou can cause me to talk with Him by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein I shall not stumble. Keep me solemn, devout, faithful, resting of free grace for assistance, acceptance, and peace of conscience. Almighty and everlasting God, Whose paths are always mercy and truth, grant, we beseech Thee, that we who are fostered by Thy tenderness may also grow up with an increase of piety; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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God’s Infinite Liberality Will Always Exceed All Our Wishes and Our Thoughts—God is Always Giving!
Spread your arms to those with needs, and serve with joy and zest; fill each day with golden deeds, and give your very best. Our beliefs about what we are and what we can be precisely determine what we will be. The real art of communication is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. The force of words, being (as I have formerly noted) too weak to hold people to the performance of their covenants; there are in humans true nature, but two imaginable helps to strengthen it. And those are either a fear of the consequences of breaking their word; or a glory, or pride in appearing not to need to break it. This later is generosity too rarely found to be presumed on, especially in the pursuers of wealth, command, or sensual pleasures; which are the greatest part of humankind. The passion to be reckoned upon, is fear; whereof there be two very general objects: one, the power of the spirits invisible; the other, the power of those people they shall therein offend. Of these two, though the former be the greater power, yet the fear of the later is commonly the greater fear. The fear of the former is in every person, one’s own religion: which has place in the nature of humans before civil society. The later has not so; at least place enough, to keep people to their promises; because in the condition of mere nature, the inequality of power is not discerned, but by the even of battle. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
So that before the time of civil society, or in the interruption thereof by war, there is nothing can strengthen a covenant of peace agreed on, against the temptation of avarice, ambition, lust, or other strong desire, but the fear of that invisible power, which they every one worship as God; and fear as a revenger of their perfidy. All therefore that can be done between two people not subject to civil power, is to put one another to swear by the God one fears: which swearing or oath, is a form of speech, added to a promise; by which one that promises signifies, that unless one perform, one renounces the mercy of one’s God, or calls to Him for vengeance on oneself. Such was a heathen form, “Let Jupiter kill me else, as I kill this beast.” So is our form, “I shall do thus, and thus, so help me God.” And this, with the rites and ceremonies, which every one use in one’s own religion, that the fear of breaking faith might be the greater. By this is appears, that an oath taken according to any other form, or rite, then one’s, that swears is in vain; and no oath: and there is no swearing by any thing which the swearer thinks not God. For though people have sometimes used to swear by their kings, for fear, or flattery; yet they would have it thereby understood, they attributed to them divine honour. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
And the swearing unnecessarily by God, is but orphaning of his name: and swearing by other things, as people do in common discourse, is not swearing, but an impious custom, gotten by too much vehemence of talking. It appears also, that the oath adds nothing to the obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God, without the oath, as much as with it; if unlawful, binds not at all; though it be confirmed with an oath. “We do not think about it enough. We spend too much time cursing time—time waits for no man, time will tell, oh, the ravages of time, time flies! We do not think about the gift of time. Time gives us the chance to make mistakes and correct them, to regenerate, to grow. Time gives us the chance to forgive, to restore, to do better than we have ever done in the past. Time gives us the chance to be sorry when we fail and the chance to try to discover in ourselves a new heart. How we use this time means everything. Will we take the opportunity to transform ourselves, to admit our hideous blunders, and become against all odds, the people of our dreams? That is what it is about, right?—becoming the people of our dreams,” (page 375-376, The Wolves of Midwinter by Anne Rice). #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
One day a patient accused himself bitterly of being ungrateful, of being a burden on the analyst, of not sufficiently appreciating the fact that the analyst treated him at a small fee. However, at the end of the interview he found that he had forgotten to bring the money he had intended to pay that day. This was only one of many evidences of his wish to get everything for nothing. His profuse and generalized self-accusations had here as elsewhere the function of obscuring the concrete issue. Another example which may serve as illustration of many is a mature and intelligent woman felt guilty about having had temper tantrums as a child, although she knew, intellectually, that they had been provoked by her parents’ unreasonable conduct, and although in the meantime she had freed herself of the belief that one must think one’s parents beyond reproach. Nevertheless her guilt feelings on this score persisted so strongly that she was inclined to take her failure to make erotic contacts with men as a punishment for her hostility toward her parents. By blaming an infantile offense for her present incapability of making such contacts she disguised the factors factually operating, such as her own hostility toward men and her having withdrawn into a shell as a consequence of a fear of rejection. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
The self-recriminations not only protect against the fear of disapproval but also invite absolute reassurance, by provoking reassuring statements to the contrary. Even when no outside person is involved they provide reassurance by enhancing the neurotic’s self-respect, for they imply that one has such a keen moral judgment that one reproaches oneself for faults which others overlook and thus ultimately they make one feel that one is really a wonderful person. Moreover they give one relief, because they rarely concern the real issue of one’s discontentment with oneself, and therefore factually leave a secret door open for a belief that one is not so bad after all. A defense that is directly opposite to self-recrimination, and nevertheless fulfills the same purposes, is forestalling any criticism by always being right or perfect, thus leaving no vulnerable spots for criticism to find a foothold. Where this type of defense prevails any behaviour, even though glaringly wrong, will be justified with an amount of intellectual sophistry worthy of a cleaver and skillful lawyer. The attitude may go so far as to make it necessary to be right in the most insignificant and trifling details—to be always right about the weather, for example—because for such a person being wrong in any detail opens up the danger of being wrong altogether. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Usually a person of this type is unable to endure the slightest difference of opinion, or even a difference of emotional emphasis, because in one’s thinking even a minute disagreement is equivalent to a criticism. Tendencies of this kind account to a great extent for what is called pseudo-adaptation. This is found in persons who in spite of a severe neurosis manage to maintain in their own eyes, and sometimes also in those of the people around them, an appearance of being “normal” and well adapted. In neurotics of this type one will scarcely every go wrong in predicting an enormous fear of being found out or disapproved of. A third way in which the neurotic may protect oneself against disapproval is to take refuge in ignorance, illness or helplessness. I encountered a transparent example of this in a French girl whom I treated in German. She was one of the girls I have already mentioned who were sent to me under the suspicion of feeblemindedness. During the first few weeks of analysis I was doubtful myself about her mental capacity; she did not seem to understand anything I said, even though she understood Germany perfectly. I tried to say the same things in simpler language, with no better results. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
Finally two factors clarified the situation. She had dreams in which my office appeared as a jail, or as the office of a doctor who had examined her physically. Both ideas betrayed her anxiety at being found out, the latter dream because she was terrified of any physical examination. The other revealing factor was an incident in her conscious life. She had forgotten to present her passport at a certain time, as required by law. When at last she went to the official she pretended not to understand German, hoping in this way to escape punishment—an incident she related to me laughingly. She then recognized that she had been using the same tactics toward me, and for the same motives. For this time on she proved to be a very intelligent girl. She had been taking shelter behind ignorance and stupidity to escape the danger of being accused and punished. In principle the same strategy is pursued by anyone who feels and acts like an irresponsible, playful child who is not to be taken seriously. Some neurotic persons adopt this attitude permanently. Or even if they do not behave childishly they may refuse to take themselves seriously in their own feelings. The function of this attitude may be observed in analysis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Patients on the verge of having to recognize their own aggressive tendencies may suddenly feel helpless, suddenly act like a child, desiring nothing but protection and affection. Or they have dreams in which they find themselves small and helpless, carried in the mother’s womb or in her arms. If helplessness is not effective or applicable in a given situation, illness may serve the same purpose. That illness may serve as an escape from difficulties is well known. At the same time, however, it serves the neurotic as a screen against the realization that fear is making one recoil from tackling a situation as one should. A neurotic person who is having difficulties with one’s superior, for example, may find refuge in a server attack of indigestion; the appeal of disability at such time lies in the fact that it creates a definite impossibility of action, an alibi, so to speak, and thereby relives one of the realization of one’s cowardice. A final and very important defence against disapproval of any kind is a feeling of being victimized. By feeling abused the neurotic wards off reproach for one’s own tendencies to take advantage of others; by feeling miserably neglected one debars reproaches for one’s tendencies toward possessiveness; by feeling that others are not helpful one prevents them from recognizing one’s tendencies to defeat them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
This strategy of feeling victimized is so frequently used and tenaciously maintained because it is in fact the most effective method of defense. It enables the neurotic not only to ward off accusations but at the same time to put the blame on others. We must show our Scriptures not be in conflict with whatever [our critics] can demonstrate about the nature of things from reliable sources. In fact, it is safe to say that throughout much of church history, Scripture and right reason were considered twin allies to be prized and used by disciples of Jesus. “Nobody knows the actual day on which Christ was born. But December twenty-fifth was a great feast to the pagans of the ancient World, the day when the Sun was at its lowest ebb and people would gather in the fields, in the villages, and in the depths of the forest to beg for the Sun to come back to us at full strength, for the days to lengthen once more. And for warmth to return to the World, melting the deadly snows of Winter, and gently nourishing the crops of the field once again. That is the meaning of all the candles of Christmas, the bright electric lights on our Christmas trees. It is the meaning of all the celebrations throughout the season, that we have the hope always and forever of being better than we are, of triumphing over the darkness that might have dfeated us in the past, and realizing a brilliance never imagined before,” (pages 374-375, The Midwinters Wolves by Anne Rice). #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak—courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. “Think about it for a minute. Think about what it means to renew, to repent, to start all over again. We human beings always have the capacity. No matter how badly we stumble, we can get up and try again. No matter how miserably we fail ourselves and God and those around us, we can get up and start all over again. There is no midwinter so cold and so dark that we cannot reach for the shining light with both hands,” (page 374 The Midwinter Wolves by Anne Rice). While listening may be the most undervalued of all the communication skills, good people managers are likely to listen more than they speak. Perhaps that is why God gave us two ears and only one mouth. It does not matter what you intend to communicate, but how it is heard that counts. “I am grateful with all my heart that time is once more stretching out before me, providing me again with the chance to somehow—somehow—make amends for the things that I have done. God puts in our paths so many opportunities for that, does he not?—so many people out there who need so much from each and every one of us. He gives us people to help, people to serve, people to embrace, people to comfort, people to love. As long as I live and breathe, I am surrounded by these limitless opportunities, blessed by them on all side,” (page 376 The Midwinter Wolves by Anne Rice). #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway one’s audience and dictate its decision. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all people’s actions. In order that all people may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it. “And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord gives no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for the that they may accomplish the thing which he commands them. And it came to pass that when my father had heard these words he was exceedingly glad, for he knew that I had been blessed of the Lord. And I, Nephi, and my brethren took our journey in the wilderness, with our tents, to go up to the land of Jerusalem. And it came to pass that when we had gone up to the land of Jerusalem, I am my brethren did consult one with another. And we cast lots—who of us should go in unto the house of Laban. And it came to pass that the lot fell upon Laman; Laman went in unto the house of Laban, and he talked with him as he sat in his house. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
“And he desired of Laban the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass, which contained the genealogy of my father. And behold, it came to pass that Laban was angry, and thrust him out from his presence; and he would not that he should have the records. Wherefore, he said unto him: Behold thou art a robber, and I will slay thee. But Laman fled out of his presence, and told the things which Laban had done, unto us. And we began to be exceedingly sorrowful, and my brethren were about to return unto my father in the wilderness. But behold I said unto them that: As the Lord lives, and as we live, we will not go down unto our father in the wilderness until we have accomplished the thing which the Lord have commanded us. Wherefore, let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord; therefore let us go down to the land of our father’s inheritance, for behold he left gold and silver, and all manner of riches. And this he has done because of the commandments of the Lord. For he knew that Jerusalem must be destroyed, because of the wickedness of the people. For behold, they have rejected the words of the prophets. Wherefore, if my father should dwell in the land after he has been commanded to flee out of the land, behold, he would also perish. Wherefore, it must needs be that he flee out of the land,” reports 1 Nephi 3.7-18. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Christianity is to be identified neither with any Christian Church nor with Christendom as a whole. It embraces both Jesus as the Christ and what is called the “Logos spermatikos.” Every theology knows that there is a sense and a manner in which God is not limited by the Church, that Christ reaches humans outside of those who are official members of the Church. Whether they are aware of it or not, Christ is the unconditional concern. It has to do it even when it is impossible to call him by his name. Every ultimate concern, every protest in the name of the Unconditional against any kind of idolatry—of things, of nations, of doctrines—implies a share in the Christian witness. This explains the messianic eloquence that is it the faith itself in the New Being in Christ which seeks expression in the most meaningless situations as it brings justification in the heart marked by sin, in the mind smeared by unbelief. Christ as the Revelation of the Unconditional among humans must be accepted as the one to explain the contents of the Christian faith, and the datum has to be focused upon as the norm adopted by theology and streamlined according to the norm. O God, Who orders things in Heaven and Earth alike for the assistance of humankind; we beseech Thee that while we are labouring in the lower part of the Universe, Thou would mercifully refresh us by the protection of Thy ministers from above; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
And here is the widespread failure to attain Christian maturity among both leaders and followers, referred to earlier. Those who are Christians by profession—and seriously so, we must add—today do not usually have, are not led into, the VIM (Vision, Intention, Means) that would enable them to routinely progress to the point where what Jesus Himself did and taught would be the natural outflow of who they really are on the inside. Rather, what they are inwardly is left substantially as it was, as it is in non-Christians, and they are left constantly to battle with it. That is why today you find many professing Christians circling back to non-Christians sources to resolve the problems of their inner life. Instead of inward transformation, some outward from of religion—often today even called a spirituality—is taken or impsed as the goal of practical endeavour. What is then important is to be a “good____” (you can fill in the blank). And the respective social group—the “good____s”—wiill enforce that importance, on pain of disapproval or exclusion from the group. Or the individual even enforces it upon himself or herself as what is “obviously” right. However, whatever the detail, authentic inward transformation into Christlikeness is omitted. It is not envisioned, intended, or achieved. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Not so in the call of Jesus to live with one as one’s student or apprentice in His kingdom. By contrast, for Him and for His Father, the heart is what matters, and everything else will then come along. And the process of inward renovation starts from the stark vision of life in the Kingdom of God. There can be no ongoing devotion without confession, which can take place anytime. Ideally it ought to take place whenever we sin. However, all too often we are too proud and emotionally charged to acknowledge our sins at the time we commit it—for example, when we lost our temper in an argument. However, if we are overloaded with guilt, devotion is impossible. To live by grace is to live solely by the merit of Jesus Christ. To live by the grace is to live solely by the merit of Jesus Christ. To live by grace is to base my entire relationship with God, including my acceptance and standing with Him, on my union with Christ. It is to recognize that in myself I bring nothing of worth to my relationship with God, because even my righteous acts are like filthy rage in God’s sights (Isaiah 64.6). Even my best works are stained with mixed motives and imperfect performance. I never truly love God with all my heart, and I never truly love my neighbour with the degree or consistency with which I love myself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Yet God requires perfection. Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” reports Matthew 5.48. When we take Jesus’ words seriously, we are forced to say with the psalmist, “Thy commandment is exceedingly broad,” reports Psalm 119.96. What is the answer to out dilemma? All Christians recognize that we are justified—that is, declared righteous—solely on the basis of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us by God though faith (Romans 3.21-25). However, few of us fully recognize that we are also sanctified through faith in Christ. Sanctification, or holiness (the two words are virtually interchangeable), is essentially conformity to the moral character of God. We normally think of sanctification as progressive, as an inner change of our character whereby we are confronted more and more to the likeness of Christ. That is certainly a major part of sanctification, but not all of it. O Living God, I bless thee that I see the worst of my heart as well as the best of it, that I can sorrow for those sins that carry me from thee, that it is Thy deep and dear mercy to threaten punishment so that I may return, pray, live. My sin is to look on my faults and be discouraged, or to look on my good and be puffed up. I fall short of Thy glory every day by spending hours unprofitably, by thinking that the thing I do are good, when they are not done to thy end, nor spring from the rules of Thy word. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
My sin is to fear what never will be; I forget to submit to Thy will, and fail to be quiet there. However, Scripture teaches me that Thy active will reveals a steadfast purpose on my behalf, and this quietness my soul, and makes me love Thee. Keep me always in the understanding that saints mourn more for sin than other people, for when they see how great is Thy wrath against sin, and how Christ’s death alone pacifies that wrath, that makes them mourn the more. Help me to see that although I am in the wilderness it is not all briars and barrenness. I have bread from Heaven, streams from the rock, light by day, fire by night, Thy dwelling place and Thy mercy seat. I am sometimes discouraged by the way, but though winding and trying it is safe and short’ death dismays me, but my great high priest stands in its waters, and will open me a passage, and beyond is a better country. While I live let my life be exemplary, when I die may my end be peace. O Light of light, O Brightness indescribable, Christ our God, the Wisdom, Power, and Glory of the Father, Who didst appear visibly to all people as the Word made flesh, and having overcome the prince of darkness, did return to Thy throne on high; grant to us Thy suppliants, amid this dark World, the full outpouring of Thy splendour; appoint the Archangel Michael to be our defender, to guard our going out and coming in; and admit us to place on Thy right hand, to receive the crown from Thee. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
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The Condition Upon which God Hath Given Liberty to Humans is Eternal Vigilance!

An individual’s self-concept is the core of one’s personality. It affects every aspect of human behaviour: the ability to learn, the capacity to grow and change, the choice of friends, mates, and careers. It is no exaggeration to say that a strong beneficial self-image is the best possible preparation for success in life. The Master has one’s shortcomings or frailties just as we all have, but one also had what few of us have—a direct contact with God. Where is the person who is wise enough to give everyone else spiritual guidance, personal advice, marital counsel, and prediction of future? Who with a single look knows all about you as one already knows all about God and the Universe? Let us not look for fantasies of wishful thinking but see humans as humans. Let one not expect to find perfection in any mortal. Let one be satisfied to find someone who has so developed one’s spirituality that one is worthy to lead those who are still much in the rear. There is no being without one’s defects: it is a dreamer’s notion that the perfect human being exists on our planet. Hence the disciples who servilely copy their guru in all things may copy one’s defects too! Where is such a master, such a faultless paragon of virtue wisdom strength and pity, to be found? #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Look where we will, every person falls short of the ideal, shows an imperfection or betrays a weakness. The ideal self-actualized person portrayed in philosophical (as distinct from mystical) books, has not come to life in our times however much one may have done so in ancient times. Behind the majestic phrases of most of these spiritual teachers, we usually find in the end of a searching investigation based on living with them or on the historic fact of their lives, that there stand for frail mortals. Hence those few who emerge as being one with, and not inferior to, their teachings stand out all the more truly as great beings. It is misleading to put such a person forward, as so many people put one forward, as being faultless. One’s consciousness of God may be perfect, but one’s conduct as a human being may be not. Is there anywhere a faultless person? One may be wise but one may not be wise all the time. For history shows lapses of judgment, impulsive actions, and other regrettable happenings due to karmic pressures even where least expected. There are many ways to undermine the student-professor relationship: if the guru is put upon an unreachable pedestal, if one is turned into a god and one’s humanness is denied, or if the guru is believed to be perfection itself. The possibility for perfection in any person is a debatable point. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
When considering fame it can be useful and convenient to consider ill-famed or infamy, this arising when there is a circle of persons who know ill of an individual without having met one personally. The obvious function of ill-fame is social control, of which two distinct possibilities must be mentioned: Formal social control is the first. There are functionaries, and circles of functionaries, employed to scan various publics for the presence of identifiable individuals whose record and reputation have made them suspect, or even “wanted” for arrest. For example, during a mental hospital study, I knew a patient who had “town parole” and also a record of having harassed some youths. On entering any of the neighbouring movies houses he was likely to be spotted by the manager and made to leave. He was, in short, too ill-famed to attend movies in the neighbourhood. Well-known “hoods” have had the same problem, but a scale larger than could be effected by theater managers. It is here that one deals with further examples of the occupation of making persona identifications. Floorwalkers in stores, for example, sometimes have extensive records of the appearance of professional shoplifters along with that identity peg called the modus operandi. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The production of personal identification may in fact be accorded a social occasion of its own, as in the police line-up. Dickens, in describing the social mixing of prisoners and visitors in a London jail, provides another example, called “sitting for one’s portrait,” whereby a new prisoner was obliged to sit in a chair while the guards gathered and looked at the individual, fixing one’s image in their kinds so as to be able to spot the individual later. Functionaries whose job is to check up on the possible presence of the ill-reputed may operate in the public at large; and this time the famed can be seen to be in much the same position as the ill-famed. It is possible for the circle of those who know of an individual (but are not known by one) to include the public at large, not merely those employed to make identifications. (In fact the terms “fame” and “ill-famed” imply that the citizenry at large must possess an image of the individual.) No doubt the mass media play the central role here, making it possible for a “private” person to be transformed into a “public” figure. Now it seems the case that the public image of an individual, that is, the image of one available to those who do not know one personally, will necessarily be somewhat different from the image one projects through direct dealings with those who know one personally. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Where an individual has a public image, it seems to be constituted from a small selection of acts which may be true of one, which facts are inflated into a dramatic and newsworthy appearance, and then used as a full picture of one. In consequence a special type of stigmatization can occur. The figure the individual cuts in daily life before those with whom know has routine dealings is likely to be dwarfed and spoiled by virtual demands (whether favourable or unfavourable) created by one’s public image. This seems especially to occur when the individual is no longer engaged in newsworthy larger events and must everywhere face being received as someone who no longer is what one once was; it seems also likely to occur when notoriety is acquired due to a brief and uncharacteristic, accidental event which exposes the individual to public identification without providing one any compensating claim to desired attributes. In law, efforts of an individual to remain a private citizen or regain that status have come to form part of the question of privacy. People have the right to be let alone. An implication of these comments is that the famous and the infamous ay have more in common than either has with what headwaiters and gossip columnists call “nobodies,” for whether a crowd wants to show love of hate for an individual, the same disruption of one’s ordinary movement can occur. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
This type of lack of anonymity is to be contrasted to the type based on social identity, as when an individual with a physical imperfection feels he or she is constantly stared at. Infamous hangmen and famous actors have both found it expedient to board a train at an unanticipated station or to wear a disguise; individuals may even find themselves using stratagems to escape hostile public attention that they also used at an earlier time in their story to escape adulatory attention. In any case, readily accessible information about the management of personal identity is t be found in the biographies and autobiographies of famous and infamous people. An individual, then, may be seen as the central point in a distribution of persons who either merely know about one or know one personally, all of whom may have somewhat different amounts of information concerning one. Let me repeat that although the individual’s daily round will routinely bring one into contact with individuals who know one differently, these differences will ordinarily be incompatible; in fact, some kind of single biographical structure will be sustained. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
A person’s relationship to one’s boss and one’s relationship to one’s child may be vastly different, so that one cannot easily play the part of employee while playing the part of father, but should the person, while walking with one’s child, meet one’s boss, a greeting and introduction will be possible without either the child or the boss radically reorganizing their personal identification of the person—both having known of the existence and role of the other. He well-established etiquette of the “curtesy introduction,” in fact, assumes that the person we have a role relation to quite properly has other kinds of relationships to other kinds of person. I assume, then, that the apparently haphazard contacts of everyday life may still constitute some kind of structure holding the individual to one biography, and this in spite of the multiplicity of selves that role and audience segregation allow one. We have now begun to look at a characteristic whose development markedly distinguishes the human from other animal–’our greater ability to steer behaviour in a particular direction. The potential for this is to come extent built in; that is why it was worth while studying in such detail the process of learning to recognize a triangle. That process is the prototype for all direction-giving processes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Simplifying grossly, we may say that because of the way the eye is constructed, its attention travels between angles until the structure “triangle” is registered. When this happened very often, a more permanent structure is established: the concept of t for triangle. Once this has happened, the concept “triangle” sometimes comes to mind when angles are perceived. We begin sometimes to think “triangle” before we have counted the corners. Here is a kind of system where the perception of two angles (or sometimes just one) can call forth the concept “triangle,” and where the concept of “triangle” calls forth the activity of looking for angles. “Looking for” (formally called expectancy) is a direction- giving process, closely related to attention-giving. Referring to the reciprocal facilitations which operate when looking at the triangle. Attention is the central reinforcement of a sensory process. But the same process is called expectancy when the sensory reinforcement is delayed. I shall usually call this process “expectation.” Seeing an angle, the eye is drawn along a line to the adjacent angle. This is the influence of the past. It can however become the influence of the future. Because the eye is drawn along, there is an element of action. A neural organization can come into being, which involves both an expectation of what will happen next, and an impulse to do the next thing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Structural changes produce enduring concepts, and perhaps quite elaborate structures of ideas and feelings which give meaning to much that happens. One consequence of such structures is to make it possible for us to expect events to happen which have not happened yet. Expectations can cause a message to get organized in a more powerful way than the message would warrant if the structures had not already become established, and in a more powerful way than other messages coming in at the same time. Expectations give meaning to current events. So much so that expectation is often the same as meaning. If the central “steps” assembly reverberates easily and is a relatively enduring structure, than a great variety of messages about height can evoke a sense of danger—height will come to stand for sanger; height will bring with it the expectation that something dangerous is about to happen. This sense of danger will have come from the person’s anticipation that he or she is about to remember a painful experience associated with the upstairs room. This anticipation is called signal anxiety: the present situation is a signal (symbol) that something else will happen next, in this case, something undesirable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The central process which lead to expectancy and meaning can also act selectively so that certain stimuli are sought for—“selected.” Insofar as people’s lives in society, as one of many creaturely beings, as one of many individuals, one is influenced by one’s environment. One also constantly abuts against one’s intrinsic limits. Being justified by grace, simul peccator et justs, one runs the permanent risk of negating one of the two poles of one’s existence, sin or justice. Thus one does not live in a comfortably peaceful region, but rather on a spiritual boundary line between the demonic—or the realm of idolatry, of misinterpretation—and justice by grace. Ultimately this situation, which is psychologically translated as an awareness of sin, stems from the “spiritual cleavage” between essence and existence, between Eden and the World. It is the drama and also the privilege of modern humans that one is more conscious than one’s forerunners were of this “boundary situation.” Hence the existential questions that crop up in one concerning the means of being, of existence and of life, to which one finds no ultimate answer in oneself. No answer does not mean that a person is not ultimately concerned regarding the dilemmas of existence. Far from it, an analysis of one’s situation shows that humans are away of something that calls for unconditional allegiance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Beyond the contradictions of the dialectic of existence one senses, however dimly, a sort of undercurrent to being, a ground of being where contradictions would be resolved and dilemmas uncoil themselves if one could reach so far. The great religions and their philosophical or political substitutes have tried to give it a name and to elaborate means of allegiance to it. The Christian faith knows that this unconditional concern has been revealed to us in Jesus as the Christ. The ultimate ground of being in one other than God. The method of apologetics, therefore, would consist in witnessing to the New Being in Jesus as Christ at the moment when humans reach awareness of the Unconditional in oneself. To be efficient today, the theological norm must be apprehended ad an answer to human’s situation, as the name for the ultimate ground of being. This is why we follow a method of correlation wherein an existential analysis, a transcendent realism, lays bare human’s ultimate concern and proceeds to show that the New Being in Jesus as the Christ is the God-given answer to human’s questions, the unfolding of one’s situation, the justification by grace of one’s existence. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
When a person is ultimately concerned, when one has reached the bottom of being and has given oneself to it, even thought in doubt and with hesitancy—for these belong to one’s situation as human—then one is indeed justified by faith. Whether one knows it or not, whether one has heard of Christ or not, one is then grasped by the New Being. For this is the Protestant protest: to assert God in the midst of the demonic, the Unconditional amidst the conditioned. This is justification by grace alone: to be take hold of by the Christ now, not doctrinally but existentially, not in theory but in fact. Every unconditional concern stamps a person as having been reached by the New Being in Christ, by a reality in which the self-estrangement of our existence is overcome, a reality of reconciliation and reunion, of creativity, meaning and hope. Adhesion to the Unconditional resolves the contradictions of the conditions of existence. Then the New Being re-establishes the courage to be, which is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. Then humans are justified by grace alone. We must bring light to the unconditional concern of humans and show the identity of the Unconditional, with which humans are concerned, with the New Being manifested in Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Hence the norm is best expressed thus: The material norm of systematic theology today is the New Being in Jesus as the Christ as our ultimate concern. Theology is interested in this ultimate or unconditional concern in itself. In the Christian faith it is equated with Christ himself as the revealer of the New Being. Theology today has to show people Christ as the Revelation of the Unconditional. The Eye of Providence or the all-seeing eye is a symbol showing an eye surrounded by rays of light or glory, and usually enclosed by a triangle. It is sometimes interpreted as representing the eye of God keeping watch on humankind. In 1782 the Eye of Providence was adopted as part of the symbolism on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States of America. On the seal, the Eye is surrounded by the words “Annuit Coeptis,” meaning “He approves (or has approved) our undertakings,” “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” meaning “New Order of the Ages,” and the lowest level of the pyramid showing the years 1776 in Roman numerals. The Eye is positioned above an unfinished pyramid with thirteen steps, representing the original thirteen states and the future growth of the country—Manifest Destiny. The combined implication is that the Eye, or God favours the prosperity of the United States of America. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
It is written: “The grace of God is life everlasting,” reports Romans 6.23. However, life everlasting consists in the vision of the Divine essence, according to the words: “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true God,” excreta reports John 17.3. Therefore to see the essence of God is possible to the created intellect by grace, and not by nature. Knowledge is regulated according as the thing known is the knower. However, the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Hence the knowledge of every knower is ruled according to its own nature. If therefore the mode of anything’s being exceeds the mode of the knower, it must result that the knowledge of the object is above the nature of the knower. Now the mode of being of things is manifold. For some things have being only in this one individual matter; as all bodies. However, others are subsisting natures, not residing in matter at all, which, however, are not their own existence, but receive it; and these are the incorporeal beings, called Angels. However, to God alone does it belong to His own subsistent being. Therefore what exists only in individual matter we know naturally, forasmuch as our soul, whereby we know, is the form of certain matter. Now our soul possesses two cognitive powers; one is the act of a corporeal organ, which naturally knows things existing in individual matter; hence sense knows only the singular. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
There is another kind of cognitive power in the soul, called the intellect; and this is not the act of any corporeal organ. Wherefore the intellect naturally knows natures which exist only in individual matter; not as they are in such individual matter, but according as they are abstracted therefore by the considering act of the intellect; hence it follows that through the intellect we can understand these objects as Universal; and this is beyond power of the sense. Now the angelic intellect naturally knows natures that are not in matter; but this is beyond the power of the intellect of our soul in the state of its present life, untied as it is to the body. It follows therefore that to know self-subsistent being is natural to the divine intellect alone; and this is beyond the natural power of any created intellect; for no creature is its own existence, forasmuch as its existence is participated. Therefore the created intellect cannot see the essence of God, unless God by His grace united Himself to the created intellect, as an object made intelligible to it. This mode of knowing God is natural to an Angel—namely, to know Him by His own likeness refulgent in the Angel oneself. However, to know God by any created similitude is not to know the essence of God, as was shown above. Hence is does not follow that an Angel can know the essence of God by one’s own power. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The general pattern of personal transformation, which also applies to spiritual formation in the Christian tradition, should now be clear. Indeed, this is the pattern of al human accomplishment, even that which—like spiritual formation can only occur at the initiative and through the constant direction and upholding of God, or through grace. To keep the general pattern in mind, we will use the little acronym “VIM,” as in the phrase “vim and vigour.” Vision, Intention, Means. “Vim” is a derivative of the Latin term “vis,” meaning direction, strength, force, vigour, power, energy, or virtue; and sometimes meaning sense, import, nature, or essence. Spiritual formation in Christlikeness is all of this to human existence. It is the path by which we can truly, as Paul told the Ephesians, “be empowered in the Lord and in the energy of his might,” as reported in Ephesians 6.10 and “become mighty with his energy through his Spirit entering into the inward person,” reports Ephesians 3.16. If we are to be spiritually formed in Christ, we must have and must implement the appropriate vision, intention, and means. Not just any path we take will do. If this VIM pattern is not in place properly and held there, Christ simply will not be formed in us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Larger segments, especially classic texts, are tailor-made for meditation. The Ten Commandments, with the first four Godward commands, and the six manward injunction following, should be regularly murmured in reverent self-examination (cf. Exodus 20.1-17 and Deuteronomy 5.1-22). There are eight Beatitudes which consecutively considered poverty of spirit, mouring over sin, gentleness, spiritual hunger, mercy, purity, peacemaking, and persecution. The Lord’s Prayer begins with the foundational awareness “Our Father, who art in Heaven” and then presents three upward petitions and three horizontal petitions—a perfect pattern for prayer and meditation. There are endless possibilities, including he so-called kenosis passage, Philippians 2.5-11, which begins, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” Other food for meditation includes Jesus’ parables, the Psalms, and the epigrams of James. Both practical and esoteric passages can provide divine substance for reverent soul chatter. The effect of meditation are supernal, bringing: Revival—“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul,” reports Psalm 19.7. Wisdom—“The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple,” reports Psalm 19.7; “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me,” reports Psalm 119.97, 98. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Increases in our Faith—“Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ,” reports Romans 10.17. We may be challenged, convicted, and exhilarated with the call to meditation. The question is, how is this to be done? The Scriptures say it should be continual, telling us we ought to mediate “day and night” reports Psalm 1.2; cf. 119.97), and even while we lie awake at night reports Psalm 63.6; 119:148. Ideally, we are to make meditation part of our regular devotion, giving hidden time to reverently muttering God’s Word. However, even our bust schedules can be punctuated with Scriptural meditation—in the car, at lunch break, or waiting for a bus. Select a choice text, write in on a card, and slip it into your pocket. Pull it out on those spare moments. Murmur it. Memorize it. Pray it. Say it. Share it. The discipline of meditation is a must. Moses told Israel as he finished the “Songs of Moses”: “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day. They are not just idle words for you—they are your life,” reports Deuteronomy 32.46,47. “Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’ And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,” reports Hebrews 10.9-10. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The great mistake made by most of the Lord’s people is in hoping to discover in themselves that which is to be found in Christ alone. Most of us have a tendency to seek within ourselves what is to be found in Christ alone. O Merciful God, that we who by violating the Divine precepts fell away from the happiness of Paradise, may by the keeping of Thy commandments regain the access to eternal bliss; through Jesus Christ our Lord. No person is obliged to accuse oneself. A covenant to accuse oneself, without assurance of pardon, is likewise invalid. For in the condition of nature, where every person is judge, there is no place for accusation: and in the civil state, the accusation is followed with punishment; which being force, a person is not obliged not to resist. The same is also true, of the accusation of those, by whose condemnation a person falls into misery; as of a father, wife, or benefactor. For the testimony of such an accuser, if it be not willingly given, is presumed to be corrupted by nature; and therefore not to be received: and where a person’s testimony is not to be credited, one is not bound to give it. Also accusations upon torture, are not to be reputed as testimonies. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
For torture is to be used but as means of conjecture, and light, in the further examination, and search of truth; and what is in that case confessed, tends to ease of one that is tortured; not to the informing of the torturers: and therefore ought not to have the credit of a sufficient testimony: for whether one deliver oneself by true, or false accusation, one does it by right of preserving one’s own life. Lehi’s sons return to Jerusalem to obtain the plates of brass—Laban refuses to give the plates up—Nephi exhorts and encourages his brethren—Laban steals their property and attempts to slay them (sliving)—Laman and Lemuel smite Nephi and Sam and are reproved by an Angel. About 600-592 Before Christ. “And it came to pass that I, Nephi, returned from speaking with the Lord, to the tent of my father. And it came to pass that he spake unto me, saying: Behold I have a dreamed a dream, in the which the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brethren shall return to Jerusalem. For behold, Laban hat the record of the Jews and also a genealogy of my forefathers, and they are engraven upon plates of brass. Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brothers should go unto the house of Laban, and seek the records, and being them down hither into the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“And now, behold thy brothers murmur, saying it is a hard thing which I have required of them; but behold I have not required it of them, but it is a commandment of the Lord. Therefore go, my son, and thou shalt be favoured of the Lord, because thou has not murmured,” reports 1 Nephi 3.1-6. O Lord, help me to approach thee with becoming conception of Thy nature, relations and designs. Thou inhabitest eternity, and my life is nothing before thee; Thou dwellest in the highest Heaven and this cannot contain Thee; I live in a house of clay. Thy power is almighty; I am crushed before the moth. Thy understanding is infinite; I know nothing as I ought to know. Thou canst not behold evil; I am vile. In my ignorance, weakness, fears, depression, may Thy Spirit help my infirmities with supplies of wisdom, strength and comfort. Let me faithfully study my character, be willing to bring it to light, observe myself in my trials, judge the reality and degree of my grace, consider how I have been ensnared or overcome. Grant that I may never trust my heart, depend upon any present resolutions, but be strong in the grace of Jesus: that I may know how to obtain relief from a guilty conscience without feeling reconciled to my imperfections. Sustain me under my trials and improve them to me; give me grace to rest in thee, and assure me of deliverance. May I always combine they majesty with thy mercy, and connect Thy goodness with Thy greatness. Then shall my heart always rejoice in praises to thee. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Take Time to Honour God, He is Moved by Your Faith—Faith Opens the Door for the Extraordinary!

The business of expanding your consciousness is not an option. Either you are expandable or you are expendable. Many people are mislead into thinking, as popular reports sometimes suggest, that neurophysiologists have found many answers to the problem of human behaviour. Most scholars in the field of the neurosciences, on the contrary, have a very different attitude. Our knowledge and concepts of the central neural organization of aggressive behaviour are constricted by the fact that most of the information has been derived from animal experiments, hence almost nothing is known about the relation of the central nervous system to the “feeling” or “affective” aspects of emotions. We are entirely confined to observation and experimental analysis of the expressive or behavioural phenomena and the objectively recorded peripheral bodily changes. Obviously, even these procedures are not entirely reliable, and despite extensive research efforts it is difficult to interpret behavioral on the basis of these clues alone. Those who hope to solve the problem of the neurophysiology of the mind are like people at the foot of a mountain. They stand in the clearings they have made on the foothills, looking up at the mountain they hope to scale. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
However, the pinnacle of neurophysiology is hidden in eternal clouds and many believe it can never be conquered. Surely if the day does dawn when a human reached complete understanding of one’s own brain and mind, it may be one’s greatest conquest, one’s final achievement. There is only one method that a scientist may use in one’s scientific work. This is the method of observation of phenomena of nature followed by comparative analysis and supplemented by experimentation in the light of reasoned hypothesis. Neurophysiologist who follow the rules of the scientific method in al honesty will hardly pretend that their own scientific work entitles them to answer these questions. Not only the neurosciences and psychology but many other fields need to be integrated to create a science of humans—fields such as paleontology, anthropology, history, the history of religions (myths and rituals), biology, physiology, genetics. The subject matter of the “science of humans” is human: human as a total biologically and historically evolving being who can be understood only if we see the interconnectedness between all one’s aspects, if we look at one as a process occurring within a complex system with many subsystems. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The behavioural sciences (psychology and sociology), are interested mainly in what people do and how one can be made to do what one does, not why one does what one does and in who one is. They have to a considerable extent become an obstacle to and a substitute for the development of an integrated science of humans. The brain is more and more understood as a whole, as one system, so that behaviour cannot be explained by referring to some of its parts. Impressive data supporting this view have been presented by E. Valenstien, who has shown that the supposed hypothalamic “centers” for hunger, thirst, pleasures of the flesh excreta, are not, if they really exist, as pure as previously thought—that stimulation of a “center” for one behaviour can elicit behaviour appropriate to another if the environment provides stimuli consistent with the second. Aggression (actually, nonverbal communication of threat) elicited in a squirrel monkey will not be believed by another monkey if the threat is made by the second monkey’s social inferior. These data are consistent with the holistic view that the brain takes account, in its reckoning of what behaviour to command, of more than one strand of incoming stimulation—that the total state of the physical and social environment at the same time modifies the meaning of a specific stimulus. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
However, the skepticism regarding the capacity of neurophysiology to explain human behaviour adequately does not means a denial of the relative validity of the many experimental findings, especially in the last five decades. These findings, while they might be reformulated and integrated in a more global view, are valid enough to give us important clues for the understanding of one kind of aggression, that of defensive aggression. Neurophysiologist have concentrated their efforts on finding the brain areas which are the substrates of the most elementary impulses and behaviours needed for survival because Dr. Darwin propositioned that the structure and functioning of the brain is governed by the principle of the survival of the individual and the species. There is general agreement with MacLean’s conclusion, who called these basic brain mechanisms the four Fs: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and the performance of pleasures of the flesh activities. As can easily be recognized, these activities are vitally necessary for the physical survival of the individual and the species. (That humans have basic needs beyond physical survival whose realization is necessary for their functioning as a total being will be discussed later.) #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
As far as aggression and flight are concerned—they are controlled by different areas of the brain, but the term “controlled” is quite inadequate. The response is one process going on in other parts of the brain, interacting with the specific area which is stimulated. Nonetheless, it has been shown, for example, that affective reaction of rage and its corresponding aggressive behaviour pattern can be activated by direct electrical stimulation of various areas, such as the amygdala, the lateral hypothalamus, some parts of the mesencephalon, and the central gray matter; and it can be inhibited by stimulating other structures, such as the septum, the circumvolution of the cingulum, and the caudal nucleus. With great surgical ingenuity some investigations were able to implant electrodes in a number of specific areas of the brain. They established a two-way connection for observation. By low voltage electrical stimulation of an area they were able to study changes of behaviour in animals, and later in humans. They could demonstrate, for instance, the arousal of intensely aggressive behaviour by the direct electric stimulation of certain areas, and the inhibition of aggression by stimulating certain others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
On the other hand, when emotions like rage, fear, pleasure, excreta were aroused by environmental stimuli, they could measure the electrical activity of these various areas of the brain. They could also observe the permanent effects produced by the destruction of certain areas of the brain. It is indeed quite impressive to witness how a relatively small increase in the electric charge in an electrode implanted in one of the neural substrates of aggression can produce a sudden outburst of uncontrolled, murderous rage and how the reduction of electric stimulation or the stimulation of an aggression-inhibitory center can equally suddenly stop this aggression. Delgado’s spectacular experiment of stopping a charging bull by the stimulation of an inhibitory area (by remote control) has aroused considerable popular interest in this procedure. That a response is activated in some brain areas and inhibited in others is by no means characteristic of aggression; the same duality exists with regard to other impulses. The brain is, in fact, organizes as a dual system. Unless there are specific stimuli (external or internal), aggression is in a state of fluid equilibrium, because activating and inhibiting areas keep each other in a relatively stable balance. This can be recognized particularly clearly when either an activating or an inhibiting area is destroyed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Starting with the classic experiment by Heinrich Kluver and P.C. Bucy, it has been demonstrated, for instance, that destruction of the amygdala transformed animals (rhesus monkeys, wolverines, wildcats, rats, and others) in such a way that they lost—at least temporarily—their capacity for aggressive, violent reactions, even under strong provocation. On the other hand, the destruction of aggression-inhibiting areas, such as small areas of the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus, produces permanently aggressive cats and rats. Given the dual organization of the brain, the crucial question arises: What are the factors that disturb the balance and produce manifest rage and corresponding violent behaviour? We have already seen that one way in which such disturbance of the balance can be produced is by electric stimulation or destruction of any of these areas (aside from hormonal and metabolic changes). Mark Ervin emphasized that such disturbance of the equilibrium can also occur due to various forms of brain diseases that alter the normal circuitry of the brain. Two kinds of changes affect the neural pathways. One kind is the momentary electrochemical change which is the physical means by which impulses travel along the nerves. This change depends on stimulation: when the stimuli cease, so do this process. This is how the environment—the source of many stimuli—controls the behaviour of the organism. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The other kind of change has to do with what happens at the synapse of neurons which frequently activate another. With use, more permanent structural changes take place which enable impulses to travel more easily through these synapses than others: facilitation. It is now generally believed that there are these two kinds of effects. There is a such thing as Phi elements which are concerned with momentary discharges, and Psi elements which bind nervous energy on a more permanent basis (cathexis). This difference, between fleeting and more enduring changes in the nervous system, makes it possible for more central dominance to emerge. Central dominance, from this perspective, accounts for the relatively slight effect made by feeling changes—particular messages being sent along at any moment of perception—on the more enduring structures which are slowly being built up in the course of facilitation, and confirmed by reverberation. This is how the organism controls its own behaviour, instead of being controlled by environmental stimuli only. Enduring changes in the pathways affect the reception and organization of subsequent messages, more than these later messages affect the existing organization. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
To establish more central control is a victory of the organism over the environment, enabling the individual to adapt the environment in its own interest. Past memories can then be drawn upon to evaluate current events, giving individuals the benefit of past experiences before they take action. The disproportionate fear of disapproval may extend blindly to all human beings or it may extend only to friends—although usually the neurotic is unable to distinguish clearly between friends and enemies. In the beginning it refers only to the outside World, and to a greater or lesser extent it always remains related to the disapproval of others, but it may also become internalized. The more this happens, the more the disapproval from outside becomes unimportant in comparison with the disapproval of the self. The fear of disapproval may appear in various forms. Sometimes it shows in a constant fear of annoying people; the neurotic may be afraid, for example, to refuse an invitation, disagree with an opinion, express any wishes, fail to conform to the given standards, be in any way conspicuous. It may appear in a constant fear of people finding out about one; even when one feels one is liked one’s inclination is to withdraw in order to forestall being found out and dropped. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
It also may come out in an inordinate reluctance to let others know anything about one’s own private affairs, or in a disproportionate anger at any harmless questions concerning oneself, because one feels that such questions are attempts to try to pry into one’s affairs. The fear of disapproval is one of the outstanding factors that makes the analytical process difficult for the analyst and painful for the patient. Different though each individual analysis is from the other, all have in common the feature that the patient, while desiring the analyst’s help and while wishing to reach an understanding, must at the same time fight off the analyst as a most dangerous intruder. It is this fear that induces the individual to act as if one were a criminal before a judge, and, like the criminal, one is secretly grimly determined to deny and to mislead. This attitude may appear in dreams of being pushed to confession and reacting to it with agony. One patient of mine, at a time when we were close to uncovering some of one’s repressed tendencies, had a day dream which was significant in this respect. One imagined he was a boy who had the custom of finding refuge, every now and then, on a dream island. There the boy became part of a community governed by a law prohibiting any revelation of this island’s existence and demanding the death of any possible intruder. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
A person whom the boy loved, and who represented the analyst in some disguised form, happened to find one’s way to the island. According to the law one should have been killed. The boy could save him, however, by pledging that he himself would never return to the island. This was an artistic expression of the conflict which from the beginning to the end of the analysis was present in one or another form, a conflict between liking the analyst and hating him because he wanted to intrude into hidden thoughts and feelings, a conflict between the patient’s impulse to fight in defense of one’s secrets and the necessity of giving them up. If the fear of disapproval is not generated by guilt feelings it may be asked why the neurotic is then so much concerned about being detected and disapproved of. The main factor that accounts for the fear of disapproval is the great discrepancy that exists between the façade which the neurotic shows both to the World and to oneself and all the repressed tendencies that lie hidden behind the façade. Although one suffers, even more than one realizes, at not being at one with oneself, at all the pretenses one must keep up, one has nevertheless to defend these pretenses with all one’s energy, because they represent the bulwark that protects one from one’s lurking anxiety. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
If we recognize that these things he has to hide form the basis of his fear of disapproval we can understand better why the disappearance of certain “guilt feelings” cannot possibly free one from one’s fear. There is more that has to be changed. To put it very bluntly, it is the whole insincerity in one’s personality or rather, in the neurotic part of one’s personality, that is responsible for one’s fear of disapproval, and it is in this insincerity that one fears detection. As to the special content of one’s secrets, one wants in the first place to conceal the sum total of what is usually covered by the term aggression. This term is used to include not only one’s reactive hostility—anger, revenge, envy, desire to humiliate, and the like—but all one’s secret demands on others. Since I have already discussed these in detail it suffices here to say briefly that he does not want to stand on his own feet, that he does not want to make efforts of his own in order to achieve what he wants; instead he inwardly insists on feeding on other persons’ likes, whether by domineering and exploiting or by the means of affection, “love” or submissiveness. As soon as his hostile reactions or his demands are touched upon, anxiety develops, not because he feels guilty but because he sees that his chances of getting the support he needs are endangered. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In the second place he wants to hide how weak and insecure and helpless he feels, how little he can assert himself, how much anxiety he has. For this reason he builds up a façade of strength. However, the more his particular strivings for security are focused on dominance, and thus the more his pride is also linked with the notion of strength, the more he thoroughly despises himself. He not only feels that there is danger in weakness but also considers it despicable, in himself as well as others, and he classes as weakness any inadequacy whether it concerns not being master in one’s own houses, inability to overcome barriers within oneself, having to accept help, or even being possessed by anxiety. Since he thus essentially despises any “weakness” in himself, and since he cannot help believing that others will despise him likewise if they find out his weaknesses, he makes desperate efforts to hide them, but always with the fear that he will be found out sooner or later; therefore the continued anxiety. Thus guilt feelings and their accompanying self-recriminations are not only the result, instead of the cause, of a fear of disapproval, but they are also a defense against this fear. They fulfill the double purpose of inviting reassurance and of blurring the real issue. The latter purpose they accomplish either by diverting attention from what should be concealed, or by exaggerating so greatly that they appear untrue. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
An illustration of the general pattern of personal transformation is provided by programs that teach people to refrain from doing something very harmful, something that could possibly lead to untimely death. A desirable state of being is envisioned, and an intention to realize it is actuated in decision. Means are applied to fulfill the intention (and the corresponding decision) by producing the desirable state of being. This includes a conscious involvement of God in the individual’s life because it is highly effective in brining about personal transformation. It works in terms of essential structures of the human self revealed by God through His people. When we stop to think about it, there is no such thing as unqualified freedom. Such “freedom” would not be freedom, it would be anarchy. It would be everyone doing what is right in one’s own eyes; and given our sinful nature, it would be total chaos. In the Untied States, we say we live in a “free country.” We understand that freedom to be political freedom: the right to have a say in our government. However, we all recognize we are not free to disobey the laws of our state or nation. We are not free, for example, to drive on the left side of the highway. My son observed a humorous example of freedom when he visited a country in which automobile drivers are undisciplined and “free spirited.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
He saw cars stopped at a railroad crossing for a passing train. Instead of lining up behind one another to cross in their proper turn, several cars lined up at the crossing guard accord the entire road. Each driver wanted to be the first to cross when the guard was raised. However, when the train had passed, lo and behold, cars were lined up completely across the road on the other side of the tracks. “Freedom” quickly turned to chaos! That kind of thing happens in a much more serious way when we insist on unqualified freedom from the law of God. We have indeed been set free from the bondage and curse that results from breaking the law. And we have been called to freedom from works as a means of obtaining any merit with God. However, we have not been called to freedom from the laws as an expression of God’s will for our daily living. Paul said, “For in my inner being I delight in God’s laws,” and “I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s laws,” reports Romans 7.22,25. A few verses before he had characterized God’s law as “holy, righteous and good” as reported in Romans 7.12. It seems inconceivable that Paul would want to be free, or urge others to be free, from what was holy, righteous, and good—that in which he himself delighted. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
So, then, God’s law is not opposed to grace, nor is it an enemy of grace. Neither is the law of God opposed to us as we seek to live by grace. To live by grace means we understand that God’s blessing on our lives is not conditioned by our obedience of disobedience but by the perfect obedience of Christ. it means that out of grateful response to the grace of God, we seek to understand His will and to obey Him, not to be blessed, but because we have been blessed. When the Psalmist speaks of meditating on the Law of God day and night (Psalm 1.2), he uses a word which means “to mutter.” This word was used to describe the murmurings of kings in Psalm 2.1, and for the chattering of doves in Isiah 59.11. In fact, St. Augustine translated Psalm 1.2, “On his law he chatters day and night.” Meditation is intrinsically verbal. This means the Psalmist memorizes God’s Word—for one cannot continually mutter the Scripture without memorizing it, and vice versa. Personally applied, this tells us that along with our systematic reading of the Bible, we ought to select especially meaningful segments to reverently mutter over. Sometimes it may be a single verse—Philippians 3.10, for example, the four emphases of which I like to murmur in the NASB: that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being confronted to His death. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Slowly and prayerfully turning over Scripture in this manner engages the eyes, the ears, and the mouth, and drills through the serpentinite to the heart—maximizing internalization and devotion. “And thus Laman and Lemuel, being the eldest, did murmur against their father. And they did murmur because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them. Neither did they believe that Jerusalem, that great city, could be destroyed according to the words of the prophets. And they were like unto the Jews who were at Jerusalem, who sought to take away the life of my father (Lehi). And it came to pass that my father did speak unto them in the valley of Lemuel, with power, being filled with the Spirit, until their frames did shake before him. And he did confound them, that they durst not utter against him; wherefore, they did as he commanded them. And my father dwelt in a tent. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, being exceedingly young, nevertheless being large in stature, and also having great desires to know of the mysteries of God, wherefore, I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father; wherefore, I did not rebel against him like unto my brothers,” 1 Nephi 1.12-16. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Grant us, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, ever to rejoice in devotion to Thee; because our happiness is perpetual and full, if we are continually serving the Author of all good; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let Thy faithful people rejoice evermore in Thy benefits; that being ordered by Thy governance, they may please Thee in their lives, and happily obtain the good which they pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O Almighty God, that we may attain to the fulness of joy, and be the more earnestly devoted to Thy Majesty; through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Lord, pour into our hearts Thy servants that joy of the righteous which is in Thee; that the praise of Thee, which becometh well the upright, may purge out all unholiness from our minds; through They mercy. O Merciful God, when I hear of disagreeable things amongst Christians, it brings an additional weight and burden on my spirit; I come to thee in my distress and make lamentable complaint; teach me how to take reproofs from friends, even though I think I do not deserve them; use them to make me tenderly afraid of sin, more jealous over myself, more concerned to keep heart and life unblameable; cause them to help me to reflect on my want of spirituality, to abhor myself, to look upon myself as unworthy, and make them beneficial to my soul. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
May all Thy people know how little, mean, and vile I am, that they may see I am nothing, less than nothing, to be accounted nothing, that so they may pray for me aright, and have not the least dependence upon me. It is sweet to be nothing and have nothing, and to be fed with crumbs from Thy hands. Blessed by Thy name for anything that life bring. How do poor souls live who have not thee, or when helpless have no God to go to, who feel not the constraining force of Thy love, and the sweetness of communion? O how admirably dost Thou captivate the soul, making all desires and affections centre on thee! Give me such vivacity in religion, that I may be able to take all reproofs from other people as from Thy hands, and glorify Thee for them from a sense of Thy beneficent love and of my need to have my pride destroyed. A competent teacher puts oneself behind one’s pupil’s eyes, inside one mind, and starts instruction from what one finds there. The prudent teacher will reveal what will best help people, not necessarily what they like to hear or all that one knows. One must give people what is best for them, must first evaluate how much truth they can take in. It is utterly impracticable and imprudent to give all people all the spiritual truth at all times. The prudent teacher will give out only slightly more than the seeking enquirer is able to receive. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Covenants entered into by fear, in the condition of mere Nature, are obligatory. To further highlight the illustration, if I covenant to pay a ransom, or service for my life, to an enemy; I am bound by it. For it is a contract, wherein one receiveth the benefit of life; the other is to receive money, or service for it; and consequently, where no other law (as in the condition, of mere nature) forbiddeth the performance, the covenant is valid. Therefore prisoners of war, if trusted with the payment of their ransom, are obliged to pay it; and if a weaker prince, make a disadvantageous peace with a stronger, for fear; one is bound to keep it; unless (as hath been said before) there ariseth some new, and just cause of fear, to renew the war. And even in all common-wealths, if I be force to redeem myself from a thief by promising him or her money, I am bound to pay it, till the civil law discharge me. For whatsoever I may lawfully do without obligation, the same I may lawfully covenant to do through fear: and what I lawfully covenant, I cannot lawfully break. A former covenant, makes void a later. For a person that has passed away one’s right to one person today hath it not to pass tomorrow to another: and therefore the later promise passeth no right, but is null. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Still My Sighs and Fill My Mouth with Song, then Give Me Summer Weather as a Christian
There are no secretes to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. The confusion of power and force have prevented a meaningful doctrine of power, especially in the social and political fields. Our understanding of power and the power of being is the first step in removing this inhibition. However, more is needed, because the disturbing question must be answered whether there is power without force and compulsion. If this question had to be answered negatively, would that not mean that the equation of power with compulsions is not confusion but realism? The term “force” points both to the strength a thing has in itself and to the way in which it has effect on other things. It forces them into a movement of behaviour without using their own active support. Of course, no thing can be forced into something which contradicts its nature. If this is attempted, the thing in question is destroyed and, perhaps, remade into something else. In this sense there is an ultimate limit to any application of force. That which is forced must preserve its identity. Otherwise it is not forced but destroyed. In the realm of physics things are forced to move or to behave in a way which is determined by their own potentialities and by force effective upon them. The result is calculable and represents a balance of the different powers which are working in the direction of the result. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
In the realm of living beings, the same possibilities and the same limits of force are given. However, there is a difference from the inorganic realm. As long as a living being is not transformed into a mechanism it reacts spontaneously, supporting or resisting the forces working on it. And one cannot transform a living being into a complete mechanism, without removing its centre and this means without destroying it as a living unity. One can mechanize most of its reactions, but there are always sub-centers which react spontaneously as long as the being is alive and not transferred into the realm of merely chemical process as they occur in dead bodies. Spontaneity means that a reaction is elicited but not forced by a stimulus and consequently that it is not calculable. For a “holistic” reaction always works through the centre, which is not calculable, because it is indivisible, constituting an individual being. To the degree to which force in living beings needs the support of spontaneity, one could speak more adequately of compulsion or coercion. This is certainly necessary in the encounters between human beings. For these words, “compulsion” or “coercion,” a psychological resistance is indicated which must be overcome. And if dealing with humans, this is what power has to do. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Power actualizes itself through force and compulsion. However, power is neither the one nor the other. It is being, actualizing itself over against the threat of non-being. It uses and abuses force in order to overcome this threat. It uses and abuses force in order to actualize itself. However, it is neither the one nor the other. Therefore the question of power and compulsion must be answered in the following way: Power needs compulsion. However, its use of compulsion is only effective if it is an expression of the actual power relation. If compulsion trespasses this limit it becomes self-denying and undercuts the power which it is supposed to preserve. It is not compulsion which is bad, but a compulsion which does not express the power of being in the name of which it is applied. Power needs compulsion, but compulsion needs the criterion which is implied in the actual power relation. An “open,” “flat,” or barefaced lie may be defined as one for which there can be unquestionable evidence that the teller knew he or she lied and willfully did so. A claim to have been at a particular place at a particular time, when this was not the case is an example. (Some kinds of impersonations, but not all, involved such lies, and many such lies do not involve impersonation.) RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Those caught in the act of telling barefaced lies not only lose face during the interaction but may have their face destroyed, for it is felt by many audiences that if an individual can once bring oneself to tell such a lie, one ought never again to be fully trusted. However, there are many “white lies,” told by doctors, potential guests, and others, presumably to save the feelings of the audience that is lied to, and these kings of untruths are not thought to be horrendous. Further, in everyday life it is usually possible for the performer to create intentionally almost any kind of false impression without putting oneself in the indefensible position of having told a clear-cut lie. Communication techniques such as innuendo, strategic ambiguity, and crucial omissions allow the misinformer to profit from lies without, technically, telling any. The mass media have their own versions of this and demonstrate that by judicious camera angles and editing, a trickle of response to a celebrity can be transformed into a wild stream. Formal recognition has been given to the shadings between lies and truths and to the embarrassing difficulties caused by this continuum. Organizations such as real estate boards develop explicit codes specifying the degree to which doubtful impressions can be given by overstatement, understatement, and omission. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
The Civil Service in Britain apparently operates on a similar understanding: The rules here (as regards “statements which are intended or are likely to become public”) is simple. Nothing may be said which is not true: but it is as unnecessary as it is sometimes undesirable, even in the public interest, to say everything relevant which is true; and the facts given may be arranged in any convenient order. It is wonderful what can be done within these limits by a skillful draftsman. It might be said, cynically, but with some measure of truth, that the perfect replay to an embarrassing question in the House of Commons is one that is brief, appears to answer the question completely, if challenged can be proved to be accurate in every word, gives no opening for awkward “supplementaries,” and discloses really noting. The law crosscuts many ordinary social niceties by introducing one of its own. In American law, intent, negligence, and strict liability are distinguished; misrepresentation is held to be an intentional act, but one that can arise through word or deed, ambiguous statement or misleading literal truth, non-disclosure, or prevention of discovery. Culpable non-disclosure is held to vary, depending on the area of life, there being one standard for the advertising business and another standard for professional counselors. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Further, the law tends to hold that: A representation made wit an honest belief in its truth may still be negligent, because of lack of reasonable care in ascertaining the facts, or in the manner of expression, or absence of the skill and competence required by a particular business or profession. The fact that the defendant was disinterested, that one had the best motives, and that one thought one was doing the plaintiff a kindness, will not absolve one from a liability so long as one did in fact intend to mislead. When we turn from outright impersonations and barefaced lies to other types of misrepresentation, the commonsense distinction between true and false impression becomes even less tenable. Charlatan professional activity of one decade sometimes becomes an acceptable legitimate occupation in the next. We find that activities which are thought to be legitimate by some audiences in our society are thought to be rackets by others. More important, we find that there is hardly a legitimate everyday vocation or relationship whose performers do not engage in concealed practices which are incompatible with fostered impressions. Although particular performances, and even particular parts or routines, may pace a performer in a position of having nothing to hide, somewhere in the full round of one’s activities there will be something one cannot treat openly. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The larger the number of matters and the lager the number of acting parts which fall within the domain of the role or relationship, the more likelihood, it would seem, for points of secrecy to exist. Thus in well-adjusted marriages, we expect that each partner may keep from the other secrets having to do with financial matters, past experiences, current flirtations, indulgencies in “bad” or expensive habits, personal aspirations and worries, actions of children, true opinions held about relatives or mutual friends, excreta. With such strategically located points of reticence, it is possible to maintain a desirable status quo in the relationship without having to carry out rigidly the implications of this arrangement in all areas of life. Perhaps most important of all, we must note that a false impression maintained by an individual in any one of one’s routines may be a threat to the whole relationship or role of which the routine is only one part, for a discreditable disclosure in one area of an individual’s activity will throw doubt on the many area of activity in which one may have nothing to conceal. Similarly, if the individual has only one thing to conceal during a performance, and even if the likelihood of disclosure occurs only at a particular turn or phase in the performance, the performer’s anxiety may well extend to the whole performance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Some general characteristics of performance suggest: activity oriented towards work-tasks tends to be converted into activity oriented towards communication; the front behind which the routine is presented is also likely to be suitable for other, somewhat different routines and so is likely not to fit completely any particular routine; sufficient self-control is exerted so as to maintain a working consensus; an idealized impression is offered by accentuating certain facts and concealing others; expressive coherence is maintained by the performer taking more care to guard against minor disharmonies than the stated purpose of the performance might lead the audience to think was warranted. All of these general characteristics of performances can be seen as interaction constraints which play upon the individual and transform one’s activities into performances. Instead of merely doing one’s task and giving vent to one’s feelings, one will express the doing of one’s task and acceptably convey one’s feelings. In general, then, the representation of an activity will vary in some degree from the activity itself and therefore inevitably misrepresent it. And since the individual will be required to rely on signs in order to construct, however faithful to the facts, will be subject to all the disruptions that impressions are subject to. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
While we could retain the common-sense notion that fostered appearances can be discredited by a discrepant reality, there is often no reason for claiming that the facts discrepant with the fostered impression are any more the real reality than is the fostered reality they embarrass. A cynical view of everyday performances can be as one-sided as the one that is sponsored by the performer. For many sociological issues it may not even be necessary to decide which is the more real, the fostered impression or the one the performer attempts to prevent the audience from receiving. The crucial sociological consideration, for this report at least, is merely that impression fostered in everyday performances are subject to disruption. We will want to know what kind of impression of reality can shatter the fostered impression of reality, and what reality really is can be left to other students. We will want to ask, “What are the ways in which a given impression can be discredited?” and this is not quite the same as asking, “What are the ways in which the given impression is false?” We come back, then, to a realization that while the performance offered by imposters and liars is quite flagrantly false and differs from this respect from ordinary performances, both are similar in the care their performers must exert in order to maintain the impression that is fostered. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Thus, for example, we know that the formal code of the British civil servants and of American baseball umpires obliges them not only to desist from making improper “deals” but also to desist from innocent action which might possibly give the (wrong) impression that they are making deals. Whether an honest performer wishes to convey the truth or whether a dishonest performer wishes to convey a falsehood, both must take care to enliven their performances with appropriate expressions, excluded from their performances expressions that might discredit the impressions being fostered, and take care lest the audience impute unintended meanings. Because of these shared dramatic contingencies, we can profitably study performances that are quite false in order to lean bout ones that are quite honest. If in every actualization of power compulsion is implied, how can power be untied with love? All those who want to remove power for the sake of love ask this question, implying a negative answer. If power needs force and compulsion for its actualization, does it exclude love? The ontological answer to this most urgent practical question follows from our analyses of love and power. The power of being is its possibility to affirm itself against the non-being within it and against it. The power of being is the greater the more non-being is taken into its self-affirmation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The power of being is not dead identity but the dynamic process in which it separates itself from itself and returns to itself. The more conquered separation there is the more power there is. The process in which he separated is reunited is love. The more reuniting love there is, the more conquered non-being there is, the more power of being there is. Love is the foundation, not the negation, of power. Whether one says that being has non-being in itself or whether one says that being separates itself from itself and reunites itself with itself, does not make any difference. The basic formula of power and the basic formula of love are identical: Separation and Reunion of Being taking Non-Being into itself. From this ultimate unity of power and love the question can be answered: How can the compulsory element of power be united with love? Nobody felt the weight of this question more than Luther, who had to combine his highly spiritual ethics of love with his highly realistic politics of absolute power. Luther answered with the statement that compulsion is the strange work of love. Sweetness, self-surrender and mercy are, according to him, the proper work of live, bitterness, killing, and condemnation are its strange work, but both are works of love. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
What he meant could be expressed in the statement that it is the strange work of love to destroy what is against love. This, however, presupposes the unity of love and power. Love, in order to exercise its proper works, namely charity and forgiveness, must provide for a place on which this can be done, through is strange work of judging and punishing. In order to destroy what is against love, love must be untied with power, and not only with power, but also with compulsory power. This latter demand posits a new question: If love is united with the compulsory element of power, where are the limits of this union? Where does compulsion conflict with love? It conflicts with love when it prevents the aim of love, namely the reunion of the separated. Love, through compulsory power, must destroy what is against love. However, love cannot destroy one who against love. Even when destroying one’s work it does not destroy one. It tried to save and fulfill one by destroying in one what is against love. The criterion is: Everything that makes reunion impossible is against love. We read that in the Middle Ages during the trial and execution of a mass murderer, the relatives of the murdered ones fell on their knees and prayed for his soul. The destruction of his bodily existence was not felt as a negation, but as an affirmation of love. It made the reunion of the radically separated soul of the criminal with himself and with the souls of his natural enemies possible. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
The opposite story is that of present-day totalitarian forms of the exercise of power, in which the victims are transformed into things by fatigue, drugs, and other means and nobody, not even relatives and friends, are allowed to participate in their destruction, which is intended as a destruction of their whole being without reuniting love. Perhaps there is one point which Luther has not seen clearly enough, namely that love’s strange work, the compulsory element of power, is not only the strange but also the tragic aspect of love. It represents a price which must be paid for the reunion of the separated. And beyond this, Luther certainly has not emphasized sufficiently that love’s strange work can be used by those in power as a means, not for reuniting the estranged, but for keeping themselves in power. The question, how this distortion of the doctrine of love’s strange work can be prohibited, has not been asked by him. Therefore he has often been accused of a Machiavellian cynicism with respect to power. This is certainly, subjectively speaking, wrong. However, it is not completely wrong with respect to the consequences of Luther’s doctrine. The question is: If love and power are untied and if compulsion is inescapable in every actualization of power, how can love be united with power? #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
We have discussed the term “self-love” and have suggested it complete removal. One does not speak of self-power, but one uses the term “self-control” in the sense of power over oneself. Again we ask: Does the structure of self-relatedness admit something like power of the self over the self? The question must be decided in the same way as it has been decided in the case of self-love. The term is metaphorical. There is no self which fights against another self, with which, on the other hand, it is identical. The power of the self is its self-centredness. Self-control is the preservation of this centredness against disruptive tendencies, coming from the elements which constitute the centre: One could say that a struggle is going on between these elements, each of them trying to determine the centre. However, such a struggle presupposed that there is a centred self within which the conflict of drives can occur. The centre recedes logically every element which tries to determine it. Power over oneself is the power of the self over the forces which constitute it and each of which tries to determine it. We must, however, ask: How can a centre (a symbol take from geometry) have power besides the power of the elements of which it is the centre? #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
The answer is, that it has not such independent power but that its power is the power of a stabilized balance of the elements which are centred in it. The stabilized balance of its constitutive elements is the power of the centre. In this balance some elements prevail, others are subordinated but not ineffective. Self-control is the activity of the centred self in preserving the strengthening the established balance against disruptive tendencies. This can be done by the exclusion from the centre of many elements which are present in the self. It also can be done by a union of many elements in the centre without the exclusion of most of them. Whether self-control is exercised in the former or in the latter way decides about the ethical meaning of self-control, the former way for a more puritan, the latter for a more romantic ethics. However, the basic structure is the same in both cases: self-centredness implies the power which the self exercises through a stable balance of its constituent elements over each of these elements. In this sense every self is a power structure. “Now this he spake because of the stiffneckedness of Laman and Lemuel; for behold they did murmur in many things against their father, because he was a visionary man, and had led them out of the land of Jerusalem, to leave the land of their inheritance, and their gold, and their silver, and their precious things, to perish in the wilderness. And this they said he had done because of the foolish imaginations of his heart,” reports 1 Nephi 2.11. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Let Thy perpetual mercy, O Lord, accompany Thy Church; that while it is placed among the storms of the World, it may both be refreshed with present gladness, and behold the brightness of eternal bliss; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord Jesus, I sin—grant that I may never cease grieving because of it, never be content with myself, never think I can reach a point of perfection. Kill my envy, command my tongue, trample down self, to copy Thy words, acts, spirit, to be transformed into Thy likeness, to be consecrated wholly to Thee, to live entirely to Thy glory. Deliver me from attachment to things unclean, from wrong associations, from the predominance of evil passions, from the sugar of sin as well as its gall, that with self-loathing, deep contrition, earnest heart searching I may come to Thee, cast myself on Thee, trust in Thee, cry to Thee, be delivered by Thee. O God, the Eternal All, help me to know that all things are shadows, but Thou art substance, all things are quicksand, but Thou art mountain, all things are shifting, but Thou art anchor, all things are ignorance, but Thou art wisdom. If my life is to be a crucible amid burning heat, so be it, but do Thou sit at the furnace mouth to watch the ore that nothing be lost. If I sin willfully, grievously, tormentedly, in grace take away my mourning and give me music; remove my sackcloth and clothe me with beauty; still my sighs and fill my mouth with song, then give me Summer weather as a Christian. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Success does not come to you; you go to it. We might be biased, but every side of a #MillsStation home is a good side. 😍 This Residence 1 elevation has extra-large windows to let in ALL that breathtaking natural light. ☀️ https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-1/
Belief is the knowledge that we can do something. It is the inner feeling that what we understand, we can accomplish. For the most part, all of us have the ability to look at something and know whether or not we can do it. So, in belief there is power: our eyes are opened; our opportunities become plain; our visions become reality.