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I Will Pray for You. I Will Suffer for you. Do Not Hurt Me. See What a Big Heart I Have?
Humans in twenty-first century have been cut adrift in a rudderless yacht on an uncharted sea. Abnormal psychological functioning is deviant, but deviant from what? Sometimes people’s behaviours, thoughts, and emotions are different from those that are considered normal in our place and time. We do not expect people to cry themselves to sleep each night, wish themselves dead, or obey voices that no one else hears. In short, behaviour, thoughts, and emotions are deemed abnormal when they violated a society’s ideas about proper functioning. Each society established norms—explicit and implicit rules for proper conduct. Behaviour that violates legal norms is called criminal. Behaviour, thoughts, and emotions that violate norms of psychological functioning are called abnormal. Judgments of abnormality vary from society to society. A society’s norms grow from its particular culture—its history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts. A society that values competition and assertiveness may accept aggressive behaviour, whereas one that emphasizes cooperation and gentleness may consider aggressive behaviour unacceptable and even abnormal. A society’s values may also change over time, causing its views of what is psychologically abnormal to change as well. In Western society, for example, a woman’s participation in the business World was widely considered inappropriate and strange one hundred and twenty years ago. Today the same behaviour is valued. Judgements of abnormality depend on specific circumstances as well as on cultural norms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Many painful human experiences produce intense reactions—largescale catastrophes and disasters, assaults, child abuse, war, terminal illness, chronic pain. Is there an “appropriate” way to react to such things? Should we ever call reactions to them abnormal? Even functioning that is considered unusual does not necessarily qualify as abnormal. According to many clinical theorists, behaviour, ideas, or emotions usually have to cause distress before they can be labeled abnormal. Should we consider that feelings of distress must always be present before a person’s functioning can be considered abnormal? Not necessarily. Some people who function abnormally maintain a beneficial frame of mind. Abnormal behaviour tends to be dysfunctional; that is, it interferes with daily functioning. It so upsets, distracts, or confuses people that they cannot care for themselves properly, participate in ordinary social interactions, or work productively. Some people have to quit their jobs, leave their families, and are prepared to withdraw from the productive lives they once lead. Here again one’s culture plays a role in the definition of abnormality. Our society hold that it is important to carry out daily activities in an effective, self-enhanced manner. The behaviour of some people is considered abnormal and undesirable, whereas others, who continue to perform well in their jobs and enjoy fulfilling relationships, would probably be considered simply unusual. Then again, dysfunction alone does not necessarily indicate psychological abnormality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Some people fast or in other ways deprive themselves of things they need as a means of protesting social injustice. Far from receiving a clinical label of some kind, they are widely viewed as admirable people—caring, sacrificing, even heroic. Perhaps the ultimate in psychological dysfunctioning is behaviour that becomes dangerous to oneself or others. Individuals whose behaviour is consistently careless, hostile, or confused may be placing themselves or those around them at risk. Although danger is often cited as a feature of abnormal psychological functioning, research suggests that it is actually the exception rather than the rule. Despite popular misconceptions, most people struggling with anxiety, depression, and even bizarre thinking pose no immediate danger to themselves or to anyone else. If the concept of abnormality depends so heavily on social norms and values, it is no wonder that efforts to define psychological abnormality typically raise as many questions as they answer. Ultimately, each society selects general criteria for defining abnormality and then uses those criteria to judge particular cases. Noting society’s role in the process, the whole concept of mental illness may be considered invalid, a myth of sorts. The deviations that society calls abnormal are simply “problems in living,” not signs of something wrong within the person. Societies invent the concept of mental illness so that they can better control or change people whose unusual patterns of functioning upset or threaten the social order. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Even if we assume that psychological abnormality is a valid concept and that it can indeed be defined, we may be unable to apply our definition consistently. If a behaviour—excessive use of alcohol among college students, says—is familiar enough, the society may fail to recognize that it is deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous. Thousands of college students throughout the United States of America are so dependent on alcohol that it interferes with their personal and academic lives, causes them great discomfort, jeopardizes their health, and often endangers them and the people around them. Yet their problem often goes unnoticed, certainly undiagnosed, by college administrators, others students, and health professionals. Alcohol is so much a part of the college subculture that it is easy to overlook drinking behaviour that has become abnormal. Conversely, a society may have trouble distinguishing between an abnormality that requires intervention and an eccentricity, or marked individuality, with which others have no right to interfere. From time to time we see or hear about people who behave in ways we consider strange, such as a man who lives alone with two dozen cats and rarely talks to other people. The behaviour of such people is deviant, and it may well be distressful and dysfunctional, yet many professionals think of it as eccentric rather than abnormal. In short, while we may agree to define psychological abnormalities as patterns of functioning that are deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and sometimes dangerous, we should be clear that these criteria are often vague and subjective. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When is a pattern of behaviour deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous enough to be considered abnormal? The question may be impossible to answer. Few of the current categories of abnormality that we will deal with are as clear-cut as they may seem, and most continue to be debated by clinicians. Furthermore, the term “mental illness” has been out of fashion since the late nineteenth century, the more politically correct term is “dysfunctional.” The term mental illness for a lot of people is scary. Some people fear that if they admit they have some dysfunctional aspect of their behaviour that they will be locked up in a lunatic asylum and that medical history will follow them all their lives and stigmatize them, making it impossible to have gainful employment. However, “It is not just people who cannot find a job, or cannot fit in society that struggle with depression sometimes,” says Jared Padalecki. It is significant that Communist leaders like Lenin despised all schools of spiritual thought, denounced religion, and scored metaphysical reflection. This is now the nominal inheritance of half the World, most particularly the so-called workers’ class. If social justice means that every human, however deprived one’s background, should have a chance to develop oneself and to better one’s standards of living, then it is certainly a good thing. However, if it means the forced regimentation of everyone, the compulsory equalization of everything, the denial of individuality and the destruction of freedom, then it is surely a bad thing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
If we only pause to consider that half the entire human race has fallen under the enforced leadership and tyrannical domination of those who would limit humans to their ego and reality to matter, we may see how urgently necessary is an arrest to this downward trend. The World is in a state of a spiritual crisis. Where the physical body is cherished as the sole reality and made the sole basis for social and political reform, where hate-driven humans advocate physical violence as the sole means of effecting progress, be sure of the presence of evil forces, dangers to society, ignorant opponents of truth, and enemies of the Light. It is very meaningful that the filthy abuse which some tyrants put into their writings against idealists is no longer living psychologist and philosophers in the utter blindness which was left to them. More and more they begin to question the nature of consciousness as well as its relationship to the external World, more and more they investigate borderland experiences like telepathy and hypnotism. On the question of consciousness’ relationship to the brain they are now arguing quite widely, but, for obvious reasons, they remain unable to come to definitive conclusions on which all could agree. They are not satisfied with the completely materialistic answer and yet dare not venture into the purely mentalistic one. Meanwhile they go on debating, and so long as this continues, it is spiritually much healthier than their state of sixty years ago. Problems are being stated and solutions are being discussed. If people with an unenlightened inheritance overshadows it all, that cannot be helped in a totalitarian Communist country. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
At the present stage of history the truth must be left out in such a land, but it cannot be left out forever. Out of all their mental and verbal activity, the people will have to draw a little nearer to it intellectually. What is happening on a deeper plane is outside their knowledge. No materialistic organization of society can prevent the appearance and development of spirituality in the individual, but it can create the conditions which will obstruct the appearance or hinder the development of spirituality. Narcissistic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as NPD) has to be one of the most interpersonally obnoxious of the personality disorder. People with NPD have an exaggerate sense of self-worth and entitlement, coupled with a nearly insatiable thirst for attention and acclaim. Symptoms include a grandiose sense of self-importance, preoccupations with fantasies of success and power, a belief that the self is special and should only be associated with other high-status and powerful people, a need for excessive admiration, a voracious sense of entitlement, exploiting others for personal benefit, lack of empathy, envy of others, or a belief that others envy the self, and arrogance. The negative effects of this behaviour on others, as well as the wrongfulness of exploiting others for personal gain, are obscured by the arrogance of the individual. On a psychosocial level, the person with NPD wishes for active love and protection, while simultaneously fearing blame, being ignored, or being controlled by others. The constitution of NPD dramatically interferes with the development and maintenance of intimate interpersonal relationships. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Based on clinical observations, several destructive interpersonal motifs have been noted to be expressed by people with NPD. One of these is a pursuit of metamorphosis—that is, a fantasy that association and intimacy with powerful others will bring transformation and evolution from inferiority and insecurity. In the core of every narcissistic personality there exists, more or less pronounced, experience of insecurity and inferiority. A second motif is selective interpersonal repulsion, or a loathing and systematic persecution of those on whom persons with NPD project their own conflicts. When such a person recognizes some unacceptable aspect of one’s own self in another individual, this individual must be cast off and put down. Finally, the pathological intolerance of criticism is a result of the doubly noxious nature of criticism for a person with NPD. Criticism serves to threaten the person’s sense of grandiosity, and intensify the person’s internal experience of inferiority and insecurity. Consequently, the person will respond to criticism with aggression and rage. It scarcely bears mentioning that those with NPD rarely develop satisfying and close personal relationships. Part of this problem stems from these individuals’ hostility and devaluation of others. This constitutes the so-called “narcissist’s dilemma”: holding other in contempt while simultaneously relying on them for positive regard and affirmation. Symptoms of NPD are negatively associated with receiving social support from others, and positively associated with loneliness and conflict with others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Nevertheless, individuals with NPD may feel that there are a lot of people available who think very highly of them. Among married people, NPD is associated with domestic violence, and interest in extramarital relations. Among the important components of the interpersonal troubles experienced by those with NPD are the negative reactions of others to their conduct. When subjects in two studies viewed a person with NPD presented on DVD, they reacted with rejection and a negative mood. These findings are reminiscent of those in the literature on depression indicating that depressed people irritate others and elicits rejection from them. Although people with NPD are probably rejected for different reasons, the end results are similar to those experienced by depressed persons: loneliness, a lack of social support, and conflictual interactions with others. Rejection from others may cause great aggravation for some persons with NPD, while being of virtually no concern to others. NPD exists on a continuum ranging from an oblivious subtype to a hypervigilant subtype. Whereas a person with the oblivious subtype has no awareness at all of one’s impact on other people, the individual with the hypervigilant subtype is on the lookout for any sign of criticism or put-down from others. The interpersonal rejection that often follows in the wake of interpersonal interactions must surely contribute to substantial aggravation for the person with the hypervigilant NPD. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Perhaps the most scientifically plausible account of the etiology of NPD is based on social learning theory; it places origins of the disorder in excessive and unconditional parental valuation and attention to the point of worship. In such an interpersonal context, the parents are viewed as devoting themselves so fully to caring for their child and making one feel special that they sublimate their own needs to those of the child. Consequently, the child fails to develop an awareness or appreciation for the needs of other people. Years of living in such an environment also result in an unjustified sense of self-worth that must constantly be reinforced and polished in the face of any potential failure. This social learning phenomenon is identified by a combination of selfless, noncontingent love and adoration from the family; parental deference to the child; and an ever-present threat of al fall from grace in the pathogenesis of NPD. This account has considerable face validity for explaining the sense of grandiosity and lack of empathy that characterize this disorder. Although a social learning account of NPD enjoys some popularity and acceptance, psychodynamic accounts of the disorder are especially prevalent, and also point to early interpersonal experiences in its etiology. Within this literature there exists something of a controversy. Accordingly, self-psychological perspective, NPD is a manifestation of arrested development. An egocentric sense of grandiosity is seen as a normal part of early development. At this point in time, the child expects total nurturance and caring from parents, and develops selfobjects, which are images of other people as they relate to the self. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Eventually, the infant begins to feel vulnerable upon becoming aware of the parents’ shortcomings. The child then defensively idealizes the parents and returns to a sense of self-grandiosity. These are sources of strength for the child when dealing with an uncertain World. Normally, this narcissism gives way to empathy and more realistic appraisals of the self and others. However, when maternal empathy and confirmation are defective, the grandiose self perseveres as a defense against the vulnerabilities inherent in life. NPD may also be a compensation for early emotional deprivation and unempathic mothering. This causes the child to feel unloved, resulting in rage being projected onto one’s parents. As a defense, the child develops a grandiose self by combining aspects of the self that are admired by the parents, a fantasized version of the self, and an idealized version of the parents. There is also a focus on simultaneous feelings of inferiority and grandiosity in NPD. There may additionally be some oral rage, a powerful aggression originally directed at caregivers who did not provide unconditional love and approval, as a casual agent in NPD. One may need to focus more on pathological psychosocial development in the etiology of NPD, and conclude arrested development to fully understand the condition. NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) involves a grandiose sense of self, interpersonal arrogance and exploitation, a desire for excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy. The interactions of a person with NPD are marked by the quest for metamorphosis (rising above inferiority via association with powerful others), selective interpersonal repulsion, and pathological reactions to even the slightest criticism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Obviously these traits and qualities render intimate interpersonal relationships nearly impossible. People with NPD are trapped between a need for other people to give them attention and admiration, and contempt for others. Their interpersonal lives are marked by conflict, loneliness, and rejection from others. A social learning hypothesis holds that this personality disorder is the result of excessive parental adoration and attention. Psychodynamic accounts of NPD also stress early parent-child relations, focusing on arrested or pathological development of the self image in relation to others. If one is serious about being well, if one really wants to be made physically and emotionally whole one must get up and get moving with one’s life. Do not lay around feeling sorry for one’s self. Do not make excuses; do not blame other people or circumstances that disappointed one. Instead, start forgiving the people who hurt one. Trust God, get up, and step into the great future He has for you. Today can be a turning point in your life, a season of new beginnings. Refuse to in a state of victimhood. Thing happen to us and we may never know why. However, do not use that as an excuse to sulk and be full of doom and gloom. Just because we do not know the answers does not mean that they do not exist. One has simply not discovered them yet. Trust God to workout the things one does not understand. God has your best interests at heart. That is faith, and that is the attitude that God honours. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If you want to live your best life and become a success, you have to work hard and have faith in God. In God’s salutary presence no indecent thought, no unhealthy distraction, shall ever rear its ugly head. Why? Because one is about to welcome into one’s heart and hearth, however humble it may be, not an Angel, but the Lord of Angels. What a difference a distance makes! There is a World of distance between the Ark of the Covenant and its holy contents; between God’s unstainable Body and its unspeakable Virtue; between a sacrifice required by the Old Law and the Sacrifice of sacrifices required by the New Law; that is to say, the one prefigures the other, and the new bread that is host to God’s body completes the sacrifice. Every free action has two causes that come together to produce it. The one is moral, namely the will that determines the act; the other is physical, namely the power that executes it. When I walk toward an object, I must first want to go there. Second, my feet must take me there. A paralyzed mand who want to walk or an agile man who does not want to walk will both remain where they are. The body politic has the same moving causes. The same distinction can be made between the force and the will; the one under the name legislative power and the other under the name executive power. Nothing is done and ought to be done without their concurrence. We have seen that legislative power belongs to the people and can belong to it alone. On the contrary, it is easy to see, by the principles established above, that executive power cannot belong to the people at large in its role as legislator or sovereign, since this power consists solely of particular acts that are not within the province of the law, nor consequently of the sovereign, none of whose acts can avoid being laws. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Therefore the public force must have an agent of its own that unifies it and gets it working in accordance with the directions of the general will, that serves as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, and that accomplishes in humans. This is the reason for having a government in the state, something often badly confused with the sovereign, of which it is merely the minister. What then is the government? An intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with the execution of the laws and the preservation of liberty, both civil and political. The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say, governors, and the entire body bears the name prince. Therefore those who claim that the act by which a people submit itself to leaders is not a contract are quite correct. It is absolutely nothing but a commission, an employment in which the leaders, as simple officials of the sovereign exercise in its own name the power with which it has entrusted them. The sovereign can limit, modify, or appropriate this power as it pleases, since the alienation of such a right is incompatible with the nature of the social body and contrary to the purpose of the association. Therefore, I call government or supreme administration the legitimate exercise of executive power; I call prince or magistrate the human or the body charged with that administration. The willing seduction of the consumer into production has staggering implications. To understand why, it helps to remember that the market is premised on precisely the split between producer and consumer that is now being blurred. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
An elaborate market was not necessary when most people consumed what they themselves produced. It only became necessary when the task of consumption was separated from that of production. Conventional writers define the market narrowly as a capitalist, money-based phenomenon. Yet the market is merely another word for an exchange network, and there have been (and still are) many different kinds of exchange networks. In the West the most familiar to us is the profit-based, capitalist market. However, there are also socialist markets—exchange networks through which the goods or services produced by Ivan Ivanovich in Smolensk are traded for goods or services turned out by Johann Schmidt in East Berlin. There are markets based on money—but also markets based on barter. The market is neither capitalist nor socialist. It is a direct, inescapable consequence of the divorce of producer from consumer. Whenever this divorce occurs the market arises. And wherever the gap between consumer and producer narrows, the entire function, role, and power of the market is brought into question. The rise of presuming today, therefore, begins to change the role of the market in our lives. It is too early to know where this subtle but significant thrust is taking us. Certainly the market is not going to go away. We are not going to go back to premarket economies. What I have called Sector B—the exchange sector—is not going to shrivel up and vanish. We will, for a long time to come, continue to be heavily dependent upon the market. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Nevertheless, the rise of presuming points strongly toward a fundamental change in the relationships between Sector A and Sector B—a set of relationships that Second Wave economist have until now virtually ignored. For presuming involves the “de-marketization” of at least certain activities and therefore a sharply altered role for the market in society. It suggests an economy of the future unlike any we have known—an economy that is no longer lopsidedly weighted in favour of either Sector A or Sector B. It points to the emergence of an economy that will resemble the First Wave nor Second Wave economics, but will, instead, fuse the characteristics of both into a new historic synthesis. The rise of the prosumer, powered by the soaring cost of many paid services, by the break down of Second Wave service bureaucracies, by the availability of Third Wave technologies, by the problems of structural unemployment, and by the many other converging factors, lead to a work-styles and life arrangements. If we permit ourselves to speculate, bearing in mind some of the shifts described earlier—such as the move toward de-synchronization and part-time paid work, the possible emergence of the electronic cottage, or the changed structure of family life—we can begin to discern some of these lifestyle changes. Thus we are moving toward a future economy in which very large numbers never hold full-time paid jobs, or in which “full-time” is redefined, as it has been in recent years, to mean a shorter and shorter workweek or work year. (In Sweden, where a law guaranteed all workers five weeks of paid vacation regardless of age or length of service, a normal work year was considered to be 1840 hours. In fact, absenteeism has run so high that a more realistic average per worker is 1600 hours per year.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Large numbers of workers already do paid work for what averages out to only three of four says a week, or they take six months or a year off to pursue educational or recreational goals. This pattern may well grow stronger as two-paycheck households multiply. More people in the paid labour market-higher “labour participation rates,” as the economist put it—may very well go with reduced hours per worker. This casts the whole question of leisure into a new light. Once we recognize that much of our so-called leisure time is, in fact, spent producing goods and services for our own use—prosuming—then the old distinction between work and leisure falls apart. The question is not work versus leisure, but paid work for Sector B versus unpaid, self-directed, and self-monitored work for Sector A. In the Third Wave context new lifestyles based half on production exchange, half on production for use, become practical. Such lifestyles were, in fact, common in the early days of the industrial revolution among farm populations who were slowly being absorbed into the urban proletariat. For a long transitional period millions of people worked part-time in factories and part-time on the land, growing their own food, buying some of their necessities, making the rest. This pattern—but with twenty-first century technology for goods and food production, as well as immensely enhanced self-help methods for the production of many services. Instead of a dress pattern, for example, tomorrow’s prosumer might well buy a computer program the powers a “smart” electronic sewing machine. Even the clumsiest househusband, with such a computer program, could make his own custom-fitted shirts. Mechanically inclined tinkers could do more than tune up their autos. They could actually half-build them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
It is always possible for the customer to program one’s own specifications into the auto manufacturing process via computer and telephone and have the car delivered to one’s house without even going to the dealership. One can also easily picture a generation brought up on part-time paid work as the norm, eager to use their own hands, equipped with many inexpensive mini-technologies in the home, forming a sizeable segment of the population. This is already happening in China. They are replicating and creating electronics and selling them to Americans for a much more affordable price. Some of these machines are made for China so they instructions are in Chinses are well as the settings on the machine, but when you are getting them at a discounted price, it is worth your time to do the research and figure out what the machine is saying. Half in the marker, half out, working intermittently rather than all year round, taking a year off now and then, they might well earn less—but compensate by supplying their own labour for many tasks that now cost money, thus mitigating the effects of inflation. American’s Mormons offer another clue to possible future lifestyles. Many Mormon stakes—a stake corresponds to, say, a Catholic diocese—own and operate their own farms. Members of the sake, including urban members, spend some of their free time as volunteer farmers growing food. Most of the produce is not sold but stored for emergency use or distributed to Mormons in need. There are central canning plants, bottling facilities, and grain elevators. Some Mormons grow their own food and take it to the cannery. Others actually buy fresh vegetables at the supermarket, then take them to the local cannery. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Says a Salt Lake City Mormon, “My mother will buy tomatoes and can them. Her relief ‘society,’ the women’s auxiliary society, will have a day and they all go and can tomatoes for their own use.” Similarly, many Mormons not only contribute money to their church but actually perform volunteer labour—construction work, for example. None of this is to suggest that we are all going to become members of the Mormon church, or that it will be possible in the future to re-crate on a wide scale the social and community bonds one finds in this highly participatory yet theologically autocratic group. However, the principle of production for self-use, either by individuals or by organized groups, is likely to spread farther. Given home computers, given seeds genetically designed for urban or even apartment agriculture, even cheap home tools for working plastic, given new materials, adhesives, and membranes, and given free technical advice available over the Internet, mobile phones, telephone lines, with instructions flickering on the TV or computer screen, it has become possible to create lifestyles that are more rounded and varied, less monotonous, more creatively satisfying, and less market-intensive than those that typified Second Wave civilization. It is still too early to know how far this shift of activity from exchange in Sector B to presumption in Sector A will go, how the balance between these sectors will vary from country to country, and which particular lifestyles will actually emerge from it. What is certain, however, is that any significant change in the balance between production for use and production for exchange will set off depth charges under our economic system and our values as well. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Whoever was the first to make the analogy between caterpillars and butterflies and death and resurrection—old life and new life—must have had a “butterfly experience.” Knots being untied; tight jar libs being loosened—it is freedom. It is freeing. It is the slow motion experience of leaping through a meadow with arms and legs in tune with rhythm of life. However, somehow the butterfly says it best, become of the cocoon experience. People seem to have more than one go-round with the cocoon. How did it start for me this time? Why did it start? I was happy as a caterpillar. Just a bit confined, that is all. I viewed myself, and others did, as fuzzy-wuzzy, problem free, happily married, financially secure, basking in the love of God…but I was content. I did not know myself. Actually, I did not even know that I did not know myself. And certainly did not own my feelings. I had to move away from all those who unknowingly kept me as a pet caterpillar to learn the true situation. And what is why I ended up here in the New World. Things have happened fast, which I like. However, becoming a new nation has been a difficult, thrilling, labourious, joyous, arduous, and climatic year. There have been so many significant encounters. Every century and generation I have learned so much. However, several things were of major importance. Almost a passing comment by Dr. James McCune Smith tuned a trickle into a flood last fall when he said, “American, I sensed a lot of tension in you the first time we met.” I could hardly believe it. Everybody knew I was the land of opportunity, where one could achieve anything, they put their mind to, no matter who they are. I was not tense…how could he say that? #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
I was building colonies, hosting thanksgiving, emancipating human being with religious freedom and human rights, establishing child labour laws, building free centers of public education, creating factories that raised the standard of living, producing crops, fostering livestock, and giving constant attention to the beings of my land by providing them with some of the best weather in the World. Tense…tense! How true! I had to face it. And so began a whole chain of discoveries. I thought I was relaxed and learned myself I was tense. I thought I was well-adjusted and learned that I did not even know myself. I thought I was loving and learned that I was often indifferent. I thought I was social and learned that I was withdraw. On an optimistic note, I thought I was dumb and learned I was intelligent. At an earlier point in my Christian life, it would have seemed unspiritual to consider these things. However, somewhere bear the beginning of this century, I experience a glorious assurance that God was in fact the One who led me to this point—and He was the one leading me through! For some reason, it seems that it is almost over. Or maybe it is the beginning of a new era building on what I have learned. I do know that I am more excited about life. I love my land and its inhabitants more than ever before. And I am more open to forming friendships with new pilgrims. Most of all, I feel more comfortable being myself. In these centuries of growth I have come in touch with my own worth and potential. Simply becoming aware was a great part of the answer. Perhaps that is because I wanted the change. I really do want to be a transparent nation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
For now all I can say is that something deep is happening within me—and I love what is happening. Rather than focusing on why certain things happen to me or to those I love, I choose to focus on You, Father, who You are, and what You have promised to do in my life as I trust You. I want to be better; I want to be healed from anything that would keep me locked in the past. Today, I will step into that great future You have for me. I pelage my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. To all that is brief and fragile, superficial, unstable, to all that lacks foundation argument or principles; to all that is light, fleeting, changing, finite to smoke spirals, wand roses, to sea foam, and mists of oblivion…to all that is light in weight for itinerants on this transient Earth, somber, raving, with transitory words, and premium cranberry juice, I toast. May God be mindful of the souls of all our brothers, departed members of the house of America who sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of the Holy Name and the honour of America. Please grant that their heroism and self-sacrificing devotion find response in our hearts and the purity of their souls be reflected in our lives. Many their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life, an everlasting blessing among us. Amen. O merciful God who dwellest on high and art full of compassion, please grant perfect rest beneath the shelter of Thy divine presence among the holy and pure who shine as the brightness of the firmament, to our dear departed who have gone to their eternal home. May their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Grant that their memories ever inspire us to noble and consecrated living. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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There Was Terror in His Eyes as Not Often Seen in a Human Being!
Twenty-first century humans, in spite of all their scientific and technological advances, are baffled by unexplained forces existent in the Universe. The naturalistic philosophy of the previous generations has been unable to account for all of the mysterious phenomena which have been observed. Many scientists believe that living beings may inhabit other galaxies, and highly educated humans are seriously studying reports of those who insist they have received communications from the dead. Humans of science no longer scoff at the accounts of strange occurrences associated with witchcraft and occultic practices. Although they do not necessarily accept them as proof of the supernatural, many will admit they are manifestations of some kind of power they do not yet understand. Christian theologians and scientists are not perplexed by such reports. They know that both God and Satan are very much alive. Though readily conceding that they cannot explain fully all the mysteries of life, they affirm with confidence the existence of God and an invisible host of intelligent supernatural beings. They are convinced that when one accepts the teachings of the Bible, one begins to understand many of the puzzling facts of existence. For example, the Bible tells of holy angels who dwell in Heaven (Matthew 18.10). It also mentions “angels that sinned” (2 Peter 2.4), rebellious spirit begins who have been cast out of Heaven and now dwell in the atmosphere that surrounds the Earth. We know this because Paul declared that Satan is “the prince of the power of the air,” reports Ephesians 2.2, and the Greek word translated “air” was used to speak of the gaseous envelop that encircles our planet. These wicked beings apparently have unlimited access to Earther, and actively influence every area of human endeavour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Because they do not possess physical bodies, we cannot typically detect them through our senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. We do have evidence of their presence, however, for the Word of God gives us information regarding their identification, their nature and their function. Various terms are used in the Christian Bible to denote the evil spirit beings who followed Satan in this initial act of rebellion against God. It refers to “angels that sinned” 2 Peter 2.4 and “angels who kept not their first estate” Jude 6, and many times mentions “spirits” and “demons.” Some scholars believe that these demons must be distinguished from the “angels that sinned” and the “angels who kept not their first estate.” They contend that the Heavenly beings who joined Satan in his revolt against God are fallen angels, but that demons are disembodies spirits of physical and moral creatures who once lived upon the Earth. However, these Bible students disagree regarding an exact identification of the demons. Some say they are the spirits of pre-Adamic beings similar to man, while others identify them as the spirits of the “giants” who were destroyed in the great flood of Noah’s day. If one thinks that demons are the spirits of man-like beings who lived before Adam, then one will no doubt interpret Genesis 1.2 as a declaration that the original Earth, inhabited by the creatures, was cataclysmically destroyed. Genesis 1.2 is then translated as follows: “And the Earth became without form and void…” This theory, while attractive in that it permits a literal interpretation of the days in Genesis 1, must be acknowledged as only a hypothesis. Most Hebrew scholars reject this interpretation because Genesis 1.2 begins with a grammatical construction which makes it highly unlikely that Genesis 1.1 and 1.2 are separated by millions of years. Then, too, the verb translated “became” almost always has the meaning “was.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
However, even if we accept this theory, and believe that a race of man-like beings inhabited the prehistoric Earth, we would have no basis for thinking that their spirits are now free to roam about as the enemies of humankind. Other Bible scholars maintain that demons are the spirits of the “giants” who lived upon the Earth in the days of Noah. They refer to Genesis 6, contending that these “giants” were produced when fallen angels, called the “sons of God,” married the “daughters of men.” “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the Earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all whom they chose. There were giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown,” reports Genesis 6.1, 2, 4. It is necessary for proponents of this theory to believe that fallen angels became male human beings who married women, produced a mongrel offspring, and took over the role of father in the family. They theorize that Satan hoped thereby to frustrate God’s redemptive plan. The Lord had promised salvation through Christ to human beings only—not for angels or mixed half-human and half-angelic race. Christ could not have been born to offspring of these corrupted creates or provide redemptions for them. Thus God’s plan of redemption would have been thwarted. In addition, both Jude and Peter in their epistles refer to a sin committed by angels, and their words can be blended very nicely into this concept. Jude writes, “And the angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,” reports Jude 6, 7. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The words “in like manner” (verse 7) are taken to mean that the sin of the angels in having pleasures of the flesh with women was an unnatural act, comparable to sodomy. Peter tells of angels assigned to Tartaros, the nether World of the Greeks considered to be lower than Hades. “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell [GK Tartaros], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,” reports 2 Peter 2.4. Again, it does not take a great deal of imagination to see how these words of Peter may be applied to the wicked angels who committed the monstrous sin of attempting to make mongrels of the human race. Many Bible students, however, reject this interpretation of Genesis 6. Since angels are non-material beings, it would be necessary for them to create physical bodies for themselves capable of impregnating a female member of the human race. This would require nothing less than a creative miracle, and the Bible indicates that this power belongs only to God. In addition, it is not necessary to interpret the statements in Jude and 2 Peter as a reference to sin involving pleasures of the flesh on the part of the fallen angels. Jude’s use of the expression “going after strange flesh” may be figurative language representing spiritual fornication. The prophets often depicted Israel’s unfaithfulness to God in this manner. Peter’s statement that the angels who sinned have been assigned to Tartaros may be a simple declaration that all sinning angels have been designated to this place, and that they are even now under chains of moral and spiritual darkness. The Bible gives little information regarding the origin of demons. We can state with absolute certainty only that they are fallen spirit beings who have committed themselves to Satan and that they hate God and seek to harm His people. No clear distinction can be made between fallen angels and demons, for they are all evil spirits. Some of our questions must remain unanswered, but the Lord has given ample revelation to warn us that these invisible enemies are far too great and powerful for us to defeat in our own strength, and that we can successfully wage war against them only as we live in continual dependence upon the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
In one respect the case of Dame Alice Kyteler stands alone in the history of magical dealings in Ireland prior to the seventeenth century. We have of the entire proceedings an invaluable and contemporary account, or at latest one compiled within a very few years after the death of Petronilla of Meath; while the excitement produced by the affair is shown by the more or less lengthy allusions to it in early writings, such as The Book of Howth (Carew MSS.), the Annals by Fariar Clyn, the Chartularies of S. Mary’s Abbey (vol. ii), &c. It is also rendered more valuable by the fact that those who are best qualified to give their opinion on the matter have assured the writer that to the best of their belief no entries with respect to trials for sorcery or witchcraft can be found in the various old Rolls preserved in the Dublin Record Office. However, when the story is considered with reference to the following facts it takes on a different signification. On the 29th of September 1317 (Wright says 1320), Bishop de Ledrede held his first Synod, at which several canons were passed, one of which seems in some degree introductory to the events detailed in last week’s report. In it he speaks of “a certain new and pestilential sect in our parts, differing from all the faith in the World, filled with a devilish spirit, more inhuman than heathens…who pursue the priests and bishops of the Most High God equally in life and death, by spoiling and rending the patrimony of Christ in the diocese of Ossory, and who utter grievous threats against the bishops and their ministers exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and (by various means) attempt to hinder the correction of sins and the salvation of souls, in contempt of God and the Church.” From this it would seem that heresy and unorthodoxy had already made its appearance in the diocese. In 1324 the Kyteler case occurred, one of the participants being burnt at the stake while other incriminate persons were subsequently followed up, some of whom shared the fate of Petronilla of Meath. In 1327 Adam Dubh, of the Leinster tribe of O’Toole, was burnt alive on College Green for denying the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, as well as for rejecting the authority of the Holy See. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
In 1335 Pope Benedict XII wrote a letter to King Edward III, in which occurs the following passage: “It has come to our knowledge that while our venerable brother, Richard, Bishop of Ossory, was visiting his diocese, there appeared in the midst of his catholic people men who were heretics together with their abettors, some of whom asserted that Jesus Christ was a mere man and a sinner, and was justly crucified for His own sins; others after having done homage and offered sacrifice to demons, thought otherwise of the sacrament of the Body of Christ than the Catholic Church teaches, saying that the same venerable sacrament is by no means to be worshipped; and also asserting that they are not bound to obey or believe the decrees, decretals, and apostolic mandates; in the meantime, consulting demons according to the rites of those sects among the Gentiles and Pagans, they despise the sacraments of the Catholic Church, and draw the faithful of Christ after them by their superstitions.” Unlike apocryphal and rabbinical literature, the Biblical description of evil spirits avoids the unusual and grotesque. The Bible does, however, present us with a clear picture of their activity and tells us how to resist them effectively. In the first place, it declares that demons or fallen angels are non-material beings. They do not possess bodies like humans, and therefore are repeatedly called “spirits.” Matthew, for example, says, “When the evening was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick,” reports Matthew 8.16. Jesus started that the Creator is not made up of physical substance when He said, “God is a Spirit,” reports John 4.24. Later, when His frightened disciples thought He was a ghost, He told them their fears were groundless, for “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have,” reports Luke 24.39. Paul had in mind the non-physical nature of Satan and his army of evil spirits when he said that our warfare is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. Satan’s demonic hordes are spirit beings, and therefore more dangerous than the “flesh and blood” enemies we may encounter in our daily lives. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Second, the Bible portrays demons as highly intelligent creatures. They recognize Christ when He was here upon the Earth, and knew they could not have fellowship with Him. Luke tells us about an evil spirit who is an example of this. “When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God, most high? I beseech thee, torment me not,” reports Luke 8.28. The fallen spirits are also aware of their ultimate defeat, for James declared, “Them demons also believe, and tremble,” reports James 2.19. They are, of course, finite creatures, even Satan is limited in knowledge. He has myriads of evil spirit followers, however, and they are able to give him information on almost any person and circumstance in which he is interested. In this manner he can find out much what he wants to know. Truly, believers in Christ can never successfully cope with Satan and his hosts without special help from the Lord. Therefore, we must humbly look to God for wisdom and strength to resist the attacks of our invisible enemies. Third, the World of evil spirits is cruel. These creatures hate God and all who have placed their trust in Him. They seem to find delight in causing human grief and pain. For example, Matthew tells us that a man who was both blind and dumb suffered these afflictions because a demon had entered his body. “Then was brought unto him one possessed with a demon, blind, and dumb; and He healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spoke and saw,” reports Matthew 12.22. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of two demented men who lived in the country of the Gerasenes, and indicate that their insanity was the result of demonic invasion of their personalities. Luke, the beloved physicians, writes of a woman who was bent over with some crippling disease, saying that she had “a spirit of infirmity.” He adds that Jesus said she had been bound by Satan. “And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And, behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no way lift herself up. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
“And he laid his hands on her; and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which humans ought to work; in them, therefore, come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or her ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, who Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bound on the sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him,” reports Luke 13.10-17. While the gospel writers make it clear that not all illness is the work of Satan and demons, they do point out that much human suffering is the result of demonic activity. Finally, the Bible tells us that all fallen angels or evil spirits are confirmed in their wickedness. Though they “believe and tremble,” they will never repent, never seek forgiveness, and never pray for holiness or purity. Though they know that Jesus is the Christ, they never really worship Him. They must acknowledge that He is stronger than they, and may occasionally render Him token submission, but inwardly they hate Him and keenly resent His authority over them. In fact, their nature is so totally evil that the term “unclean” often is applied to them. (See Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelations 16.13.) They apparently delight in sin, find great pleasure in leading humans to commit evil deeds, and possess no feelings of guilt nor desire for deliverance. Michael Scot, reputed a wizard of such potency that—when in Salamanca’s cave he listed his magic want to wave and the bells would ring in Notre Dame. Scot has studied successively at Oxford and Paris (where he acquired the title of “mathematicus”); he then passed to Bologna, thence to Palermo, and subsequently continued his studies in Toledo. His refusal of the See of Cashel was an intellectual loss to the Irish Church, for he was so widely renowned for his varied and extensive learning that he was credited with supernatural powers; a number of legends grew up around his name which hid his real merit, and transformed the man of science into a magician. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
In the Border country traditions of his magical power are common. Boccaccio alludes to “a great master in necromancy, called Michael Scot,” while Dante places him in the eighteen circle of Hell. The next, who is so slender in the flanks, was Michael Scot, who of a verity of magical illusion knew the game. Another man to whom magical powers were attributed solely on account of his learning was Gerald, the fourth Earl of Desmond, styled the Poet, who died rather mysteriously in 1398. The Four Masters in their Annals describe him as “a nobleman of wonderful bounty, mirth, cheerfulness of conversation, charitable in his deeds, easy of access, a witty and ingenious composer of Irish poetry, a learned and profound chronicler.” No legends are extant of his magical deeds. King James I of Scotland, whose severities against his nobles had around their bitter resentment, was barbarously assassinated at Perth in 1437 by some of their supports, who were aided and abetted by the ages Duke of Atholl. From a contemporary account of this we learn that the monarch’s fate was predicted to him by an Irish prophetess or witch; has he given ear to her message he might have escaped with his life. We modernize the somewhat difficult spelling, but retain the quaint language of the original. “The king, suddenly advised, made a solemn feast of the Christmas at Perth, which is clept Saint John’s Town, which is from Edinburg on the other side of the Scottish sea, the which is vulgarly celpt the water of Lethe. In the midst of the way there arose a woman of Ireland, the clept herself as a soothsayer. The which anon as she saw the king she cried with a loud voice, saying thus: ‘My lord king, and you pass this water you shall never turn again alive.’ The king hearing this was astonied of her words; for but a little before he had read in a prophecy that in the self same year the king of Scots should be slain; and therewithal the king, as he rode, cleped to him one of his knights, and gave him in commandment to turn again to speak with that woman, and ask of her what she would, and what thing she meant with her loud crying. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
“And she began, and told him as ye have heard of the King of Scots if he passed that water. As now the king asked her, how she knew that. And she said, that Huthart told her so. ‘Sire,’ quoth he, ‘men may “calant” yet take to heed of yon woman’s words, for she is but a drunken fool, and wot not what she saith’; and so with his folk passed the water celpt the Scottish sea, towards Saint John’s town.” The narrator states some dreams ominous of James’s murder, and afterwards proceeds thus: Both afore supper, and long after into quarter of the night, in the which the Earl of Atholl (Athetelles) and Robert Steward were about the king, where they were occupied at the playing of chess, at the tables, in reading of romances, in singing and piping, in harping, and in other honest solaces of great pleasance and disport. Therewith came the said woman of Ireland, that celpt herself a divineress, and entered the king’s court, till that she came straight to the king’s chamber-door, where she stood, till at the last the usher opened the door, marvelling of that woman’s being there that time of night, and asking her what she would. ‘Let me in, sir’ quoth she, ‘for I have somewhat to say, and to tell unto the king; for I am the same woman that not long ago desired to have spoken with him at the Leith, when he should pass the Scottish sea.’ The usher went in and told him of this woman. ‘Yea,’ quoth the king, ‘let her come tomorrow’; because the he was occupied with such disports at that time he let not to hear her as then. The usher came again to the chamber-door to the said woman, and there he told her that the king was busy in playing, and bid her come soon again upon the morrow. ‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘it shall repent you all that ye will not let me speak now with the king.’ Thereat the usher laughed, and held her but a fool, charging her to go her way, and therewithal she went thence. Her informant “Huthart” was evidently a familiar spirit who was in attendance on her. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Considering the barrenness of Irish records on the subject of sorcery and witchcraft it affords us no small satisfaction to find the following statement in the Statute Rolls of the Parliament for the year 1447. It consists of a most indignantly-worded remonstrance from the Lords and Commons, which was drawn forth by the fact that some high-placed personage had been accused of practising sorcery with the intent to do grievous harm to one’s enemy. When making it the remonstrants appear to have forgotten, or perhaps, like Members of Parliament in other ages, found it convenient to forget the nonce the Kyteler incident of the pervious century. There was an Act of Parliament which was intended to put a stop to a certain lucrative form of witchcraft. It is gravely stated by the writer of a little book entitled Beware the Cat (and by Giraldus Camrensis before him), that Irish witches could turn wisps of hay, straw &c. into red-coloured pigs, which they dishonestly sold in the market, but which resumed their proper shape when crossing running water. To prevent this it is stated that the Irish Parliament passed an Act forbidding the purchase of red swine. We regret to say, however, that no such interesting Act is to be found in the Statues books. The belief in the power of witches to inflict harm on others was also a powerful belief in Victorian times. When reflecting on history, one can see that consulting someone with supernatural powers was no different than talking to a friend about one’s life. It was very common. Also, many of these accounts turned out to have some truth to them or evidence of supernatural power. Perhaps this is because people were more in tune with their inner spirit and the planet back then. Many people thought Sarah Winchester was mentally ill or deranged for consulting a medium about how she should deal with the evil spirits that were haunting her, they thought she was even more insane for building the World’s most beautiful and unique mansion. However, what better way could there be to spend your money than by creating something you and the World can enjoy for many centuries and creating a living memorial for your family? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Perhaps what Mrs. Winchester did was very rational and sane. In contrast, most others express their pain and suffering by becoming destructive and hurting others, and people usually idolize them for that. Mrs. Winchester gradually developed her skill in building, just as she had done with music and language in her youth. She often used the most current innovations in her home. Some historical sources say that Mrs. Winchester was the first to use wool for insulation. Carbide gas lights in the house were fed by the estate’s own gas manufacturing plant, which used a new process. The gas lights were operated by pushing an electric button. A specially designed window catch was patterned after a Winchester rifle trigger and trip hammer, amongst other state of the art designs. I met a man in the Winchester Mansion one day that I knew very well, as I thought, though I had not seen him for years. Without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle questions, we walked together to the Blue Séance Room, and there we shook hands. Just then there came a vague vibration in the Earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. Next morning, I spoke of this meeting to a mutual friend, and then I learnt, for the first time, that the man had died six months before. The natural inference was that I had mistaken one man for another, an error that, not having a good memory for faces, I frequently fall into. What was remarkable about the matter, however, was that throughout our walk I had conversed with the man under the impression that he was that other dead man, and, whether by coincidence or not, his replies had never once suggested to me my mistake. As soon as I finished speaking to Jared, who had been listening very thoughtfully, asked me if I believed in spiritualism “to its fullest extent.” “That is a rather large question,” I answered. “What do you mean by ‘spiritualism to its fullest extent’?” “Well, do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the power of revisiting this Earth at their will, but that, when here, they have the power of action, or rather, of exciting to action. Let me put a definite case. A spiritualist friend of mine, a sensible and by no means imaginative man, once told me that a table, through the medium of which the spirit of a friend had been in the habit of communicating with him, came slowly across the room towards him, of its own accord, one night as he sat alone in the Winchester Mansion, and pinioned him against the wall. Now can any of you believe that, or can you not?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
I could believe it. It seems that the difference between what we call the natural and supernatural is merely the difference between frequency and rarity of occurrence. Suppose a person died with the dearest wish of one’s heart unfulfilled, do you believe that one’s spirit might have power to return to Earth and complete the interrupted work? The Winchester Mansion is supposed to be enchanted. According to the legend, William Winchester was a very potent magician, and usually resided in a castle. To this he brought his bride, a beautiful young lady, Sarah Lockwood Pardee, who he loved, and he prevailed upon her her every desire, but with fatal results. One day she presented herself in the chamber in which her husband exercised his forbidden art, and begged him to show her the wonders of the evil science. With the greatest reluctance he consented, but warned her that she must prepare herself to witness a series of most frightful phenomena, which, once commenced, could neither be abridged nor mitigated, while if she spoke a single word during the proceedings the castle and all it contained would sink. Urged on by curiosity she gave the required promised, and he commenced. Muttering a spell as he stood before her, feathers sprouted thickly over him, his face became contracted and hooked, a corpse-like smell filled the air, and winnowing the air with beats of its heavy wings a gigantic vulture rose in his stead, and swept round and round the room as if on the point of pouncing upon her. The lady controlled herself though this trial, and another began. The bird alighted near the door, and in less than a minute changed, she saw not how, into a horribly deformed and dwarfish hag, who, with yellow skin hanging about her face, and cavernous eyes, swung herself on crutches towards the lady, her mouth foaming with fury, and her grimaces and contortions becoming more and more hideous every moment, till she rolled with a fearful yell on the floor in a horrible convulsion at the lady’s feet, and then changed into a huge serpent, which came sweeping and arching towards her with crest erect and quivering tongue. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Suddenly, as it seemed on the point of darting at her, she saw her husband in its stead, standing pale before her, and with his finger on his lips enforcing the continued necessity of silence. He then placed himself at the full length on the floor and began to stretch himself at full length on the floor and began to stretch himself out, longer and longer, until his head nearly reached to one end of the vast room and his feet to the other. This utterly unnerved her. She gave a wild scream of horror, whereupon the castle shook and the nine-story tower of what is now known as the Winchester Mansion came tumbling down. Mr. Winchester is said to have been dead and never lived in the Winchester Mansion, but perhaps his spirit did? Once every seven years, the great William Wirt Winchester would rise, and rides by on his white horse round Llanada Villa. The steed is shod with gold shoes, and when these are worn out the spell that holds Mr. Winchester will be broken, and he will regain possession of his vast estates and semi-regal power. In the closing years of the nineteenth-century there was a living man named Gilbert Plutchik who claimed to have seen Mr. Winchester. Gilbert was a blacksmith, and his forge stood on back of the estate, near a lonely part of the road. One night when there was a bright moon, he was working very late and quite alone. In one of the pauses of his work he heard the ring of many hoofs ascending the steep road that passed his forge, and, standing in his doorway, he saw a gentleman on a white horse, who was dressed in a fashion the like of which he had never seen before. This man was accompanied by a mounted retinue, in similar dress. They seemed to be riding up to the mansion, but the pace slackened as they drew near, and the rider of the white horse, who seemed from his haughty air to be a man of rank, drew bridle, and came to a halt before the smith’s door. He did not speak, and all his train were silent, but he beckoned to the smith, and pointed down at one of the horse’s hoofs. Gilbert stopped and raised it, and held it just long enough to see that it was shod with a gold shoe, which in one place was worn as thing as a shilling. Instantly his situation was made apparent to him by this sign, and he recoiled with a terrified prayer. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The lordly rider, with a look of pain and fury, struck him suddenly with something that whistled in the air like a whip; an icy streak seemed to traverse his body, and at the same time he saw the whole cavalcade break into a gallop, and disappear down the hill. It is generally supposed that for the purpose of putting an end to his period of enchantment Mr. Winchester endeavours to lead someone on to first break the silence and speak to him; but what, in the event of his succeeding, would be the result, or would befall the person thus ensnared, no one knows. If one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this World at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as this, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing-room tricks. There was once a great wrong done to the Winchester Mansion. A man stole something priceless from the estate. After that, he felt like he was being followed. However, the course was the whole World, and the stakes his life. It was sixteen hours before he was going to abscond. Passing the estate once more, he asks, “How long since the carriage passed this way, with a tall, fair man inside?” “Such a one passed this morning, Monsieur. The man was ridden by Fear as he looked, and saw before him the door to the Winchester Manion opened, and passing in, knelt down and prayed. He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch eagerly at the straws of faith. He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs from him, facing him, knelt Mr. Winchester praying also. However, Mr. Winchester’s prayer, being a thanksgiving merely, was short, so that when the thief raised his eyes, he saw the face of Mr. Winchester gazing at him across the chair tops, with a mocking smile upon it. He made no attempt to rise, but remained kneeling, fascinated by the look of joy that shone out of Mr. Winchester’s eyes. And Mr. Winchester moved the high-back chairs one by one, and came toward him softly. Then, just as Mr. Winchester stood beside the thief who had wronged him, full of gladness that his opportunity had come, there burst from the bell town a sudden clash of bells, and Mr. Winchester vanished. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Then the thief who had done the wrong rose up and passed out praising God. What became of the body of Mr. Winchester is not known. There was none to identify. Years passed away, and the survivour in the tragedy became a worthy and useful citizen, and a noted man of science. He was employed by Mrs. Winchester and even had a laboratory on the estate were many objects necessary to him in his researches, and prominent among them, stood in a certain corner, a human skeleton. It was a very old and much-mended skeleton, and one day the long-expected end arrived, and it tumbled to pieces. Thus it became necessary to purchase another. The man of science visited a dealer he well knew, and the dealer said he would send a well-proportioned “study” to his laboratory that very afternoon. The dealer was as good as his word. When Monsieur entered his laboratory that evening, the thing was in its place. Monsieur seated himself in his high-backed chair, and tried to collect his thoughts. However, his thoughts were unruly, and inclined to wander, and to wander always in one direction. He opened a large volume and commenced to read. He read of a man who had wronged another and feld from him, the other man following. Finding himself reading this, he closed the book angrily, and went and stood by the window and looked out. He saw before him the sun-pierced nave of East wing of the Winchester Mansion, and on the stones lay a dead man with a mocking smile upon his face. Cursing himself for a fool, he turned away with a laugh. However, his laugh was short-lived, for it seemed to him that something else in the room was laughing also. Struck suddenly still, with his feet glued to the ground, he stood listening for awhile: then sought with starting eyes at the corner from where the sound had seemed to come. However, the white thing standing there was only grinning. Monsieur wiped the damp sweat from his head and hands, and stole out. For a couple of days he did not enter the room again. One the third, telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl, he opened the door and went in. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand, and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined it. A set of bones bought for a thousand dollars. Was he a child, to be scared by such a bogey! He held his lamp up in front of the thing’s grinning head. The flame of the lamp flickered as though a faint breath had passed over it. The man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house were old and cracked, and that the wind might creep in anywhere. He repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room, walking backwards, with his eyes fixed on the thing. When he reached his desk, he sat down and gripped the arms of his chair till his fingers turned white. He tried to work, but the empty sockets in that grinning head seemed to be drawing him towards them. He rose and battled with his inclination to fly screaming from the room. Glancing fearfully about him, his eyes fell upon a high screen, standing before the door. He dragged it forward, and placed it between himself and the thing, so that he could not see it—nor it see him. Then he sat down again to his work. For a while he forced himself to look at the book in front of him, but at last, unable to control himself any longer, he suffered his eyes to follow their own beat. It may have been an hallucination. He may have accidentally placed the screen so as to favour such an illusion. However, what he saw was a bony hand coming round the corner of the screen, and, with a cry, he fell to the floor in a swoon. John Hansen and other people of the house came running in, and lifting him up, carried him out, and laid him upon his bed. As soon as he recovered, his first question was, where had they found the thing—where was it when they entered the room? And when they told him they had seen it standing where is always stood, and had gone down into the room to look again, because of his frenzied entreaties, and returned trying to hide their smiles, he listened to their talk about overwork, and the necessity for change and rest, and said they might do with him as they would. So for many months the laboratory door remined locked, and many of the innovative technologies produced by the Winchester Estate came to a halt. Then there cam a chill winter evening when the man of science opened it again, closed the door behind him. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
He lighted his lamp, and gathered his instruments and books around him, and sat down by the fire before them in his high-backed chair. And the old terror returned to him. He was sitting there when he heard a cry. He held his lamp above his head, and saw figures in the distance, and wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. He listened for a moment to the wind in the valley, it sounded unnatural. Standing at the door was a specter. The man of science sat down partly to collect his thoughts again, partly because it had turned him faint. He heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in the parlor. This time the man of science wished to conquer himself. His nerves were stronger now, and his brain clearer; he would fight his unreasoning fear. He crossed the door and locked himself in, and flung the key to the other end of the room, where it fell among beakers and Bunsen Burners with an echoing clatter. Later on, the housekeeper, Angus, going her final round tapped at the door and wished him good night, as was her custom. She received no response, at first, and growing nervous, tapped louder and called again; and at length an answering “good night” came back to her. She thought little about it at the time, but afterwards she remembered that the voice that had replied to her had been strangely grating and mechanical. Trying to describe it, she likened it to such a voice as she would imagine coming from a statue. Next morning the door to the laboratory remained still locked. It was no unusual thing for him to work all night, and far into the next day, so no one thought surprised. When, however, evening came, and yet he did not appear, the servants gathered outside the room and whispered, remembering what had happened before. They listened, but could hear no sound. They shook the door and called to him, then beat with their fists upon the mahogany panels. However, there was still no sound. Becoming alarmed, they decided to burst open the door, and, after many blows, it gave way and flew back, and they crowded in. He sat bolt upright in his high-backed chair. They thought at first he had died in his sleep. However, when they drew nearer and the light fell upon him, they saw the livid marks of bony fingers round his throat; and in his eyers there was such a terror as is not often seen in human eyes. Next evening was a lovely evening, and Mrs. Winchester walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when she traversed the field-path near where the nine-story tower once stood. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Winchester Mystery House
Saturdays are for the boilers 😉 Do you know where this is in the house?
🎟 Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
This is Not a Fairytale—Accept the Kingdom of God, You Idiot!
Mental health plays an important role in the way we deal with stress, how we relate to others and decisions we make in our daily lives. Without sound mental health, it would almost be impossible for one to realize one’s full potential, work productively, make a meaningful contribution to one’s community, or handle the stress that comes with life. Bipolar disorder is active and exacerbated, at least in part, by interpersonal stressors. When asked for their opinions of what caused their bipolar disorder, 74 percent of patients in one study pointed to interpersonal factors. There is some evidence linking vulnerability to particular interpersonal stressors with severity in bipolar disorder. In particular, sociotrophy-autonomy marks a particular predisposition predictive of negative symptomatological reactions to particular classes of stressors. People who score high on sociotrophy define their self-worth and efficacy in terms of interactions and relations with other people. Conversely, people who score high on autonomy derive their self-worth and efficacy from independent and autonomous achievements. Theoretically, people who are more sociotropic would be expected to be more vulnerable to interpersonal stressors. After assessing their sociotrophy-autonomy and their experience of stressful events, a group of patients with bipolar disorder were followed over a period of 18 months. Symptoms of bipolar disorder were exacerbated as a function of experiencing interpersonally oriented stressors, and of being more sociotrophic. Even if they experienced low levels of interpersonal events, whereas people who scored low on sociotrophy only experienced heightened symptoms in response to high levels of stressful interpersonal events, sociotrophy appeared to place subjects at risk for heightened symptoms. However, researchers did not find this sociotrophy-interpersonal stress-vulnerability effect, although it was evident among patients with unipolar depression. This suggest that the match between interpersonal stressful events and interpersonal vulnerabilities may be more import in unipolar than in bipolar depression. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
A related study also found that subjects with unipolar depression were more likely than those with bipolar depression to actually generate interpersonally oriented stressful events, such as conflicts. In this study, the subjects with bipolar depression did not differ significantly from medically or healthy controls in terms of experiencing interpersonal stressful event. Although symptoms of bipolar disorder may be triggered by interpersonal stressors, particularly when a patient has a predisposition to define one’s own self-worth in interpersonal terms, patients with bipolar disorder are not as likely to actually generate interpersonal stressors as are people with unipolar depression. Social support is believed to mitigate the ill effects of stressful events. Among patients with bipolar disorder, higher levels of social support are predictive of symptom-free “survival time.” However, social support has proven to protect against depressive episodes but not manic episodes. When people are feeling depressed, social support from others may involve tangible assistance with the source of the problem, cognitive restructuring or reframing so that the problem is no longer viewed as catastrophic, and distraction to take the depressed person’s mind off the problem temporarily. Each of these may be effective, at least in the short run, in alleviating some of the dysphoria felt by people who are depressed. It is interesting however, that many of these same tactics have little or no value for altering the mood of someone in a manic episode. To the extent that stressors exacerbate symptoms of bipolar disorder, social support may be helpful for minimizing some of the symptoms (depressive) but not others (manic). People with bipolar disorder have relatively high rates of the Cluster B, or “dramatic-emotional,” personality disorders (id est, antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline). In some sample of patients with bipolar disorder, 45 percent had at least one personality disorder, and many had several personality disorders. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
A study of personality disorder rates in outpatients with bipolar disorder compared to controls yielded estimates of 48 percent and 15 percent, respectively. The connection between bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder represents a mixture of impulsive self-damaging behaviour and unstable mood with agitated depressive features, unstable and ambivalent interpersonal relationships, suicidal threats or attempts, intense inappropriate displays of anger, and transient stress-related paranoid or disorganized symptoms. In some ways it is like bipolar disorder except that the two phases are mixed and more reactive to interpersonal problems. Symptoms of bipolar disorder can be triggered and exacerbated by interpersonal stressors, much like symptoms of borderline personality disorder. In both disorders, interpersonal relationships are turbulent, perhaps as both a result and a cause of the disorder’s symptoms. Bipolar disorder shares some significant features with schizophrenia. It is sometimes a challenge to distinguish the two. From an interpersonal perspective, perhaps the most striking similarity is the evidence for CD (communication deviance) and negative AS (affective style) in family interactions. It is tempting to speculate that these family interaction processes may create a vulnerability to, and/or be responsive to, nonspecific psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. In terms of social styme, people with bipolar disorder, like those with schizophrenia, often communicate with other people in way that are dramatic, odd, or grandiose. At the level of psychological and interpersonal symptoms, there is substantial overlap between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, suggesting that the two problems occupy neighbouring positions on the continuum from gross psychosocial disturbance to normal psychosocial functioning. In addition to being highly comorbid with personality disorders, and to some extent with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder tends to cooccur with eating disorders and substance use disorders. Obviously, these problems have been linked to some of the same interpersonal issues that are evident in bipolar disorder, particularly marital and family-of-origin difficulties. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The discovery of a genetic component in bipolar disorder, along with the documented efficacy of pharmacological agents for its treatment, has made biological explanations of bipolar disorder very fashionable. Attributions to biological origins are also very face-saving for patients and their families. However, these biological vulnerabilities are the backdrop, in front of which interpersonal stressors and disturbances in family relations profoundly influence the course of the disorder. Social and environmental factors may evoke or protect against biological, genetic, or cognitive vulnerabilities to bipolar disorder. Because the symptoms of bipolar disorder may be biologically caused, clearly leads to interpersonal impairment (exempli gratia, divorce, rejection from others), which further exacerbates the condition’s severity and chronicity. Unlike their counterparts with unipolar depression, people with bipolar disorder (at least during manic episodes) are prone to excessive talkativeness, exhibiting pressured speech, and grandiose ideas, loose associations, disorganized trains of thought, and ease of distractibility. Their excessive gregariousness may be amusing and even charming at times. However, the sheer chaos in their interpersonal communication, driven in part by thought disorder, undoubtedly interferes with competent social interaction. Other people may be annoyed, confused, and even frightened by the social behaviour of these patients. There is some suggestion that patients with bipolar disorder may manipulate others, presumably in the service of fulfilling their own dependency needs. Family problems may stress a patient, contributing to one’s symptoms. From a family systems perspective, these problems would be interpreted as both causes and effects of the disorder. Like people with unipolar depression, patients with bipolar disorder have difficulty establishing and maintaining romantic and marital relationships. When they do, considerable conflict, longing for intimacy, and disruption of pleasures of the flesh ensue. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
These patients appear almost oblivious to the burden they place on their spouses. Spousal EE (expressed emotions) have also proven to affect the course of the disorder. The positive symptoms profile of bipolar disorder may provide a modicum of relief from marital distress, due to the external attribution that spouses make from such symptoms. In their role as parents, patients with bipolar disorder tend to raise children with psychological and behavioural problems of their own. These children are especially vulnerable to the ill effects of stress, and their symptoms appear yoked to those of their ill parents. Symptoms of bipolar disorder are responsive to interpersonal stressors. Such stressors commonly precipitate episodes of the illness. Whereas social support from others has proven to suppress depressive episodes, it does not appear effective at preventing mania. Like two closely related mental healthy problems, depression and schizophrenia, bipolar disorder profoundly affects and is affected by interpersonal phenomena. Disturbed family dynamics and problems with close relationships figure prominently in the phenomenology of this severe and debilitating problem. Though biological agents have been implicated in the distal cause of this disorder, its maintenance and course are responsive to the many interpersonal problems experienced by patients with bipolar disorder. “Now He Who has fashioned us [preparing and making us fit] for this very thing is God, Who also has given us the [Holy] Spirit as a guarantee [of the fulfillment of His promise]. So then, we are always full of good and hopeful and confident courage; we know that while we are at home in the body, we are abroad from the home with the Lord [that is promised us]. For we walk by faith [we regulate our lives and conduct ourselves by our conviction or belief respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, with trust and holy fervour; thus we walk] not by sight or appearance. [Yes] we have confident and hopeful courage and are pleased rather to be away from home out of the body and be at home with the Lord. Therefore, whether we are at home [on Earth away from Him] or away from home [and with Him], we are constantly ambitions and strive earnestly to be pleasing to Him,” reports II Corinthians 5.5-9. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
When we keep reliving the painful memories of the past, we negate God’s desire to bring healing. Just as we are about to heal, we start talking about our painful experiences again. We bring it up to our friends. We start reliving it, seeing it in our imagination. All of a sudden, we can feel those same emotions all over again, as though we were tearing open the old wound. It will never properly heal until we learn to leave it alone. When one dwells on painful experiences in one’s past, one’s emotions go right back there with you, and you feel the pain in the present. You can relive something in your mind and feel it today just as vividly as when it happened twenty years ago. One must do something regarding the painful experiences from the past. Refuse to go back there emotionally; refuse to dredge up negative emotional memories. They will do one no good; in fact, strongly felt negative emotions hold the potential to severely stifle one’s progress. Think of it like this: Every person has two main files in one’s memory system. The first is a file filled with all the good things that have happened to us. It is full of our victories and accomplishment, all the things that have brought us joy and happiness through the years. The second file is just the opposite. It is filled with the hurts and pains of the past, all the negative things that have happened to us. It is full of our defeats and failures, things that brought us sadness and sorrow. Throughout or life, we can choose which file we will access. Some people repeatedly return to file number two and relive the painful things that have happened to them. They are always thinking about the times somebody did them wrong, the time they were hurt or suffered awful pain. They practically wear out file number two. They are so preoccupied with the negative things, they never get around to exploring file number one. They hardly think about the good things that have happened to them. If one wants to be free, if one wants to overcome self-pity, throw away the key to file number two. Do not go back there anymore. Keep your mind focused on the good things God has done in your life. To nurture an awareness of this perfect love may have different connotations for the Christians as opposed to the non-Christians. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
The Christian who goes through life becoming increasingly aware of the pure and intimate love that God has for one, has faith that the process of sanctification or growing in Christlikeness is inevitable. The Christian would probably think of this in terms of new fruits continually being born in one’s personality and relationships. In Galatians, Paul lists these fruits as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,” reports Galatians 5.22-23. For the non-Christian, mist the same process may be unfolding although one is not really aware of growing also by the grace of God. In one’s openness to the truth about one’s life, one can experience a clarification of one’s life situation, a deep trust in one’s own being, and a growing sense of relatedness to the Universe. The healing love God has for humankind, and the love that people can experience for one another, is the spiritual birthright of every human being. Being affirmed by love at the core of one’s being, the actualizing person does not need to waste energy proving, defending, controlling, or abusing oneself. One is set free to be oneself in a caring and respectful way, and to express oneself to others and to God in ways that are spontaneous, sincere, and creative. Being grounded in the fertile soil of God’s love, one is free to grow. God’s loving us perfectly does not guarantee that we will always feel loved. The sun always shines on the Earth, but sometimes a cloud blocks out the warmth that the Earth receives. So it is with the growing Christian. There are times of ecstatic awareness of God’s presence, and there are times when one’s prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling. However, for the actualizing Christian, even pain, frustration, confusion, and struggle are inspired tutors. In one’s heart, one learns to say with Christ, “Not my will, but thine be done,” and with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” So the actualizing life is based on the courage to know the truth about oneself and one’s destiny. This is why faith is at the heart of the Christian lifestyle. Only faith can be open to God’s sovereignty whatever the circumstances may be. Faith can penetrate the mystery of God’s love even when human understanding is darkened. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
To change from manipulating to actualizing does not require that one become something different from what one is. It simply means living more and more from one’s core being, which is infused in the most intimate way with God’s creative Spirit. To actualize is to unfold in our core being like a flower in bloom. The petals are like the four primary polarities described throughout this essay. If we are open to it, the process occurs in God’s good time. When on the actualizing pathway, a person moves into an ever-expanding sphere of meaningful and intimate relationships. This can happen as we receive more and more of the nourishment of God’s healing love. As life progresses, we become more vibrant, feeling-ful, and alive. The inner core is constantly enlarged throughout our being. Our sense of connectedness to God, nature, and humankind increases throughout life. The glimpse gives us new life and assists in the process of redemption, of what is called salvation in religious circles, but what happens when it is lost again? Well, something is left over, obviously the memory of it, but something more, difficult to describe, because it is in the subconscious. It is to these glimpses that one must return again and again, or rather to the memory of them, so they will give one support and will help one in one’s hour of need. One must love them and live by them in their light and not let them get lost in the limbo of utter forgetfulness. Uncertainties and fears beset the ordinary human. They come up in spite of oneself, whether they refer to one’s fortunes or one’s health, one’s business or one’s relationships. In such a situation whatever peace of mind one finds does not last long and cannot unless one has looked for and found, at least from time to time, a measure of communion with the Overself. Even a glimpse, a single glimpse, which may happen only once during several years, gives one a measure of support whatever thoughts appear and disappear during the interval of years. The glimpse goes, but it remains in one’s mind as a point of reference, a criterion for the future, something with which he can compare one’s ordinary existence and one’s ordinary attitudes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The simple discovery of what one really is leads to large implications. One sees one’s aims in life, one’s goals and ambitions, one’s desires and attitudes, under a different light. The glimpse itself passes but the memory remains and the effect upon them is disturbing. One begins to feel a new unease with them. The Truth itself is a cleansing agent, although its work on the emotions and thoughts and tendencies may be quite slow in many cases, because it is on a deep level. In some cases its effect is sudden, dynamic. At the very least the glimpse leaves a beautiful memory, at the most a divine inspiration. In our best moments, we discover that we are not really alone, for with them comes our best self. It is our guide and comforter. The experience may seem to happen by chance, its duration may be little more than momentary, but the impression left may last a lifetime. The glimpse is also a therapeutic experience. How can anyone who has gained entry into this sublime state ever again fall into the error of materialism? It has not even the value of a dream but only that of the memory of a dream! The experience is devastating toward one’s concept of reality. When the Overself takes full possession of one, it will change one’s personality and outlook completely. The dynamic inspiration imported by this experience will continue long after the experience itself has ceased. Life will be very different for humans, when at long last, one recovers the sense of one’s own divinity. When humans are touched by the power of God, one is called a “Son of God” or “Daughter of God.” Nothing can hold the experience. It evades one’s mental grasp, eludes one’s emotional hold. The Glimpse falls away and cannot be retained. However, the minutes or hours during which one was exposed to it will long be associated in memory with a great joy, a grave stillness, and an acute understanding. One longs to renew the glimpse but finds it beyond one’s power to do so; without it, the days seem futile. There is this value of these glimpses at least, that forever after the human possesses their standard by which to judge all other experiences in life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
The Overself, like the horizon, receded each time one came nearer and claimed it, but gave one sufficient tokens to lure one onward still again. The more one tastes these delightful unions, the less one will be able to endure these inevitable separations. These glimpses are received with holy joy and in later years, remembered with sweet nostalgia. The years will follow each other and one’s impressions of this divine day will blur. However, it is tremendous meaning will never blur. In this supreme moment one feels that so much of life which mattered greatly now matters little, so many desires, aims, ambitions, and values now fall in the scale of things. The mood passes, one’s feet descend to Earth, but one finds that at the back of one’s mind one is a little suspicious of them, a little sceptical of their promise. A few minutes of the glimpse compensates fully for the lengthened years of dull mediocrity and triviality, reconciles one to the past’s sufferings. The heartbreaks of life may be compensated by these glimpses. Out of the inner quietude have come the great decisions, the miraculous healings, the memorable awakenings, and the end of sorrows. When all else is forgotten, it is an experience one shall remember. One who is uplifted by this power will understand where others only condemn. The memory of this lovely foretaste will haunt imagination and taught desire. One will long to recapture the experience but will suffer under the feeling of its elusiveness and remoteness. Who can forget one’s first experience of the Glimpse? What a memory of gentleness, beauty, wonderment, and deeper understanding it leaves behind! The glimpse sustains ideals, nurtures hope, and supports faith. This balmy and relaxed experience may nevertheless have drastic and dramatic consequences. For it may drive the human to repudiate one’s former way of life and to initiate a reorientation of thought, habit, and conduct. To lock awareness to one of these glimpses even for a minute, without wilting, unmoved, is the highest form of concentration. It yields new power for one’s future life, and leaves an unforgettable stamp on one’s past life. The glimpse gives one the confidence that one is walking the right road thwarts one’s ego and weakens one’s lusts. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
A Glimpse gives one the confidence that one is walking the right road and encourages one to go forward. Even a little glimpse may lead to momentous decision. For it is the quality of consciousness which is important. With each glimpse, one will see life differently. When one finds, as all aspirants do, that one cannot keep this feeling or even recover it whenever one wants to, one may become wistfully nostalgic for it or even sadly mournful. The ordinary attitudes toward life suddenly desert one and no longer exist. New and strange ones just as suddenly arise within one. It leaves a firm and ineffaceable imprint on memory. Sometimes experienced, always remembered, the glimpse has marked one for life with some beneficial and benign signs. These glimpses serve several purposes. First, they uplift the aspirant’s heart. It is as if one has turned into another human, someone who still is but no longer seems oneself. Most seekers get experiences of mystic illumination at some time or other, but these are not essential. They are transient and they pass. They are intended to entice seekers away from too much materialism and then they vanish. Accept the historic fact that you had these experiences and glimpses—dozens of them—which revealed the Soul. What of worth life has given still stays in the mind, can still be found there again. Such is the magic of that passing-over to the higher consciousness, that the most sinful character or the most sorrowful life is transformed overnight. Virtue redeems the one; serenity heals the other. Even if the glimpse does not heighten the feeling that here is a signal from something real, one’s own further or deeper study and the testimony of historic figures will show one that one is on the right track. Such is the magic of that passing-over to the higher consciousness, that the most sinful character of the most sorrowful life is transformed overnight. Virtue redeems the one; serenity heals the other. The nostalgia which keeps on calling us back to those lovely moments is worth heeding. Humans cannot live in memories alone. One will soon or late feel the need to become that glory which one remembers so well. It will not let one forget, whatever pleasurable or painful experiences one passes through. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Jesus Christ’s saying on the subject of Holy Communion, as recorded by His Evangelists, “Come to Me, all you who labour and lumber, and I will take up your load, wrote Matthew 11.28. “The bread I give you is My flesh—there is enough to nourish the World,” wrote John 6.57. “Take it and eat it—this is My Body. Do it again, whenever you think of me; it is in remembrance of My part of the Original Deal.” Matthew recorded that too (26.26), and so did Paul in First Corinthians (11.24-25). “Whoever communicated Me in this way—that is to say, who commemorates Me by eating My Flesh and drinking My Blood—one will take up residence with Me, and I with one,” reports John 5.64. “These words I have spoken to you—breathe them and live,” reports John too 6.63. Yes, yes, O Christ, Eternal Truth. Yes, I have read these sayings, and what is more, I have copied them. And I cannot help but notice they are not all from the same place; they were not set down at the same time; they did not appear all in one passage or indeed scattered about on any one page. However, that is the copyist in me! They are Your words, no doubt about that, and, as such, I welcome them with open heart and open soul. And now they are my words also—favourite sayings, all—because You uttered them for my salvation. They flew from Your mouth, like seeds from a sower’s hand, coming to rest on the topmost soil of my soul. So full of piety and promise, they arouse me, but, alas, my sins drowse me off again. You will want me to approach the Great Mystery, but the very thought of it, when I do think of it, makes my conscience cringe, my bones creak. I still want to break bread with You but, as the Evangelist John might have asked (13.8), do You still want me to approach the Holy table? However, my feet are stuck to the ground. I must take one act of faith at a time, and that will get me to the Holy Table in plenty of time. I still want to obtain Eternal Life and Glory. Thank You, Father, that my past is forgiven, and I can live today fresh and clean because of what You have done for me. Please help me to focus on the great future that You have for me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
If you have a note due in January for $80,000, do not wait until December 29th to ask God to meet that need or to confess that your need is met according to His riches in glory. You have waited too late. That would take a miracle and we are not talking about miracles at this point. You need to start by putting the seed in the ground and proclaiming that your need is met. The law of sowing and reaping is a law of God and it words. Here is what has happened in many cases. “People have started saying, “Oh, Lord, it loos worse. There is a recession and I will not have the money by the end of the year. I will never be able to meet the payment. We will never be able to do it.” They confessed that for six months. Then when the note came due, they did not have the money, but they were very pleased that they were able to prophesy it six months ahead of time. The law of sowing and reaping was set in motion and produced failure. They spoke unbelief in prayer and they got what they said. Then they wondered why it worked out that way. The very principle that God have us to put us over, we have used in reverse. It will work just as fast in reverse gear as it will in forward. I have heard people say, “I prayed, but I believe it is getting worse.” “I have prayed but I am afraid it is not working out.” Well, I am not afraid. I know it is not working out because you are not releasing faith in God. You are releasing faith in the adversary. Fear is the reverse gear of faith. Fear brings the adversary on the scene. Fear releases the ability of the enemy against you. Faith releases the ability of God on your behalf. So when you pray, believe right then that it is settled. Believe when you pray, and the manifestation will come. This is not a fairytale. The Word of God is true and it works. It is spiritual law. The Word is your contract with God the Father. You need to read your contract and know what is in it. Many times we stop at verse 24 in Mark 11, but let us go on to verses 25 and 26. Have you ever noticed that every time Jesus Christ taught on prayer, He mentioned forgiveness? If my prayers were not being answered, the first question I would ask myself would be, “Am I holding something against someone?” or “Have I forgiven those who have done me wrong?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Jesus Christ said, And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any; that your Father also which is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses. However, if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in Heaven forgive your trespasses. I was meditating on this verse one day and decided that this may be the reason so many people kneel to pray. Jesus said, When ye stand praying, forgive. Maybe they think if they kneel, they do not have to forgive! If I was having troubles with my prayer life, I would check to be sure I was walking in forgiveness. Unforgiveness will stop your faith from working. Unforgiveness is a thief of life and a thief of faith. We can experience God’s love in a very direct and intimate way. This comes about through a spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ, and through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the gift that Jesus asked God to give us. As Jesus said to his disciples, “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the World cannot receive, because it neither sees one nor know one; you know Him; for He dwells with you, and will be in you,” reports John 14.16-18. The Holy Spirit bears witness that we are the sons and daughters of God (Romans 8.16). The Spirit is the Comforter, the counselor. We may seem too far away from Christ to have a personal relationship with Him, but the Holy Spirit can bring us together with Him. The gift of the Holy Spirit is that which helps us to know, in an intimate way, God’s love. We realize that this concept of the Holy Spirit may not have much meaning for some of you who are oriented primarily to psychology rather than religion. Consider with us the possibility that the Holy Spirit—this mysterious energy that may be difficult to understand—is the personal Presence and source of inspiration for growth and fulfillment among human beings. Even some of our Christian readers my have difficulty accepting this premise, because the Holy Spirit has sometimes been viewed as the vague third member of the Holy Spirit who is spoken of in the Apostles’ Creed but not experienced directly in daily life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
However, the Holy Spirit can give us the comfort and the power to live life openly in love, not in a fearful hiding place. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,” II Timothy 1.7. The Holy Spirit can be understood to come from within the personality much as a seed is placed within fertile soil. It is like a mustard seed that grows gradually from within, as opposed to a mustard-plaster which is slapped on from without. We like the understanding that the theologian Theodore Runyon brings to this issue: Because God values and respects our human freedom, the presence of His Spirit may be ignored or overlooked or buried beneath years of insensitivity and indifference. Jesus never imposes oneself on anyone. One meticulously honours the right of people to turn away from one as well as toward one, because one’s reign is not something that can be imposed but must be freely willed by anyone who can be His follower. Thus, the first step of the person who would know Christ is simply to become aware that one is already “closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.” Second, the person must surrender to one’s will for one’s life, learning daily to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit that enables one to fulfill one’s will. Some Christians believe that wholeness will happen automatically as soon as they come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We wish to point out that one of the mysteries of the Christian faith is that while one has the peace of Jesus’ being close at hand, one is still in a creative tension. This is because we are in a process of growing. That is, Christianity affirms that the kingdom of God is at hand; yet at the same time it has not yet fully come. The Holy Spirit is in the World and in the personality of the Christian; yet the Christian is still not a perfectly loving and wise being. Being born again does not mean that we will never have any problems. This is not true, but we do have Someone to help us face our problems. The Christian life is not a way “out” but a way “through” life. The Holy Spirit wants to form in and through our lives a unique expression of our Christlikeness. That expression takes into account every dimension of our lives—genetic and physical makeup, metabolic and hormonal systems, emotionality, experiences in the environment, place in culture and history, special calling and destiny, and our unique relationship with Jesus Christ in this life and in life eternal. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
It is striking in this context to note that the Greek word used in the New Testament to characterize the activity of the Holy Spirit in the human personality is dynamis. This probably looks familiar to the reader because it is the root word out of which our words for dynamo and dynamite have evolved. So when Christ tells us his disciples (Acts 1.8) that they shall receive power (dynamis) when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, he is saying that a dynamic new presence of energy will flow into their lives. The process of an outward flow of vitality and energy from the depths of the personality is the very opposite dynamic of the kind of collapsing inward of the personality that we have called deterioration. The actualizing Christian is moved in one’s core being by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Instead of tending toward spiritual and psychological deadness, one is continually animated and inspired by the Holy Spirit. The ironclad chains of fear are broken, and the Spirit guides one along the wisest pathway for one’s life. At the core level a profound experience occurs again and again in the life of the growing Christian. The Holy Spirit moves rhythmically and reliably back and forth within one’s day-to-day awareness. Just as the ocean tides move in and out, so does the Holy Spirit move now into the foreground of awareness, not into the background, but always near at hand. The result is that through all the experience of life, the person still feels loved in one’s core. The power of live is that it heals our fears and inspires our greatness. We have simply to come out of our hiding places, surrender to the love of God, and receive His gift of the Holy Spirit to guide out lives. Soul of Earth, sanctify me. Body of Earth, save me. Blood of Earth, fill me with love. Water from Earth’s side, wash me. Passion of Earth, strengthen me. Resurrection of Earth, empower me. Good earth, hear me. Within your wounds, hide me. Never let me be separated from you. From the power of evil, protect me. At the hour of my death, call me that with your living ones, I may thank you for all eternity Amen. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Father of mercy, in whose hand are the souls of the living and the dead, may Thy consolation cheer us as we remember our beloved and honoured kinsfolk who have gone to their eternal rest. May we be loyal to the memory of all our brethren, who in every generation scarified their lives to sanctify Thy name. We beseech Thee, O Lord, grant us strength to be faithful to charge while the breath of life is within us. May their souls repose in the land of the living, beholding Thy glory an delighting in Thy goodness. O good and beneficent God, turn this day in lovingkindness and tender mercy to the prayers of those who serve Thee and plead wholeheartedly before Thee. Verily we know that our strength is frail, and that Thou hast made our days as hand-breadths. Help us, O God of our salvation, to bear ourselves faithfully and blamelessly during the years of our pilgrimage. Strengthen us with steadfast faith in Thee and Thy Torah. Let Thy grace be with us, that we may rear our children to keep Thy commandments and to fulfill Thy will all the days of their life. Give us sustenance and let us not be in need of the gifts of others. Remove from us care and sorrow, distress and fear, shame and contempt. O God, take us not hence in the midst of our days. Let us complete in peace the number of our years. And when our end draws nigh and we depart this World, be Thou with us, and may our souls be bound up in the bond of life with the souls of all the righteous who are ever with Thee. Amen and Amen. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my dear father whom I recall in this solemn hour. I remember with esteem the affection and kindness with which he counselled and guided me. May I ever uphold the noble heritage he has transmitted unto me so that through me, his aspirations shall be fulfilled. May his soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life and his memory ever be for a blessing. Amen. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my beloved mothers whom I recall in this solemn hour. I remember with deep reverence and affection the solicitude with which she tended and watched over me, ever mindful of my welfare, ever anxious for my happiness. Many were the sacrifices she made in order to ennoble my heart and instruct my mind. May her soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life and her memory ever be for a blessing. Amen. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Cresleigh Homes
Ahh…it’s the time of year when all the holiday china gets a chance to show its stuff! 🍽️
Just wait…the eat-in island will be dressed to impress for Thanksgiving guests this year! One of our favorite parts about the Meadows 1 model – we get so many seating options! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
It is Futile to Try to Take the Kingdom of Heaven by Violence!
Mental hygiene is just as important as keeping the rest of our body in good shape. Our mental health influences so much about how we move through life, how we view ourselves, and how we relate to others. That is why it is so important to discuss our mental health with professionals or trusted friends to find ways of cultivating a beneficial state of mind, and to be reminded that we are never alone even when we feel like no one understands us. Without question, family-of-origin relations and interactions have dominated the interpersonal research on schizophrenia. However, there is reason to believe that problematic interpersonal relationships extend beyond the realm of family relations for patients with schizophrenia. For example, among patients at a residential facility, interpersonal interactions were identified as the primary cause of symptom fluctuations in approximately sixty-six percent of the residents with schizophrenia. The most commonly identified interpersonal interactions were with other residents, and involved arguments, irritation, and concern about having personal property stolen by these others. Residents also indicated that arguments with and criticism from staff members led to worsening of their symptoms. This kind of relation friction is very prominent in the interpersonal landscape of people with schizophrenia. One particular area of interest for schizophrenia and interpersonal relationships more generally is social support. Patients with schizophrenia typically have smaller social networks, and report that they have fewer close friends, than healthy controls or even other psychiatric patients. Importantly, our research group detected a negative association between number of family members in the patients’ social networks and their prognosis, whereas a greater number of friends and acquaintances in these networks was associated with better outcomes. This finding indicates that the type of “social support” that may be offered by family members actually aggravates the course of the disorder. What is obviously beneficial to the patient with schizophrenia is social support from friends. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
However, social support from friends is sadly lacking in many cases. One possible reason for this lack of support may stem from the poor social skills that are often associated with schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia and poor social skills tend to have smaller social networks. The negative symptoms of schizophrenia may also inhibit the ability to secure social support from other. The impact of social support clearly extends beyond just psychiatric symptoms for people with schizophrenia. It may literally have an impact on their long-terms survival. Recently 133 records of patients with schizophrenia, who were admitted to a state hospital, were examined. Over a lengthy retrospective follow-up period, those patients with more social support available exhibited a lower expected mortality. Using survival analysis, it was demonstrated that a 1-point increase in social support (expressed on a 5-point scale) was associated with a 25 percent hazard reduction over the follow-up period, which averaged 58 years. Clearly, when social support is available, it pays many dividends to people with schizophrenia—in terms of both psychiatric symptoms and longevity. Research on social support suggest that it is difficult for people with schizophrenia to reap the benefits offered by relationships with friends. In addition to problems with friendship, schizophrenia is associated with less closeness and more conflict with siblings. Individuals in the study expressed a considerable degree of grief and stress associated with their attempts to cope with their ill siblings. Further, there is evidence to indicate that, like people with depression, people with schizophrenia often elicit rejection from others. For instance, a large sample of students were asked to read vignettes describing a young mand with paranoid schizophrenia, personality disorder, or no mental health problem. The more mentally distressed the target person was judged to be, the more respondents found one to be socially unacceptable, and the more social distance from him they desired. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Similar findings are evident in a study of face-to-face interactions with patients with schizophrenia. In this case, the more strangely patients behaved during the interaction (as rated by observers), the more negatively their conversational partners responses to the. Some patients consistently behave in ways that lead them to be responded to more or less negatively. This interpersonal rejection effect associated with schizophrenia may explain the difficulty such people have in building and maintaining a social support network of friends. It is also linked to the sever social skills deficits these patients have. In addition to being embedded in disturbed and dissatisfying interpersonal relations, people with schizophrenia evidence serious communication problems of their own. An extensive line of research on social skills deficits associated with schizophrenia shows that the disorder is strongly associated with what are often fundamental failures in basic communication skills. Although these deficits are not ubiquitous with this family of disorders—for example, those with the paranoid subtype may be more functional—in many cases the exceptionally peculiar and disorganized style of relating to other people makes communication extremely difficult and challenging. The research on social skills deficits associated with schizophrenia has examined the expression or encoding aspects, as well as the reception of decoding aspects, of communication. Within each of these area, distinct deficits are sometimes evident in subprocesses (speech production and use of non-verbal behaviour in the case of encoding skills; and recognition of facial expressions, social information, and recognition/process in the case of decoding skills). Patients with schizophrenia have impairments in social skills that are more pronounced than those of either healthy or psychiatric controls. The social behavior of patients with schizophrenia, in social settings, tends to be less appropriate than that of either nonpsychiatric controls, or psychiatric controls, including patients with mood disorders and schizoaffective disorder. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Impairment in social skills are not just secondary to the symptoms of schizophrenia, and they are significantly associated with more general social functioning. Further evidence of poor encoding social skills associated with schizophrenia is evident in a diverse range of studies. For example, based on clinical ratings of such social skills as acceptance of contact from others, initiation of contact with others, effective communication, engaging in activities, participating in groups, forming friendships, and asking for help, patients with schizophrenia scored significantly lower on all dimensions, compared to patients with bipolar disorder or major depression. Similar findings based on clinical ratings indicate that in domains such as language development, socialization, and responsibility, patients with schizophrenia were rated more poorly than those with intellectual disabilities, and were about the same range as patients with organic brain impairment. When using self-report instruments to assess social skills, people with schizophrenia rated themselves as less competent in their ability to initiate interactions, manage conflict, and provide emotional support to others. These social skills deficits were particularly associated with negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Effective verbal communication skills are essential for conveying information, as well as for establishing and negotiating interpersonal relationships. Deficits in these skills are almost immediately evident upon interacting with an individual with schizophrenia. A frequent theme in the research on speech production and schizophrenia is the frequency of communication failures. These include such phenomena as vague or confused references, missing information in references, and structural unclarities. In conversation, people with schizophrenia will exhibit numerous communication failures. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The communication failures makes their discourse very difficult to decode, and their train of thought almost impossible to follow. This type of speech clarity (or unclarity) is strongly related to social functioning among patients with schizophrenia. It is impossible to overlook the striking parallel between the findings on communication failures among people with schizophrenia and the findings on Communication Deviance (CD) in their family members. Another speech problem associated with schizophrenia is diminished or inhibited speech production, also known as poverty of speech. This is speech that is inappropriately laconic and unrestricted. For example, when asked, “What was your family like when you were growing up?”, a person with schizophrenia may answer, “OK, I guess.” Such insufficiently elaborate responses require the conversational partner to probe continually for further information in order to get a sufficient answer. And when people with schizophrenia do speak, they tend to have poor enunciation and inflection. Such inhibited speech production is not specific to schizophrenia; it is also evident in depression. However, it tends to be more chronic for people with schizophrenia, whereas it improves dramatically as symptoms remit in depression. The effective use of nonverbal behaviour adds considerable richness to vocal communication, conveying attitudes, emotions, and information. People with schizophrenia regularly exhibit impairments in their use of nonverbal communication behaviours. For example, patients with schizophrenia make less eye contact with others during social interactions, although this may be limited to certain types of interactions that are of a personal nature. When watching emotional films, patients with schizophrenia were found to be less facially animated than nonpatient controls. They may also be impaired in the use of paralanguage (exempli gratia, tone of voice, speech rate, inflection) to convey emotion. In family interactions, patients with schizophrenia use fewer gestures and lean forward less toward their partners than psychiatric controls do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Research on the encoding aspects of social skills shows that people with schizophrenia perform very poorly. Both their verbal and their nonverbal behaviours suggest disengagement, confusion, and existence in reality that is difficult to express, much less share with others. Sadly, the extent of social skills deficits associated with schizophrenia does not stop there. Aside from encoding or behavioural production skills, decoding skills are also vital to effective interpersonal communication. These skills are often referred to as social and emotional sensitivity or nonverbal sensitivity. Such skills call on one’s ability to perceive and read subtle cues in the discourse and nonverbal behaviour of other people at a rapid pace. Obviously, these are cognitively demanding skills that are preferred over a lifetime of human interactions. People with schizophrenia experience a multitude of decoding problems in interpersonal contexts. These interpersonal decoding skills problems are undoubtedly related to a more general problem that reveals itself equally in poor performance in decoding noninterpersonal phenomena. By definition, inherent in its diagnostic criteria, schizophrenia involves many serious perceptual problems that are often manifest in hallucinations and disorganized cognition and affect. They make for ineffective social perception that undoubtedly contributes to deteriorated interpersonal experiences for people with schizophrenia. The real enemies of humankind today—as in the recent past—are doctrines which have issued from the womb of hate and greed, suspicion and violence, and grown only to spread hate and greed, suspicion and violence. For the inevitable harm of such thinking is as self-destructive as it is socially destructive. If they could penetrate, by some mystical insight, the awful horrors and repulsive episodes which mar modern history, they would find something unimaginably grand, beautiful, and wise behind it all, unseen and undreamt by the human agents responsible for this misery. It is unjustified escapism. Postwar sensualism is as much a form of escapism as postwar ashramism. Folly and evil play the most powerful parts on the contemporary World stage. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
If we look at the large panorama of the twenty-first century history, with its tortures and devastations, its epidemics and destructions, its famines and depopulations, above all, its menace of horrors yet to come, we can see how trivial a thing in fate’s eyes is personal life, how unimportant in them is personal emotion. What does fate, God, Nature, care about the little histories, the little loves, the little griefs of pullulating humans, who must appear in those same eyes as hardly more noteworthy than pullulating ants! There are millions—nay, billions—of these men and women who are so like each other in their basic natures and desires, that it does not make any difference to the planetary Mind or the protoplasmic Force whether some of them die or survive, mate of frustrate, are ecstatically happy or dully miserable, stay perfectly whole or limp hideously maimed. The fact is that the World finds itself today very nearly spiritually bankrupt. Snobbishness is only misplaced reverence. Any good that is misplaced easily becomes an evil. The older nations were permeated with this evil far too much. The World approaches insane chaos and convulsion at most, perilous conditions at least. The fault lies not only with the criminal but also with the society in which created the conditions which tempted one to enter criminality. There is such insecurity and instability, so much demoralization and so much discontent. Are human life and human destiny ruled by mere chance or by iron law? If by chance, then our race is wholly at the mercy of evil humans, but if by law, then we may hope to see the pattern of ultimate good eventually show itself in its history as these humans and all humans are steered back to righteous courses by suffering and intuition, by revelation and reflection. The fact that human character as a whole seems not to have improved in our time does not mean that it will fail to improve in the future. Human virtue is only in its infancy and will one day attain its maturity. Human goodness in essence is indestructible because the divine soul in humans is indestructible. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
There is in the very midst of humanity today, albeit hidden and awaiting its hour of manifestation, that which is the very opposite of what has already manifested itself though the evil channels. There is divine pity as against barbarous cruelty, sublime wisdom as against materialistic ignorance, altruistic service as against aggressive selfishness, and exalted reverence, altruistic service as against hard atheism. There is the recall to a forgotten God. There is redemptive grace. There is a hand outstretched in mercy to the worst sinner, and in consolation to the worst sufferer. Those who are mystically sensitive feel its presence even now, however intermittently. Too many people hold, whether consciously or unconsciously, the materialistic belief that they are here on Earth to satisfy their material desires only, and that they have no higher responsibility. This is no time for smooth words that hide the true state of affairs, no times for shallow optimism that screens the precipice along whose edge we are walking. Humanity passed through the five-year agony of life-and-death conflict against the enemy attempts at World domination because it earlier hugged the delusion either that the danger did not exist or that it was very slight even if it did exist. It cannot afford to repeat that error. The peril in which it now stands from materialism—whether avowed, open, or disguised, supported by out-of-date science, or molded from out-of-date religion—is just as grave in its own way because of its terrifying spiritual and physical consequences. The materialistic view of humans, which would regard one’s life-functioning as a set of physical processes only, which would condemn one to an absolute lack of spiritual awareness, must die or humans themselves will die with it. Materialism leads to a faulty interpretation of historic events and one-sided interpretation of personal ones. Most of the modern civilizations which are based on materialism and take no account of the spiritual nature of humans are building towers of Babel which, when they have reached a certain height, will topple down. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The greater the height, the larger the number of broken pieces. The creativity of these civilizations is illusory; they seem to be productive, but they are really destructive, for since they do not conform to the World-Idea the karma they are making must inevitably bring all this about. The gods of quite virtue and spiritual wisdom have had fewer votaries than at most other parallel periods of our history, while the grinning demons of brazen pleasure and materialistic pursuits have been far busier. Folly holds the field. Despite all the scientific backwardness and primitive character attributed to them, there was always a place in most of the civilization of antiquity—and there still is in the Old World—for the self-actualized or the prophet. In the New World there does not seem to be one for one today—on the contrary, one is too often met with unjust suspicious and hopeless misunderstandings and so can do nothing else than crawl into one’s shell. This accusing fact that our society has no place for one, sets no importance on one and perceives no value in one, is of itself enough to damn it for having strayed so far from its higher purposes. There is something seriously wrong with a civilization which thinks that the effort to come into Overself-consciousness is an abnormal and even an insane one. It is a stupid and narrow outlook which equates the desire for material progress with the pursuit of materialism. We have passed out the centuries belief in fossilized creeds only to pass into the centuries of superstitious belief in credalized fossils—such as the materialistic conception of Man, the crude notion that the inferiority of all Eastern knowledge. Whether we take the industrialized machine-ridden civilization of Europe or that of the United States of America, in the end they are setting up the same goals—the creation of slavery to technology which can only end in psychosis and physical illness. When a people is concerned only with material things, and when their desires are wholly confined to them, it is proper to call them materialists. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Just as nature has set limits to the status of a well-formed human, beyond which there are but giants or dwarfs, so too, with regard to the best constitution of a state, there are limits to the size it can have, so as not to be too large to be capable of being well governed, nor too small to be capable of preserving itself on its own. In every body politic there is a maximum force that it cannot exceed, and which has often fallen short by increasing in size. The more the social bond extends the looser it becomes, and in general a small state is proportionately stronger than a large one. A thousand reasons prove this maxim. First, administration becomes more difficult over great distances, just as a weight becomes heavier at the end of a longer lever. It also becomes more onerous as the number of administrative levels multiplies, because first each city has its own administrative which the populace pays for; each district has its own, again paid for by the people; next each province has one and then the great governments, the satrapies and vice royalties, requiring a greater cost the high you go, and always at the expense of the unfortunate people. Finally, there is the supreme administration which weights down on everyone. All these surcharges continually exhaust the subjects. Far from being governed by these different orders, they are worse governed than if there were but one administration over them. Meanwhile, hardly any resources remain for meeting emergencies; and when recourse must be made to them, the state is always on the verge of its ruin. This is not all. Not only does the government have less vigour and quickness in enforcing the observance of the laws, preventing nuisances, correcting abuses and foreseeing the seditious undertakings that can occur in distant places, but also the populace has less affection for its leaders when it never sees them, for the homeland, which, to its eyes, is like the World, and for its fellow citizens, the majority of whom are foreigners to it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The same laws cannot be suitable to so many diverse provinces which have different customs, live in contrasting climates, and which are incapable of enduring the same form of government. Different laws create only trouble and confusion among the peoples who live under the same rulers and are in continuous communication. They intermingle and intermarry, and, being under the sway of other customs, never know whether their patrimony is actually their own. Talents are hidden; virtues are unknown; vices are unpunished in this multitude of humans who are unknow to one another which the seat of supreme administration brings together in one place. The leaders, overwhelmed with work, see nothing for themselves; clerks govern the state. Finally, the measures that need to be taken to maintain the general authority, which so many distant officials want to avoid or harass, absorb all the public attention. Nothing more remains for the people’s happiness, and there barely remains enough for its defense in time of need. And thus a body which is too big for its constitution collapses and perished, crushed by its own weight. On the other hand, the state ought to provide itself with a firm foundation to give it solidity, to resist the shocks it is bound to experience, as well as the efforts it will have to make to sustain itself. For all the peoples have a kind of centrifugal force, by which they continually act one against the other and tend to expand at the expense of their neighbours, like Descartes’ vortices. Thus the weak risk being soon swallowed up; scarcely any people can preserve itself except by putting itself in a kind of equilibrium with all, which nearly equalizes the pressure on all sides. It is clear from this that there are reasons for expanding and reasons for contracting, and it is not the least of the political theorist’s talents to find, between these and other reason, the proportion most advantageous to the preservation of the state. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
In general, it can be said that the former reasons, being merely external and relative, should be subordinated to the latter reasons, which are internal and absolute. A strong, healthy constitution is the first thing one needs to look for, and one should count more on the vigour born of a good government than on the resources furnished by a large territory. Moreover, there have been states so constituted that the necessity for conquests entered into their very constitution, and that, to maintain themselves, they were forced to expand endlessly. Perhaps they congratulated themselves greatly on account of this happy necessity, which nevertheless showed them, together with the limit of their size, the inevitable moment of their fall. In Britain, a Manchester housewife named Katherine Fisher, after suffering for years from a desperate fear of leaving her own home, founded an organization for others with similar phobias. Today that organization, The Phobics Society, has many branches and is one of thousands of new groups cropping up in many of the high-technology nations to help people deal directly with them own problems—psychological, medical, social, or sexual. In Detroit, Michigan USA, some 50 “bereavement groups” have sprung up to assist people suffering from grief after the loss of a relative or friend. In Australia an organization called GROW brings together former mental patients and “nervous persons.” GROW now has chapters in Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Alaska, New Zealand, Ireland, Trinidad/Tobago. In America, PFLAG has over 400 chapters across the country, and boasts of more than 200,000 members to help those with homosexual children. In Britain, Depressives Associated has some 60 chapters. From Addicts Anonymous and the Black Lung Association to Parents Without Partners and Widow-to-Widow, new groups are forming everywhere. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Of course, there is nothing new about people in trouble getting together to talk out their problems and learn from one another. Nonetheless, historians can find little precedent for the wildfire speed with which the self-help movement is spreading today. Human Services Research Institute is a team of more than 50 dedicated professionals, which provides research, support, and guidance to clients looking to develop more efficient and responsive service systems. They work across all sectors and program area in health and human services, addressing the needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities; people experiencing behavioural health disorders; children, youth, and families; seniors and people with physical disabilities; people experiencing housing instability or homelessness; and states and communities looking to promote population health. In the United States of America alone there are now over 500,000 such groupings with new ones forming daily. Many are short-lived, but for each one that disappears several seem to take its place. These organizations vary widely. Some share the new suspicion of specialists and attempt to work without them. They rely entirely on what might be termed “cross-counseling”—people swapping advice based on their own life experience, as distinct from receiving traditional counseling from the professionals. Some see themselves as providing a support system for people in trouble. Other play a political role, lobbying for changes in legislation or tax regulations. Still others have a quasi-religious character. Some are international communities whose members not only meet but actually live together. Such groups are now forming regional, even transnational linkages. To the extent the professional psychologists, social workers, or doctors are involved at all, they increasingly undergo a role change, shifting from the role of impersonal expert who is assumed to know best to that of listener, teacher, and guide who works with the patient or client. Existing voluntary or nonprofit groups—originally struggling to see how they fit in with a movement based on the principle of helping oneself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The self-help movement is thus restructuring the socio-sphere. Smokers, stutterers, suicide-prone people, gambler, victims of throat disease, parents of twins, overeaters, and other such groupings now form a dense network of organization that mesh with the emerging Third Wave family and corporate structures. However, whatever their significance for social organization, they represent a basic shift from passive consumer to active prosumer, and they thus hold economic meaning as well. Though ultimately dependent on the market and still intertwined with it, they are transferring activity from Sector B of the economy to Sector A, from the exchange sector to the presumption sector. Nor is this burgeoning movement the only such force: Some of the richest and largest corporations in the World are also—for their own technological and economic reasons—accelerating the rise of the prosumer. Prayer is a legal right. Under this new covenant contract, sealed by the Lord Jesus Christ in His own blood, you have the legal right as a born-again believer to enter the throne room of God. You can stand in His presence without fear, without a sense of inferiority, without a sense of guilt, because of what Jesus did. It is your legal right to come boldly before the throne of grace to request Heavenly intervention in this Earth on your behalf. Prayer is your legal right, but you should come by the rules of spiritual law that govern prayer. Even though you do not, the law will still work—the law that says, one shall have whatsoever one saith. Or the law that says, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. These laws still work regardless of our ignorance of the Word. Prayer is the legal right to ask God to supernaturally intervene in your behalf. The power of binding and loosing is not in Heaven. It is on Earth. You are the one who has authority to bind the forces of evil. You are the one who has the power to loose the ability of God in this Earth through the prayer of faith. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
It is your legal right to use the prayer of faith to put you over in life. Wrong words in prayer will hold you in bondage. They will loose the ability of the enemy against you. Right words in prayer will release the ability of God. Prayer is to line ourselves up with the Word of God and set ourselves in a position to give God liberty to move on our behalf. Sometimes our prayers have bound God. If you rightly divide the Word of God in prayer, you will loose God’s ability. It will cause you to stand in a new realm of faith. You will come to the point that you will not have to pray all night. You can pray, knowing that God hears you. Then you will be silent to the Lord. Try to bring as much of your mind into your prayer as possible. When tired, rest. Repeat the rhythm of prayer five times. Such mental concentration is one of the secrets of champion professional strong humans. The faithful practice of these mind-concentrated mental exercises of prayer must lead in time to better bodily self-control. Prayer evokes the greatest power to resolve situations and to assist one in making one’s dreams com true, and it brings about the greatest results. However, one may practise prayer until Doomsday, mutter the hundred and eight different mystic spells, sit in all the sixty-four postures of yoga of body control, hold one’s breath for a whole hour or vary its rhythms in every conceivable manner, but the Overself will remain stubbornly remote unless one frankly faces and successfully fights out one’s struggle against one’s own ego in one’s own heart. No physical contortion, exercise, or manipulation can ever take its place. An isolated prayer is always nice. However, consider three minutes every day, or more. Prayer seems very effective when it is done regularly and is habit forming. Help teach your children, instead of complaining, try to pray to God and ask for the goodness that you want. It is futile to try to take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence. It cannot be successful. This desire to enter the Kingdom in a hurry is pardonable. Yet if it were fulfilled, the fulfillment would be a premature attainment and consequently lacking in fullness, falling short in wholeness, and uncertain of steadiness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
All the different stages of development are needed in experience and can be missed only to our loss. Although timelessness is the quest’s end, the journey itself must take place in the measured pace of time to prepare us properly for its end. It may be that this is because we may not take hold of spiritual possessions which we have not rightfully earned by personal labours and to which we have no honest legal title. It may be that a spiritual treasure cannot become our own in advance of the requisite efforts to develop adequate fitness and understanding for such vast responsibility. “My son, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart; for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh,” reports Proverbs 4.20-22. Some stories bear repeating over and over because they build our faith. For instance. God’s people often retold the Exodus story, partly because God instructed them to do so, but in my mind, I can also imagine them telling the story of Moses and the deliverance from Egyptian slavery for the sheer joy they experienced in passing on the event to the next generation. In some ways, I feel the same way when I tell about my father’s miraculous healing. The doctor said he had days to live. So he went home and pored over his Bible and found about one hundred favorite passages of Scriptures concerning healing. His circumstances began to change. Not overnight, but little by little, he began to feel better. He got his appetite back and started gaining weight. Slowly but surely, his strength returned. Maybe you are facing a “hopeless” situation. Do not give up. God is a miracle-working God. He knows what you are going through, and He will not let you down. Start speaking words of faith today, and watch how God causes your circumstances to change. Ecstasy is not a permanent mark of the mystical experience, but only a temporary mark which accompanies its first discovery. It is the beginners who are so excited by mystical ecstasies, not the proficient. The process of re-adjusting the personality to a future filled with wonderful promise and stamped with tremendous importance naturally moves the emotional nature towards an extreme delight. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to regard the mystic’s ecstasy as something that was merely emotional only. Behind it there is the all-important contribution of the Overself’s grace, love, and peace. When the emotional excitement of the discovery eventually subsided, these will then show themselves more plainly as being its really significant elements. Life can never again be just as ordinary, just as commonplace as before, nor just as if one had never passed through those vital moments of divine uplift. The white-hot point of their inspiration has faded, but it can never be forgotten. It will, nay it must, show itself powerfully in one’s directive purposes and in the quality of one’s living. One will want to keep this awakened consciousness at all times. This aspiration will instantaneously or eventually bring one to tread the Quest. In the intellectual deductions which one may make after the experience, and when one is viewing it analytically, one may find corroboration of one’s true beliefs or contradiction of one’s false ones. However, the ego having closed in upon one again, this may happen only partially, or only slightly, depending on its strength. Every glimpse of the Infinite helps one to let go of the finite, to detach oneself from one’s possessions and passions. Here is goodness and beauty which Worldly objects and Worldly creatures do not possess. The human who has once glimpsed them can never again become completely satisfied with the World’s offerings, for this reason, but will again and again be haunted by, and attracted to, the vision of this higher possibility for humans. Blaming and attacking are a more aggressive form of manipulation used in relationships by Critical Christians. Because of the many times such persons have been hurt, they fixate on being angry and punitive, believing that consistently blaming and attacking others will keep them from ever being hurt again. Being hurt is the Critical Christian’s greatest fear. So, paradoxically, one becomes the aggressor in hurting others first to keep from being hurt. This perpetuates a vicious cycle. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
While being in good contact with the polarities of anger and strength, the Critical Christian is out of touch with the complementary dimensions of love and weakness. In fact, one is stuck on the anger polarity and cannot allow into awareness feelings of tenderness or humility because they threaten the rigid pattern of always being in control and being right. When anything happens that the Critical Christian does not like, one compulsively seeks to find fault with others, God, or the World. Critical Christians enjoy bullying others into believing that their way is the only way. A closely associated strategy is judging others—constantly pointing out what they should be or say or do and where they have gone wrong. Because the Critical Christin is basically angry at the World, one usually communicates with others in a rather brusque way. However, the same dynamic of attacking and blaming may be carried on with a smile and an artificial appearance of being a nice person. Sometimes the Critical Christian just complains and whines constantly about not living this or that. As a child, the critical person could well have received the kind of harsh, judgmental treatment one now dishes out to others. Much psychological research shows that children learn many of their basic styles of relating by modeling themselves on the way that their parents or other authority figures relate to them. For instance, there is a high probability that children who have been physically or psychologically abused by parents will in turn abuse their own children, unless specific therapeutic intervention gives them new alternatives that they never had a chance to learn. Chances are the critical person experienced real fear, helplessness, and torment in childhood. This could have been inflicted by insecure parents, jealous brothers or sisters, exploitative relatives, or bullying peers. However, at some point, the pain reached such a crescendo that the person reversed roles—becoming the persecutor rather than the victim—and spent the rest of one’s life taking out the frustration, hostility, and pain on others. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
When people living out a punitive style of relating become Christians, there is a high probability that they will unconsciously contaminate their understanding of God and other people. The contamination is a result of the old hurts and the hostility that they generated within. The irony, then, is that Critical Christians rationalize such attitudes and behaviour by believing that God is the one who is angry, harsh, and judgmental of everyone. This supposedly excuses them for their own hostile behaviour. This type of individual might even believe that he or she is an emissary of God, sent to dispense God’s wrath on others. Once, therefore, feels quite smug in laying heavy demands upon others and becoming a hard taskmaster in telling others how to be holy and live up to God’s supposed expectations. A noticeable pattern for the Critical Christian is the preoccupation with ritual, rule, and regulation. In the zeal to serve God, one becomes guilty of destroying the spirit of love and gentleness that characterizes true Christian behaviour with a dogmatic and almost vicious concern with the letter of the law. Some Critical Christians can recognize that they are intolerant and impatient with anyone who sees things differently from them. They often feel that they have all the answers about God, life, and other people’s behaviour. When they become aware of how many people who have felt hurt, and misunderstood by their brash approach to life, the understand they have judged others too harshly. As these individuals grow, they develop a more gentle lifestyle that enables one to relate genuinely to people who are quite different from them. Father, it is Your Word that I rely upon to bring healing and health to my life and to those from whom I am praying. I am not interested in spiritual tricks or formulas; I only want Your will to be done. May my words reflect Your words and Your will in the situations I am facing. I will dare to speak faith-filled words. Faith comes from the Word, not prayer. I once head someone say, “I prayed all night about a certain situation, just stayed up and prayed all night.” Well if they had prayed in faith, they would have gone to sleep. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Pray in faith, then rest in the Lord. When you start praying in faith, your words will be few, but they will be effective. (However, keep in mind if your system is already perfected, do not change it.) Sometimes we pray just trying to muster up some faith. That is not scriptural. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God, not by praying. Go to the Word of God and hear the Word until faith comes; do not be too quick to pray. Sometimes we start talking before we know what to say. Hear the Word…hear the Word…hear the Word. It might take a week or a month, but faith will come. Then go to God with the prayer of faith and thank Him. You will not have to stay there long. You can get more from God in two minutes, believing Him, than you can praying all night in unbelief. However, keep in mind, long conversations with God can be like therapy. A little patience and humility in adversity will please God more than a lot of consolation and devotion in prosperity. Why do you become depressed when a small insult is sent your way? If it has been a bigger one, a real calumny, say, you still should not have let it bother you. Let it pass. It is not the first time or the last time, just the present time, an they will keep coming, no matter how long you live. Verily, you will do virilely most days, that is to say, until sometime prickly gets in your way. You are very good at giving advice on vice to others, how to battle the Enemy, that sort of thing. However, when tribulation suddenly comes a-knocking, you quickly lose your water. Pay some attention to how fragile you are, especially in the small things of life. They are for your salvation, all these dreadful little things that happen to you. Put the bad stuff out of your heart, as best as you know how. And if it goes get to you, do not let it depress you or entangle you for long. As for consolation, if you are not getting any, then at the least bear up patiently. Also, if you accidentally overhear an insulting remark and feel your gorge rise, reprimand yourself and do not let a wisecrack escape your mouth, lest the tots and tykes be scandalized. If commotion arises, quickly muffle your drums, and from that, the internal pain will be suitably and smoothly hummed with grace. Up to this point God has lived, prepared to help us, and he is prepared to help us more. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
However, we must first have faith in God, then invoke God directly, and address God nicely. Keep your heard on straight! Cinch up your cincture! There are worse battles ahead. However, do not fuss and fume if you have to skirmish with tribulation, or worse, come under heavy fire from temptation. Why? Well, God should have thought it obvious by now. You are homo sapiens, not Sapientia herself! You are fleshy, not feathery; human, not Angel. Just saying in the same old place as far as virtue’s concerned is not really a virtue in the spiritual life. The First Angel as well as the First Man found that out. And now they are out of Heaven, out of Paradise. God is the One who raises up those who are down and out about their own welfare. However, those who know their own infirmity, these God will carry to His divinity. May all I say and all I think be in harmony with thee, God within me, God beyond me, maker of the trees. In me be the windswept truth of shorepine, fragrance of balsam and spruce, the grace of hemlock. In me the truth of douglas fir, straight, tall, strong-trucked land hero of fireproof bark. Sheltering tree of life, cedar’s truth be mine, cypress truth, juniper aroma, strength of yew. May all I say and all I think be in harmony with thee, God within me, God beyond me, maker of the trees. In me be the truth of streamlover willow soil-giving alder hazel of sweet nuts, wisdom-branching oak. In me the joy of crabapple, greatmaple, vinemaple, cleansing cascara and lovely dogwood. And the gracious truth of the copper branches arbutus, bright with colour and fragrance, be with me on the Earth. May all I say and all I think be in harmony with thee, God within me, God beyond me, maker of the trees. This Feast of the Law all your gladness display, today all your homages render. What profit can lead one so pleasant a way, what jewels can vie with its splendour? Then exult in the Law on its festival day, the Law is our Light and Defender. My God I will praise in a jubilant lay, my hope in Him never surrender. His glory proclaim where His chosen sons pray, my Rock all my trust shall engender. Then exult in the Law on its festival day, the Law is our Light and Defender. My heart of Thy goodness shall carol alway, Thy praises I ever will render; while breath is, my lips all Thy wonders shall say, Thy truth and Thy kindness so tender. Then exult in the Law on its festival day, the Law is our Light and Defender. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Yeah, You Sure Do Have a Problem!
Just because you do not understand it, does not mean It is not so. Contemporary investigations of family relationships and schizophrenia center more on explaining the course than the cause of the disorder. There are, however, some notable instances where researchers have employed family-of-origin variables to predict the onset of schizophrenia. Three family variables that have been, and continue to be, particularly influential in this area are communication deviance, expressed emotion, and family affective style. In the classic family approaches to schizophrenia, patients’ families often have odd and unfocused styles of interacting with each other, perhaps in the service of sustaining pseudomutuality. Members of these families have difficulty establishing and maintaining a shared focus of attention through their discourse. Out of this original set of studies and hypotheses about family interaction and schizophrenia emerged a very influential line of research on communication deviance. It has been theorized that people learn to focus their attention and derive meaning from external stimuli through their interactions, particularly with parents, during the early years of life. Odd and deviant styles of communication among the parents were presumed to interact with biological predispositions to contribute to thought and communication disturbances in children who are unable to relate to and understand their parents. A considerable body of evidence indicates that a family affected by a member’s schizophrenia will communicate in odd, idiosyncratic, illogical, and fragmented language, even when that member is not present. Topics of conversation will often drift or abruptly change direction, with a lack of closure. Such interactions are marked by a blurred focus of attention and meaning. This characteristic style of family communication has been labeled CD (communication deviance). #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Traditionally, CD has been assessed from transcripts of parents’ responses to projective tests such as the Rorschach or the Thematic Apperaption Test (TAT). These responses are generally made in the absence of the child. People with schizophrenia may have a contorted peculiar language and misinterpratations of social and verbal language. This is referred to as interactional communication deviance (ICD), and it classifies parents’ discourse into categories such as idea fragments (exempli gratia “But the thing is as I said, there’s got…you can’t drive in the alley), contradictions or reactions (exempli gratia, “No, that’s right, she does” and ambiguous reference (exempli gratia ‘Kids stuff that’s one thing but something else is different too). Abundant evidence indicates that CD is higher in parents of patients with schizophrenia than it is in parents of either patients without schizophrenia or healthy controls. It is particularly intriguing that this distorted form of communication is highly reminiscent of the communication style that typifies the person who actually has schizophrenia. It is therefore unclear whether parental CD reflects a genetic effect that is evident in both parent and child, or a parental behaviour that contributes to the child’s problem. The onset of schizophrenia can be predicted. In one study, parents from families with moderately disturbed teenagers each responded to TAT protocols, from which measures of CD were taken. Fifteen years later, the lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia in the children was assessed. High CD in the parents was strongly associated with the appearance of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in some of the family of offspring at follow-up. In a similar study, disturbed high-risk adolescents were followed over a period of 5 years. By the end of the study, approximately 10 percent of those whose parents who were low or intermediate in CD went on to develop schizophrenia, whereas 56 percent of those whose parents were high in CD developed schizophrenia. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Other researchers on CD has examined its role in the course of schizophrenia. For example, one group of patients with schizophrenia and their parents were followed for over the course of 1 year. Within the 12-month period of the study, slightly over 50 percent of the patients has experienced a relapse. Parental CD at the time of the patients’ discharge was significantly higher among the parents of those who relapsed versus those who did not. However, in the assessment of parental CD at time 1, there were no differences among parents of those who did versus those who did not relapse. As it turns out, the parents of those patients who relapsed exhibited a dramatic increase in their CD over the course of the study. This investigation indicates that returning to a home with high CD will increase the likelihood of relapse. The results of an adoption study conducted in Finland illustrate the power of parental CD to influence schizophrenic outcomes in children. Children who were genetically at risk or predisposed to develop schizophrenia, were especially likely to develop the disorder when reared by an adoptive family that was high in CD. However, among the low-risk adoptees, there was no relationship between CD in the adoptive parents and thought disorders in children. These findings suggest that parental CD may be a family stressor that interacts with a preexisting diathesis to influence the development of schizophrenia. It is reasonable to wonder whether parental CD is a repose to schizophrenia in a child. Interaction with a person afflicted with schizophrenia may possibly bring about CD. However, the parental CD is not a consequence of living in a household with someone who has schizophrenia. In addition to distorted verbal behaviour, parental CD may be accompanied by problematic use of nonverbal behaviour. Parents who are high in CD also exhibit gaze aversion and rigidity in facial expression while interacting with their children. These are powerfully disconfirming behaviours. At the same time, they fit well with poor focus of attention that is the hallmark of CD. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
When a high-CD parent “interacts” with a child, both verbal and nonverbal behaviour suggest that the parent’s thoughts and emotions are elsewhere, and that there is some tension between the parent and the child. Consequently, the child may be met with fragmented and disconfirming behaviour in both the verbal and nonverbal channels when interacting with the high-CD parent. It appears that parental CD functions as a type of stressor that affects the course and outcome of schizophrenia. When parents’ communication is particularly amorphous and peculiar, children may become confused and uncertain about even basic and fundamental social realities. This confusion undoubtedly has functional significance in the course of the schizophrenia, as it is so central in the constellation of symptoms that make up the disorder. It is difficult to read the transcripts and hear the speech of a high-CD parents, and not wonder about the parent’s own mental health, aside from that of the child. It is therefore understandable that when patients are discharged into the care of such parents, they offspring remain at risk for future relapse. Early investigations of family expressed emotion (EE) identified a pattern of criticism, overinvolvement, overprotectiveness, excessive attention, and emotional reactivity that appeared to create a vulnerability to relapse and poor social adjustment among patients with schizophrenia. EE represents an attitude of criticism and emotional overinvolvement on the part of the parent, which is expressed during an interview with a researcher or clinician. Originally a special interview procedure, known as the Camerwell Family Interview, was employed to assess family EE. The construct is operationalized through the frequency of critical remarks, degree of hostility, and the degree of emotional overinvolvement expressed by a family member during the interview. Generally, parents who express more than six criticisms during the interview are characterized as high in EE. EE is a combination of four behavioural characteristics: intrusiveness; anger and/or acute distress and anxiety; overt blame and criticism of the patient; and an intolerance of the patient’s symptoms. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
One study revealed that patients who returned to a home with high-EE relatives exhibited a 9-month relapse rate of 51 percent, whereas only 13 percent of those who returned to a low-EE family relapsed. Family therapy programs that improve communication and problem solving, thus lowering EE, have been shown to lower relapse rates significantly. Recently discharged patients with schizophrenia who returned to either high-EE or low-EE families were examined. Patients from high-EE families exhibited more odd and disruptive behaviour during a family interaction approximately 6 weeks after hospital discharge than did patients from low-EE households. Relatives in the high EE households were more critical of the patients when they verbalized unusual thoughts than low-EE family members were. Studies such as these clearly paint a picture of a vicious circle in high-EE family relations: These parents respond to a patient with a lot of criticism, because patients from these households appear to exhibit more bizarre and disruptive behaviour than patients from low-EE homes. It is likely that the negative reactions they receive from their families contribute further to the potential for relapse among patients. A review of 25 studies on family EE indicated a 50 percent relapse rate, over a period of 9-12 months, among patients discharged to high-EE families, but only 21 percent among those with low-EE relatives. These findings indicate that the odds of relapse are increased by approximately 2.5:1 for patients discharged to high- versus low-EE relatives. Similar findings are evident in a recent meta-analysis of this literature, indicating an effect size of r =.30 for the association between family EE and relapse. Studies of family EE show that three factors are prominent in protecting a patient with schizophrenia from relapse. The first factor is low-EE in the relatives who live with the patient. For better or worse, most patients are discharged back to their families of origin. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
When family members harbour critical and hostile attitudes toward a patient, the likelihood of relapse is high. On the other hand, low-EE, which may be indicative of greater tranquility, support, acceptance, can greatly reduce the probability of relapse. A second protective factor is low (id est, less than 35 hours per week) face-to-face contact with high-EE parents. Again, avoiding the agitating effect of high-EE family members appears to pay some dividends. The final protective factor identified is whether a patient is maintained on medication. Obviously, those who comply with medication regiments are at reduced risk for relapse. These authors argue that of the three factors, low-EE in the family is most important in reducing relapse within a year from discharge, as it appears to have a prophylactic effect regardless of compliance with medication. Family EE may function as a stressor that precipitates relapse among recovering patients with schizophrenia. The experience of a psychological problem as profound as schizophrenia can leave a recovering patient in a very fragile psychological and social state. Even though symptoms may be under control and in remission, the interpersonal disruption that is associated with this disorder may still be evident, leaving the patient in a precarious state of interpersonal behaviours, the patient may have minimal opportunity for seeking social support and validation from other sources. The end result of this state of affairs may be relapse into an episode of schizophrenia upon being pressed by EE from family members. There is reason to believe that parents who are particularly high in EE may have psychological problems of their own. Studies found that lifetime rates of major psychiatric disorders were 100 percent in high-EE parents of patients with schizophrenia, and only 44 percent in parents who scored low on measures of EE. Although this 44 percent lifetime prevalence rate for the low-EE parents may seem high, it considered normal when contrasted with other studies, suggesting that these parents as a group are no different from those in the general population. The amazingly high rate of psychiatric disorder in the high-EE parents raises the possibility that EE may be a marker of genetic transmission of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Family EE is assumed to be a stressor that evokes psychiatric symptoms in a patient. Do patients find high-EE to be stressful? To explore the issue, patients with schizophrenia were asked to discuss happy and unhappy memories from their lives. Patients with high-EE parents recalled significantly fewer positive memories that involved their parents, compared to patients with low-EE parents. Overall, parents were featured in twice as many positive as negative memories. However, high-EE parents were featured in roughly equal proportions of positive and negative recollections. The study provides at least indirect evidence that high-EE parents are experienced as stressful by patients with schizophrenia. Research on family EE continues to flourish. In addition to being a useful and reliable predictor of relapse, EE may be fruitfully understood as a familial risk indicator for schizophrenia. High-EE parents are especially likely to have their own history of psychopathology. Thus parental EE may signal a possible genetic transmission of psychopathology. High-EE parents feel that their own psychological problems were overcome though internal efforts. Whether family EE is viewed as a predictor of relapse or a risk factor, one can interpret it within a diathesis-stress framework, in which this conflictual and hostile family attitude functions as a stressor on the patient. At the same time, however, it is important to bear in mind that EE may also reflect parents’ frustration and appraisal of the burden of dealing with their son or daughter with schizophrenia. Whereas EE reflects the content of communications, CD reflect the form of communication. As if to make a potentially disruptive family situation worse for patients with schizophrenia, families are that are high in CD also tend to be high in EE. Consequently, patients may be dealt a double dose of problematic interactional exchanges with their family members. It is little wonder that patients discharged to parents high in EE, who are also likely to express unclear, odd, and fragmented ideas, are at such a high risk for relapse. When the two variables were put side by side in the same investigation, family CD proved to be a more powerful predictor of schizophrenia outcomes (exempli gratia, number of relapses, time hospitalized, ratings of psychosocial functioning) then family EE. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Affective style (AS) is a measure of the verbal behaviour of family members during discussion of a conflict-laden issues with the patient present. Whereas EE is an attitude of hostility, criticism, and overinvolvement expressed by a family member during an interview in the absence of the patient, AS represent the family members’ actual verbal behaviours when interacting with the patient. It may be viewed as the behavioural manifestation of the attitude indexed by the expressed emotion construct, but this relationship has been difficult to establish empirically. Although AS and EE are close related and perhaps overlapping constructs, a distinct body of literature exists on AS, indicating that (like EE) it is often predictive of relapse among patients with schizophrenia. Measures of AS are typically taken from a series of brief family discussions about a current unresolved problem in the family. As might be expected, these conversations pull for substantial emotional expression. The conversations are then transcribed, and the family members’ speech content is coded for support, criticism, guilt induction, and intrusiveness. The unit of analysis for the coding is typically six lines of uninterrupted speech by a single speaker. The results of the coding are used to classify families into one of three profiles AS profiles: benign, intermediate, or poor. Benign-As families display a lack of negative behaviours (id est, personal criticism, guilt induction, and critical or neutral intrusiveness) during their interactions. Intermediate-As families are those who express some negative but some positive speech behaviours (id est, primary support) during the family discussion. Finally, poor-AS (also referred to as negative-AS) families are those in which one or both parents exhibit negative verbal behaviours, but no positive verbal behaviours. In one of the first AS studies, 65 families of high-risk, disturbed, but not psychotic adolescents participated in the family discussion. The adolescents were then assessed at a follow-up 5 years later. When a broad schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis (exempli gratia, including schizoid personality disorder) was used as the outcome criterion, only 8 percent of adolescents with a benign-AS family profile at time 1 received a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis at time 2. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Among those with an intermediate-AS family profile at time 1, 50 percent were diagnosed at time 2. This figure increased to 59 percent among those with a poor-AS family profile. Although it has been found that the best prediction of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders involved a combination of As and Cd, it is clear that family AS is a marker of risk for schizophrenia. In a longitudinal study of even longer duration, a group of moderately disturbed teens and their families were followed over a period of 15 years. The families participated in the typical conflict discussion. They were then classified as either negative- or benign-AS. Results for the study indicated that within those families classified as benign-AS, no cases of extended schizophrenia-spectrum disorder developed over the 15-year interval. However, almost all the schizophrenia-spectrum cases observed at time 2 occurred in the context of a family where one or both parents were high in EE and As. Like the studies on EE, the early studies on AS clearly supposed the hypothesis that family expression of criticism and hostility, in the absence of any supportiveness, indicates a risk for the development of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders among high-risk adolescents. These findings are consistent with early research showing that many psychiatric patients use mental hospitals as a refuge from stressful environments, in which they seek a carefree lifestyle. In addition to being a risk factor in the initial development of the disorder, AS may also predict relapse. In one investigation, patients with schizophrenia whose families had benign-AS profiles at the time of their discharge from the hospital evidenced a 40 percent rehospitalization rate over the next 12 months, whereas those who returned to negative-AS families had over twice the rate (83 percent) of rehospitalization. Even more striking are the findings for AS in concert with medication compliance: Patients with negative-AS families and noncompliance with medication exhibited a 100 percent rehospitalization rate, compared with only 17 percent among those with benign-As families and medication compliance. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Of further interest is the fact that researchers were tested for, and it was largely ruled out that the possibility that those patients from negative-As families were sicker in the first place and therefore more likely to relapse. This finding suggests that it is unlikely that family AS is merely a reaction to the severity of a child’s illness. Approximately 70 percent of those families characterized by excessive criticism and emotional overinvolvement at initial assessment remained that way over the course of the study, regardless of the patient’s clinical status. Furthermore, about 20 percent of the parents become more critical over the course of the study, despite the fact that the patients’ condition actually improved. For most families, AS reflects a relatively stable and enduring style of interaction, which is resistant to treatment and independent of the patients’ recovery status. The connection between family AS and rehospitalization could be the result of at least two different processes. The most straightforward hypothesis is that family AS is a stressor that pushes an already fragile individual “over the edge.” Experiencing a serious psychological problem can leave a recovering patient in a delicate psychological state, as noted earlier. The criticism and intrusiveness evident in a negative-AS household have the potential to strain the already sensitive patient to such an extent that the full disorder may redevelop. An alternative but related hypothesis is that family AS is a stressor that pushes the recovering patient out of the household and back into the hospital, in an effort to seek refuge from the family. Most people would find a negative-AS household to eb an aversive environment. It is understandable that almost anyone would want to get out of such an environment. For the patient with a learning history that involves being taken care of in a hospital, remission and readmission may be functional, in that it removes one from the stressful confines of the negative-As family origin. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Is negative AS specific to families of patients with schizophrenia? Several studies have been conducted to explore this issue, and these generally suggest that the problem is particularly exaggerated in such families. For example, when compared to parents of patients with bipolar disorder, the parents of patients with schizophrenia have been found to make more intrusive and critical statements toward the patients after discharge from the hospital. When compared to families of patients with anorexia nervosa, families of patients with schizophrenia were much more likely to have negative-As profiles. In this sample, only 1 of the 11 families of patients with anorexia nervosa had a negative-As profile. Family AS appears to have a relationship with both the onset and course of schizophrenia. At the same time, the variable has not been as widely embraces as CD or EE. This is due to problems with reliably rating AS. Consequently, the variable appears almost exclusively in research studies of the group at or from UCLA who originally developed the construct. Nevertheless, the available research findings indicate that it is a family interaction phenomenon with potential equal to CD or EE in explaining considerable variance in the course of schizophrenia. Modern conceptualizations of family interaction and schizophrenia fit well within a diathesis-stress framework. Some individuals may harbour a biological predisposition to develop schizophrenia. This predisposition is more formally known as the diathesis. It is unquestionably stressful to live with parents who communicate in odd and illogical ways, and who are unable to establish and maintain a shared focus of attention. It is equally stressful to live with parents who harbour as well as express attitudes of hostility, criticism, and overinvolvement. Sadly, many of these destructive and stressful family interaction patterns cooccur. The confusion and disorientation that parental CD produces, and the guilt, shame, and bewilderment about ego boundaries that parental EE and negative AS create, have the effect of combining flame and fuel among those with an existing predistortion toward schizophrenia and/or trigger relapse. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Current evidence indicates that one could question the mental health of any parent who exhibits excessive hostility, criticism, and emotional overinvolvement toward a child, along with an inability to establish and maintain a shared focus of attention in discussions that have a bizarre tone and structure. These family variables have an undeniable role in the course and in some cases onset of schizophrenia. It is not possible to fully understand and predict this disorder without at least some consideration of the family context in which a patient with schizophrenia was reared and into which one is discharged. The upsurge of interest in Eastern religion and Western cults is welcome, and may help a turn to the Good; but it has its negative side in a matching interest in Evil with a capital E. These evils, sufferings, and calamities exist for all, the good and the bad; such is the human lot. Whether in politics or in society, there is widespread double-talk, publicly upheld untruth, and differing views expressed. Many people have had their eyes opened to the depth and extent of the evil in humans, and they have become sad over it. Today nobody needs to become illumined in order to see the same thing. If some humans wish to withdraw from the World, disgusted with its repeated brutalities and malignances, need we wonder? Because the Universe is a manifestation of the Divine, it must be divinely guided. Therefore its history must be divinely controlled. What has happened in human World affairs so recently and so dramatically is not outside the divine will. What is happening today is just as much inside it. The degenerative process which replaces the universal-mindedness of Goethe by the fanatic narrowness of Goebbels, the calm wisdom of the earlier man by the obscene insanity of the later one, is a subject for reflection. The good and the evil in humans is such long-associated partners that cooperation of the good alone between humans is impossible. At some point of their contact, in some way, the reptilian evil will creep in and make its unpleasant discordant presence felt. Hence universal brotherhood is only a beautiful dream, to be shattered upon awakening to the ugly facts. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The lives of so many good humans in our time have moved inexorably to disaster, like the gloomy story of a Greek tragedy, that the helpless but friendly onlooker may well wonder where God is. A period so filled with confusion and so rife with evil, drives thoughtless people to more sensuality and materialism but thoughtful ones to more aspiration and higher values. O Lord Jesus, Your life was such a small stretch in human history, and even that was despised by Humankind. Despite what the history of the World has said and done, grant that I may imitate You in all respects. “The servant is not greater than the master, nor the student, the teacher.” That is how Your Matthew put it (10.24). We Devouts will be exercised in this life because there is where we will find our Salvation and True Sanctity. Outside of these applications of the spiritual life, whatever I read or hear about You will not give me the same pleasure as knowing You personally. “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in one’s heart, but believes that what one says is going to happen, it shall be granted to one. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they shall be granted you,” reports Mark 11.23-24. If you are in a touch situation today, now more than ever you need to guard what you say and now allow any negative, destructive words to come out of your mouth. Scripture says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and you will eat the fruit thereof,” reports Proverbs 18.21. In other word, you create an environment for either good or evil with your words, and you are going to have to live in that World you have created. If you are always murmuring, complaining, and talking about how bad life is treating you, you are going to live in a pretty miserable, depressing World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
You will always be tempted to use words to describe negative situations, but God wants us to use our words to change our negative situations. Do not talk about the problem, talk about the solution. Receive the Cross from Jesus Christ’s very hand. Carry it as Jesus handed it over to you, carry it to the death. Truly the life of a good self-actualized is the Cross, and the Cross is the passage to Heaven. The Cross is an uphill trudge, and once begun, you cannot just stop and turn around and go downhill. Ah, my friends, let us make the trudge together—Jesus will be with us. It is because of Him we took up this cross, and it is because of Him we will preserve in the Way of the Cross. He will lead the way, and we will follow. If He falls, we will help. And the other way around. Look, there Jesus is. Our King enters before us. He will fight for us. Let us follow him virilely, and no one will fear the terrors. Let us be prepare to die bravely in war. “Let us not fear the terrors. Let us not bring disgrace on our glory,” as the First Maccabist would say (9.10), by fleeing from the Cross. “Let the weak say I am strong. Let the oppressed say I am free. Let the sick say I am healed. Let the poor say I am well off,” reports Joel 3.10. Started calling yourself healed, happy, whole, blessed, and prosperous. Stop talking to God about how big your mountains are, and start talking to your mountains about how extraordinary your God is. When you are facing obstacles in your path, you must boldly say, “Greater is He who is in me than one who is in the World,” reports 1 John 4.4. “No weapon formed against me is going to prosper,” reports Isaiah 54.17. God always causes His loved ones to triumph. Stop complaining about lack and limitation and start declaring, God supplies all of my needs in abundance. Stop complaining that nothing good ever happens to you and start declaring, “Everything I touch prospers and succeeds.” We must stop cursing the World. Let us start loving God’s creation. There is a miracle in your mouth. If you want to change your World, start today by changing your words. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Never pray your problem. If you pray the problem, it will get worse. If you pray the problem, you loose the ability of the enemy. Pray the problem and it will grow greater and your faith will flee away on the wings of doubt. Pray the thing you desire. Go to the Word of God and find out what God said about it. You will find that the Word says, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them,” reports Mark 11.24. So you would pray the desire: “Father, I desire my husband to be saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. I ask You to send labourers across his path to witness to him. As I am praying right now, I believe that I receive it in the name of Jesus Christ. I cast all my cares over onto You; and when I get up in the morning, I will not pray about it again. I will continue to thank you. Father, I want to speak words that are consistent with Your Word; may my words be filled continually with faith and hope, and may they create an environment in which You can do great and mighty things in and through my life.” Now you have returned God’s Words to Him, He will perform it. Now that may not happen overnight. This is where the force of patience is exercised. Learn to be silent to the Lord as is mentioned in Psalm 37, verse 7. Do not use vain repetitions. Do not pray the same prayer over and over (but if you are just learning to pray, do what you can, God hears all prayers). Do not be held in bondage. I am a farmer by trade and let us say that I have just planted a field of cotton. Now, if I went out and said the next morning, “Man, something is wrong. This cotton is not coming up. Let us plow it up and plant it again,” would it not be foolish? The next day the same thing happened. If I kept doing that, I could plant 365 days and still not produce any cotton. We need to become as smart in the spiritual realms as we are in the natural. That kind of farming practice will cause one to go bankrupt quick! Our prayers many times have held us in bondage, causing spiritual bankruptcy. No one would dare plant a garden and next morning dig it up. Well, Sarah Winchester might. He plants and flowers and trees were known to grow years overnight. However, for most of us, it takes time for these things to happen. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
God has certain laws that He operates under. He had regulated Himself by His Word. God has the power to do anything. However, so many times He cannot use His power in our behalf because if He did, it would violate His Word. That is one thing God cannot do! He cannot violate His Word. If He did some of the things we ask, He would have to lie to do it. We have prayed beyond His ability to answer because of our violation of His rules concerning prayer. Jesus said, ‘What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them.” Some of you have been praying all the bad things, the problems. If God did what you really desire, then He would violate His Word. He said that you can have what you say when you pray, and you have said the problem in prayer over and over until all you are seeing and believing is the problem. Have you ever prayed, “Lord, it is not working out. It is not getting any better”? Well, I was praying that every prayer one morning and the Lord spoke something into my spirit. If I heard it in my ears, it would not have been any louder. He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Lord, I am praying.” He said, “No, you are not; you are complaining!” A lot of folks are complaining, thinking they are praying. They are telling God their problems. In Matthew, chapter 6, Jesus said that the Father already knows the problem. He already knows what you have need of before you ask Him. Then there is no need to pray the problem. What we need to do is zero in one the answer. Pray and speak the answer; cast the problem over on Him. The enemy has deceived the Christians into praying the problem. Did you know the more you pray the problem, the more you say the problem? The more you say the problem, the more you will believe in the problem. The problem will grow because you are keeping it always before you. It is just like fertilizing the problem. It will grow bigger and bigger. You tell others about it and they will say, “Yeah, you sure do have a problem.” They will agree with you, and then they will tell someone else. Finally, you will have fifty people agreeing that you have a problem. “Then you do have a problem! For Jesus said, ‘If two of you shall agree on Earth as touching anything, it shall be done,’” reports Matthew 18.19. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Now you can see the deception of the enemy. He has deceived us by twisting the Word of God around so we use it against ourselves. The adversary does not care how much you pray. One does not care how much you go to church. If one can distort the Word of God so that your prayers are ineffective, one has defeated you. Yes, you may make it to Heaven, but you may not do anything while you are here on Earth, except suffer, struggle along, and feel sorry for yourself. Many people get the idea that they are just suffering for Jesus; when, in fact, if they would just act on the Word of God and stand against the enemy, rebuking one in the name of Jesus, they could live in success. There is success in the name of Jesus Christ. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the enemy, and one will flee from you,” reports James 4.7. The Helpless Christian is in the same yacht with the ret of humanity in having weaknesses. The only difference is that even when a trusting relationship with God has been established, the Helpless Christian still feels the fear of being overwhelmed by life. This person feels that one hardly has the right to exist, much less grow. The Helpless Christian is stuck on the weakness polarity. Out of a sense of fear, the Helpless Christian distorts a religious commitment by reaming infantile and dependent. This person’s fear takes one of two forms. First, one may see God as the Great Rescuer and so stay helpless and continually wait for God’s help. Or, second, one may feel so overwhelmed by God because one is so big and by contrast one is so small that there is nothing else to do except sit shaking one’s boots in one’s presence. Either way, fear blocks growth. This person is unconsciously relating to God in the same manipulative ways that one has learned to relate to others. The helpless person has never learned to stand on one’s own feet. The body structure often reflects this in that the upper torso is often somewhat caved in, making the person appear fragile. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The Helpless Christian may experience a very nice payoff for infantile and dependent behaviour. There are many people who would like nothing better than to constantly rescue and take care of such a needy person. So the individual secretly enjoys the big fuss made over one’s difficulties, needs, and problems. If one dummies up, and does not learn to think for oneself, then others can be tricked into doing all the thinking. If one never has enough faith for anything, then other can be made to do the praying. If one is not willing to face life and learn to cope with it, the others can be hooked into giving advice, making decisions, and taking all the responsibility that should rightfully be one’s own. So the Helpless Christian says, “I cannot do it; I give up.” And the rescuers says, “That is all right; we will do it for you. Since getting in touch with one’s own strength and adequacy will mean accepting new responsibility, the Helpless Christian may prefer to continue seducing others into doing the thinking, feeling, and acting. Of course, one unknowingly pays the terrible price of remaining a psychological and spiritual infant throughout life. The other factor that may exert an unconscious influence on the attitudes and behaviour of the helpless person may be early traumatic experiences with family or peers. It is highly probable that the person has felt overwhelmed, humiliated, or severely taken advantage of while growing up. Therefore, one no longer trusts anyone. One does not even trust oneself, because there is a residual feeling of terror and helplessness about not being able to cope with life on one’s own. When people carry residual feelings of shame and embarrassment, as well as patterns of promiscuity into their adult Christian life, they may never experience an emotional reliable relationship, and it will be extremely difficult to understand others. That will make one an all too easy mark for predators. One must decide to face one’s life, and this will allow for the experience of new hope and lead to the discovery of a deep desire to amount to something. One will then take an active interest in determining how things will turn out for oneself, and be surprised that one’s choices can make such a big difference. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
This enlightenment will allow an individual to build friendships with humans that are genuine and supportive and allow one the dignity of being oneself. One will take an active interest in one’s careers, education, and hobbies and this disciplining time and energy will allow one to reach long term goals of vocational excellence. Then one day one will feel, “I am really loved. God loves me. And I can tell that some of my friends love me. And I am starting to love myself!” It may not be easy, but one can make real progress in climbing out of the rut of helplessness and apathy. At the manipulative level, the helpless Christian uses tactics of withdrawal and avoidance in order to escape the demands of responsible growth and self-direction. At the character level, some people may find themselves cold, aloof, and emotionally detached from others. In psychological terms, we souls say that the person is developing a schizoid character. In lay terms, we could say that the person is becoming lifeless and devoid of feeling. Having at some point felt a denial of the right to a fulfilling life, one is now determined never to again feel the pain of betrayal. Thus one psychologically locks oneself into solitary confinement and becomes numb to life, avoiding relationships and taking comfort in a hermit-like life where there is no emotional energy invested in another living thing except a dog or a cat. The passion, the interest or excitement with life, and the vision for fulfillment of one’s destiny are all gone. Encountering such an individual, one wonders if there is a person at all inside the stiff, fortified body. At the psychotic stage, helpless people melt silently into schizophrenia or an ultimate kind of “shut-offness” from the World. Not having learned how to live in the real World, they create a World of their own. Going further, they regress to an earlier, totally dependent form of infantile behaviour, relying on forces outside themselves for even the most simple bodily needs. This is both an alarming and depressing picture. Yet it is happening in people’s lives. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
If you find some of these tendencies unfolding in your own life, we urge you to begin reversing the pattern. The material throughout this report, coupled with your own desire and prayer, ought to provide you with many good options for growing out of the rut of being a Helpless Christian. If you feel that pressures in your own personality make it impossible to grow or change in healthy directions, then it would be wise for you to prayerfully seek a relationship with a competent professional counselor or therapist. Many people nowadays are benefiting from several weeks or months of individual group counseling or therapy with a qualified professional. Mother, Father, God, Universal Power, please remind us daily of the sanctity of all life. Please touch our hearts with the glorious oneness of all creation, as we strive to respect all the living beings on this planet. Please penetrate our souls with the beauty of this Earth, as we attune ourselves to the rhythm and flow of the seasons. Please awaken our minds with the knowledge to achieve a World in perfect harmony and please grants us the wisdom to realize that we can have Heaven on Earth. O Lord, open the Heavens and please pour down your rain. Yes, Lord, please refresh us, and pour down your spirit. Pour water on the thirsty land, and stream on the dry ground; pour your spirit upon our offspring, and your blessings on our descendants. Your Heavens above, rain down your righteousness; let the clouds show it down. Let the Earth open wide, let salvation spring up, let righteousness flourish with it; as You, the Lord, have created it. Please, loving God, bring us rain to renew the ground, to replenish our dams, to bring some chance of feed, to bring the possibility of some reward to those who have toiled so hard. We turn to you in faith and hope and love. With permission of Him who is exalted above all blessing and adoration, revered above all hymns of praise, wise in heart and might in strength and power, sovereign of the World and Lord of all creation, and with permission of all the righteous ones of this congregation, gathered here this day to rejoice in the Torah, and assembled to complete, then reverently to begin again in joy to read the Torah, stand forth, stand forth, stand forth, Hatan Bereshit. Inasmuch as you are chosen to be the first to perform so perfect a command, how great is your privilege, exceedingly great your reward! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Witches, Warlock, and Ghost in the Mansion of Mrs. Winchester!
Some people call themselves witches, and believe that they are able to contact and utilize powers from the invisible realm. However, there are many questions about witchcraft. Is it merely a game some people play? Is it beneficial to humanity? Or is it evil and dangerous? Universities all over the World are offering courses in occultism, and teams of scientists are investigating reports of mysterious magical phenomena all over the globe. They are baffled by some of the amazing incidents they encounter, and admit that present scientific knowledge cannot account for them. The Word of God may not provide a specific explanation for every problem one may encounter as one studies Satan, Satanism, and witchcraft, but it sheds much light on these subjects and offers practical guidelines by which God’s children can avoid dangers inherent in occultism. An unexpected and amazing development of this enlightened age is the resurgence of interest in Satan and an increase in occultic activity. A few years ago, most people assumed that the devil was dead, in the same manner that some theologians recently have affirmed the death of God. It is now becoming increasingly apparent that these reports were premature. Satan is very much alive, and is actively involved in today’s World. Though many scientists and philosophers still scoff at the idea of a personal devil, highly educated people all over the World meet regularly to worships Satan. Some groups, having dedicated themselves to the service of the devil, have committed brutal sacrificial slayings, while others engage in vile acts of immorality. Witchcraft, seances, and fortunetelling, for many years limited to areas of ignorance and superstition, are now discussed in highly respected magazines. Newspapers carry horoscopes, and multitudes consult them seriously every day. Prominent people have received a great deal of publicity by reporting the reception of personal messages from the spirits of the dead. The late Bishop Pike, for example, published a widely-read book telling of seances in which he purportedly talked with his dead son who had committed suicide. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Others, claiming the ability to foretell the future, also have become the objects of widespread interest, and have name Jeane Dixon comes to mind. She reportedly communicated with Mrs. Winchester who wanted to continue the restoration of her mansion. Mrs. Dixon is considered a prophetess by many people, and top leaders in government industry consult her for information about the future. In Europe today, more people are making a livelihood through the practice of occultism than the total number engaged in the Christian ministry. Belief in the existence of an unseen spiritual realm to be entered at death, and which has an influence upon human life, has captivated the minds of multitudes. The millions involved with occultism are unaware of the real nature of these mysterious and dangerous areas of investigation, and refuse to turn to the one source of truth regarding the kingdom of darkness. The Bible, the holy Word of God, reveals the true nature of the supernatural. It teaches that two real spiritual Worlds exist, one good and the other evil. It tells us that God is a Spirit (John 4.24), and that a great number of angels called “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1.14) worship Him in Heaven and carry out His assignments upon Earth. The other invisible kingdom is evil, and is under the direction of Satan, who controls an organized host of wicked spirit beings. They are a formidable foe arrayed against God and His people, and the apostle Paul declared, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. All that can be known about the devil’s origin, fall, and present activity is to be found in the Bible. Although it does not specifically answer every question we may ask, it tells us the important facts about him and his kingdom. He was once a glorious, sinless creature, but he rebelled against God, was cast out of Heaven to Earth, and now leads his great army of spirit beings in a futile attempt to defeat God and destroy His people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
The devil was created an angelic being of great beauty and splendor and at one time had great favour with God. Ezekiel describes him in his sinless state as follows, “Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyre, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have seen thee so; that wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee,” Ezekiel 28.12-15. Although the prophet was addressing these words primarily to an Earthly ruler, the king of Tyre, it is apparent that the full meaning of this prophecy is not exhausted by its reference to a flesh-and-blood monarch. The ultimate subject of Ezekiel’s words was Satan, the real instigator of the king’s pride and cruelty. Many Bible students reject this interpretation of Ezekiel’s dirge. They consider this viewpoint to be untenable and imaginative, and prefer to consider the prophet’s description to be a highly figurative portrayal of the king of Tyre. Some even say this lamentation incorporates a well-known Tyrian myth about a primeval being who lived in the “Garden of God” until he was expulsed for pride and rebellion. It is unlikely, however, that the inspired prophet would incorporate a myth into his message of judgment. Then, too, many prophetic pronouncements contained a double perspective. Isaiah, for example, after giving a stern warning of impending disaster, told Ahaz that the Lord would give a sign that the message he had spoken was true. “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken by both her kings,” reports Isaiah 7.14-16. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The fourteenth verse is a definite reference to Christ, the virgin-born Son of God, but verses fifteen and sixteen point to Maher-shalal-hash-baz, the infant son of Isaiah whose birth and early years are described in the following chapter. Before the lad was three years old, Pekah and Rezin, king of Israel and Syria, had been executed as the prophet had predicted. Since this type of double reference is common in the prophetic Scriptures, it should not be thought strange that Ezekiel, in pronouncing judgment upon the king of Tyre, should also be alluding to Satan, who motivated the Earthly monarch to his sinful pride and cruelty. The prophet declared that in his original state Satan was a creature of great wisdom and beauty. He portrays the devil as having been in Eden, the garden of God, and describes him as having been lavishly adorned with jewels at that time. The translation in our King James Version also speaks of the “timbrels” and “flutes” prepared by him on the day he was created, and some Bible students have inferred from this that he had great musical ability and was given charge of the Heavenly choirs which sang their praises to God. The Hebrew words, however, are difficult to translate, and most students are convinced that the words rendered “timbrels” and “flutes” more likely refer to the gold settings and engravings of his ornamental attire. “Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created,” reports Ezekiel 28.13. This exalted creature is also declared to be “the anointed cherub that covereth,” reports Ezekiel 28.14, which indicates that God appointed him to have a place of special prominence in connection with his throne. The remainder of the verse, “thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire,” indicates that before his sin, he was in the immediate presence of God’s glorious holiness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In fact, Satan may have been the most exalted of all the angels, and the memory of this former glory could have been the reason Michael did not dare “bring against him a railing accusation,” (Jude 9). Dr. Eric Sauer suggests the possibility that even before God created man, He committed to Lucifer a position of authority in relation to the Earth and its surrounding planets. For this reason, Satan is called the “god of this World” in the New Testament. In England and Scotland during the mediaeval and later periods of its existence, witchcraft was an offence against the laws of God and man; in Celtic Ireland dealing with the unseen were not regarded with such abhorrence, and indeed had the sanction of custom and antiquity. Consequently, when the Anglo-Normans came over, they found that the native Celts had no predisposition towards accepting the view of the witch as an emissary of Satan and an enemy of the Church, though they fully believed in supernatural influences of both good and evil, and credited their Bards and Druids with the possession of powers beyond the ordinary. The persecution of witches did not cease in the countries where that the growth and spread of witchcraft made headway—far from it; on the contrary it was kept up with unabated vigour. Infallibility was transferred from the Church to the Bible; the Roman Catholic persecuted the witch because Supreme Pontiffs had stigmatized her as a heretic and an associate of Satan, while the Protestant acted similarly because Holy Writ contained the grim command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The evil that was wrought by such amongst an unenlightened and superstitious people can be well imagined; unbelievers would be converted, while the credulous would be rendered more secure in their credulity. In the 16th century, during the rule of the Commonwealth Parliament thirty thousand witches were put to death in England. Even as late as 1690 torture was judicially applied to extract evidence, for in that year a Jacobite gentleman was questioned by the boots. However, Scotland, even at its worst, fades into insignificance before certain parts of the Continent, where torture was used to an extent and degree that can only be termed hellish; the appalling ingenuity displayed in the various methods of applying the “question extraordinary” seems the work of demons rather than of Christian, and makes one blush for humanity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Nonetheless, the punishment of death by fire for witchcraft or sorcery was not employed to any extend in Ireland. We have one undoubted instance, and a general hint of some others as a sequel to this. How the two witches were put to death in 1578 we are told, but probably it was by hanging. Subsequent to the passing of the Act of 1586, the method of execution would have been that for felony. On the Continent the stake was in continual request. In 1514, three hundred persons were burnt alive for this crime at Como. Between 1615 and 1635, more than six thousand sorcerers were burnt in the diocese of Strasburg, while, if we can credit the figures of Bartholomew de Spina, in Lombardy a thousand sorcerers a year were put to death for the space of twenty-five years. The total number of person executed in various ways for this crime has, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, been variously estimated at from one hundred thousand to several millions; if the latter figure be too high undoubtedly the former is too low. In the persecution of those who practised magical arts, no rank or class in society was spared; the noble equally with the peasant was liable to torture and death. This was especially true of the earlier stages of the movement when sorcery rather than witchcraft was the crime committed. For there is a general distinction between the two, though in many instances they are confounded. Sorcery was, so to speak, more of an aristocratic pursuit; the sorcerer was the master of the Devil (until his allotted time expired), and compelled him to do his bidding: the witch generally belonged to the lower classes, embodied in her art many practices which lay on the borderland between good and evil, and was rather the slave of Satan, who almost invariably proved to be a most faithless and unreliable employer. Anybody might become a victim of the witch epidemic; noblemen, scholars, monks, nuns, titled ladies, bishops, clergy—none were immune from accusation and condemnation. Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
According to alchemists, the souls of the dead can be pinned into homunculi. A homunculi is a very small human being or humanoid creature; a supposed microscopic but fully formed human being which a fetus was formerly believed to develop. Much that passed current in the west as White (id est permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The pentagram is a symbol of faith, a symbol of the five elements Spirit, Air, Earth, Water, and Fire (one for each point), and the circle (the Universe) contains and connects them all. The Golden Ratio is the number 1.61803399, represented by the Greek letter Phi, and considered truly unique in its mathematical properties, prevalence throughout nature, and its ability to achieve a perfect aesthetic composition. It is integral to the pentagram. Shorter and longer sections of each line exist in golden ratio. If you look at God’s fingers and the general position of the bodies in Michelangelo’s fresco, you will see pentagrams. After Mrs. Winchesters mysterious disappearance in 1922, the mansion of emptied of her belongings. It took six trucks working around the clock for six weeks to move all of her furniture out. Many people say not only was it a lot of stuff, but the movers would get lost in the mansion. Nonetheless, some things were left behind. From time to time the mansion was rented out. A young couple Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor rented the place, but the story of what happened is very fascinating. No one ever thought that Ethel Taylor would marry Oliver Hall; but he thought differently, and things which Oliver Hall intended had a queer way of coming to pass. He asked her to marry him before he went Yale. She laughed and refused him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The Next time Oliver came home, he asked her again. However, she laughed, tosses her luscious blonde locks, and refused again. A third time he asked her; she said it was becoming a confirmed bad habit, and laughed at him more then ever. Oliver was not the only man who wanted to marry her, but his attempts were like an elephant, at whose clumsy feats were considerably amusing. Ethel was the belle of the Santa Clara Valley, and every one was in love with her more or less; it was a sort of fashion, like masher collars or Inverness capes. Therefore everyone was very annoyed as surprised when Oliver Hall walked into the Bank of Italy Building and invited everyone to his wedding. “Your wedding?” “You do not mean it?” “Who is the happy fair? When is it to be?” Oliver Hall filled his pipe and lighted it before he replied. Then he said—“I am sorry to deprive you fellow of your only joke—but Miss Taylor and I just let the Winchester mansion and are to married at the estate in April. “You do not mean it?” “He has got the mitten again, and its turned his head.” “No,” he said, rising “I see it is true. Lend me a pistol someone—or a first class fare to other end of Nowhere. Hall has bewitched the only pretty girl in our twenty-mile radius. Was it a mesmerism, or a love-potion, Oliver?” “Neither, sir, but a gift you will never have—perseverance—and the best luck a man ever had in this World. It is so glorious to know of a surety that now we can think, feel, speak, act—above all, love one another—haunted by no counteracting spell, responsible to no living creature for our life and our love.” There was something in his voice that silenced everyone, and all chaff of the other fellows failed to draw him further. The queer thing about it was that when we congratulated Miss Taylor, she blushed and smiled, and dimpled, for all the World as though she were in love with him, and had been in love with him all the time. They had been laughing very heartily, cherishing the mirth, as it were like those who caress a lovely bird that had been frightened out of its natural home and grown wild and rare in its visits, only tapping at the lattice for a minute, and then gone. Women are strange creatures. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
In Santa Clara everyone who was anyone was asked to the wedding at Llanada Villa. Many people were truly more interested in the trousseau than the bride herself. The coming marriage was much canvasses at afternoon tea-tables, and at the Bank of Italy over the saddler’s, and the question was always asked: “Does she care for him?” The best man used to ask that question in the early days of their engagement, but after a certain evening in April, the pause between the acts, when the house was half-darkened, and the laughter died away made him never ask that question again. “How cold is it,” said John, the best man, shivering. Oliver shivered too; but not with cold, it was more like the involuntary sensation at which people say, “Someone is walking over my grave.” He said so, jestingly. “Hush, Oliver,” whispered John, and again the draught of cold air seemed to blow right between them. The next week, John was coming home from the Bank of Italy through the churchyard. Their church was on a thyme-grown hill, and the turf about it is so thick and soft that one’s footsteps are noiseless. He made no sound as he vaulted the low lichened wall, and threaded his way between the tombstones. It was at the same instant that he heard Oliver Hall’s voice, and saw his face. Ethel was siting on a low flat gravestone with the full splendour of the western sun upon her mignonne face. Its expression ended, at once and for ever, any question of her love of Oliver; it was transfigured to a beauty John should not have believed possible, even to that beautiful little face. Many people said she was like a reincarnation of Mrs. Winchester. Oliver lay at Ethel’s feet, and it was his voice that broke the stillness of the golden April evening. “This spring is cold for you, my love. I half wish we had taken courage, and sailed once more for Hispaniola. My dear, my dear, I believe I should come back from the if you wanted.” John coughed at once to indicate his presence, and passed on into the shadow fully enlightened. “Oh, no—oh, no! No mor of the sea. Llanada Villa is perfect for me,” she said, with another and stronger shoulder. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
“Ethel,” he said at last, rousing himself, with a half-smile, “I think I must have grown remarkably attractive. Look! half the glasses opposite are lifted to our box. It cannot be to gaze at me, you know. Do you remember telling me I was the ugliest fella you ever saw?” “Oh, Oliver!” Yet it was quite true—she had thought him so, in far back, strange, awful times, when she, a girl of sixteen, had her mind wholly filled with one idea!—one insane, exquisite dream; when she brought her innocent child’s garlands, and sat him down under one spreading magnificent tree, which trees of the Victorian garden at Llanada Villa, until she felt its dews dropping death upon her youth, and her whole soul withering under its venomous shade. “Oh, Oliver!” She cried once more, looking fondly on his beloved face, where no unearthly beauty dazzled, no unnatural calm repelled; where all was simple, noble, manly, true. “My dearly beloved, I thank Heaven for that dear ‘ugliness’ of yours. Above all, though blood runs strong, they say , I thank Heaven that I see you no likeness to—” Oliver knew what name she meant, though for a whole year past—since God’s mercy made it to them only a name—they had ceased to utter it, and let it die wholly out of the visible World. The wedding was to be early in April. Two days before, John had to run up town on business. The train was late, of course, for they were on the South-Eastern, and as he stood grumbling with his watch in his hand, who should he see but Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor. They were walking up and down the unfrequent end of the platform, that he obtrusively passed the pair with his Gladstone, and took the corner in a first-class smoking-carriage. He did this with as good an air of not seeing them as he could assume. John prided himself on his discretion, but if Oliver were traveling alone he wanted his company. He had it. “Hullo, old man,” came his cheery voice as he swung his bad into John’s carriage; “here is luck; I was expecting a dull journey!” “Where are you off to?” John asked, discretion still bidding him turn his eyes away, though he saw, without looking, that hers were red-rimmed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
“To old San Francisco,” he answered, shutting the door and leaning out for a last word with his sweetheart. He stood—clasping her hand secretly and hard; then he grew quitter; until, as the drop-scene fell, the same cold air swept past them. It was as if someone fresh from the sharp sea-wind had entered the box. “Oh, I wish you would not go, Oliver,” she was saying in a low, earnest voice. “I feel certain something will happen.” “Do you think I should let anything happen to keep me, and the day after tomorrow our wedding-day?” “Do not go,” she answered, with a pleading intensity which would have sent anyone’s Gladstone on to the platform and one after it. However, Oliver Hall was made differently; he rarely changed his opinion, never his resolutions. He only stroked the little ungloved hands that lay on the carriage door. “I must go, Ethel, The old boy’s have been awfully good to me, and now he is dying I must go and see him, but I shall come home in time for—” the rest of the parting was lost in a whisper and in the rattling lurch of the starting rain. “You are sure to come?” she spoke as the train moved. “Nothing shall keep me,” he answered; and they steamed out. After he had seen the last of the little figure on the platform he leaned back in his corner and kept his silence for a minute. When he spoke it was to explain to John that his godfather, whose heir he was, lay dying in Le Petit Trianon, some fifty miles away, and had sent for Oliver, and Oliver felt bound to go. “I shall be surely back tomorrow,” he said, “or, if not, the day after, in heaps of time. Thank Heaven, one has not to get up in the middle of the night to get married nowdays!” “And supposed Mr. Koshland dies?” “Alive or dead I mean to get married on Thursday!” Oliver answered, as he unfolded Oakland Tribune. At the Third and Townsend Depot they said their “goodbye,” and he got out and John saw him ride off; John went to Berkeley, where he stayed the night. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
When John got home the next afternoon, a very wet one, by the way, his sister greeted him with—“Where is Oliver Hall?” “Goodness knows,” he answered testily. Every man, since Cain, has resented that kind of question. “I thought you might have heard from him,” she went on, “as you are to give him away tomorrow.” “Is he not back,” I asked, for I had confidently expected to find him at Llanada Villa. “No, John,”—his sister Alexis always had a way of jumping to conclusions, expecially such conclusion as were least favourable to her fellow-creatures—“he has not returned, and, what is more, you may depend upon it he will not. You mark my words, there will be no wedding tomorrow.” His sister Alexis has the power of annoying him which no other human being possess. “You mark my words,” John retorted with asperity, “you had better give up making such a thundering idiot of yourself. There will be more wedding tomorrow than ever, you will take first part in.” A prophecy which, by the way, came true. However, though, John could snarl confidently to his sister, he did not feel so comfortable when, late that night, standing on the door step of the Winchester mansion, heard the Oliver had not returned home. Filled with German superstitions, the young man grew almost pale, but kept a courteous calmness. There was nothing too ghastly or terrible for his own imagination to conjure up. John went home gloomily through the rain. Next morning brought a brilliant blue sky, gold sun, and all such softness of air and beauty of cloud as to make up a perfect day. However, he woke with a vague feeling of having gone to bed anxious, and of being rather averse to facing that anxiety in the light of full wakefulness. However, with his shaving-water came a note from Oliver which relieved his mind and sent him to the Winchester mansion with a light heart. Ethel was in the garden. He saw her blue gown through the hollyhocks as the mansion’s gates swung behind him. So he did not go up to the mansion, but turned aside down the turfed path. “He has written to you too,” she said, without preliminary greeting, when John reached her side. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“Yes, I am to meet him at the station at three, and come straight back to the mansion.” Her face looked pale, but there was brightness in her eyes, and a tender quiver about the mouth that spoke of renewed happiness. “Mrs. Koshland begged him so to stay another night that he had not the heart to refuse,” she went. “He is so kind, but I wish he had not stayed.” John was at the station at half-past two. He felt rather annoyed with Oliver. It seemed a sort of slight to the beautiful young lady who loved him, that he should come as it were out of breath, and with the dust of travel upon him to take her hand, which some of them would have given the best years of their lives to take. However, when the three o’clock train glided in, and glided out again having brought no passengers to their little station, John was more than annoyed. There was no other train for thirty-five minutes; he calculated that, with much hurry, he might just get back to the mansion in time for the ceremony; but, oh, what a fool to miss that first train! What other man could have done it? That thirty-five minutes seemed like a year, as he wandered round the station reading the advertisements and the time-tables, and the company’s bye-laws, and getting more and more angry with Oliver Hall. This confidence in his own power of getting everything he wanted the minute he wanted it was leading him too far. John hated waiting. After no sight of Oliver, he flung himself into the carriage that he had brough for him. “Drive to the mansion!” he said, as someone shut the door. “Mr. Hall has not come by this train.” Anxiety now replaced anger. What had become of the man? Could he have been suddenly taken will? John had never known Oliver to have an illness in his life. And even so, he might have telegraphed. Some awful accident must have happened. Maybe his corpse was picked up off a wreck, and committed to the deep—in the Gulf of Mexico. The thought that he had played her false never—no, not for a moment, entered John’s head. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Yes, something terrible had happened to Oliver, and on John lay the task of telling his bride. John almost wished the carriage would upset and break his head so that someone else might tell her, not Joh, who—but that is nothing to do with the story. It was five minutes to four as they drew up to the gate of the Winchester mansion. A double row of eager onlooker lined the path of the palm avenue. John sprang from the carriage and passed up between them. The estate’s gardener had a good front place near the door. He stopped. “Are they waiting still, Thomas?” he asked, simply to gain time, for of course he knew they were by the waiting crowd’s attentive attitude. “Waiting, sir? No, sir, why it must be over by now.” “Over! Then Mr. Hall has come?” ‘To the minute, sir; must have missed you somehow, and I say, sir,” lowering his voice, “I never see Mr. Oliver the bit so afore, but my opinion is he has been drinking pretty free. His clothes was all dusty and his face a sheet. I tell you I did not like the looks of him, with never a look or a word for none of us; him that was always such a gentleman!” I had never heard Thomas make so long a speech. The crowd in at mansion wee talking in whispers and getting ready rice and slippers to throw at the bride and bridegroom. The ringers were ready with their hands on the ropes to rung out the merry peal as the bride and bridegroom should come out. A murmur from the Winchester mansion announced them; out they came, Thomas was right. Oliver Hall did not look himself. There was dust on his coat, his hair was disarranged. He seemed to have been in some row, for there was a black mark above his eyebrow. He was deathly pale. However, his pallor was not greater than that of the bride, who might have been carved in ivory—dress, veil, orange blossoms and all. As they passed out the ringers stooped—there were six of them—and then, on the ears expecting the gay wedding peal, came the slow tolling of the Winchester Bell. A thrill of horror at so foolish a jest from the ringers passed through all the guests. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
However, the ringers themselves dropped the ropes and fled like rabbits down the belfry stairs. The bride shuddered, and grey shadows came about her mouth, but the bridegroom led her on down the path where the people stood with the handfuls of rice; but the handfuls were never thrown, and the wedding-bells never rang. In vain the ringers were urged to remedy their mistake: the protested with many whispered expletives that they would see themselves further first. In a hush like the hush in the chamber of death the bridal pair passed into their carriage and its door slammed behind them. Then the tongues were loosed. A babel of anger, wonder, conjecture from the guests and spectators. “If I had seen his condition, sir,” said old Seymour to me as we drove off, “I would have stretched him on the floor of the mansion, sir, by Heaven I would, before I would have let him marry my daughter!” Then he put his head out of the window. “Drive like fury,” he cried to the coachman; “do not spare the horses.” He was obeyed. They passed the bride’s carriage. John forbore to look at it, and old Seymour turned his head away and swore. They reached reception hall before it. They stood in the hall doorway, in the blazing afternoon sun, and in about half a minute, they heard the wheels crunching the gravel. When the carriage stopped in the front of the steps old Seymour and John ran down. “Great Heaven, the carriage is empty! And yet—” he had the door open in a minute, and this is what he saw—No sign of Oliver Hall; and of Ethel, his wife only a huddled heap of white satin lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the seat. “I drove straight here, sir,” said the coachman, as the bride’s father lifted her out; “and I will swear no one got out of the carriage.” We drove back to the Winchester mansion, and carried her back into the house in her bridal dress, and drew back her veil. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Her face. No one would ever forget. White, white and drawn with agony and horror, bearing such a look of terror as no one has never seen except in dreams. And her hair, her radiant blonde hair, it was white like snow. As John and her father stood, both half mad with horror and mystery of it, a body came up the avenue—a telegraph boy. They brought the orange envelop to John. He tore it open. “Mr. Hall was thrown from his horse on his way to the station at half-past one. Killed on the spot!” And he was married to Ethel Taylor in the Winchester Mansion at half-past three, in the presence of fifty guests. “I shall be married, dead or alive!” What had passed in that carriage on the drive to the reception hall? No one knows—no one will ever know. Oh, Ethel! Oh, my dear!” Before a week was over they laid her beside her husband in the Oak Hill Memorial Park on the northern most hill in the San Juan Bautista Hills of South San Jose. Thus was accomplished Oliver Hall’s wedding. Whether or not one believes in superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss the unusual events that have taken place at this estate. Just like the original construction, restoration and maintenance work at Winchester Mystery House is never complete. The actual amount of materials requires is staggering. For example, it takes over 20,000 gallons of pain to cover the exterior—and by the time the workers have finished, they have to start all over again! Continuous work is being done on the massive structure, with carpenters, painters, and gardeners toiling away just like they did during Mrs. Winchester’s day. The sons, grandsons, and great grandson of Mrs. Winchester’s original employees have been some of these workmen! The restoration work is very demanding. Although you can still find spots where the cracked plaster has not been fixed after the 1906 Earthquake, almost everything will eventually be restored. This has been left like this on purpose, like a frozen moment in time, to show people how Mrs. Winchester lived there. An ongoing search continues for fine examples of the period furnishings, similar to what Mrs. Winchester herself would have used. Her original furnishings were auctioned off after her death and never have been recovered. The job of overseeing the restoration is a painstaking one. The historical accuracy of every project is researched and approved by the Restoration Board of Directors. Winchester Mystery House receives no funds from any government agency; the continuous restoration and maintenance programs are funded entirely from tour, café, and gift shop revenues. Since 1973, millions of dollars have been invested to ensure that this unique landmark will be preserved as the premier showcase of the Santa Clara Valley’s gracious past. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
The Witches Cap 🧙🏼♀️- named for it’s conical resemblance of a witches hat. Many famous mediums claim this room was “important” to Sarah Winchester, although we do not know what it was used for. How did you feel when you experienced the Witches Cap for the first time? winchestermysteryhouse.com
Is There Someone Who Teases You and Makes Fun of You?
Through the social compact we have given existence and life to the body politic. It is now a matter of giving it movement and will through legislation. For the primitive act whereby this body is formed and united still makes no determination regarding what it should do to preserve itself. Whatever is good and in conformity with order is such by the nature of things and independently of human conventions. All justice comes from God; He alone is its source. However, if we knew how to receive it from so exalted a source, we would have no need for government or laws. Undoubtedly there is a universal justice emanating from reason alone; but this justice, to be admitted among us, ought to be reciprocal. Considering things from a human standpoint, the lack of a natural sanction causes the laws of justice to be without teeth among humans. They do nothing but good to the wicked and evil to the just, when the latter observes them in one’s dealings with everyone while no one observes them in their dealings with one. There must therefore be conventions and laws to unite rights and duties and to refer justice back to its object. In the state of nature where everything is commonly held, I owe nothing to those to whom I have promised nothing. I recognize as belonging to someone else only what is not useful to me. It is not this way in the civil state where all rights are fixed by law. However, what then is a law? So long as we continue to be satisfied with attaching only metaphysical ideas to this word, we will continue to reason without coming to any understanding. And when they have declared what a law of nature is, they will not thereby have a better grasp of what a law of the state is. I have already stated that there is no general will concerning a particular object. In effect, this particular object is either within or outside of the state. If it is outside of the state, a will that is foreign to it is not general in relation to it. And if this object is within the state, that object is part of it; in that case, a relationship is formed between the whole and its parts which makes two separate beings, one of which is the part, and the other is the whole less that same part. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
However, the whole less a part is not the whole, and so long as this relationship obtains, there is no longer a whole, but rather two unequal parts. Whence it follows that the will of one is not more general in relation to the other. However, when the entire populace enacts a statute concerning the entire populace, it considers only itself, and if in that case a relationship is formed, it is between the entire object seen from one perspective and the entire object seen from another, without any division of the whole. Then the subject matter about which a statute is enacted is general like the will that enacts it. It is this act I call a law. When I say that the object of the laws is always general, I have in mind that the law considers subjects as a body and actions in the abstract, never a human as an individual or a particular action. Thus the law can perfectly well enact a statute to the effect that there be privileges, but it cannot bestow them by name on anyone. The law can create several classes of citizens, and even stipulate the qualification that determine membership in these classes, but it cannot name specific persons to be admitted to them. It can establish a royal government and a hereditary line of succession, but it cannot elect a king or name a royal family. In a word, any function that relates to an individual does not belong to the legislative power. One this view, it is immediately obvious that it is no longer necessary to ask who is to make the laws, since they are the acts of the general will; not whether the prince is above the laws, since one is a member of the state; nor whether the law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to oneself; not how one is both free and subject to the laws, since they are merely the record of our own wills. Moreover, it is apparent that since the law combines the universality of the will and that of the object, what a human, whoever one may be, decrees on one’s own authority is not a law. What even the sovereign decrees concerning a particular object is no closer to being a law; rather, it is a decree. Nor is it an act of sovereignty but of magistracy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
I therefore call every state ruled by laws a republic, regardless of the form its administration may take. For only then does the public interest govern, and only then is the “public thing” [in Latin: res publica] something real. Every legitimate government is republican. (By this word I do not have in mind merely an aristocracy or a democracy, but in general every government guided by the general will, which is to the law. To be legitimate, the government need not be made indistinguishable from the sovereign, but it must be its minister. Then the monarchy itself is a republic.) I will explain later on what government is. Strictly speaking, laws are merely the conditions of civil association. The populace that is subjected to the laws ought to be their author. The regulating of the conditions of society belongs to no one but those who are in association with one another. However, how will they regulate these conditions? Will it be by common accord, by a sudden inspiration? Does the body politic have an organ for making known its will? Who will give it necessary foresight to formulate acts and to promulgate them in advance, or how will it announce them in time of need? How will a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wants (since it rarely knows what is good for it), carry out on its own an enterprise as great and as difficult as a system of legislation? By itself the populace always wants the good, but by itself it does not always see it. Then general will is always right, but the judgment that guides it is not always enlightened. It must be made to see objects as they are, and sometimes as they ought to appear to it. The good path it seeks must be pointed out to it. It must be made safe from the seduction of private wills. It must be given a sense of time and place. It must weigh present, tangible advantages against the danger of distant, hidden evils. Private individuals see the good they reject. The public wills the good that it does not see. Everyone is equally in need of guides. The former must be obligated to conform their will to their reason; the latter must learn to know what it wants. Then public enlightenment results in the union of the understanding and the will in the social body; hence the full cooperation of the parts, and finally the greatest force of the whole. Whence there arises the necessity of having a legislator. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Earlier we saw that when all the Second Wave principles were put to work in a single organization the result was a classical industrial bureaucracy: a giant, hierarchical, permanent, top-down, mechanistic organization, well designed for making repetitive products or repetitive decisions in a comparatively stable industrial environment. Now, however, as we shift to the new principles and begin to apply them together, we are necessarily led to wholly new kinds of organizations for the future. These Third Wave organizations have flatter hierarchies. They are less top-heavy. They consist of small components linked together in temporary configurations. Each of these components has its own relationships with the outside World, its own foreign policy, so to speak, which it maintains without having to go through the center. These organization operate more and more around the clock. However, they are different from bureaucracies in another fundamental respect. They are what might be called “dual” or “poly” organizations, capable of assuming two or more distinct structural shapes as conditions warrant—rather like some plastic of the future that will change shape when heat or cold is applied but spring back into a basic form when the temperature is in its normal range. One might imagine an army that is democratic and participatory in peace time but highly centralized and authoritarian during war, having been organized, in the first place, to be capable of both. We might use the analogy of a football team whose members are not merely capable of rearranging themselves in T formation and numerous other arrangements for different plays but who, at the sound of a whistle, are equally capable of reassembling themselves as a soccer, baseball, or basketball squad, depending upon the game being played. Such organizational players need to be trained for instant adaptation, and they must feel comfortable in a wider repertoire of available organizational structures and roles. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
We need managers who can operate as capably in an open-door, free-flow style as in a hierarchical mode, who can work in an organization structured like an Egyptian pyramid as well as in one that looks like a Calder mobile, with a few thin managerial strands holding a complex set of nearly autonomous modules that move in response to the gentlest breeze. We do not yet have a vocabulary for describing these organizations of the future. Terms like matrix or ad hoc are inadequate. Various theorists have suggested different words. Advertising man Lester Wunderman has said, “Ensemble groups, acting as intellectual commandos, will begin to replace the hierarchical structure.” Tony Judge, one of our most brilliant organization theorists, has written extensively about the “network” character of these emerging organizations of the future, pointing out, among other things, that “the network is not ‘coordinated’ by anybody; the participating bodies coordinate themselves so that one may speak of ‘autocoordination.’” Elsewhere he has described them in terms of Buckminster Fuller’s “tensegrity” principles. However, whatever terms we use, something revolutionary is happening. We are participating not merely in the birth of new organizational forms but in the birth of a new civilization. A new code book is taking form—a set of Third Wave principles, fresh ground-rules for social survival. It is hardly any wonder that parents—still mainly tied to the industrial-era code book—find themselves in conflict with children who, aware of the growing irrelevance of the old rules, are uncertain, if not blindly ignorant, of the new ones. They and we alike are caught between a dying Second Wave order and the Third Wave civilization of today. The principal interpersonal theories of depression emphasizes the role of interpersonal rejection in maintain the disorder. This interpersonal phenomenon is evidently not specific to depression, as people with social anxiety disorder are also likely to experience interpersonal rejection. Of course, it is possible that in at least some cases, the relationship between anxiety and rejection is secondary to the relationship between depression and rejection. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Notwithstanding this possibility, the anxiety-rejection relationship appears robust. Evidence for this rejection effect comes from a variety of populations and interpersonal contexts. For example, a group of socially anxious male high school student who interacted with female confederates received less desirable ratings as potential dates by those confederates. Friends and family members of socially anxious people view them as less likeable and more difficult to talk to, in comparison to their nonanxious peers. Socially anxious high school students in one study indicated that they received less support and less acceptance from their classmates. However, there was no relationship in this study between social anxiety and support from parents or teachers, indicating that this rejection effect is most evident from peers. Younger children with social anxiety also experience interpersonal rejection. For example, 7- to 14-year-olds were observed interacting with peers, and also observed was the quality (positive, negative, or neutral) of peer responses to interaction with the target child. Children with social anxiety disorder received fewer positive responses from their peers during the observed interaction than nonanxious children did. Another sample of children aged 6-11 with social anxiety disorder indicated that they did not feel socially accepted and that they had more negative interactions with peers (exempli gratia, being teased, made fun of, having enemies) than nonannxious controls did. Children with anxiety disorders tend to be disliked by their peers. In a study of over 1,000 children aged 6-11, students were classified as “cooperative,” “friendly-dominant,” “hostile-dominant,” or “submissive,” based on peer nominations. As might be expected, social anxiety was highest among the submissive group. When students were asked who they “liked most,” those in the submissive group (id est, socially anxious) ranked last out of the four, and were tied for first with the hostile-dominant group for peers’ rating of whom they “liked least.” Evidence from family studies, shows that even parents may act rejecting toward children with social phobia. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Children and adults with social anxiety disorder are typically non-threatening, and, if anything, more likely than nonanxious individuals to try to appease others. Why then should they be the recipients of the interpersonal rejection? It has been hypothesized that this effect is due to perceived dissimilarity. In this study, participants engaged in a conversation with a confederate, who, along with peers observed, rated the similarity of the target person to the confederate and indicated their acceptance or rejection of the target. The relationship between the target’s social anxiety and interpersonal rejection from others was mediated by perception of the target’s similarity. It was concluded that “we reject socially anxious individuals because we perceive them as different than ourselves and that we use how uncomnfortable they appear and any unwillingness on their part to reciprocate our confidence as information about exactly how different they are. Interpersonal rejection plays a crucial, and perhaps etiological, role in social anxiety disorder. Children with poor social skills are likely to experience interpersonal rejection. These rejection experiences lead to pessimistic expectations for social interactions, which in turn generate affective and psychological anxiety responses to social interactions. Anxious children are assumed to avoid such interactions because of these responses, and this avoidance reduces their opportunities for learning and enhancing social skills, thus returning them to the start of the cycle. If any stage of the model is present (id est, poor social skill, interpersonal rejection, negative expectations, anxiety reactions, avoidance), social phobia can develop. As such, one could characterize this as a cascade model: Once any stage in the cycle is initiated in force, subsequent stages are inevitable. Then apparent consequences of problematic social skills, expectations for negative social outcomes, and interpersonal rejection are a lack of close relationships and a turbulent interpersonal environment for the socially anxious person. This pattern begins very early in life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Socially anxious children in primary school indicate that they have more negative interactions with peers (exempli gratia, “Is there someone who teases you and makes fun of you?”) than nonanxious children do. Similarly, adolescents who experience social anxiety report less frequent contact and intimacy with friends, compared to their less anxious peers. A sample of socially anxious high school students who were interviewed about their friendships indicated that they received less support from their classmates, that they had fewer friends, and that their friendships were less intimate than those of nonanxious classmates. The pattern of troubled personal relationships that begins in childhood continues into adulthood. Adolescents and young adults (aged 14-24 years) with social anxiety disorder exhibit impairment in social and leisure activities, in addition to problems with household and work relations. University students with social anxiety report fewer interactions with members of the opposite gender, and great dissatisfaction with their performance in those interactions, than their nonanxious counterparts do. When college students were asked to keep a diary of their social interactions, those who classified as high in social anxiety rated the quality of these interactions (exempli gratia, “difficult,” “guarded,” “many communication breakdowns,” “a great deal of misunderstanding”) more negatively than students who were low in social anxiety did. Another sample of college students with social anxiety indicated that they engaged in pleasures of the flesh less frequently than students low in anxiety, and that when they did they rated it as less enjoyable. Socially anxious college students evaluate themselves as generally nonassertive and socially avoidant. As they continue into early and middle adulthood, people with social phobia report a great deal of difficulty establishing and maintaining romantic relationship, and perhaps as a result less likely to marry than their nonanxious counterparts. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Among those who do not marry, social dysfunction is particularly evident. An unfortunate reality of social anxiety and social phobia is a lack of satisfying interpersonal relationships and interactions. The relationships that are available are often judged, at least by the socially anxious person, to be of low quality and intimacy. Like problems with social skills, these relationship problems may maintain, if not worse, feelings of anxiety. At the same time, social anxiety itself (especially when it reaches the point of social phobia) undoubtedly had the potential to spoil opportunities for relationship development. “I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need,” reports Philippians 4.13. We draw to our lives that which we constantly think about. If we dwell on the negative, we will attract the negative people, experiences, and attitudes. If we dwell on our fears, we will draw in more fear. You set the direction of your life with your thoughts. “Seek, inquire for, and require the Lord while He may be found [claiming Him by necessity and by right]; call upon Him while He is near,” reports Isaiah 55.6. God’s grace is such a precious commodity. Therefore, do not allow it to be watered down or thinned out with extraneous things or terennal consolations. The choice is up to you. You do not have to entertain every thought that comes to mind. The first thing you need to do is ascertain where that thought is coming from. Is that thought from God, is it your own thought, or is it a destructive thought from the enemy? If a thought is negative, it is most likely from the enemy. If a thought is discouraging, or destructive, brings fear, worry, doubt, or unbelief; if the thought makes you feel weak, inadequate, or insecure, that thought is not from God. If you hope to keep receiving God’s grace on a regular basis, one of the things you have to do is ditch all impediment to grace. Look for a secret garden of your own. Spend some time there. Alone, preferably. Leave your friends at the path, leave your books at the gate, and God will be there waiting in this fine Chatsworthy place. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
We can pray to God, and He will give us a few snippets on how to keep one’s spirit penitential and one’s conscious pure. The Bible says, “We should cast down every wrong imagination and take into captivity every wrong thought,” reports Corinthians 10.5. That simply means: Do not dwell on it. Get rid of it immediately. Reject it, and choose to think on something optimistic. If you make the mistake of dwelling on the enemy’s lies, you allow the negative seed to take root. And the more you think about it, the more it is going to grow, creating an enemy stronghold in your mind from which attacks can be launched. Night and day, the enemy will pummel your mind with notions such as: You are never going to be successful. Nobody in your county has ever amounted to much. You are not smart enough. Your parents do not trust you with their money. Your mayor was always depressed and evil. Your governor could not keep a job. Even your local news reporters are always having a mental health crisis and are pathological liars! You were just born in the wrong city and state. Therefore, you must realize that God is in control and He is the only source of authority that matters. God is not limited by geographical location, time, or space. He is not limited by your education, your social standing, your economic standing, your income source, nor your race. The only thing that limits God is your lack of faith. There is no such thing as the wrong side of the pond with God. If you will put your trust in Him, God will make your life significant. God longs to make something great out of your life. He will take a nobody and shape that person into an extraordinarily successful individual. However, you must cooperate with God’s plan; you must start thinking of yourself as the champion God made you to be. The enemy attacks your mind saying that you do not have what it takes; God says you do have what it takes to be successful. Whom are you going to believe? #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The enemy attacks your mind saying that you do not have what it takes; God say you have what it takes to be whatever you want in life. The enemy says you are not able to become extraordinarily successful; God declares you can do all things through Christ. The enemy says you will never get out of debt; God has proclaimed that you will have abundance and financial success, you will lend and not borrow. The enemy says you are never going to get well; God says He will restore your health. The enemy says you will never amount to anything; God says He will make you a great success and your life will be significant. The enemy says your problems are too big, there is no hope; God says He will solve those problems. Not only that, but God will turn those problems into blessing. Therefore, develop a habit of believing what God says about you; start agreeing with Godly thoughts. God’s thoughts will build you up and encourage you. They will give you the strength you need to persevere. God’s thoughts will give you a spirit of success. How can you discover God’s thoughts? Easy, just start reding and meditating on His Word, allowing its truths to become the operating system for your life. Father, I choose to think in patterns that will be pleasing to You. Please help me, I pray, to recognize those areas where the enemy is trying to make inroads into my mind. Please help me to cast down every evil thought and imagination, and to replace those negative ideas with input from Your Word. As for the rest of the World, do not give it a thought. Do God first; do all the rest later, if there is any time left over. That is to say, you will not be able to wait on God and at the same time tickle your own Tranitories. As for your friends and acquaintances, tell them you are going on holiday. However, if you are going on holiday with God, then leave behind all your usual baggage. So prayed Blessed Apostle Peter in his First Letter, that those faithful to Christ should describe themselves as “strangers and wayfarers” (2.11). When you are about to die, will you have enough faith in your wallet to let go of those final affections of the World? #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Will your sallow and indeed shallow flesh ever let your soul escape to the Freedom Beyond? Sentiments similar to those in First Corinthians (2.14). If you truly wish to be spiritual, you have to renounce everything near and far and take care of no one more than yourself. If you have perfectly conquered yourself, then you will be able to subjugate the rest of the World more easily. The perfect victory? To triumph over oneself. If you yourself in check—that is to say, if your sensuality obeys your reason, and your reason obeys God in all things—then you can truly claim victory over yourself and have yourself proclaimed lord of the World. If you are determined to scale this crest, then you should follow the advice of John the Baptist, as it is recorded in Matthew (3.10); that is to say, you have to begin by picking up the ax and putting it swiftly, virilely, to the roots, uprooting and destroying all the wildly successful plants that are destroying you. Self-love is the radical vice, the root that needs to be eradicated at all costs. Evil once conquered and captured must be led in triumph through the streets! After that, there will be a period of peace and tranquillity. Only a few take seriously this business of dying to self, and even they have had only partial success. Some, caught up in the wonderfulness of themselves, remain entangled in their own desires and cannot rise above themselves in spirit. Others, on the other hand, who freely desire to walk with Me in the Garden have to leave all their clingings—that is to say, their diddly depravities and fickle affections, their creature comforts and private stashes—at the gate. Sometimes we pray for things we do not need and are not good for us. I heard of a man in World War II who prayed for God to move him from one concentration camp to another. It was just a few miles away and he prayed and God answered his prayer. He was very happy but it was short lived. In a few weeks the Allied forces came into the camp he left and liberated all the prisoners. He stayed two more years in the other camp. He used his faith and his prayer was answered, but it prolonged the problem. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
First of all, you need to determine what is the will of God. When you know God’s will, you know that God is going to hear you. The Word says if God hears you, you will get what you ask. First John 5.14-15 is simply saying that if you get an audience with your Father, you will get your prayer answered. When I was growing up, I knew if I could get to my dad, I could get him to drop me off at school is his brand-new Maserati Ghibli. However, sometimes my mother would say, “No, do not bother him now. He is asleep.” So I could not get an audience with him. I knew if I could get an audience with him, I would get what I wanted. The Word tells us how to get an audience with our Heavenly Father. Sometimes we think the Lord must have heard us because we have goose bumps running up and down our back. That has nothing to do with it. You may get some feeling (and that is all right), but do not base your faith on feelings. What if you do not get any feeling at all? That is right, too. That does not change the Word of God. “Let one ask in faith, nothing wavering. For one that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that human think that one shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded human is unstable in all one’s ways,” reports James 1.6-8. You receive because you believe God and act on His Word. Goose bumps will never produce an answer to prayer—faith will! The actualizing person is relatively free to experience and express personal fears. Such a person is able to live from within along the polar axes of one’s being. Few people remain in the actualizing process all the time. More common is the tendency to be actualizing part of the time and manipulative part of the time. However, if the person remains unaware of manipulative tendences, they may grow like weeds and eventually overtake the garden of the personality. Unfortunately, most people learn to relate at the manipulative level. This comes about when experiences that bring pain and fear result in a tendency to live a more controlled and calculating way. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Since the open and direct experience of feelings makes one vulnerable in bearing one’s heart to others, the manipulative person closes up and becomes less straightforward in order to avoid any possibility of being hurt or frightened again. One relates to others primarily in mechanical and unfeeling ways, thus becoming less authentic, less spontaneous, and less creative than the actualizing person. Manipulative behaviour is stereotypic and compulsive, lacking novelty and choice. That is why it becomes a boring and tedious way to live and often leads to depression. Manipulation is a way of using others to get what you consciously or unconsciously want from one. However, the person who exploits people as though they were things loses the capacity to enjoy intimacy and love in relationships. In contrast to the actualizing person, the manipulator invests more energy in fortifying the ego boundary and less in living rhythmically and responsively. Even the body becomes tighter and less sensitive. It is as though in pursuit of security, the manipulative person retreats into a walled city and tries to hide there. Next some the character level, in which the person literally becomes a “character”—that is, someone who reacts in the same narrow, limited way to almost any input from outside. This level of functioning is even more emotionally constricting. The fear is greater than that of the manipulator, and the person is more thoroughly stuck in rigid behaviour patterns. There is a real inability to learn from new situations or from life. Rather, the person reacts in the same stiff, repetitious way day after day, year after year. This is the level of most neurotic behaviour. The games the manipulative pattern now reflect a rather grim, frozen stance against a hostile and threatening World. The walls of the self become still more thick and rigid. This level could be described as further withdrawal into a central fortress within the city walks. Finally comes the psychotic level, the desperate “Custer’s last stand” against a World that is experienced as overwhelming. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Everything is subordinated to the task of psychological survival in the “Custer’s last stand” crisis mode of existence. Fear has completely filled the center of the personality. There is no room for love, hope, joy, wisdom, or peace. The muscles remain chronically tensed or flaccid, depending upon the specific form the psychosis takes. The behaviour of the psychotic is bizarre and extreme. The person may hallucinate, repeat certain phrases incessantly, or sit in one position for days on end. Meaning and emotional connectedness to others have almost completely disappeared, so the psychotic must construct an entirely new reality based on fantasies or unconscious drives. At the chronic psychotic level, life is restricted to the tiny dungeon deep in the recesses of the walled city. During the acute stage, or “psychotic break” with reality, the individual can no longer sustain the heavy investment of energy required to keep defenses going. Therefore, the walls begin to collapse and the self is lost in chaos, apathy, terror, or rage. Much human suffering makes sense when viewed as distorted attempts to survive in a World that has been painful, frightening, and poisonous to the individual. Fear, the central mechanism that sustains the defensive stance, occupies the center of the personality. In the deterioration process, the person makes the terrible journey downward from fulfillment to fragmentation, from purpose to chaos, from humanness to robot-likeness—from the image of God to the pale of nothingness. Manipulative behaviour, character disorders, and psychoses represent progressively more involved systems whereby one tries desperately to win in a World that is perceived as a fearful battleground rather than a place for love and intimacy. This is when a person begins to suffer the misery of “shut-upness.” Thus in shutting oneself off from the unfolding adventure of a God-directed Universe, one begins gradually to lose touch with the deepest meaning of one’s life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
For anyone caught up in the downward spiral of deterioration, the biblical principle “love casts out fear” is like a lighthouse in a stormy cove. It means that we are no longer lost. Life can get pretty tough, but we can find our way home. The monstrous cruelty and baleful influences which have shown their detestable faces in World history from time to time, are reminders of how far humans have yet to go in fulfilment of the World-Idea. In large regions of the Earth it seems as though moral darkness has enveloped humankind. Although a fair appraisal requires us to examine how far this swing of the pendulum against established religion represents rebellion against its superstition and imposture and how far it represents a real loss of conscience and deterioration of character, there is still enough residue of evil to instigate apprehension as to the future course and results of this situation. Anyone who has travelled this wide Earth knows that there are greedy humans who are like ferocious tigers, and smooth-tongued women who are as dangerous as devouring serpents. The evil of such people lies not so much in the character which they reveal as in the character which they hide. It is the suave dissembler who reproduces the word of goodness without its heart and who cynically divorces creed from conduct that we must fear, rather than the human who has “scoundrel” stamped all over one’s face and actions. We are not apt to be on our guard against a silky voice, saintly manner, and smiling lips, but when these things hide a devil’s heart of dark intentions, we are in peril of being undone. It is true that the respectable often hides the rotten. Whether they call it evil and sin with the Christians, or ignorance and immaturity with the Hindus, or insufficiency of the good with the Platonic thinker, or weakness and failure, or the blindness of materialism, the presence of deplorable or horrible or criminal tendences need not be denied. They are in the World, but then, other better nobler and purer tendencies are also there. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The manifest relation really existing in God is really the same as His essence and only differs in its mode of intelligibility; as in relation is meant that regard to its opposite which is not expressed in the name of essence. Thus it is clear that in God relation and essence do not differ from each other, but are one and the same. If we can gain the power to enter the Presence, it will work silently upon the reform and reshaping of our character. Every such entry will carry the work forward, or consolidate what has already been done. One begins to look on the World afresh, as if for the first time. However, it is the beauties, the harmonies, the inner meanings, and the higher purposes that one now sees. One becomes more attentive to the attractiveness of Nature, observes her colourings and forms with new delight. If the glimpse ends, its memory does not and will always be preserved. Those who forget have only let changes in character or circumstance push it down out of sight for a period. For a time thrill of having had the glimpse inspires one. However, it soon fades and then one becomes dependent upon one’s simple memory of it. Even after one sinks back to one’s former state, the mystic who has had a flash, a glimpse, a revelation, or a vision of something beyond it can never be exactly the same as one was before. The light cannot fall upon one without leaving some little effect behind at the least, or some tremendous change at the most. One of the purposes of the glimpse is to make the human aspire that one shall be made worthy of its coming again. In the first contribution of memory is an unconscious one, intuitively reminding humans of what one really is but seems to have lost, the second is a conscious one. it is to keep up one’s interest in the establishment of the higher awareness and to stop one from forgetting the pursuit of this goal. That is, it is to keep one on the Quest. These experiences if taken aright will lead one not to spiritual pride but to spiritual humbleness. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Because one has been once illumined, the darkness can never again be total darkness. One will know that the possibility of light flashing across it always exists. No one can know in advance how long it will stay with one. It is here out of nowhere and nowhen, and then gone away the next hour. The visitation may or may not be repeated but because it is nothing that one has achieved, the repetition is outside one’s reach to control. Thus begins a lifelong haunting by what becomes one’s dearest wish—to repeat, and especially to continue in, this magical transformation. We must keep a proper proportion in our minds between these different branches of self-preparation and purification. A human whose spine is straight but whose conduct is crooked is doing worse than a human whose conduct is straight but whose spine is crooked. May the wind blow sweetness, the rivers flow sweetness, the herbs grow sweetness, for the People of Truth! Sweet be the night, sweet the dawn, sweet be the Earth’s fragrance, sweet be our Heaven! May the tree afford us sweetness, the sun shine sweetness, our cows yield sweetness—milk in plenty! We beseech Thee, O Lord, save us. We beseech Thee, O Lord, do Thou cause us to prosper. O Lord, answer us in the day that we call. God of all souls save us. Thou who searchest hearts, do Thou cause us to prosper. O Lord, answer us in the day that we call. God of all souls save us. Thou who searchest hearts, do Thou cause us to prosper. Thou mighty Redeemer, answer us in the day that we call. Thou who utter righteousness, save us. Thou who art clad in glory, do Thou cause us to prosper. Everlasting and gracious God, answer us in the day that we call. Thou who art pure and upright, save us. Thou who pitiest the needy, do Thou cause us to prosper. O good and bountiful Lord, answer us in the day that we call. Thou who knowest our thoughts, save us. Mighty and resplendent God, do Thou cause us to prosper. Thou who are clothed in righteousness, answer us in the day that we call. King of the Universe, save us. Source of light and majesty, do Thou cause us to prosper. Thou who supportest the falling, answer us in the day that we call. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
How could you use the pretty, glass door pantry at the Meadows Residence 2 model? It’s perfect for storage and display of all that pretty holiday tableware!
This single story home boats an ideal layout with 2,372 square feet, of thoughtfully designed living space, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage.
Finding new ways to celebrate is one of our favorite things, and living in a spacious, thoughtfully designed home helps us get the most of each and every holiday! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-2/
The Dead and the Living Can Never be One—God Has Forbidden it!
Life is richest when you realize that we are all snowflakes. Each of us is absolutely beautiful and unique. And we are here for a very short time. Mrs. Winchester was a pretty little brunette, rather pale, with dark hair, brilliant brown eyes, a resolute mouth and a bright, intelligent expression. She was orderly, trim and feverishly energetic, and seemed to live every moment of her life. The Winchester mansion was like a paradise on Earth; and in this light I still regarded it, until a great change came over the temperature, and the month of April introduced me to red-hot winds, sleepless nights, and the intolerable “brain fever” bird. The next morning, rested and invigorated, we set out on a tour of inspection; and it is almost worthwhile to undergo a certain amount of baking on the sweltering heat of the plains, in order to enjoy those deep first draughts of cool hill air, instead of a stifling, dust-laden atmosphere, and to appreciate the green valleys and blue hills by force of contrast to the far-stretching, eye-smarting, white glaring roads that intersect the burnt-up plains—roads and plains that even the pariah abandon, salamander though he be! No doubt the work of some extremely roughish-looking and grotesque imps and demons, who were inflicting various torments. However, to our delight and surprise, Mrs. Winchester had by no means overdraw the advantages of her new estate. The Grand Queen Anne Victorian mansion was solidly built of wood, brick, and stone, nine storied, and ample in size. It stood on kind of a shelf cut out of the hill side, and was surrounded by a pretty flower garden, full of roses, fuchsias, carnations. There was also a fruit orchard, many exotic trees and plants, and an avenue of palm trees. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
There was a delightful, flagged verandah. The stairs were very steep. At the head of them, the passage and rooms were repeated. There were very small nooks, a switchback staircase, which has seven flights with forty-four steps, rising only about nine feet, since each step was just two inches. Miles of twisting hallways, secret passageways in the walls, a labyrinth of rooms, and dressing-rooms, 13 bathrooms, and plenty of good water. From the fourth-floor balcony, there was a glorious view, across a valley, far away, to the snowy range. As we looked around the drawing-room, here were carpets, curtains, solid, very solid chairs, and Berlin wool worked screens, a card-table, and any quantity of pictures. All the rooms were well, almost handsomely, furnished, in an old-fashioned style. There was no scarcity of wardrobes, looking-glasses, or even armchairs, in the bedrooms, and they pantry was fitted out—a most singular circumstance—with a large supply of handsome glass and china, lamps, old moderators, coffee and tea pots, plated side dishes, and candlesticks, cooking utensils and spoons and forks, wine coasters, and a cake-backet. The chins was Spoke, the plate old family heirlooms, with a crest—a winged horse—on everything, down to the very mustard spoons. There were gold- and silverplated chandeliers, imported Tiffany art glass windows, German silver and bronze inlaid doors, Swiss molded bathtubs, rare precious woods like mahogany and rosewood. Handsome Dresden china vases, nice boxes of firewood in every room, clocks, real hair mattresses—in short, it was a treasure trove. It was well built with some peculiar effects such as stairs that lead to the ceiling, doors that go nowhere and that opened onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
It is estimated that there were some 500 to 600 rooms in the house. However, it is haunted! According to a Boston medium, Mrs. Winchester and her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits. Supposedly the untimely deaths of her daughter and husband were caused by these spirits, and it was implied that Mrs. Winchester would be the next victim. We soon forget about the dismal prophecy, being too gay and too busy to give her, or it a thought. We had so many engagements—tennis parties and tournaments, picnics, concerts, dances and little dinners. We ourselves gave occasional afternoon teas in the verandah, using the best Spode cups and saucers and the old silver cake-basket, and were warmly complimented on our good fortune in being guests in such a charming house and garden. Mrs. Winchester also had an African grey parrot—a rare bird indeed—and a cute little dog named Zip. Later that night, we had dinner in a handsome and somewhat antique-looking room. A cheerful wood-fire blazed in the capacious hearth; a little at one side an old-fashioned table, with richly-carved legs, was placed—destined, no doubt, to receive the supper, for which preparations were going forward; and ranged with exam regularity stood the tall-backed chairs whose ungracefulness was more than counterbalanced by their comfort. A stranger stopped at the door of the room, and displayed his form and face completely. He wore a dark coloured cloth cloak, which was short and full, not falling quite to the knees; his legs were cased in dark purple silk stockings, and his shoes were adorned with roses of the same colour. The opening of the cloak in front showed the undersuit to consist of some very dark, perhaps sable material, and his hands were enclosed in a pair of heavy leather gloves which ran up considerably above the wrist, in the manner of a gauntlet. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
In one hand he carried his walking-stick and his hat, which he had removed, and the other hung heavily by his side. A quantity of grizzled hair descended in long tresses from his head, and its fold rested upon plaits of a stiff ruff, which effectually concealed his neck. So far all was well; but the face!—all the flesh of the face was coloured with the bluish leaden hue which is sometimes produced by the operation of metallic medicines administered in excessive quantities; the eyes were enormous, and the white appeared both above and below the iris, which gave to them the impression of insanity, which was heightened by their glassy redness; the nose was well enough, but the mouth was writhed considerably to one side, where it opened in order to give egress to two long, discoloured fangs, which projected from the upper jaw, far blow the lower lip; the hue of the lips themselves bore the usual relation to that of the face, and was consequently nearly black. The character of the face was malignant, even satanic, to the last degree; and, indeed, such a combination of horror could hardly be accounted for, except by supposing the corpse of some atrocious malefactor, which had long hung blackening upon the gibbet, to have at length become the habitation of a demon—the frightful sport of satanic possession. It was remarkable that the worshipful stranger suffered as little as possible of his flesh to appear, and that during his visit he did not once remove his gloves. There was something indescribably odd, even horrible about all his motions, something undefinable, something unnatural, unhuman—it was as if the limbs were guided and directed by a spirit unused to the management of bodily machinery. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The stranger said hardly anything during his visit, which did not exceed half an hour; and the host himself could scarcely muster courage enough to utter the few necessary salutations and courtesies; and, indeed, such was the nervous terror which the presence of Theophilus Dunn inspired, that very little would have made all his entertainers fly bellowing from the room. During his stay he did not once suffer his eyelids to close, nor even to move in the slightest degree; and further, there was a death-like stillness in his whole person, owing to the total absence of the heaving motion of the chest caused by the process of respiration. These two peculiarities, though when told they may appear trifling, produced a very striking and unpleasant effect when seen and observed. He saw a shadowy and ill-defined form gliding into the apartment. Sharp guests of wind and warning rumblings of thunder that seemed to shake the mountains, blew away the table cloth. As it was whirling into space, Dunn drew his sword, and raising the candle as o throw its light with increased distinctness upon the objects in the room, he entered the chamber into which the figure had glided. No figure was there—nothing but the furniture which had belonged to the room, and yet he could not be deceived as to the fact that something had moved before them into the chamber. A sickening dread came upon him, and the cold perspiration broke out in heavy drops upon his forehead; nor was he more composed when he heard the increased urgency, they agony of entreaty, which Mrs. Winchester implored him not to leave for a moment. “I saw him,” she said. “He is there! I cannot be deceived—I know him. He is by me—he is with me—he is in the room. Then, for God’s sake, as you would save me, do no stir from beside me!” #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Mrs. Winchester had it prevailed upon her to lie down upon the bed, where she continued to urger everyone to stay by her. She frequently uttered incoherent sentences, repeating again and again, “The dead and the living cannot be one—God has forbidden it!” and then again, “Rest to the wakeful—sleep to the sleep-walkers.” There was a Greek curse inscribed on a lead tablet in the drawing room from the city of Selinus in Sicily. Mrs. Winchester used it to communicate with gods and spirits. A spirit had been summoned and bound to the tablet to make sure the curse was effective. Souls after death do as yet love their body which they left, as those souls do whose bodies want due burial or have left their bodies by violent death, and as yet wander about their carcasses in a troubled and moist spirit, being, as it were, allured by something that hath an affinity with them. Many spirits had been invoked that night, this one had been brought out and seated on a sixteen-sided stand (an improvement on the double pentacle called Solomon’s seat). Mrs. Winchester lay in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the bed, at her urgent desire, stood her niece Marion “Daisey” Marriam Marriott; a candle burned in the bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment. Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton arrived, and cleared his voice, as if about to commence a prayer; but before he had time to begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to illuminate the room in which Mrs. Winchester lay, and she with hurried alarm, explained: “Sir Lancelot, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe.” Sir Lancelot stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order to supply what she desired. “O God! do not go, Sir Lancelot!” shrieked the unhappy Mrs. Winchester; and at the same time she sprang from the bed and darted after him, in order, by her grasp, to detain him. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
However, the warning came too late, for scarcely had he passed the threshold, and hardly had Mrs. Winchester has time to utter the startling explanation, when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him, as if swung to by a strong blast of wind. Sir Lancelot and Dunn both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to sake it. Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror. Sir Lancelot and Dunn applied every energy and strained every nerve to force open the door; but all in vain. There was no sound of struggling from within, but the screams seemed to increase in loudness, and at the same time they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn, and the window itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open. One last shriek, so long and piercing and agonized as to be scarcely human, swelled from the room, and suddenly there followed a death-like silence. A light step was heard crossing the floor, as if from the bed to the window; and almost at the same instant the door gave way, and yielding to the pressure of the external applicants, they were nearly precipitated into the room. It was empty. The window was open, and Sir Lancelot sprang to the chair and gazed out upon the fruit orchard and the lake below. He saw no form, but he beheld, or thought he beheld, the waters of the broad lake beneath settling ring after ring in heavy circular ripples, as if a moment before disturbed by the immersion of some large and heavy mass. No trace of Mrs. Winchester was ever after discovered, nor was anything certain respecting her mysterious wooer detected or even suspected; no clue whereby to trace the intricacies of the labyrinth, and to arrive at a distinct conclusion was to be found. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
However, an incident occurred, which, though it will not be received by our rational readers as at all approaching to evidence upon the matter, nevertheless produced a strong and a lasting impression upon the mind of Sir Lancelot. Many years after the events at the Winchester Mansion, which we have detailed, Sir Lancelot, then remotely situated, received an intimation of his father’s death, and of his intended burial upon a fixed day in an independent chapel in Bath late in the day upon which the funeral was appointed to take place. The procession had not then arrived. Evening closed in, and still it did not appear. Sir Lancelot strolled down to the church—he found it open; notice of the arrival of the funeral had been given, and the vault in which the body was to be laid had been opened. The official who corresponds to our sexton, on seeing a well-dressed gentleman, whose object was to attend the expected funeral, pacing the aisle of the chapel, hospitably invited him to share with him the comforts of a blazing wood fire, which as was his custom in winter time upon such occasions, he had kindled on the hearth of a chamber which communicated by a flight of steps with the vault below. In this chamber Sir Lancelot and his entertainer seated themselves; and the sexton, after some fruitless attempts to engage his guest in conversation, was obliged to apply himself to his tobacco-pipe and can to solace his solitude. In spite of his grief and cares, the fatigues of a rapid journey of nearly forty hours gradually overcame the mind and body of Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, and he sank into a deep sleep, from which he was awakened by someone shaking him gently by the shoulder. He first thought that the old sexton had called him, but he was no longer in the room. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
There was a kind of ghostly twilight. The ghostly lights passed and disappeared in the gathering darkness. He roused himself, and as soon as he could clearly see what was around him, he perceived a female form, clothed in a kind of black robe of muslin, part of which was so disposed as to act as a veil, and in her hand she carried a lamp. She was moving rather away from him, and towards the flight of steps which conducted towards the vaults. Sir Lancelot felt a vague alarm at the sight of this figure, and at the same time an irresistible impulse to follow his guidance. He followed it towards the vaults, but when it reached the head of the stairs, he paused; the figure paused also, and turning gently round, displayed, by the light of the lamp it carried, the face and features of the beloved, Sarah Winchesters. There was nothing horrible, or even sad, in the countenance. On the contrary, it wore the same arch smile which used to enchant him long before in his happy days. A feeling of awe and interest, too intense to be resisted, prompted him to follow the specter, if specter it were. She descended the stairs—he followed; and, turning to the left through a narrow passage she led him, to his infinite surprise, through the door to nowhere, into what appeared to be an old-fashioned Victorian apartment. Abundance of costly antique furniture was disposed about the room, and in one corner stood a four-post bed, with heavy black cloth curtains, and by the light of the lamp which she held towards its contents, she disclosed to the horror stricken clergyman, sitting bolt upright in the bed, the livid and demoniac form of Theophilus Dunn. Sir Lancelottt had hardly seen him when he fell senseless upon the floor, where he lay until discovered, on the next morning, by persons employed in closing the passages into the vaults. He was laying in a cell of considerable size, which had not been disturbed for a long time, and had fallen beside a large coffin which was supported upon small stone pillars, a security against the attacks of vermin. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
To his dying day Sir Lancelot was satisfied of the reality of the vision which he had witnessed, and he has left behind him curious evidence of the impression which it wrought upon his fancy, in a painting executed shortly after the event we have narrated, and which is valuable as exhibiting not only the peculiarities which have made the Winchester Mansion sought after, but even more so as presenting occurrences in Mrs. Winchester’s interviews and journals that defy explanation. However, Mrs. Winchester’s mysterious fate must ever remain a matter of speculation. Yes; sometimes at night the most terrible weeping and sobbing can be heard coming from the “Daisy bedroom,” and a phantom horse can be heard plunging in the carriage house, and the wild, unearthly and utterly appalling shriek. The scene of horrible dinner parities has even been seen in the dining room. A party of ghouls meets there a few times of year, after midnight, and are assembled with the spoils of the graves they have violated, and are feasting on the flesh of long-buried corpses. One of the servants even saw his own wife, who, by the way, never touched supper at home, playing no inconsiderable part in the hideous banquet. Hundreds of wild stories have appeared about this mysterious mansion. It seems odd that none of her relatives or former employees ever came forward to contradict these stories, despite the fact that many of them lived for forty years after the estate was opened for tours. For some reason, did they feel threatened by talking—or did they continue to guard Mrs. Winchesters privacy? At the Winchester Mystery House, we may never be able to separate fact from legend—so here are some stories that have been told since the late 1800s and early 1900s. We leave it to guests and readers to decide for themselves why Mrs. Winchester really built the house the way she did, or what is it really? A portal or just a museum? #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Winchester Mystery House is an extravagant maze of Victorian craftmanship—marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. Tour guides must warn people not to stray from the group or they could be lost for hours. Countless questions come to mind as you wander through the mansion—such as, what was Mrs. Winchester thinking when she had a staircase built the descends seven steps and then rises eleven? By the way, Harry Houdini, an occultist, was attracted to the Winchester and tried to escape from the mansiin blindfolded; he also died Halloween 1926.
Winchester Mystery House
What it feels like walking through a microscopic spiderweb….🕷🕸
All Hallows’ Eve, Lost in the House tour tickets are still available for tonight. Hurry and purchase before they sell out!
🎟link: http://ow.ly/k5wM50GqWTb
When are You Going to Face the Real World?
The good and the bad are all part of the World-picture, although their proportions vary as the time-wheel turns around. It is the function of such opposing forces, environments, or persons to compel one to negotiate them properly, or suffer the consequences. Often what manages to get the public eye ends up with little or no spiritual profit. However, just as often what the public eye fails to notice is of the greatest possible spiritual importance. It would be a totally unobservant or totally theoretic person who denied the presence of evil, but it would be an ill-informed one who did not perceive that its life and power are circumscribed. I hope I shall not be misunderstood for saying that I saw clearly how the physical expression of evil is a necessary prerequisite to the spiritual redemption from evil. For what the sinner does is after all only an outcome of what one thinks. If the doing of wrong actions will, by the higher law of recompense, bring one ultimately the physical punitive consequences of those actions, they will also bring one—and again ultimately—the thought that the two are inseparably connected together. This is a step—admittedly only a first step—toward that repentance and that purification which make redemption possible. The notion that the God-Power is engaged in a desperate struggle with an evil power, that God calls on humans to give His help and that the outcome of this warfare depends to any extent on such help—this notion is a ridiculous one. My experience of life and observation of others have taught me that there is no situation in which you will find good alone present without some concomitant evil. To look for undiluted good is utopian, unrealistic, and self-deceptive. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The procession of love in God ought not to be called generation. In evidence whereof we must consider that the intellect and the will differ in this respect, that the intellect is made actual by the object understood residing according to its own likeness in the intellect; whereas the will is made actual, not by any similitude of the object willed within it, but by its having a certain inclination to the thing willed. Thus the procession of the intellect is by way of similitude, and is called generation, because every generator begets its own like; whereas the procession of the will is not by way of similitude of the object willed within it, but by its having a certain inclination to the thing willed. Thus the procession of the intellect is by way of similitude, and is called generation, because every generator begets its own like; whereas the procession of the will is not by way of similitude, but rather by way of impulse and movement towards an object. So what proceeds in God by way of love, does not proceed as begotten, or as son, but proceeds rather as spirit; which name expresses a certain vital movement and impulse, accordingly as anyone is described as moved or impelled by love to perform an action. All that exists in God is one with the divine nature. Hence the proper notion of this or that procession, by which one procession is distinguished from another, cannot be on the part of this unity: but the proper notion of this or that procession must be taken from the order of one procession in God takes its name from the proper notion of will and intellect; the name being imposed to signify what its nature really is; and so it is that the Person proceeding as love receives the divine nature, but is not said to be born. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Likeness belongs in a different way to the word and to love. It belongs to the word as being the likeness of the object understood, as the thing generated is the likeness of the generator; but it belongs to love, not as though love itself were a likeness, but because likeness is the principle of love. Thus it does not follow that love is begotten, but that the one begotten is the principle of love. We can name God only from creatures. As creatures generation is the only principle of communication of nature, procession in God has no proper or special name, expect that of generation. Hence the procession which is not generation has remained without a special name; but it can be called spiration, as it is the procession of the Spirit. The awful fact of innate evil, the hideous mystery of innate sin, must be recognized and faced. We cannot make bad humans into good humans; but Nature, Life, with millions of years at her disposal, can. Evil arises where the good is still undeveloped from its latency, but sometimes it is the distortion of the good. We will understand this problem better when we understand that the presence of good and evil in the Universe does not signify a division of power but a division of thought. Thought is the cause; thought is the cure. Satan can pretend to be an Angel of Light. There are adepts in evil who hide their real aim behind an outward show of altruistic purpose. These secret purposes disguise themselves in a convenient form, and if no other is convenient they will even use some open purpose which stands in total opposition to them. They emerge in the most unlikely and unlooked-for places. The evil in human relations springs from the ignorance in human beings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
As each one brings the principle of truth into one’s own consciousness, one brings it into one’s relations with others as a result. The love which accompanies it denies birth to cruelty, anger, and lust or dissolves any which already exist. Although it is perfectly true that divine goodness is at the heart of things, it is no less true that demonic evil is on the surface of things. The followers of simple cults which stubbornly try to see only the goodness and not the evil, which deny things as they are and indulged wishful thinking, have themselves and their leaders to blame when disaster awakens them to the errors in the map they are following. They would do better to arouse themselves, while there is yet time, to keep a soundly balanced attitude, neither falling over to one side or the other overmuch, yet always remembering that superphysical experience between the incarnations is disproportionately good and free from evil, by contrast with physical plane experience. Let us not insult human reason by denying human evil. In any universal arrangement or personal situation, there is either gross disorder, with its consequent turmoil trouble and suffering, or there is real order, with its harmonious co-operation with the divine will working outward from the divine center—be it humans’ heart or the sun’s rays. The great ills (miscalled evils) of bodily life, such as disease and poverty, are often forced upon one by an implacable fate. However, it would be a delusion to class them always with the great evils of mental life, such as hate and cruelty. For their control is frequently beyond one’s power, and their course may have to be endured, whereas sinful thoughts and their resultant deeds are not independent of one’s control and may be avoided. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Why is it that people are dazzled with this-Worldly thingamajigs? Well, unless they come to their right minds soon, they will amuse themselves to death. When right principles, theories, or concepts are taken up by the wrong persons, they become wrong themselves—because misused, falsified, prevented. Suffering is not always an evil. It is often educative. All evil is then seen to spring from separativeness, which is a stage inevitable to all creatures as they follow the line of unfoldment. Evil therefore is the adverse element in Nature. Humans can conquer it in one’s mind by conquering separativeness and realizing the All as oneself. At the same time one discovers that the whole creation is really a mental one, hence like but not the same as a dream; and if one keeps awake to the Static Reality whilst in the midst of the Earthly dream, the whole World becomes merely a school for educating consciousness. The suffering, evil, and the like are transient aspects leaving permanent results. The wedding of Heaven and Earth can never be brought about, since the Perfect and the Imperfect are incompatibles. However, they can be brought into some sort of equilibrium, into better balance, so that life in the World would not be as bad as it is. Those who ignorantly believe that God needs their help to ensure His triumph over evil in the World, have yet to learn that this triumph has been eternally accomplished already. The human being who can affect this situation either by helping or hindering does not exist. It is a disturbing concept which holds that man’s goodness seldom becomes actualized without the presence of, and struggle against man’s evil. If men engaged themselves more in asking not “What is good and what is evil?” but rather “What is the Highest Good?” the first question would get itself answered automatically and peace would then follow anyway. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
When the evil in humans is washed out, one will find in all its goodness the original stuff of which one is made—beneficent to all, a joy to oneself. However, because we affirm that the powers of evil will destroy themselves in the end, this must not be mistaken to mean that we may all sit down in smug complacency. We ought not to make this an excuse for inaction. On the contrary, it should inspire us to stronger efforts to preserve the noblest things in life from their attack. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good humans do nothing. The night’s darkness shelters the evil forces, the sun’s brightness tells us where the divine ones are centralized. “My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus,” Philippians 4.19. As God’s children, we are able to live an abundant life. That is acceptable. In fact, we should even expect to be blessed. Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one. If you come from a poor environment, or do not have a lot of material possession, that is fine. God has many blessings in store for you. However, all the good things in life are not material. Yet it is nice to also have material comforts. Therefore, do not allow the image of lack and limitation become the motion picture you constantly play in your head. It is good to be humble, but seeing yourself prospering is also healthy. One should seek to rise to new levels of success. Start looking through the eyes of faith and keep that image of happiness and success in your heart and mind. You may not be as affluent as you like, at the moment, but with hard work, dedication, education, and payer, anything is possible. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
God has called for human help, and no one is coming. We are his last resort! How often on Earth has God put His trust in a human being, even in a Devout, and yet been disappointed! However, then again how often has God found a helping hand where He had no reason to expect one? The conclusion? Vain is the hope for consistency in human behaviour. However, God is always consistent; if the Psalmist has it right (37.39), then the Just are always saved. Only God can find the good in everything that happens to us. Left to ourselves, we are infirm and unstable, falliable and fallable. The Christ Holy Bible and Book of Mormon clearly shows that God takes pleasure in prospering His children. As His children prosper spiritually, physically, and materially, their increase brings God a sense of satisfaction that we can only imagine. If I introduced Leo and Annie to you, and they went to school with no shoes on, had holds in their clothes, and dirt under their fingernails, you would probably say, “That man is not a god father. He does not take good care of his children.” Indeed, my children’s poverty would be a direct reflection on me as their day. Just like a governor who brags about having the 5th largest economy in the World and over a twenty-five-billion-dollar surplus, but has the highest homeless population in the developed World. Perhaps, taxes are so high people cannot afford to live? Perhaps the people need a rebate of some of their money? Perhaps there should be a record number of affordable housing units going up on undeveloped land? Perhaps taxpayer funded sports arenas could be converted into affordable lofts? #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Nonetheless, when we go through life with a poverty mentality, it is not glorifying to God. It does not honour His great name. No, God is honoured and pleased when we develop a prosperous mindset. God wants to supply every need you have, and He will! With that being said, do not expect much from your politicians. Do not turn to the news for answers. Pick up the Bible, go to church and pray to God for all that you seek. God, I thank You that You have better things in store for me than I would even choose for myself, that Your dream for me is even grander than my dream for myself, and Your resources are inexhaustible! Devouts like me keep a good monastic muzzle on ourselves in everything we say or do. However, will that caution and circumspection really prevent us from being axed and battleaxed? All I know, O Lord, is that whoever confides in You and “speaks from a simple heart”—a characteristic much favoured in the Wisdom of Solomon (1.1)—does not fall so easily. Oh, he will slip—he is bound to—but God will come to his rescue or, at the very least, God will offer one some help. That is because God does not desert whoever has put one’s hope in Him for the Long Haul. A rare find is the faithful friend who preserves through all the ups and downs of friendship. God is the most faithful of friends, O Lord, and without You there is no such thing as Friendships. “For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the World that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, not be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life,” reports John 3.16. The spiritual event, the mystical experience, is there but its presentation to the conscious mind—manipulated by one’s personal tendencies to an extent which exaggerates their importance—creates a mixed result. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
However, the glow of this transcendence lingers in the heart for long after its actual manifestation. It suffuses one with unearthly happiness and fills one with solemn reverence. When this mood is fully upon one, one may find it hard to talk to anyone for some time afterward. One emerges from the experience feeling surrounded by peace and protected by supernormal powers. The glimpse vanishes, slowly with a few, quickly with most, leaving its effects in one’s recognition of greater possibilities in life and grander ones in oneself. One comes back from the glimpse not only renewed in grace but purged in character, not only less egoistic but more detached, hence calmer. It is only a mood, of course, and may vanish in a few minutes, hours, or days. However, whereas most other moods pass from memory and are unrecallable, this kind is unforgettable. This wonderful and memorable experience, call it Void or call it God, will for some time afterwards become a kind of background to the events of one’s life and to one, oneself. Illumination arising from suffering seems to last longer than that arising from happiness because the latter is easier to lose. One is likely to become careless with that which comes from happiness. Whatever the height reached, the glory felt during the glimpse, one still lives on as a human being after it has passed. Thoughts reappear, ordinary emotions are felt again. The uplifted consciousness falls back, the rapturous moments pass away. One must then revert to the ordinary animal-intellectual life of everyday, to all the human implications of one’s existence. Why try, vainly, to deny them? #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
One has seen some truth and may want to share it. However, in what manner can one communicate that which is not intellectually measurable? If the glimpse does not last, is a human discovers, or rather comes back to find, that one still is human, one should be pleased that it came at all. It is not easy and it may need a long period of practice and remembrance, but something of this afterglow may be kept and retained even amid the turmoil of the World’s work. In those glorious enchanted moments which immediately succeed the glimpse, almost anything seems possible. The glimpse comes to be treasured in memory as something very precious and quite unique, most intimate and not freely talked about with others. Slowly and dimply one will become aware of one’s surroundings and one’s body. Little by little one will struggle back to them as if from some far planet. The recovery of consciousness will be only intermittent at first, only in brief snatches achieved with difficulty. However, later it will be heled and kept for longer periods until it remains altogether. The afterglow of this experience may be a sensation of its curative power, leaving nerves and heart healed of their troubled negative conditions, or of it purifying power, leaving the mind freed of its undesired and undesirable thoughts. The glimpse leaves an afterglow of truth, a reassurance of support. One’s heart will be warmed and one’s will moved as a consequence of this experience. The test will come when one has to descend from the mountain-peck of mediation into the valleys of prosaic everyday living. Can one adjust the greatness one has seen and felt to this smaller narrower World or will one lose it therein? #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The closer one comes to the Overself the more reticent one becomes about it. Even though the glimpse is so impressive, the subsequent activities of the day put it out of one’s mind until one is able to relax, perhaps at bedtime. When the spark of inspiration fades out, new ideas often go with it, of if they come, the power to utilize them escapes one. If the glimpse slips away from the greater calm, where does it go? Into the ever-active outward-turned thinking movement. From this inner World of Essence we descend to the outer World of Experience. “For every wrongdoer hates (loathes, detests) the Light, and will not come out into the Light, but shrinks from it, least one’s work (one’s deeds, one’s activities, one’s conduct) be exposed and reproved. However, one who practices truth [who does what is right] comes out into the Light; so that ones works may be plainly shown to be what they are—wrought with God [divinely prompted, sone with God’s help, in dependence upon Him],” reports John 3.20-21. Once there was a holy soul, St. Agatha, a wealthy girl who had vowed her virginity to Christ in the third century. As the official record of her martyrdom showed, she was brutally tortured and died in prison, but not before dropping this pearl of spiritual wisdom: “My mind is grounded and founded in Christ.” If only that were your sentiment also, then your every fear would not sting so, nor every unkind word stab. While the missionaries were on their trip westward, Joseph and his friends were busy in New York doing the Lord’s work. Parley Pratt’s nineteen-year-old brother, Orson, was much interested in Christ’s work in the latter day and went to Joseph requesting that he seek the Lord to know what his work would be. Joseph prayed earnestly in behalf of this young man. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
By revelation given in November, Jesus Christ said: “My son Orson, hearken and hear and behold what I, the Lord God, shall say unto you. Blessed are you because you have believed, and more blessed are you because you are called of me to preach my gospel; to lift up your voice as with the sound of a trump, both long and loud, and cry repentance unto a crooked and perverse generation; preparing the way of the Lord for His second coming. The time is soon at hand, that I shall come in a cloud with power and great glory, and it shall be a great day at the time of my coming. Therefore prophesy and it shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost; and if you are faithful, behold, I am with you until I come.” In December Sidney Rigdon and his friend, Edward Partridge, traveled from Kirtland to New York to visit Joseph Smith and to learn more about the church. Joseph prayed to know in what manner they might serve. After much prayer, the Son of God said: “Listen to the voice of the Lord your God…I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified for the sins of the World. Behold, verily, verily I say unto my servant Sidney, I have looked upon thee and thy works. I have heard thy prayers and prepared thee for a great work. I have heard thy prayers and prepared thee for a greater work. Thou art blessed, for thou shalt do great things. And it shall come to pass, that there shall be a great work in the land…and I will show miracles, signs and wonders, unto all those who believe on my name. And whoso shall ask it in my name, in faith, they shall cast our devils; they shall heal the sick; they shall cause the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak, and the lame to walk. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
“And the time speedily cometh that great things are to be shown forth unto the children of humans; but without faith shall not anything be shown. I haven sent forth the fullness of my gospel by the hand of my servant Joseph. Wherefore watch over one that one’s faith fail not, and it shall be given by the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, that knoweth all things; and a commandment I give unto thee, that thou shalt write for him. And the Scriptures shall be given even as they are in mine own bosom, to the salvation of mine own elect; for they will hear my voice, and shall see me. Lift up your hearts and be glad; your redemption draweth nigh. Fear not, little flock, the kingdom is yours until I come.” At about the same time this revelation came for Sidney Rigdon, a revelation was received directed to Edward Partridge, in which the Christ said: “I say unto you, my servant Edward, that you are blessed, and your sins are forgiven you, and you are called to preach my gospel. You shall receive my Spirit, the Holy Ghost, even the Comforter, which shall teach you he peaceable things of the kingdom. And you shall declare it with a loud voice, saying, Hosanna, blessed be the name of the most high God.” In a revelation given to Joseph in June, 1830 (Doctrine and Covenants 22), the Lord had explained that Moses had been told that men would one day take away many of the words which Moses and others had written, but that God would raise up another man who would give the words back to the people. By this God meant that parts of the Bible which Moses and others had written would be left out of the Scriptures or be lost, and another man would be inspired by God’s Spirit to know what had been omitted or lost and put them back in the Bible. This man was to be Joseph Smith, Jr., and Sidney Rigdon was to help him. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Sidney Rigdon was a student of the of the Bible, having spent years in its study. He had an unusual understanding of the Scriptures and at one time had resigned as minister because the church of which he was pastor did not teach according to the Bible. Truly the Lord had prepared him for a greater work. As Joseph and Sidney Rigdon worked together, God inspired them by his Holy Spirit that they might understand the things they read in the Bible. When two or more Scripture passages conflicted, God helped them to know what was right. The prophecy of Enoch is one book which is mentioned in the Bible but which had been omitted, apparently having been lost. Enoch was the righteous human who built the perfect city of Zion which was taken to Heaven. Enoch lived many hundreds of years before Jesus’ time. God made it known to Joseph Smith by his Holy Spirit what the prophecy of Enoch contained, and as God inspired his mind, he wrote about it. Joseph Learned that Enoch built the city of Zion where all were of one heart and mind and lived in righteousness. Enoch had been shown a vision in which he saw everything that was to happen to the World in the future. He saw Noah who built an ark to save the few righteous people from the flood which destroyed the wicked ones. He saw the coming of Jesus, the Son of God, who was born in a manger, and who came to show people the right way to live. He saw this Son of God crucified on a cross, and a great storm. He saw him raised from the dead and ascend into Heaven. In his visions Enoch saw the time when Jesus’ gospel would again return to the Earth. He saw the righteous gathered from all over the Earth to place called Zion, and to this place Enoch saw the Son of God come to live for a thousand year. The Lord has shown Enoch all things, even to the end of the World. Enoch saw the righteous people receive great joy, and the wicked ones fear God’s judgment against them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
God directed Joseph to put this lost book—the prophecy of Enoch—into the Holy Scriptures so it might be of help to those who study it to understand about God and his purpose. If they understood, they might become better people than they could otherwise be. This prophecy has also been included in the Doctrine and Covenants as Section 36. Joseph and Sidney Rigdon were working hard on the Inspired Version of the Scriptures when they received instructions by revelation in which the Lord said: “Behold, I say unto you, that it is not expedient in me that ye should translate any more until ye shall go to the Ohio. Ans again a commandment I give unto the church, that it is expedient in me that they should assemble together at the Ohio, against the time that my servant Oliver Cowdery shall return unto them. So Joseph and Sidney Rigdon laid aside their work on the Inspired Version of the Scriptures to preach and strengthen the church, and to prepare for an assembly of the Saints at Kirtland. The wonder of the human soul which, even surrounded by the depravity and folly of today, can still aspire nobly and think loftily, would be quite puzzling did we not know the dual nature of the human entity and the divine nature of the laws which govern it. So long as separate egos exist—separate from the cosmic ego in their own view, that is—so long will their ignorance produce what we call evil. The ego, let loose upon the World, uninstructed and unbridled, cannot in the final reckoning benefit the World. To talk of service, without wisdom or character, may squander its goodwill in egoistic mire. Note too that the resources of commerce and industry, far from making the tax more endurable through an abundance of money, only make it more burdensome. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
I will not dwell upon a very obvious point, namely that, although a greater or lesser quantity of money in a state can give it more or less credit outside the state, it in no way alters the real fortune of the citizens and does not make them any more or less comfortable. However, I must make two important remarks. First, unless the state has extra commodities and the abundance of money comes from export trade, only the commercial towns are aware of this abundance, and the peasant only become relatively poorer. Second, since the price of everything increases with the increase in money, taxes must be increased proportionately, so that the famer finds oneself under a great burden without having greater resources. It should be noted that the tax on lands is actually a tax on its product. While everyone agrees that nothing is so dangerous as a tax on grain paid by the buyer, how is it we do not see that it is a hundred times worse if this tax is paid by the farmer oneself. Is it not the most direct method possible of depopulating the homeland, and thus in the long run of ruining it? For there is no worse scarcity for a nation than that of humans. Only the true statesman can rise one’s sights above the financial objectives of imposing greater taxes. Only one can transform onerous burdens into useful regulations of public administration. Only one can make the people wonder whether such establishments have for their purpose the good of the nation rather than the production of taxes. Duties on the importation of foreign merchandise which the local people are eager to have but which the homeland does not need; on the exportation of domestically produced merchandise of which the homeland has none to spare and which foreigners cannot do without; on the product of useless and excessively lucrative arts; on the entry into towns of pure luxuries, and in general on all luxury items will all achieve this twofold purpose. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
It is by means of such taxes, which ease the burden of poverty and place the onus on wealth, that one must prevent the continual increase in the inequality of fortunes, the subjection of a multitude of workers and useless servants to the rich, the multiplication of idle people in the cities, and the desertion of rural areas. It is important to place a proportion between the price of thing and the duties imposed on them such that the greediness of private individuals is not too strongly tempted by the size of the profits to commit fraud. Moreover, smuggling must be made difficult by singling out merchandise that is more difficult to conceal. Finally, it is appropriate for the tax to be paid by the one who uses the thing taxed rather than the one who sells it, to whom the quantity of the duties with which one is charged would provide greater temptations and means of committing fraud. This is the usual practice in countries where the taxes are the heaviest and the best paid in the World. The merchant pays nothing. Only the buyer pays the duty, without any murmuring or sedition resulting, for since the provisions necessary for life, such as rice and grain, are completely exempt, the people are not oppressed and the tax falls only on the wealth. Moreover, all these precautions ought to be dictated not so much by the fear of smuggling as by the attention the government ought to pay to protecting private individuals from the seduction of illegitimate profits, which, after having turned them into bad citizens, would waste no time turning them into dishonest people. Let heavy taxes be levied on livery servants, carriages, mirrors, chandeliers and furnishings, on fabric and gilding, on the courtyards and the gardens of law makers, on public entertainment of all kinds, and on the idle processions, such as those of buffoons. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
In sort, on that group of objects of luxury, amusement and idleness that catch everyone’s eye and that can scarcely be hidden, since their whole purpose is to be on display, and they would be useless if they should fail to be seen. There is no cause for fear that the proceeds of such taxes would be arbitrary, since they are imposed only on things that are not absolutely necessary. It shows a poor knowledge of humans to believe that human who have once been seduced by luxury can ever renounce it. They would a hundred times rather renounce necessities, preferring to die of hunger than of shame. The increase in their expense is only a new reason for sustaining it, when the vanity of displaying oneself as wealthy will reap its reward from the price of the things as well as the expanse of the tax. As long as there are rich people, and the state cannot contrive a revenue less onerous and more secure than one based on this distinction. Would you rather have the state getting revenue only by taxing them life out of its citizens, or allow them to compete on a limited basis with private industry, which may result in them becoming more economical? For some reason, industry would have nothing to suffer from an economic order that enriched the public finances, revitalized agriculture by relieving the farmer, and imperceptibly brought all fortunes close to that intermediate level of wealth which constitutes the true force of a state. I confess it could happen that these taxes might contribute to making some fashions come and go more quickly; but it would never happen without substituting others on which the worker would earn a profit without the public treasury taking a loss. In short, suppose the spirit of the government was constantly to levy all taxes on the superfluities of the rich, one of two things might happen. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Either the rich would remove their superfluities to turn them into something useful, which would redound to the profit of the state, in which case, the imposition of taxes would have produced the effect of the best sumptuary laws. The expenses of the state will of necessity have diminished with those of private individuals; and the public treasury in this way would not receive less than it would thereby gain for having to pay out less. Or, if the rich do not cut back on any of their extravagances, the public treasury would have, in tax proceeds on these extravagances, the resources it was seeking in order to provide for the real needs of the state. In the first case, the public treasury is enriched by reducing expenditures. In the second case, it is enriched by the useless expenditures of private individuals. Let us add to all this an important distinction in the matter of political right, and to which governments, jealous of doing everything by themselves, should pay great attention. I have said that since personal taxes and taxes on absolute necessities attack the right to property and consequently the true foundation of public society, they are always subject to dangerous consequences, if they are not established with the express consent of the people or its representatives. It is not the same for duties on things whose use can be forbidden. For then, since the private individual is absolutely constrained to pay, one’s contributions can be reckoned as voluntary. Thus the individual consent of each of the contributions takes the place of the general consent, and even presupposes it in a certain way. For why would the people be opposed to any tax levy that falls only on whoever wants to pay it? It would appear to me certain that whatever is not prescribed by the laws or not contrary to mores and that the government can forbid, it can permit a payment of a duty. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
If, for example, the government can forbid the use of carriages, a fortiori it can impose a tax on carriages, a wise and useful way to blame their use without terminating it. Then one can view the tax as a type of fine, whose proceeds compensate for the abuse it punishes. Someone may perhaps object that since those called impostors, that is, those who impose or invent the taxes, are in the class of the rich, they will not take care to spare others at their own expense and to burden themselves in order to relieve the poor. However, such ideas must be rejected. If in each nation those to whom the sovereign commits the government of the peoples were, in virtue of their position, the enemies of the state, it would not be worth the trouble to inquire what they should do to make people happy. In millions of middle-class homes a ritual drama is enacted: the recently graduated son or daughter arrives late for dinner, snarls, flings down the wants ads, and proclaims the nine-to-five jobs, and the mother, exhausted and depressed from paying the latest batch of bills, are outraged. They have been through this before. Having seen good times and bad, they suggest a secure job with a big corporation. They young person sneers. Small companies are better. No company is best of all. An advanced degree? What for? It is all a terrible waste! Aghast, the parents see their suggestions dismissed one after another. Their frustration mounts until, at last, they utter the ultimate parental cry: “When are you going to face the real World?” Such scenes are not limited to affluent homes in the United States of America or even Europe. Japanese corporate moguls mutter in their sake about the swift decline of the work ethic and corporate loyalty, of industrial punctuality and discipline among the young. Even in Russia middle-class parents face similar challenges form youth. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Is this just another case of epater les parents—the traditional generational conflict? Or is there something new here? Can it be that young people and their parents are simply not talking about the same “real World”? The fact is that what we are seeing is not merely the classical confrontation of romantic youth and realistic elders. Indeed, what was once realistic may no longer be. For the basic code of behaviour, containing the ground rules of social life, is changing rapidly as the onrushing Third Wave. We saw earlier how the Second Wave brought with it a “code book” of principles or rules that governed everyday behaviour. Such principles as synchronization, standardization, or maximization were applied in business, in government, and in a daily life obsessed with punctuality and schedules. Today a countercode book is emerging—new ground rules for the new life we are building on a de-massified economy, on de-massified media, on new family and corporate structures. Many of the seemingly senseless battles between young and old, as well as other conflicts in our classrooms, boardrooms, and political backrooms are, in fact, nothing more than clashes over which code book to apply. The new code book directly attacks much of what the Second Wave person has been taught to believe in—from the importance of punctuality and synchronization to the need for conformity and standardization. It challenges the presumed efficiency of centralization and professionalization. It compels us to reconsider our conviction that bigger is better and our nations of “concentration.” To understand this new code, and how it contrasts with the old one, is to understand instantly many of otherwise confusing conflicts that swirl around us, exhausting our energies and threatening our personal power, prestige, or paycheck. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Prayer and focus on God is important for Spirit-Energy. This also helps the concentration of thoughts. The refusal to study the Bible or pray is short-sighted, narrow-minded, and unjustified, for this lays some foundation for the mental and higher planes of existence. Devotion to God is not concerned only with gaining abnormal physical power as the opponents seem to believe, but also with gaining physical health, freedom from sickness, abundant vitality, and especially a purified nervous system and disciplined instincts. God can bestow youthful elasticity to the body, and He will give deeper, more refreshing sleep; also, one passes into sleep more quickly. The steadiness which prayer provides has an effect on the consciousness, to, and it is an indirect means of attaining the requisite concentration, and ultimately, because of the effect on the interaction of heart and brain, the requiste inhibition of thiking. Thus, the art of prayer for self-healing and self-control has come to be traditionally handed down to the present day. Bakerman God, I am your living bread, strong, Bakerman God. I am your low, soft, and being-shaped loaf. I am your rising bread, well-kneaded by some divine and knotty pair of knuckles, by your warm Earth hands. I am bread well-kneaded. Put me in fire, Bakerman God, put me in your own bright fire. I am warm, warm as you from fire. I am white and gold, soft and hard, brown and round. I am so warm from the fire. Break me, Bakerman God. I am broken under your caring Word. Drop me in your special grace. The while for water we entreat Thee now, athirst as willows by the waterside, the pouring forth of old, remember Thou! O God of our salvation, save Thou us! These bearings boughs held upward in the way they sprout from Earth; these burdened by their plea, O answer, when in sudden need they pray. O God of our salvation, save Thou us! #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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The Awareness of Human Destructiveness Bursts!
Many humans, at one time, were primarily isolated, but enter relationships with members of the human family in order to satisfy their striving for please. Many of the relationships were sought after and conceived in a way that resemble relations in the marketplace. Each was only concerned with the satisfaction of one’s needs, but it is precisely for the sake of this satisfaction that one had entered into relations with others who offer what one needs, and need what one offers. Each living cell is supposed to be endowed with the two basic qualities of living matter, Eros (love) and the striving for death. We are struck by the significance of the possibility that the aggressiveness may not be able to find satisfaction in the external World because it comes up against real obstacles. If this happens, it will perhaps retreat and increase the amount of self-destructiveness holding sway in the interior. Impeded aggressiveness seems to involve a grave injury. It really seems as though it is necessary for us to destroy some other thing or person in order not to destroy ourselves, in order to guard against the impulsion to self-destruction. A sad disclosure indeed for the moralist! However, the most powerful impeding factor of all and one totally beyond any possibility of control is the death instinct. In theory of death instinct, the awareness of human destructiveness bursts forth in full strength, and destructiveness becomes the one pole of existence which, fighting with the other pole, Eros, forms they very essence of life. Destructiveness becomes a primary phenomenon of life. It is true that evil forces do exist but not true that they exist on the highest level. Insight into the ultimate sees the not. Evil is certainly present, plain to sight and unpleasant to experience, but it is not altogether, nor only what it seems. It is really an appearance, and reconcilable with the benign source of good. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Eros, present in every cell of living substance, has as its aim the unification and integration of smaller units into the unity of humankind. This is love that does not involve pleasures of the flesh, also known as the “love instinct”; love is identified with life and growth, and—fighting with the death instinct—it determines human existence. Humans are no longer conceived of as primarily isolated and egotistical, as l’homme machine, but as being primarily related to others, impelled by the life instincts which make one need union with others. Life, love, and growth are one and the same, more deeply rooted and fundamental then pleasures of the flesh and other pleasures. The change is vision shows clearly in this new evaluation of the Christian biblical commandment, “Though shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Anything that encouraged the growth of emotional ties between humans must operate against war. These ties may be of two kinds. In the first place they may be relations resembling those toward a loved object, though without having an aim for pleasures of the flesh. There is no need for psychoanalysis to be ashamed to speak of love in this connection, for religion itself uses the same words: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This, however, is more easily said than done. The second kind of emotional tie is by means of identification. Whatever leads humans to share important interests produces this community of feeling, these identifications. And the structure of human society is to a large extent based on them. Why is history such a record of wars, oppressions, exploitations, invasions, and persecutions? Why have all the saviours, avatars, prophet, and saints succeeded only with individual humans here and there, not with the mass of humankind? #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Is the religious dream of universal goodness nothing more than a dream? It is not a help but a self-deception to ignore the double polarity of existence, the yin-and-yang in the Universe, the shadow-self in humans. Only outside of religion, in the philosophic realm of the ultimate being, the Unique, the Real, where the entire World itself is cast out, can we talk of friction-free consciousness, and only in the deepest meditation can we share it. Although the experience is a temporary one, the peace in it so passes the understanding that “the Kingdom of Heaven” is its fit name. Here indeed is the Good raised to its highest degree. Here is a demonstration that human evil is but privation of good. What may be true on the ultimate level—the non-existence of evil, the reality of the Good, the True, the Beautiful—becomes false on the level of duality. Here the twofold powers, the opposites, do not exist, do hold the World in their sway. To deny relative evil here is to confuse different planes of being. The human who would deliberately harm one’s fellows for one’s own ends is a sinner. Evil arises only when an entity goes astray into the delusions of separateness and materialism, and thence into conflict with other entities. There is no ultimate and eternal principle of evil, but there are forces of evil, unseen entities who have gone so far astray and are so powerful in themselves that they work against goodness, truth, and justice. However, by their very nature such entities are doomed to eventual destruction, and even their work of opposition is utilized for good in the end and becomes the resistance against which evolution tests its own achievements, the grindstone against which is sharpens humans’ intelligence, the mirror in which its shows one one’s flaws. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The lower nature in incurably hostile to the higher one. It prefers its fleeting joys with their attendant miseries, its ugly sins wit their painful consequences, because this spells life to it. Everything and everyone has a negative side. One could fill up a lifetime looking for and finding it. One could go on grumbling, criticizing, ranting, and hating. However, there is also the beneficial side of it. The philosophical attitudes seeks deeper, keeps calmer, for it finds equilibrium on another plane. The descent from faith in Holy Spirit to faith in unholy spirits happens to those who are either too weak to remain at such a high altitude or too incapable of rising from a sensate view of existence. Evil can take every form, even that of the guru, the quest, and the leaner. Some yeas ago someone asked me, “What about absolute evil?” The answer is this: with Confucius we say that sin is due to ignorance, and with Pythagoras that evil is due to the absence of good. Ignorance leads to selfishness and extreme ignorance leads to extreme selfishness, which in turn leads to extreme evil. Now, all these are relative conditions and pass away in time as the person leans one’s lessons though the series of experience and corrects one’s mistake during reincarnations. There cannot be an absolute evil because there is only one Absolute Power, one God, one Supreme Being; and it is this which inspires the highest goodness know to humans when one discovers its presence, through the Overself, in one’s heart. In that sense only I said there was an absolute good. The pairs of opposites exist only in the finite, relative, and limited World. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
There is no opposite to the Supreme Power in the timeless and infinite World, no Satan with whom God is in everlasting conflict. However, on its own level, Mind knows neither good nor bad. There is only IS-ness. It seems that there is evil in the World, but why? What bad humans have done is to let their evil grow like a noxious weed too large and their good too little, whereas good humans have cultivated a high proportion of goodness. There is no absolute evil. It is truer to talk of absolute god for that is there first. Why? Because God is there first. Humans came later and broke the divine laws little by little. They created their own evil consequences. Or for different reasons they harm others and have later to suffer for it. Humans were once looked at as machines driven by chemical processes: feelings, affects and emotions were explained as being caused by specific and identifiable physiological processes. Most of hormonology and of the neurophysiological findings of the last decades were unknown to these humans, yet with daring and ingenuity they insisted on the correctness of their approach. Needs and interests for which no somatic sources could be found were ignored, and the understanding of those processes which were not neglected followed the principles of mechanistic thinking. The model of human behaviour could be repeated today in a properly programmed computer. One develops a certain amount of tension which at a certain threshold has to be relieved and reduced, while this realization is checked by another part, the ego, which observes reality and inhibits relief when it conflicts with the needs for survival. This Freudian robot would be similar to Isaac Asimov’s science-fiction robot, but the programming would be different. Its first law would be not to hurt human beings, but to avoid self-damage or self-destruction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
However, the new theory does not follow this mechanistic “physiologizing” model. It is centered on a biological orientation in which fundamental forces of life (and its opposite: death) become the primal forces of motivating humans. The nature of the cell—that is, of all living substance—becomes the theoretical basis for a theory of motivation, not a physiological process that goes on in certain organs of the body. The new theory was perhaps closer to a vitalistic philosophy than to the concept of the German mechanistic materialists. What motivated Dr. Freud to postulate the death instinct? One factor was probably the impact of the First World War. He, like many other humans of his time and age, had shred the optimistic vision so characteristic of the European middle class, and saw oneself suddenly confronted with a fury of hate and destruction hardly believable before August 1, 1914. From there, Dr. Freud became a man preoccupied with death. He thought of dying every day, after he was forty; he had attacks of Todesangst (“fear of death”), and sometimes he would add to his “goodbye”: “You might never see me again.” One might surmise that Dr. Freud’s disposition would have impressed him as a confirmation of his fear of death, and thus contributed to the formulation of death instinct. This preoccupation with death grew in intensity and led him to a concept in which the conflict between life and death was at the center of human experience, rather than the conflict between the two life-affirmative drives, pleasures of the flesh and ego drives. To assume that humans need to die because death is the hidden goal of one’s life might be considered a kind of comfort destined to alleviate one’s fear of death. And it is true, when people’s lives are in danger and they lack security that they learn not to fear death. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It seems likely that many hearts in American society have waxed cold since September 11, 2001, when there was an attack on American soil that claimed the lives of over 3,500 people. Many people were too young to realize how devastating it was at the moment, but I believe the tragedy affected everyone much like Dr. Freud was confronted with the fury of hate and destruction from August 1, 1914. Acts on war in your homeland make people realize that life is not promised and it can have a psychological impact. “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see,” reports Hebrews 11.1. Begin today to believe that what you have hoped for is going to happen, that good things are on their way. Notice, faith has to do with the unseen World. You may not be able to perceive anything beneficial happening in your life with your natural eyes today. In fact, everything may be falling apart—your finances, your health, your business, your relationships with your family and friend. All kind of problems may be on the horizon. However, do not be discoursed, turn your focus to the supernatural World, look to God and Jesus Christ for solutions and know that your harmony and peace will be restored. The World tells you that you need to live out loud and seeing is believing. However, God says seek ye the Kingdom of Heave first, and all these things will be added to you. Look through your Heavenly eyes of faith, and once you confirm something by faith, it will manifest in the physical World. What do you do when you see others being honored or elevated? You could feel bad about their feeling good. Or you could consider these as occasions for your feeling good about feeling bad. Why? #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
If only you knew it, the contempt of humans on Earth should not cause you to shed a single tear. What should you do? Direct your heart toward God in Heaven. In the past, many men did not view woman as equals with men, but some did. Overall, there was a patriarchal bias. However, the very essence of the Platonic myth is that male and female were once one and were then divided into halves, which implies, of course, that the two halves are equals, that they form a polarity endowed with the tendency to unite. Eros (love) aims at complicating life and preserving it, and hence is also conservative, because with the emergence of life an instinct is born which is to preserve it. However, we must ask, if it is the nature of the instinct to re-establish the earliest state of existence, inorganic matter, how can it at the same time tend to re-establish a later form of existence, namely life? Well, according to Plato’s report in the Symposium concerning the original unity of man who was then divided into halves by Zeus, after this division, each desiring his other half, they came together and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one. The living substance at the same time of its coming to life was torn apart into small particles, which have ever since endeavoured to reunite through martial union and procreation. These instincts, in which the chemical affinity of inanimate matter persisted, gradually succeeded, as they developed through the kingdom of the protists, in overcoming the difficulties put in the way of that endeavour by an environment charged with dangerous stimuli—stimuli which compelled them to form a protective cortical layer. These splintered fragments of living substance in this way attained a multicellular condition and finally transferred the instinct for reuniting, in the most highly concentrated form, to the combination of two souls. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
So it is no wonder so many people feel so fractured and incomplete. Their living substance was torn apart. Do you see things getting better in your life? Or are you just drifting along, accepting whatever comes your way? “I know I was not going to get that Cresleigh Havenwood House Residence 4. Noting good ever happens to me.” “This is just my lot in life. I knew I would never get that BMW 750Li with Xdrive.” “I knew I would never be blessed.” In the face of God’s blinding glory, many of us have to be blinkered. Perhaps that is why, without our peripheral vision, we are so easily hoodwinked by Vanity. If I assess myself correctly, never has an injury been done to me by another creature, and hence I have no right, at least not yet, to make a ruckus against God, my Righteous if Riotous Lord. Why? Because I have sinned against God frequently and gravely. Deservedly, therefore, should every creature pick up one’s pike against me. So it is only reasonable to conclude that confusion and contempt are my just due. Yours, however, is praise, honour, and glory. And in the light of these considerations, unless I prepare myself—by being looked down upon by every giraffe, outsped by every gazelle, overlooked by every gryphon—I can be neither pacified and stabilized interiorly, spiritually illuminated, nor fully one with God. Do not limit God with your small thinking. Have extraordinary vision for your life and live with faith and expectancy. You will be surprised that you will become what you believe. Some of the reasons are blessings are delayed in the fulfillment of the promise for year after year, is simply the fact that we cannot see it through our eyes of faith. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Is God trying to do something out of the ordinary in your life? Be sure to get into agreement with God. Do not tell God the reasons why things cannot happen. All the time God is trying to plant new seed of success inside of us. He is showing us that if we do not conceive in our hearts through faith, it will never come to pass. “The things which are impossible with humans are possible with God,” reports Luke 18.27. Let that word plant faith inside of your heart. You do not have to figure out how God is going to solve your problems, but turn the situation over to God. God can do what human beings cannot or will not do. God is supernatural. If you can put your trust and confidence in the Lord, God will surely bring it to pass. If you can see the invisible, God will do the impossible. In God, the love of a friend should stand. God is Ever-living, Everlasting Truth, your friend will not shed a tear if you live of die. It is because of God that love of a friend should stand. It is because of God that one should be loved, that is to say, everyone who is seemed good to you and who is very dear in this life. Without God the love of friendship will not have the strength to last. Nor is the love of friendship true and clear unless God is an integral part of it; that is as His Augustine described it in his Confessions (4.4). Which is another way of saying, you ought to be dead to two-person friendships, especially when the other person is another creature. However, when the other person is God, then something odd happens. The closer you approach God, the farther you recede from every friendly solace. Also the higher you ascend to God, the deeper you descend into yourself and the viler you appear to yourself. I want to get a grander vision for my life, Father, and then live it out with faith and expectancy, knowing that I will become what I believe. Today, I will focus on You, who You are and what You can do in and through me. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Whoever attributes good to oneself only makes it more difficult for oneself to receive the grace of God. Why? Because, as the spiritual wisdom echoing Proverbs (3.34), Psalms (55.22), and First Peter (5.5) has it, the grace of the Holy Spirit always seeks the humble heart. To annihilate yourself, to empty yourself of all created love—that is what you ought to do. And what I ought to do is fill that very same space with a very great grace. When you warm to the wonderfulness of the created World, the Creator’s respect for you begins to cool. Because of the Creator, if for no other reason, learn how to conquer yourself in all things. Do that, and you will have the strength to reach out to Divine Knowledge. However slight it may be, unruly love and irregular respect delay, even detour, your spiritual progress. The anal libido has a deep affinity to the death instinct. Now, controlling and possessing are certainly tendencies opposite of loving, furthering, liberating, which form a syndrome among themselves. However, “possession” and “control” do not contain the very essence of destructiveness, the wish to destroy, and hostility toward life. No doubt, the anal character has a deep interest in and affinity to feces as part of their general affinity to all that is not alive. Feces are the product finally eliminated by the body, being of no further use to it. The anal character is attracted by feces as one is attracted by everything that is useless for life, such as dirt, death, decay. We can say that the tendency to control and possess is only one aspect of the anal character, but milder and less malignant than hatred of life. Eros (love), therefore is looked upon as the biologically normal aim of development, while the death instinct is seen to be based on a failure of normal development and in this sense a pathological, though deeply rooted striving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
If one wants to entertain a biological speculation one might relate anality to the fact that orientation by smell is characteristic of all four-legged mammals, and that the erect posture implies the change from orientation by smell to orientation by sight. The change in function of the old olfactory brain would correspond to the same transformation of orientation. In view of this, one might consider that the anal character constitutes a regressive phase of biological development for which there might even be a constitutional-genetic basis. The anality of the individual could be considered as representing an evolutionary repetition of a biological human functioning. The theoretician arrives at the conclusion that humans have only the alternative between destroying oneself (slowly, by illness) or destroying others; or—putting it in other words—between causing suffering either to oneself or to others. The humanist rebels against the idea of this tragic alternative that would make war a rational solution of this aspect of human existence. An alternate is repression of the instinctual demands, which are the development of culture and civilization. Some people say the Europeans created such a successful society because they learned the art of self-control. The repressed instinctual drive was “sublimated” into valuable cultural channels, but still at the expense of full human happiness. On the other hand, repression led not only to increasing civilization but also to the development of neurosis among the many in whom the repressive process did not work successfully. Lack of civilization combined with full happiness or civilization combined with neurosis and diminished happiness seemed to be the alternative. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The contradiction between the death instinct and Eros confronts humans with a real and truly tragic alternative, a real alternative because one can decide to attack and wage war, to be aggressive, and to express one’s hostility because one prefers to do this rather than to be sick. That this alternative is a tragic one hardly needs to be proven. Something very remarkable, which we should never have guessed and which is nevertheless quite obvious. What happens to the aggressor when one renders one’s desire for aggression innocuous? One’s aggressiveness is introjected, internalized; it is, in point of fact, sent back to where it came from—that is, it is directed toward one’s own ego. There it is take over by a portion of the ego as super-ego, and which now, in the form of “conscience,” is ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other, extraneous individuals. The tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that is subjected to it, is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a need for punishment. Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within one to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city. The transformation of destructiveness into a self-punishing conscience does not seem to be as much as an advantage as it may seem to imply. According to this theory of conscience, it would have to be as cruel as the death instinct, since it is charged with its energies, and no reason is given why the death instinct should be “wakened” and “disarmed.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Rather, it would see that the following analogy expresses the real consequences of this thought more logically: a city that has been ruled by a cruel enemy defeats one with the help of a dictator who then sets up a system that is just as cruel as that of the defeated enemy; and this, what is gained? The instinct of destruction, moderated and tamed, and, as it were, inhibited in its aim, must, when it is directed toward objects, provide the ego with the satisfaction of its vital needs and with control over nature. This is a good example of sublimation; the aim of the instinct is not weakened, but it is directed toward other socially valuable aims, in this case the “control over nature.” This sounds, indeed, like a perfect solution. Humans are freed from the tragic choice of destroying either others or themselves, because the energy of the destructive instinct is used for the control over nature. However, we must ask, can this really be so? Can it be true that destructiveness becomes transformed into constructiveness? What can “control over nature” mean? Taming and breeding animals, gathering and cultivating planets, weaving cloth, building Cresleigh Homes, manufacturing pottery and many more activities including the construction of Ultimate Driving Machines, railroads, airplanes, skyscraper: al these are acts of constructing, building, unifying, synthesizing, and, indeed, if one wanted to attribute them to one of the two basic instincts, they might be considered as being motivated by Eros rather then the death instinct. With the possible exception of killing animals for their consumption and killing humans in war, both of which could be considered as rooted in destructiveness, material production is not destructive but constructive. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
As a result of a little speculation, we have come to suppose that this instinct is at work in every living creature and is striving to bring it to ruin and to reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter. Thus is quite seriously deserved to be called a death instinct, while procreation is the instinct represented by the effort to live. The death instinct turns into the destructive instinct when, with the help of social organs, it is directed outwards, on to objects. The organism preserves its own life, so to day, by destroying an extraneous one. Some portion of the death instinct, however, remain operative within the organism, and we have sought to trace quite a number of normal and pathological phenomena to this internalization of the destructive instinct. We have even been guilty of the heresy of attributing the origin of conscience to the diversion inwards of aggressiveness. If this process is carried too far, you will notice that it is by no means a trivial matter; it is possibly unhealthy. On the other hand if these forces are turned to destruction of the external World, the organism will be relieved and the effect must be beneficial. This would serve as a biological justification for all the ugly and dangerous impulses against which we are struggling. It must be admitted that they stand nearer to Nature than does our resistance to them for which an explanation also needs to be found. When the good is absent, the evil is present. The cynic who denies the existence of the good, the dreamer who denies the existence of the evil—each ignores the other half of life as evidence in history and in the World around one. When we go to the roots—that is what “radically” literally means—and discover that a great deal of our conscious thinking only veils our real thoughts and feelings and hides the truth; most of our conscious thought is a sham, a mere rationalization of thoughts and desires which we prefer not to be aware of. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
This is revolutionary because it leads people to open their eyes to the reality of the structure of the society they live in and hence to the wish to change it in accordance with the interests and desires of the vast majority. Much of the liberal middle class was suspected of being neurotic because their liberation of pleasures of the flesh is largely part of the ever-increasing consumerism. If people are taught to spend and spend, rather than, as in the nineteenth century, to save and save, if they were transformed into “consumers,” one had not only to permit but encourage consumption of pleasures of the flesh. It is after all the most simple and the cheapest of all consumption. Conservatives used to have a strict code of chastity and liberty of pleasures of the flesh lead to an anticonservative revolutionary attitude. If anything, historical development has shown that liberation of pleasures of the flesh has served the development of consumerism and weakened political radicalism. What more people really want is not to become more human, more free, more independent—that would mean more critical and revolutionary-minded—but they want to suffer no more than the average member of their class. They hardly see a really happy person, only a few people who have succeeded in being relatively satisfied with their lot, especially if they are successful and admired by others. Naturally, quite a few people, having a sympathetic listener to talk to, feel better, aside from the fact that as years go by experience in living makes the average person improve one’s lot, except those who are too sick to learn from experience. The contemporary capitalist society is considered to be the highest, most developed form of social structure. It is because all other social structures are more primitive or utopian, and not really successful. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
An ever-growing number of people have become aware that capitalist society is just one of innumerable social structures and is neither more nor less “real” than the societies of Central African tribes. The invention of artillery and fortifications has in our times forces the sovereigns of Europe to reestablish the use of regular standing troops to guard their fortresses. Yet however, legitimate the motives, there is reason to fear that the effect will be no less fatal. It will be no less necessary to depopulate the rural areas in order to raise armies and garrisons. To maintain them it will be no less necessary to oppress the peoples. And these dangerous establishments have in recent times been growing so rapidly in all of our part of the World, that no one can foresee anything but the imminent depopulation of Europe, and sooner, or later, the ruin of the people who inhabit it. Be that as it may, it should be noted that such institutions necessarily subvert the public domain, leaving only the wearisome resources of subsidies and taxes, which remain for me to discuss. It would be remembered here that the foundation of the social compact is property, together with its first condition that each person should be maintained in the peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to one. It is true that by the same treaty each person at least tacitly obliges oneself to be assessed for public needs. However, since this commitment cannot hard the fundamental law and presumes that contributors acknowledge the evidence of need, it is clear that to be legitimate, this assessment should be voluntary. It is not based on a private will, as if it were necessary to have the consent of each citizen, who should pay only as much as one pleases. This would be directly contrary to the spirit of the confederation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Rather, it should be through the general will, by majority vote, and on the basis of proportional rates that leave no room for an arbitrary imposition of taxes. This truth (that taxes can be legitimately established only by the general consent of the people or its representatives) had generally been recognized by all the philosophers and jurists who have any reputation in matters of political right. While some of them have established maxims that appear contrary, it is easy to see the private motives that moved them to do so. They stipulate so many conditions and restrictions that it all boils down to exactly the same thing. For whether the people can reuse it or whether the sovereign should not demand it, is a matter of indifference as far as right is concerned. And if it is only a question of force, it is utterly pointless to inquire what is or is not legitimate. The contributions levied on the people are of two kinds: real taxes (levied on things) and personal taxes (paid by the head). Both are called taxes or subsidies. When the people sets the amount it pays, it is called a subsidy; when it grants the entire proceeds of an assessment, it is a tax. In The Spirit of the Laws we find that a head tax is more in keeping with servitude, while a real tax is more suited to liberty. This would be incontestable, were everyone’s head share equal. For nothing would be more disproportionate than such a tax. It is especially in an exacting observance of proportions that the spirit of liberty consists. However, if a head tax is exactly proportioned to the means of private individuals and is thus at once both and personal, it is the most equitable and, as a result, the one best suited to free humans. At first these proportions appear quite easy to observe, because, being relative to each person’s position, the indications are always public. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
However, besides the fact that greed, influence-peddling, and fraud know how to leave no evidence behind, it is rare that an account is taken of all the elements that should enter into these calculations. First, one ought to consider the relationship of quantities according to which, all things being equal, someone who has ten times more goods than someone else should pay ten times more. Second, one ought to consider the relationship of use, that is, the distinction between what is necessary and what is superfluous. Someone who has only the bare necessities of life should not pay anything at all. Taxing someone who has superfluities can, in time of need, be extended to everything over and above the necessities of life. To this one will declare that, given one’s rank, what would be superfluous for a human of inferior standing is necessary for one. However, that is a lie. For humans of superior standing have two legs, just like a cowherd, and, like the cowherd, has only one stomach. Moreover, this alleged necessity of life is so little necessary to one’s standing that, if one knew how to renounce these things for some worthy cause, one could only be respected more. The people would prostrate themselves before a minister who would go on foot to the council because one had sold one’s Ultimate Driving Machines when the state had a pressing need. Finally, the law does not demand magnificence of anyone, and propriety is never reason against right. A cultivated human of taste and feeling can find much that is beautiful in nature and art; and if one is also a moral idealist, one will find much that is good and virtuous in human life and experience. However, it would be incomplete to stop there and ignore the fact that there is also around us much that is base, dark, and even evil. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The two sides put together form a complete observation. However, it is only the mystics and philosopher who can see—because it requires a deeper penetration than the intellect and the sense can give—that the dark side deals with the World of appearances, a World which is fleeting and ephemeral, whereas the good side and the beautiful side is merely a hint of that other World closer to Reality. Evil is a very real problem in this World of time and space. Evil forces exist and must be fought with all our strength. Nevetheless the Power out of which all things and all entities come is a beneficent one. Love is its radiation. There is no evil and no pain in it. They begin only on the lower level of separation and differentiation. Wild air, World-mothering air, nestling me everywhere, that each eyelash or hair girdles; goes home betwixt the fleeciest, frilest-flixed snowflake; that is fairly mixed with riddles, and is rife in every least thing is life; this needful, never spent, and nursing element; my more than meat and drink, my meal at every wink; their air, which, by life’s law, my lung must draw and draw now but to breathe its praise. Please give rain. We are the pure who camped by water. For Jacob’s sake who set the rods in water, O speed us! He strained and rolled the stone from off the water. Please give rain! Blest heirs to Torah’s quickening water, O save us! To win for them and for their offspring water. Please give rain! Today as then we cry for water. For Moses’ sake who found his people water, O speed us! He smote the rock and lo! out gushed the water. O save us, mighty God! Please give us rain! Our sires sang round the well of water. O save us! Because of Moses at Meribah’s water, O speed us! At Thy command he gave the thirsting water. O save us, mighty God! please give rain! Thy holy servants poured Thee water. O save us! For Thy chief minstrel’s sake who longed for water, O speed us! Yet turned and made libation with the water, O save us, mighty God! Please give rain! Four plants we wave that love the water, O save us! For American’s sake, the home of living water, O speed us! The parched Earth open to the Heavens’ water, O save us, mighty God! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 