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And I Want Just to Call You ‘Cause We Go Together Just Like Jam and Bread or Maybe Birds of a Feather!

January 9, 2020 1:39 am

Accept the pain, cherish the joys, resolve the regrets; then can come the best of benedictions. As you simplify your life, the laws of the Universe will be simpler. There is only a slight difference between keeping your chin up and sticking your neck out, but it is a difference worth knowing. All of us try to feel, and pretend to feel, but we seldom do so alone. Most often we do it when we exchange gestures or signs of feelings with others. Taken together, emotion work, feeling rules, and interpersonal exchange make up our private emotional system. We bow to each other not only from the waist but from the heart. Feeling rules set out what is owed in gestures of exchange between people. They enable us to assess the worth of an outward tear or an inward attempt to feel sad for people who are inappropriate behavior. Looking at a bright light to make a tear glisten is a mark of homage, a way of paying respect to those who proclaim that sadness is owed. More generally, it is a way of paying respects to a rule about respect paying. In psychological “bowing,” feeling rules provide a baseline for exchange. There are two types of exchange—straight and improvisational. In straight exchange, we simply use rules to make an inward bow; we do not play with them. In improvisational exchange, as in improvisational music, we presuppose the rules and play with them, creating irony and humor. However, in both types, it is within the contact of feeling rules that we make our exchange and settle our accounts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

In our society, some unmeant gestures occur in such a wide variety of performances and convey impressions that are in general so incompatible with the ones being fostered that these inopportune events have acquired collective symbolic status. First, performer may accidentally convey incapacity, impropriety, or disrespect by momentarily losing muscular control of oneself. One may trip, stumble, fall; one may belch, yawn, make a slip of the tongue, scratch oneself, or be flatulent; one may accidentally impinge upon the body of another participant. Secondly, the performer may act in such a way as to give the impression that one is too much or too little concerned with the interaction. One may stutter, forget one’s lines, appear nervous, or guilty, or self-conscious; one may give way to inappropriate outbursts of laughter, anger, or other kinds of affect which momentarily incapacitate one as an interactant; one may show too much serious involvement and interest, or too little. Thirdly, the performer may allow one’s presentation to suffer from inadequate dramaturgical direction. The setting may not have been put in order, or may have become readied for the wrong performance, or may become deranged during the performance; unforeseen contingencies may cause improper timing of the performer’s arrival or departure or may cause embarrassing lulls to occur during the interaction. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Performances differ, of course, in the degree of item-by-item expressive care required of them. In the case of some international cultures, we are ready to see a high degree of expressive coherence. Granet, for example, suggests this of filial performances in China: Their fine toilet is in itself a homage. Their good deportment will be accounted an offering of respect. In the presence of parents, gravity is requisite: one must therefore be careful not to belch, to sneeze, to cough, to yawn, to blow one’s nose nor to spit. Every expectoration would run the risk of soiling the paternal sanctity. It would be a crime to show the lining of one’s garments. To show the father that one is treating him as a chief, one ought always to stand in his presence, the eyes right, the body upright upon the two legs, never daring to lean upon any object, to bend, nor to stand on one foot. It is thus that with the low and humble voice which becomes a follower, one comes night and morning to pay homage. After which, one waits for orders. Wen we commence a relationship with somebody for some purpose, we begin in a role, as teacher, or as customer, or as helper. In that sense each participant has a role to fulfill. A third party looking at this transaction can watch it and say, “You are fulfilling the role of the helper, and he or she is fulfilling the role of the helpee.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

I may be aware I am supposed to fulfill the role of helper, but I can do this in a way that expressed my genuine commitments and intentions and in my idiosyncratic way. It is the difference between taking a role and playing a role. To take a role is a commitment to a task; to play a role is a charade. Some people lose zest when they feel they can only work in a cut-and-dried, stereotyped way. In due time one outgrows that stereotype way. If one feels one must stick to that stereotyped way, it makes one sick. This is why many nurses, psychotherapists, doctors, and teachers ultimately get fed up with their professions. They lose zest because they feel that they have got to keep up the appearance of the role of a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, a therapist in some stereotyped way. When they do that, what they are telling you is that they are more committed to imitating the role than they are carrying out their professional commitment, that is [to] bring about results. When your commitment is to goals, and not means, you cannot help but be eccentric, idiosyncratic, offbeat, oddball, and creative. In contrast, in persons in whom the craving for prestige is uppermost, hostility usually takes the form of a desires to humiliate others. This desire is paramount in those persons whose own self-esteem has been wounded by humiliation and who have thus become vindictive. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Usually they have gone through a series of humiliating experiences in childhood, experiences that may have had to do either with the social situation in which they grew up—such as belonging to a underrepresented group, or being themselves poor but having wealthy relatives—or with their own individual situation, such as being discriminated against for the sake of other children, being spurned, being treated as a plaything by the parents, being sometime privileged, and other times shamed and snubbed. Often experience of this kind are forgotten because of their painful character, but they reappear in awareness if the problems concerning humiliation are clarified. In adult neurotics, however, never the direct but only indirect results of these childhood situations can be observed, results which have been reinforced by passing through a “vicious circle”: a feeling of humiliation; a desire to humiliate others; enhanced sensitivity to humiliation because of a fear of retaliation; enhanced wish to humiliate others. The tendencies to humiliate are deeply repressed, usually because the neurotic, knowing from one’s own sensitivity how hurt and vindictive one feels when humiliated, is instinctively afraid of similar reactions in others. Nevertheless some of these tendencies may emerge without one’s being conscious of it: in an inadvertent disregard of others, such as letting them wait, in inadvertently bringing others into embarrassing situations, in letting others feel dependent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Even if the neurotic is completely unaware of wishing to humiliate others or of having done so, one’s relations with them will be pervaded by a diffuse anxiety which is revealed in a constant anticipation of rebuke or humiliation for oneself. Inhibitions resulting from this sensitivity to humiliation often appear in the form of a need to avoid anything which might possibly seem humiliating to others; such a neurotic, for example, may be incapable of criticizing, of refusing an offer, of dismissing an employee, with the result that one often appears overconsiderate or over-polite. Finally, a tendency to humiliate may be hidden behind a tendency to admire. Since inflicting humiliation and bestowing admiration are diametrically opposed, the latter offers the best means of eradicating or concealing tendencies toward the former. This is the reason also why both these extremes are frequently to be found in the same person. There are several ways in which the two attitudes may be distributed, the reasons for the distribution being dependent on the individual. They may appear separately in different periods of life, a period of a general contempt for people succeeding a period of hero-worship; there may be admiration for men and contempt for women, or vice versa; or there maybe blind admiration for one or two persons, and just as blind a contempt for the rest of the World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

It is in the process of analysis that one can observe that the two attitudes in reality exist together. A patient may at the same time blindly admire and despise the analyst, either suppressing one of the two feelings or vacillating between them. In the striving for possession hostility usually takes the form of a tendency to deprive others. The wish to cheat, steal from, exploit or frustrate others is not in itself neurotic. It may be culturally patterned, or it may be warranted by the actual situation, or it may normally be considered a question of expediency. In the neurotic person, however, these tendencies are highly charged with emotion. Even if beneficial advantages one derives from them are sight or irrelevant one will feel elated and triumphant if one meets with success; in order to find a bargain, for example, one may spend time and energy entirely disproportionate to the amount saved. One’s satisfaction at success has two sources: a feeling that one has outwitted others, and a feeling that one has injured others. This tendency to deprive others takes many forms. The neurotic person will feel resentment toward a physician if one is not treated gratuitously, or for less than one is able to pay. One will feel anger toward one’s employees if they are not willing to work overtime without pay. In relations with friends and children the exploiting tendency is often justified by alleging that they have an obligation toward one. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The ordinary aspirant, whose intuition is not sufficiently developed, should test the person one proposes to accept as one’s master. This will require one to watch the other closely for a period of time. In some cases a week will give the answer, in others three months will be needed. In all cases, the aspirant ought not to commit oneself until one has enough evidence that one is committing oneself rightly. Those who lack the innate discernment or wide experience needed to detect the real character and true capacity of a master, should wait sufficiently long an seek outside advice before entrusting themselves to one. The faith that God is working through a particular being can be tested for its validity by watching one, for a sufficient length of time, what happens to those who reject one utterly or respond to one ardently. In their excessive eagerness to discover a master, they fail to practice discernment. However, wait for the true master requires a certain patience and strength. A true self-actualized person is hard to find. A false one, drooling one’s plagiarism or one;s platitudes, is easy to find. Do not fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Parents may actually destroy their children’s lives by demanding sacrifices on such a basis, and even if the tendency does not appear in such destructive forms, any mother who acts according to the belief that the child exist to give her satisfaction is bound to exploit the child emotionally. A neurotic of this kind may also tend to withhold things from others, withhold money which one ought to pay, information which one could give, pleasures of the flesh which one has led another to expect. The presence of robbing tendencies may be indicated by repeated dreams of stealing or one may have conscious impulses to steal, which one checks; one may actually have been a kleptomaniac at some period. Persons of this general type are often unaware that they purposely deprive others. The anxiety connected with their wish to do so may result in an inhibition as soon as something is expected of them, so that, for example, they forget to buy an expected birthday present, or they become impotent if a woman is willing to yield to them. This anxiety, however, does not always lead to an actual inhibition, but may become apparent in a lurking fear that they are exploiting or depriving others, as indeed they are, though consciously they would indignantly repudiate such an intention. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

A neurotic may even have this fear concerning certain of one’s activities in which these tendencies are actually not present, at the same time remaining unaware that in other activities one does exploit or deprive other people. These tendencies to deprive others are accompanied by an emotional attitude of begrudging envy. Most of us will feel some envy if others have certain advantages which we should like to have ourselves. With the normal person, however, the emphasis lies on the fact that one wishes to have these advantages oneself; with the neurotic the emphasis lies on the fact that one begrudges them to others, even if one does not want them at all. Mothers of this kind often begrudge the gaiety of their children and tell them that “those who sing before breakfast will cry before supper.” The neurotic will try to disguise the crudity of one’s begrudging attitude by putting it on the basis of a justified envy. The advantage of others, whether it concerns a doll, a girl, leisure or a job, appears so glorious and desirable that one feels entirely justified in one’s envy. This justification is possible only with the help of some inadvertent falsification of facts: an under-estimation of what one has oneself, and an illusion that the advantages of others are the really desirable ones. The self-deception may go so far as to make ne actually believe that one is in a miserable state because one fails to have the one advantage in which another person surpasses one, completely forgetting that in all other respects one would not like to change with the other. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The price one has to pay for this falsification is incapacity to enjoy and appreciate the possibilities for happiness that are available. This incapacity, however, serves to protect one from the much-feared envy of others. One does not deliberately keep oneself from satisfaction with what one has, as many normal persons who have good reason to protect themselves against the envy of certain persons, and therefore misrepresent their real situation; one does a thorough job of it, and really deprives oneself of any enjoyment. Thus one defeats one’s own ends: one wants to have everything, but in consequence of one’s destructive drives and anxieties one emerges at the end with empty hands. Love, power, and justice are metaphysically speaking as old as being itself. They preceded everything that is, and they cannot be derived from anything that is. They have ontological dignity. And before having received ontological dignity they had mythological meaning. They were gods before they became rational qualities of being. The substance of their mythological meaning is reflected in their ontological significance. Dike, the goddess of justice, receives Parmenides when he is introduced into truth itself. For there is no truth without the form of truth, namely justice. And being-itself, according to the same philosopher, is kept within the bondage of eternal laws. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The logos of being is the power which keeps the World going and the city alive, according to Heraclitus, and Mind is the divine power which swings the wheel of being, according to Xenophanes. According to Empedocles, it is hate and love, separation, and reunion which determine the movements of the elements. Love, power, and justice are ever repeated subjects of ontology. There is hardly a leading philosopher who does not put them into they very foundations of one’s thought. In Plato we find the doctrine of eros as the power which drives to the union with the true and the good self. In his interpretation of ideas as the essences of everything, he sees them as the power of being. And justice for him is not a special virtue, but the uniting form of the individual and the social body. In Aristotle we find the doctrine of the universal eros which derives everything towards the highest form, the pure actuality which moves the World not as a cause (kinoumenon) but as the object of love (eromenon). And the movement he describes is a movement from the potential to the actual, from dynamis to energeia, two concepts which include the concept of power. Marriage under the Lordship of Christ is a mutually sanctifying relationship—it moves us toward holiness. Most of us, by the time we get married, are like a well-furnished home—and a lot of furniture needs to be tossed out to make room for the other person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Marriage helps empty those rooms. Genuine marital love reveals rooms of self-centeredness. Beyond these are autonomy and self-will—an ongoing house cleaning. Marriage certainly did that for me. I had no idea how self-centered I was until I married! In fact, marriage is the one institution which tames the inveterate barbarianism of man. Over the years a good marriage can change us for the better—almost beyond recognition. There is indeed a mutual sanctification in marriage. However, the emphasis in the Scriptures is on the responsibility of a husband’s love for his wife: “to make her holy, cleansing her by he washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless,” reports Ephesians 5.21-6.9. This is what Christ will do through our divine married to Him, for at His return the washed and regenerated Church will be presented to Him in absolute perfection. This is the dealing of the romance of the ages. Meanwhile, these divine nuptials are a parable of what ought to be the loving husband’s elevating effect on his wide. He is to be the man ff the Word who lives a Godly life, praying and sacrificing for his wife. His authentic spirituality is meant to buoy her onward and upward toward the image of Christ. The man who sanctifies his wife understands that this is his divinely ordained responsibility. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Men (ignoring for the moment our wives’ spiritual responsibility to us), do you realize it is your responsibility to seek your wife’s sanctification? Even more, honestly, do you accept it? Marriage will reveal something about her which you already know about yourself—that she is a sinner. Marriage reveals everything: her weaknesses, her worst inconsistencies, the things others never see. Loving your spouse is not to love as a saint, but as a sinner. If we love her for her saintliness, we do not love her at all. You see your wife as you see yourself, and you love her as yourself. You realize your mutual need, and you delve into God’s Word, to listen to it with your heart and try, by His grace, to love out so that she will be encouraged by your life—and thus become an even more beautiful bride for Christ. This brings up some hard questions: Is my wife more like Christ because she is married to me? Or is she like Christ in spite of me? Has she shrunk from His likeness because of me? Do I sanctify her or hold her back? Is she a better woman because she is married to me? Is she a better friend? A better mother? Men, our call is clear: sanctifying love. A passage emphasizing the complete and absolute forgiveness of our sins is Isaiah 43.25, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Here God uses two expressions: He blots out our transgressions—that is, He removes them from the record—and He remembers them no more. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

A friend of mine, because of a teenage “prank,” had a felony conviction in Canada. Later, he received a Queen’s pardon. Now, if his past is ever investigated for criminal activity, the response given is, “We have no record of this person.” His record has not just been marked “pardoned,” it has been completely removed from the file and destroyed. It has been blotted out, never to be seen again. This is what God does with our sins. When you trust in Jesus Christ as you Savior, God removes your record from the file. He does not keep it there or daily add the long list of sins you continue to commit even as a Christian. God not only blots our sins from His record, He also remembers them no more. This expression means God no longer holds them against us. The blotting out of our transgressions is a legal act. It is an official pardon from the Supreme Governor. The remembering them no more is a relational act. It is the giving up by an injured party of all sense of being offended or injured. It is a promise never to bring up, either to Himself or to you, your sins. There is a difference between not remembering and forgetting. Forgetting is passive and is something that we human beings, not being omniscient, so. “Not remembering” is active; it is a promise whereby one person (in this case, God) determines not to remember the sins of another against him. To “not remember” is simply a graphic way of saying, “I will not bring up these matters to you or others in the future.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Consider a rebellious, recalcitrant student in a classroom. His acts of defiance toward the teacher may have both legal and relational consequences. Legally, he may be expelled from school. Relationally, the teacher may feel a deep sense of hostility toward the student. Even if the student is allowed to return to school (the equivalent of a pardon), the teacher may continue to hold hostility toward the student, “remembering” his rebellion and defiance. In order to gain a good standing in the classroom, the rebellious student needs to be both pardoned by the school authorities and forgiven by the teacher. On needs to have the teacher give up al sense of being offended and agree “not to remember”—for instance, not to bring up—his poor behavior. (Obviously, for this to happen, the student’s attitude and future conduct must change. However, still, the teacher must decide to not remember the past.) This, then, is similar to what God does when He blots out our transgressions and remembers our sins no more. As the Supreme Governor and Judge, God pardons us. As the offended party, God forgives us and He promises never to bring up our sins again. Through His death, Jesus not only secured our pardon with God, He also reconciled us to God. However, Paul said, “All this from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.18. God, acting in grace through the giving of His Son to die for us, was the initiator of reconciliation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

If you have trusted in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, you are both justified (a legal act) and reconciled (a relational act). You are no longer condemned by God. As Paul said, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8.1. In addition, you are no longer estranged from God. God is no longer against you; God is now for you. Again as Paul said, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (8.31). Both of these wonderful changes occurred because of God’s grace and despite our sin and guilt: “[For] where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (5.20). Those who hate you do not win unless you hate them—and then you destroy yourself. Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can be felt only if you do not set conditions. Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasure prove of golden sands and crystal brooks with silken lines, and silver hooks. “And there shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth; and they shall be like unto the old save the old have passed away, and all things have become new,” reports Ether 13.9. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, Who didst descend from Heaven to Earth, out of the bosom of the Father, and didst sustain five wounds upon the wood of the Cross, and shed thy precious Blood for the remission of our sins. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

We humbly beseech Thee, God, that at the day of judgment we may be set at Thy right hand and be thought worthy to hear those sweetest words, “Come, ye blessed, into the kingdom of My Father:” Who with the same Father, who will save all beings. O Father, Thou hast made man from the glory of thyself, and when not an instrument of that glory, he is a thing of nought; no sin is greater than the sin of unbelief, for if union with Christ is the greatest good, unbelief is the greatest sin, as being cross to thy command; I see that whatever my sin is, yet no sin is like disunion from Christ by unbelief. Lord, keep me from committing the greatest sin in departing from him, for I can never in this life perfectly obey and cleave to Christ. When thou takest away my outward blessings, it is for sin, innot acknowledging that all that I have is of thee, in not serving thee through what I have, in making myself secure and hardened. Lawful blessings are the secret idols, and do mist hurt; the greatest injury is in the having, the greatest good in the taking away. In love divest me of blessings that I may glorify thee the more; remove the fuel of my sin, and may I prize the gain of a little holiness as overbalancing all my losses. The more I love thee with a truly gracious love the more I desire to love thee, and the more miserable I am at my want of love; the more I hunger and thirst after thee, the more I faint and fail in finding thee, the more my heart is broken for sin, the more I pray it may be far more broken. My great evil is that I do not remember the sins of my youth, nay, the sins of one day I forget the next. Keep me from all things that turn to unbelief or lack of felt union with Christ. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

By the shedding of the Blood of Christ our Lord, peace has been established in Heaven and Earth. O truly precious is the Covenant of peace, which was made by the offering of that holy Blood! Not with gold, nor silver, nor gems, nor pearls, but with the Blood that gushed from the side of the Saviour. That Blood-shedding gladdened Heaven, purified Earth, and terrified hell. Today, O good Jesus, for us Thou didst not hide Thy Face from shame and spitting. Today, Jesus our Redeemer, for us Thou wast mocked, buffeted by unbelievers, and crowned with thorns. Today, O good Shepherd, Thou didst lay down Thy life on the Cross for the sheep, and wast crucified with robbers, and hadst Thy sacred hands nailed through. Today Thou was laid in the guarded sepulcher, and the Saints burst open their tombs. Today, O good Jesus, put an end to our sins, that no the day of Thy Resurrection we may joyfully receive Thy holy Body, and be refreshed with Thy sacred Blood. O Christ, the Only-begotten Son of the Unbegotten Father, Who for us wast this say slain, the Innocent for the ungodly; remember the price of Thy Blood, and bout out the sins of Thy people; and as Thou wast pleased to endure for us reproaches, spitting, bonds, blows, the scourge, the cross. The nails, the bitter cup, death, the spear, and lastly burial, vouchsafe to us wretched ones for whom Thou didst suffer this, the infinite blessedness of Heavenly kingdom; that we who bow down in reverence for Thy Passion, may be raised up to things Heavenly in the joys of Thy Resurrection. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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I Used to think Love was Something I Could Take or Leave Alone but Now I Could Not do without My Supply!

January 5, 2020 4:28 am

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new end. We should be lenient in our judgment, because often the mistakes of others would have been ours had we had the opportunity to make them. What is food to one being is bitter poison to others. Every negative development in a person is to be understood as the result of damaging influences in early childhood. This has led sometimes to irrational self-accusation on the part of parents who feel guilty for every undesirable or pathological trait that appears in a child after birth, and to a tendency of people in analysis to put the blame for all their trouble on their parents, and to avoid confronting themselves with the problem of their own responsibility. Good intentions mean noting if they cover up the unconscious intentions; “honest” dishonesty demonstrates that it is not enough to have “meant” well consciously. Forces operate in beings of which one is not aware and rationalization protects one from awareness; unconscious forces are integrated in a system to which we call character. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Character syndromes are rooted and nourished in the particular forms of relatedness of the individual to the outside World and oneself; furthermore, inasmuch as the social group shares a common character structure (“social character”) the socioeconomic conditions shared by all members of a group mold the social character. That is where the saying, “birds of a feather flock together” comes from. Love, tenderness, sadism, masochism, ambition, curiosity, anxiety, rivalry—these and many other drives are no longer each attributed to a special instinct, but to the influence of the environment (essentially the significant persons in early childhood) via the psyche. The description given thus far suggest that character determines, the character trait, whether loving or destroying, drives a person to behave in a certain way, and the person is acting according to one’s character feels satisfied. Indeed, the character traits tells us how a person would like to behave. However, we must add an important qualification: if one could. The conflict between what we would like to do and the demands of self-interest remains crucial. We cannot always behave as we are driven to by our passions, because we have to modify our behavior to some extent in order to remain alive. The average person tries to find a compromise between what one’s character would make one want to do and what one must do in order not to suffer more or less harmful consequences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The degree to which a person follows the dictates of self-preservation (ego interest) varies, of course. At one extreme the weight of the ego interest is zero; this holds true for the martyr and a certain type person who targets and terminates prominent people. At the other extreme is the opportunist for who self-interest includes everything that could make one more successful, popular, or comfortable. Between these two extremes all people can be arranged, characterized by a specific blend of self-interest and character-rooted passions. How much a person represses one’s passionate desires depends not only on factors within oneself but on the situations; if the situation changes, repressed desires become conscious and are acted out. This holds true, for instance, for the person with a sadistic-masochistic character. Everybody knows the type of person who is submissive to one’s boss and sadistically domineering to one’s wife and children. Another case in point is the change that occurs in character when the total social situation changes. The sadistic character who may have posed as a meek or even friendly individual may become a fiend in a terroristic society in which sadism is valued rather than deplored. Another may suppress sadistic behavior in all visible actions, while showing it in a subtle expression of the face or in seemingly harmless and marginal remarks. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Repression of character traits also occurs with regard to the most noble impulses. In spite of the fact that the teachings of Jesus are still part of our moral ideology, a being acting in accordance with them is generally considered a fool or a neurotic; hence many people still rationalize their generous impulses as being motivated by self-interests. These considerations show that the motivating power of character traits is influenced by self-interest in varying degrees. They imply that character constitutes the main motivation of human behavior, but restricted and modified by the demands of self-interest under varying conditions. Here is possessed the fundamental difference between behaviorism and psychoanalytic characterology. Conditioning works through its appeal to self-interest, such as the desire for food, security, praise, avoidance of pain. In animals, self-interest proves to be so strong that by repeated and optimally spaced reinforcements that interest for self-preservation proves to be stronger than other instincts like pleasures of the flesh or aggression. Humans of course also behave in accordance with one’s self-interest; but not always, and not necessarily so. One often acts according to one’s passions, one’s meanest and one’s noblest, and is often willing—and able—to risk one’s self-interest, one’s fortune, one’s freedom, and one’s life in the pursuit of love, truth, and integrity—or for hate, greed, sadism, and destructiveness. In this very difference is possessed the reason conditioning cannot be a sufficient explanation for human behavior. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

The discovery of unconscious processes and of the dynamic concept of character were radical because they went to the roots of human behavior; they were disquieting because nobody can hide any longer behind one’s good intentions; they were dangerous, because if everybody were to know what one could know about oneself and others, society would be shaken to its very foundations. Psychoanalysts is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one’s subjective needs and expectations (transference), of character, and of conflicts between passionate strivings embodied in character traits and the demands for self-preservation. Thus far, feelings of inferiority have nothing to do with any factual inferiority, but have been discussed only as the effects of a tendency to recoil from competition. Do they then have nothing to do with existing shortcomings, with a realization of actual flaws? They are in fact the result of both actual and imagined inadequacies: feelings of inferiority are a combination of anxiety-motivated belittling tendencies and a realization of existing defects. As I have emphasized several times, we cannot ultimately fool ourselves, though we may be successful in shutting certain impulses out of awareness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

And therefore a neurotic person of the character we have been discussing will know, deep down, that one has anti-social tendencies which one must conceal, that one is far from genuine in one’s attitudes, that one’s pretenses are quite different from the undercurrents below the surface. One’s registering of all these discrepancies is an important cause for one’s feelings of inferiority, even though one never recognizes clearly the source of the discrepancies because they arise from repressed drives. Not recognizing their source, one gives to oneself reasons for feeling inferior which are rarely the real reasons, but only a renationalization. There is another reason why one feels that one’s inferiority feelings are the direct expression of an existing deficiency. On the basis of one’s ambition one has built up fantastic notions of one’s own value and importance. One cannot help measuring one’s realistic accomplishments against one’s notions of being a genius or a perfect human being, and in this comparison one’s real acts or one’s real possibilities appear inferior. The total result of all these recoiling tendencies is that the neurotic incurs real failures, or at most does not get on as well as one should, considering one’s opportunities and one’s gifts. Others who started with one get ahead of one, have better careers, greater success. This lagging behind does not concern only external success. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The older one becomes the more one feels the discrepancy between one’s potentialities and one’s achievements. One feels keenly that one’s gifts, whatever they may be, are going to waste, that one is blocked in the development of one’s personality, that one does not mature as time goes on. The problem of persons around the age of forty is that they become blocked in their development. However, one has not recognized the conditions leading up to such a situation, and therefore has not found any satisfactory solution. And one reacts to the realization of this discrepancy with a vague discontent, a discontent which is not masochistic but real and proportionate. A discrepancy between potentialities and achievement may be due, as I have already pointed out, to external circumstances. However, the discrepancy which develops in a neurotic person, and which is a never-failing character of neuroses, is due to one’s internal conflicts. One’s actual failures and the consequent increasing discrepancy between potentialities and achievements inevitably give even greater force to one’s existing inferiority feelings. Thus one not only believes oneself to be, but actually is inferior to what one might be. The impact of this development is all the greater since it puts the inferiority feelings on a realistic basis. Meanwhile the other discrepancy which I have mentioned—that between high-flown ambitions and the comparatively poor reality—becomes so unbearable that it demands a remedy. As such a remedy fantasy offer itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

More and more the neurotic substitutes grandiose ideas for attainable goals. The value they have for one is obvious: they cover up one’s unendurable feelings of nothingness; they allow one to feel important without entering into any competition and thus without incurring the risk of failure or success; they allow one to build up a fiction of grandeur far beyond attainable goal. It is this blind-alley value of grandiose fantasies that makes them dangerous, because the blind alley has a definite advantage for the neurotic when compared with the straightforward road. These neurotic ideas of grandeur should be distinguished from those of the normal person and those of the psychotic. Even the normal person will at times think oneself wonderful, attribute undue importance to what one is doing, or indulge in fantasies of what one might do. However, these fantasies and ideas remain decorative arabesques and one does not take them too seriously. They psychotic person with ideas of grandeur is at the other end of the line. One is convinced that one is a genius, the Emperor of Japan, Napoleon, Christ, and will reject all evidence of reality which tends to disprove one’s conviction; one will be wholly unable to comprehend any reminder that one is actually a less affluent doorman, or patient in an asylum or the object of disrespect and ridicule. If one become aware of the discrepancy at all one will decide in favor of one’s grandiose ideas, and will believe that the others do not know any better, or that they are deliberately treating one with disrespect in order to hurt one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

However, if therapy enables the individual to reorient one’s pattern of life and to reduce the tension and anxiety one feels regarding one’s personal problems, then the reactions of one’s automatic nervous system in, for example, a situation of stress, should also be altered. Essentially, if a change in life pattern and in internal tension occurred in therapy, this should show up in organismic changes in autonomic functioning, an area over which the individual has no conscious control. Individual who have experienced therapy develop a higher frustration threshold during their series of therapeutic contacts, and are able to recover their homeostatic balance more rapidly following frustration. After therapy, the individual is able to meet, with more tolerance and less disturbance, situations of emotional stress and frustration or stress was never considered in therapy; the more effective meeting of frustration is not a surface phenomenon but is evident in autonomic reactions which the individual cannot consciously control and of which one is completely unaware. Thus, it is predicted that if therapy enabled the individual to better handle stress at the psychological level, then this should be evident also in one’s autonomic functioning. Therefore, do not major in the minors. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. Remember to breathe not weak, snatched gasps, but deep riveting drafts. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Another point in which the impossibility of the theory of addition of love and justice becomes visible is the relation of love and justice to the concrete situation. Justice is expressed in principles and laws none of which can ever reach the uniqueness of the concrete situation. Every decision which is based on the abstract formulation of justice alone is essentially and inescapably unjust. Justice can be reached only if both the demand of the universal law and the demand of the particular situation are accepted and made effective for the concrete situation. However, it is love which created participation in the concrete situation. It would be completely wrong to say that love must be added to justice if the uniqueness of the situation is to be reached. For this would mean that justice as such is impossible. Actually the situation shows that justice is just because of the love which is implicit in it. However, this can e understood fully only in the context of an ontological analysis of the root meanings of both love and justice. The weight of the problems and the dangerous character of the confusions is equally obvious when we finally confront power and justice. It is in this realm of problems that the relation of law and order to justice and of all of them to power is discussed and more often confused than illuminated. The first questions is: Who gives the law in which justice is supposed to be expressed? #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

To give a law is the basic manifestation of power. However, if a group which has power gives laws, how are they related to justice? Are they not simply the expression of the will to power of this group? The Marxist theory of the State asserts that the laws of the State are tools which give social control to a ruling group. The origin of its power may be military invasion or it may be socioeconomic stratification. In both cases justice is possible only if the State has withered away and has been replaced by an administration without political power. The justice of the ruling class is injustice and, if defended, ideology. The laws it gives preserve a social order, and as long as there is no alternative social order, the laws of the ruling classes are better than chaos. The more cynical representatives of this theory interpret justice exclusively as a function of power and in no way as its judge. They accept the Marxist analysis without the Marxist expectation, and reduce justice completely to a function of power. In reaction against this removal of justice as an ultimate principle a theory has been developed which tries to separate justice from power and completely and to establish it as a self-contained system of valid judgements. Justice is an absolute, without any relation to structures of power. The absolute law, derived from the principles of the natural or rational law, does not express wat is, but it demands what should be. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Irrespective of power it commands and expects obedience because of its intrinsic validity. It does not express but it judges power. The contrast of these two theories about the relation of power to justice reveals the difficulty of the problem and the necessity of an ontological research into the rot meanings of power and justice. As announced before, I have led you into a jungle of problems and confusions, and, at every point, I have indicated the way out; namely, the ontological analysis of love, power, and justice. When the God we love chose to reveal Himself, He did so in creation itself and in more specific, special ways—most importantly, in the Scriptures and Jesus Christ. When we affirm that the Bible is a revelation from God, we do not simply assert that God as a person is known in and through it. We also mean that God has revealed understandable, objectively true propositions. The Lord’s Word is not only practically useful, it is also theoretically true (John 17.17). God has revealed truth to us and not just Himself. This truth is addressed to our minds and requires an intellectual grasp to understand and then apply. Because of the Bible’s nature, serious study is needed to grasp what it says. Of course, the Scripture contains easily grasped portions that are fairly straightforward. However, some of it is very difficult, intellectually speaking. In fact, Peter one said that some of Paul’s writings were intellectually challenging, hard to understand, and easily distorted (that is, uneducated in Christian theology) and unstable people (2 Peter 3.16). #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

The more a person develops the mind and the understanding of hermeneutics (the science of interpreting the Scriptures), the more one will be able to understand the meaning and significance of the Scriptures. Unfortunately, many today apparently think that hard intellectual work is not needed to understand God’s propositional revelation to us. Instead, they believe that the Holy spirit will simply make know the meaning of a text if it is implored to do so. Tragically, this represents a misunderstanding of the Spirit’s role in understanding the Scriptures. In my view, the Spirit does not help the believer understand the meaning of Scripture. Rather, He speaks to the believer’s soul, convicting, comforting, opening up applications of His truths through His promptings. On the evening Christ gave Himself up for us, John 17 tells us, He prayed in succession for Himself, for His twelve disciples, and for all of us who would later believe. When He finished praying for His future bride, He went to the cross. Then came Hos death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His enthronement at the right hand of the Father, where He constantly makes intercession for us. Thus we understand that giving ourselves for our brides involves prayerful intercession. Men, do you pray for your wives with something more than, “Bless good Meghan in all she does”? If not, you are sinning against her and against God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Most Christian men who claim to love their wives never offer more than a perfunctory nod to their wives’ needs before God. Men, you ought to have a list of her needs, spoken and unspoken, which you passionately hold up to God out of love for her. Praying is the material work of a Christian husband! The most basic command is, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave up himself for her.” Men, we are divinely called to die for our brides, to take on her sufferings as our own, and to make intercession for her. You are supposed to be her ride or die man. When it is said that the readiness of the seeker determines the appearance of the master, this applies to the first fundamental initiation of one’s spiritual life. It does not mean that a master will come into one’s own town and seek one out, but that one will come into one’s life. And this may be brought about in various ways—as by the seeker oneself being led, either by Worldly circumstances or by one’s own seeking, out of one’s own town to the town or country where the master is living. The location of one’s spiritual guide will in part be the accident of one’s own geographical situation, for one will obviously be limited in one’s selection to possibilities and reputations in one’s own country or nation or race. The sheer physical and financial difficulties of traveling throughout the World—not to mention the obstacles of personal circumstance, family obligations, and ignorance of where to search and whom to approach in foreign lands, combine to set this limitation upon one’s inquiry and hence upon one’s opportunity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

It is foolish to seek holiness geographically or holy beings in particular places. I have found that one being may live in a Himalayan abode and be a scoundrel and another being may live in a Bowery slum and be a saint. Wherever the live, people always carry their own thoughts and their own selves with them. The Soul, which is the object of our quest, is within us. The Master, who is to guide us upon our quest, will appear whenever we are ready for one and wherever we happen to live—or else we will be led to one. There are beings in the New World and the Old World, not less wise and noble than each other. If we have not met them, “the fault, Dear Brutus is…in ourselves,” primarily in our unworthiness, and secondarily in our incapacity to recognize what is beneath the surface. All speculation upon the motives and the methods of the illuminate will avail little. The light by which one works is denied to ordinary beings. We should not try to bind one down to qualities which fit only those who grope in the dark or move in twilight. We should trust where we cannot see and wait patiently for the day of revilement, when we will find all made clear and all riddle solved to our satisfaction. It is an old truism in the Old World that it takes an adept to understand an adept, but the New World will have to learn this truth by bitter experiences with pseudo-adepts. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

There are many signs of one’s spiritual status in the dignity and composure of one’s bearing, the deliberateness and truthfulness of one’s speech, and the impressiveness of one’s tension-free face. Helter Skelter is a phrase taken from a song performed by a well-known rock music group. Charles Manson used it to characterize that state of confusion in which he kept his followers, and himself as well. In the state of helter-skelter nothing makes sense, and everything makes as much sense as anything else. Manson was able to use this ideology to brainwash his followers and make them believe they were not responsible for their actions and they were not doing anything wrong when the ended the life of an individual. He taught them they if harm came to a person by means of his follower’s hands, then it was meant to be, it was in divine order and they did no really harm the individual and the individual was still alive on a different plane of existence. Aldous Huxley, in one of his retrospective writings, commented on how, among the associates of his youth, the endless talk of meaninglessness—the meaninglessness of life and therefore of everything in it—was merely an excuse to permit them to do whatever they wanted. Their life was organized (or, more properly, disorganized) around their feelings and wayward thoughts, with their will in two. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

However, resolute action for the good requires that things make sense. You would not want someone caught up in helter-skelter to work on your lawn mower, do your gastrointestinal examination, nor work on your computer. Life makes sense only if you understand its basic components and how they interrelate to form the whole. Evil, on the other hand, thrives on confusion. God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14.33). Frankly, our visible Christian World is not too far from helter-skelter with reference to its understanding of the makeup of the person and therefore of the spiritual life and spiritual formation. We need to access the fullness of biblical teachings on these matters. We suffer far too much from the influence of a surrounding culture that thrives on confusions. (And therefore its denial that human beings have a nature.) This may seem like a harsh thing to say about our “Christian World,” and I am sorry to day it; but the issues here are too important to mince words. Accordingly, much of what we do in Christian circles with very good intentions—hoping, we say, to see steady, significant growth in Christlikeness—simply makes no sense and lead nowhere so far as substantive spiritual formation is concerned. What a brutal thing to say! However, we need to recognize this, or show why it is not the case. I hope we have taken significant first steps toward a clarity that can serve as a foundation for the effectual practice of Christian spiritual formation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. “As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgression from us,” reports Psalm 103.12. How far is the East from the West? If you start due north at any point on Earth, you would eventually cross over the North Pole and start going south, but that is not true when you go East or West. If you start West and continue in that direction you will always be going West. North and South meet at the North Pole, but East and West never meet. In a sense, they are an infinite distance apart. So when God says He removes our transgressions from us as far as the East is from the West, He is saying they have been removed an infinite distance from us. However, how can we get a handle on this rather abstract truth in such a way that it becomes meaningful in our lives? When God uses this metaphorical expression describing the extent of His forgiveness of our sin, He is saying His forgiveness is total, complete, and unconditional. God is saying He is not keeping score with regard to our sins. “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities,” reports Psalm 103.10. Yes, God actually says that! I know it seems too good to be true. I confess I almost hesitate to write those words because they are so foreign to our innate concepts of reward and punishment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

However, those gracious words are right in the Bible, and they are God’s words. How can God possibly do this? How can He so completely disregard our transgressions as to say He removes them an infinite distance from us? The answer is by His grace through Jesus Christ. God laid our sins on Christ and He bore the penalty we should have borne. Because of Christ’s death in our place, God’s justice is now completely satisfied. God can now, without violating His justice or His moral law, forgive us freely, completely and absolutely. He can now extend His grace to us; He can show favor to those who, in themselves, deserve only wrath. O Loving Wisdom of the living God, O living everlasting Word and everlasting Power of God the eternal Father—for everlasting is Thy birth, Who art the everlasting Son of God the everlasting Father, and art God; without Whom is nothing, by Whom are all things; in Whom consisteth whatever is; Who art God above us, and Man for our sakes; for Thou hast willed for us to be what we are: grant us what Thou hast promised; give to us, although unworthy, what Thou hast offered to all alike; that is, that Thy Passion may be our deliverance, and Thy Death our life, and Thy cross our redemption, and Thy Wound our healing; that being crucified with Thee, we may by Thy gift be lifted up on high to Thy Father, with Whom in bliss Thou livest and reignest. “And it is by faith that my fathers have obtained the promise that these things should come unto their brethren through the Gentiles; therefore the Lord hath commanded me, yea, even Jesus Christ,” reports Ether 12.22. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

O Source of All Good, what shall I render to three for the gift of gifts, then own dear Son, begotten, not created, my redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute, his self-emptying incomprehensible, his infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp. Herein is wonder of wonders: he came below to rise me above, was born like me that I might become like him. Herein is love; when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace, to raise me to himself. Herein is power; when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart he untied them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created. Herein is wisdom; when I was undone, with no will to return to him, and no intellect to devise recovery, he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost as man to die my death, to shed satisfying blood on my behalf, to work out a perfect righteousness for me. O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, and enlarge my mind; let me hear good tidings of great joy, and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore, my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose, my eyes uplifted to reconcile Father; place me with ox, mule, camel, goat, to look with them upon my redeemer’s face, and in him account myself delivered from sin; let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart, embrace him with undying faith, exulting that he is mine and I am his. In him thou hast given me so much that Heaven can give no more. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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You are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine, You Make Me Happy When Skies are Gray!

December 31, 2019 5:13 am

The climate of change that defines turn-of-the-century life is with us to stay. And while change of this magnitude demands greater adaptability and a commitment to lifelong learning, it also promises huge opportunity for those who know where and how to look for it. Vision is the capacity to create and communicate a view of a desired state of affairs that induces commitment among those working in the organization. The origin, process, and conclusion of science is something which exists only in the subjective experience of persons and so also is its utilization. Science will never depersonalize, or manipulate, or control individuals. It is only person who can and will do that. That is surely a most obvious and trite observation, yet a deep realization of it has had much meaning for me. It means that the use which will be made of scientific findings in the field of personality is and will be a matter of subjective personal choice—the same type of choice as a person makes in therapy. To the extent that one has defensively closed off areas of one’s experience from awareness, the person is more likely to make choices which are socially destructive. To the extent that one is open to all phases of one’s experience we may be sure that this person will be more likely to use the findings and methods of science (or any other tool or capacity) in a manner which is personally and socially constructive. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

There is, in actuality then, no threatening entity of “Science” which can in any way affect out destiny. There are only people. While many of them are indeed threatening and dangerous in their defensiveness, and modern scientific knowledge multiplies the social threat and danger, this is not the whole picture. There are two other significant facets. There are many persons who are relatively open to their experience and hence likely to be socially constructive. Both the subjective experience of psychotherapy and the scientific findings regarding it indicate that individuals are motivated to change, and may be helped to change, in the direction of greater openness to experience, and hence in the direction of the behavior which is enhancing of self and society, rather than destructive. Science can never threaten us. Only persons can do that. And while individuals can be vastly destructive with the tools placed in their hands by scientific knowledge, this is only one side of the picture. We already have subjective and objective knowledge of the basic principles by which individuals may achieve the more constructive social behavior which is natural to their organismic process of becoming. What this line of thought has achieved for me is a fresh integration in which the conflict between the “experientialist” and the “scientist” tends to disappear. This particular integration may not be acceptable to others, but it does have meaning to me. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Science, as well as therapy, as well as other aspects of living, is rooted in and based upon the immediate, subjective experience of a person. It springs from the inner, total, organismic experiencing which is only partially and imperfectly communicable. It is one phase of subjective living. It is because I find value and reward in human relationships that I enter into a relationship known as therapeutic, where feelings and cognition merge into one unitary experience which is lived rather than examined, in which awareness is non-reflective, and where I am participant rather than observer. However, because I am curious about the exquisite orderliness which appears to exist in the Universe and in this relationship I can abstract myself from the experience and look upon it as an observer, making myself and/or others the object of that observation. As observer I used all of the hunches which grow out of the living experience. To avoid deceiving myself as observer, to gain a more accurate picture of the order which exists, I make use of all the canons of science. Science is not an impersonal something, but simply a person living subjectively another phase of oneself. A deeper understanding of therapy (or of any other problem) may come from living it, or from observing it in accordance with the rules of science, or from the communication within the self between the two types of experience. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

As to the subjective experience of choice, it is not only primary in therapy, but it is also primary in the use of scientific method by a person. What I will do with the knowledge gained through scientific method—whether I will use it to understand, enhance, enrich, or use it to control, manipulate and destroy—is a matter of subjective choice dependent upon the values which have personal meaning for me. If, out of fright and defensiveness, I block out from my awareness large areas of experience—if I can see only those facts which support my present beliefs, and am blind to all others—if I can see only the objective aspect of life, and cannot perceive the subjective—if in any way I cut off my perception from the full range of its actual sensitivity—then I am likely to be socially destructive, whether I use as tool the knowledge and instruments of science, or the power and emotional strength of subjective relationship. And on the other hand if I am open to my experience, and can permit all of the sensing of my awareness, than I am likely to use myself, my subjective experience, and my scientific knowledge, in ways which are realistically constructive. This then is the degree of integration I have currently been able to achieve between two approaches first experienced as conflicting. It does not completely resolve all the issues posed, but it seems to point toward a resolution. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

It rewriters the problem or reperceives the issue, by putting the subjective, existential person, with the values which one holds, at the foundation and the root of the therapeutic relationship and of the scientific relationship. For science too, at its inception, is an “I-Thou” relationship with person or persons. And only as subjective person can I enter into either of these relationships. The fear of success results from fear of the begrudging envy of others and this of the loss of their affection. Sometimes it is a conscious fear. A gifted writer among my patients renounced writing altogether because her mother began to write and proved to be successful. When after a long period she took it up again, hesitantly and apprehensively, she was afraid not of writing poorly but of writing too well. This woman was for a long time incapable of doing anything at all, the main reason being her excessive fear that others would begrudge her everything; instead she put all her energy into the task of making people like her. The fear may appear also as a mere vague apprehension that one would lose friends if one were to have any success. In this fear, however, as in so many others, the neurotic person is more often away not of one’s fear but only of the resulting inhibitions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

When such a person plays tennis, for example, one my feel when one is close to victory that something holds one back and makes it impossible for one to win. Or one may forget to keep an appointment of decisive importance of one’s future. If one has something pertinent to contribute to a discussion or conversation one may speak in so low a voice, or in such condensed expression, that one will fail to make any impression. Or one will let others have the acclaim for work one has accomplished. One may observe that with some persons one can talk intelligently, while with others one is stupid; that with some one can play an instrument in a masterly fashion while with others one plays like a beginner. Although one feels bewildered by such an uneven state of affairs one is unable to change it. It is only when one has gained insight into one’s tendency to recoil that one will discover that when talking to a person less intelligent than oneself one compulsively has to act still less intelligent; or that when playing with a poor musician one has to play still worse, drive by a fear that by excelling one would hurt and humiliate the other. Finally, if one does have a success one is not only unable to enjoy it, but does not even fell it as one’s own experience. Or one will diminish it by attributing it to some fortuitous circumstances or to some insignificant stimulation or help from outside. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

After a success, however, one is likely to feel depressed, partly because of this fear, but also because of an unrecognized disappointment brought about by the fact that the actual success always remains far being one’s secret excessive expectations. Thus the conflict situation of the neurotic person derives from a frantic and compulsive wish to be the first in the race, and at the same time an equally great compulsion to check oneself as soon as one gets well started or makes any progress. If one has done something successfully, one is bound to do it poorly the next time. A good lesson is followed by a bad lesson, an improvement during treatment by a relapse, a good impression on people by a bad one. This sequence keeps recurring and gives one the feeling that one is waging a hopeless fight against overwhelming odds. One is like Penelope, who unraveled every night what she had woven during the day. Thus inhibitions may set in at each step of the way: the neurotic may repress one’s ambitious wishes so completely that one does not even attempt a piece of work; one may try to do something but be unable to concentrate or carry it through; one may do excellent work but shrink from any evidence of success; and finally one may reach outstanding success and be unable to appreciate it or even feel it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

If you come to comfort the disturbed, you will surely disturb the comfortable. “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through the righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,” reports Romans 5.20-21. A study of the grace of God is a study in contrast, a contrast between the desperate plight of humankind and the abundant and gracious remedy God has provided for us through Christ Jesus. This contrast is beautifully described in the words f an old hymn: Guilty, vile and helpless we, spotless Lamb of God was He; full atonement! Can it be? Hallelujah, what a Savior! We already know that all of us are indeed guilty, vile, and helpless. We recognized that all of us are equally in need of the grace of God. When an engaged couple goes into a jewelry store to shop for that special diamond, the jeweler will often se a dark velvet-covered pad on one’s counter, then carefully lay each diamond on the pad. The contrast of the dark velvet provides the background that enhances the sparkle and beauty of each diamond. Our sinful condition hardly qualifies as a velvet pad, but against the dark background of guilt and moral pollution, God’s grace in salvation sparkles like a beautiful, clear, and flawless diamond. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

The apostle Paul used a contrasting background when he described God’s gracious remedy for our ruin in a series of Scriptures I like to call God’s wonderful contractions. Having painted the dark background of our ruin, Paul proceeds to set before us the clear, sparkling diamond of God’s remedy. Notice how be begins: But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. We are all found to be in a state of ruin, but now God has provided a remedy: a righteousness is said to be apart from law, that is, apart from any consideration of how well or not so well we have obeyed the law of God. Under God’s grace, the extent or quality of our law-keeping is not an issue. Instead, those who have faith in Jesus Christ are justified freely by his grace. To be justified means more than to be declared not guilty. It actually means to be declared righteous before God. It means God has imputed or charged the guilt of our sins to His Son, Jesus Christ, and has imputed or credited Christ’s righteousness to us. Not, however, that we are justified by His grace. It is because of God’s grace we are declared righteous before Him. We are all guilty before God—condemned, vile, and helpless. We had no claim on God; the disposition of our case was wholly up to Him. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

God could with total justice have pronounced us all guilty, for that is what we were, and consigned us all to eternal damnation. That is what He dd to the Angels who sinned (see 2 Peter 2.4), and God could have with perfect justice done the same to us. God owed us nothing; we owed Him everything. However, because of God’s grace, God did not cosign us all to hell; instead, He provided a remedy for us through Jesus Christ. “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood,” reports Romans 3.25. What is a sacrifice of atonement? When God turns aside his wrath, taking away sin. The meaning of Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, then, is that Jesus by His death turned aside the wrath of God from us by takin it upon Himself. As He hung on the cross, He bore our sins in His body and endured the full force of God’s wrath in our place. “He himself bore of sins in His body,” and suffered, “the righteous for unrighteous” reports 1 Peter 2.24, 3.18. By His death Jesus completely satisfied the justice of God, which required eternal death as the penalty for sin. It is not so much that we are afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it is that place in between that we fear. A vision without a plan is only a dream. The outer wall of the soul is perhaps like a permeable membrane in a biological organism, which is designed to allow passage of some but not all foreign objects. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

When the wall of the soul is broken, individuals are at the mercy of forces they cannot handle. The soul can be sustained intact and can function as it is supposed to only in keeping of God. “Behold, all souls are Mine,” reports Ezekiel 18.4. Our actions always arise out of the interplay of the universal factors in human life: spirit, mind, body, social context, and soul. Action never comes from the movement of the will alone. Often—perhaps usually—what we do is not an outcome of deliberate choice and a mere act of will, but is more of a relenting to pressure on the will from one or more of the dimensions of the self. The understanding of this is necessary for the understanding and practice of spiritual formation, which is bound to fail if it focuses upon the will alone. The inadequacy of good intentions alone to ensure proper action is marked by Jesus’ words: “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” If the six dimensions, infinite environment, soul, social, body, mind, and spirit, are properly aligned with God and what is good—and therefore with each other—that mere relenting will be good, and our actions will simply be the good fruit of the good tree. If they are not so aligned, they will be the inevitable bad fruit of the bad tree. If they are not so aligned, they will be the inevitable bad fruit of the bad tree. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

We must clearly understand that there is a rigorous consistency in the human self and its actions. This is one of those things we are most inclined to deceive ourselves about. If I do evil, I am the kind of person who does evil; if I do good, I am the kind of person who does good. Actions are not impositions on who we are, but are expressions of who we are. They come out of our heart and the inner realities is supervises and interacts with. Today one of the most common rationalizations of sin or folly is, “Oh, I just blew it.” While there is some point to such a remark, it is not the one those who use it hope for. It does not exonerate them. While it may be true that there are other circumstances in which I would not have done the foolish or sinful thing I did, and while what I did may not represent me fully, “blowing it” does not represent me fully. I am the kind of person who “blows it.” “Blowing it” shows who I am as a person. I am, through and through, in my deepest self, the kind of person who “blows it”—hardly a lovely and promising thing to be. Whatever my action is comes out of my whole person. The will or spirit, tiny power that it is, is very largely at the mercy of the forces playing upon it from the larger self and beyond. The God-intended function of the will is to reach out to God in trust. By standing in the correct relation to God through our will we can receive grace that will properly reorder the soul along with the other five components of the self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

In the life away from God, the order of dominance is: body, soul, mind (thought/feeling), spirit, and God. This is the order in idolatry of all kinds, including that of those who worship “The Good Life,” as it is often called. There are two Gods. There is the God that people generally believe in—A God who has to serve them (sometimes in very refined ways, say by merely giving them peace of mind). This God does not exist. However, the God whom people forget—the God whom we all have to serve—exists, and is the prime cause of our existence and of all that we perceive. In the life under God, by contrast, the order of dominance is: God, spirit, mind (thought/feeling), soul, body. Here the body serves the soul; the soul, the mind, the spirit; and the spirit, God. Conversely, the life from above flows from God throughout the whole person, including the body and its social context. For those who are according to [that is, who live life in terms of] the flesh [the natural human powers only] set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

When the proper ordering of the human system under God is complete—which no doubt will never fully occur in this life because of the social dimension of the self and our finitude and the total spiritual environment surrounding us—then we have people who love God with all their heart, and with all their soul, and with all their strength, and with all their mind; and their neighbor as themselves. When we are like this, our whole life is an eternal one. Everything we do counts for eternity and is preserved there. The spirit must first come alive to and through God, of course. Otherwise we remain dead to him in trespasses and sins. However, once the spirit comes alive in God, the lengthy process of subduing all aspects of the self under God can begin. This is the process of spiritual formation viewed in its entirety. Spiritual transformation only happens as each essential dimension of the human being is transformed to Christlikeness under the direction of a regenerate will interacting with constant overtures of grace from God. Such transformation is not the result of mere human effort and cannot be accomplished by putting pressure on the will (heart, spirit) alone. In spite of all the misuses to which the word love is subjected, in literature and daily life, it has not lost its emotional power. It elicits a feeling of warmth, of passion, of happiness, of fulfilment, whenever it is used. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

The word love brings to mind past or present or anticipated occasion of loving or being loved. Its root meaning, therefore, sees to be an emotional state which like all emotions cannot be defined, but which must be described in its qualities and expressions and is not a matter of intention or demand but of happening or gift. If this were so, love could be kept within the sphere of affections, and it could be discussed as one affection among others. In considering the significance of love, when we consider the nature of the divine substance and about the many ways in which humans participate in it, we must reflect on human’s intellectual love towards God as the love with which God love himself. In other words, love is elevated out of emotional into the ontological realm. And it is well-known that from Empedocles and Plato to Augustine and Pico, to Hegel and Schelling, to Existentialism and depth psychology, love has played a central ontological role. There is another interpretation of love which is neither emotional nor ontological but ethical. In one of the determining documents of Judaism, Christianity and all the New World, the word love is combined with the imperative “thou shalt.” The Great Commandment demands of everyone the total love of God and the love of one’s neighbour according to the measures of human’s natural self-affirmation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

If love is emotion, how can it be demanded? Emotions cannot be demanded. We cannot demand them of ourselves. If we try, something artificial is produced which shows the traits of what had to be suppressed in its production. Repentance, intentionally produced, hides self-complacency in perversion. Love, intentionally produced, show indifference or hostility in perversion. This means: love as an emotion cannot be commanded. Either love is something other than emotion or the Great Commandment is meaningless. There must be something at the basis of love as emotion which justifies both its ethical and its ontological interpretation. And it may well be that the ethical nature of love is dependent on its ontological nature, and that the ontological nature of love gets its qualifications by its ethical character. However, if all this is valid—and we shall try to show that it is valid—the question arises as to how these interpretations of love are related to the fact that love appears in the shape of the most passionate of emotions. Beautiful Christlike love does not just happen! It comes from the inner resolve of a person who has determined to live under the authority of God’s directive regarding how a Godly being must love one’s spouse—as it is spelled out in Ephesians 5. Thy are directives every Christian being out to be familiar with, must understand, and, I think, even commit to memory. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

To examine the Godly being’s responsibility, we must fix in our minds the grand truth at the end of Ephesians 5, verse 31, where Paul quotes Genesis 2.24: when a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, “the two will become one flesh.” He then adds in verse 32, “There is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.” There is an astounding unity in marriage! The assertion that men and women become “one flesh” indicates something of the psycho-spiritual depth of marriage—an exchange of soul. Marriage ideally produces two people who are as much the same person as two people can be! Christians in marriage have the same Lord, the same family, the same children, the same future, and the same ultimate destiny—an astounding unity. An amazing bounding took place the moment I saw my new born children and held them in my arms. They are from my flesh. I am close to my children, interwoven with them. Yet, I am no one flesh with them. I am one flesh only with my wife. This, in my opinion, is why mature couples possessing extraordinarily different appearances yet often look so much alike—they are “one flesh.” There has been an exchange of soul—a mutual appropriation of each other’s lives. This is, indeed, a mystery—which partially illustrates the even deeper marital union of Christ and Church. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

We must keep the mysterious nature of our union constantly before us if we are to understand the disciplines of marital love as they unfold—the discipline of sacrificial love, of sanctifying love, of self love. “And they did land upon the shore of the promised land. And when they had set their feet upon the shores of the promised land they bowed themselves down upon the face of the land, and did humble themselves before the Lord, and did shed tears of joy before the Lord, and because of the multitude of his tender mercies over them. And it came to pass that they went forth upon the face of the land, and began to till the Earth,” reports Ether 6.12-13. May forgiveness, O Lord, we beseech Thee, proceed from the Most High. May it succour us in our misery; may in cleanse us from our offenses; may it be granted to penitents; may it plead for mourners; may it bring back those who wander from the faith; may it raise up those who are fallen into sins; may it reconcile us to the Father; may it confirm us with the grace of Christ; may it conform us to the Holy Spirit. Thou incomprehensible but prayer-hearing God, know, but beyond knowledge, revealed, but unrevealed, my wants and welfare draw me to thee, for thou hast never said, “Seek ye me in vain.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

To thee, great God, I come in my difficulties, necessities, distresses; possess me with thyself, with a spirit of grace and supplication, with a prayerful attitude of mind, with access into warmth of fellowship, so that in the ordinary concerns of life my thoughts and desires may rise to thee, and in habitual devotion I may find a resource that will soothe my sorrows, sanctify my successes, and qualify me in all ways for dealing with my fellow beings. I bless thee that thou hast made me capable of knowing thee, the author of all being, of resembling thee, the perfection of all excellency, of enjoying thee, the source of all happiness. O God, attend me in every part of my arduous and trying pilgrimage; I need the same counsel, defence, comfort I found at my beginning. Let my religion be more obvious to my conscience, more perceptible to those around. While Jesus is representing me in Heaven, may I reflect Him on Earth, while He pleads my cause, may I show forth His praise. Continue the gentleness of thy goodness towards me, and whether I wake or sleep, let thy presence go with me, thy blessing attend me. Thou has led me on and I have found thy promises true, I have been sorrowful, but thou hast been my help, fearful, but thou hast delivered me, despairing, but thou hast lifted me up. Thy vows are ever upon me, and I praise thee, O God. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Please Plant this Heart of Mine Underneath the Lonesome Pine on the Hill When it is Twilight on the Trail!

December 29, 2019 4:51 am

Almost one hundred years ago, in October and November of 1929, the stock market crashed and the World entered the Great Depression. The Roaring Twenties came to an end. Wealthy people everywhere lost their fortunes. Multimillionaires jumped out of windows. My grandparents told me they even cut back on eating meat. So, why does Paul in the Bible attack conformism? Why does he not call the Christian the perfectly adjusted being? Why does he not describe the Christian way as the way to a complete acceptance of the moral and religious standards of society? His thought is far from this, and according to the certain criteria of adjustment, certainly he could not have been called a good educator. However, he knew why he rejected conformism. He knew that all conformism is a state of being conformed to this eon. So let us try to understand the meaning of this strange assertion. This eon means the state of things in which we are living, which is, according to Paul, a state of corruption. Being conformed to it, therefore, means to participate in its corruptedness. Where there is conformism there is acceptance of corruption, subject to the present questionable state of things. In our English Bibles, the Greek word for eon is translated “World.” This is somehow misleading. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

When we speak of World we think of the Universe. However, the Universe, including our Earth and everything in it, is the product of incessant divine creativity here and now. It is good in its created form, and it is the place to which the kingdom of God shall come, as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. It is one of those most dangerous misunderstandings of the Christian message to deny this World and its created glory, and to direct our eyes to a Superworld, unrelated to the original creation. The Bible speak of a new Heaven and a New Earth in contrast to the Old Heaven and the Old Earth. And now we understand what Paul means when he speaks of conformity to this eon: he means the untransformed Old Earth and the untransformed Old Heaven. He means the corrupted state of the Universe, and especially of our Universe—the Universe of beings—when he warns us not to become conformed to it. The attitude towards this eon, toward ourselves, and towards our World that the apostle demands is threefold: judgment, resistance, and transformation. However, one may ask—must I judge, must I resist, must I transform everything I encounter? Ought we not to adjust to that which is borne out of the wisdom of the ages, bestowed upon us by the generations before us through their experience and insights? #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Could one not say—be conformed to what has been proved to be good and noble and in conformity with the spirit of love? We must ask this question with great seriousness and self-criticism. However, we must not forget that we are living in this eon, under the control of its forms and ways, where the uncorrupted is mixed with corruption, and the acceptable with the unacceptable, and good with evil. This is what makes conformity so dangerous. If the corruption of this eon were obvious, very few would be tempted to be conformed to it. Not many people, in reality or in literature, make a pact with the devil. However, there are many who are lured by elements of goodness, indeed of real goodness, into a pact with this eon, into the state of being conformed to it. And certainly, there are strong arguments for accepting conformity. We all are conformed to the family into which we are born whether we want to be or not. Shall we try to be non-conformists in our family because conformism would mean adjustment to this eon, to the corrupted state of things? Would that not bring much suffering to the other members of the family, and deprive us of the many blessings that an intimate and ordered family life can provide? How can the commandment to honor father and mother be combined with the warning of the apostle not to be conformed to this eon? #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

Jesus says—“I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. One who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and one who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me,” reports Matthew 10.35-37. There are the most radical statements of non-conformity. And even Paul’s radicalism sounds conservative in comparison with them. It is astonishing that a faith based on words like these has been used throughout its history as a most successful instrument of conformity inside and outside family relations. How did this happen? Why is it the predominant attitude within Western culture even today, in spite of all the forces of disintegration? It is because it is infinitely difficult to find the point where the state of being conformed contradicts love as it is manifest in the Christ. It would be easy to notice the point where separation becomes unavoidable, if our family, as often was the case in early Christianity, tried to make us reject the Christ and what he stands for. However, this is not so today. Instead of it, the question of conforming or not conforming arises in innumerable small moments of our daily life. And in each moment, our answer is a risk, burdened with struggles within our own conscience. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

We do not know with certainty whether our non-conformity is based on a wrong conformity to ourselves or whether it is our awareness of corruption that drives us to non-conformity. And we do not know with certainty whether our non-resistance is based on a wrong surrender or whether it is an element of love and wisdom that keeps us conformed to the family group. We do not know these things with certainty, and we can act only at the risk of being wrong. However, act we must. Most people try to avoid the risk by being conformed to the state of things into which they have been thrown by destiny. However, those who have transformed our World risked wrong decisions. And the greater beings they were, the more conscious were they of the risk. They did not cease to doubt in spite of the depth and the passion of their faith. For when they refused to be conformed to themselves, but were renewed in their own being and could thus renew other things. And precisely for this reason they never became self-assured—they took upon themselves the risk of not being conformed and the anxiety and doubt and glory of this risk. Paul demands this of every Christian. Every Christian must be strong enough to risk non-conformity, even in the radical sense that Jesus describes with respect to one’s family. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

The situation in the family is an example, and more than an example. For all conformity is rooted in it. And resistance to conformity is first of all resistance to the family. However, there are other larger groups in which we breathe the air of conformity day and night, and where the resistance is sometimes easier, yet often more difficult, than in the family. I am thinking of educational, social, political, and religious groups. Let us look at each of them in the light of the apostolic word. It seems that an educational group is least exposed to conformity. Those who are learning are usually more inclined to resist than to accept their teachers and what they are taught by them. And the teachers are chosen on the basis of the independence of their judgments and the freedom of their scholarly questioning. This seems to make the institutions of higher learning the representative places of non-conformity. I do not think that this is so, however. One needs to ask the students two questions: Do not you often build, out of your resistance to what you are taught, a new conformity of rebellion? And do you resist the group or gang to which you belong as strongly as you resist your teachers, or are you conquered by gang conformity and all the elements of this eon, and the corruption implied in such conformity? How would you answer? #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

As we read some of the passages from the prophets, we might easily imagine that we were reading the reports of eye-witnesses from Warsaw or Hiroshima, Tokyo (2011) Sri Lanka, Berlin, San Francisco (1906), Oakland (1989) on New York (11 September 2001). Isaiah says: “Behold, the Lord maketh the Earth empty and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down and scattereth its inhabitants…Towns fall to pieces; each being bolts one’s door; gladness has gone from the Earth and pleasure is no more. The cities are left desolate; their gates are battered down; and few are left. For Earth has been polluted by the dwellers on its face…breaking the Eternal Covenant. Therefore, a curse is crushing the Earth, and the guilty people must atone.” Every one of these words describes the experience of the peoples of Europe and Asia. The most primitive and most essential foundations of life have been shaken. The destruction is such that we, who have not experienced it, cannot even imagine it. We have not experienced it; we cannot believe that we could be caught in such a destruction and see busses dancing, bridges collapsing, oceans swallowing up 200,000 people and entire cities. And yet, I see American soldiers walking through the ruins of these cities, thinking their own country, and seeing with visionary clarity the doom of its towns and cities. I know that this has happened, and still is happening. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

There are soldiers who have become prophets, and their message is not very different from the message of the ancient Hebrew prophets. It is the message of the shaking of the foundations, and not those of their enemies, but rather those of their own country. For the prophetic spirit has not disappeared from the Earth. Decades before the World wars, people judged the European civilization and prophesied its end in speech and print. There are among us people like these. They are like the refined instruments which register the shaking of the Earth on far-removed sections of its surface. These people register the shaking of their civilization, its self-destructive trends, and its disintegration and fall, decades before the final catastrophe occurs. They have an invisible and almost infallible sensorium in their souls; and they have an irresistible urge to pronounce what they have registered, perhaps against their own wills. For no true prophet has ever prophesied voluntarily. It has been forced upon the by a Divine Voice to which they have not been able to close one’s ears. No being with a prophetic spirit likes to foresee and foreasy the doom of one’s own period. It exposes them to a terrible anxiety within oneself, to serve and often deadly attacks from others, and to the change of pessimism and defeatism on the part of the majority of the people. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

People desire to hear good tidings; and the masses listen to those who bring them. All the prophets of the Old and New Testaments, and others during the history of the Church had the same experiences. They all were contradicted by the false prophets, who announced salvation when there was no salvation. “The prophets prophesy falsely, and my people love to have it so,” cries Jeremiah in despair. They called him a defeatist and accused him of being an enemy of his country. However, is it a sign of patriotism or of confidence in one’s people, its institutions and its way of life, to be silent when the foundations are shaking? Is the expression of optimism, whether or not it is justified, so much more valuable than the expression of truth, even if the truth is deep and dark? Most human beings, of course, are not able to stand the message of the shaking of the foundations. They reject and attack the prophetic minds, not because they really disagree with them, but because they sense the truth of their words and cannot receive it. They repress it in themselves; and they transform it into mockery or fury against those who know and dare to say that which they know. In which of these two groups do you consider yourselves to be? Among those who respond to the prophetic spirit, or among those who close their ears and hearts against it? #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

I have always felt that there might be few who are able to register the shaking of the foundations of the Earth as such, but God Who laid the foundations and would shake them; and that they did not speak of the doom of the nation as such, but of God Who brings doom for the sake of His eternal justice and salvation. As the 102^nd Psalm says: “Thy years are foundations of the Earth, and the Heavens are the work of thy hands. They vanish, but thou shalt endure; they wear out like a robe, thou changest them like garments. However, thou art the same and thy years shall have no end.” When the Earth grows old and wears out, when nations and cultures die, the Eternal changes the garments of God’s infinite being. God is the foundation on which all foundations are laid; and this foundation cannot be shaken. There is something immovable, unchangeable, unshakeable, eternal, which becomes manifest in our passing and in the crumbling of our World. On the boundaries of the finite the infinite becomes visible; in the light of the Eternal the transitoriness of the temporal appears. The Greeks called themselves “the mortals” because they experienced that which is immortal. This is why the prophets were able to face the shaking of the foundations. It is the only way to look at the shaking without recoiling from it. Or is it possible to be conscious of the approaching doom, and yet to regard it with indifference and cynicism? Is it humanly possible to face the end cynically? #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

There are certainly some among us who are cynical toward most of that which beings create and praise. There are some among us who are cynical about the present situation of the World and the leaders of the World. We may be cynical, of course, about the true motives behind all human action; we may be cynical about ourselves, our inner growth and our outer achievements. We ay be cynical about religion and about our Churches, their doctrines, their symbols and their representatives. There is scarcely one thing about which we may not be cynical. However, we cannot be cynical about the shaking of the foundations of everything! I have never encountered anyone who seriously was cynical about that. I have seen much cynicism, particularly among the younger people in Europe before the war. However, I know from abundant witness that this cynicism vanished when the foundations of the World began to shake at the beginning of the European catastrophe. We can be cynical about the end only so long as we do not have to see it, only so long as we feel safety in the place in which our cynicism can be exercised. However, if the foundations of this place and all places begin to crumble, cynicism itself crumbles with them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

And only two alternatives remain—despair, which is the certainty of eternal destruction, or faith, which is the certainty of eternal salvation. “The World itself shall crumble, but my salvation knows no end,” says the Lord. This is the alternative for which the prophets stood. This is what we should call religion, or more precisely, the religious ground for all religion. How could the prophets speak as they did? How could they paint these most terrible pictures of doom and destruction without cynicism or despair? It was because, beyond the sphere of destruction, they saw the sphere of salvation; because, in the doom of the temporal, they saw the manifestation of the Eternal. It was because they saw the manifestation of the Eternal. It was because they were certain that they belonged within the two spheres, the changeable and the unchangeable, bot bound within it alone, can face the end. All others compelled to escape, to turn away. How much of our lives consist in nothing but attempts to look away from the end! We often succeed in forgetting the end. However, ultimately we fail; for we always carry the end with us in our bodies and our souls. And often whole nations and cultures succeed in forgetting the end. However, ultimately they fail too, for in their lives and growth they always carry the end with them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

Often the whole Earth succeeds in making its creatures forget its end, but sometimes these creatures feel that their Earth is beginning to grow old, and that its foundations are beginning to shake. For the Earth always carries its ends within it. We happen to live in a time when very few of us, very few nations, very few sections of the Earth, will succeed in forgetting the end. For in these days the foundations of the Earth do shake. May we not turn our eyes away; may we not close our ears and our mouths! However, may we rather see, through the crumbling of a World, the rock of eternity and the salvation which as no end! Music, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of Heaven we have below. “And in the mouth of three witnesses shall these things be established; and the testimony of three, and this work, in the which shall be shown forth the power of God and also his word, of which the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost bear record—and all this shall stand as a testimony against the World at the last day. And if it so be that they repent and come unto the Father in the name of Jesus, they shall be received into the kingdom of God. And now, if I have no authority for these things, judge ye’ for ye shall know that I have authority when ye shall see me, and we shall stand before God at the last day. Amen,” reports Ether 5.4-6. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Receive my confession, O my only Hope of Salvation, Jesus Christ, my Lord and God. For in the mortal World I am lost, and altogether in thought, word, and deed, and in all evils, I am overwhelmed. Thou Who justifiest the ungodly and quickenest the dead, Lord my God, justify me and revive me. Save me, O Lord, King of eternal glory, Who canst save. Grant me to will and to do, and to accomplish, what is pleasing to Thee, and profitable to myself; give me assistance in distress, consolation in persecution, and strength in all temptation; vouchsafe me pardon for past evils, amendment of present evils, and be pleased to send me protection against evils to come. Thine it is to give the sinner a stricken heart and a fountain of tears. It is mine, if Thou shalt vouchsafe it, to weep for my sins; it is Thine to efface them speedily, as a cloud. I beseech Thee, O Lord, to forget my sins, and to remember Thy mercies. O Christ, spare me, pity me, not according to Thy word, that I may live, and not be disappointed of my hope. Give me a fountain of tears, O Fountain of life. My hope of salvation is in no works of mine; but my soul hangs simply on the boundlessness of Thy love, and confides in the multitude of Thy mercy. Hear our Prayer, O Lord, and listen to our groanings, for we acknowledge our iniquities, and lay open our sins before Thee. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Against Thee, O God, have we sinned; to Thee we make our confession, and implore forgiveness. Turn Thy face again, O Lord, upon Thy servants whom Thou hast redeemed with Thine own Blood. Spare us, we pray Thee, and vouchsafe pardon to our sins, and be pleased to extend to us Thy loving-kindness and Thy mercy. Thou eternal God, thine is surpassing greatness, unspeakable goodness, super-abundant grace; I can as soon count the sands of ocean’s ‘lip’ as number thy favours towards me; I know but a part, but that part exceeds all praise. I thank thee for personal mercies, a measure of health, preservation of body, comforts of house and home, sufficiency of food and clothing, continuance of mental powers, my family, their mutual help and support, the delights of domestic harmony and peace, the seats now filled that might have been vacant, my country, church Bible, faith. However, O, how I mourn my sin, ingratitude, vileness, the days that to my guilt, the scenes that witness my offending tongue; all things in Heaven, Earth, around, within, without, condemn me—the Sun which sees my misdeeds, the darkness which is light to thee, the cruel accuser who justly charges me, the good Angels who have been provoked to leave me, thy countenance which scans my secret sins, thy righteous law, thy holy word, my sin-soiled conscience, my private and public life, my neighbours, myself—all write dark things against me. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

I deny them not, frame no excuse, but confess, Father, I have sinned; yet still I live, and fly repenting to thy outstretched arms; thou wilt not cast me off, for Jesus brings me near, thou wilt not cast me off, for Jesus brings me near, thou wilt not condemn me, for he died in my stead, thou wilt not mark my mountains of sin, for he levelled all, and his beauty covers my deformities. O my God, I bid farewell to sin by clinging to his cross, hiding in his wounds, and sheltering in his side. O Good Jesus, Who didst enable Lazarus at the sound of Thy voice to rise from the tomb, grant us to hear Thy voice in our souls, and to rise through grace from the depth of our own sin. Cleanse, O Lord, our consciences by the sincere confession of the Catholic Faith, and by continual contrition of heart; that we may always be heard by Thee in Heaven, when we call to Thee for pardon of sins on Earth! Let us live then and be glad, while young life is before us. “Though I speak with the tongues of humans and of Angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal,” reports 1 Corinthians 13.1. “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand,” reports St. Mark 3.25. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard! I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. Our country is the World; our country people are all humankind. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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Moonlight and Love Songs are Never Out of Date—Hearts Full of Passion!

December 28, 2019 4:27 am

The rich man has his BMW i8 motor car, his country and his town estate. He smokes a $1 million Gurkha Cigar, infused with the delectable Remy Martin Black Pearl Louis XIII. And jeers at Fate. Yet through my lamp burns low and dim, though I must slave for livelihood—think you that I would change with him? You bet I would. As things are now, education is so cluttered and tangled up with a thousand senseless notions and stupidities, that the task of reformation is almost a superhuman one. It is entirely a task of taking away and reducing—not one of adding to, or expanding. It is the task of the sculptor, who cuts the superfluous marble off, rather than that of the wax-workman who lays on the stuff thicker and thicker. Beneficial school change is built on common dreams, common concerns, common aspirations, common trust, and common sense! Those individuals and organizations that are most effective do not experience fewer problems, less stressful situations, and greater fortune—they just deal with them differently. The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. Probably the most dramatic metaphor for change as the watchword of our time is the experience of the Russian Cosmonaut Krikalev, who left Leningrad for a 313-day journey in space in 1991. Almost a year later he returned to a city no longer on the map and a country that no longer existed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Great changes require administrative support and necessary resources. Without these two elements the potential will die a slow death and the old negative patterns will return. Some people grin and bear it. Others smile and change it. At times it seems to us that the help promised us has not materialized. This is our opinion. However, it may also be that our ego stands in the way too obstinately. In any case it should been made clear to us in books and conversations that the people in positions of authority are not Masters, but only fellow students. If we cannot get the required help from such a one, we must accept the fact that it simply is not meant to be. When it comes to God’s grace, it cuts both ways: It can neither be earned by our merit nor forfeited by our demerit. If one sometimes feels one deserves an answer to prayer or a particular blessing from God because of one’s hard work or sacrifice, one is living by works, not by grace. However, it is just as true that if one sometimes despair of experiencing God’s blessing because of our demerits—the oughts one should have done but did not, or the do nots one should not have done but did—one is also casting aside the grace of God. Often time, we seldom think of merit on our part, but we are frequently painfully aware of our demerits. Therefore, we must, as much as possible, keep in mind that our demerits do not compel God to with draw His grace from us, but rather, God treats us without regard to deserts whatsoever. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

I would much rather stake my hope of God’s blessing on His infinite goodness than believed that I am cursed or focus on my good works. John Newton, the debauched and dissolute slave trader, after his conversation wrote the wonderful old hymn “Amazing Grace.” He never tired of contemplating with awed amazement the wonder of a grace that would reach even to him. However, the person who grew up in a Godly Christian family, who trusted Christ at an early age, and who never indulged in any so-called “gross” sins should be just as amazed at the grace of God as was John Newton. Here is a spiritual principle regarding the grace of God: To the extent you are clinging to any vestiges of self-righteousness are putting any confidence in your own spiritual attainments, to that degree you are not living by the grace of God in your life. This principle applies both in salvation and in living the Christian life. Grace and good works (that is, works done to earn favor with God) are mutually exclusive, which means being related such that each excludes or precludes the other. Essentially these principles are incompatible. We cannot stand, as it were, with one foot on grace and the other on our own works of merit. From hence, let fierce contending nation know what dire effects from civil discord flow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Go to the people. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build on what they have. And the best leaders, when their task is accomplished, and their work is done, the people will remark: we have done through God’s grace. However, if you are trusting to any degree in your own mortality or religious attainments, or if you believe God will somehow recognize any of your good works as merit toward your own salvation, you need to seriously consider if you are truly Christian. I realize I risk offending some with that statement, but we must be absolutely clear about the truth of the gospel of salvation. The most shining deeds and valuable qualities that can be found among humans, though highly useful and truly excellent, when set in their proper places, and referred to suitable ends, are, as to the grand article of justification treated as nonentities. For divine grace disdains to be assisted in the performance imperfect performances of humans. Attempts to complete what grace begins, betray our pride and often the Lord; but cannot promote our spiritual interest. Let the reader, therefore, carefully remember, that grace is either absolutely free, or it is not at all: and, that one who professes to look for salvation by grace, either believes in one’s heart to be saved entirely by it, or one acts inconsistently in affairs of the greatest importance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

Those who are truly saved are those who have come to Jesus with the attitude expressed in the words of an old hymn, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” Let us reflect for a moment on the classic definitions of activity and passivity we find in Aristotle, Spinoza, Goethe, Marx, and many other thinkers of the New World over the last two thousand years. Activity is understood as something that brings the powers inherent in people to expression, that helps give birth, that brings to life both our physical and emotional, both our intellectual and artistic capacities. Perhaps some of you will not quite understand what I mean when I speak of powers inherent in people, for we are accustomed to thinking of power and energy as residing in machines, not in people. And whatever powers human beings do possess are channeled primarily into inventing and operating machines. As we marvel more and more over the power of machines, we understand less and less of the wonderful powers of human beings. We no longer quite believe those lines from Sophocles’ Antigone: “Numberless are the World’s wonders, but none more wonderful than humans.” A rocket that can fly to the Moon seems far more wonderful to us than a mere human being. And in a certain sense we feel that in our modern inventions we have created things more marvelous than God did when he created humans. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

We have to reorient our thinking if we mean to focus our attention on human consciousness and on the development of the vast potential human beings have. We possess not only the ability to speak and to think but also the capacity for ever deeper insight, for ever greater maturity, a capacity for love and for artistic expression. All those things are potentially present in us, waiting to be developed. Activity, being active in the way that authors I have named understand it, means that: the bringing out, the manifesting of those powers that human beings have but that usually remain hidden or suppressed. If you take as your point of departure the human being as human being and one’s relationship to the World as a human one, then you can give only love in return for love, trust in return for trust, and so forth. If you want to influence other people, then you have to be a person who genuinely stimulates and challenges others. Each of your relationship with people—and with nature—has to be a specific expression of your own true, individual life appropriate to the object of your intentions. If you love without awakening love in return, that is, if your love as love does not produce a loving response, if the expression of your being as a loving person does not make you loved, then your love is powerless and brings unhappiness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Love is clearly a kind of activity. It rarely occurs to modern beings that they can create anything through love. One’s usual an almost exclusive concern is to be loved, not to emanate love oneself, not to awaken love in others through one’s love for them and so to create something new, something that had not existed in the World before. That is why one think that being loved is purely a matter of chance or something you can make happen is purely a matter of chance or something you can make happen by buying all sorts of things that will supposedly make you lovable, everything from the right shirt to an elegant suit will do for you I really cannot say. However, I do have to acknowledge as an unfortunate fact that many beings are loved for their sporty BMW motor cars. And here we have to add, of course, that many beings are fonder of their cares than they are of their wives. At any rate, both partners to such an arrangement often seem quite content, but after a while they will become bored with each other and possibly even hate each other, because they have both been deceived or will at least feel deceived. They thought they were both loved, but in reality all they have done is pretend at love. They have not practiced active love. Similarly, when we say, in the classic sense of the word, that someone is passive, we do not mean that one sits still, reflects, meditates, or looks at the natural World; we mean instead that one is driven by forces one does not control, that one cannot act but can only reacting. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

Human beings are a reactive being. Present one with a stimulus, and he or she will promptly react to it. Behaviorism assumes that all human behavior is essentially governed by the principle of rewards and punishments. Reward and punishment are the two great stimuli, and a human being will presumably react to them they way another other living creature does. One will learn to do things for which one is rewarded and not to do the ones for which there is a threat of punishment. One does not necessarily have to be punished; the threat of punishment alone usually suffices. Every now and then, of course, a few people do indeed have to be punished so that the threat of punishment does not become an empty threat. Now let us look at what it means to be “driven.” Take an inebriated person, for example. One may well be “active.” One yells and waves one’s arms around. Or think of someone in that psychotic state that we describe as “manic.” Such a person is hyperactive, one thinks one can help the whole World; one talks a blue streak, sends telegrams, gets things moving. One appears to be prodigiously active. However, we know that in the first case the motor behind the activity is alcohol; in the manic patient, it is some electrochemical malfunction in the brain. The external manifestations in both cases, though, appear to be those of extreme activity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

“Activity” that is either a mere reaction to a stimulus or a “driveness” or compulsion manifested as passion is, in reality, passivity, no matter how great a stir it may make. Our words “passion” and “passive” derive from passio and passivus respectively, both of which stem in turn from the Latin verb meaning “to suffer.” So if we say of someone that one is a very passionate person, we are paying one a rather dubious compliment. Jealousy is a passion that eagerly pursues what brings about suffering. That is true not only of jealousy but of any passion that takes on a compulsive character: ambition, green, the lust for power, gluttony. All addictions are passions that create suffering. They are forms of passivity. “Passion” has taken on a wider range of meaning in our modern usage and so has lost the clarity it once had. I will not go into the reasons for that. Now if you take a close look at the activity of people who merely react or who act compulsively, people who are therefore passive in the classical sense, you will notice that their reactions never take a new direction. Their reactions are always the same. The same stimulus will always produce the same reaction. You can predict with certainty what will happen each time. Everything can be calculated. There is no individuality in evidence here; no powers of thought come into play; everything seems to be programmed: the same stimulus, the same effect. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

Since behaviorism sees the human being primarily as a mechanism, it makes similar assumptions about one: A certain stimulus will evoke a certain response. The study and exploration of that phenomenon and the formulation of prescriptions based on it is what the behaviorist call science. Perhaps it is a science, but it is not a human one, for a living human being never reacts twice in precisely the same way. At each moment one is a different person, one is at least never exactly the same. Heraclites expressed the same idea when he said, “It is impossible to wade into the same river twice.” The reason is, of course, that the river is constantly flowing. I would say that behavioral psychology may be a science, but it is not a science of humans. It is rather a science of alienated beings conducted with alienated methods by alienated researchers. It may be capable of illuminating certain aspects of human nature, but it does not touch on what is vital, on what is specifically human about human beings. It is clear that scientific findings can be communicated only to those who have agreed to the same ground rules of investigation. The Australian bushman will be quite unimpressed with the findings of science regarding bacterial infection. He knows that illness truly is caused by evil spirits. It is only when he too agrees to scientific method as good means of preventing self-deception, that he will be likely to accept its findings. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

However, even among those who have adopted the ground rules of science, tentative belief in the findings of a scientific research can only occur where there is a subjective readiness to believe. One could find many examples. Most psychologist are quite ready to believe evidence showing that the lecture system produces significant increments of learning, and quite unready to believe that the turn of an unseen card may be called through an ability labelled extrasensory perception. Yet the scientific evidence for the latter is considerably more impeccable than for the former. Likewise when the so-called “Iowa studies” first came out, indicating that intelligence might be considerably altered by environmental conditions, there was great disbelief among psychologists, and many attacks on the imperfect scientific methods used. The scientific evidence for this finding is not much better today than it was when the Iowa studies first appeared, but the subjective readiness of psychologists to believe such a finding has altered greatly. A historian of science has noted that empiricists, had they existed at the time, would have been the first to disbelieve the findings of Nicolaus Copernicus, who formulated a model of the Universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at the center of the Universe. Nonetheless, Aristarchus of Samos also formulated the same model about 1800 years prior. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

It appears then that whether I believe the scientific findings of others, or those from my own studies, depends in part on my readiness to put a tentative belief in such findings. One example from my own experience may suffice. In 1941 a research study done under my supervision showed that the future adjustment of delinquent adolescents was best predicted by a measure of their realistic self-understanding and self-acceptance. The instrument was a crude one, but it was a better predictor than measures of family environment, hereditary capacities, social milieu, and the like. At that time I was simply not ready to believe such a finding, because my own belief, like that of most psychologists, was that such factors as the emotional climate in the family and the influence of the peer group were the only real determinates of the future delinquency and non-delinquency. Only gradually, as my experience with psychotherapy continued and deepened, was it possible for me to give my tentative belief to the findings of this study and of a later one (1944) which confirmed it. One reason we are not particularly aware of this subjective fact is that in the physical sciences particularly, we have gradually adopted a very large area of experience in which we are ready to believe any finding which can be shown to rest upon the rules of the scientific game, properly played. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry. Draw your salary before you spend it. Because the soul encompasses and organizes the whole person, it is frequently taken to be the person. We naturally treat persons as souls. However, of course, the soul is not the person. It is, rather the deepest part of the self in terms of overall operations; and like body, it has the capacity to operate (and does, largely, operate) without conscious supervision. The soul is somewhat like a computer that quietly runs a business or manufacturing operation and only comes to our attention when it malfunctions or requires some adaption to new tasks. It can be significantly reprogrammed, and this too is a major part of what goes into the spiritual formation (re-formation) of the person. The figures of the soul are given off in the beams of Heaven, and the Earth receives them. There is an appetite that binds the whole and its parts, the motion of congruity or situation of the parts in respect of the whole, evident in so many particulars. This entails a consenting or proportion. There is the appetite in which the inferior kind moves toward its superior kind. Like agrees with like in small moments, as is seen when the magnet receives tiny iron particles; but iron in larger quantities will go to the Earth, the kind superior to the magnet. There is an appetite in every being to propagate the more general form of oneself, for instance, to multiply one’s species. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Because the soul is so inclusive and fundamental and to some degree independent of conscious direction, biblical and poetic language often addresses it in the third person. The psalmist asked, “Why are you in despair, O my Soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence,” reports Psalm 42.5. The “rich fool” of Luke 12 said, “I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry,’” reports verse 19. In his poem “The Chambered Nautilus,” Oliver Wendell Holmes intoned, “Build thee more stately mansion, oh my soul, as the swift season roll.” However, for all of the soul’s vastness and independence, the tiny executive center of the person—that is, the spirit or will—can redirect and re-form the soul, with God’s cooperation. It mainly does this by redirecting the body in spiritual disciplines and toward various other types of experiences under God. In the language of the prophets, it is the Lord Who shakes the mountains and melts the rocks. This is a language that modern being cannot understand. And so God, Who is not bound to any special language, not even to that of the prophets, spoke to the beings of today through the mouths of our greatest scientists, and this is what He said: You yourselves can bring about the end upon yourselves. I give the power to shake the foundations of your Earth into your hands. You can use this power for creation or destruction. How will you use it? #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

This is what God said to humankind through the work of the scientists and through their discover of the key to the foundations of life. However, through them He did even more. God forced His Word upon them, as He had forced it upon the prophets, in spite of their attempt ever to resist it. For no prophet likes to say what one has to say. And no scientist who participated in the great and terrible discovery liked to say what he or she had to say. However, one could not but speak; one had to raise one’s voice, like the prophets, to tell this generation what the prophet told their generations: that the Earth and humans, trees and animals, are threatened by a catastrophe which they can scarcely escape. A tremendous anxiety expresses itself through the words of these beings. Not only do they feel the shaking of the foundation, but also that they themselves are largely responsible for it. They tell us that they despise what they have done, because they know that we are left with only a slight chance of escape. Wavering between little hope and much despair, they urge us to use this chance. This is the way in which God had spoken to our generation about the shaking of the foundations. We have forgotten about such shaking. And it was science, more than anything else, which had made us forget it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

It was not science as knowledge, but rather science for the purpose of hidden idolatry, for the purpose of persuading us to believe in our Earth as the place for the establishment of the Kingdom of God, to believe in ourselves as those through whom this was to be achieved. There were prophets of this idolatry—false prophets, as they were called by Jeremiah—who cried: “Progress, infinite progress! Peace, universal peace! Happiness, happiness for everyone!” And now what has happened? That same science, in the saving power of which these false prophets believed, has utterly destroyed that idolatry. The greatest triumph of science was the power it gave to humans to annihilate themselves and their World. And those who brought about this triumph are speaking today, like the true prophets of the past—which is to say, not of progress, but of a return to the chaos of the beginning; not of peace, but of disruption; and not of happiness, but of doom. In this way science is atoning for the idolatrous abuse to which it has lent itself for centuries. Science, which has closed our eyes and thrown us into an abyss of ignorance about the few things that really matter, has revealed itself, had opened our eyes, and has pointed, at least, to one fundamental truth—that “the mountains shall depart and the hills shall be removed,” that “Earth shall fall down to rise no more,” because its foundations shall be destroyed. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

However, still we hear voices—and since the first shock, they have been increasing—which try to comfort us, saying: Perhaps humans will use the power to shake the foundations for creative purposes, for progress, for peace and happiness. The future is possessed in human’s hands, in our hands. If we should decide for constructiveness instead of destruction, why should we not be able to continue the creation? Why should we not become like God, at least in this respect? Job had to become silent when the Lord spoke to him our of the whirlwind, saying, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Declare if thou hast understanding!” However, out false voices continue: “Perhaps we can answer where Job could not. Have not our scientific discoveries revealed the mysteries of the ways in which the Earth was founded? Are we not, in thought and knowledge, able to be present at this event? Why should we be afraid of the shaking of the foundations?” However, humans are not God; and whenever one has claimed to be like God, one has been rebuked and brought to self-destruction and despair. When one has rested complacently on one’s cultural creativity, or on one’s technical progress, on one’s political institutions or on one’s religious systems, one has been thrown into disintegration and chaos; all the foundations of one’s personal, natural and cultural life have been shaken. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

As long as there has been human history, this is what has happened; in our period it has happened on a larger scale than ever before. Human’s claim to be like God has been rejected once more; not one foundation of the life of our civilization has remained unshaken. The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a being, who cannot grasp proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated. When the existence of a cause is demonstrated from an effect, this effect takes the place of the definition of the cause in proof of the cause’s existence. This is especially the case in regard to God, because, in order to prove the existence of anything, it is necessary to accept as a middle term the meaning of the word, and not its essence, for the question of its essence follows on the question of its existence. Now the names given to God are derived from His Effects; consequently, in demonstrating the existence of God from His effects, we may take for the middle term the meaning of the word “God.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

From effects not proportionate to the cause no perfect knowledge of that cause can be obtained. Yet from every effect the existence of the cause can be clearly demonstrated, and so we can demonstrate the existence of God from His effect; through from them we cannot perfectly know God as He is in His Essence. Before Thine eyes, O Lord, I stand guilty by the witness of my own conscience. I hardly dare to ask what I do not deserve to obtain. For Thou, Lord, knowest our doings. We blush to confess what we fear not to commit. Unto Thee, after falling into sin, I return from my wanderings; before Thee I lie sorely wounded; worthless as I am, my only relief is in Thee, O good Physician! Everywhere Thou findest us; therefore unto Thee we flee, because from Thee we cannot escape. Let Thy forgiveness comfort those whom their guilt terrifies. We plead guilty before Thee, O Lord; spare us, because Thou art kind. We know that unless Thou pardon, Thou mayest justly punish us. However, with Thee is great mercy, and overflowing readiness to forgive. Let Thy loving-kindness, from which we hope everything, not impute to us that wherein we have offended, but look upon that which we ask. O God, Who desirest not the death, but the repentance of sinners, reject not from Thy tender love my wretched self, a frail sinner; nor look to my sins and crimes, and my unclean and base thoughts, whereby I am woefully disunited from Thy will; but look Thou to thine own mercy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

We may meet a self-actualized person daily over several weeks and yet know nothing of one’s mind, have no insight into one’s true character. This is because you do not have the high-grade quality of perceptiveness needed to sense the individual. There is no level of contact, no real communication between you and the individual. Not every illuminated being has one’s status admitted and one’s knowledge recorded. Some have not been found out by the World until years after they have been dead. If the being has found one’s divine soul and it has fund one, one is thereby set free of the rules, restrictions, and disciplines which ascetically fence the life of a being who has not. Nothing can burn away the divine presence in one’s heart. “And no I, Moroni, have written the words which were commanded me, according to my memory; and I have told you the things which I have sealed up; therefore touch them not in order that ye may translate; for that thing is forbidden you, expect by and by it shall be wisdom in God. And behold, ye may be privileged that ye may show the plates unto those who shall assist to bring forth this work; and unto three shall they be shown by the power of God; wherefore they shall know of surety that these things are true,” reports Ether 5.1-3. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. I pray Heaven to be bestow the best of blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. My none but honest and wise beings every rule under this roof. O Lord, I hand on thee; I see, believe, live, when thy will, not mine, is done; I can plead nothing in myself in regard of any worthiness and grace, in regard of thy providence and promises, but only thy good pleasures. If thy mercy make me poor and vile, blessed be thou! Prayers arising from my needs are preparations for future mercies; help me to honour thee by believing before I feel, for great is the sin if I make feeling a cause of faith. Show me what sins hide three from me, and eclipse thy love; help me to humble myself for past evils, to be resolved to walk with more care, for if I do not walk holily before thee, how can I be assured of my salvation? It is the meek and the humble who are shown thy covenant, know thy will, are pardoned and healed, who by faith depend and rest upon grace, who are sanctified and quickened, who evidence they love. Help me to pray in faith and so find thy will, by leaning hard on thy rich free mercy, by believing thou wilt give what thou hast promised. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Strengthen me to pray with the conviction that whatever I receive is thy gift, so that I may pray until my prayer be granted; teach me to believe that all degrees of mercy arise from several degrees of prayer, that when faith is begun it is imperfect and must grow, as shaped ground opens wider and wider until rain comes. So shall I wait thy will, pray for it to be done, and by grace become fully obedient. Almighty and everlasting God, by Whom that begins to be which was not, and that which lay hid is made visible, cleanse away the folly of our heart, and purify us from our secret vices; that we may be able to serve Thee, O Lord, with a pure mind; though Jesus Christ our Lord. Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last. Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and it current is strong; no sooner does anything appear than it is swept away, and another comes in its place, and will be swept away too. Nothing happens to any person that one is not formed by nature to bear. Remember that to change your mind and follow one who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

CRESLEIGH RIVERSIDE AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the low $400’s

Now Selling!

Exemplified in the charm of this house Cresleigh Home is a design reminiscent of early America. The architecture is complimented by stucco and wood siding, which gives this classic Folk-Style Farmhouse the double advantage of good looks and a hardworking, vital floor plan. Note the covered porch provides shelter to the front door. The entry opens the way to causal gatherings. There is that is located right off the entry way, a great room with a fireplace, dining room, and an amazing kitchen, with a butler’s pantry, is handy for both living areas. Residence four is the largest home offered in Cresleigh Riverside.

This two-story, 3,489 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one lavishly appointed suite on the first floor, three- and one-half bathroom, and a true three-car garage. Upstairs, the plan is flexible as they come: four bedrooms, and a loft. The bedrooms could easily be a study or playroom, a sewing room, home office, library, or even a gym. Special amenities make this home a stand-out from others in its class, and will suit your family and lifestyle. You will love the sliding glass doors to the back yard, and the wealth of closets and storage space. Our Plumas Ranch homes are now selling! Not only will you own a beautiful home, you’ll live near this beautiful park, too! 🌳

If you’re interested in learning about the pricing for our #Riverside, #Meadows, or #Bluffs neighborhood, sign up for our interest list or call to learn more about pricing: https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/

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Come to Me and You Will Find Rest in Your Souls–I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End!

December 18, 2019 2:11 am

We often worry about what we will be tomorrow, but do not take into account that we are somebody today. Life should be a place of learning suffused with excitement, engagement, passion, challenge, creativity, and joy. When we are in the minority, that is when the test of courage comes; when we are in the majority is when the test of acceptance comes. It is our destiny and the destiny of everything in the World that we must come to an end. Very end that we experience in nature and humankind speaks to us with a loud voice: you also will come to an end! It may reveal itself in the farewell to a place where we have lived for a long time, the separation from the fellowship of intimate associates, the death of someone near to us. Or it may become apparent to us in the failure of a work that gave meaning to us, the end of a whole period of life, the approach of old age, or even in the melancholy side of nature visible in autumn. All this tells us: you will also come to an end. Whenever we are shaken by this voice reminding us of our end, we ask anxiously—what does it mean that we have a beginning and an end, that we come from the darkness of the not yet, and rush ahead towards the darkness of the no more? When Augustine asked this question, he began his attempt to answer it with a prayer. And it is right to do so, because praying means elevating oneself to the eternal. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

In fact, there is no other way of judging time than to see it in the light of the eternal. In order to judge something, one must be partly within it, partly out of it. If we were totally within time, we would not be able to elevate ourselves in prayer, meditation and thought, to the eternal. We would be children of time like all other creatures and could not ask the question of the meaning of time. However, as human beings we are aware of the eternal to which we belong and from which we are estranged by the bondage of time. We speak of time in three ways or modes—the past, present, and future. Every child is aware of them, but no wise being has ever penetrated their mystery. We become aware of them when we hear a voice telling us: you also will come to an end. It is the future that awakens us to the mystery of time. Time runs from the beginning to the end, but our awareness of times goes in the opposite direction. It starts with the anxious anticipation of the end. In the light of the future we see the past and present. So let us first consider our going into the future and towards the end that is the last point that we can anticipate in out future. The image of the future produces contrasting feelings in beings. The expectation of the future gives one a feeling of joy. We may even learn to recapture the will to laugh and the art of laughing at will. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

It is a great thing to have a future in which one can actualize one’s possibilities, in which one can experience the abundance of life, in which one can create something new—be it new work, a new way of life, or the regeneration of one’s own being. Courageously one goes ahead towards the new, especially in the earlier part of one’s own life. However, this feeling struggles with other ones: the anxiety about what is hidden in the future, the ambiguity of everything it will bring us, the shortness of its duration that decreases with every year of our life and becomes shorter the nearer we come to the unavoidable end. And finally the end itself, with its impenetrable darkness and the threat that one’s whole existence in time will be judged as a failure. Therefore, it may be a good idea to think before one speaks, and read before one thinks. This may give one something to think about that we did not make up ourselves—a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when one is at the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions. We want to be in the pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in the pursuit of us. The goal is to fully realize the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in our souls. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

How do beings, how do you, react to this image of the future with its hope and threat and inescapable end? Probably most of us react by looking at the immediate future, anticipating it, working for it, hoping for it, being anxious about it, while cutting off from our awareness the future which is farther away, and above all, by cutting off from our consciousness the end, the last moment of our future. Perhaps we could not live without doing so most of our time. However, perhaps we will not be able to die if we always do so. And if one is not able to die, is one really about to live? How do we react if we become aware of the inescapable end contained in our future? Are we able to bear it, to take its anxiety into a courage that faces ultimate darkness? Or are we thrown into utter hopelessness? Do we hope against hope, or do we repress our awareness of the end because we cannot stand it? Repressing the consciousness of our end expresses itself in several ways. Many try to do so by putting the expectation of a long life between now and the end. For them it is decisive that the end be delayed. Even old people who are near the end do this, for they cannot endure the fact that the end will not be delayed much longer. Many people realize this deception and hope for a continuation of this life after death. They expect an endless future in which they may achieve or possess what has been denied them in this life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

This attitude that we will achieve our hearts desires in the after life is a prevalent attitude about the future, and also a very simple one. It denies that there is an end. It refuses to accept that we are creatures, that we come from the eternal ground of time and return to the eternal ground of time and have received a limited span of time as our time. It replaces eternity by endless future. However, endless future is without a final aim; it repeats itself and could well be described as an image of hell. This is not the Christian way of dealing with the end. The Christian message says the eternal stands above past and future. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” The Christian message acknowledges that time runs towards an end, and that we move towards the end of that time which is our time. Many people—but not the Bible—speak loosely of the “hereafter” or the “life after death.” Even in our liturgies eternity is translated by “World without end.” However, the World, by its very nature, is that which comes to an end. If we want to speak in truth without foolish, wishful thinking, we should speak about the eternal that is neither timelessness nor endless time. The mystery of the future is answered in the eternal of which we may speak in images taken from time. However, if we forget that the images are images, we fall into absurdities and self-deceptions. There is no time after time, but there is eternity above time. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Time is like a jigsaw puzzle. Each edge piece of a puzzle interlocks with two others to form the puzzle’s framework and give structure and support to the puzzle as a whole. Each piece has a unique design and cut that ensures just the right place to fit within the puzzle. Each morning, people from the edge pieces that interlock to create a safe environment and give support to one another and the whole. Each morning, they provide just the right place for every individual to fit safely and securely. The community members are strength and stability, and like the edge pieces, they do not stand alone in this responsibility. There are always others to support and assist, ensuring that every person has a place. The spirits temper the movements of bodily parts. Some infectious diseases are chiefly in the spirits, and not so much in the humours. We have complex and contradictory feelings toward the freedom and independence and self-determination of the individuals and countries: we desire these and are proud of the past support we have given to such tendencies, and yet we are often frightened by what they may mean. We tend to value and respect the dignity and worth of each individual, yet when we are frightened, we move away from this direction. Suppose we presented ourselves in some such fashion, openly and transparently, in our foreign relations. We would be attempting to be the nation which we truly are, in all our complexity and even contradictoriness. What would be the result? #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

If we, as a country, were more open and transparent in our foreign relations, it seems the results would be similar to the experiences of a client when one is more truly that which he or she is. Let us look at some of the probable outcomes. We would be much more comfortable, because we would have nothing to hide. We could focus on the problem at hand, rather than spending our energies to prove that we are moral or consistent. We could use all of our creative imagination in solving the problem, rather than in defending ourselves. We could openly advance both our selfish interests, and our sympathetic concern for others, and let these conflicting desires find the balance which is acceptable to us as a people. We could freely change and grow in our leadership position, because we would not be bound by rigid concepts of what we have been, must, ought to be. We would find that we were much less feared, because others would be less inclined to suspect what lies behind the façade. We would, by our own openness, tend to bring forth openness and realism on the part of others. We would tend to work out the solutions of World problems on the basis of the real issues involved, rather than in terms of the facades being worn by the negotiating parties. In short what I am suggesting by this fantasied example is that nations and organizations might discover, as have individuals, that it is a richly rewarding experience to be what one deeply is. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

I am suggesting that this view contains the seeds of a philosophical approach to all of life, that it is more than a trend observed in the experience of clients. Feeling rules are what guide emotion work by establishing the sense of entitlement or obligation that governs emotional exchanges. This emotion system works privately, often free of observation. It is a vital aspect of deep private bonds and also affords a way of talking about them. It is a way of describing how—as parents and children, wives and husbands, friends and lovers—we intervene in feelings in order to shape them. What are feeling rules? How do we know they exist? How do they bear on deep acting? We may address these questions by focusing on the pinch between “what I do feel” and “what I should feel,” for at this spot we get our best view of emotional convention. Now, when we take a closer look at the whole person, we find that there are six basic aspects in our lives as individual human beings—six things inseparable from every human life. These together and in interplay make up human nature. Thought (images, concepts, judgments, inferences), feeling (sensation, emotion), choice (will, decision, character), body (action, interaction with the physical World), social context (personal and structural relations to others), and soul (the factor that integrates all of the above to form one life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

Simply put, every human being thinks (has a thought life), feels, chooses, interacts with one’s body and its social context, and (more of less) integrates all of the foregoing as parts of one life. These are the essential factors in a human being, and nothing essential to human life falls outside of them. The ideal of the spiritual life in the Christian understanding is one where all of the essential parts of the human self are effectively organized around Go, as they are restored and sustained by him. Spiritual formation in Christ is the process leading to that ideal end, and its result is love of God with all of the hearts, soul, mind, and strength, and of the neighbor as oneself. The human self is then fully integrated under God. The salvation or deliverance of the believer in Christ is essentially holistic or whole-life. David the psalmist, speaking of his own experience but prophetically expressing the understanding of Jesus the Messiah, said, “I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure,” reports Psalm 16.7-9. Note how many aspects of the self are explicitly involved in this passage: the mind, the will, the feeling, the soul, and the body. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

A major part of understanding spiritual formation in the Christian traditions is to follow closely the way the biblical writings repeatedly and emphatically focus on the various essential dimensions of the human being and their role in life as a whole. We will draw from spiritual understanding the incentive to keep on with our quest and the courage to set higher goals. To learn from God in this total-life immersion is ow we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. The outcome is that we increasingly are able to do all things, speaking or acting, as I Christ were doing them. As apprentices of Christ we are not learning how to do some special religious activity, but how to live every moment of our live from the reality of God’s kingdom. I am learning how to live my actual life as Jesus would if He were me. No matter what my profession is, I am in full-time Christian service no less than someone who earns his or her living in a specifically religious role. Jesus stands beside me and teaches me in all I do to live in God’s World. He shows me how, in every circumstance, to reside in His word and thus be a genuine apprentice of His—His disciple indeed. This enables me to find the reality of God’s World everywhere I may be, and thereby to escape from enslavement to sin and evil. We become able to do what we know to be good and right, even when it is humanly impossible. Our lives and words become constant testimony of the reality of God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

When, for example, an architect facing a difficult architectural job, one must know how to integrate it into the kingdom of God as much as someone attempting to win another to Christ or preparing a lesson for a congregation. Until we are clear on this, we will have missed Jesus’ connection between life and God and will automatically exclude most of our everyday lives from the domain of faith and discipleship. Jesus lived most of His life on Earth as a blue-collar worker, someone we might describe today as an independent contractor. In His vocation He practiced everything He later taught about in life in the kingdom. It is important to move away from derogatory language against others, calling them twits, jerks, or idiots, and increasingly mesh with the respect and endearment for persons that naturally flows from God’s way. This in turn transforms all of my dealings with others into tenderness and makes the usual coldness and brutality of human relations, which lays a natural foundation for unspeakable actions, simply unthinkable. Our mind and heart will keep coming back to God’s grace. The grace of God is so inexhaustible and at times overwhelming. “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever more! Amen,” reports 2 Peter 3.18. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

Growing in the grace of God allows one to become acquainted with elements of our experience which have in the past been denied to awareness as too threatening, too damaging to the structure of the self. One finds one’s experiencing these feelings fully, completely, in the relationship, so that for the moment one is one’s fear, or one’s anger, or one’s tenderness, or one’s strength. And as one lives these widely varied feelings, in all their degrees of intensity, one discovers that one has experienced oneself, that one is all these feelings. One finds that one’s behavior changing in constructive fashion in accordance with one’s newly experienced self. One approaches the realization that one no longer needs to fear what experience may hold, but can welcome it freely as a part of one’s changing and developing self. However, it seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness. It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted, or fulfilled, or actualized. It is not a state of drive-reduction, or tension-reduction, or homeostasis. I believe that all of these terms have been used in ways which imply that if one or several of these states is achieved, then the goal of life have been achieved. Certainly, for many people happiness, or adjustment, are seen as states of being which are synonymous with the good life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

Social scientists have frequently spoken of the reduction of tension, or the achievement of homeostasis or equilibrium as if these states constituted the goal of the process of living. So it is with a certain amount of surprise and concern that I realize that my experience supports none of these definitions. If I focus on the experience of those individuals who seem to have evidenced the greatest degree of movement during the spiritual and therapeutic relationship, and who, in the years following this relationship, appear to have made and to be making real progress toward the good life, then it seems to me that they are not adequately described at all by any of these terms which refer to fixed states of being. I believe they would consider themselves insulted if they were described as adjusted, and they would regard it as false if they were described as happy or contented or even actualized. As I have known them I would regard it as most inaccurate to say that all their dive tensions have been reduced, or that they are in a state of homeostasis. So I am forced to ask myself whether there is any way in which I can generalize about their situation, any definition which I can give of the good life which would seem to fit the facts as I have observed them. I find this not at all easy, and what follows is stated very tentatively. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. The direction which constitutes the good life is that which is selected by the total organism, when there is psychological freedom to move in any direction. This organismically selected direction seems to have certain discernible general qualities which appear to be the same in a wide variety of unique individuals. The good life, from the point of view of my experience, is the process of movement in a direction which the human organism selects when it is inwardly free to move in any direction, and the general qualities of this selected direction appear to have a certain universality. Many people, however, seem to be morally bankrupt—completely devoid of any decent moral qualities. And it is just about the worst thing you can say about a person. A lot of people are also spiritually bankrupt. Spiritual bankruptcy is a most absolute state. It means we have nothing to give to God. Salvation is a gift from God; it is entirely by grace through faith—not by works. People living the good life are righteous and the process seems to involve an increasing openness to the experience. It is the polar opposite of defensiveness. Defensiveness is an organism’s response to experiences which are perceived or anticipated as threatening, as incongruent with the individual’s existing picture of oneself, or of oneself in relationship to the World. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

These threatening experiences are temporarily rendered harmless by being distorted in awareness, or being denied to awareness. I quite literally cannot see, with accuracy, those experiences, feelings, reactions in myself which are significantly at variance with the picture of myself which I already possess. A large part of the process of therapy is the continuing discovery by the client that one is experiencing feelings and attitudes which heretofore one has not been able to be aware of, which one has not been able to own as being a part of oneself. If a person could be fully open to one’s experience, however, every stimulus—whether originating within the organism or in the environment—would be freely relayed through the nervous system without being distorted by any defensive mechanism. There would be no need of the mechanism of subception whereby the organism is forewarned of any experience threatening to the self. On the contrary, whether the stimulus was the impact of a configuration of form, color, or sound in the environment on the sensory nerves, or a memory trace from the past, or visceral sensation of fear or pleasure or disgust, the person would be living it, would have it completely available to awareness. Thus, one aspect of this process which I am naming the good life appears to be a movement away from the pole of defensiveness toward the pole of openness to experience. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

The individual living the good life is becoming more able to listen to oneself, to experience what is going on within oneself. One is more open to one’s feelings of fear and discouragement and pain. One is also more open to one’s feelings of courage, and tenderness, and awe. One is free to live one’s feelings subjectively, as they exist in one, and also free to be aware of these feelings. One is more able fully to live the experiences of one’s organism rather than shutting them off. Almighty and everlasting God, Who hast made known the Incarnation of Thy Word by the testimony of a glorious star, which when the wise men be held, they adored Thy Majesty with gifts; grant that the star of Thy righteousness may always appear in our hearts, and our treasure consist in giving thanks to Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, the Enlightener of all nations, grant Thy people to enjoy perpetual peace; and pour into our hearts that radiant light which Thou didst shed into the minds of the wise men; thought Jesus Christ Our Lord. “Behold, O Lord, thou hast smitten us because of our iniquity, and hast driven us forth, and for these many years we have been in the wilderness; nevertheless, thou hast been merciful unto us. O Lord, look upon me in pity, and turn away thine anger from this thy people, and suffer not that they shall go forth across this raging deep in darkness; but behold these things which I have molten out of rock,” reports Ether 3.3. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

Coming Soon!

Cresleigh homes gives emphasis to detail and authenticity in their designs, remaining true to a style architecturally, while updating floor plans to create a modern, comfortable home. This combination of classic architectural style and easy livability add up to solid, long-lasting value. Today, there is a return to traditionalism and pure styles. People want the look and feel of an older home with the amenities and comforts of modern floor planning. Elaborate master bedroom suites, cozy country kitchens, libraries, media centers, and great rooms are all part of what makes a plan livable.

Cresleigh Meadows is coming soon! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle. Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/

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No One Knows the Worth of Innocence Till One Knows it is Gone Forever, and that Money Cannot Buy it Back!

November 30, 2019 3:01 am

If past history was all there was to life, the richest people would be those who did not progress. Your past is important, but as important as that is, it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see the future. The function of a great soul is to store obscure ideas, and make sense of the World of information. We are the dwelling place of incredible opportunities. They live within us. With consciousness about who we are and what we are, with the awareness of the problems we are faced with, with a commitment not only to ourselves but to each other, we can make it work We will make it work Is this all too good to be true, too beautiful to be factual? Is it only a theory without grounds, a personal belief without evidence? No!—it is quite demonstrable to anyone who will undertake the work upon oneself.. When God made you, He threw away the mold. There never has been or ever will be another person just like you. So you are an original, a meticulously designed instrument. That is great! However, you will never perform, live, or achieve above the value you attribute to yourself. It is the supreme job of the soul to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. The rewards of this quest are not primarily material ones, although these may come. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

The only reward that can be guaranteed to the successful aspirant is that one will emerge out of the unregenerate state and come closer to God’s consciousness, that is to say, to the kingdom of Heaven. Whoever looks for more may be disappointed. However, to the being who through reflection or suffering, intuition or instruction, has got one’s values right, this will be enough. From the first momentary glimpse f the soul till the final rest in it, one is being led to accept the truth that the love which one wants and hopes to find outside of oneself must be found within oneself. The true beloved is not a person but a present. When genuine love in its most intense form utterly overwhelms one, one will find that its physical form is a mere caricature of it and that its human form is a pale reflection from it. Instead of having to bed some woman or some man for crumbs of affection from their table, one will find a veritable fountain of everflowing love deep within one’s heart, and therefore ever available to one in the fullest measure. This is that one beloved who can never desert one, the unique soul-mate who will forever remain with one, the only twin soul one can seek with the absolute certainty that it is truly one’s own. At the least there will be more outer harmony and less outer friction in day-to-day living, more inner peace and less inner anxiety. It leads to amity in human relationships and dissolves enmity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

When their lives have reached an impasse, people seek or should seek the help of a psychotherapist. The symptoms of the impasse are diverse, including physical suffering, inability to concentrate, anxiety, depression, boredom or guilt, inability to love another or participate in adult relationships, loneliness, obsession, antisocial behavior—the entire gamut of psychopathology as we know it. Diverse though the symptoms of misery might be, they share one feature. They are the inexorable outcome of adjusting to a way of life, a way of existing and behaving in the World, which an informed common sense would tell us must lead to neurosis or psychosis, to a checking out or a refusal to carry on further in that way. We know now that elaborate schemes for classifying symptoms of mental illness into neat categories is unprofitable for would-be helpers of others. When we label someone as a schizophrenic or a neurotic, we lull ourselves into thinking that we understand one before we actually do. The impasses in existence are only superficially described as illness, a term which at best is a metaphor, not an explanation. We spent centuries regarding people who do not fit, whose behavior we could neither understand nor accept as evil, as possessed by demons. It was indeed an advance toward greater compassion among beings when the illness-metaphor was applied to the people who would not play the game of social existence as it was supposed to be played. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

However, not all who, though physically intact, cannot play the game are sick. Perhaps none are. Mental illness is a myth one that has an historical purpose, but which no longer helps beings regard and treat deviants as their kith and kin. Now, the persistent belief that people who check out are mentally ill and need to be cured of their disease symptoms beclouds understanding. Indeed, the belief that one’s patient or client or counselee is an exemplar of some category of disapproved humanity: schizophrenic, delinquent, neurotic, and so forth—leads the would-be helper to treat one as less than a full human being, less than a fellow traveler through this life. Anyone who has been treated by another, not as they very one he or she is, but as the embodiment of some category—disabled, same sex oriented, a professor, a psychotic—knows that one is not being addressed by the person who so regards him or her. If I am regarded as a patient by the doctor, and neither he or she nor I ever become acquainted with one another, we are doubtless both cheated; and it is questionable whether any enduring help can come out of so impersonal a transaction. It is more apt to regard the one in deed of help as a fellow seeker. One seeks relief from one’s suffering, to be sure, and more fundamentally (whether or not one can verbalize the ultimate goal of one’s quest), one is seeking a way to be in the World, a way to live with others, and a way of being oneself that is meaningful and rewarding. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

One is seeking a way that produces satisfactions, hope, and meaning in expanding experience rather than pain, misery, stultification, and impotence. These latter outcomes are cries for help. They are, as well, proof that the seeker’s way of life up to the point of breakdown was not compatible with wellness. It seems futile for a physician, psychotherapist, or growth counselor to treat symptoms by anesthetizing the person with assorted drugs, or by reducing one in some way, and then to send one back to the very way of life that was inimical to truly human being. What is called for in addition to cure is to help the seeker find some way that will permit one to function more fully, more authentically, with a more liberating focus to one’s existence. The counthentically, with a more liberating focus to one’s existence. The counselor must aim to seek with one’s client and persist in the search until they jointly discover what changes in the client’s self and World will permit one to live a life compatible with wellness. The helper, if one is to me more than a first-aid technician, must grope with one’s client, to find healthy personality for one: that is, a healthy way of being a person in the World (the literal meaning of personality). Therefore, not everyone with a mental illness is broke or dangerous, but sometimes those who are not seeking help can be. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

In real life a person knows that one’s behavior will have consequences. When people lack a complete feeling of reality, it may cause reactions that represent unconscious tendencies. No one knows the worth of innocence till one know it is gone forever, and that money cannot buy it back. Some people have a predisposing factor in the brain which is partly responsible for their mental illness. Often times, a paranoiac fall ill long before anyone suspects one’s illness and their pathological idea overwhelmed them at a psychological moment. This usually happens when one’s congenitally hypersensitive emotional life becomes warped, and the spiritual form which one’s emotions need in order to live finally break down. It did not break by itself, it was broken by the individual. It is usually because one’s feelings, which are woven out of moonshine are immature, and need prolonged incubation in order to grow strong and to withstand he unavoidable clash with reality. In themselves there is nothing reprehensible about them, but to the simple, straightforward mind they arouse suspicion. However, in the individual’s mind, when someone rejects them it has a devastating effect, because they believe there are no grounds for this harsh interpretation. One’s dream is destroyed, but this in itself would not have been harmful had it not also killed the individual’s feelings. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

A less passionate person can put up with sternness, and not hold before one the ideal of cold-blooded heartlessness, but the highly-strung, sensitive nature in need of affection will be broke. Gradually it will seem to the individual that one attained one’s ideal, when suddenly one discovered that the person they think they “fixed” was not on the same wavelength. This realization is usually followed by an arise of paranoia, and also a form of paranoid schizophrenia characterized by delusions and hallucinations, and indeed all other forms of schizophrenia. There will also usually be microscopic lesions of the brain. Milder cases do not usually lead to hospitalization, they can be cured by psychotherapeutic means. However, with regard to the possibility of a cure, one should not be too optimistic. Such cases are rare. They very nature of the disease, involving as it does the disintegration of the personality, rules out the possibility of psychic influences, which is the essential agent in therapy. Schizophrenia shares this peculiarity with obsessional neurosis, its nearest relative in the realm of the neuroses. Many cases of schizophrenics never are seen in psychiatric hospitals because these cases are partially camouflaged as obsessional neuroses, compulsions, phobias, and hysterias, and they are very careful never to go near an asylum. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

Concomitantly, the individual needs to excel, to achieve success, prestige, or recognition in any form, they need to feel “accepted.” Strivings in this direction are partly oriented toward power, inasmuch as success and prestige lend power in a competitive society. However, they also make for a subjective feeling of strength through outside affirmation, outside acclaim, and the fact of supremacy. Here the center of gravity is possessed outside the person oneself; only the kind of affirmation wanted from others differs. Factually the one is as futile as the other. When people wonder why success has failed to make the individual feel any less insecure, they only show their psychological ignorance, but the fact that they do so indicates the extent to which success and prestige are commonly regarded as yardsticks. A strong need to exploit others, to outsmart them, to play them, to make them of use to oneself, is part of the picture. Any situation or relationship is looked at from the standpoint of “What can I get out of it?”—whether it has to do with money, prestige, contact, or ideas. The person is consciously or semiconsciously convinced that everyone acts this way, and so what counts is to do it more efficiently than the rest. One becomes hard and tough, or gives that appearance. One regards all feelings, one’s own as well as others’, as sloppy sentimentality. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

In love relationships the neurotic’s tendencies to defeat, subdue, and humiliate the partner play an enormous role. They usually want a mate who is eminently desirable, one through whose attractiveness, social prestige, or wealth can enhance one’s own position. One sees no reason to be considerate of other. The neurotic usually attaches him or herself to others so they can subdue and degrade and humiliate that individual, and this attitude is usually traceable to feelings the individual has about his or her parent, by whom one felt humiliated and whom one wished to humiliate in returned, but out of fear hid this impulse being an exaggerated devotion—a situation which is often described as a fixation. These individuals are usually bad losers and undeniably want victory. One is always ready to accuse others, and the consideration of guilt does not play a role in the thought process. One does not assume the other person is wrong; just one assumes one is right because one needs this ground for subjective certainty in as much the same way as an army needs a safe ground to launch an attack. If not an arrant foolishness, to admit an error when it is not absolutely necessary sees to one as an unforgivable display of weakness. It is consistent with one’s attitude of having to fight against a malevolent World that one should develop a keen sense of realism—of its kind. A need for reassuring affection is often the reason for clinging to a partner of the same sex. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

Admiration or love may serve as a compensation for the defeating drives as follows: by keeping the destructive impulses from awareness; by eliminating competitiveness altogether by creating an unsurpassable distance between self and competitor; by providing a vicarious enjoyment of success or participation in it; by propitiating the competitor and thus warding off one’s vindictiveness. One will never be so naïve as to overlook in others any manifestation of ambition, greed, ignorance, or anything else that might obstruct one’s own goals. Since in a competitive civilization attributes like these are much more common than real decency, one feels justified in regarding oneself as only realistic. Another facet of one’s realism is one’s emphasis on planning and foresight. Like any good strategist, in every situation one is careful to appraise one’s own chances, the forces of one’s adversaries, and the possible pitfalls. Because one is driven always to assert oneself as the strongest, shrewdest, or most sought after, one tries to develop the efficiency and resourcefulness necessary to being so. The zest and intelligence one puts into one’s work may make one a highly esteemed employee or a success in a business of one’s own. However, the impression one gives of having an absorbing interest in one’s work is only a means to an end. One has no love for what one is doing and take no real pleasure in it—a fact consistent with one’s attempt to exclude feelings from one’s life altogether. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

This chocking off of all feelings has a two-edged effect. On the one hand it is undoubtedly expedient from the standpoint of success in that it enables one to function like a well-oiled machine, untiringly producing the goods that will bring one ever more power and prestige. Here feelings might interfere. They could conceivably lead one into a line of work with fewer opportunistic advantages; they might cause one to shy away from the techniques so often employed on the road to success; they might tempt one away from one’s work to the enjoyment of nature or art, or to the companionship of friends instead of persons merely useful to one’s purpose. On the other than the emotional barrenness that results from a throttling of feeling will do something to the quality of one’s work; certainly it is bound to detract from one’s creativity. The moment of the outbreak of neurosis is not just a matter of chance; as a rule it is most critical. It is usually the moment when a new psychological adjustment, that is, a new adaptation, is demanded. Such moments facilitate the outbreak of a neurosis, as every experienced neurologist knows. You may ask why the neurotic has a special tendency not to accomplish one’s necessary tasks. Here let me point out that no living creatures adjusts itself easily and smoothly to new conditions. The law of inertia is valid everywhere. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

A sensitive and somewhat unbalanced person, as a neurotic always is, will meet with special difficulties and perhaps with more unusual tasks in life than a normal individual, who as a rule has only to follow the well-worn path of an ordinary existence. For the neurotic there is no established way of life, because one’s aims and tasks are apt to be of a highly individual character. One tries to go the more or less uncontrolled and half-conscious way of normal people, not realizing that one’s own critical and very different nature demands of one more effort than the normal person is required to exert. There are neurotics who have shown their heightened sensitiveness and their resistance to adaptation in the very first weeks of life, in the difficulty they have in taking the mother’s breast and in their exaggerated nervous reactions, and so forth. For this peculiarity in the neurotic predisposition it will always be impossible to find a psychological aetiology, because it is anterior to all psychology. This predisposition—you can call it congenital sensitiveness or what you like—is the cause of the first resistances to adaptation. As the way to adaptation is blocked, the biological energy we call libido does not find its appropriate outlet or activity, with the result that a suitable form of adaptation is replaces by an abnormal or primitive one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

Neurosis is not primary a phenomenon based on a perverted sexual disposition, but merely secondary and a consequence of failure to apply the stored-up psyche in a suitable way. The psychological trouble in neurosis, and the neurosis itself, can be formulated as an act of adaption that has failed. A neurosis is, in a sense, an attempt at a self-cure—a view which can be and has been applied to many other illnesses. The aggressive type looks like an exquisitely uninhibited person. One can assert one’s wishes, one can orders, express anger, defend oneself. One’s feelings about oneself is that one is strong, honest, and realistic, all of which is true if you look at things from one’s way. According to one’s premises one estimate of oneself is strictly logical, since to one ruthlessness is strength, lack of consideration for others, honesty, and a callous pursuit of one’s own ends, realism. One’s attitude on the score of one’s honesty comes partly from a shrewd debunking of current hypocrisies. Enthusiasm for a cause, philanthropic sentiments, and the like one sees as sheer pretense, and it is not hard for one to expose gestures of social consciousness or Christian virtue for what they so often are. One’s set of values is built around the philosophy of the jungle. Might makes right. Away with humanness and mercy. Homo himini lupi. Here we have values not very different from those with which the nazis have made us so familiar. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

This behavior could be labeled as Pseudoneurotic schizophrenic. Schizophrenia literally means “split personality,” referring to portions of the psyche that are contradictory; it does not mean multiple personality disorder, which is the presence of distinct, autonomous alternate personalities. Pseudoneurotic schizophrenia is a form characterized by all-pervasive anxiety and a wide variety of neurotic symptoms that initially mask underlying psychotic tendencies, which may be manifest as occasional, brief psychotic episodes. By adapting the terminology to that of early Middle Ages, it is all devils and witchcraft. Healthy personality is growing personality. It is a way for a person to function in one’s World, a way that yields growth without placing other important values in jeopardy. People commit themselves to a repertoire of values; they live for them One who is a healthy personality seeks to fulfill them, and one defends them when they are under threat. A healthy personality is to oneself as a dedicated farmer is to one’s farm—one does everything in its time. The abundance of the crops, that state of one’s livestock, and the condition of one’s outbuildings are testimony to the farmer’s alert and responsive care. The healthy personality likewise shows evidence, in one’s very being and presence, of one’s alert and responsive care of oneself. One finds one’s life meaningful, with satisfactions and some accepted suffering; one loves and is loved; one is can fulfill reasonable social demands upon one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

And one is in no doubt as to who one is, what one’s feeling and convictions are. One does not apologize for being the very person one is. One can look out on the World and see it from the standpoint of how it presently is (according o social consensus); but one can also see oneself, the World, and the people in it from the standpoint of possibility. One can regard the World as a place in which one can bring into being some possibilities that exist only in one’s imagination. The World, the other person, and oneself—none of these are seen by a healthy personality as sclerosed, frozen, finished, or defined once for all. Such a person has free access to a dimension of human being much neglected by the square, the hyper-conformist, the modal personality. I am referring here to something that has been called the unconscious, experiencing. Transcendental experiences, spiritual experience. This hidden dimension of the self, sought for centuries by beings who have longed for personal fulfillment beyond rationalism, is usually dreaded by the average person. It could be called experiencing possibility. It sometimes peeps out when one permits oneself to be unfocused and aimless, unintegrated, not going anywhere or doing anything; but is tamped back in anxious haste, for it is experiences like the contents of Pandora’s box. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

When one’s unconscious threatens to speak, when direct experience of self or World invades one’s consciousness, one becomes overwhelmed with anxiety and may temporarily feel one is losing one’s mind and sanity. Indeed, one is on the point of going out of one’s ego. One’s present self-concept and concept of things and people are shattered by implosions and explosions of raw experience from within and without. One experiences one’s being in dimensions presently unfamiliar to one, hence frightening. However, a healthier personality recognizes that one’s unconscious, this persistent but usually drowned out dream, this source of new truth, is the voice of one’s true, real self—a statement of how one has mistreated oneself (if the message is dysphoric) or an invitation to new possibilities of being for which one has become sufficiently grown and secretly, unconsciously prepared. We look upon these possibilities from this delicious mess of insanities and realities, strivings, and deadnesses, hopes and fears, agonies and exultations, which forms our present state, and realize that the more a being becomes acquainted with the true sources of one’s inner life—both good and bad sides—the better it will be for one’s outer life. One will expand the meaning of one’s own habitual life-experience as one expands the awareness of the divine in oneself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

The idea that one can learn without effort, without frustration, may be good as an advertising slogan, but is certainly not true in the acquisition of major skills. Without the capacity to accept frustration humans would hardly have developed at all. And does not everyday observation show that many times people suffer frustrations without having an aggressive response? People waiting in line in order to obtain a theater ticket, religious people who fast, people in war who have to do without adequate food—in these and hundreds of other cases frustration does not produce aggression in healthy people. What can, and often does, produce aggression is what the frustration means to the person, and the psychological meaning of frustration differs according to the total constellation in which the frustration occurs. If a child, for instance, is forbidden to eat candy, this frustration, provided the parent’s attitude is genuinely loving and free from pleasure in controlling, will not mobilize aggression; but if this prohibition is only one of many manifestations of the parent’s desire for control, or if, for instance, a sibling is permitted to eat it, considerable anger is likely to be the result. What produces the aggression is not the frustration as such, but the injustice of rejection involved in the situation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

The most important factor in determining the occurrence and intensity of frustration is the character of a person. A very greedy person, for instance, will react angrily when one does not get all the food one wants, and a miserly person, when one’s wish to buy something inexpensive is frustrated; the narcissistic person feels frustrated when one does not get the praise and recognition one expects. The character of the person determines in the first place what frustrates one, and in the second place the intensity of one’s reaction to frustration. Practical wisdom in overcoming the most difficult situations and perfect skill in managing the most delicate ones, are qualities which should emerge from the balanced training given by this quest for truth. It becomes the background, unknown to other persons, of all one’s activities. This is a considerable achievement, a consequence of applying to them what one perceived in prayer, learnt in study, and understood in reflection. It is a teaching whose conceptions give the mind a reasonable understanding of life and whose practice gives the heart repose. It is a gross mistake to believe that this is a path to Worldly misery and material destitution. Whoever turns oneself into a jewel-case of philosophic wisdom, perfect devotion, and faultless conduct, to one comes success in all one’s enterprises. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

When the healthy love of life is on one, and all its forms and its appetites seems so unutterably real; when the most brutal and the most spiritual things are lit by the same Sun, and each is an integral part of the total richness—why, then it seems a grudging and sickly way of meeting so robust a Universe to shrink from any of its facts and wish them not to be. Rather take the strictly dramatic point of view, and treat the whole thing as a great unending romance which the spirit of the Universe, striving to realize its own content, is eternally thinking out and representing to itself. After the pure and classic truths, the exciting and rancid ones must be experienced because our minds have become clogged with the dullness and heaviness of our native pursuits. Still, the facts of human sensibility are the most worthy of attention. However, what is the essence of this philosophy of objective conduct, so old-fashioned and finite, but so chaste and sane and strong, when compared with its rival? It is the recognition of limits, foreign and opaque to our understanding. It is the willingness after bringing about some external good, to feel at peace; for our responsibility ends with the performance of that duty, and the burden of the rest we may lay on higher powers. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad. I cannot understand the belief that an act is bad, without regret at it happening. I cannot understand regret without the admission of real, genuine possibility in the World. Only then is it other than a mockery to feel, after we have failed to do out best, that an irreparable opportunity is gone from the Universe, the loss of which it must forever after mourn. The World is vulnerable, and liable to be injured by certain of its parts if they act wrong. And it represents their acting wrong as a matter of possibility or accident, neither inevitable nor yet to be infallibly warded off. In all this, it is a theory devoid either of transparency or of stability. It gives us a pluralistic, restless Universe, in which no single point of view can ever take in the whole scene; and to a mind possessed of the love of unity at any cost, it will, no doubt, remain forever inacceptable. One who is sufficiently ready to recognize the Higher Purpose of Life, and who has the courage to change and improve one’s way of thinking, thereby replacing the negative thoughts by optimistic ones, will certainly be rewarded by improved circumstances and greater happiness than one may already enjoy. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

And if I still wish to think of the World as a totality, it lets me feel that a World with a chance in it of being altogether good, even if the chance never comes to pass, is better than a World with no such chance at all. A little of this knowledge saves from much danger. Even a few years’ study of philosophy will bring definite benefit into the life of a student. It will help one in all sorts of ways, unconsciously, here on Earth and it will help one very definitely after death during one’s life in the next World of being. Although its promises and experience may not appear glamorous in a Worldly sense, the Quest reveals itself to be the best pf all possible ways of living. If it exacts the highest possible price in human satisfactions it gives in return the highest possible spiritual satisfactions. “For the Lord God hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; and inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence,” reports 2 Nephi 4.4. Blessed art Thou, Almighty Master, Who hast reach the beginning of the night. Hear our prayers, and those of all Thy people; and forgive us our sins voluntary and involuntary, and accept our evening supplications, and send down on Thine inheritance the fulness of Thy mercy Thy compassion. Compass us about with Thy holy Angels, arm us with the armour of Thy righteousness, fence us round with Thy truth, guard us with Thy power. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Deliver us from every assault and every device of the adversary; and grant us to pass this evening and the ensuing night, and all the days of our life, in fullness of peace and holiness, without sin and stumbling. For it is Thine to pity and to save, O Christ our God. “Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord; and my heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard,” reports 2 Nephi 4.16. Grant us, Lord, to rejoice in beholding the bliss of Thy Jerusalem, and to be carried in her bosom with perpetual gladness; that as she is the home of the multitude of the Saints, we also may be counted worthy to have our portion within her; and that Thine Only-begotten Son, the Prince and Saviour of all, may in this World graciously relieve His afflicted, and hereafter in His Kingdom be the everlasting Comfort of His redeemed. Stir up, O Lord, Thy power, and come; and mercifully fulfill that which Thou hast promised to Thy Church unto the end of the World. Stir up, we beseech Thee, O Lord, our hearts to prepare the ways of Thine Only-begotten Son; that by Hid Advent we may be enabled to serve Thee with purified minds; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to purify our consciences by The daily visitation; that when Thy Son our Lord cometh, He may find in us a mansion prepared for Himself; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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My Brain is My Harp and My Lyre, My Soul is My Garden and My Orchard!

November 27, 2019 2:29 am

People easily forget that they are locked in coevolution with the life-forms that sustain their thought. In particular, they often neglect the evolution of their soul as a vital aspect of their own survival. When life seems not worth living, ten minutes in prayer proves otherwise. The soul is that venerable place where beings preserve the history of their experience, their tentative experiments, their discoveries, and their plans. In the soul may be found the recipes for daily living—the prescriptions for the mind and the heart. Listening one evening to Bach’s “Passion according to St. Matthew,” I was struck by the text and music of the line, “Then all the disciples forsook hi and fled.” It anticipated the words of Jesus on the Cross, “My God, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?” One who is forsaken by all beings feels forsaken by God. And, indeed, all being left him, and those who were nearest him fled farthest from him. Ordinarily, we are not aware of this fact. We are used to imagining the crucifixion in terms of those beautiful pictures where, along with his mother and other women, at least one disciple is present. The reality was different. They all fled, and some women dared to watch from afar. Only an unimaginable loneliness remained during the hours His life and work were broken. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

How shall we think about these disciples? Our first reaction is probably the questions—how could they forsake him Whom they had called the Messiah, the Christ, the bringer of the new age, whom they had followed after leaving behind everything for his sake? However, this time, when I heard the words and tones of the music, I admired the disciples! For it is they whom we owe the words of our text. They did not hide their flight; they simply stated it in one short sentence, a statement that judges them for all time. The gospel stores contain many judgments against the disciples. We read that they misunderstood Jesus continuously, as did his mother and brothers, and that day by day, their misunderstandings intensified his suffering. We read that some of the most important among them demanded a place of exceptional glory and power in the World to come. We read that Jesus reproached them because their zeal made them fanatical against those who did not follow Him. And we read that Jesus had to call Peter “Satan,” because Peter tried to dissuade him from going to Jerusalem to his death, and that Peter denied his discipleship in the hour of trial. These reports are astonishing. They show what Jesus did to the disciples. He taught them to accept judgement, and not to present themselves in a favorable light. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Without the acceptance of such judgement, they could not have been his disciples. And if the disciples had suppressed the truth about their own profound weakness, our gospels would not be what they are. The glory of the Christ and the misery of his followers would not be so clearly manifest. And yet even in the same records, human’s desire to cover up one’s own unattractiveness makes itself felt. Later traditions in the gospels try to smooth the hard and hurting edges of the original picture. Apparently, it was unbearable to established congregations that all the disciples fled, that none of them witnessed the crucifixion and the death of the master. They could not accept the fact that only far away in Galilee was their flight arrested by the appearance of him who they deserted in his hour of agony and despair. So, it was stated that Jesus himself had told them to go to Galilee; their flight was not a rea real flight. And still later, it was said that they did not flee at all, but remained in Jerusalem. From earliest times, the church could not stand this judgment against itself, its past and its present. It has tried to conceal what the disciples openly admitted—that we all forsook him and fled. However, this is the truth about all beings, including the followers of Jesus today. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

The flight from God begins in the moment we feel His presence. This feeling is at work in the dark, half-conscious regions of our being, unrecognized, but effective; in the restlessness of the child’s asking and seeking; of the adolescent’s doubts and despairs; of the adult’s desires and struggles. God is present, but not as God; He is present as the unknown force in us that makes us restless. However, in some moments He appears as God. The unknown force in us that caused our restlessness becomes manifest as the God in Whose hands we are, Who is our ultimate threat and our ultimate refuge. In such moments it is as though we were arrested in our hidden flight. However, it is not an arrest by brute force, but one that has the character of a question. And we remain free to continue our flight. This is what happened to the disciples: they were powerfully arrested when Jesus first called them, but they remained free to flee again. And they did when the moment of trial arrived. And so it is with the church and all its members. They are arrested in their hidden flight and brought into the conscious presence of God. However, they remain free to flee again, not only as individual beings, but also as bearers of the church, carrying the church itself on the road to Galilee, separating it as far away as possible from the point where the eternal breaks into the temporal. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Beings flee from God even in the church, the place where we are supposed to be arrested by the presence of God. Even there we are in flight from him. If the ultimate cuts into life of a being, one tried to take cover in the preliminary. One runs for a safe place, fleeing from the attack of that which strike one with unconditional seriousness. And there are many places that look safe to us as Galilee looked to the feeling disciples. Perhaps the most effective refuge in our time from the threatening presence of God is the work we are doing. This was not always so. The attitude of ancient beings towards work is well summed up in the curse God pronounced over Adam—“In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,” and in the words of the 90^th Psalm concerning the short years of our life—“yet their span is but toil and trouble.” Later, physical labor with its toil and its drudgery was left to the slaves and serfs or uneducated classes. And it was distinguished from creative work that was based on leisure time, and hence, the privilege of the few. Medieval Christianity considered work a discipline, especially in monastic life. However, in our period of history, work has become the dominating destiny of all beings, if not in reality, at least by demand. It is everything—discipline, production, creation. The difference between labor and work is gone. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The fact that it stands under a curse in the Biblical view is forgotten. Work has become a religion itself, the religion of modern industrial society. And it has all of us in its grip. Even if we were able to escape the punishment of starvation for not working, something within us would not permit an escape from the bondage to work. For most of us it is both a necessity and a compulsion. And as such, it has become the favored way of the flight from God. And nothing seems to be safer than this way. From it we get the satisfaction of having fulfilled our duty. We are praised by others and by ourselves for “work well done!” We provide support for our family or care for its members. We overcome daily the dangers of leisure, boredom and disorder. We acquire a good conscience out of it and, as a cynical philosopher said, at the end of it, a good sleep. And if we do the kind of work that is called creative, an even higher satisfaction results—the joy of bringing something new into being. Should somebody protest that this is not his or her way of fleeing from God, we might ask one: Have you not sometimes drawn a balance sheet of your whole being, and upon honestly discovering many points on the negative side, then not balanced the sheet by your work on the other? #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The pharisee of today would boast before God not so much of one’s obedience to the law and of one’s religious exercises as of one’s hard work and one’s disciplined, successful life. And one would also find sinners with whom one could compare oneself favorably. Can these competing tendencies, the extroverting and the introverting, be brought together in a single life? Philosophy not only answers that they can, but also that they mist be integrated if the spiritual life is to reach its fullest bloom. It wisely mingles the two ideals without despoiling either. Here, it not only co-operates with human nature but also imitates the rhythmic pattern of Nature. It is in harmony with the way the Universe goes. It is not enough to develop any one of these parts of our being alone. It is a much more stupendous task to develop al three at the same time. Yet this is what philosophy asks for. Work completely done, the body effectively used, the mind capably directed—such a roundly developed personality is the ideal. If the whole truth is to be discovered, the whole being must be brought to its quest. If this is done, philosophy will be lived as well as known, felt a well as understood, experienced as well as intuited. Beings as a whole must enter on the Quest and then the complete organism will benefit when truth is found. If isolated functions alone enter on it then they alone will benefit by the truth. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

So long as one is an incomplete person, so long will one never be able to find more than an incomplete truth. It is not just one part of being which is to follow the quest but all parts of one. The whole truth can come only to the whole being. Other experiences and other goals demand the strength and activity of only a part of one’s being from one but this search for a higher life demands one’s all. One follows the quest somewhat hesitantly, discontinuously and cautiously, wary lest it demands more from one than one is prepared to give. There is no objection: one my set one’s own pace but in the end, of course, one must come into this quest with all of oneself. Why should one not be a human being as well as an enlightened soul? Why should one not bring all of one’s nature to this co-operative venture that is Life? The quest may become one’s central interest but this is no excuse for one to become unbalanced or disequilibriated. If one comes to the quest with one’s whole being, turning every side of it to the quest’s light and discipline, one may confidently expect the full insight, the full transformation and not a partial, incomplete result. The first reward is truth realized in every part of one’s being, the lower self becoming the instrument of the Soul. The second reward is peace, intense satisfying and joyous. A keen and constant longing after the Soul’s consciousness, a willingness to surrender all to it inwardly, are however necessary prerequisites. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Let us have faith that right makes right; and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. The acceptance of these ideas can only benefit, and not harm, humanity. God does not want us to do extraordinary things; he wants us to do ordinary things extraordinarily well. When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. The real World as it is given objectively at this moment is the sum total of all its beings and events now. The real World order—it is an order with which we have nothing to do but to get away from it as fast as possible, We break it: we break it into histories, and we break it into arts, and we break it into sciences; and then we began to feel at home. We make ten thousand separate serial orders of it, and on any one of these we react as though the others did not exist. We discover among its various parts relations that were never given to sense at all (mathematical relations, tangents, squares, and roots and logarithmic functions), and out of an infinite number of these we call certain one essential and lawgiving, and ignore the rest. Essential these relations are, but only for our purpose, the other relations being just as real and present as they; and our purpose is to conceive simply and to foresee. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Are not simple conception and prevision subjective ends pure and simple? They are the ends of what we call science; and the miracle of miracles, a miracle not yet exhaustively cleared up by any philosophy, is that the given order lends itself to the remodeling. It shows itself plastic to many of our scientific, to many of our aesthetic, to many of our practical purposes and ends. When the being of affairs, the artist, or the being of science fails, one is not rebutted. One tried again. One says the impressions of sense must give way, must be reduced to the desiderated form. They are all postulate in the interest of their volitional nature a harmony between the latter and the nature of things. The theologian does no more. And the reflex doctrine of the mine’s structure, though all theology should as yet have failed of its endeavor, could but confess that the endeavor itself at least obeyed in form the mind’s most necessary law. Now, if he did not exist, what kind of a being would God be? The word “God” has come to mean many things in the history of human thought, from Venus and Jupiter to the “Idee” which figures in the pages of Hegel. Even the laws of physical nature have, in these positivistic times, been held worthy of divine honor and presented as the only fitting object of our reverence. Of course, if our discussion is to bear any fruit, we must mean something more definite the this. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

We must not call any object of loyalty a “God” without more ado, simply because to awaken our loyalty happens to be one of God’s functions. He must have some intrinsic characteristics of his own believes that the object of one’s loyalty has those other attributes, negative or positive, as the case may be. Now, as regards a great many of the attributes of God, and their amounts and mutual relations, the World has been delivered over to disputes. Not only such matters as his mode of revealing himself, the precise extent of his providence and power and their connection with our free-will, the proportion of one’s mercy to one’s justice, and the amount of his responsibility for evil; but also his metaphysical relation to the phenomenal World, whether causal, substantial, ideal, or what not—are affairs of purely sectarian opinion that need not concern us at all. Whoso debates them presupposes the essential features of theism to be granted already; and it is with these essential features, the care poles of the subject, that our business exclusively is possessed. The acceptance of these ideas can only benefit, and not harm, humanity. If one will consciously put oneself into line with this higher purpose of human living, one will not only become a better and wiser being but also a happier one. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The pursuit of Truth is full of certainty. It rewards its own, even in apparent defeat. Out of the Quest will come a yearning for what is the best in life and the highest in Truth. This experience of feeling is really the discovery of unknown elements of self. The phenomenon is the fact that in our daily lives there are a thousand and one reasons for not letting ourselves experience our attitudes fully, reasons from our past and from the present, reasons that reside within the social situation. It seems too dangerous, too potentially damaging, to experience them freely and fully. Just as pain might make a person realize that there is something wrong with one’s body, so neurotic symptoms could draw attention to psychological problems of which the individual was unaware. Introverts are caught up in their inner Worlds; while extraverts lose themselves in the press of events. Because of the achievements of one’s culture, there is an especial tendency toward intellectual hubris; and overvaluation of thinking which could alienate a being from one’s emotional roots. Neurotic symptoms, dreams and other manifestations of the unconscious are often expressions of the “other side” trying to asset itself. There is, therefore, within every individual, a striving toward unity in which divisions would be replaced by consistency, opposites equally balanced, consciousness in reciprocal relation with the unconscious. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Personalities are manifested by definiteness, wholeness and ripeness. In the safety and freedom of a therapeutic relationship, one can they can be experienced fully, clear to the limit of what they are. They can be and are experienced in a fashion that I like to think of as “pure culture,” so that for the moment the person is one’s fear, or one is one’s anger, or one is one’s tenderness, or whatever. In the first half of life, a person is, and should be, concerned with emancipating oneself from parents and with establishing oneself in the World as spouse, parent and effective contributor. In the modern World, especially, a certain one-sidedness might be needed to fulfill these conventional demands; but, once a person had done so, then one should look inwards. This is the journey toward the wholeness the process of individuation. Sometimes fear kind of seeps through, and people feel they need something to hold on to. Much like a student feels he or she wishes the World would let one have one’s thesis or one’s Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) because they kind of need that little World. In adult life, we experience a feeling of being all the way to the limit. Being nothing but a pleading little child, supplicating, begging, dependent. At that moment one is nothing but one’s pleadingness, all the way through. Alchemists sought not only to make gold, but to perfect everything in its own nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Moreover, alchemists linked change in matter with change in beings, so that alchemical “work” aimed at perfecting matter was, at the same time, a psychological process aimed at perfecting humans. Some of the alchemists undoubtedly thought of their work as a meditative development of the inner personality. Here we find parallels between the series of changes described by the alchemists and the process of individuation which is taking place within people who reach their limit and are trying to move beyond. Only the being who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice becomes a personality. By paying attention to the voice within, the individual achieves a new synthesis between conscious and unconscious, a sense of calm acceptance and detachment, and a realization of the meaning of life. If the unconscious can be recognized as a co-determining factor alone with consciousness, and if we can live in such a way that conscious and unconscious demands are taken into account as far as possible, then the centre of gravity of the total personality shifts its position. It is then no longer in the ego, which is merely between conscious and unconscious. This new centre might be called the self. The new centre expressed itself in quaternity symbols and circular structures which are called mandalas. Mandalas symbolize an integrating factor. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

In cases where consciousness is confused, mandalas may appear as compensator attempts at self-healing by imposing an ordered structure. The self, of which the mandala is a symbol, is the archetype of unity and totality. This archetype is the underlying reality manifesting itself in the various systems of monotheism. The self, therefore, is God within; and the individual, in seeking self-relations and unity, becomes the means through which God seeks his goal. By fulfilling one’s own highest potential, the individual is no only realizing the meaning of life, but also fulfilling God’s will. People will feel it is such a wondrous thing to have these new things come out of them. It will amaze them so much each time, and then again there will be that same feeling, kind of feeling scared that one has so much of this that one has been keeping back something. Then one will realize that this has bubbled through, and that for the moment one is one’s dependency in a way which astonished him or her. It is not only dependency that is experienced in this all-out kind of fashion. It may be hurt, or sorrow, or jealousy, or destructive anger, or deep desire, or confidence and pride, or sensitive tenderness, or outgoing love. It may be anything of the emotions of which beings are capable. What I have gradually learned from experiences such as this, is that the individual in such a moment, is coming to be what one is. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Only exception individuals reach the peeks of individual development. Individuation means parting company with the crowd; and this is first accentuates loneliness, and may seem alarming. Most human beings are content to remain safely with the majority, conforming to the conventions and beliefs shared by members of their family, church or political party. However, exceptional individuals are impelled by their inner nature to seek their own path; and, although human psyches, like human bodies, share a basic structure, the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. When a person has, throughout therapy, experienced in this fashion all the emotions which organismically arise in one, and has experienced them in knowing and open manner, then one has experienced oneself, in al the richness that exists within oneself. One has become what one is. Childhood discover is of the vital importance of remaining in touch with the inner World and is one factor accounting for it as an emphasis on healing and the growth of personality as essentially an inner process, concentrating upon the individual’s relation with the various aspects of one’s own psyche, rather than upon one’s relationships with other human beings. Individuals can neither be happy nor healthy unless they acknowledge their dependence upon God than that of the ego. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

When we think about what it means to become one’s self, it is a most perplexing question. Often times during the reflective process, various facades by which one has been living have somehow crumpled and collapsed, bring a feeling of confusion, but also a feeling of relief. It may seem as if all the energy that goes into holding the arbitrary pattern together is quite unnecessary—a waste. One might think that one has to make the pattern one’s self; but there are so many pieces, and it is so hard to see where they fit. Sometimes one may put them in the wrong place, and the more pieces mis-fitted, the more effort it takes to hold them in place, until at last you are so tired that even that awful confusion is better than holding on any longer. Then one will discover that left to themselves the jumbled pieces fall quite naturally into their own places, and a living pattern emerges without any effort at all one one’s part. Your job is just to discover it, and in the course of that, you will find yourself and your own place. One must even let their own experience tell one its meaning; the minute one tells it what it means, one is at war with one’s self. To be yourself means to find the pattern, the underlying order, which exists in the ceaselessly changing flow of one’s experience. Rather than trying to hold one’s experience into the form of a mask, or to make it be a form or structure that it is not, being one’s self means to discover the unity and harmony which exists in one’s own actual feelings and reactions. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Being one’s self means that the real self is something which is comfortably in one’s experiences, not something imposed upon it. It seems that as we learn to self-actualize that gradually, painfully, the individual explores what is behind the masks one presents to the World, and even behind the masks which one has been deceiving oneself. Deeply and often vividly one experiences the various elements of oneself which have been hidden within. Thus, to an increasing degree one becomes oneself—not a façade of conformity to others, not a cynical denial of all feeling, nor a front of intellectual rationality, but a living, breathing, feeling, fluctuating process—in short, one becomes a person. We should be ruled by affirmation of individuality. A being who understands and comes to terms with the different aspects of one’s inner being is enabled to live life more completely. It is possible to look at one and the same event through two different frames of reference which, though mutually exclusive, are nevertheless complementary. You can learn anything you need to learn to achieve any goal you set for yourself. There are no limits except the limits you place on your imagination. So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable and then, when we summon the will, they seem become inevitable. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the daily small differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. O Lord God, Who didst bow the Heavens, and come down for the salvation of humankind, look upon Thy servants and Thine inheritance. For to Thee, the awful and benignant Judge, Thy servants have bowed the head and stooped the neck, looking for no help of humans, but waiting for Thy pardon and salvation. Guard them at all times, and this evening, and in the ensuing night, from every foe, from every adverse working of the devil, from idle thoughts and wicked imaginations. “And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land,” reports Mosiah 29.30. O Lord our God, refresh us with quiet sleep, when we are wearied with the day’s labour; that being assisted with the help which our weakness needs, we may be devoted to Thee both in body and mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “And I command you to do these things in the fear of the Lord; and I command you to do these things, and that ye have no king; that if these people commit sins and iniquities they shall be answered upon their own heads” reports Mosiah 29.30. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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The Right Way to Teach Beings is to Propose Truth, Not Impose it!

November 10, 2019 6:26 am

I climbed swiftly up the mountain until I was in the thick of the old forest that extended to the very end of my ancestral land, moving effortlessly through the snow that had exhausted me when I was a young boy and a young man. Many of the old trees I recalled were gone, and I was in a dense thicket of spruce and other fire trees when I came to the cement bench I had hauled to this high and deserted place when I had first returned in the twentieth century. It was a common kind of garden bench, curved about the bark of an immense tree, and deep enough for me to sit comfortably with my back against the tree to look down on the distant Chateau with her glorious lighted windows. On, the cold Winters I had spent under that roof, I thought, but only in passing. I was almost used to it now, the splendid palace that the old castle had become, and this sense of ownership, of being the lord of this land, the lord who could walk out to the very boundaries, and gaze on all that one ruled. I shut out the sound of distant music, voices, laughter. I wake slowly and without enthusiasm, spinning out each moment as long as possible. Here, under the bedclothes, is the safety of the primeval cave, the womb warmth of the lord’s lair. All humanity loves the security and comfort of these slow, drowsy moments: to us, they are vital. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

More than sleep itself, they stoke up our energy, making unreal past and future, and all the present except the sweet laziness of muscle and the mind’s soft meanderings. It is, I supposed, about an hour before full consciousness crowds in on me and I can no longer lie in peace. I wish, I really wish, it were possible to prolong that state of trance indefinitely, to hibernate my way into eternity so that the World’s events, great and small, passed unnoticed and unfelt. However, as I have gradually extended my sleeping hours from the normal eight to twelve or more, to fill in the long and empty days, I suppose I cannot complain. For myself, I am content enough alone, although at times the need for emotional contact with another human being becomes hard to bear. I cannot be bothered to cook anything, so I make a pot of tea, have a slice of break, switch on the radio, and attempt to read the day-old paper. Before long it beings to bore and annoy me. I turned my head to the left and started to gaze at the murals on the wall, which had the eerie perfection of a vampire painter, and it made them look both magnificent and contrived at the same time, as if someone had blasted the walls with photographic images and then a team had painted them in. Thus, if a man should die, yet his personality in his home allowed to live on in that his possessions and choice of their settings are left and where they are, his presence will continue to be felt. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

If he has passed his physical body and mental characteristics on to his children, and they continue to live in this home, his presence will be felt more strongly. Furnished rooms, though obviously not completely empty, have this same anonymity, so that the newcomer, feeling lost in the void, is indefinably cheered at the discovery of an bedroom with comforters and pillows already on the bed, or a living room with plush sofas and art on the walls, with their message that the vacant space has been filled in the past and can be so in their own share of its future. To be precise, I have no roots, and, apart from an African wood carving on the mantelpiece and a couple of books on the bedside table, the room is as impersonal as when I first took it. The carving is about all I have left f my childhood and family (from whom, obviously, I had to sever myself) and was collected by my grandfather, who specialized in African primitives. The books, relics of school-day enthusiasm, have remained unopened for months now, giving way to an endless stream of newspapers and periodicals. A part from the extremes of fear and weakness of resolution, no softness of any kind must be shown or shared, for softness has no place in our World. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

It is at once shunned and despised when we come across it, because to be soft is to be constantly shamed and hurt, to lose illusions before others can be built up, to invite trickery, to open the door for the profiteer, the violent or the mad, to allow that vital and precious awareness to be dulled. From the time of my own high school days, I have heard judgments and words, sometimes spoken by the people I love, sometimes by those I despise. It can be difficult to ignore the self-defeating invective. It took many years of experience in life, and some invaluable psychoanalytic therapy, for me to overcome such influences on my own attitude. However, even before I had succeeded in rebutting and then rejecting the hostile viewpoints, I had reacted to them. Since them, I have learned through observation that my reaction was not unusual. The need for self-acceptance is buried within many of us, and we can only throw off the influence of those who think us beneath them by always striving, despite the hardship and impediment, to excel even beyond our own capacities. Our ethical standards must be above reproach, our honesty greater than that of others, our loyalty to friends and ideals firmer than that of other people, precisely because—knowingly or not—they think so little of some of us, and precisely in that order that we must think the more of ourselves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

At each turn of life and at all moments of the day, it is important for us to convince ourselves that we are as good as the next person; in fact, better. It is necessary for us to believe in ourselves, as it must be for all successful persons. Because humankind can make it so difficult for us to preserve our self-esteem, it may be necessary to hold aloft our own activities, to drive on with our own achievements in order that our faith in self can survive the impact of many crushing blows. And those who have studied the personality adjustments of people in other marginalized groups, whether of the character, will recognize the struggle as following a not uncommon pattern. The stages of the Quest for Truth passes by degrees from the disciplining of the ego to the opening of consciousness to God. For me personally, I was spurred by a belief that if my learning were greater, my thinking deeper, my talents more creative, then the loftier would be the stature which I could assume in my own eyes. On this journey there are stages of ascent, stations of understanding lights of peace, and shadows of despair. If we continue the inner work we will pass through various stages of development. It would be a mistake to believe that one has reached a final attitude or a fixed set of values. Between the beginner and the adept is this difference: that the state of being which the one looks up to with awe-struck wonder seems entirely natural to the other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Here is, perhaps, a phase of the laws of compensation. It is a counterpart of the bravado displayed by the cowardly, the overlording shown by the diminutive, the conceit by those who suffer from an inferiority of feeling to utilize scientific foundation for its group attitude as justification for discrimination. In other fields, it is called a defense mechanism, or a Napoleonic complex. However, it is not the origin that matters. We are concerned with the results, whether beneficial or destructive to society and to the individual. A small person is anti-social when one seeks to compensate for one’s defects, in one’s own image, for whatever inferior trait by a display of dictatorial traits in which one uses other people as pawns. One’s behavior stems from a factor beyond his or her control, and may be turned to other directions, and does not make it the more palatable for society. When people are oppressed and discriminated against, however, many of their achievements may stem from the effort of the individual to excel in order to combat the influence of universal condemnation on one’s self-esteem. This is a beneficial consequence, even though it may (or may not) arise from an unfortunate source. People tell us we should tolerate others with differences, but tolerance is one of the ugliest words in our language. No word is more misunderstood. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

We appeal to other beings to be tolerant of others—in other words to be willing to stand them. I do not want to be tolerated, and I cannot see why anyone else should be struggling to be tolerated. If people are no good, they should not be tolerated, and if they are good, they should be accepted. In the intergroup relations people are far from having attained acceptance of peoples other than themselves. Tolerance—in the sense of willingness to put up with the existence of others—is still to be achieved. However, what is it but a miserable compromise? In the name of humanity appeals are made to various groups to tolerate each other, when tolerance is actually hardly more desirable than intolerance. The latter is only slightly more inhumane than the former. People cutting across all racial, religious, national, and caste lines, frequently react to rejection by a deep understanding of all others who have likewise been scorned because of their belonging to a marginalized group. It is not for us to join with those who reject millions or billion of our fellow beings of all types and groups, but to accept all beings, an attitude forced upon us happily by the stigma of being cost out of the fold of society. And today, the deep-rooted prejudices that restrict marriages and friendships according to social strata—family wealth, religion, color, and a myriad of other artifices—are conspicuously absent among the submerged groups that makes up the marginalized members of our society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The sympathy for all humankind—including groups similarly despised in their own right—that is exhibited by so many people who feel like they are outcasts, can be a most rewarding factor, not only for the individual, but for society. The person learning to accept oneself can—and often does—demonstrate that he or she harbors no bitterness, for one learns, of necessity, the meaning of turning the other cheek. One is forced by circumstances to answer hate with love, abuse with compassion. It is no wonder, then, that one can as a doctor, educator, or pacifist, show a tenderness to others, no matter how tragic their dilemma, that is seldom forthcoming from people who have themselves not deeply suffered. The humiliations of life can distill a mellow reaction, a warmth and understanding, not only for people in like circumstance, but for all the unfortunate, the despised, the oppressed of the Earth. People who are rejected and accept their circumstances are compelled to constantly search for the answers to their problems within themselves. Reminded of the “baseness” and the “ugliness” of one’s acts, one wishes to understand what differentiates one from all other around them. This introspective study pervades the entire personality and all its activities. The great why, the infantile manifestation of curiosity that strives, in the less inhibited mind of the child, to gain the key to the ultimate riddle of a being’s life and its meaning, is typical of those who have been marginalized. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Unable, perhaps, to develop the extrovert qualities which require a receptive World in which to have free play; struggling to find a solution to the mystery of one’s own imperious desires; not suited for unquestioning acceptance of the facts of one’s self without an understanding of these facts—the invert finds much of one’s thought process consumed with inner projection. The flare-up of temper, the critical perception of a work of art, the basis of a broken friendship, the unfinished task at work, the daydream and the nightmare—whence come these facets of life, what are their hidden meanings, how do they tie in with the total personality? These perceptive abilities, sharpened by inner search, can be and frequently are applied to an understanding of all people. On the surface this seems to be confined to the ability to recognize hidden, latent, or well-disguised talent behind the façade of respectability, but it also permits recognition of the concealed meaning of a poem, the delayed break of a handshake, even the condemnatory attitude of a hostile person. This ability is, in a sense, a form of self-protection. Analytical abilities that are developed by introspection, sharpened by the search for a glimpse behind anonymous mask, are extended to the understanding of all phases of human behavior. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

Because some individual learns that one’s activities, thoughts, philosophies, aspirations, are understandable in the light of full knowledge of the intricacies of the emotional structure; because one learns that the motives for an action may be camouflaged so thoroughly that it seems to stem from the very opposite of its actual source; because, in short, one is forced to obtain a wealth of knowledge about the personal psychological make-up, one can and frequently does this to the fuller understanding of others. And when to this understanding is added compassion for all individuals and groups, no matter to what tragic pass life has brought them, a rare combination of worthwhile traits is obtained. It is understood that beyond discussion, not based on unthinking faith, blind passion, illogical reasoning, or linger prejudices that are one time or another were part of the ruling mores of society fails to receive its day in court. Not all people have been able to utilize their disadvantageous position for self-improvement in every respect and in all direction. I have pointed out the struggle to excel, but many people are easily defeated. Their resiliency in the face of the burden they carry is insufficient to meet the experiences of life. I have outlined the understanding that is extended to other individuals and groups that struggle, each in its own manner, against exclusion. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

However, many people, even those in marginalized groups, are deeply rooted in prejudice. They have been unable to learn the lesson that should be so apparent to them in the face of the World’s bigotry and persecution. I have depicted the individual turned compassionate toward one’s fellow beings, but there are those whose cruelty is lustful and murderous. Self-study and insight are not always present, nor is skepticism of necessity a constructive force. However, it is the very essence of democracy, the antithesis of totalitarianism, that justice and fair play are desirable ends in themselves. Repression and intolerance are to be condemned, no mater what lofty purpose may motivate them or what useful result may unwittingly issue therefrom. The beneficial reaction that turns repression to the finer purpose in life is far from a justification of that of course. In fact, the opposite is true, for it is a demonstration of character, power, and intellect of the invert that gives the lie to the name-calling of one’s enemies and proves all the more one’s worthiness of acceptance by society. The desirable ends which I have outlined must, in fact, be weighed against the needless sufferings, the dejection and humiliation, the extortion and the court trials—all issuing from the same repressive character of modern culture. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

The great energy of those who have utilized the contempt of their fellows as an incentive to further creativity must be balanced against the energy expended and wasted in the struggle against this very same contempt. There is a poetic irony in the future of the once marginalized in society, for one will use the high attainments of character to struggle against the very injustices that are so largely responsible for these attainments, and the successful termination of repressive attitudes may erase the very achievements that were used to effect this termination. Nevertheless, I am convinced that there is a permanent place in the scheme of things for the person reaching for self-actualization—a place that transcends the reaction to hostility and that will continue to contribute to social betterment after social acceptance. Power is required for communication. To stand up before an indifferent or hostile group and have one’s say, or to speak honestly to a friend truths which go deep and hurt—these require self-affirmation, self-assertion, and even at times aggression. This point is so self-evident that it is generally overlooked. Hence, many are mighty in contradiction. My experience in psychotherapy convinces me that the act which requires the most courage is the simple truthful communication, unpropelled by rage or anger, of one’s deepest thoughts to another. We generally communicate most openly only to those who are our equals in power. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Violence itself is a kind of communication. They cannot communicate with language, so they strike out in violence. However, it is still a language, however rudimentary or primitive, appropriate in certain conditions, and necessary in others. Some people are violence because they do not possess the self-esteem necessary for communication. They cannot stand and deliver themselves of their feelings in relation to others; indeed, unable to formulate them, they are unsure of what their feelings really are. The sooner people in power turn their minds away from exploiting taxpayers and the less affluent for financial gain and become concerned with the rights of people as human beings, the sooner the violence will be mitigated. There is something more important that powerful nations need to send to our leaders and children. This is the poets. For the poets (and writers in general) are the ones skilled in communication. They can speak in universal forms which will be understood by people of whatever color or nationality. They speak the language of consciousness, of dignity, regardless of race or color; they can cultivate the integrity of the marginalized and the other characteristics that are essential to being human. For they know that communication makes community, and community is the possibility of human beings living together for their mutual psychological, physical, and spiritual nourishment. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

The kind of communication that overcomes the impulse to violence and that binds persons to each other is a kind of talking that is conciliatory and restorative. In psychotherapy we find that the difficulties experiences by a man and a wife in a relationship can be gauged roughly how much trouble they have in communicating with each other. When there is difficulty understanding what the other is talking (or not talking) about, we can assume an estrangement. Then the person is simply not (or perhaps does not want to be) tuned in on the wave length of the others. Intellectualizing or talking abstractly is a symptom of the same thing—a desire not to communicate one’s real feelings, a blocking-off of one’s total self. As hostility grows, projection increases also; there is apt to be a good deal of allegations and an increase in distance, all of which is indicative of growing hostility. We know that we shall get to the stage of violence ere long. Psychotherapy is reversing that process so that the person can talk on the same wave length. Even if the couple decides to divorce, at least they decide it together, and the process has that much more community in it. Communication recovers the original “we” of the human being on a new level. Authentic communication depends on authentic language. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Authentic talk is organic—the speaker communicates not merely with words but with one’s body also; one’s gestures, one’s movements, one’s expression, one’s tone of voice communicate the same thing as one’s words. One speaks not as a disembodied voice but as one organic totality to another. We would not communicate unless we valued the other, considered one worth talking to, worth the effort to make our ideas clear. This is communicating without talking down, without patronizing. Communication implies the presence of social interest. One has to have an interest in the other to make it worthwhile to hear one. This means one relates to another not as receptacle for the expression one one’s pleasures of the flesh, or as a being to be exploited for the assuaging of one’s own loneliness, or in any other way as an object, but as a human being in the full meaning of that term. Communication leads to community—that is, to understanding, intimacy, and the mutual valuing that was preciously lacking. Community can be defined simply as a group in which free conversation can take place. Community is where I can share my innermost thoughts, bring out the depths of my own feelings, and know they will be understood. These days there is a greater search for community, partly because our human experience of community has largely evaporated and we are lonely. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

The term community gives birth to a rich cluster of words, all of which have powerful connotations. There is commune, a relatively new word with an optimistic ring; and communion, an old word with new meaning that has for many of us a still more beneficial tone. However, when we come then to a cognate which is taken negatively by many people—namely communism. All these words have the same root. Community is destroyed by destructive violence. If I, like Cain, commit a senseless act of ending a life, I must flee into the desert, driven by my guilt at having take the life of my brother Abel; a cleavage now exists between me and other members of my erstwhile community. In this sense I shrink my World and thus kill part of myself. I need my enemy in my community. He or she or they keep me alert, vital. I need one’s criticism. Strange to say, I need him or her or them to posit myself against. If I could learn something from one, I would walk twenty miles to see my worst enemy. However, beyond what we specifically learn from our enemies, we need them emotionally: our psychic economy cannot get along well without them. Persons often remark that curiously to them, they feel a singular emptiness when their enemy dies or is incapacitated. All of which indicates that our enemy is as necessary for us as is our friends. Both together are part of authentic community. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Community is where I can accept my own loneliness, distinguishing between that part of it which can be overcome and that part of it which is inescapable. Community is the group in which I can depend upon my fellows to support me; it is partially the source of my physical courage in that, knowing I can depend on others, I guarantee that they also can depend on me. It is where my moral courage, consisting of standing against members of my own community, is supported even by those I stand against. “And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord that he would give unto community grace, that they might have charity,” reports Ether 12.36. O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,–Nature observatory—whence the dell, its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell, may seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ‘mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee, yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be almost the highest bliss of human-kind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

Residence Four is the largest home offered in Cresleigh Riverside. This two-story, 3,489 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one suite on the first floor, three and one half bathroom, and a true three-car garage. The covered porch provided a warm entry and the dining room is located right off the entry way. The Kitchen is connected through the Butler’s Pantry providing ample storage. The great room and loft upstairs allow for various uses that will suit your family and lifestyle.

https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/residence-4/

Randolph Harris II International Institute

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